Posted on 05/05/2019 7:27:23 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
FULL TITLE: Boeing knew about problems with the 737 Max the year before Lion Air crash and did nothing about them
(CNN)A new statement from Boeing indicates that the aerospace manufacturer knew about a problem with the 737 Max aircraft well before the deadly October 2018 Lion Air crash, but decided not to do anything about it.
Boeing previously acknowledged that an alert system that was supposed to be a standard feature in the fleet "was not operable on all airplanes." But a statement released Sunday describes a troubling timeline that shows how long some at the company were aware of the problem before finally deciding to act. Boeing says its senior leadership and the Federal Aviation Administration did not know about the issue until after the Lion Air crash.
The angle of attack (AOA) disagree alert only worked on an aircraft if the airline had purchased an additional, optional feature, known as the AOA indicator, Boeing said.
The AOA indicator lets pilots know if one of the AOA sensors is not working, while the disagree alert shows if the sensors contradict each other.
It's not known if the lack of the alert function played a role in the crashes of Lion Air crash and Ethiopian Airlines planes, which killed 346 people. But the disagree alert could have notified pilots that a sensor was malfunctioning. In both disasters, preliminary investigations suggest faulty data from a malfunctioning AOA sensor triggered the aircraft's anti-stall software, known as MCAS, which pitched down the nose of the planes as pilots struggled for control.
Boeing contends the alert function was not necessary for the safe operation of the airplane. But former Boeing engineers and aviation analysts interviewed by CNN criticized Boeing's original software design for relying on data from a single AOA sensor,...
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Somebody’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.
This is going to end up being the most expensive “cost savings” in the history of Boeing.
Clean the sewers and ready the barges...Wall Street is about to take a DUMP!
Penny smart. Pound foolish.
I think Wall Street will be okay, Boeing, not so much.
A good friend of mine an ex Air Force Pilot and civilian pilot flew 737s 25 years for Southwest. He was not a 737 Max captain but flew the earlier models. He is an engineer. He explained it in very simple terms.
Computer 2
Pilots 0
Cut corners on how you implemented a safety device that is there anyway - it might save a few dollars at the risk of billions of dollars and hundreds of lives. Probably a bean counter’s decision and not an engineer’s decision.
Bean counter about to be fed into the coffee grinder.
Hm...they have a backlog of about 6-7 years of production. You think they are going out of business?
It was not a simple beancounter issue. The issue was and is with certification or re-certification of a new airplane. Re-cert can be done reasonably quickly. Certification of a new airplane can take years. I know this having worked as a senior software engineer for Boeing & Airbus for decades. They wanted to get the plane out the door when competing with a new A320. They were consciously cutting corners. I sincerely hope they will throw the bastards in jail.
The AOA indicator lets pilots know if one of the AOA sensors is not working, while the disagree alert shows if the sensors contradict each other.
Your comment is BS! My neighbor is a SW captain. MCAS on the MAX uses an AOA sensor as its primary control element. The plane has TWO AOA sensors. The “added feature, now standard, is that both AOA’s are connected to MCAS and they now cross-check one another. If the system detects an error now, MCAS goes inop and the pilot has to actually fly the plane without it. A properly trained pilot, who actually knows how to fly the plane without all the neat add-on bells and whistles like MCAS also knows how to deal with “a runaway trim” situation ( as happens when MCAS has a problem with it’s AOA sensor) and turns off the entire system that drives the stabilizer trim and uses the manual trim wheel next to his leg to properly trim the aircraft using the basic flight instruments in front of him to establish level flight. The simple fact is that a lot of foreign pilots ( notably ones in Asia and the ME) are NOT properly trained, so when the electronic $hit takes a $hit, they don’t know what to do. Instead, the evidently just watch the crash develop from a front seat!
My friend, also a retired SW 737 pilot, said the same thing about third world pilot proficiency.
Coupled with the airlines’ desire to dispense with pilot contracts...
...EXACTLY.
You are egregiously-wrong.
I don’t have time to post the proof; look for yourself.
Only ONE sensor was feeding MCAS. That’s from Boeing itself.
Insofar as your comments on “properly-trained pilot”...we are in complete agreement.
Mentour Pilot on You Tube has some good discussions on the MAX aircraft and MCAS.
MAX, as opposed to other Boeing designs, needs MCAS because of the size and position of its engines. It would be a lot easier with MAX to hit the throttle as an attempt to get out of a stall and pitch the aircraft into a worse stall, than with other Boeing craft.
But suppose MCAS fails. Now what.
Why AoA sensors at all... if they are vulnerable to collisions with objects. Why not a gyroscopic instrument.
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