Posted on 03/14/2019 2:33:55 PM PDT by rickmichaels
Lion Air Flight 610 plunged into the sea off Indonesia because the pilot “lost (the) fight with his software,” Canadian Transport minister Marc Garneau chillingly told a Wednesday press conference announcing the grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX 8.
There is nothing wrong with the basic mechanics of the aircraft: Its engines, wings and control surfaces are all believed to be working fine. Rather, the passenger jet may have killed 346 people for the terrifyingly modern reason that human pilots were unable to override a malfunctioning computer.
The cause of the Lion Air crash — and the suspected cause of the recent downing of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 — is a little-known piece of software known as MCAS, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System.
The 737 MAX 8 has heavier and more fuel-efficient engines than prior editions of the 737, a change which causes the aircraft to pitch upwards ever-so-slightly after takeoff.
Rather than instructing airlines to warn their pilots of this quirk, Boeing simply equipped the MAX 8 with MCAS, a program that would automatically tilt the nose downwards to compensate.
In normal circumstances, the system is not a problem, but it only takes a minor maintenance error to turn MCAS into a deadly liability.
In the case of Lion Air Flight 610, the 737 MAX 8 had a faulty “angle of attack sensor”; a small blade sticking out of the cockpit that records the angle of the aircraft in flight.
The sensor was wrongly telling the MAX 8’s flight computers that the aircraft was climbing much more sharply than it was. As a result, pilots were left wrestling with an aircraft that was repeatedly plunging itself towards the ground for no reason.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalpost.com ...
So don’t even comment if you’re going to play dumb.
The Max planes are misleadingly called 737s when in fact they are a major re-design. The wings had to be shifted forward to accommodate the new engines so it handles differently.
The change in wing position plus the heavier engines apparently gives the nose a tendency to tip up at times, so they decided to add this ‘MCAS’ software to ‘help’ the pilots.
But they didn’t tell the pilots that the MCAS was there, and they obviously didn’t limit it only to times when the plane has a lot of altitude, and worst of all they didn’t give the pilots a way to turn the damned thing off when they rotate off.
If a plane needs to have a software program in order to fly level, there’s something wrong with the design of the plane.
Period.
Would passenger manifests give us a clue?
It makes me really excited about all the talk about autopilot in our cars.
That’s sort of what I’d gathered. They put software in place to smooth out the minor aerodynamic anomalies. But software itself is inherently prone to unanticipated bugs, as every programmer should know. It undergoes a lot of testing and then still surprises everyone since unlike humans, it can’t think beyond what it’s been told. It shouldn’t be used at all to compensate for a plane’s bad handling.
That’s what I said.
It seems the design of the MCAS system had no redundancy, no reference to other stability signals, and no travel limits on trim controls. If so, Boeing has sub-standard design, test and QA procedures.
I have no doubt you are better than Boeing at programming avionics and that your knowledge of what went wrong is vastly greater, too.
"I can't allow you pilots to jeopardize the mission ... I mean 'flight'."
“” “” I learned how to fly in the early 70’s. Another thing that amazes me is that many pilots today have difficulty with basic navigation skills.”” “”
Blame GPS. I didn’t have problem to navigate a thousand miles in a crowded foreign country with a paper map fifteen years ago.
Now housewifes cans go shopping without GPS.
Do you mean the B1 bomber?
The AE35 Unit checked out fine. HAL was the problem.
The plane looks weird. Those engines are too close to the fuselage.
Whatever flips your skirt.... G
Actually your a conclusion starts from a false assumption so your argument fails. Software is not a component of your computer... A component makes noise when you drop it on a hard surface... Software is like the writing in a book. Neither was at fault.
Whatat you are positing is to have a startup screen that asks the pilot his nationality then only allows him to taxi unless he is from a Boeing approved country. Right now every country in the world has its own standards. So, how would you fix this problem? Not all pilots are good pilots.
Excellent point. Well taken. No, I am not.
The current evidence and story is beyond belief.
So we’ll have to wait and see what Boeing’s response it.
One item confirms what I have said - they are now adding multiple sensors to feed the software that takes control, acknowledging that using one sensor for input was an error. So in that point, their response confirms one of my points.
the first thing that came to my mind was faulty pitot tube..... the aircraft is nosing down to pick up speed... if the tube is not properly aligned at build, welllllll
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