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How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

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Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

#31

Post by Numberwang »

stcredzero wrote: post #22

There is a big difference between how you behave when you're calm, vs how you behave when you're under stress. Basically, you start hitting sub-sentient "defaults." You default to your training. You default to inherited flight or fight behaviors. Emergency procedures and training need to be designed with this in mind, or they will fail. (Presentation preparation is like this. My last presentation failed because by se…

How would you design presentation preparation with that in mind? Or anything for that matter?

Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

#32

Post by rob74 »

mcv wrote: post #12
Insanity wrote: post #11

>, “Boeing 737-800 pilots were required to receive some additional training on the MAX 8, which included an hour lesson on some differences. Additional training was not required, as the 737-800 and the MAX 8 have same type certification.” How are those type certifications determined? It seems to me that there should be an instance checking if the type certifications make sense. Or perhaps they did, and they just real…

It makes sense that very minor differences don't require extra training if the differences have no meaningful impact on cockpit design or flight characteristics. But in this case, flight characteristics were clearly different, and MCAS was supposed to compensate for those differences. I don't know how they measure such differences, but you'd think that different engines, different aerodynamics, and a new control syst…

well, yes, exactly, MCAS was supposed to compensate for these differences, to make sure that the flight characteristics are close enough to not require additional training. But tragically, what was supposed to be part of the solution turned out to be part of the problem...

Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

#33

Post by ineedasername »

Simulacra wrote: post #27

This will all fall on the shoulders of Boeing. They installed a feature without properly notifying pilots and airlines. Thus when things went haywire, the pilots had no idea what was going on.

Hopefully it will also fall in part on the FAA, which greenlit the thing for use without checks that might have caught this.

Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

#34

Post by basch »

saluki wrote: post #13
Insanity wrote: post #11

>, “Boeing 737-800 pilots were required to receive some additional training on the MAX 8, which included an hour lesson on some differences. Additional training was not required, as the 737-800 and the MAX 8 have same type certification.” How are those type certifications determined? It seems to me that there should be an instance checking if the type certifications make sense. Or perhaps they did, and they just real…

y, sounds like a change like this: The system, known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, was incorporated because the plane has larger engines placed further forward on the craft, and so has a chance of facing a stall at lower speeds than earlier 737 variations. Would require more training than a few hours.

they tried to write a shim that made the new plane fly like the old one.

Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

#35

Post by jcims »

Unvetted image comparison of the cockpits

737 MAX 8 Cockpit - https://i2.wp.com/thepointsguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/0...

737 800 Cockpit - https://i.imgur.com/eRULoST.jpg

I don't really know my way around an airliner but the key displays seem to be quite different and there's a lot fewer knobs on the MAX 8.

Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

#36

Post by ineedasername »

wnevets wrote: post #30

>FAA for pushing engineers to 'delegate' reviews of certain components back to Boeing themselves. How much more proof do we need as a society that self regulation is a fool's errand?

Unfortunately, regulation doesn't fit with the narrative of self-determination and "pull yourself up by your bootstraps"

Instead the narrative is about big, bloated bureaucracies, ignoring the fact that they got so big by having to respond and add additional layers every time someone figured out a new way to screw things up, as with Boeing.

Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

#37

Post by the_pwner224 »

Simulacra wrote: post #27

This will all fall on the shoulders of Boeing. They installed a feature without properly notifying pilots and airlines. Thus when things went haywire, the pilots had no idea what was going on.

This series of incidents is pretty clear cut it seems (we know that a feature Boeing made caused the crashes), and the investigations IIRC are not being done by the American agencies.

But in the past there have been worse incidents and Boeing lied and cheated their way out of them without seeing any large penalties: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19389983

Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

#38

Post by dmix »

ineedasername wrote: post #36
wnevets wrote: post #30

>FAA for pushing engineers to 'delegate' reviews of certain components back to Boeing themselves. How much more proof do we need as a society that self regulation is a fool's errand?

Unfortunately, regulation doesn't fit with the narrative of self-determination and "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" Instead the narrative is about big, bloated bureaucracies, ignoring the fact that they got so big by having to respond and add additional layers every time someone figured out a new way to screw things up, as with Boeing.

I've never heard anyone criticizing the size of the FAA or calls for airplane manufacturers to be deregulated. Do you have examples of this? Or are you just making a general politicized point about deregulation?

On the other hand I've seen many people complain about "regulatory capture" between FAA + Boeing repeatedly. That's even on the Wikipedia for FAA.

> The FAA has been cited as an example of regulatory capture, "in which the airline industry openly dictates to its regulators its governing rules, arranging for not only beneficial regulation, but placing key people to head these regulators."

Which is an entirely different problem than a culture of "pulling up your bootstraps".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aviation_Administratio...

Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

#39

Post by johnsea »

ineedasername wrote: post #33
Simulacra wrote: post #27

This will all fall on the shoulders of Boeing. They installed a feature without properly notifying pilots and airlines. Thus when things went haywire, the pilots had no idea what was going on.

Hopefully it will also fall in part on the FAA, which greenlit the thing for use without checks that might have caught this.

And will it also fall in part on the passengers who demand cheap and cheaper air fares? (Not only to the detriment of their own safety but also to further increasing ecological debts).

Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

#40

Post by brozaman »

jcims wrote: post #35

Unvetted image comparison of the cockpits 737 MAX 8 Cockpit - https://i2.wp.com/thepointsguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/0... 737 800 Cockpit - https://i.imgur.com/eRULoST.jpg I don't really know my way around an airliner but the key displays seem to be quite different and there's a lot fewer knobs on the MAX 8.

I don't know nearly enough to have a respectable opinion on this, but those screens can display different information configured to display different information at the user's choice.

Here you have another max 8 with a completely different layout on those screens: http://www.driven-technologies.com/images/bt_portfolio/52/or...

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