US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max • Hacker News Board

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#291

Post by lqet » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 3:52 PM UTC

chipsa wrote: post #209

sundayfunday wrote: post #49

Someone shared this on a different forums, it’s a recent NPR interview of a pilot for American Airlines. https://overcast.fm/+nmn7rqq0/06:04 It’s a short interview but in short, * Boeing left out info on the new flight control system in the pilots manual they trained with * the training to fly the new planes was 56 minutes of PowerPoint presentations on an iPad * he would not have known how to correct the system in t…

If he doesn't know how to correct for runaway stabilizer trim, then he probably should be decertified. It's a memory item: https://www.theairlinepilots.com/forumarchive/b737/b737memor... And the checklist is 4 items long. Item 3 disables MCAS.

I am curious regarding item 4:

  STABILIZER TRIM WHEEL - GRASP and HOLD

How does the trim wheel work? Is it mechanically connected to the stabilizer?

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#292

Post by kawfey » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

nickjj wrote: post #207

bluedino wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just use one of the many water bottle filling stations?

Not all airports have these. Also if you're an inexperienced flyer and have a tight connection, you may not have the time to find one in an unfamiliar airport but a bar or restaurant is almost always in sight.

Not all airports have sinks?

It's not like they filter what's coming out of water fountains anyway.

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#293

Post by kawfey » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 4:01 PM UTC

mtw wrote: post #240

The current head of FAA appointed by Trump was a lobbyist for Southwest, AA, United Airlines. No wonder he doesn't ground the Boeing 737 Max. Southwest alone operates the biggest 737 Max fleet in the world, with 280 planes. They'd lose a lot of money if their former employee grounds the plane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Elwell

> Southwest alone operates the biggest 737 Max fleet in the world, with 280 planes.

Incorrect, they operate 35 Max8's, and have 237 total firm orders for Max8 and 30 for Max7.

https://www.planespotters.net/airline/Southwest-Airlines

http://www.southwestairlinesinvestorrelations.com/news-and-e...

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#294

Post by kayfox » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 4:08 PM UTC

peteradio wrote: post #179

_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…

Why the fuck does the investigation need to be concluded __BEFORE__ they ground the goddamn planes??? That makes no sense it has horrible incentives.

Because its quite possible that grounding the planes would result in more fatalities. People may drive or get shuffled onto older, less safe aircraft.

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#295

Post by CloudNetworking » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 4:11 PM UTC

StreamBright wrote: post #170

Grue3 wrote: post #140

How improbable was two Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777-200ER flights crashing within five months? Should all Boeing 777-200ER airplanes be grounded? Or all Malaysian Airlines flights? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17 By the way it took years to figure out how exactly these crashed.

Should we ground Russian surface to air rockets instead?

They tend to explode, crash and burn, so I'd say... yes? :)

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#296

Post by nickjj » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

kawfey wrote: post #292

nickjj wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all airports have these. Also if you're an inexperienced flyer and have a tight connection, you may not have the time to find one in an unfamiliar airport but a bar or restaurant is almost always in sight.

Not all airports have sinks? It's not like they filter what's coming out of water fountains anyway.

> Not all airports have sinks?

I haven't seen any, unless you're talking about using the bathroom sinks?

In which case, no thanks. Even with a touch less sensor people can still (and do) touch the area where the water comes out. Flying is stressful enough as it is. I don't want to have to think about potentially drinking tainted water (pun intended).

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#297

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 4:16 PM UTC

mtw wrote: post #240

The current head of FAA appointed by Trump was a lobbyist for Southwest, AA, United Airlines. No wonder he doesn't ground the Boeing 737 Max. Southwest alone operates the biggest 737 Max fleet in the world, with 280 planes. They'd lose a lot of money if their former employee grounds the plane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Elwell

[deleted]

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#298

Post by erokar » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 4:17 PM UTC

stirlo wrote: post #15

It’s scary to think how complicit the FAA was in granting Boeing’s wish that this 30 year newer plane with substantially larger engines only required 2-3 hours of new training and said training was able to miss covering entire systems like MCAS. Now 350 people are dead, all the FAA can be thankful of is the dead are foreigners so it’s unlikely they’ll be held properly accountable.

Interesting Reddit comment below. If true, this means the AoA probe does not need to fail for the MCAS to trigger, but be caused by transient bursts of high AoA. If this is true -- a big if of course -- and Boeing knew about it as early as August 2018, it's pretty damning.

https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/b08h03/737_max_mega...

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#299

Post by magduf » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 4:25 PM UTC

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #214

whack wrote: post #206

How does the plane's safety record compare against that of motorcycles or sub-compact cars? Should we ban them as well, until they can attain safety parity? My girlfriend has two intercontinental flights coming up in the next month. Flights that are very important to her life goals and fulfillment. I would hate to see a wrench thrown into those plans, because of a risk that she already takes on every weekend when she…

There are about 350 of these planes flying, and they've been in general use for about two years. That implies 1/350 odds of a fatal crash per plane per year. I can't find similar statistics for motorcycles, but that's still wildly unacceptable. And even if it weren't, you're arguing that problems can only be addressed one at a time in strict order of severity, in a nation of 326 million people. That's ridiculous.

What's more, this isn't an issue just for a nation of 326M people, this is global.

There are other issues which IMO are worse: how many people in America are killed by guns because we refuse to do anything about those legislatively? How many are killed by auto crashes because we refuse to build better trains and public transit?

However, other countries (like those in the EU) see this plane as problematic, and are grounding it. That's something that they can do. EU nations don't have any control over America refusing to fix its problems with guns and cars and public transit, but they do have the power to ground unsafe planes in their airspace, so that's what they're doing.

As for the US, the US isn't doing anything about this plane at all; that's why we're arguing about it here, combined with the fact that other nations are doing something about it.

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#300

Post by freehunter » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 4:26 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #175

CaptainZapp wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You conveniently forgot to mention that the captain of the flight was highly experienced with 8'000 hours of flight time.

So in perfect conditions he's very likely to tell the rookie beside him to fly the plane so the rookie can rack up experience. Edit: Why is this being down-voted? Letting the new guy get experience this way is a common industry practice.

>Why is this being down-voted

Because you're making a claim with absolutely no evidence that the captain sat by and watched a rookie crash a plane and kill everyone on board and the captain did nothing to intervene and save his own life.