Boeing again 47

[3DDave]

Repeating what? The Boeing took full blame? Is that it?
Or that the crew 100% failed - look at the FDR and the CVR.

Tell me what reasonable thing they did at any point, one thing that in their training they would have said "This is exactly what will keep control."

Show me one post you made before ET-302 that said the MAX should be grounded and why.
Show me any post anywhere by anyone before ET-302 that suggests that.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

it was an utter crap design using 1960's chat to justify it was safe.

I was trained in 2000 and have 24 years experience flying all manner of turboprop crap with is extremely hands on zero automatics.

I now have 2000 hours on a very nice jet 3rd generation jet. out of 12000 hours total which is over 1 year of my life with my feet not connected to the ground.

I still think it would have been more luck than skill that would have saved my fat hairy Scottish arse from death in a 737MAX having a AOA failure event.

 

[3DDave]

Confirmation bias. The question is - would you risk flying a plane with a known defect?

Do you regularly do the exact opposite of the FCOM requirement?

What skill is there to pushing the trim button?

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

I regularly fly inside the MEL with required procedural changes

So to answer you question yes I do.

But the systems are documented and procedures are also documented I have zero memory items.

Basically two black pilots have completely killed one of the most outstanding engineering respected company's in the USA. Plus a couple of hundred other humans not that the accountants will even think about them. if we are going to believe pro Boeing types.

 

[3DDave]

No - you don't fly with a known fatal flaw. MEL - which ones are known to be fatal? Which have you flown with after a fatal crash happened because the MEL item malfunctioned?

You do sidestep and have no proof that anyone thought there was an insurmountable problem before ET-302. Neither you nor anyone else thought that doing more than pushing the trim switch to return the plane to trim and then using the cutout switches, which are there for exactly this purpose, was required.

Neither did the other nearly 10,000 737 pilots; at least, so far, I have seen none spoke up before ET-302.

The pilots didn't do the killing, except themselves and their passengers; they didn't follow the procedure or take any sensible action.

Those who lied and said they followed the procedure exactly lined up the knife. The CEO who falsely took all the blame pushed it into the heart.

Shortly after killing those people on the plane, the Ethiopian government, owner and operator and trainer for the airline, went and killed about 200,000 or more Ethiopians in a frenzy of genocide.

Between 162,000 and 600,000 people were killed, and war rape became a "daily" occurrence, with girls as young as 8 and women as old as 72 being raped, often in front of their families. A major humanitarian crisis developed as a result of the war, which led to a widespread famine.

The airline was the crown jewel of government achievement and it could not be seen that they had training flaws so bad they needed to ground the planes. Besides, they could blame Boeing. Which they did. And no one can sue them, but they did get a huge payout, and discounts on future orders. Win-win.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

I actually think you have quite a none normal experience base from your comments.

You have way more than the normal stick waggling private pilot comment on the MCAS stuff.

Your basically screwed now and absolutely nobody including the FAA is going with the logic stream.

 

[dik]

Gentlemen...

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Point taken..


It is highly frustrating though seeing the demands of humana performance which I know I am incapable of myself.

Thankfully the director of the FAA had the same feelings after he experienced a MCAS event in the Boeing simulator.

There will be those that do see everything that is occurring currently to Boeing as the result of those dead pilots incompetence.

Where as I see it as the incompetent of Boeing managers.

 

[LittleInch]

3DDave,

We've been through this many times and clearly won't agree, but some things need challenging here.

"Known Defect" - The MCAS issue was not described as a "defect". The Defect was the AoA indication failure which occurred during flight - they didn't take off with a defective AoA indicator. Plus every 737Max operator was also flying with this issue.
"known mitigation - did opposite" - Maybe lost in the mists of time now, but the "mitigation" and the explanation of what MCAS was likely to do in the event of an AoA failure was IMHO, very poorly written and in essence they followed the procedure, they disabled the trim switches. The thing that they did which was outside that was reenabling it and not following through on the trim buttons in part because they had allowed the airspeed to get away from them.
" just wanted to get the autopilot to fly the plane because they didn't know how." - Well it was flying perfectly well before the A/P dropped out so trying to reengage it seems perfectly sensible to me.

Bottom line though was the poor design of the MCAS system, the change to its maximum trim change AFTER getting approval from the FAA, not telling the pilots it was there, providing no warning lights or gauges as standard, repeated operation based on single input / single failure, reliance on "memory" items etc etc.

So yes, you can continue to believe that the 2 pilots are the cause of Boeing going into meltdown, but I don't and I think not many others do either.

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

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

You would be surprised how many do believe it.

And there is a large number of pilots and technical none American in there as well.

But the game is played like its a political campaign for an election.

The technical failure of the design and certification is globally out there and has been for years. That fact cannot be changed or debated.

We really don't want Boeing to fail. It will cause utter chaos for everyone.

 

[LionelHutz]

There is a big disconnect between what people think the plane should be capable of, and what it really is. Boeing and the airlines make believe they can be flown like a new FBW design, but it's simply not true.

As for blame, there is plenty to go around, and the blame can go back long before the 737 was certified. You could point fingers towards everyone from the US government to Boeing to Ethiopia and beyond.

Boeing has been stupid going back to the M-D merger or possibly even before. They sold around 10k of the 737 to 737NG planes. They knew the NG was pushing the limits and should be considered a dead design, but they continued flogging it instead of starting clean sheet. Then, they decided to build the Dreamliner instead of a smaller plane with at least 5x more demand for.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

The NG was a flawed certification as well.

They rushed it through so they didn't have to comply with the new standards which were about to come in at the time.

This was then grandfathered through onto the MAX

There are things getting pulled on the current MAX models getting certified that date back to the NG certification

 

[3DDave]

" they followed the procedure, they disabled the trim switches. "

Clearly not. The procedure was to establish trim before disabling the trim switches and never re-enable them. The plane was gaining altitude and was stable on pitch before they re-enabled trim to re-enable the autopilot and then left it on while the auto-pilot refused to engage.

Had they discussed any of this with their Chief pilot or each other or any other pilots in the several MONTHS ahead of this they would know not to.

Read the AD, read the FDR. Skipping parts, attempting to force the autopilot back on when the circumstance clearly states to disable the autopilot, failing to set thrust manually when the airspeed disagree says to. Failing to re-establish trim before disabling the trim switches. That's not following anything.

There's this idea that somehow they found themselves in those seats as if beamed in with a Star Trek transporter from their beds and had never been on a flight-deck before, having to figure out everything from scratch.

You don't believe that when a maker sends out an emergency AD and a statement that the software will be re-written that that constitutes a known defect? The software had a defect. That's what was known. The ET-302 pilots did know MCAS was there and were given ample information as to how it worked. They knew a plane configured just like theirs had crashed and had months to review the crash report. If they didn't understand why the crash happened, they should have refused to fly.

"Well it was flying perfectly well before the A/P dropped out so trying to reengage it seems perfectly sensible to me." It was not. There was a stall warning and a stick shaker. There was an airspeed disagree. It was not perfect. That's why the autopilot dropped out. I feel like they would hold in a circuit breaker that kept tripping or put a penny in a fuse box.

It wasn't just the crew. It was the claim that the crew performed perfectly and that the plane could not have been flown safely. The crew was just the beginning of the claim. What did the fatal damage was the CEO saying it was entirely the fault of Boeing, based on that claim of perfect performance.

I asked for specific facts about what the pilot community thought before ET-302. So far, no response. Of course the FAA head, who refuses to release a video of his experience and was blamed for not grounding the MAX, is going to make a show of it. I expect he did the Star Trek beam-in on the last 5 seconds when the flight had been allowed to become unrecoverable. No different that the AF447 Captain who woke up from a nap and got to the flight deck to see how his crew had killed them all. But that's not what the ET-302 crew started with.

Here's how I know the meltdown started with ET-302. The same MCAS problem brought down the Lion Air flight and no one reacted the way they did to ET-302. Had ET-302 not crashed Boeing would not be in the current situation. The tear filled claims the ET-302 pilots bravely followed all instructions perfectly and still died was key, not the crash.

I believe that, in the months after Lion Air, that someone reproduced that same event in a simulator and did not came away with the idea the situation was uncontrollable or could be uncontrollable; people looking for any flaw in the mitigation. Did the head of the FAA get into a simulator then? If not, why not?

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

To be honest from what I remember there was more sense being talked by you lot in this forum than there was in the pilot forums.

We had 737 classics and the pilots on them didn't seem to know anything more than was said here.

In fact there are 3-4 following the various aviation threads to this day.

Our ex Norwiegen pilots flying the max said looking back it was incredibly little information they received before flying it and after the first one speared in. They basically got a single email with half a page of A4 on the lion air crash. And those that were in the SIM got a 5 min talk about it.

They were as surprised as the rest of us when the second one went in and the fall out started.

 

[LittleInch]

3DDave,

We've been through this many times and I've gone back to find that original AD from Boeing and it is, IMHO, very confusingly written and provides unclear information.

Right at the start it emphasises that this occurs in "Manual Flight Only". So little wonder they were trying to re-engage the A/P as that takes it put of manual flight only.

No mention that it only starts when you don't have Flaps down for even 5 degrees.
No mention that pulling back on the control column doesn't stop the trim action as had been the case in the NG and earlier versions so a significant change
No mention that failure to cut out would overcome the control column elevator control
In terms of the trim and the operating instruction, the big things in capital letters say CUTOUT and then in the "notes" says that electric trim "can be used..." so clearly optional and not "part of the procedure".

Also no mention of this being a fatal flaw. Or Disengage Auto Throttle and no mention of not re-engaging A/P.

I will grant you they re engaged the trim, but only after they couldn't move the manual trim wheel and were having a lot of difficulty as I recall trying to hold the plane steady with a constant high force required on the control column.

What it should have said IMO was that the FIRST action to take to arrest the nose down action was to use the column trim buttons to both arrest the nose down trim and also correct the trim back to a stable position and then WITHIN 5 SECONDS, hit the trim cut out switches. Don't re-engage A/P or release the trim cut out switches and at the same time disable auto throttle. But it didn't.

So we won't agree on this clearly and whilst there were some errors and mis steps by the pilots, none of that would have been required if the design was not fatally flawed. The Ethiopian Air chief was undoubtably pointing the finger at Boeing.

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

 

[3DDave]

"They were as surprised as the rest of us"

A lot of people were surprised. They should have gotten over that surprise when the details from the FDR came out where the crew made a minor problem into a disaster.

"They basically got a single email with half a page of A4 on the lion air crash. And those that were in the SIM got a 5 min talk about it."

An airline management problem, a failure of the related CAA, their Chief pilot, and themselves for lack of interest.

All entities that are not Boeing.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Best Boeing only sells it's product to an extremely select customer base then.

Manage the risk that way instead of by system design.

 

[1503-44]

ABOUT TIME FOR A CONTINUING THREAD?


--Einstein gave the same test to students every year. When asked why he would do something like that, "Because the answers had changed."

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Yes go for it. I really don't know the etiquette of doing that.

 

[LittleInch]

You just create a new thread with Pt 2 (or whatever) in the title and link to the previous one in the first post. That's it.


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