https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/safety/120514-ethiopian-7...
It all comes down to this:
"There are far too many aerodynamic bandaids that are permitted to pass the current standards. Not just this particular airplane, but a whole bunch of airframes. If the basic aerodynamics won't pass without the pushers, pullers and now AOA induced changes to primary and secondary controls then a new design of the wing platform should come into play."
The way I interpret this, is that the plane should never have gotten the green light to fly.
More info about the MCAS here: https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/what-is-the-boeing...
The crux is that safety agencies never mandated training on these new systems, and new procedures weren't created with them in mind. Worse still procedures from older models of the same aircraft (such as automatic overriding of auto-trim) were removed without re-training on that either.
Lion Air had to repair the AOA sensor multiple times (replace, then flush), but a single sensor failure should not bring down an aircraft; and if the AOA sensor is that safety critical then why did Boeing put two of them instead of three (i.e. for cross-checking readings)? Either it wasn't safety critical and Lion Air's actions are reasonable, or it was and Boeing cut costs on safety.
So the justifications blaming either the pilots (who didn't get training, because safety agencies told them it wasn't needed) or maintenance (who were repairing a non-critical sensor that turns out to be safety critical) are weak.
This is an excellent point. Boeing can't have it both ways.
Fast forward to today where airport infrastructure is much more developed and these small/medium size airliners are being pressed into front line service including intercontinental routes. The aircraft has changed drastically to accommodate these changes through the years, enough that it may be time for a clean sheet design. They've changed just about everything on the air-frame from the fuel load/cabin length/wing to the avionics to make this all work.
Now, the other side of that coin is with systems. In theory this should be fine, but obviously isn't. It's hard to differentiate bandaids from regular systems and if either fails then safety is compromised. Obviously the amount of unnecessary systems should be minimized but as time goes on more systems WILL be added to gain the rewards of automation, which is a good thing. As such, we need to educate pilots on ALL of the systems, and rigorously test them before they enter service.
Additionally, if you do as the pilots want and achieve very high aerodynamic stability through the air-frame instead of stability control systems (fly by wire essentially) it reduces the aerodynamic efficiency of the airliner, particularly with current conventional designs.
It's crazy to me that that would be an acceptable compromise.
The original design of the 737 did not have ovoid inlets.
You can see regular circular nacelle inlets on the 737-100:
https://secure.boeingimages.com/archive/Boeing-737-100-2JRSX...
and on the 737-200 here:
https://secure.boeingimages.com/Assets/V2/jrZYYwCXohU1rDmk4e...
The ovoid inlet design was introduced with the 737-300, when the engine was changed to the CFM56.
His tweet sounds dumb but there is some truth in it.
As you say, planes and procedures have become very complicated. And I think there are only two options: making planes simple again which make them less efficient or let computers fly the plane and make the interface simple(r).
If you look at the rockets of SpaceX then you can say they are the extreme form of fly by wire and very instable when it comes to aerodynamics. But computers can land them within centimeters when they fall out of space.
So maybe that will be the future. Planes that are very efficient instable flying 'rockets' that are controlled by computers.
The wings need to be swept for efficient travel much over Mach 0.6 and these aero aids are needed for swept wings.
At this point, pushers and shakers are well-accepted fixes for aero that is not inherently recoverable.
this is an overstatement. airframe fuel efficiency is a undoubtable good thing vis a vis climate change, costs, etc. Obviously they've reached a point were the aerodynamic profile of a modern, efficient airframe is difficult to control via manual pilot input alone in some scenarios. This was the case for stealth technology with fighter/bomber designs.. the B2 for example has no vertical stabilizer and would not be controllable at all without fly-by-wire. Of course pilots will lament complexity and the loss of manual input. Regardless, the FAA wanted MCAS in the 737Max. Augmenting human input in the face of instrument failure and possible human failure is an extremely hard problem and uncharted territory for the industry. Doesn't at all mean its a not a worthy goal or that the designers or regulators had ill intent or negligence.
To counteract this they introduced the MCAS system. They would not have needed this if they hadn't "retrofitted" big engines on an old airplane design, but instead started from scratch. The B737 MAX is not really a modern aircraft, but a heavily modded old design.
You can design an aircraft just like this that won't have those characteristics. You'll just need to pay to get it certified and then airlines will have to pay to train their pilots. Instead, Southwest wanted the band-aid fix, and Boeing obliged them.
If it is cheaper to invent something like MCAS than to properly adapt the airframe, then maybe the processes that would be used for the latter are ripe for some efficiency optimization.
I'd rather wait for formal investigations (e.g. NTSB-style) before jumping to any conclusions.
As an example, Norwegian (who has 15 of them) said they weren't grounding them as late as this morning, but now they'll have no choice. They use them mainly for their medium flights between scandinavia and southern europe (Nice, Budapest, Tenerife etc). No way they can do that without flying over Germany and France. It wouldn't be very good optics if they swapped their MAX'es to domestic use to free up regular 737's for flying over the continent either.
Edit: Two are Turkish, only one is Norwegian
I wonder if, say, Germany, waited until its planes had to chance to land before closing their airspace, while other countries/companies, like Norwegian got caught by surprise.
Convenience over safety?
Total speculation on my part.
> Diversion to Shiraz, Iran December 2018
> A Norwegian Boeing 737 MAX suffered an unspecified technical failure over Iran in December 2018. The pilot made a precautionary landing at Shiraz Shahid Dastgheib International Airport without incident. Spare parts required to make the aircraft airworthy were not available in the world outside the United States, which has prohibited exports of technology to Iran. Two months later, the almost-brand-new aircraft remained stranded in Shiraz and subject to seizure by the Iranian government.[86]
> On 22 February 2019 the plane was ferrried from Shiraz to Stockholm as DY8921
If you're a reasonably sized international airline, it seems like a reasonable possibility that you'd have to (or want to) land in a territory that the US in unfavourable toward. Why take the risk?
The MCAS system and the way it was introduced sound a little like a patch, and slightly haphazard.
While training & runbooks and procedures are important, take-off is a busy time, and the Max-8 is (afaik) intended to operate very-nearly-like a standard 737, so it's not inconceivable that pilots wouldn't have time or intuitively know how to handle this situation.
Ultimately any vehicle/software/tool is going to be safest when the responsible designer makes it intuitive and reduces the possibility of failure cases rather than adding workarounds or runbooks to patch over them and/or disclaim the liability.
Anyway, it seems like it could be early to strongly assign blame or critique until we know how serious the issue is.
https://www.easa.europa.eu/newsroom-and-events/press-release...
In particular, ferry flights are allowed with certain limitations.
> "[...]do not operate the aeroplane, except that a single non-commercial ferry flight (up to three flight cycles) may be accomplished to return the aeroplane to a location where the expected corrective action(s) can be accomplished.".
Doesn't this just say the 737 MAX can be flown only to undergo future maintenance that'll resolve whatever the current issue is, unless another notice is posted clearing it?
I've always held the FAA in high regard, and think they do a good job. Are they really being negligent here? Or is the media just looking for something to spark outrage?
Can anyone with more specific knowledge of aircraft safety weigh in?
The US can tacitly blame "third world" pilots all they want, but with 300 people dead already, I think it's important for the FAA and Boeing to say exactly what is going on, especially since the planes are in use in the USA.
There is a debate over if the plane's hardware, software, or pilots are at fault-- either the planes should be grounded or the exact protocol should be published all over for the world to know, since it is the passengers' lives at stake.
[1 https://www.economist.com/gulliver/2015/01/29/a-crash-course...].
[2 https://www.riskcomm.com/visualaids/riskscale/datasources.ph...].
EDIT: The Economist source that estimates a plane's p(crash) is questionable, for a passenger plane. If anyone wants to dig into this further, I found this source too: http://www.baaa-acro.com/crash-archives
The FAA and NTSB are very good at what they do, one of the very few examples of government services that work well together with industry, give them some time.
Not saying I think these are completely random. But since we don't even know the cause of the Ethopian crash yet, who's to say? The causes may very well be unrelated.
The Ethiopian Air copilot only had 200 total hours of experience. In the US, you need an ATP certificate with a minimum of 1500 hours to even be a first officer.
Before we start throwing sand at the FAA, why not ask how a 200 hour pilot gets into the copilot seat of an airliner. Let’s also ask why Lion Air failed to fix a problem with the airspeed indicator. During a previous flight the day before the crash, the pilot reported a problem with the airspeed indicator and deactivated the anti-stall system. Lion Air didn’t fix the problem and the airplane crashed the next day. But that’s Boeing’s fault? Lion Air is a shit airline with a horrible safety record. Southwest Airlines uses only 737s and you can count their major incidents on one hand and their fatalities in over 47 years? Just 1.
Lion Air fatalities? Hundreds over multiple incidents. Ethiopian Air? Much safer than Lion Air, but much less safer than Southwest. Ethiopian has a fleet of 108 airplanes and Southwest has a fleet of 754, including 35 Max 8 planes — yet not a single incident despite flying an order of magnitude more frequently than those other airlines.
Air Canada has 24 8 Maxes in the air as does American. Along with Southwest, that’s hundreds of flights per day without incident, but then there is a crash with some third world Lion Air plane where maintenance is provided with proverbial duct tape and Ethiopia Air who has a student pilot as the first officer? Perhaps instead of grounding specific airplanes, we should ground specific airlines, because it’s clear than Ethiopian and Lion Air ought not be flying until they can figure out the basics such as maintenance and pilot training.
Is it fair? Maybe not all of it. But I think it's completely predictable.
Hasn't news always been for-profit? If not: which news organizations (newspapers, magazines, wire services) have been run on a non-profit basis?
The only recent change (IMHO) has been higher time-to-market pressures (minutes versus hours/days).
Honestly why not ground a few hundred planes just to be safe? It doesn't bother the Netherlands or Singapore. There are other aircraft, nobody is running out.
It’s mean, but I’m not surprised, given the money in the game, that Europe is acting up much faster than FAA for a Boeing airframe, and the opposite for an Airbus/DC airframe.
2) McDonnell Douglas (maker of the DC planes) is now owned by Boeing and was an American company.
I don't understand this logic. They are essentially risking their entire company over the safety of this plane. If something happens now they'll be driven to bankruptcy at record speed.
https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/southwest-airlines...
Right now, 737 Max Fleet is the deadliest plane per mile that is in the air [1], by a wide margin. Maybe it's an anomaly and the rate is much lower, but by the same reasoning, it could be worse. I'm not flying on one, and my opinion of Southwest and American is at a new low.
1. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-boeing-737-max-is-now-the...
Is southwest refusing refunds? Not doubting you, just asking if there has been a story about it.
I hate to say it, but given the track record for appalling incidents happening with airlines in the US, I'll buy that dip.
But all that profit, would someone think of stock holders please!?
No wonder McDonald Douglas changed the DC-10 into the MD-11.
Which is a lot, considering DC-9 and DC-10 are known for all sorts of crashes, including losing the same door 4 times for the same reason, each time with deaths. Ah, and who doesn’t remember the Concorde crash. Provoked by bursting a tyre on a piece lost by a DC-10. The airplane that literally falls into pieces.
I guess it is natural for governments to promote local industries but the cynical me thinks that corporations have captured our government so they don’t act in the public interests.
From the CAA: https://www.caa.co.uk/News/Boeing-737-MAX-Aircraft/
https://www.planespotters.net/production-list/Boeing/737/737...
The 737-700, -800 and -900ER, the most widespread versions of the previous 737NG,[10] are replaced by the 737 MAX 7, MAX 8 and MAX 9, respectively[61] (FAA type certificate: 737-7, -8, and -9[8]). The 737 MAX 8 entered service in May 2017,[2] and the MAX 9 entered service in March 2018.[62] The MAX 7 is expected to enter service in January 2019, followed by the MAX 200 later in 2019, and the MAX 10 in 2020.
The only difference, again AFAIK, is the passenger and cargo capacity, length, and the range.
Given the trade tensions the US has with both China and the EU and the fact that both are offering competing products (Airbus more so), this sounds like more of a political move. In the case of the EU, the WTO ruled that Airbus was illegally subsidized by the government that has now banned a Boeing aircraft while it has the green light to fly in the US.
As swampy as the US government is, the EU has it's fair share of payoffs etc.. I expect this to further heat up the trade war.
Of course that's all speculation since we don't know much about this particular crash, but that's the main issue with them.
Bascially MCAS is a hack to cover a problem raised by trying to save money by pretending it's the same as a 52-year old airframe. Instead of just saying "let's do this properly ” and certificating as a new design with appropriate design features.
Boeing's main argument is that the procedure for dealing with runaway trim is completely unchanged compared to other planes, so this shouldn't require any additional training.
I understand their reasoning, but it seems odd to not even inform that there was a change, so that this would be more on top of the pilots minds. It's even worse that the system engages as soon as flaps are retracted. Since 737's usually take off with at least some minimum flaps, and retract them soon after take-off once enough airspeed has been attained (but while the plane is still at low altitude), this is quite dangerous. Pilot workload is high at this stage and there is limited altitude to recover.
That said, since this issue is on top of everyone's minds, and US carriers have added the optional safety indicators, we are unlikely to see a crash any time soon. Pilots will be jumping to the override switches at any sign of trouble.
If something else made the engine(s) catch fire and become inoperative, and the MCAS system enabled correctly due to low airspeed/stall conditions, but was fought by the panicked pilot(s) resulting in an unrecoverable stall, it's an entirely different story.
They didn't come up with a common sense solution, doing so would have costed many billions for a new airframe with longer legs for the landing gear. This is how I understand the problem, coming from a design compromise and organisational groupthink.
Clearly this is my armchair speculation however I suspect there will be lessons to be learned from this that run along the lines of the 'Vasa' rather than the 'Comet'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)
The Vasa story crops up on HN from time to time, it was a top heavy Swedish ship that sank after launch in light winds many centuries ago. The spec had changed with more gun decks added and groupthink drove the 'pride of the fleet' project forward. The launch date happened and it sunk.
If we speculate (e.g. before the facts are in) that this was similar in cause to Lion air incident, then I would be curious to know how often AoA sensor has malfunctioned and|or MCAS has otherwise gone haywire and pilots have needed to revert to manual control during the two years of service MAX8s have had.
Picture being at the wheel of a self-driving car, with an obvious crash looming, and the car refusing to let you, the driver, take back control and steer the wheels or step on the brakes.
[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/questio...
Small typo: He says "forward and up" in the video.
Here's a good answer from Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/azzp0r/ethiopian_...
Based on what I read, the truth is a lot more complicated. The MCAS doesn't work the way most people seem to think it does. Maybe it is a factor in the crashes. We don't know that yet.
Maybe there is nothing in particular wrong with these planes, and they were just hit with two random accidents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370
2 Boeing 777-200ERs down within three months of each other (one was shot down by Russia and the other is speculation)
The hardware, software, and human systems are so intertwined that it likely involves all 3, even if the route cause can be isolated to one.
That being said, there hasn't been much specific information about the cause released yet, that I've heard.
"You don't have to do anything, the plane will fly itself. Unless there's a catastrophic emergency. Then you better remember everything you haven't practiced from 18 months ago" seems like a failed implementation.
The general idea is that there is an auto-trim system meant to stop the plane from stalling. But when it gets bad data from a faulty sensor it tries to crash the aircraft (short version). Pilots, all pilots, are trained to recognize this and override the system, but this aircraft requires them to do some things slightly differently. Specifically, they have to shut down the system rather than manually work against it. Difficulties arise where there is a disconnect between what the pilots think is happening, what the systems think and tell them is happening, and what the aircraft is actually experiencing. So this is an interaction between an automated system (software) a potentially faulty sensor (hardware) and pilot training. It is a complex problem that will take a while to fully understand and solve.
These crashes happened because Boeing tried to market the plane as not requiring retraining in order to boost sales to airlines.
"What the hell is happening?"
"MCAS ACTIVE"
"Flip the cutouts!"
Why that wasn't mandated by the FAA I have no idea. Instead the pilots are expected to systematically analyse the options whilst trying to stay airborne.
We don't know it had anything to do with pilot training until the investigation is actually finished. To say it's pilot training is pushing Boeing's narrative.
https://boeing.mediaroom.com/news-releases-statements?item=1...
> Following the Lion Air crash, US aviation authorities issued an emergency directive to carriers to update flight manuals with information on what to do when the aircraft’s anti-stall system is triggered by erroneous data from what’s called an “angle-of-attack” sensor. The flight system can react to that data by pointing the plane’s nose sharply downward. Boeing, meanwhile, directed airlines to a checklist in manuals for stabilizing the aircraft. Pilots said the crash and the directives that followed were the first time that they were made aware of these changes to the flight system.
That way, if you have one faulty sensor, it gets outvoted.
The MCAS system in the new 737-MAX's only have 2 AoA sensors, which means a single faulty sensor can cause bad things to happen.
Other discussions at https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Boeing%20points%3E10&sort=byDa...
Boeing Withheld Information on 737 Model, According to Safety Experts and Others (wsj.com) 398 points | 3 months ago | 211 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18438607
What the Lion Air Pilots May Have Needed to Do to Avoid a Crash (nytimes.com) 118 points | 3 months ago | 50 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18471464
How the pilots of Lion Air Flight 610 lost control (nytimes.com) 105 points | 75 days ago | 136 comments
You're not wrong. But do you think the EU banning them couldn't possibly have anything to do with who makes them or the competition between Airbus and Boeing? Even as a secondary factor?
https://leehamnews.com/2018/11/07/boeing-issues-737-operatio...
https://leehamnews.com/2018/11/14/boeings-automatic-trim-for...
Either not widely reported or lost in other confusion, that I find important about Lion Air, from the first article:
Indonesian crash investigators have said the 737 MAX involved in the crash has flown with unreliable airspeed information in the last four flights.
That very well could make identification and corrective action for the problem more difficult. And then, there is in fact a different behavior in the MAX with MCAS in normal operation that pilots weren't made aware of, and results in this central question in the 2nd article:
How should [pilots] know that pulling on the Yoke didn’t stop the trim?
In previous 737's, pulling on the yoke does stop trim, but that's contrary to the point of MCAS which is why it has different behavior, but it's a behavior pilots aren't aware of and haven't trained for; and both Boeing and the FAA have been saying 737's all have the same behaviors and flight characteristics. And that becoming clearly not the case is really pissing everyone off.
Second, because airplane manufacturers have a significant amount of negotiating power, combined with airlines very often not being in a great financial position: Boeing certainly wouldn't want to be liable for storage costs and the logistics of getting a fleet of planes back to a central facility if an airline went bankrupt, for example. Leases also get legally interesting when the assets involved move internationally on a daily basis...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_fleet#Curre...
Orders & Deliveries of the 737 MAX (all models): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boeing_737_MAX_orders_...
That said, "relatively easy" is still a comparative: aircraft are frequently leased and having any out of service will be costing the airline a lot of money.
Generally, planes like this have high operating costs, and usually are kept in the air pretty much constantly to be able to make a profit. Having one grounded potentially means losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars a day.
Given that this significant data point is hours or just a couple days away, isn’t it prudent to get the data before grounding the fleet?
If the jet had been brought down intentionally, should the FAA have grounded the aircraft? Crashes like this are so incredibly rare, and on a new aircraft perhaps the easy decision is to just ground it. But shouldn’t that require actual evidence on the cause of the crash?
Witness accounts are of the plane trailing smoke and debris, but I don’t trust those at all. I feel like given that we will know definitively if trim was a factor in the crash so soon, a decision should only be made once that is known.
Two of the same plane have crashed in 5 months and 346 people are dead.
https://www.apnews.com/94c19abef66d4a0e977a1286d779ba22
"Turkish Airlines says it is grounding all Boeing 737 Max aircraft in its fleet until further notice."
So overall, they seem to be quite good.
I think the relatively low pay and status of software engineers outside of the Bay Area is a huge risk to society. We are going to start seeing it show up in interesting places.
The original title was : E.U. Suspends All Operations of Boeing Max Model That Crashed
Completely disregard public safety to just protect the financial interests of a single private company, when this is systematically carried out by a tax funded bureau which was actually created to safeguard the safety of the public, how this is is not corruption? How this is not the text book definition of corruption at the highest level?
Will FAA fight so hard to ignore public concerns and safety if the aircraft were built by other countries?
And what is this mandatory software update MCAS needs? If it's safe, why does it need an update?
Are we looking at a lack of leadership in the org? The current head is acting administrator as a result of a failure of the Trump administration to appoint a new head in the wake of the previous administrator's planned exit on Jan 6 of last year.
I don't know anything about Mr. Elwell one way or another, but not all deputies are there with an eye towards taking the top job.
Why? Because with what we know now I could have prevented the Lion Air crash. Any airline flying these planes would have been criminally negligent to have not issued guidance to all of it's crews pointing out the system, the potential danger and the workaround. Any pilots who've gone through their annual sim time will no doubt have had a trim-runaway situation thrown at them.
I obviously have no data beyond what has been released to the public but I'd be unsurprised to here this was completely unrelated.
