Boeing 737 Max8 Aircraft Crashes and Investigations [Part 7] 16

[Sparweb]

This post is the continuation from this series of previous threads:

thread815-445840
thread815-450258
thread815-452000
thread815-454283
thread815-457125
thread815-461989

This topic is broken into multiple threads due to the length to be scrolled, and images to load, creating long load times for some users and devices.
If you are NEW to this discussion, please read the above threads prior to posting, to avoid rehashing old discussions.

Thank you everyone for your interest! I have learned a lot from the discussion, too.

Some key references:
Ethiopian CAA preliminary report (Link is now broken. See PDF download below, 3 MB)

Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee preliminary report

A Boeing 737 Technical Site

Washington Post: When Will Boeing 737 Max Fly Again and More Questions

BBC: Boeing to temporarily halt 737 Max production in January

www.sparweb.ca

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

The older aircraft were harder in some respects and you needed and required more of an engineer's mind set. For dealing with stuff. But all of the time you knew exactly what the machine was doing. But easier in others because what you see is what you get.

The people flying them were different as well. Most of them came into civilian flying with a military back ground.

These days it's straight from uni/school for alot with zero life experience.

I completely agree with spar about pilots being the biggest variable and the cause of the majority of accident's either completely or as a major contributor.

But then again there is no statistics on what a pilot does successfully sort out day to day. Automatics are great load reducers. They also save alot of fuel. But every single approach will have some sort of pilot input to get to the ground. Be it to temporarily select heading and Vs on a ils when the beams start to wobble due to the 4 aircraft ahead or not react to a huge gust and chase the airspeed.

I don't have a solution. I know the direction we should be going in which is a better understanding of the current humans becoming pilots, Their thought processes and instinct reactions and thier limitations globally. And then design for that. It's a start and other things will surface along the way but continuing with using 50 year old presumptions which where never completely correct in the first place history will only repeat itself with these human machine clashes.

Handling skills have decreased depending on what section of the industry your in. Long haul jet pilots suffering the most. Some only doing 3 landings a month. The company's are actively preventing manual flying in day to day operations.

Us turboprop dash trash types. We still get plenty of stick time. 4 sectors a day and 20 working days a month means we are banging in. Literally that is, just got a fdm email about my first officer s 1.79g landing. But anyway I land 40 times a month and watch for another 40. The airport's we fly to will allow us to do visual approaches so we do them. Think i did 4 approaches from 10000ft to landing with no flight director or autopilot in the last month. In summer it would have been more.

So there is a huge spread of stick skills as well for designers to deal with.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

This is an interesting article.

I remember the up roar around the time of the Airbus selection cancellation.

Why on earth would you want to fly the plane and the boom at the same time? Btw in the UK we don't use booms our planes have to prod a basket.

But it's not just the max that Boeing is dealing with.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/amp/ncna1153671

The starliner has issues as well.

Is there anything they don't have issues with?

 

[1503-44]

YES FUEL PRICES. HOLD ON AIRLINES. HELP IS COMING.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/08/investing/oil-prices-crash-opec-russia-saudi-arabia/index.html

Our (Petroleum/products) industry is doing everything possible to support our aviation clients. So much so that we may put ourselves out of business pretty soon in the process. $31/BBL you just can't beat it, even with a stick. Unfortunately we all may be out of business soon, if not tomorrow. Expensive shale oil cannot even compete with solar cell power any more, never mind that super-cheap, conventionally produced oil, from Saudi Arabia and Russia. Woooo! Who could have seen that coming? Thanks for your BILLIONS of capital that it took us to get us there, BTW. And ... Ah, You won't be seeing that again.

Hopefully the airlines (and the rest of you as well) will finally reap the benefits of cheaper jet and other fossil fuels on the way in the immediate future and use those BILIONS OF SAVINGS to keep the flight crews flying, and ground service staff gainfully employed during their time of crisis, all those hedge funds and oil traders going, and perhaps contribute to the many faithful oil and gas companies, and their workers, that contiuously endevor to support the world, even to their own detriment. Or at least not complain too much if we ever get a fair price again for our stuff. Tell me. What other industry is so adept at developing new technology and so competing so fiercely in fair world market that they force themselves out of business? It certainly makes the dangers of drinking your own kool-aid perfectly clear. Can we talk bail out?

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Well the low oil price will have several much larger effects for me coming from Aberdeen Scotland. What's the current North sea break even point?

There is no point burning fuel when nobody is travelling. I am hearing 50-60 pax on a 180 seaters which most of the loco's run. Yes fuel is a large part of the turn over of all airlines but sub 40% load factors the fuel could be free and it wouldn't change anything.

And there is nonsense going on that aircraft are having to fly empty just to keep slots in the major airports such as Heathrow. These slots are worth millions each and the airlines don't want competitors to get them so they fly empty aircraft. Hopefully that will be suspended in the next few days.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Well that's the type rating cancelled... And redundancy notices going out.. I am lucky and still have a job....

A bit of pilot humour...

Another thought is when to buy Boeing stock? I reckon 100$ to set my buy for.

 

[Tomfh]

That Boeing tanker story was really interesting.

How much of Boeing’s recent share rise over the last decade was due to this deal?

 

[Sparweb]

...there is no statistics on what a pilot does successfully sort out day to day...

Like the goalie at a hockey game. There's a bright red light that comes on every time he makes a mistake. But he gets 100+ saves during the game and hardly anyone notices or keeps track.

The other point, about skill in general, is such a tough nut to crack. Pilots, drivers, computer programmers, architects; everyone should have a skill, but is it valued as much as it should be? I'm increasingly convinced that the entire mentality of both Western AND Eastern people is completely inadequate to the task. Not referring to technological sophistication, exactly. In some ways; throw enough computation at a problem and you can get any machine to do a lot of things on its own. What I'm really referring to is HOW it gets them done, HOW often it gets it right, and HOW much any user can trust it. What if the whole thrust of automation and AI is just because too many people can get away with being lazy?

The Darwin award winners who die in Tesla highway crashes while napping are just the trailblazers on this path.
So many individuals around the world are convinced that convenient, simple, easy is equal to good.
Accept the stuff you read on the internet, accept the promised 20-pound weight loss just by drinking this powdered product you can order online, accept the lane-keeping reminder in your SUV, accept the form the government tax agency sent you is accurate. You got it all from a computer so it must be the best.

I spent 3 weeks in China a couple of years ago, sharing daily life with folks who have within 1 generation discovered a plethora of western technology, but not a soul among them knows how to use it skillfully. The whole time I was subjected to myopic drivers who can't see the road for the phone in their face, empty abandoned skyscrapers, electrical receptacles in the shower wall, and airplanes whose controls were assembled with stripped-thread bolts. Every moment I knew that somewhere in my field of vision there was at least one bollixed-up thing and I had to try real hard to stay focused on just one at a time to maintain my sanity. There was this constant onslaught of incompetence. I couldn't even order a snack without watching someone fumble for a tedious minute with the container. Can you imagine what kind of pilot emerges from this environment? Sorry - this subject brings out the worst in me sometimes.

I make a dedicated and conscious effort to be as skillful as possible in as many things I do every day as I possibly can. There's a moderate level of this attitude in the people around me, but precious few people in my immediate circle who actually realize that skill is an EXTREMELY satisfying part of life. Discovering a way to do something and putting it to use is great fun. Finding a better way the next time you try just sweetens it. I know some people who think this way and I admire them greatly.

When confronted people who "phone it in" or got their training from school and that's all they know, I really have to bite my tongue. I hear them complain about trivial problems - things I've solved in my life a long time ago (and moved on to bigger problems, everybody's got them) I wonder just how happy or satisfied anyone at all is with their life.

I'd better stop. Glad it's my thread so I get to pretend it's on-topic.

http://www.sparweb.ca

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

I personally do think it is on topic.

But it does encompass pretty much every thread in this sub forum to some extent.

Your comments about different geographical areas and skill sets could and would be labelled racist by more than a few. But I know from experience that you are correct. Its not related to anything genetic before anyone gets upset. Its all to do with how someone grows up and what experiences they are exposed to during childhood and what is the norm in their environment.

You can find the same technically clueless people in every company in the world. Just go to the accounts or marketing departments and you will find a vast herd of them.

As for the getting satisfaction from doing something properly and getting frustrated and persevering to get better. They have started labelling traits like that medically, Autism being the favourite, 50 years ago they would have called them grumpy engineers. ;-)

 

[debodine]

To Alistair's point, as soon as you hear in any discussion a participant refer to any other participant in the discussion as anything "...ist" or "...phobic", you know you are talking to someone who is either unwilling (usually through ideology) or unable (usually thru indoctrination) to reason.

 

[RVAmeche]

debodine,

I think that's a pretty extreme blanket rule to apply to any discussion.

There are lots of people who will use an accidents (such as the 737 Max) or other events (such as Covid-19) to say racist or xenophobic things based on biased prejudices or beliefs. That's a sad fact of human beings. Of course there are also people who will claim the other side is being racist/xenophobic just to try to "win" the debate.

 

[TenPenny]

Like the goalie at a hockey game. There's a bright red light that comes on every time he makes a mistake. But he gets 100+ saves during the game and hardly anyone notices or keeps track.

Well, actually, in pro hockey, almost everyone notices, and thousands of people keep track of those percentages.

 

[Sparweb]

It didn't occur to me at the time of writing yesterday how my message could be misunderstood... thank you for pointing it out and not jumping all over me.
For the record (I feel a CYA attack coming on) I encounter a large number of people who seem to be incompetent all the time everywhere I go, and this may be a problem with me, if not as much a problem for them. There is no pattern and there is no particular trade or discipline where I see it more or less. I'm just sensitive to it and it bothers me so much that I probably tend to overreact to it more than other people do. It was the general incompetence - or better put, denigration of the value of skill - that I was complaining about. I just happened to be in China at the time that I was also immersed in a group of people who really didn't know what they were doing. I have also seen the befuddled work of plenty of down-home American, Canadian and European people in one mechanical trade or another. I also know I've screwed up a few times and those events are painful to think about. As the old saying goes "the problem with incompetence is that the supply always exceeds the demand".
Oh, and then to rub sand in the wound, I was listening to a radio show last night and then they turned to the topic of "Should we aim for mediocrity?". So you guys only got 1/2 of my rant because I boiled over again at the dinner table.

Again, I should cut this short. For therapy I think I should go read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".

http://www.sparweb.ca

 

[LittleInch]

So now not only are boeing faced with a " geriatric Frankenstein of old tech and new " their age old desire to let the plots fly the plane and do things in short spaces of time is being attacked by the reality of pilot skills and airline desire to set everything into auto and let the plane do the work.

It seems to be a growing realisation that the automation side is now so much a part and parcel of modern aircraft flying that the pilots, especially those coming straight from school/university/pilot training academy (as the ET captain was), just don't mistrust the machine enough.

Thus this hybrid machine Boeing has in the 737 max with part manual part FBW is now at odds with the people being taught to fly it.

I wonder if it will ever get there sometimes.



Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[Comcokid]

The 737 carries more of a "geriatric Frankenstein of old tech and new" than we realize. It carries a thin fuselage skin approach that started with the 727. I understand that the skin is a little thicker than early model 737 (Aloha Flight 243 high cycles, corrosion, thin skin) but it still suffers more often from skin fatigue cracks than it should. Now that smoking is banned on commercial flights the airline maintenance people no longer have nicotine stains to help show cracks before they become worse (Southwest Flight 812 + Flight 2294 + a 737 yesterday with a crack on a flight from Idaho to Las Vegas).

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

The ET Captain wasn't some low hours numpty.

He had slightly less than me total hours at 8122 hours. But significantly less PIC time of 1417. But 1417 PIC on the 737 is 2 years flying as a Captain. So he will know what he was doing. The FO was a different story.

He also had time on a proper old school aircraft the 757/767.

He will though have had a lot less sectors than me. ie TO/landings

But that cockpit experience is no different to a lot of loco cockpits in Europe.

I don't think they didn't mistrust the automatics, they just didn't have a clue how to sort it out because they didn't know what was going on. I do honestly myself wonder if I could have done any better. Realistically and truthfully I am not sure I could have at the time.

I can not emphasise enough how strange and utterly confusing something screwing with your controls is with the autopilot out. FBW is different story they are trained from the outset that there is stuff going on that you don't know about. Boeing sells the 737 on the fact that the pilot fly's the plane and the controls have a direct linkage to the flight surfaces. So with the MAX they went Frankenstein FBW without telling the crew and not designing and certifying to DAL A FBW standards.


And yes comcokid there is crown skin cracking issue which is surfacing just now on the NG's but nothing released yet by the FAA. That area has already got a 1500 hours out of phase inspect AD on it. But an aircraft apparently had a fast fracture failure on it 500 hours or something like that after the last inspection. So they are now wondering if just a visual inspection is enough.

 

[Lou Scannon]

It carries a thin fuselage skin approach that started with the 727.

Not to nitpick, and I'm quite willing to be corrected, but I seem to recall that the downsized 707 i.e. Boeing 720, had a lightened structure that included thinner skin. And as far as I know the 720 came a little before the 727. Just for the record.

"Schiefgehen wird, was schiefgehen kann" - das Murphygesetz

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

It might be more to do with acid etching becoming more main stream in the 60's.

About that period they all started thinning the skin down between the attachment points.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Some more on the crown splits.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/faa-is-probing-how-a-12-inch-crack-occurred-in-southwest-jet/

Seems to be happening to ASW a bit to often for comfort to be honest.

the Q400 early on suffered a load of gear failures. And that turned out to be an issue with maint by SAS.

 

[waross]

Is that type of cracking common to passenger jets?
Is it unique to Boeing jets?
Is it unique to 737 aircraft?

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

 

[SWComposites]

Yes.
No.
No.