> A guest columnist—who happens to be the regular columnist’s wife—ponders how his obsession with air travel benefits readers

> In the days after the first crash of Boeing’s 737 Max, engineers at the Federal Aviation Administration came to a troubling realization: They didn’t fully understand the automated system that helped send the plane into a nose-dive, killing everyone on board.

> Engineers at the agency scoured their files for information about the system designed to help avoid stalls. They didn’t find much. Regulators had never independently assessed the risks of the dangerous software known as MCAS when they approved the plane in 2017.

source: HN

> The person responsible for getting the fancy computer to Hawaii talked with the shipping company about the situation. At the time, they were Microsoft’s exclusive provider of overnight delivery services, and from how this story unfolds, it’s clear that they were serious about maintaining that status.

> The mystery surrounding MH370 has been a focus of continued investigation and a source of sometimes feverish public speculation.

> Roughly 110 years ago, one of the world’s greatest aircraft designers—Clarence “Kelly” Johnson—was born in Ishpeming, Michigan. And since we’re gigantic aviation nerds here at Ars Technica, the week of his birthday (February 27) is as good a reason as any to celebrate some of his legendary designs. Johnson spent 44 years working at Lockheed, where he was responsible for world-changing aircraft including the high-flying U-2, the “missile with a man in it” F-104 Starfighter, and the almost-otherworldly Blackbird family of jets.

> As Boeing hustled in 2015 to catch up to Airbus and certify its new 737 MAX, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) managers pushed the agency’s safety engineers to delegate safety assessments to Boeing itself, and to speedily approve the resulting analysis.

> But the original safety analysis that Boeing delivered to the FAA for a new flight control system on the MAX — a report used to certify the plane as safe to fly — had several crucial flaws.

> That flight control system, called MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System), is now under scrutiny after two crashes of the jet in less than five months resulted in Wednesday’s FAA order to ground the plane.

Also: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/business/boeing-safety-features-charge.html

source: DF

> The ace pilot risking his life to fulfill Richard Branson’s billion-dollar quest to make commercial space travel a reality.

> Stucky had piloted SpaceShipTwo on two dozen previous test flights, including three of the four times that it had fired its rocket booster, which was necessary to propel it into space. On October 31, 2014, he watched the fourth such flight from mission control; it crashed in the desert, killing his best friend. On this morning, Stucky would be piloting the fifth rocket-powered flight, on a new iteration of the spaceship. A successful test would restore the program’s lustre.

And a little note at the end, unrelated to the crash:

> As it turned out, there had been a glitch in the gyros’ software; the manufacturer had issued a patch, but hadn’t indicated that it fixed a major problem, so Virgin Galactic hadn’t installed it.

> “Without a doubt, this is, by design, less space than you have in cabins for our customers who desire a different product.”

> Jason Francisco of Camarillo, Calif., figured out that on airlines that charge for cold water, flight attendants often pour hot water from the onboard tea kettle at no cost. To help feed his family of six, Mr. Francisco—a logistics supervisor, no less—brings aboard budget flights several packets of instant miso soup, bowls of dry ramen noodles and reusable dinnerware.

> Varsano, who says he has sold or helped to sell almost 300 aircraft over the course of his career, is a large, fit, exceptionally good looking and effortlessly agreeable self-made man of 61. He has an imposing head crowned with slicked-back pewter hair, piercing eyes of an Aegean blue, an imperial nose and the resplendent smile of a beloved crooner on a Caesars Palace pension. He wears suits made by the Ghanaian-British Savile Row designer Ozwald Boateng over worn Italian loafers, and carries a weathered gray Louis Vuitton briefcase with a heavy metal clasp. His business card is milled from galvanized metal. By his estimate, the total value of sales he has brokered exceeds $4 billion.

source: MR

> Airbus said Monday it built 718 planes in 2017—a company record and a full 30 planes above the year before. Boeing said last week it produced 763 airliners, also a record.

> Airbus and Boeing have already struggled at times to get planes out the door because of a lack of seats, toilet doors, and even engines.

Toilet doors and jet engines, the pinnacle of modern engineering.

> Boeing and Airbus ended the year with a combined backlog of 13,129 planes, or almost nine years of production at current output levels.

I cannot imagine dealing with a backlog like that.

> A trip from Brazil to Europe, for instance, took three days, and there was little to do except look out the window, read, socialize, eat, and drink. These last two, as one might expect, were taken quite seriously.

> Reporting has taken me to many strange places. The oddest is the National Airborne Operations Centre, the doomsday plane that carries American defence secretaries around the globe. A specialised version of a Boeing 747, known as an E4-B, its white and blue hull is studded with odd bulges and domes, concealing the gadgets needed to run a nuclear war from the air.

> But the terminals were built more than 40 years ago, and many believe the decades have not been kind.

> I frequently see airlines cited as an example where the American economy is obviously more monopolistic. By some metrics, yes, but what about the final deal?

source: MR

Don’t aim at your future self.

Continuous markets in everything. All it’s missing is a little blockchain.

source: ML

> Each region is closer to a particular airport than any other. This partitioning of the sphere is called a spherical Voronoi diagram.

source: jwz

> Dividing security checks into haves and have-nots is bad social policy

Probably a dead on arrival policy, but nevertheless.

source: SOS

> I’ve held off on posting this while I tried to find out more about the back story and identify who was really responsible. But since none of the airlines involved have chosen to talk to me, despite my diligent efforts, and many questions may be answered publicly only at trial (or never publicly if the likely lawsuits are settled out of court), here’s my educated guess as to what happened and who’s responsible.

source: HN