Several Boeing 737 Max 8 pilots in U.S. complained about suspected safety flaw

Dallas News ^ | 3-12-2019 | Cary Aspinwall Ariana Giorgi Dom DiFurio

[aimhigh]

I remember a crash caused by a loose bolt that allowed an engine to flip up over the wing. The FAA figured out a way to blame the pilot.

[nicollo]

Doesn't this lead to the Lion Air situation where pilot manually trims up, seconds later MCAS trims down, pilot trims up, seconds later MCAS trims down, etc until pilot runs out of trim? Does this account for the rapid and unstable changes to up/down velocity observed in Ethiopia? I believe the same porpoising was observed in Lion Air.

Must have been horrifying for the passengers and crew, I can't imagine.

My wife was recently on that very flight from ADD to NBO. Here from her itinerary:

Equipment: Boeing 737-800 Passenger

I always eyeball her itineries for equipment and felt good about this one. Wow. She knows a guy who was scheduled on ET302 that crashed and missed the flight due to late connection.

There but for the grace of God...

[reg45]

American Airlines flight 191. O’Hare airport. DC-10. May 25, 1979.

[_Jim]

re: “American Airlines flight 191. O’Hare airport. DC-10. May 25, 1979.”

Maintenance procedures were to blame there; improvised technique to install the engines that saved time, but damaged the pylons ...

[beelzepug]

“fly the f..cking airplane”

That was the first thing my instructor told me when I was learning to fly. Advice to live by....literally!

[central_va]

My instructor taught me the three 8's of aviation to get my priorities set correctly. Your priorities are:

Avi8

Navig8

Communic8

[central_va]

There should be a button with one press you turn off all the high tech crap.

[TalonDJ]

“This kind of corner cutting on training and documentation has infected industry from top to bottom, especially in the computer industry.”

Agree, but a big big factor here is that the airlines REALLY don’t want to formally ‘retrain’ pilots on a new model. I know because I am in the industry and have heard it straight from the airlines. So there is HUGE pressure on Boeing to make the deign work the same from the pilots perspective. In this case it didn’t so they added automatic systems to force it to be the same... only those systems have issues and the pilots, by design, did not get any extra training.

[TalonDJ]

“According to The New York Times, Boeing and the FAA decided pilots did not need to be informed about the change to the flight control system. The Times reported Boeing and regulators decided against informing pilots at least in part to minimize the costs of retraining pilots.”

This is 100% accurate and deliberate. And the airlines were all in favor. Retraining all those pilots would cost millions. Airlines knowing they would have to retrain makes them less likely to buy a new model aircraft.
The MAX has a LOT of systems that were redesigned from the previous model. In the words of a co-worker of mine who worked on the MAX, they were reminded almost weekly to ‘make it like the NG’ (the previous version). To the point that they had to NOT put in performance improvements that might make it fly better. The pressure on the designers to avoid requiring retraining is HUGE.

[TalonDJ]

Your post is an outstanding summary. It is dead on.

[beef]

“In this case it didn’t so they added automatic systems to force it to be the same...”

That sounds almost criminal to me. I wonder if this sort of thing is common practice in aviation.