321–330 of 344 posts
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>Ethiopian Air are near the bottom This is ignorance, Ethiopian have been flying for 70 years and have an excellent safety record on par with most western airlines.
Could there be more non fatal incidents that only manufacturers and safety regulators are aware of ?
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. Have you read this complaint from an actual pilot? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19374386 Quoting the HN post: "My post flight evaluation is that we lacked the knowledge to operate the aircraft in all weather and aircraft states safely. The instrumentation is completely different - My scan…
If the problem is lack of training, (or even "possibly maybe failing sensors") - and your failure mode includes "maybe killing 150+ paying customers in one shot" ... seems like a no-brainer, to me, to fucking ground the planes, and take immediate corrective action.
And again: just my opinion, it just reeks of someone who spends their days in a "spreadsheet-facing" position, making the decision to not ground these planes, not take their users' (pilots) reports seriously, and continue to risk hundreds of customers' lives (and thousands of their own employees livelihoods) on a daily basis.
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> - Lion and Ethiopian Air are near the bottom when it comes to maintenance and follow up with Boeing Another commenter mentioned that Ethiopian Airline is considered Category 1 by the FAA, and is a member of the Star Alliance. Surely that indicates a decent track record? I'm not saying it _is_ the plane, but as the EASA Emergency Airworthiness Directive points out, while a connection between the two incidents cannot…
Quite. That doesn’t pass the sniff test. If it turns out this is Boeing’s fault, for the reasons suspected, and the FAA have staked their reputation on it - I fear for the future of airline safety.
This is totally fucked up. For an administration whose core-competency which was supposed to be "protecting American Workers" - they're sure trying like hell to get the airlines of the world to turn to Airbus and other foreign manufacturers for trustworthy aircraft.
I mean - holy shit - every engineering effort fucks up. But to refuse to admit it, and cover it up, that's a violation of trust. Who wants to do business with that shit? You can buy product from someone who occasionally makes mistakes, and when called on it, admits it, and does their damnedest to make it right and show you they're trying to fix it. But when someone blames the victim or tries to deny there's a problem, you take your money elsewhere.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/business/canada-737-max.h...
From a customer perspective I would have appreciated a joint approach of the major aviation agencies. The way it is handled right now, I can’t judge whether the EU is reacting shortsighted or if the US is too careless. One seems to be true?
As a customer, what stake do you personally have in this plane not being grounded? Isn't it always better to be cautious, like the EU/China seem to be?
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> Southwest, the biggest US operator of 737 MAX aircraft, bought the "AOA Disagree" option on their aircraft...If you have that, you get a warning that the flight control system is seeing bogus AOA data How can something that important be an option?
> How can something that important be an option? Based on other comments here and in other discussions, it seems like adding that feature would increase the training requirements for the pilots since it is an additional instrument in the cockpit. I don't know whether it was Boeing, Boeing's customers, or both who pushed for the instrument to be an option. Any combination is plausible, and I'm not going to rush to jud…
Basically everything about this plane boils down to "it should require more training but it didn't"
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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 think the problem is he wouldn't have recognized the behavior pattern that keys "runaway stabilizer trim" in the extra conditions over and above what is trained for a faulty MCAS activation would result in. If you're not aware of something, it takes a non-trivial amount of time to break out of your trained response envelope and to start thinking outside the box. This is a problem with many training heavy discipline…
A: Aborted Engine Start
B: Airspeed Unreliable
C: Cabin Altitude Warning
D: Emergency Descent
E: Engine Fire or Engine Severe Damage or Separation
F: Engine Limit / Surge / Stall
G: Engine Overheat
H: Loss of Thrust on Both Engines
I: Runaway Stabilizer
J: Uncommanded Roll
K: APU Fire
L: Overspeed - Warning Clacker
From a quick glance, I can recall accidents caused by/involving at least 6 of those general categories (C, E, F, H, I, J, L) and several others (A, K) are primarily ground issues from what I can tell. If the pilot doesn't know one of them, what's the chance they don't know some of the others?
> If you're not aware of something, it takes a non-trivial amount of time to break out of your trained response envelope and to start thinking outside the box.
Unfortunately, the MCAS fix is one of the things written on the envelope - there shouldn't be any unpacking to do in the first place. Yes, the plane shouldn't put pilots in that position. But at the same time, pilots need to be ready to be put into that position - because sometimes things don't work for reasons outside your control. Like eating a couple geese on takeoff in both engines or something else equally unlikely.
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All the listed people are in the legislative branch. The FAA is part of the executive branch. Short of passing a law that grounds the 737 MAX, legislators don't really have a say here. Interestingly, Trump has also come out against the plane, but his uninformed Twitter ramblings are by and large (rightfully) ignored by the executive branch. And he's not against the 737 MAX for valid reasons, but for luddite ones.
Yep, Trump says a lot of really stupid stuff (like his comments about the electromagnetic launchers on the new Ford carrier). But in this case, even if his reasoning is stupid, it'd be better if the executive branch actually followed his lead and grounded the plane.
Trump shares some blame here because he's never had, nor even appointed, an FAA commissioner. Maybe with someone confirmed in charge they would've been more proactive.
Lots of jumping to conclusions going on in this thread, blaming the FAA, lobbyists, and politicians for being in the pocket of Boeing. Nobody knows why this plane crashed. The flight recorders have just been recovered and so far there has been nothing in the news about what was on them. The plane might be to blame. The airline or the pilots might be to blame, and by the way, that airline has a bad safety record. It m…
Nobody knows why this plane crashed. The flight recorders have just been recovered and so far there has been nothing in the news about what was on them. Yes. And the recorders have angle of attack data. We'll know within days if it's another AOA sensor problem. Southwest, the biggest US operator of 737 MAX aircraft, bought the "AOA Disagree" option on their aircraft, and recently added an AOA indicator. Many operator…