101–110 of 269 posts
> [T]hey got help from an unexpected source: an off-duty pilot who happened to be riding in the cockpit. That extra pilot, who was seated in the cockpit jumpseat [...] Am I missing something here? Isn't it normal for off-duty pilots to ride in the jump-seat?
Here again. Downvotes for someone asking a bona fide question. Place has changed. It's a shame. Downvote away...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe you may have misunderstood the comment you were replying to. They were saying you cannot counteract MCAS's control inputs with the elevator alone. Which is a somewhat unconventional design, in a lot of aircraft the elevator can overpower the horizontal stabilizer, whereas with a bad sensor MCAS will continue to move the stabilizer until you cannot overcome it. To use a bad analogy, in a car the break is str…
They were saying you cannot counteract MCAS's control inputs with the elevator alone. Pulling on the yoke is not how you counteract a runaway stabilizer on the 737. I've pasted the relevant part of the QRH in a few previous comments. Yes, the stabilizer ultimately has more pitch authority under some circumstances. That may be what happened here, but if I'm interpreting the graphs on the preliminary report correctly I…
It is how pilots learn to counteract nose down day one of pilot training. In many aircraft hard elevation will overpower even a faulty horizontal stabilizer. If the QRH was a panacea we would have 348 fewer loses today.
> That may be what happened here, but if I'm interpreting the graphs on the preliminary report correctly I wonder about mechanical failure of some sort.
There was a mechanical failure, the AoA sensor. I'm skeptical there needs to be more going on than MCAS due to the "repeated correction" unauthorized change Boeing made.
> “The FAA believed the airplane was designed to the 0.6 limit, and that’s what the foreign regulatory authorities thought, too,” said an FAA engineer. “It makes a difference in your assessment of the hazard involved.”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Boeing did inform them. Otherwise how would the third pilot have known what to do when he saved the plane?
Boeing did inform them. Boeing did not inform any of the airlines of MCAS until after the Lion Air crash. Otherwise how would the third pilot have known what to do when he saved the plane? The deadheading pilot recognized a problem with something controlling the stabilizer and went off script. Edit: I love the downvotes from folks who haven't actually read any of the complaints from pilots. Since reading is too hard,…
It's not like he was pushing random buttons. He knew what the system was, he knew that it was likely to be the cause of the problem, and he knew how to disable it. He must have been informed about the system.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Boeing did inform them. Boeing did not inform any of the airlines of MCAS until after the Lion Air crash. Otherwise how would the third pilot have known what to do when he saved the plane? The deadheading pilot recognized a problem with something controlling the stabilizer and went off script. Edit: I love the downvotes from folks who haven't actually read any of the complaints from pilots. Since reading is too hard,…
> The deadheading pilot recognized a problem with something controlling the stabilizer and went off script. It's not like he was pushing random buttons. He knew what the system was, he knew that it was likely to be the cause of the problem, and he knew how to disable it. He must have been informed about the system.
How would he know something that was undisclosed? It's not conjecture here, no airlines and no pilots knew of the presence of MCAS before the Lion Air 610 crash.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Boeing did inform them. Otherwise how would the third pilot have known what to do when he saved the plane?
Boeing did inform them. Boeing did not inform any of the airlines of MCAS until after the Lion Air crash. Otherwise how would the third pilot have known what to do when he saved the plane? The deadheading pilot recognized a problem with something controlling the stabilizer and went off script. Edit: I love the downvotes from folks who haven't actually read any of the complaints from pilots. Since reading is too hard,…
From the article:
"told the crew to cut power to the motor driving the nose down, according to the people familiar, part of a checklist that all pilots are required to memorize."
Emphasis mine.
> That extra pilot, who was seated in the cockpit jumpseat, correctly diagnosed the problem and told the crew how to disable a malfunctioning flight-control system and save the plane, according to two people familiar with Indonesia’s investigation. > The presence of a third pilot in the cockpit wasn’t contained in Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee’s Nov. 28 report on the crash and hasn’t previously…
It didn't need to be included in the preliminary report since it is contextual/background information. They did include in the report that on a previous flight the same sensor error occurred and the pilots resolved it by disabling auto-trim. The fact there was a third pilot there is definitely interesting, but they didn't make anyone less safe by not including it in the report. There's no bombshell here. Previous pro…
Edited to add it’s a training amendment
Earlier quoted context omitted.
More to the point, this reflects positively on Lion Air because it means that the pilots in the forward facing seats properly took advice into account. This is good crew resource management. Check out the Asiana crash at SFO for an example of where CRM failed hard. The pilot flying in that case was told by the other two pilots in the cockpit how to avoid the crash and he STILL flew a perfectly serviceable plane into…
> More to the point, this reflects positively on Lion Air because it means that the pilots in the forward facing seats properly took advice into account. This is good crew resource management. It's good the pilots took advice -- but they should not have needed that advice because they should have been trained to operate the system properly. The whole thing reflects very poorly overall: - The pilots were not trained p…
It's hard to train for something that doesn't exist according to Boeing
The plane was allowed to fly again the next day despite the malfunction
The plane was serviced between flights, and assuming that Lion Air actually did what they claimed, Lion Air maintenance followed the Boeing instructions by the book.
The incident was not reported properly at the time
The malfunction was written up in the maintenance log and the issues were addressed. Unfortunately because Boeing refused to disclose the existence of MCAS the pilots wrote it up both as what they saw (EFS non-op, IAS disagree), and if memory serves, they also suspected the one algorithm they knew about (STS)[1].
> That extra pilot, who was seated in the cockpit jumpseat, correctly diagnosed the problem and told the crew how to disable a malfunctioning flight-control system and save the plane, according to two people familiar with Indonesia’s investigation. > The presence of a third pilot in the cockpit wasn’t contained in Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee’s Nov. 28 report on the crash and hasn’t previously…
It didn't need to be included in the preliminary report since it is contextual/background information. They did include in the report that on a previous flight the same sensor error occurred and the pilots resolved it by disabling auto-trim. The fact there was a third pilot there is definitely interesting, but they didn't make anyone less safe by not including it in the report. There's no bombshell here. Previous pro…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Boeing did inform them. Boeing did not inform any of the airlines of MCAS until after the Lion Air crash. Otherwise how would the third pilot have known what to do when he saved the plane? The deadheading pilot recognized a problem with something controlling the stabilizer and went off script. Edit: I love the downvotes from folks who haven't actually read any of the complaints from pilots. Since reading is too hard,…
> The deadheading pilot recognized a problem with something controlling the stabilizer and went off script. It's not like he was pushing random buttons. He knew what the system was, he knew that it was likely to be the cause of the problem, and he knew how to disable it. He must have been informed about the system.
From my point-of-view, two opinion points: 1. I am glad that 737 MAX has been grounded. May it stay that way, globally, until this issue is provably resolved. 2. The entire Boeing chain of management that resulted in these crashes should be publicly flogged, their remuneration & benefits clawed back & subject to a mandatory minimum prison sentence. Who the hell am I kidding! Neither is very likely to happen in the pr…
People hunger for someone to blame, rattling off a long list of maladies that should befall that person, until they have been thoroughly satisfied, but they are never satisfied. They always feel there should be someone else, something more, something deserved.
The truth is, there is no point to such a punishment here. It is unlikely that any individual plotted to kill people by pushing some faulty code out of malice. These were people simply doing their best and they failed.