Posted on 03/21/2019 7:35:57 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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.
Current and former engineers directly involved with the evaluations or familiar with the document shared details of Boeing’s “System Safety Analysis” of MCAS, which The Seattle Times confirmed.
The safety analysis:
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.com ...
The FAA, citing lack of funding and resources, has over the years delegated increasing authority to Boeing to take on more of the work of certifying the safety of its own airplanes.Early on in certification of the 737 MAX, the FAA safety engineering team divided up the technical assessments that would be delegated to Boeing versus those they considered more critical and would be retained within the FAA.
There wasn’t a complete and proper review of the documents,” the former engineer added. “Review was rushed to reach certain certification dates.”
But several FAA technical experts said in interviews that as certification proceeded, managers prodded them to speed the process. Development of the MAX was lagging nine months behind the rival Airbus A320neo. Time was of the essence for Boeing.
A former FAA safety engineer who was directly involved in certifying the MAX said that halfway through the certification process, “we were asked by management to re-evaluate what would be delegated. Management thought we had retained too much at the FAA.”
Bribes to Obama administration?
End of the day you will find Malfeasance in the certification of this aircraft, either at Boeing, the FAA or BOTH... Don’t kid yourselves.
There are only 2 ways this plane got into service... 1) Complete ineptitude up and and down Boeing and the FAA which I do not believe at all or 2) Crony Capitalism and Greased Palms or Flat out falsified documentation etc by Boeing.
Slimes reporting that not having this caused the crash.
These papers just make stuff up.
“Bribes to Obama administration?”
Just heard this am that FBI (ha, ha) has opened a criminal investigation.
something I still don’t understand... if you take the aircraft out of autopilot, the flight characteristic software is still operating and able to make significant flight corrections? Why?
Who wants to fly a plane where you can’t just take the stick and throttles over in an emergency situation without interference from software or even malfunctioning hardware???
Because Boeing marketed This Plane as being a 737. The mcas box has to remain engaged in order for it to be a 737. When the mcas box is disengaged the plane flies as it flies which is not like a 737. This whole thing boils down to a big fat marketing gimmick that Boeing perpetrated upon its customers and it stinks to high heaven
Juan Brown is the best pilot reporter out there. This is an excellent analysis of the crash and history of the B737 MAX/Airbus 320neo saga.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ts_AjU89Qk
I think you are probably correct.
MCAS was capable of moving the tail more than four times farther than was stated in the initial safety analysis document.
...
What about the final safety analysis document?
Who wants to fly a plane where you can’t just take the stick and throttles over in an emergency situation without interference from software or even malfunctioning hardware???
...
In the case of the Lion Air crash, the captain was able to keep the plane under control by using enough force. The captain let the first officer fly while he checked the manual. The FO did not use enough force on the control column to override the automatic trim and the plane flew into the ground.
On a previous flight the flight crew disabled the automatic trim and the plane landed safely. Apparently, they didn’t let the next crew know what happened, which they are supposed to do.
At the basic level this was a hardware problem, the failure of one of the angle of attack sensors.
I’ll wait for the NTSB report; can’t trust the nooze media to even get the known facts right ...
Good thing Trump wasn’t POTUS in 2015.
Self policing in a competitive market. What could go wrong?
Safety development processes involve methodologies that are expensive. They take time. There are no short cuts.
Here, it appears they cut short the process in a crucial area. This was reckless, to the point of criminal imo. This whole thing STINKS and people died because of it.
I would expect that one could easily have automatic trim control irrespective of the autopilot. When A/P engaged, it controls the auto trim. When A/P disengaged, the auto trim operates on its own.
Furthermore, I’d expect that the auto trim can itself be disengaged, in which case there is a manual trim control wheel.
The a/p can do a LOT more than merely control the horizontal stabilizer trim control: tied to nav, heading mode, altitude hold.... then there is the flight director.
So what’s wrong with a good old fashioned ‘stick-shaker’ as a stall warning?
I will be doing exactly the same thing. Boeing has given the worldwide traveling public and our military and military air forces all over the world terrific, safe operating air machines for many, many years. Knowing that I will wait for for both Boeing & NTSB reports as to what happened.
I also believe that might have been some human shortfalls in the cockpit environment and culture of different airlines. The fact that no USA or Europe had fatal incidents is cause for concern relative Lion Airlines & Ethiopian Airlines cockpit operating procedures & command during a critical airworthy incident.
If you are not trained to fly the aircraft, all of the computer assisted management in the world will not save you. These pilots did not know how to fly the aircraft. That is all this is. I could fly a 767 for 20,000 hours and then step onto a 757 for the very first time in my life, never been on it before and fly it safely and certified. These pilots were not trained properly. The copilot had 200 flight hours, not even sure what those 200 hours were in, but still, 200 hours, there were probably passengers on that flight that had that much time or more on flight simulator.
This is why I avoid new aircraft models and designs as much as possible.
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