Posted on 03/10/2019 1:35:43 PM PDT by springwater13
The Boeing 737 MAX 8, a brand new plane only registered in November, disappeared from the radar six minutes into the flight. Immediate comparisons have been drawn with Lion Air flight 610, which crashed just over four months ago, killing 189 people. Flight data showed erratic climbs and descents before the plane, also a MAX 8, came down 12 minutes after takeoff from Jakarta.
More than 300 Boeing 737-MAX planes are in operation and more than 5,000 have been ordered worldwide since 2017. It is the latest iteration of the 737, the worlds bestselling plane, ever more capable of flying autonomously.
Autonomy, however, can bring problems. It is notable that insurers considering driverless cars worry most about the period when highly autonomous vehicles will coexist with human drivers, the uncertain interface between human and artificial intelligence.
Pilots worldwide were angered after the Lion Air crash that subtle software modifications to the MAX 8s autopilot had not been fully communicated. Nor were they made the subject of mandatory pilot retraining.
The new plane automatically compensates if it believes its angle puts it at a risk of stalling, a safety feature that worked in a slightly different way to that which 737 pilots were used to. Lion Airs black box suggested the pilots of flight 610 had been wrestling with this issue.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Love that dang song and video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5rRZdiu1UE
Best part is those ‘80s vintage MOPAR cop cars.
That first blue car is a Ford LTD or whatever name they were using then. They may have dropped “Galaxy” by then.
Boeing took a 50 year old design, and modified it ti fit the latest generation of engines to it. They were able to do this by moving the engines forward, lifting the nose up a few inches, and changing the tail cone.
This caused the airplane’s handling characteristics to change. Basicly the airplane has a tendency to lift the nose.
So the Boeing engineers tried to remedy the situation by programming the airplane’s MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) to help the pilots bring the nose down in case the nose it drifted too high. In the Indonesia crash, The problem was that this wasn’t even written in the Flight Crew Operations Manual (FCOM), and crew didn’t know about it.
Ethiopian pilots maybe not so much.
According to Boeing’s own employee training, the most important ethics is ensuring a black person is on every team, not making airplanes that don’t crash.
I kid you not. When Boeing speaks of ethics they speak about minorities being included on every team. They never speak about airplane safety in their ethics programs.
I thought that Boeing issued instructions how to disable this feature with a flick of a switch after the first crash?
If the crew is not trained or told about it, then the switch may as well be on Mars.
There should be an Alyssa Milano on every team! That way everything would be covered! (well, except for white males)
[Its a terrible way to die.]
Great. So you have 3rd world pilots possibly having to transition from the old handling standard to one where the MCAS software (thanks for the term) is now involved.
In the early 90s Boeing had trouble with their rudder control where the pilot inputs would sometimes reverse themselves so a right rudder input would make the plane yaw to the left. It wasn’t until a plane with the problem was able to land safely that the issue was revealed.
I wonder how accurate this report is:
Why bother, AOC is going to ieliminate air travel. Next to take a train to Hawaii. When does the next one leave?
By now they surely know about it. The problem is that maybe thats not the only problem or not the problem itself.
Good call on the Ford.
Thanks.
There was the dark green Mopar in Hunter.
Those were good days.
Those boxy sedans are just what cars looked like when I was a kid. Huge sense of nostalgia when watching the video.
There wasnt just one but 3 Nairobi warnings
What were the other ones?
I wonder if the pilots were the same on both fatal flights.
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