Posted on 03/13/2019 11:45:22 AM PDT by WhoisAlanGreenspan?
Shares of Boeing tumbled Wednesday after President Donald Trump said he is grounding all Boeing 737 Max jets, following the second major crash within five months.
“Boeing is an incredible company. They are working very, very hard right now,” Trump told reporters in Washington on Wednesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
EXCEPT .... there’s this ‘little’ problem with disengaging the autopilot on the 737 Max 8:
According to The New York Times, when Boeing first rolled out the 737 Max 8, the Federal Aviation Administration determined there were not enough differences between the new model and the prior iteration of 737 to require pilots to go through simulator training — a decision that saved the airlines time and money, and made Boeing’s new plane more competitive. That means, however, pilots remained unfamiliar with the MCAS system, even though it plays a key role in controlling the plane under certain circumstances. And even though the system could be influenced by a faulty sensor reading, The New York Times reports “there is no evidence that Boeing did flight-testing of MCAS with erroneous sensor data, and it is not clear whether the FAA did so.”
Furthermore, older 737s are equipped with technology that allows pilots to manually control the plane by simply pulling back on the control column. Yet, per The Times’ report from February, that feature was disabled on the Max 8 when MCAS is activated — another change pilots were unlikely to have been aware of.
Link:
How is the Boeing 737 Max 8 different from other Boeing 737 airplanes?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/boeing-737-max-8-boeing-737-800-how-are-the-planes-different/
Yes, and apparently sometimes they even work right. See, for example, this story: http://www.robertgraves.com/2018/03/boeing-737-max-8-pilot-report.html (repeated pitot tube falure on that Max).
I think Boeing is overthinking itself with the automated horizontal stabilizer CR*P on the 737 MAX!! I read the article at DM. I think the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) where the horizontal stabilizers are AUTOMATICALLY TILTED is CR*P, fraught with danger and confusion to pilots and should be done away with... Too many moving parts!
I'll bet it's that damned MCAS.
Typical, isn't it. You get a bunch of people in a room and everyone has the greatest idea to be integrated into the aircraft. And before you know it you have an overly complicated flying machine no one can recover with only seconds to spare.
I remember that flight off the coast of Calif. where the Alaska airlines with the horizontal stabilizer located at the TOP OF THE TAIL GOT ITS JACK SCREW STUCK. Aircraft wanted to CONSTANTLY LIFT so the aircraft COULD NOT DESCEND TO LAND. It flew till it ran out of gas then crashed into the ocean.
The goal is to do away with the expense of pilots. The Max was supposed to be a major step toward self-driving planes. The pilot has to execute complicated routines under stress to regain control of the plane. And Boeing didn’t tell the pilots what those steps were. After all, the guy that designed the system knew.
I see a LOT of jet airline business going to UTC in CT.
Bump.
“Since it operates in situations where the aircraft is under relatively high g load and near stall, a pilot should never see the operation of MCAS. As such, Boeing did not include an MCAS description in its FCOM.” (flight control operations manual) The explainer continues: “In this case, MCAS will trim nose as designed to assist the pilot during recover, likely going unnoticed by the pilot.”
There is another explanation, according to a Tuesday report in The Wall Street Journal: “One high-ranking Boeing official said the company had decided against disclosing more details to cockpit crews due to concerns about inundating average pilots with too much information — and significantly more technical data — than they needed or could digest. If this report is true their concern for "average" pilots is touching. And the reluctance by both the FAA and Boeing is telling.
“Since it operates in situations where the aircraft is under relatively high g load and near stall, a pilot should never see the operation of MCAS. As such, Boeing did not include an MCAS description in its FCOM.” (flight control operations manual) The explainer continues: “In this case, MCAS will trim nose as designed to assist the pilot during recover, likely going unnoticed by the pilot.”
There is another explanation, according to a Tuesday report in The Wall Street Journal: “One high-ranking Boeing official said the company had decided against disclosing more details to cockpit crews due to concerns about inundating average pilots with too much information — and significantly more technical data — than they needed or could digest. If this report is true their concern for "average" pilots is touching. And the reluctance by both the FAA and Boeing is telling.
Boeing says pilots can easily override the system, and it’s covered in the manual. The pilots that previously flew the Lion Air accident aircraft did disable the MCAS system and made their flight safely. The accident pilots didn’t. It seems to be a training/awareness problem. We don’t yet know if MCAS was the cause of the most recent accident.
https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/boeing-to-upgrade-737-max-flight-control-software-456540/
I heard someone saying that Boeing sold the plane as just a better 737, with no special training or simulators needed, when in fact it's like flying a completely different plane.
Not quite. The initial malfunction wanted to point the plane downward, so the pilots had to continuously pull back on the yoke to keep it level. They were trying to make an emergency landing at LAX when the jammed jack screw slipped, putting it into a steep dive. They managed to recover from that one, but a few minutes later the screw failed completely and the plane went into another dive. They actually tried to fly the plane upside down to get control, but it was no good. They were upside down and lost 18000 feet in 81 seconds before hitting the water.
After meeting with FAA officials, Trump announced the grounding....
Thanks for that information
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