How Boeing and the FAA could think that a totally new fly by wire anti stall system should be controlled by non redundant sensors totally baffles me. That this system could not even be mentioned in the pilots’ flight manual when the 737 Max wa originally certified is absolutely incredible.
I’m sure that North American based airlines could operate the 737 Max safely, but there should be no excuses for the flawed design of the MCAS.
Something new come out of this MSPMS report? We have been hearing the “similarities” angle for a week.
Note that this is all coming from BEA, not the FAA....
As someone who know the Aviation industry, especially the Aircraft Maintenance & Operations quite well. I offer a bit of sage advice. Never...and, I mean never listen to one word uttered by these Media folks....they have no idea what happened except “hearsay”...which in most cases turns out to be 100% incorrect or wrong.
A question that should be hammered home every day on the Media, is “Why did the First Officer (Co-Pilot) on the Ethiopian Airlines crashed B737MAX aircraft have only 200 active flight operating flying hours on the B737MAX aircraft.
Also...Why is the culture of cockpit operations of Lion Air & Ethiopian Airlines not being questioned. The USA, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, etc. has little trouble with their B737MAX aircraft.
I believe the answer to these fatal incidents is both technical shortcomings and human cockpit failure control breakdown. We shall see in time,...but I can assure you folks...you will learn nothing from CNBC or any other media input from around the world. Like everything they feed us peons,...they know very little of the truth or, they know no truth at all.
I only trust Boeing, the DOT and, our FAA for facts and truth and remedy...period.
DO AWAY WITH THIS AUTOMATED PIVOTING HORIZONTAL STABILIZER NONSENSE! This is where technology exceeds common sense.
So Trump has been given correct information and made the right call, again.
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This thread serves as a perfect example of what has happened on every one of these 737 Max 8 threads. The article states that the examination of the data from the Flight Data Recorder showed “similarities” with the data recorded on the earlier Lion Air accident. What similarities the mean exactly is not reported.
However, many comments proceed to discuss the use of sensor data, errors in sensor data, or other details that emerged from the Lion Air accident. Those facts have not yet been established. We don’t know if their was a sensor failure in the Ethiopian accident. Perhaps it did, but it hasn’t been reported yet, certainly not in this article. Absent in this article are any findings about crew training or crew performance, although those will certainly be forthcoming at some point.
The problem that we are having right now is that we appear to have veered off into an argument about the bad old USofA and their bandit aircraft manufacturer, Boeing and the rest of the world who don’t want any criticism of their crew selection, training, and performance; even if it is warranted. Most accidents have multiple causes and this one may have involved both the MCAS system and crew issues. That won’t be a surprise.
Meanwhile, these threads continue to be fact free zones, at least in part.
I’ve been saying to look at the Angle of Attack probe since day one.
Once upon a time, a lieutenant came into the instrument shop where I worked with an AOA indicator that he said came from a crashed plane and wanted to know if it was working at the time of the crash. It didn’t work at that point but I thought it probably was working at the time of the crash because it was stuck at an AOA other than zero. In fact, it showed a negative AOA.
Have they posted the DFDR data from the ET flight yet? They did for FLT JT610 awhile back ... showed AoA difference of 20 some deg btw L and R sensors.
The following tweets from Trevor Sumner, CEO of Perch Experience, of what really happened to the Boeing 737 Max, may be one of the best summaries of the events that led to the two recent airplane crashes, and also why Boeing's "software upgrade"response is a farce.
1of x: BEST analysis of what really is happening on the #Boeing737Max issue from my brother in law @davekammeyer, who’s a pilot, software engineer & deep thinker. Bottom line don’t blame software that’s the band aid for many other engineering and economic forces in effect.— Trevor Sumner (@trevorsumner) March 16, 2019
Some people are calling the 737MAX tragedies a #software failure. Here's my response: It's not a software problem. It was an
* Economic problem that the 737 engines used too much fuel, so they decided to install more efficient engines with bigger fans and make the 737MAX.— Trevor Sumner (@trevorsumner) March 16, 2019
This led to an
* Airframe problem. They wanted to use the 737 airframe for economic reasons, but needed more ground clearance with bigger engines.The 737 design can't be practically modified to have taller main landing gear. The solution was to mount them higher & more forward.— Trevor Sumner (@trevorsumner) March 16, 2019
This led to an
* Aerodynamic problem. The airframe with the engines mounted differently did not have adequately stable handling at high AoA to be certifiable. Boeing decided to create the MCAS system to electronically correct for the aircraft's handling deficiencies.— Trevor Sumner (@trevorsumner) March 16, 2019
During the course of developing the MCAS, there was a
* Systems engineering problem. Boeing wanted the simplest possible fix that fit their existing systems architecture, so that it required minimal engineering rework, and minimal new training for pilots and maintenance crews.— Trevor Sumner (@trevorsumner) March 16, 2019
The easiest way to do this was to add some features to the existing Elevator Feel Shift system. Like the #EFS system, the #MCAS relies on non-redundant sensors to decide how much trim to add. Unlike the EFS system, MCAS can make huge nose down trim changes.— Trevor Sumner (@trevorsumner) March 16, 2019
On both ill-fated flights, there was a:
* Sensor problem. The AoA vane on the 737MAX appears to not be very reliable and gave wildly wrong readings. On #LionAir, this was compounded by a— Trevor Sumner (@trevorsumner) March 16, 2019
* Maintenance practices problem. The previous crew had experienced the same problem and didn't record the problem in the maintenance logbook. This was compounded by a:— Trevor Sumner (@trevorsumner) March 16, 2019
* Pilot training problem. On LionAir, pilots were never even told about the MCAS, and by the time of the Ethiopian flight, there was an emergency AD issued, but no one had done sim training on this failure. This was compounded by an:— Trevor Sumner (@trevorsumner) March 16, 2019
* Economic problem. Boeing sells an option package that includes an extra AoA vane, and an AoA disagree light, which lets pilots know that this problem was happening. Both 737MAXes that crashed were delivered without this option. No 737MAX with this option has ever crashed.— Trevor Sumner (@trevorsumner) March 16, 2019
All of this was compounded by a:
* Pilot expertise problem. If the pilots had correctly and quickly identified the problem and run the stab trim runaway checklist, they would not have crashed.— Trevor Sumner (@trevorsumner) March 16, 2019
Nowhere in here is there a software problem. The computers & software performed their jobs according to spec without error. The specification was just shitty. Now the quickest way for Boeing to solve this mess is to call up the software guys to come up with another band-aid.— Trevor Sumner (@trevorsumner) March 16, 2019
I'm a software engineer, and we're sometimes called on to fix the deficiencies of mechanical or aero or electrical engineering, because the metal has already been cut or the molds have already been made or the chip has already been fabed, and so that problem can't be solved.— Trevor Sumner (@trevorsumner) March 16, 2019
But the software can always be pushed to the update server or reflashed. When the software band-aid comes off in a 500mph wind, it's tempting to just blame the band-aid.
Follow @davekammeyer if you want to dig in.— Trevor Sumner (@trevorsumner) March 16, 2019