Posted on 03/13/2019 2:50:42 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
(CNN)US pilots who fly the Boeing 737 Max have registered complaints about the way the jet has performed in flight, according to a federal database accessed by CNN.
In one of the complaints, a captain reported an autopilot anomaly which led to a brief nose-down situation -- where the front of the aircraft pointed down, according to the federal database. In another complaint, a first officer reported that the aircraft pitched nose down after the autopilot was engaged during departure. The autopilot was then disconnected and flight continued to its destination, according to the database.
lthough the data doesn't identify the pilots or their airlines, two US carriers fly the 737 Max 8: American Airlines and Southwest.
Extraordinary worldwide attention has been focused on the jet -- Boeing's biggest-selling airliner -- after Sunday's crash of a new Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max 8, minutes after takeoff from Addis Abba, which killed all 157 people on board. Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 was the second deadly crash of the same new plane type within five months. The crash of Lion Air Flight 610 shortly after takeoff from Jakarta last October killed all 189 people on board.
It's very early in the investigation of the Ethiopian Airlines crash and information from the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, which have been recovered from the crash site, has not yet been analyzed. Because of that, it's too soon to know if direct evidence exists linking the two plane crashes. On Tuesday, Ethiopian Airlines' CEO Tewolde GebreMariam told CNN's Richard Quest the pilot said he "had flight control problems" immediately before the 737 Max 8 crashed Sunday.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
That may not be the whole story. MCAS -engages- when the autopilot is disengaged. That is one of the parameters when it automatically kicks in. So a pilot with an issue switches off autopilot, and MCAS kicks in and wants to start dropping the nose. The pilot is then fighting MCAS...which Boeing never revealed the existence of to operators. So insanely, the pilot can be fighting a system he did not even know was there.
Boeing screwed the pooch on this fiasco.
“There’s probably some fault with Boeing, the FAA, and carriers for not getting the word out about the MCAS system until after the first crash”
Boeing kept the carriers out of the loop until AFTER Lion Air.
As for pulling back, they were trying but were fighting a system they were not even told existed. And switching off the autopilot would make it worse. They would have to make the next jump and understand that it is a SORT of runaway elevator trim. That’s not exactly what it is, but it uses the fix for that.
Things happen very fast. And the pilot error game isn’t going to fly. This was poor management decision at Boeing.
Love Boeing and despise Airbus. But no fast talking will get them out of this. It will take an actual answer and a fix to the MCAS.
Exactly, lets say the autopilot broke THAT day in the report but the MCAS was working normally. When the nose dropped, pilot switches off Autopilot and flies normally, and MCAS does its job normally that day.
The reported incident might be an entirely different failure than what happened to Lion and Ethiopia. That pilot’s experience may have zero to do with those other two.
It was a pretty good expose on the hysteria among the media and the politicians.
Lemmee splain:
The Max motors extend further forward than other 737s. At high angles of attack the engine nacelle produces lift causing an added pitch up.
So Boeing designed a system to drive the nose down, the MCAS:
Maneuvering Characteristic Augmentation System
MCAS is supposed to be disabled with the flaps are extended such as a takeoff.
If however the pilots didn’t set the flap trim correctly, you could have a problem when climbing.
Or, there could be a damaged or malfunctioning AOA (angle of attack) vane/sensor.
In either case, the pilot should:
A. Turn off the autopilot.
B. Oppose the trim manually with the yoke.
C. If that doesn’t work, then you turn off the STAB trim cutout switches.
The critical question is, the position of the two STAB (Stabilizer Trim) cutout switches (Main Electric and Autopilot).
Control systems can fail, Boeing thought of that. Pilots are supposed to know how to manually take over and fly the airplane.
Pitch and Power are memory items... Many foreign pilots, for a variety of reasons, are not taught this. And their manual flying skills are poor. I hasten to say generally, there are many good foreign pilots, who love to fly. But quite a few are Nintendo pilots.
Safer to fly first world than second or third. I would avoid any carrier out of Africa except South African Airways.
Stay away from Asian carriers and never middle east except El Al. European, OK UK, OK .
The big problem is that the carrier, say “Air Bangladeshi,” has a contract pilot that is virtually solo because the co-pilot is a “national” that only speaks the language and is an inexperienced pilot. The contract pilot may be a USAF or UAL trained Captain but his hands are full when solo.
MY son just flew Qatar-———loved it.
.
Your “Four Fundamentals of Flight” are the name of a drink that was served at the “O” club at my USAF training base.
It was called, “the Spin, Crash and Burn.”
One drink, you were in a spin
Two drinks, you were crashing
Third drink, your burned.
A typical smooth drink with more than one whisky in it.
Remember, we lived on base and did not fly on week ends.
P.S.
“You can stall at any airspeed!”
It will be interesting to see who was PIC at the time of the incident. The Captain is reported to have 8000+ hours. The First Officer had 200. I am assuming the hours reported for the Captain was total time and the FO’s hours were time in type.
If the FO was piloting the aircraft at the time of the incident, with only 200 hours in type (possibly all 737 variants + sim time) it is very possible the First Officer didn’t know how to respond to the MCAS intervention. Although it isn’t reported, with only 200 hours in type, it’s very possible the First Officer has never experienced an in-flight emergency.
It was reported today the flight envelope roughly followed that of the Lion Air crash. It is known there was a AOA fault reported on the aircraft that was not fixed before the fatal flight. If the actions of the Ethiopia flight is similar, could there have been another faulty AOA that should have been checked?
It will all boil down to the data on the CVR and the FDR.
Disengaging autopilot enables MCAS. Flaps coming all the way up engages it also. The system was not even revealed until after the first crash so pilots had to figure out WTH was happening. His normal analysis and problem solving was less effective without knowing the system he needed to kill.
But thanks for playing.
Bean counters are responsible for this.
Pitch and Power are memory items... Many foreign pilots, for a variety of reasons, are not taught this. And their manual flying skills are poor. I hasten to say generally, there are many good foreign pilots, who love to fly. But quite a few are Nintendo pilots.
Your quite right about that.
Pitch and Power are memory items... Many foreign pilots, for a variety of reasons, are not taught this. And their manual flying skills are poor. I hasten to say generally, there are many good foreign pilots, who love to fly. But quite a few are Nintendo pilots.
You’re quite right about that.
Bean counters are responsible for this.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Too true. How sad.
Even Cathay Pacific?
Thanks.
My understanding is that a bad sensor will affect the autopilot the same as MCAS.
http://www.b737.org.uk/mcas.htm
In the case of the Lion Air crash, the government agency investigating said the aircraft was not fixed after previous problems and shouldn’t have been put into service. On a previous flight of the same aircraft, the crew had the same problems as the accident flight, but responded correctly and disabled the automatic trim.
Here was Boeing’s response after the Lion Air crash:
***
“As our customers and their passengers continue to fly the 737 Max to hundreds of destinations around the world every day, they have our assurance that the 737 Max is as safe as any airplane that has ever flown in the skies.”
Boeing said that “the appropriate procedure to address unintended horizontal stabiliser movement” was contained in the relevant flight manuals.
It said that the preliminary report showed that the correct procedures to counter the plane’s nose being pushed down were carried out during the Denpasar flight the day before the crash.
However, it was not clear if they procedures were followed during the 29 October flight that crashed, Boeing added.
***
I think when all is said and done, Boeing’s liability is going to be minimal. They could make the system more fault tolerant, and my understanding is that those are the changes being made now. But any competent pilot should have known how to handle any runaway stabilizer problems caused by a bad sensor. No pilot has an excuse for not knowing about MCAS and or how to recover from the same conditions that caused the Lion Air crash. There was an airworthiness directive. The major portion of the blame is going to be on the airlines and their incompetent pilots.
Control systems can fail, Boeing thought of that. Pilots are supposed to know how to manually take over and fly the airplane.
...
You’ve got it. And on a previous flight of the Lion Air aircraft that crashed, the pilots handled the problem correctly.
What happened on the Lion Air crash?
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