Posted on 04/03/2019 7:18:49 AM PDT by WhoisAlanGreenspan?
Pilots at the controls of the Boeing Co. 737 MAX that crashed in March in Ethiopia initially followed emergency procedures laid out by the plane maker but still failed to recover control of the jet, according to people briefed on the probe’s preliminary findings.
After turning off a flight-control system that was automatically pushing down the plane’s nose shortly after takeoff March 10, these people said, the crew couldn’t get the aircraft to climb and ended up turning it back on and relying on other steps before the final plunge killed all 157 people on board.
The sequence of events, still subject to further evaluation by investigators, calls into question assertions by Boeing BA, -1.56% and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration over the past five months that by simply following established procedures to turn off the suspect stall-prevention feature, called MCAS, pilots could overcome a misfire of the system and avoid ending in a crash.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
If the Ethiopian crew knew how to deal with the MCAS system during false AOA indications but couldn't recover, who can say the Indonesian crew also knew but failed to recover.
I don't know if the prior air crew with the jump seat helper that successfully recovered are on record as having reported their trouble to the following crew or not.
The guy has some excellent videos and my brother who has been flying 737s for 20 years and my neighbors on the airport where we live with our airplanes have been sharing the same information. The story the thread is based on is misleading.
All that needs to be done to disable MCAS on the 737 MAX and disable runaway stabilizer trim on any 737 is to flick the two switches to the manual position that are directly under the trim indicator and part of the “before taxi” checklist. Then the pilots just needed to turn the trim wheel right next to these switches until they got the trim back to an appropriate position.
These pilots didn't know what to do in a situation that they almost had to have trained for, and no they did not follow the correct procedure. They panicked and screwed the pooch.
I have seen a lot of misleading coverage about airplane crashes in the past, but nothing that can compare to this one. I am a little surprised that so many people here have taken the bait.
The problem and solution has been known for several months.
Absolutely designed to over ride the pilots.
The problem is, you must then manually crank the stabilizer trim wheels manually, which can take a lot of muscle.
Maybe the Ethopian pilots kept turning the electric trim motor back on, which allowed MCAS to continue to give erroneous down trim to the aircraft.
Here is an excellent video on how to identify and resolve a problem with MCAS:
Button on yoke.
Power switches on throttle quadrant.
Yeah. I guess my point is that the problem may have been more impactive than they thought, and the solution less effective than they thought.
FWIW, I’m still in the “it’s probably pilot error” camp on this, but I am getting the feeling this plane is harder to fly (in some conditions) than other aircraft. And it may take special training/certification, exactly what Boeing was trying to avoid.
You can come out of your cave now.
I am in the camp that Boeing is completely responsible for this whole debacle. I understand that the two tr switches were turned off correctly in the Eithiopian crash.
Just turn the goddmned thing off and hand-fly it already.
This was a major screw up... Too bad for Boeing, but offering a formerly ‘optional’ software safety upgrade for ‘free’... Makes it sound as though they were trying to profit off passengers safety and that is as sick as it gets.
No need for that kind of snark for a fellow Freeper tho.
In the end... It wasn’t the Hal 9000’s fault, it was the fault of the computer geek who programmed the Hal 9000. There are no computer ‘errors’, but there are programmers who are fallible, and because they are human, they always will be fallible.
It would be like a modern day car driver losing the engine and the power steering while underway and not realizing how hard it is to steer the car. - Tom
And here's the referenced article by Gregory Travis; This is aerodynamic malpractice of the worst kind.
Yeah...disengaged MCAS and “still couldn’t get the aircraft to climb.”
That does not sound good.
Another thread today said they disengaged MCAS but later turned it back on.
HAL: I am sorry Dave, this airplane is going to crash.
There should be a BIG button that says Override that the pilots can hit.
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