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US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

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Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#181

Post by rbanffy »

cm2187 wrote: post #113

I am still convinced there is a problem with the plane based on simple probabilities. These are brand new planes so they shouldn’t be in a phase where failures multiply, and maintenance should be irrelevant unless these planes were delivered faulty. It’s a very small fleet compared to other models. Two extremely rare crashes (plane crashes are rare in general) within months of each others, with the same model, same p…

Speaking as an engineer, we, sometimes, underestimate the relevance of a relatively minor system. We can't imagine all possible scenarios and that's why in every single decision with systems that are responsible for human lives there is a lot of people involved - because we rely on someone, at some point, imagining the scenario everyone else didn't. This reduces the odds of letting something important slip through, but it's not perfect and can't hope to be (and, sometimes, we have the grim reminders we aren't all-knowing)

We should not rush to conclusions, since one of the investigations is in its infancy, but, from all the pilot reports that have been accumulating since the introduction of these models, it looks like the impact of the differences between models in the 737 family on crews were underestimated and training for them was not as thorough as it should have been.

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#183

Post by keiferski »

rbanffy wrote: post #171
ryannevius wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American lives have been claimed in these incidents as well.

I'm unsure about what you are implying here.

Near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — At least eight of the victims of the Ethiopian Airlines crash were confirmed Tuesday to have been Americans, including Melvin and Bennett Riffel from Redding, California.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ethiopian-airlines-crash-victim...

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#184

Post by sparkling »

nutcracker46 wrote: post #54

This is a "fifth risk" scenario, where the FAA misjudges other countries' aviation authorities as mere America bashers. The Feds also misjudge their own threat environment, gambling that the rate of hull losses due to MCAS problems is low enough to fly through. The question, "What if we're wrong?" doesn't get asked. Instead, the FAA Administrator's boss tweets a complaint about aircraft being too complicated. No, the…

[The Trump FAA are clueless political hacks, not professional safety experts and airmen.]

Surely you have the FAA employee turnover % numbers available since Trump took office?

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#185

Post by rbanffy »

nolok wrote: post #80
_cerv wrote: post #45

Some points from personal experience from working at Boeing, family working at Boeing, and a close friend on the flight line for the 737-8; - not everything is back from the Lion Air incident, but internally there was strong confidence that a lack of pilot familiarity with the adjusted mechanics of MCAS contributed to the disaster - reproducing these failures has been extremely hard and has required a lot of cooperat…

> - training for the 737-8 and -9 was just short of non existent because in practice, these planes don’t fly differently. Except for, you know, that computer system that throws people into the ground if a probe malfunction, and that the "just short of non existent" training doesn't seem to cover properly. I don't know how this part works, when a manufacturer says "this plane doesn't require full training but merely a…

Not only validate it matches reality when the plane is introduced, but continuously validating it via crew reports. This feedback needs to be a closed loop.

If a plane surprises an adequately trained crew, then it means someone missed something.

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#186

Post by tialaramex »

agumonkey wrote: post #159
jpatokal wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aviation doesn't work that way. If a moving plane screws up in any way (too close to another plane, wrong taxiway, botched takeoff/landing, etc) it will be noticed. The US also has the widely used ASRS system for confidentially reporting safety issues/lapses of any kind for everybody's benefit, and most other countries have similar systems now, although I can't vouch for Ethiopia specifically. https://asrs.arc.nasa.g…

I'm not sure we understood each other. I understand aviation is heavily monitored by the field, but maybe only a few (when fatal or grave) sample of incidents gets to the public eye. Unless walkingolof is also in the field and by 'track record' he meant even 'up to the slightest faults'.

All aviation accidents are reportable in most civilised countries, and the reports will be public. For an airliner (which these are) they'll invariably make the news. For little prop planes in GA nobody cares unless someone died.

Take an example from Ireland, an island near me. A crew screwed up and typed the wrong temperature into the computer, which calculated take-off thrust based on higher density air than was reality. As a result they had inadequate acceleration and smashed a runway light with their wheels because they took off far too late. Nobody died, nobody even needed a band aid, but that's a reportable accident and made minor headlines... even though it happened in another country miles away.

As your parent indicated, the US further has ASRS, so that not only accidents, but incidents short of an accident (situations in which something went wrong, but fortunately it did not cause an actual accident), are reported. These are anonymised to protect the reporter but you can see (anonymous) reports by aircraft type in a public system.

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#187

Post by AsyncAwait »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #177
AsyncAwait wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems to be that the crash situations are way too complex to blame a single party. It seems to me like Boeing is very much intent on blaming a single party, ("3rd world pilots/airlines").

Of course they are. Any rational entity caught up in a situation like this will try to blame someone else. The cost of being liable for anything in today's society is very high so every party fights tooth and nail to make it 100% not their fault. This is especially amplified in a highly public case like this, the politicians will not rest until some entity has been punished, politicians are under a lot of pressure be…

It's worth noting that this particular plane was new. So 'poor maintenance' is not likely.

I don't think anyone serious literally thinks that 'Boeing built a POS that fell out of the sky', but there are indications that they built a plane that required substantially different handling and tried to abstract that fact via the onboard systems, which makes the pilots unable to handle the actual behavior of the plane when the systems were off for whatever reason, which to me does sound like a pretty big 'oversight' on the part of Boeing.

Now, perhaps the pilots could have handled the situation better, but it does seem like the FAA is trying to protect Boeing, (an American company with enormous lobbying power) and Boeing is sort of positioning this as "3rd world pilots" being at fault, the FAA potentially risking American lives here.

That does not look good to me whatever the cause is, (there's unlikely to be a single one and Boeing is unlikely to be completely clean here).

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#188

Post by josefresco »

tibbydudeza wrote: post #64
Legogris wrote: post #53

I don't get it. Airline workers, Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney and democratic senators are for suspending it, which China, the EU and Australia have already done. What's going on at the FAA?

Boeing spends a lot of money on lobbying and the CEO called Trump after his tweet.

I came here to see if anyone was talking about this specific issue and I found your comment (downvoted of course).

Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/ethiopia-airlines-trump/trum...

Some background: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-airlines-trump/t...

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#189

Post by buboard »

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #108

'But the FAA said that other civil aviation authorities had not "provided data to us that would warrant action".' Pretty sure the data is that two planes crashed in five months in perfect weather conditions, killing everyone on board. Statistically, that's sufficiently improbable that it warrants investigation.

> Statistically, that's sufficiently improbable

Is it?

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#190

Post by cesarb »

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #108

'But the FAA said that other civil aviation authorities had not "provided data to us that would warrant action".' Pretty sure the data is that two planes crashed in five months in perfect weather conditions, killing everyone on board. Statistically, that's sufficiently improbable that it warrants investigation.

> Pretty sure the data is that two planes crashed in five months in perfect weather conditions

Not only that, but the data we have so far from the second crash (ADS-B data showing irregular vertical speed, see https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/flightradar24-data-regard...) is consistent with both accidents having a similar cause. Grounding all airplanes from the same model until preliminary data from the (already recovered) flight recorders can confirm or discard that hypothesis is prudent.

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