Capt. Guthrie, fleet captain for the 737 at American Airlines , faces the same problem with the faulty sensor. This time the stick shaker gives its same loud warning, the result of the faulty sensor, but the 737’s computer never points the airplane down. A yellow caution light comes on and he easily maintains control.
“You don’t see compounding emergencies going on,” Capt. Guthrie says. “The second emergency never occurs. You’ve eliminated a major distractor.”
He and other pilots at American and other airlines have been voluntarily advising Boeing on fixing its troubled model of the 737, grounded in March after crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia killed a total of 346 people. Wednesday morning’s session was the first time he checked out the changes in a full-motion simulator. (He had tested it previously in a stationary cockpit simulator in Seattle.) Boeing is running actual flight tests of the fix, with regulators world-wide scrutinizing the results.
The Fix is in. Now it is up to the regulators to approve the software changes and re-certify the MAX for passenger service.
So now, instead of pitching the plane down automatically, a light comes on.
Must’ve taken a real genius to figure that one out.
This is the problem with using H1 B Visas for this kind of work. In the US, even though it’s happening less and less, we are used being notified or informed of issues and having the freedom to make our own decisions. In other countries, they are used to being ruled not governed. The betters make the decision for you and establish controls to enforce that.
Instead of trusting the pilot to handle the situation, the H1 B figures the problem is too tough for the pilot to solve on their own and thinks it too risky that they have the freedom to make the wrong choice.
Any other corporation would go bankrupt through lawsuits.
Hundreds of people are dead because of the stupidity Boeing’s personnel and management. The override capability of the MCAS system was the result of programmers and engineers mistakenly thinking that they new more about flying airplanes than pilots do. The unforgivable arrogance of their failure to include an “off” button is matched only by hubris of Boeing’s management. They deliberately chose to not inform the pilots of this system’s crash ensuring capability under certain simple sensor failures. If Boeing loses another aircraft to this kind of stupidity, they will be bankrupted. And rightly so.
Long response later...