LNGH

DC got activated for the protests. Between that and COVID word as of mid June is holding with no timeline.

Green screen with your personal highlight reel on it

AFMAN 36-2032 section 5.4.8.3, also check the general DoD documents

You've been getting interviews so that definitely says you're doing something right. There's nothing inherently wrong with your application, and I'd even argue it's pretty strong, especially for heavies. As far as places you didn't get an interview that can come down to any number of things. Some units prefer high time some low, some emphasize scores some don't, some only look at locals some don't care, there could be a million reasons you didn't get an interview somewhere that doesn't say anything about you. As far as interviewing and not getting selected, it could be more of the same or you could need to do a little reflecting on how you come across as a person. No way to tell from this. I won't lie, I am curious as to why a private license took well over 100 hours, and hiring units may be as well. It's not unheard of to take a long time, especially if you had breaks in training that forced you to go back and review stuff, but if it's because you failed the check ride 7 times that's a huge red flag.

Parts of it can be done elsewhere but they always involve going to Wright-Patt.

Push comes to shove you can just call the ops desk. I'll be there this weekend

For anyone that missed it, resubmit your Tulsa packages ETA: https://bogidope.com/job-posting/125th-fighter-squadron-3/

You're not wrong. Here it is straight from that AD I linked earlier. My point though isn't so much that there's not a correction, or even training to handle similar issues, but that it's a matter of recognizing the issue. When the AoA fails and the aircraft suddenly pitches down the CAS throws a ton of warnings all not directly to the system that the pilots were never told was on the plane in the first place. It's easy to get caught up with a terrain alarm before catching the trim runaway. Yes, it's possible for the pilots to catch and correct the issue, even without specific training. But Boeing set the pilots up for failure while actively suppressing things that would make the aircraft safer. They never should have been in the situation of needing to figure it out without an extraordinary series of failures happening, not a single moderately likely failure. It's one thing if they overlooked it, an accident happened, they admit they ed up and correct it. But they knew there was a problem, they actively hid the problem, then when the problem killed 189 people they continued to try to hide the problem and blame the pilots. When they're finally forced to act they release an AD that downplays the problem as much as possible. Boeing had repeated opportunities to do the right thing and make the plane safer but strong armed their way through the process in the name of cutting cost. It would be great if we could say there's never going to be another accident in aviation. Our training is perfect, our systems are perfect, it's all hunky dory. But that will never happen. The best we can do, and are obligated to do, is to make things as safe as we can. Mistakes happen and people die. It's unfortunate but it happens, and we can accept that. This wasnt a mistake. This was deliberate corner cutting for profits over people, and that's unforgivable.

For the most part I have no issue with executives making stupid money. I don't care. There's a lot of arguments for why it's justifiable. But when those same executives are directly responsible for what's at best criminal negligence the least you can do is not give them more money than I'll make in the next 20 years. ETA: This is the reason I think it's ok they get paid beaucoup bucks. They get paid a lot because they hold huge responsibility. The flip side is when they forsake that responsibility now they also lose that money. But instead it's they reap the benefits of nothing going wrong, and when it does they collect one last big check and walk out. They get paid a lot because they're accountable, so let's hold em accountable. Back to the main topic: Will the 737 MAX fly again. Yes. Is Boeing's reputation going to take decades to recover? Also yes.

The AD after the first crash, btw: https://theaircurrent.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/B737-MAX-AD-1107.pdf No mention of the level of urgency required. The AD just says hey, look for these things and doesn't mention you have 3 seconds to figure it out and 10 seconds to correct or it's irrecoverable. IMHO this isnt a civil issue, it's a criminal one. But what do I know.

I'll preface this with I know it kind of contradicts what I said above but only to a point (y'all got me reading a lot more into this). The initial motivation between an update vs clean-sheet wasn't cost, it was competition, but at the end it was still a series of decisions driven by money not sound engineering or safety. The 737 wasn't supposed to be updated. I won't say never but the actual plan in 2006 was to replace the aircraft with a clean-sheet design following the 787. They kept putting off deciding on the new design until in mid-2010 they committed to making a decision in 2011. Enter Airbus in December 2010 announcing the A320neo program and securing an order of hundreds of planes from the then Boeing dominated American Airlines fleet. The downside for Airbus was that the contract with American hindered their ability to make deal with other airlines, giving Boeing time to react. Boeing pushes off the new airplane to 2030 and rushes to build a more efficient 737 to secure their dominance with other airlines. "Easiest" way to increase efficiency? Larger engines with higher bypass ratios (they also made some aero/weight changes but that's the big one). The problem is the original 737 was designed with thin turbojets, not turbofans, and also designed to sit as low as possible for weight and maintenance. The new engines don't fit under the wing so they moved them forward, up, and I think slightly in as well. This put them more forward of the lateral axis, increasing moment. Not only that, the engine nacelles themselves now generated a fair bit more lift. This came to a head when doing high speed stall testing where the aircraft would perform relatively as expected but the stick wouldn't The forces on the stick would suddenly drop off through the stall due to the increased lift on the nacelles. FAA cert requirements say that the forces on the stick have to make smooth changes. So while the aircraft was still safe to fly, it didn't meet cert requirements. Enter MCAS. The first iteration used the AoA sensor and a g-input to determine if the aircraft was entering a high speed stall and adjusted the elevator by up to 0.6 degrees to compensate. Test pilots say it works beautifully and the program continues. Some more test flights and the same stick load issue is discovered during low speed stalls as well. Lower airspeed means larger deflections are required to control the aircraft, and their won't be excessive g-forces to trigger the MCAS system. So Boeing scraps the g-force input, ups the amount of authority of the MCAS system, and allows in to activate multiple successive times in a row stacking the pitch change. Note that while they scrapped the g-input and the 737 has two AoA sensors, they never update it to read more than one. Test pilots, engineers, designers all raise concerns but are shouted down and literally told "Don't rock the boat." The safety assessment relies on the pilots assessing and correcting a runaway pitch condition within 3 seconds, which was never going to happen for several reasons. The accidents that happened were caused when that single AoA sensor failed and the MCAS system activated. A pilot may recognize a single specific issue in 3 seconds but that's not the cockpit environment when an AoA sensor fails. Master warning, stall warning, stick shaker, TAWS, overspeed, wildly spinning trim wheel, and who knows what else all suddenly comes on at the same time. The pilot figures out that nose is pitching down and yanks the yoke. Too bad the force required to pull up is suddenly well over 40 or 50 pounds. The pilot recognizes the runaway elevator and does the standard procedure of hitting the trim switch to correct. Too bad the MCAS system disables the yoke trim switch when it's activated. Go to the flight manual for the runaway elevator procedure to see what to do about MCAS. Except there's nothing in there about it. Boeing made an extremely conscious decision to leave it out. Transition training from the older 737s to the max? Nothing about MCAS was there either. So in the aftermath people turn to Boeing for answers. Why wasn't it designed safer? Why was the system reliant on a single input? Why weren't the pilots trained? Boeing's response: We did everything right. The system passed the legal requirements, our system safety assessment showed it was safe per the requirements, and the training provided was more than enough for the pilots. One hour on an iPad. You want to know why those planes crashed? Ask the pilots flying them. (This response was disgusting then and more so now with this next part coming to light). People probe deeper and the truth comes out. MCAS was a band-aid. It was tested in its original form but not in it's second evolution. Why? Because management actively suppressed flight testing of it. A new system safety report wasn't written for the new system. Why? They did a back of the envelope calculation and figured they didn't have to. The flight manual didn't continue info about MCAS or how to disable it. Why? Boeing worked very hard to convince the FAA that they didn't need it. They didn't want people to be aware of how different the aircraft really was (various reasons for that, but it all comes back to money). There was no real training program for the transition pilots. Why? Same as above. So where are we now? The FAA is auditing everything Boeing has, likely finding more issues. That'll happen, there's an absolutely insane amount of documentation, mistakes are going to happen, mostly innocent ones. Boeing is losing huge amounts of money due to the grounding and lost faith in their safety. Customers losing faith in Boeing products, but this is absolutely true: Boeing continues to insist they bear no fault and people shouldn't stop trusting them. And 346 people are dead. Gone. Never to be seen again. All because Boeing couldn't be bothered to change an 'if/then' statement to 'if/if(and)/then/else'.

Short answer: it's a cluster. There's nothing cheap about aviation, add in that parts are one off and don't benefit from economies of scale and that $200,000 system is now an $800,000 system to manufacture. Oh, the FAA iterated requirements? Do it again. It failed a half million dollar test? Do it again. Safety analysis says it's no good? Do it again. Customer changed their mind? Do it again. Why didn't Boeing redo the system safety assessment after the MCAS change? That report alone likely cost millions to write. That sounds insane? Well that report is fed by hundreds of other reports, each fed by a few to several dozen other reports, each taking anywhere from 10 to 1000 man hours to write, all written by specialist engineers (like myself) all making $40-$100 an hour. That's just for the writing and analysis. A fire test on a relatively small part can cost upwards of $100k. Just the cowling, thrust reverser, and some of the tubing around the engines of the new G500 cost over a quarter billion.

It's less engineers/lawyers as engineers/bean counters, at least from what I've seen on both hardware and software cert. Certifying clean sheet aircraft, especially part 25, is stupid expensive so incremental design makes sense. But then they no doubt had engineers screaming about why problems and finance came down and pressured the UMs to save a buck and approve it anyway instead of spending the time and money to do it right. The problem is for a publicly traded company to be successful it can't just be profitable, it needs to be increasingly profitable, which is absolutely unsustainable. Boeing needed new sales to increase profits, so new plane. Fine, makes sense. While they can more than afford a clean sheet design it cuts too heavily into profits, so iterate an existing design. OK, fine, happens all the time. But issues come up from trying to staple those huge engines to an aircraft never designed to carry them. Hardware fix is affordable but again, cuts into profits so they can't post growth. Software is cheaper so just do that. The software fix sucks and doesn't work, but the bean counters already figured the were going to make X dollars and it just hurts too much to make less than that, so lean on the UMs to get them to sign it off anyways. Besides, pilots are smart, they'll know what to do. Except you never gave them a proper training program (too expensive and it would draw attention to the flaws in the design) and you laughed at the pilots that asked for one. You don't know what to do when the aircraft is nose low? Idiot. Never mind that it's nose low because the aircraft forced it there, and we never told you how to stop it from doing that. So now instead of spending X dollars on doing it (mostly) right the first time they're spending 10X dollars fixing it as the FAA audits everything after a lot of people died. Not to mention lost revenue from sales as those planes pile up on the ground. All because fiscal quarters > long term profitability > any kind of moral responsibility. Don't be shocked if those audits find issues endemic to the 737 platform and it has repercussions outside of just the MAX series.

My guess as to why a simple software fix is taking this long has to do with the way the certification process works. For the most part, the FAA independent of Boeing doesn't look at anything. They appoint representatives at the company that approves the documentation on behalf of the FAA which is a pretty obvious conflict of interest but if they didn't it would take 25 years to approve anything. What I'm guessing is the documentation was pretty lacking in a lot of areas on things that are probably safe but just not well substantiated. After the FAA proper started to dig in to the MCAS issue they found a bunch of other things that needed to be redone. Probably just documentation and not real design issues (outside of the obvious design problems that are all public) but that can still take a long time, especially when the FAA gets directly involved and not through company surrogates.

Access to Saudi oil isn't hugely important to the US. In 2018, 59% of oil was produced domestically, 20% imported from Canada, and ~5% of our oil was imported from Saudi Arabia and that's been on the decline for years. (Source: EIA) We could pretty easily supplant them with imports from other countries (Canada, Mexico, or Venezuela would all work) or domestic production. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the intricacies of our relationship with them but oil is not the primary driver. Europe does get significant amounts of oil from SA though, so maybe it is about oil just more about not disturbing supply for allies as opposed to ourselves. Like I said, not an expert. To be clear, I also think SA is no friend to the US and we should seriously reevaluate our relationship with them.