Boeing 737 Max

[Vulcan]

Just let the inevitable happen and go Airbus.

[Shuffler]

Just let the inevitable happen and go Airbus.

Poor pilots crash those too. Only they don't ground all the planes.

The last one was an A320.  Came in too high, too hot, and landing gear not down. ATC warned of alt and speed but pilot just shrugged them off. Plane touched down on the engines then the "pilots" decided to go round. They actually became airborne again..Both engines failed from damage and the plane crashed into houses.

[Toad]

get off your high horse.  from my point of view a 1200 gadget could have prevented, in addition to pilots being told no simulating training needed and to qualify and ipad was sufficient.

pilots were so under trained that they had thousands of hours with no accidents. but of course they were lucky.


semp

That's what you (as you have said) think. But despite your stay at the Holiday Inn, you really have no experience in the field, no qualifications in the field and basically nothing at all upon which to base your opinion.

OTOH, multiple people in these 737Max discussions actually hold Type Ratings in many models of the 737, have actually worn the fourth stripe and been in command on hundreds if not thousands of commercial passenger flights, have undergone years and years of training, have actually been instructors giving the training for a Type Rating and actually have successfully handled actual inflight emergencies.

These people disagree with what you think.

But yeah...you slept in a Holiday Inn, so there IS that.

[Toad]

According to him, Airbus figured this out first, and started designing planes that could be flown by...well...by people like me, while Boeing built good planes for good pilots.

Yeah, that's what gets trumpeted around. Except if you look at two of the newer products for each company that have been around long enough for meaningful stats, the B-777 and the A330 you'll find essentially identical hull loss accident numbers. It's .42 per million departures for the A330 and .39 for the B-777.

Could be that useless pilots are going to be a fact of life for much of the world, and airliners have to be designed to deal with that.

- oldman

Could be that, as usual, airline management really is more concerned with pilot cost and pilot training cost than they are with maximum safety. The "acceptable losses" concept.

But hey....just one more gauge and no aircraft will ever crash again, right? It's not pilot proficiency...it's a sufficient number of gauges.

[Busher]

 

Could be that useless pilots are going to be a fact of life for much of the world, and airliners have to be designed to deal with that.

- oldman

Thanks to the pandemic and the resulting huge roll back of commercial flying, highly experienced well trained jet pilots will soon be a dime-a-dozen.

[guncrasher]

That's what you (as you have said) think. But despite your stay at the Holiday Inn, you really have no experience in the field, no qualifications in the field and basically nothing at all upon which to base your opinion.

OTOH, multiple people in these 737Max discussions actually hold Type Ratings in many models of the 737, have actually worn the fourth stripe and been in command on hundreds if not thousands of commercial passenger flights, have undergone years and years of training, have actually been instructors giving the training for a Type Rating and actually have successfully handled actual inflight emergencies.

These people disagree with what you think.

But yeah...you slept in a Holiday Inn, so there IS that.

and have i ever said i knew how to fly one. i only question your guys blaming only the airline and pilots. Boeing has done responsibility too.

- pushing that flight simulator was not needed
- only thing needed to qualify was a video and an ipad
- not having redundant system for it, now they do


even now they're in trouble with the airforce for leaving trash and tools inside sealed compartments, it makes you wonder what else that hasn't been found.

but seriously my interest is of the state of mind. that's what nobody knows. i would like to know what the pilots you mentioned were thinking when they faced that emergency.


semp

[Toad]

and have i ever said i knew how to fly one.

That's correct. You have no idea how to fly one. You have no idea of the training required to get a Type Rating in one. You have never been in command of a commercial passenger flight. You have never experienced various inflight emergencies that could result in the loss of the aircraft and passengers. You have never trained pilots in the aircraft or simulators. You have never been authorized by the FAA to issue a Type Rating in a jet aircraft.

Despite all of the above, you are just absolutely certain that the addition of an AOA display to the PFD would have saved the Lion Air and Ethiopian crews.

You don't believe people that have actually DONE most or all of the above things when they tell you the problem goes far deeper than the presence or absence of an AOA gauge on the PFD. When they tell you that given the evidence provided by the FDR and CVR, it's evident that an AOA display WOULD NOT have changed the outcome of the Lion Air and Ethiopian crews.

i only question your guys blaming only the airline and pilots. Boeing has done responsibility too.

I think if you actually review every 737Max thread since the accidents I don't believe you will find any of the "you guys" that holds Boeing entirely blameless. Boeing clearly could have done some things better and the "you guys" have said so in the other threads.

However, I think virtually ALL of the "you guys" believe that neither of the accidents needed to happen. That the "you guys" believe properly trained, experienced and competent pilots could have safely recovered both aircraft (as happened the day before with the jumpseat pilot giving instruction on the Lion Air aircraft). That the "you guys" believe just adding the AOA display would not have changed the outcome for Lion Air or Ethiopian.

but seriously my interest is of the state of mind. that's what nobody knows. i would like to know what the pilots you mentioned were thinking when they faced that emergency.

semp

As to what the Lion Air/Ethiopian crews were thinking, I doubt anyone will ever know.

I can only tell you what I was thinking in a very similar flight control/AOA malfunction on a 737 I was flying. I related that experience in one of the other 737Max threads. I was thinking: 1) Maintain aircraft control 2) Analyze the situation 3) Take the proper action. This all occurred in a flash, a tiny fragment of time. I flew the jet, realized we had an AOA malfunction, did not change configuration and continued to climb out to a safe altitude. That's what I was thinking and did.

It's pretty clear that the Lion Air/Ethiopian crews were unable to maintain aircraft control or analyze their situation. Thus they could not, did not take the proper action, despite the fact that both aircraft were completely flyable (again, the proof is Lion Air the day before). And...despite what you think those failures are really not Boeing's fault.

[FESS67]

I am with semp on this one.  There appears to be a chorus of "Hey look at those piss poor pilots, they are to blame!!"  I disagree with that analysis.  I am not saying that the pilots are faultless however my contention is that they were put into a situation that they should not have been put into by a system that was essentially flawed.

Now, before you pilot types go getting bent all out of shape asking how many hours I have spent as a commercial pilot, the answer is none.  But I do not need to be a pilot to read reports and recognize that there are issues at play other than the pilots involved.  Link below and some pertinent extracts.

https://transportation.house.gov/imo/media/doc/TI%20Preliminary%20Investigative%20Findings%20Boeing%20737%20MAX%20March%202020.pdf

1) Production Pressures. There was tremendous financial pressure on Boeing and subsequently the
737 MAX program to compete with Airbus’ A320neo aircraft.
12 Among other things, this pressure.......  resulted in extensive efforts to cut costs, maintain the 737 MAX program schedule, and not slow
down the 737 MAX production line. The Committee’s investigation has identified several instances
where the desire to meet these goals and expectations jeopardized the safety of the flying public.

3) Culture of Concealment. In several critical instances, Boeing withheld crucial information from
the FAA, its customers, and 737 MAX pilots. This included hiding the very existence of MCAS
from 737 MAX pilots13 and failing to disclose that the AOA disagree alert was inoperable on the
majority of the 737 MAX fleet, despite having been certified as a standard cockpit feature.
14 This
alert notified the crew if the aircraft’s two AOA sensor readings disagreed, an event that occurs only
when one is malfunctioning. Boeing also withheld knowledge that a pilot would need to diagnose
and respond to a “stabilizer runaway” condition caused by an erroneous MCAS activation in 10
seconds or less, or risk catastrophic consequences.15

Boeing received an FAA exception to allow the company to not install on the 737 MAX an
Engine Indicating and Crew Alerting System (EICAS)—a system common in newly type
certificated aircraft since 1982 that displays for pilots aircraft system faults and failures and
helps pilots prioritize responding to multiple or simultaneous indications. The FAA accepted
Boeing’s argument about the impracticality and the economic expense of installing EICAS
on the 737 MAX.22 The 737 family, including the 737 MAX, is the only Boeing commercial.............aircra ft line that does not have an EICAS system installed, which might have helped to alleviate pilot confusion in the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines accidents.

In March 2016, Boeing sought, and the FAA approved, removal of references to MCAS
from Boeing’s Flight Crew Operations Manual (FCOM),
36 ensuring 737 MAX pilots were
unaware of this new software and its potential effect on the aircraft’s handling without pilot
command.

AOA Disagree Alert – Boeing intentionally concealed information from the FAA, its
customers, and pilots about inoperable AOA Disagree alerts installed on most of the 737
MAX fleet, despite their functioning being “mandatory” on all 737 MAX aircraft, and the
FAA has failed to hold Boeing accountable for these actions.

Boeing provided Lion Air a Flight Crew Operations Manual (FCOM) on August 16, 2018,
one year after learning that the AOA Disagree alert was not functioning on most 737 MAX
aircraft, highlighting the operation of the AOA Disagree alert. Boeing failed to indicate that
it knew the AOA Disagree alert on the Lion Air 737 MAX aircraft was not operational.43

Boeing did not acknowledge that the AOA Disagree alerts on an estimated 80 percent of the
737 MAX fleet were inoperative until after the Lion Air crash in October 2018.44
▪ Although the AOA Disagree alert was not a safety-critical component, Boeing knowingly
delivered 737 MAX aircraft to its customers that did not conform to the airplane’s type
certificate, and the FAA has failed to take any measures to hold Boeing accountable for
these actions.

Boeing’s own analysis showed that if pilots took more than 10 seconds to identify and
respond to a “stabilizer runaway” condition caused by uncommanded MCAS activation the
result could be catastrophic. The Committee has found no evidence that Boeing shared this
information with the FAA, customers, or 737 MAX pilots.
▪ The 10-second reaction time and the potential for it to result in catastrophic consequences
was discovered early on in the development of the 737 MAX program.46

[Puma44]

I am with semp on this one.  There appears to be a chorus of "Hey look at those piss poor pilots, they are to blame!!"  I disagree with that analysis.  I am not saying that the pilots are faultless however my contention is that they were put into a situation that they should not have been put into by a system that was essentially flawed.

Now, before you pilot types go getting bent all out of shape asking how many hours I have spent as a commercial pilot, the answer is none.  But I do not need to be a pilot to read reports and recognize that there are issues at play other than the pilots involved.  Link below and some pertinent extracts.

https://transportation.house.gov/imo/media/doc/TI%20Preliminary%20Investigative%20Findings%20Boeing%20737%20MAX%20March%202020.pdf

In every aircraft accident/incident, there is always a chain of events that lead up to something bad happening.  It is up to the pilot(s) to break that chain and prevent the final event from happening.  They are the last stand in the chain of safety.  A well trained, competent, and experienced pilot will in most every instance break the chain and recover the aircraft successfully.  In both of the Max accidents, there was a lack of basic situational awareness and airmanship.  It’s very concerning that a cockpit jumpseater had to coach the pilots on what to do the day prior, with the same malfunction.  The next day, no coach, no safe recovery.

All of the “you guys” with actual experience know the reality of what happened and should have happened.  The rest of “you guys” are certainly entitled to your opinion.

Travel recommendation:  Buyer beware when flying third world air carriers.  Never know who’s sitting in the front office watching over your chain of safety.   

[FESS67]

Travel recommendation:  Buyer beware when flying third world air carriers.  Never know who’s sitting in the front office watching over your chain of safety.   

Travel recommendation:  Buyer beware when flying flawed aircraft.  Never know who's sitting in the back office initiating a break in your chain of safety.   

[Toad]

The clear, irrefutable fact is that in both Lion Air and Ethiopian, the aircraft was entirely capable of returning to base quite safely.

For that to happen, there needed to be a competent, well trained, experienced crew in the front seats. It's incredibly sad (and damning) that pilots that supposedly had prior Boeing experience and indeed prior experience in other series of Boeing 737s were unable to correctly perform the Runaway Stab Trim procedure (unless prompted by a jumpseat pilot.  ).

Yeah, Boeing is not blameless. But no failure to document MCAS or train MCAS or add an AOA gauge or whatever would have prevented a competent, well trained, experienced crew from safely recovering those two aircraft.

That's the simple truth of both accidents.

[Busher]

To Puma and Toad, I have the utmost respect for you gents and anyone else that made or is making a career in the "front office". I never flew the 737 so you are both exceedingly more competent to comment than I am.
But what I see here in this debate is so typical of the everyone is entitled to an opinion which in simple terms is a truth but when it comes to technically complex subjects, no one defers to expertise anymore.
The Max was crucified by the press and by extension so was Boeing. The critical review by the FAA was destined to be an inquisition designed to satisfy not only the Press but also the travelling public. In spite of that, with the willingness these days of people to see conspiracies and evil under every rock, Boeing's reputation as a builder of quality jets will be suspect by many for some time to come.
We all know that no airplane is perfect and none ever will be. Some I recall in my career had some downright nasty behaviour if the crew was careless or complacent.
So in short, do I think you guys are wasting your breath debating these people? Ya, I guess I am. Flying has become so routine that I honestly believe that people have little respect and less understanding of what it takes to make almost 45000 flights a day in the USA so relaxed.

[FESS67]

To Puma and Toad, I have the utmost respect for you gents and anyone else that made or is making a career in the "front office". I never flew the 737 so you are both exceedingly more competent to comment than I am.
But what I see here in this debate is so typical of the everyone is entitled to an opinion which in simple terms is a truth but when it comes to technically complex subjects, no one defers to expertise anymore.
The Max was crucified by the press and by extension so was Boeing. The critical review by the FAA was destined to be an inquisition designed to satisfy not only the Press but also the travelling public. In spite of that, with the willingness these days of people to see conspiracies and evil under every rock, Boeing's reputation as a builder of quality jets will be suspect by many for some time to come.
We all know that no airplane is perfect and none ever will be. Some I recall in my career had some downright nasty behaviour if the crew was careless or complacent.
So in short, do I think you guys are wasting your breath debating these people? Ya, I guess I am. Flying has become so routine that I honestly believe that people have little respect and less understanding of what it takes to make almost 45000 flights a day in the USA so relaxed.

Busher, you are falling into the trap of believing that only those who can fly commercial jets can make reasoned, intelligent and informed arguments on the subject.  That is simply not true.  As to your comment about no one defers to expertise anymore, are you suggesting that the report I referenced was not written by experts? 

As far as the review by the FAA being destined to be an inquisition designed to satisfy not only the Press but also the travelling public, how do you come to that conclusion?  The reviews / reports cite issues and errors at all levels of the incidents from design, oversight, conflicts of interest, maintenance practices, personnel competencies.  What I see is a determination to squarely land fault at the feet of the pilots and I do not think that is a fair assertion.

You state In spite of that, with the willingness these days of people to see conspiracies and evil under every rock, Boeing's reputation as a builder of quality jets will be suspect by many for some time to come.   I am interested as to what you consider to be a conspiracy.  The bullet points in my original post in this thread are, as far as I am aware, not in question.  it is not a conspiracy, it is an uncovering of the truth about what happened.  In any quality root cause analysis if you do not turn over every rock you risk not coming to a full and accurate conclusion.  Why do you think it OK to blame dead pilots but no OK to fully examine and expose the contributions made by the manufacturer?

It is an uncomfortable truth but it is the truth.  I do not agree with the sentiment that these pilots were inherently incompetent and any pilot worth their pay would have flown their way out of it.  I believe the MCAS system defeated them and if it had not been in operation they would have flown their way out of it.

What would I know though?

Here is a letter reportedly written by Sullenberger on the issue.  I am going to assume that you consider him expert enough to have a valid point of view.  It is of course possible that this is not from the famed airline captain but another cog in the consiparacy.

Letter to the Editor
Capt. “Sully” Sullenberger
New York Times Magazine
Published in print on October 13, 2019

In “What Really Brought Down the Boeing 737 MAX?” William Langewiesche draws the conclusion that the pilots are primarily to blame for the fatal crashes of Lion Air 610 and Ethiopian 302. In resurrecting this age-old aviation canard, Langewiesche minimizes the fatal design flaws and certification failures that precipitated those tragedies, and still pose a threat to the flying public. I have long stated, as he does note, that pilots must be capable of absolute mastery of the aircraft and the situation at all times, a concept pilots call airmanship. Inadequate pilot training and insufficient pilot experience are problems worldwide, but they do not excuse the fatally flawed design of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) that was a death trap. As one of the few pilots who have lived to tell about being in the left seat of an airliner when things went horribly wrong, with seconds to react, I know a thing or two about overcoming an unimagined crisis. I am also one of the few who have flown a Boeing 737 MAX Level D full motion simulator, replicating both accident flights multiple times. I know firsthand the challenges the pilots on the doomed accident flights faced, and how wrong it is to blame them for not being able to compensate for such a pernicious and deadly design. These emergencies did not present as a classic runaway stabilizer problem, but initially as ambiguous unreliable airspeed and altitude situations, masking MCAS. The MCAS design should never have been approved, not by Boeing, and not by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The National Transportation Safety Board has found that Boeing made faulty assumptions both about the capability of the aircraft design to withstand damage or failure, and the level of human performance possible once the failures began to cascade. Where Boeing failed, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) should have stepped in to regulate but it failed to do so. Lessons from accidents are bought in blood and we must seek all the answers to prevent the next one. We need to fix all the flaws in the current system — corporate governance, regulatory oversight, aircraft maintenance, and yes, pilot training and experience. Only then can we ensure the safety of everyone who flies.

Capt. “Sully” Sullenberger

 

[guncrasher]

you know what bugs me, none of you question the points I said before.

-no flight simulator needed
-only thing you needed was an ipad and a video to be certified from the previous version

but when you mention another gadget is not needed.  then why did it have to be a software installed.  shouldnt it have been easier to say hey "dummy" engines will push aircraft up, or down, not being a pilot not sure which way. but they did installed another gadget and with 1200 bucks more there would have been a blinking light saying hey you loser pilot it's malfunctioning.

none of you have questioned that.

semp

[FESS67]

you know what bugs me, none of you question the points I said before.

-no flight simulator needed
-only thing you needed was an ipad and a video to be certified from the previous version

but when you mention another gadget is not needed.  then why did it have to be a software installed.  shouldnt it have been easier to say hey "dummy" engines will push aircraft up, or down, not being a pilot not sure which way. but they did installed another gadget and with 1200 bucks more there would have been a blinking light saying hey you loser pilot it's malfunctioning.

none of you have questioned that.

semp

'Blinking lights' or any other kind of indicator are only useful if operating and operating normally.  So, the inclusion of an alert would only be useful if it was working.  Now, why would I say something dumb like that?  If it is installed it is working right?  Nope, appears not to be the case.

Boeing did not acknowledge that the AOA Disagree alerts on an estimated 80 percent of the
737 MAX fleet were inoperative until after the Lion Air crash in October 2018.44

80% of the fleet!! huh?  I am not sure how that can be considered an OK situation.

The massive issue I have with placing the blame at the feet of the pilots are statements like this from the report I referenced above:

Boeing also withheld knowledge that a pilot would need to diagnose
and respond to a “stabilizer runaway” condition caused by an erroneous MCAS activation in 10
seconds or less, or risk catastrophic consequences.

Boeing’s own analysis showed that if pilots took more than 10 seconds to identify and
respond to a “stabilizer runaway” condition caused by uncommanded MCAS activation the
result could be catastrophic. The Committee has found no evidence that Boeing shared this
information with the FAA, customers, or 737 MAX pilots.
▪ The 10-second reaction time and the potential for it to result in catastrophic consequences
was discovered early on in the development of the 737 MAX program.46
▪ Multiple Boeing ARs were aware of these findings and never reported them to the FAA

Busher, Toad and Puma would have us believe that any well trained, competent pilot would achieve the correct outcome within the stated 10 seconds and furthermore, any pilot failing to do so is incompetent.  If that is their considered professional assessment then I respect their opinions.  However, Sullenberger stated:

"I recently experienced all these warnings in a 737 MAX flight simulator during recreations of the accident flights. Even knowing what was going to happen, I could see how crews could have run out of time before they could have solved the problems. Prior to these accidents, I think it is unlikely that any US airline pilots were confronted with this scenario in simulator training,"

Even knowing what was going to happen  He was in a simulator, KNOWING what was about to happen and still struggled.  Those poor bastards doing it for real did not even know the MCAS system existed!! They were fighting an unknown!!  That is certainly true for the Lion Air pilots.  The Ethiopian pilots appear to have known about MCAS and reportedly  followed a Boeing procedure but were still unable to correct the issue.

Consider this statement from the report I referenced above:

In the aftermath of the Lion Air crash, the FAA conducted a risk assessment based on the
Transport Aircraft Risk Assessment Methodology (TARAM) which calculated that without a
fix to MCAS, during the lifetime of the 737 MAX fleet, there would be an estimated 15 more fatal, catastrophic accidents.  However, the FAA permitted the 737 MAX to continue flying
anyway while Boeing and the FAA worked on designing and validating a fix to the MCAS software. That judgment proved tragically wrong. Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 crashed less
than five months after the Lion Air crash.

I am assuming that the FAA people conducting the TARAM were qualified to do so.  If so, that is a pretty damning statement.

Do your own reading, make your own conclusions however for me 'fly the damn plane' is an OK response except when the damn plane is actively working to put you in to the ground.