Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-8 Max Experienced Dutch Roll

Re:Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-8 Max Experienced Dutch Roll by marcus0x62 on Thursday June 13, 2024 @08:12AM (#40668698)

Years ago, my father in law ( a heavy jet mechanic) got sent to China for two months as part of a team to diagnose and fix a recurring dutch roll complaint on a particular airframe. This was for a A300-series flown by a large freight carrier.

The local mechanics couldn’t figure it out, so this team was assembled from the mechanics at headquarters to fix the plane.

They inspected the plane and found no damage. They had the pilots make multiple test flights - they could not reproduce the problem. The pilots were adamant that the plane was broken. Engineers from Airbus ended up flying out to assist. They couldn’t identify any problems.

After a few months of effort and a lot of very expensive dart throwing and parts swapping, they gave up. As far as anyone could tell, there was never anything wrong with the plane, and based on comments overheard from the pilots, they simply did not like this particular plane. It had been pulled from a boneyard and recertified, and they considered flying it beneath them.

FIL did come home with some cuban cigars and really high quality counterfeit Fluke multimeters he got from the local market, though.

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Re:Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-8 Max Experienced Dutch Roll by Waterluvian on Thursday June 13, 2024 @08:36AM (#40668912)

Eek… I’d never want to fly a plane that’s beneath me. I’d prefer it to be at the same altitude.

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Re:Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-8 Max Experienced Dutch Roll by bigstrat2003 on Thursday June 13, 2024 @10:05AM (#40669819)

Technically any plane should be beneath you. Also above you, but beneath you too.

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Re:Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-8 Max Experienced Dutch Roll by Two4 on Thursday June 13, 2024 @04:39PM (#40674455)

Mitch Hedburg? Is that you?

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Re:Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-8 Max Experienced Dutch Roll by moffkalast on Thursday June 13, 2024 @09:01AM (#40669111)

Well unless you're an air launched cruise missile operator.

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Re:Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-8 Max Experienced Dutch Roll by denderson on Friday June 14, 2024 @12:16PM (#40682113)

#UnexpectedDrStrangelove ?

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Re:Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-8 Max Experienced Dutch Roll by ToucanLoucan on Thursday June 13, 2024 @09:26AM (#40669379)

> and really high quality counterfeit Fluke multimeters he got from the local market, though.

I got one of those years ago. Wouldn't trust it on any industrial shit but I've used it for residential electrical tinkering (plus smaller projects) for years, works great and has never had a single issue.

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Re:Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-8 Max Experienced Dutch Roll by marcus0x62 on Thursday June 13, 2024 @09:30AM (#40669413)

These were used for mechanic-y stuff like basic voltage and circuit draw tests. They were fine for that, and the main benefit was that they were made with oil/solvent resistant coatings on the meter body and leads.

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Re:Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-8 Max Experienced Dutch Roll by FabHK on Thursday June 13, 2024 @09:50AM (#40669627)

> they simply did not like this particular plane.

…and employed a face-saving (though probably very expensive) way of communicating it.

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Re:Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-8 Max Experienced Dutch Roll by marcus0x62 on Thursday June 13, 2024 @10:16AM (#40669964)

I think this was way more calculated than that. They made up an issue they knew would be taken very seriously and that would be difficult - in the best of circumstances - to disprove.

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Re:Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-8 Max Experienced Dutch Roll by pfannkuchen on Thursday June 13, 2024 @10:01AM (#40669770)

I suspect the face saving culture is holding China back significantly since it adds a ton of noise to interpersonal signal propagation. I wonder if the government is doing anything social engineering-y to try to reduce it?

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Re:Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-8 Max Experienced Dutch Roll by kstrauser on Thursday June 13, 2024 @10:25AM (#40670086)

The government is among the worst of the culprits. “We’re being accused of doing a bad thing? I know! Arrest the speaker and erase it from our version of the Internet!”

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Re:Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-8 Max Experienced Dutch Roll by RobotToaster on Thursday June 13, 2024 @10:34AM (#40670200)

> I wonder if the government is doing anything social engineering-y to try to reduce it?

I know Xi Jinping launching an anti-corruption program was considered a pretty big deal, because it meant admitting that corruption exists in the CPC.

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Re:Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-8 Max Experienced Dutch Roll by seanmcdirmid on Thursday June 13, 2024 @10:59AM (#40670547)

That isn’t true though. All presidents launch anti corruption campaigns to solidify their power when they start. Xi did it, Hu did it, Jiang did it, I bet Deng did it (although the office was merged yet, he was at least supreme leader). When they are all corrupt, it is easy to (a) clean house of people you don’t like (b) protect and promote your supporters and (c) scare lots of monkeys by killing lots of chickens.

The CPC always admitted there was corruption, to do otherwise would simply lose credibility with people. Given that Xi is now president for life, the corruption should simply be accumulating now since the 10 year house cleaning cycle has been broken.

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Re:Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-8 Max Experienced Dutch Roll by jgalt212 on Thursday June 13, 2024 @10:26AM (#40670107)

seriously. Look at the Kardashians. They turned every embarrassing event into a money making opportunity.

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Re:Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-8 Max Experienced Dutch Roll by RobotToaster on Thursday June 13, 2024 @10:35AM (#40670216)

You think the Kardashians are a good model for government?

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Re:Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-8 Max Experienced Dutch Roll by jgalt212 on Thursday June 13, 2024 @11:00AM (#40670556)

Of course not. I meant it as an extreme counter-example.

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