"# of seconds before President Trump gets blamed for this!
Thanks to Fiddlstyx for the above sad reality!
Posted on 03/18/2019 3:57:48 AM PDT by Magnatron
Federal prosecutors and Department of Transportation officials are scrutinizing the development of Boeing Co.’s BA 1.52% 737 MAX jetliners, according to people familiar with the matter, unusual inquiries that come amid probes of regulators’ safety approvals of the new plane.
A grand jury in Washington, D.C., issued a broad subpoena dated March 11 to at least one person involved in the 737 MAX’s development, seeking related documents, including correspondence, emails and other messages, one of these people said. The subpoena, with a prosecutor from the Justice Department’s criminal division listed as a contact, sought documents to be handed over later this month.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the Justice Department’s probe is related to scrutiny of the Federal Aviation Administration by the DOT inspector general’s office, reported earlier Sunday by The Wall Street Journal and that focuses on a safety system that has been implicated in the Oct. 29 Lion Air crash that killed 189 people, according to a government official briefed on its status. Aviation authorities are looking into whether the anti-stall system may have played a role in last week’s Ethiopian Airlines crash, which killed all 157 people on board.
The subpoena was sent a day after the Ethiopian Airlines crash a week ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
That's nothing. Media personalities play experts on EVERYTHING.
“In normal flight the wings don’t need to be as large as they need to be during takeoff and landing.”
Yeah that is why we have flaps. Don’t quit your day job.
It is more to do with larger engines and the desire but Boeing and Airlines to not retrain pilots. This post is one of the best explanations I have seen so far.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3734243/posts?page=32#32
Who could have foreseen that a supervisor would not replace an (expensive) part, as recommended by the maintenance guy?
Who could have predicted the "voluminous particulate matter" found in that craft's frequent flight area that would unexpectedly degrade the jackscrew lubricant?
And yet, it was the gubmint that as good as killed all 88 of 'em.
“Yeah that is why we have flaps. Don’t quit your day job.”
I mentioned flaps in my post. I think comparing the 737 MAX’s wings with the older 737’s wings, flaps or no flaps, the 737 MAX’s wings are smaller.
A quote from the article you reference: “The fact that this airplane requires such jury rigging to fly is a red flag”
I wonder how the engines-off rate of descent of the two planes compare. I’ll bet the MAX drops like a rock.
After all’s said and done Boeing ends up with a huge PR problem. It’s a trickier plane to fly. The automation solution might make flying it even more tricky. Training probably is a cure.
Final result: we’ll get an even better MAX and Boeing will lose a few billion dollars.
“They will probably find a way to blame this on Trump. This model started selling in May 2016. If Trump had replaced all the Clinton/Bush/Obama FAA people in early 2016 they would have said that caused the design problems.”
I think you meant 2017 in each usage, though I was about to make a joke about Candidate Trump wielding so much power. :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX
this is a wild ass guess, right? sort of like if I said it was little green men from mars.
same amount of evidence for both.
That’s not how it works at all, and incidentally, the 737 Max has a slightly LARGER wing area than the 737-800, for example. Wing planform and airfoil design also have a large effect upon aerodynamic efficiency, aside from wing “size.” Sailplanes (gliders) have unusually long wingspans and very large wing areas for their size and weight, and they are the most aerodynamically effficient aircraft in the sky. Just look at the 787. While as a high-speed jet it uses a swept wing, that wing is much longer with a higher aspect ratio as compared to previous airliners. It’s essentially using a swept sailplane wing, and it’s very efficient.
“they are the most aerodynamically efficient aircraft in the sky”
The objective here is to move cargo as cheaply as possible at 500 mph.
Some of what I say is speculation from a non-expert.
Training issue!
One of the Ethiopian pilots only had 200, yes only 200 flight hours. In the US, commercial pilots require 15,000 flight hours.
As a result, the government sees its role is in part to drive business to these companies. They allowed Boeing to self-regulate its airliner business because any loss by Boeing is a loss by the U.S., and they balance Boeing and Lockheed in the military airplane space often buying Lockheed fighter airplanes then granting Boeing no-bid transport airplane contracts (like the 767 tanker).
In my opinion, the 737 MAX problem is not a major design flaw, it is something that can be fixed easily. Runaway trim caused by a faulty angle of attack sensor, combined with poor pilot training is readily fixable. Fix the sensor, perhaps add a redundant AOA sensor, train the pilots to disengage the MACA automatic trim system at the first sign of any concern. Perhaps modify the system to disengage based on pilot input to the control column as happens on earlier 737s which have a similar stall prevention system.
People are overreacting about the derivative design of the 737 Max. Airplane manufacturers have been building derivative designs for over 70 years, at least since the DC-6 was derived from the DC-4.
People are overreacting about the automated pitch control system of the 737 Max. Airplane manufacturers have been including automated stability for over half a century, at least since the DC-8's had such a system.
Yes, fix the FAA and the FAA's certification system. Yes, fix Boeing. Yes, fix the 737 Max. But everyone needs to realize this is not the end of an airplane or the end of a company.
I believe you added an extra zero. 1,500 hours seems to the be the current standard for non military flyers. Here is a dated article explaining some of the issues and flight training requirements.
http://fortune.com/2016/09/02/faa-regulations-copilot/
I don’t think they had a chance with that elevator trim control stripped.
Seems like it stabilized a little here and there but any disturbance could have upset it.
I’d have to look again, it seemed jammed at first, as I recall.
Yeah if they had left it alone at that point maybe they could have tried other ways to trim.
Pretty dang scary.
200 hours in that type. As I understand it.
Did they slam the door shut? It was open this morning.
In their earlier double-check of Mechanic John Liotine's work, the supervisors didn't calibrate the test equipment properly, thus didn't believe the wear was outside normal parameters.
If they had listened to John Liotine, those 88 people wouldn't have died that day. Yay, John!
But the fact is that it was the ozone found in "chemtrails" that that craft had spent an inordinate amount of time following in and traversing that did in the lubricant, and then in turn, the treated jackscrew surface. The supervisors in part were probably somewhat reasonably extrapolating from the far less severe wear patterns they'd seen on jackscrews in several other of the Company's MD-83 aircraft.
Fortunately, the real problem was quickly fixed with a different lubricant far less susceptible to ozone.
"# of seconds before President Trump gets blamed for this!
Thanks to Fiddlstyx for the above sad reality!
Yes they did. Follow the link and see for yourself.
You are correct. My brain knew it was 2017 but my fingers were thinking about how Trump was recently elected and inaugurated.
One item to add to your list—corporate governance.
The Board of Directors is a pathetic combination of political hacks (to con regulators and help obtain military industrial complex contracts) and hedge fund hacks (to con big investors).
24/7 corruption—that is where we are today.
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