Even if you were concerned, there were two crashes in IIRC 40,000+ flights. You are still probably more likely to die in the car on your way to the airport. The fear would be irrational.
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Boeing 737 Max 8
- Thread starter nobbie48
- Start date
Ran into an aviation techie today and pretty much agreed on all the above. We agreed that Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) was bafflegarb to avoid a more proper and complex acronym that contained word like crash prevention, erroneous design compensator etc.
There are few details, but a whistleblower complaint around the trim cutout switches is terrifying. Hopefully they were real physical cutouts and there was no way for the computer to keep control. If Boeing left a backdoor, that would explain why Ethiopia pitched down again after the pilots hit the switches (the other possibility is the pilots re-engaged the switches for some reason).
Another very unfavorable article for Boeing. Apparently, they never flight tested the scenario where the AOA sensor gave bad data.
Even the test pilots didnt have a full grasp of the power of MCAS. How are they supposed to help you check out the plane when you bury important operational information to chase a buck?
Muilenburg is riding his arrogant high horse right to the end. "We haven't seen a technical slip or gaffe in terms of the fundamental design and certification," Muilenburg said"
Boeing relied on single sensor for 737 Max that had been flagged 216 times to FAA
Even the test pilots didnt have a full grasp of the power of MCAS. How are they supposed to help you check out the plane when you bury important operational information to chase a buck?
Muilenburg is riding his arrogant high horse right to the end. "We haven't seen a technical slip or gaffe in terms of the fundamental design and certification," Muilenburg said"
Boeing relied on single sensor for 737 Max that had been flagged 216 times to FAA
More incompetence. Apparently some airlines thought the disagree light was standard as that was past practice. Boeing moved it into the options column to try to make more money.
Virgin has delayed their order from november 2019 to july 2021. It sounds like they dont believe in Boeings approach to slap a software patch on it and see what happens.
Boeing safety system not at fault, says chief executive
Virgin has delayed their order from november 2019 to july 2021. It sounds like they dont believe in Boeings approach to slap a software patch on it and see what happens.
Boeing safety system not at fault, says chief executive
This appears to be a well written article on the approval process of the Max8.
The many human errors that brought down the Boeing 737 Max
The many human errors that brought down the Boeing 737 Max
J_F
Guest
Another damning article. Boeing thought the disagree lights were included on all planes but long into production realize they had screwed up and they werent working. They did an internal review and decided that "the lack of a working warning light “did not adversely impact airplane safety or operation"". As such they did not inform the FAA or any airlines who were told that a disagree light was standard. WTF. A pilot is trying to fight through a deadly situation and you have a non-functioning warning light??? That leads pilots to look for other sources of the problem. After the first crash boeing told airlines that the disagree light would trigger on the ground if sensors were faulty. Again, completely wrong, the plane needs to be over 400' before the light (that doesnt work on 80% of the shipped planes) could possibly illuminate.
Boeing Believed a 737 Max Warning Light Was Standard. It Wasn’t.
Boeing Believed a 737 Max Warning Light Was Standard. It Wasn’t.
Not until he straps on his golden parachute.
It's actually pretty astounding how many people this must have gone through before being rolled out to customers. I can only imagine the size of the departments at Boeing dealing with SQA, risk-management, engineering review, readiness reviews, compliance etc etc etc. It's not believable that no one in this chain of groups raised a red flag of concern re lack of redundancy and poor documentation/training (etc etc ad nauseum); the CEO is a figurehead compared to the myriad decision makers below him entrusted to do **** right.
This is probably going to result in indictments of engineers and managers and even developers deep into Boeing, not unlike engineers being arrested in the wake of VW's diesel affair. With hundreds of dead people Boeing's fuckup is unimaginably worse than that; heads will roll.
It's just really, really hard to understand how a company that has been doing aircraft for the better part of a century and big liners since the 1940s or 1950s could have screwed this up so badly. Although I happen to think that engineers these days are simply not as good as they were when Boeing drew up the 747 on paper drafting boards, there's a lot of "safety nets" (reviews, SQA, qualification, compliance etc) that had giant holes in them; apparently managers aren't as good as the "good old days" either.
This is probably going to result in indictments of engineers and managers and even developers deep into Boeing, not unlike engineers being arrested in the wake of VW's diesel affair. With hundreds of dead people Boeing's fuckup is unimaginably worse than that; heads will roll.
It's just really, really hard to understand how a company that has been doing aircraft for the better part of a century and big liners since the 1940s or 1950s could have screwed this up so badly. Although I happen to think that engineers these days are simply not as good as they were when Boeing drew up the 747 on paper drafting boards, there's a lot of "safety nets" (reviews, SQA, qualification, compliance etc) that had giant holes in them; apparently managers aren't as good as the "good old days" either.
Large companies tend to be compartmentalized. It's possible that the only people who had enough information to see the big picture were management-types who are neither pilots nor engineers. Each little compartment probably did the job that they were told "design a sensor that does this", "design wiring that connects this to that", "write some logic that does this", but nobody connected the right dots to clue in that the overall system should have been categorised as a safety-related system and treated and analysed as such.
The only way this makes sense to me is if there was a small subset of the staff that was desperately trying to bury the existence and power of MCAS. That explains why test-pilots weren't told, why it wasn't in the manual/training, why it didn't get caught by all of the departments you list etc.. If a group slipped this in and didn't tell the rest of Boeing much of the checks and balances (including the FAA) get skipped.
If you don't know about MCAS, the non-functional disagree light does seem like a minor problem. If you don't have the AOA display, the pilot can't even see the output of that sensor so who cares if it is acting up? Worst-case is the stick-shaker activates, the pilot looks out the window and realizes AOA sensor is messed up and continues safely flying.
J_F
Guest
maybe I'm cynical
but I see this as intentional
concealing the significance of MCAS and what it does
to not have to go through a new type class certification
and require the re-training of client's 737 pilots
I feel it was pure marketing
hundreds of billions were at stake vs. Airbus
not saying they knew it was unsafe and buried that info
but that the final decisions were not by the engineers
it was by the reps with the fat order books
As I learn more, this type-class thing is an even bigger deal than I thought. The training obviously has some costs, but the huge problem is (if I understand it correctly) commercial pilots can only be certified to fly one type-class at a time. If the 737 max got bumped into a new class, southwest's cost-saving of any pilot in any plane would be ruined. Given they would need two pilot pools, would they choose Boeing for the second pool or would that give Airbus an opening?
That certainly explains MCAS as a system to bring the flight characteristics of the MAX inline with those of, say, the -800. It doesn't explain the shoddy management and wholly inadequate engineering employed to implement it.
J_F
Guest
not trying to come off as argumentative
but engineers are given problems to solve
sometimes, complex problems within limited budgets
stuffing much larger/efficient jet engines
into an existing airframe could be one of those challenges
then making the whole package air-worthy after the challenges were discovered
and designing a software fix to comply with type-class certification to fool the FAA
engineering is taking the blame
seems they came to an elegant solution to polishing a turd
management heads need to roll
I doubt we'll ever get the whole story, but it is unlikely that there is no blame on engineering. Someone decided that MCAS needed to move 2.5 degrees instead of the initial 0.8 degrees. Someone decided (or missed) that MCAS should/could activate repeatedly. Those aren't management problems. Needing MCAS in the first place and burying it's importance is probably a management problem.
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