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Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

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Re: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

#131
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I continue to be fascinated with consumers who assume the role of shareholder in times of crisis, even against their own interests.

Affordable air travel is in most people's interests.

Safe travel surprasses affordable for ALL customers not most.

Re: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

#132
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the preliminary report contains data showing that electric trim was re-engaged.

Why are you dismissing the data the report contains indicating that the flight crew was unable to trim manually, that the column forces were incredibly high, and that the captain repeatedly indicated he could not maintain elevator trim without the co-pilot's aid, then? Your responses have been incredibly selective about which parts of the report you take as gospel and which you handwave away as "speculation". From wh…

The report does not actually indicate which "manually" the pilots meant, with the switches or with the trim wheel. When the question came up they went and turned the electric trim system back on and appeared to test it (only trimmed 0.2 units). Honestly if I had just turned the thing back on I would have trimmed it all the way to where I want it.

Re: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

#133
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, people are speculating this and like the previous speculation they're probably wrong.

> At 05:40:35, the First-Officer called out “stab trim cut-out” two times. Captain agreed and First- Officer confirmed stab trim cut-out. > At 05:41:46, the Captain asked the First-Officer if the trim is functional. The First-Officer has replied that the trim was not working and asked if he could try it manually. The Captain told him to try. At 05:41:54, the First-Officer replied that it is not working. I guess the F…

Its not clear if the pilots meant trimming it manually with the switches or with the trim wheel.

Re: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

#134
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, people are speculating this and like the previous speculation they're probably wrong.

> At 05:40:35, the First-Officer called out “stab trim cut-out” two times. Captain agreed and First- Officer confirmed stab trim cut-out. > At 05:41:46, the Captain asked the First-Officer if the trim is functional. The First-Officer has replied that the trim was not working and asked if he could try it manually. The Captain told him to try. At 05:41:54, the First-Officer replied that it is not working. I guess the F…

Pilots are often wrong about what their aircraft is doing. In fact, that's a big reason why they crash. So yes, the First Officer said that but that is not conclusive proof that they couldn't manually trim. He may have misinterpreted the question and tried the electric trim again. Or maybe he tried turning the wheel and didn't do it right. Or maybe he needed to try again. Or maybe he needed the pilots help. Or maybe the manual trim system was broken. There's any number of explanations for that statement.

Until someone sits down and calculates the torque needed to manually trim it's all just speculation.

Re: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

#135
Corporate irresponsibility and getting away with it is something I have mostly gotten used to at this point. But this particular incident is still really getting to me specially after the press release.

I was just trying to read up a little about sings of sociopath. It seems to me that a big chunk of major corporate big brash could be considered extreme versions of sociopath.

Re: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

#136
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you dismissing the data the report contains indicating that the flight crew was unable to trim manually, that the column forces were incredibly high, and that the captain repeatedly indicated he could not maintain elevator trim without the co-pilot's aid, then? Your responses have been incredibly selective about which parts of the report you take as gospel and which you handwave away as "speculation". From wh…

>Why are you dismissing the data the report contains indicating that the flight crew was unable to trim manually, that the column forces were incredibly high Where is that data in the report?

> At 05:40:44, the Captain called out three times “Pull-up” and the First-Officer acknowledged.

> At 05:41:30, the Captain requested the First-Officer to pitch up with him and the First-Officer acknowledged.

> At 05:43:04, the Captain asked the First Officer to pitch up together and said that pitch is not enough.

Take a look at the chart of control column position deflections. They're jolting around like crazy at +10 to +15 aft starting immediately at the first big MCAS trim event through to the end of the recording. That's because the stabilizer mis-trim is exerting considerable force on the elevator. The captain wasn't calling for aid on the column for shits and giggles.

Re: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

#137
post #20
post #11

Any PR pro worth their rate would have him and senior management very publicly flying only on 737 Max flights when they comeback online. Assurances alone are going to mean a very rocky road back for this plane.

They did that. Doesn't prove a thing. https://www.airlineratings.com/news/boeing-ceo-muilenburg-ab...

What kind of flight experience or background ‘typical’ (if ever there was such a thing) Boeing or Airbus test pilot has?

Re: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

#138
This address does nothing to make me feel better about flying on any future Boeing plane. They promise to fix the MCAS system in the current crop, but say nothing about the organizational choices and structures that allowed this to happen in the first place.

Allowing the company to produce a plane, equipped with a non-redundant system with control over the vertical attitude of the plane, and doing so in a way that intentionally minimizes the perceived impact and required training to operate a plane with this system is the true mistake here.

This is a failure of the both the FAA, Boeing, and pretty much every player along the chain.

Re: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

#139
post #117

The root problem seems to be FAA not having qualified engineers to thoroughly test the planes Boeing makes. Boeing pays better, so it hires the best engineers. FAA pays less so it gets second-grade engineers. And we all pay by flying in unsafe planes.

This has been a 50 year problem in the making, and whether it's for better or worse should be more carefully studied.

Through WW2 and the proliferating age of defense contractors, the government (mostly defense department, but also civilian agencies) stood almost on equal footing with contractors in their ability to design, scope, and evaluate big projects.

You would see scientists and in-house advisers at these departments able to expertly evaluate proposals/designs by contractors with sufficient background knowledge and tools to do so. They even worked closely with contractors to lay out the requirements and designs for systems, or products.

But, through the decades, a couple factors eroded this equal footing of the government / regulatory experts:

-- Shrinking of government budgets for (or unwillingness of the public to stomach) the ranks of Washington "bureaucrats" who represented this expert class of people (what harm is there in cutting "fat" from public servants who don't seem to produce anything tangible?)

-- More attractive pay, career potential, prestige, etc. of working in the private sector

-- Political distaste for being seen as working too closely with contractors

So what happened is that gradually but surely, government lost the tools to do these things themselves, and by sheer need to still have things approved, shifted the work onto industry.

What can you do when industry comes to you with new complicated designs for things, and you have no one who can assess (and no budget to pay for assessments of) whether those designs are safe? You ask the person proposing to critique themselves, and in many cases, they seem to know more than you anyway.

Of course, what in part probably led to our current situation.

As a society, my question is, how do we make it possible to choose to do these things in the way that produces the right outcome? For a start, I think we need to stop asking everyone to make uninformed votes about things we don't understand, yet rely on every day.

Re: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called Regulatory Capture, and it happens to all regulatory agencies sooner or later. They become primarily concerned with the interests of the companies they're regulating, rather than the public interest they're in theory tasked with working for. Unfortunately, that is just how a regulated society works.

How do you arrive at such a conclusion? Have you researched regulatory agencies in EU? For example they just blocked a meeger between two massive train manufacturer. Your argument sounds like a weak libertarian talking point.

I owned a Volkswagen. Why wouldn’t regulatory capture be a thing everywhere?
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