Air Crash Thread: Boeing MAX and Other Problems

[TenEightyOne]

Regardless of what you're trying to point out there, it doesn't take out the fact that the aircraft is flawed and has been grounded for several months now.

It's grounded because the augmentation system is flawed, it's not really a much less "flyable" aircraft than the 800 or other 737s. Without proper trimming all planes will nose up/down and be unflyable. The magnitude of the plane's efforts to do so scale with size.

In the case of MAX there's a particular danger of a nose-up in very specific circumstances, MCAS was meant to overcome that but had serious flaws through a lack of sensor redundancy. Boeing took control of certification and declared it fit to fly. That's the certification that was revoked after the documentation was initially subject to FAA-mandated alterations. I quite agree that Boeing and the FAA have serious questions to answer about the process under which MCAS was certified - but MAX is not unflyable per se.

 

[GTV0819]

Well, it looks like it will still go a long way before they could fully fix that thing and for Boeing to have all the trust back from people.

Or maybe not.

 

[Swagger897]

Doubtful. Boeing still controls a huge share of the primary passenger aircraft millions fly on daily. If there was any big scare worth any weight, it would've shown by now. The saying "if it ain't Boeing, I ain't going" will still exist for years to come.

 

[GTV0819]

Lol, I hope that's not some sort of bandwagoning there.

Going back to the topic, the aviation industry were able to ground the plane in time after the second incident and just before it escalated into some serious problem.

Otherwise, it would have been a different story already. Still, with those incidents, it has tainted a bit of their reputation.

 

[TenEightyOne]

Going back to the topic, the aviation industry were able to ground the plane in time after the second incident and just before it escalated into some serious problem.

A whole jet full of people was destroyed. There were delays in understanding the crash and grounding MAX. The FAA noted that Boeing's manuals for MAX were incomplete and ordered them to change them. Then a second plane full of people was destroyed. The FAA still didn't ground MAX - perhaps they were going to but from the outside it looked like they delayed the decision until other major air authorities around the world refused to allow MAX in their airspace.

Whoever you think "the aviation industry" are I can't agree that they grounded MAX before a serious problem.

 

[GTV0819]

Whoever you think "the aviation industry" are I can't agree that they grounded MAX before a serious problem.

Alright, I think I misused the term.

The parties who grounded them consist of either the government, aviation authorities and airlines from around the world.

I said they did it in time before it became a serious problem, since after the second incident, I thought more fatalities would occur if they haven't banned the aircraft at all until it becomes cleared.

And with that situation, I think it's the most appropriate action they could do about it.

 

[Swagger897]

Lol, I hope that's not some sort of bandwagoning there.

What? It's been a phrase for decades when the 747 was looked at as the more safer option versus the DC-10, which seemed to appear in the news all the time with now infamous crash documentaries on each of them (albeit, some were related by maintenance procedures).

At any rate, the problem is eventually going to be fixed, and airlines such as American/SWA are going to put them immediately back into service to pull back in lost revenue. I can guarantee you the day that they get approved the media will be all over it still questioning safety, but passengers won't have a choice and still pick to fly on said carriers due to cheap seats.

 

[GTV0819]

What? It's been a phrase for decades when the 747 was looked at as the more safer option versus the DC-10, which seemed to appear in the news all the time with now infamous crash documentaries on each of them (albeit, some were related by maintenance procedures).

Yes, I do know about that but that was a long time ago and we're talking about a different, smaller aircraft here. Also, today's a different era, indeed.

At any rate, the problem is eventually going to be fixed, and airlines such as American/SWA are going to put them immediately back into service to pull back in lost revenue. I can guarantee you the day that they get approved the media will be all over it still questioning safety, but passengers won't have a choice and still pick to fly on said carriers due to cheap seats.

I hope so but it doesn't stop Boeing from being currently held in the media spotlight for what happened with these two gruesome incidents months ago.

If they can fix that with certainty some time, even with the help of related parties, then things would go back to normal for them and the aviation world, I suppose.

 

[Danoff]

The FAA still didn't ground MAX - perhaps they were going to but from the outside it looked like they delayed the decision until other major air authorities around the world refused to allow MAX in their airspace.

The decision to ground the Max from the FAA came right after the release of some of the preliminary investigation details that suggested it may have been the same phenomenon as Lion Air.

 

[TenEightyOne]

The decision to ground the Max from the FAA came right after the release of some of the preliminary investigation details that suggested it may have been the same phenomenon as Lion Air.

The FAA re-iterated their belief in MAX's airworthiness on the 11th of March and announced on the 12th of March that they wouldn't ground the MAX despite other various countries having grounded the plane on the 10th, 11th and 12th. The FAA finally grounded it on the 13th of March.

The data you refer to (the contents of which I don't believe have been publicly described) were from Canada who grounded MAX on the 13th, the FAA still didn't ground MAX at that time, the decision was taken by Trump who issued an emergency order. Then and only then did the FAA issue a grounding order the necessity for which had been obvious to many countries for many days.

 

[Danoff]

The FAA re-iterated their belief in MAX's airworthiness on the 11th of March and announced on the 12th of March that they wouldn't ground the MAX despite other various countries having grounded the plane on the 10th, 11th and 12th. The FAA finally grounded it on the 13th of March.

The data you refer to (the contents of which I don't believe have been publicly described) were from Canada who grounded MAX on the 13th, the FAA still didn't ground MAX at that time, the decision was taken by Trump who issued an emergency order. Then and only then did the FAA issue a grounding order the necessity for which had been obvious to many countries for many days.

I don't agree that it was obvious. I was also looking for some corroborating evidence to suggest that the two incidents were related.

 

[Swagger897]

I was also looking for some corroborating evidence to suggest that the two incidents were related.

This is the part that gets me... A pilot flying jump tells the crew the day before how to solve the issue, and the next day the incident occurs.

Meanwhile, the airplane had been flying how many times within the US, and Europe without problems reported? I'd like to know how many times crews disabled the system upon warning, or how many times a warning was even brought up. I understand the sentiment that pilots had initially where they wanted to know what was on their aircraft, and I can see having Boeing being at fault for this point where it may not had of been clear enough/even distinguished from a standard 737NG. But yet, there were also pilots who claim that knew how to work around the system so clearly it must've been published somewhere...

 

[GTV0819]

Meanwhile, the airplane had been flying how many times within the US, and Europe without problems reported?

So do many or most of the other planes not named 737 MAX as well and without having the burden to be wary and worry about their aircraft's behavior in case their flight systems suddenly interfere and have great influence on it.

 

[TenEightyOne]

Meanwhile, the airplane had been flying how many times within the US, and Europe without problems reported?

Problems were reported by US pilots via the third party NASA collection/reporting mechanism.

I'd like to know how many times crews disabled the system upon warning, or how many times a warning was even brought up.

Disabling the system as per the procedure disconnects the electrical trim control, if you can't use the manual control (i.e. in a high speed/pitch envelope) then you're ****ed anyway. Bear in mind that even in the simulator the Boeing test pilots only had a few seconds to save the plane in certain parts of the flight envelope. Overspeed + runaway trim is a bad thing.

there were also pilots who claim that knew how to work around the system so clearly it must've been published somewhere...

Got a link?

 

[Swagger897]

Got a link?

"We have been trained on how to handle the mishap that occurred in at least the Lion Air jet that we know about," says James Belton, a United Airlines pilot and spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association.

NPR

I haven't gotten a chance to find a full MAX FCOM (either before/after the incidents) to read myself to see if there is any mention of MCAS within it, but from what I recall dating back from March/April is that there was indeed no mention specific, only runaway pitch corrections.

I know the Verge put out an article back in May and while it does have some decent sourced material, I can't be bothered to share a link made by them...

 

[TenEightyOne]

NPR

Also in there:

Elwell's claim that pilots were prepared for the MCAS has raised eyebrows among some training experts. "I find it surprising that a system that affects the pitch control of an aircraft of any description is not brought to the attention of the people that are going to be flying it," says Dai Whittingham, chief executive of the United Kingdom Flight Safety Committee. The group promotes commercial air safety and counts British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and Ryanair among its members.

Whittingham says that pointing to the pilots' training as a possible reason for the two crashes is "deflecting responsibility from where it properly lies" — with Boeing and the FAA.

He says he believes U.S. pilots were just as vulnerable to an MCAS malfunction as their overseas counterparts. "I think it would have been possible for an American pilot to have crashed the 737 Max if they had not been able to diagnose the problem," Whittingham says.

They go on to point out that several American airlines have the extra sensors as part of their package, the ones that Boeing are now saying are essential to proper failure detection for MCAS but which were paid, optional extras on the model's release. Boeing did not make the extra sensors mandatory.

I haven't gotten a chance to find a full MAX FCOM (either before/after the incidents) to read myself to see if there is any mention of MCAS within it, but from what I recall dating back from March/April is that there was indeed no mention specific, only runaway pitch corrections.

In and around the postlink from my previous post are the relevant pages. Runaway trim is mentioned, really that's a potential function of MCAS as MCAS isn't a diagnosable error in itself. AoA disagree is also there, and that's what triggers MCAS into a runaway situation. Boeing's primary fix seems to be greater sensor redundancy (see comment above about removing the 'optional' status of extra sensors).

 

[Imari]

But yet, there were also pilots who claim that knew how to work around the system so clearly it must've been published somewhere...

I know this might be hard to believe, but some pilots are smart and experienced enough to be able to diagnose and fix a problem even without specific systems knowledge.

 

[Swagger897]

I know this might be hard to believe, but some pilots are smart and experienced enough to be able to diagnose and fix a problem even without specific systems knowledge.

I completely get that. A stall is a stall no matter how detailed you want to describe it, or how sophisticated (or lack of for that matter) an aircraft is in dealing with it.

 

[Imari]

I completely get that. A stall is a stall no matter how detailed you want to describe it, or how sophisticated (or lack of for that matter) an aircraft is in dealing with it.

Perhaps, but figuring out the cause of the stall while your plane is heading for the ground is rather another matter. In that case it does make a difference if the stall was caused by a systems error, by the co-pilot leaning on the controls, or the control surfaces falling off.

Simply saying "the plane is stalling" gets you nowhere except the ground. This is why test pilots are highly trained, highly experienced and highly intelligent; because they're expected to encounter and solve problems that were unforeseen, and do it without ploughing into a mountainside. Commercial pilots are not held to such a high standard, but some of them can be very skilled nonetheless.

If some MAX pilots claim that they figured out the system without documentation, I don't see why you wouldn't believe them.

 

[Liquid]

EDIT2: An infographic showing that the MAX 8 is the second least safe passenger jet of all time if fatalities are used as an indicator. It should be remembered that at present this is due to the low number of flights of the 300-ish(?) completed aircraft. Concorde crashed once but is at the top due to the far fewer number of passengers carried across its lifetime. Still, the graphic demonstrates the reason for concern with two similar crashes on type in 5 months.

View attachment 806089

I never saw this edit in the OP at the time but I would like to point out that although Concorde has the highest casualty rate per million, the accident in France in 2000 was the only crash for a Concorde in 24 years of commercial service up until that point. Results are skewed because it flew so infrequently compared to the other planes.

The same does apply somewhat to the 737 MAX in the strict statistical sense in that it has flown far less than all other planes but you would have predicted it to have otherwise flown thousands upon thousands of times monthly before getting a fatal accident so its high fatality rate in such a short space of time is of obvious concern.

 

[TenEightyOne]

I never saw this edit in the OP at the time but I would like to point out that although Concorde has the highest casualty rate per million, the accident in France in 2000 was the only crash for a Concorde in 24 years of commercial service up until that point. Results are skewed because it flew so infrequently compared to the other planes.

The same does apply somewhat to the 737 MAX in the strict statistical sense in that it has flown far less than all other planes but you would have predicted it to have otherwise flown thousands upon thousands of times monthly before getting a fatal accident so its high fatality rate in such a short space of time is of obvious concern.

That's partly the point though - Concorde's safety record was statistically skewed by one total loss. Concorde carried very few passengers in total (25 million to the 747's 3.5 billion) so a single fatality one a single flight was going to push it to the top of that percentage game. It's also particularly unfair because the crash was caused by a fault on a 737 DC10, not by an inherent flaw with Concorde. The French authorities managed to miraculously avoid the blame for rushing Concorde to the runway due to the queuing Presidential flight.

Back to MAX... as you say, two total losses on a new type is a situation of very great concern, and neither accident seemed to be the fault of another aircraft.

 

[Swagger897]

If some MAX pilots claim that they figured out the system without documentation, I don't see why you wouldn't believe them.

I think you may have been lead astray with what I originally meant in my first post where I said this (which is why your last post goes very far off from what I had ever thought of). When I said without documentation, I meant without reference to MCAS within the FCOM. That is why I said I had seen some pilots refer to knowing how to handle said situation without it being properly documented, and able to be referenced.

Not something that was altogether not mentioned in any source materials.

 

[TenEightyOne]

That is why I said I had seen some pilots refer to knowing how to handle said situation without it being properly documented, and able to be referenced.

Not something that was altogether not mentioned in any source materials.

It certainly wasn't in the FCOM or in the training manuals until the FAA said it had to be (after the first accident). If some pilots knew more about MCAS than others then I'd suggest that through a few degrees of association they knew about the flight testing programme before its release. It's a big world but a small one too.

 

[Imari]

I think you may have been lead astray with what I originally meant in my first post where I said this (which is why your last post goes very far off from what I had ever thought of). When I said without documentation, I meant without reference to MCAS within the FCOM. That is why I said I had seen some pilots refer to knowing how to handle said situation without it being properly documented, and able to be referenced.

Not something that was altogether not mentioned in any source materials.

You're still leaning into the idea that if pilots figured out how to deal with an issue it must be because they read information about it somewhere. Or perhaps as @TenEightyOne says that they found out from a friend of a friend.

You're missing that there are two ways to learn something new; by someone else teaching you and by figuring it out yourself. You said clearly the information must have been published somewhere if they knew how to deal with it, so you're ruling out the second. I don't think your basis for that is clear at all. Why would it be impossible for an experienced pilot to figure out the basics of the MCAS and it's responses from first principles with no outside help? Pilots are not known for lacking intelligence.

 

[Liquid]

The French authorities managed to miraculously avoid the blame for rushing Concorde to the runway due to the queuing Presidential flight.

Of course they exonerated themselves but, without wanting to stray too far off topic, I have always wondered why Continental Airlines were able to successfully appeal their criminal conviction for the metal cowling cover that punctured the wheels yet were still held liable in a civil ruling to pay out compensation to the victims' families?

It seems really suspicious that they are basically found responsible through the civil ruling but escape any 'punishment' through the overturned criminal ruling. And it's not like airlines are too big to fail and protected; TWA and Pan Am are testament to that.

 

[Dotini]

Of course they exonerated themselves but, without wanting to stray too far off topic, I have always wondered why Continental Airlines were able to successfully appeal their criminal conviction for the metal cowling cover that punctured the wheels yet were still held liable in a civil ruling to pay out compensation to the victims' families?

It seems really suspicious that they are basically found responsible through the civil ruling but escape any 'punishment' through the overturned criminal ruling. And it's not like airlines are too big to fail and protected; TWA and Pan Am are testament to that.

Two possibly true underlying truisms:
1) In a civil case, go after the party that has money.
2) For most of the years since commercial aviation was a reality, the industry as a whole has lost money.

 

[Swagger897]

the industry as a whole has lost money.

Define industry. Are you referring to airlines, manufactures, or the collective total?

If anything, only a selective few of both are losing money and it's due mostly just down to poor business practice/leadership.

 

[Dotini]

Define industry. Are you referring to airlines, manufactures, or the collective total?

If anything, only a selective few of both are losing money and it's due mostly just down to poor business practice/leadership.

Airlines.

 

[GTV0819]

Airlines.

I thought it was only Boeing who has lost a lot of money since several airlines have cancelled most of their orders for the suspended aircraft.

 

[Dotini]

I thought it was only Boeing who has lost a lot of money since several airlines have cancelled most of their orders for the suspended aircraft.

Since commercial aviation got off the ground in the 1930's(?), many, many carriers have gone out of business. National (state sponsored) airlines may operate at a loss, simply for the prestige, tourism and other benefits that air travel brings.