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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

#331

Post by ddalex »

mrguyorama wrote: post #322
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference being that Airbus pilots are trained and aware of this behaviour. If it's inherently dangerous why aren't they falling out of the sky?

They are trained and aware, but in high stress situations pilots sometimes forget things like that, which was significant in the air france crash. The pilot who had better control of the situation only momentarily pressed the button used to take full control, when you are supposed to hold it as long as you wish to keep control. I believe the "dual input" warning was also not aggressive enough at the time

It didn't help that the pilot flying was the one that made the error, and the other one, who correctly understood the situation, was the pilot monitoring. Even more, the pilot monitoring didn't explicitly take control of the aircraft - "My aircraft". Bonin was under the impression that he's in charge, and was utterly confused by the whole situation, until the end.

As with each aviation accident, it's not a single cause of failure - it's a swiss cheese model of failures, where it just happened that all the holes aligned - from the flight law dropping to alternate, to Bonin who didn't trust what the computers said, to the other pilots not understanding completely what Bonin did, to the pitot tubes freezing.

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

#332

Post by treis »

ddalex wrote: post #329
treis wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Bear in mind that they're at low altitude They weren't >the pilot is busy supplying maximum pull on the yoke, Probably not true either >and therefore likely unavailable to help crank a stiff trim wheel Runaway trim should be a recoverable situation. If that's impossible then that means there is a distinct and major issue beyond MCAS.

I wouldn't feed the troll, but I don't want your misinformation to spread. > They weren't They just took off, max height of the airplane was 1000 feet above the ground. That's a definely low altitude. > Runaway trim should be a recoverable situation. The trim pointed the nose down. The aerodynamic forces were so high on the elevator that the trim wheels could not be moved by a single person. This was confirmed in 737…

>They just took off, max height of the airplane was 1000 feet above the ground. That's a definely low altitude.

People thought that based on Flightaware data. But if you actually read the report you will see that it is incorrect and they reached about 7,000 feet.

>The trim pointed the nose down.

Incorrect. The plane was steadily gaining altitude until they re-enabled electric trim.

>I wouldn't feed the troll, but I don't want your misinformation to spread.

Try being right before throwing around personal insults.

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

#333

Post by [deleted] »

salawat wrote: post #316
treis wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wing Load https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/wind-load-d_1775.html Screw Jack and effort force https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/screw-jack-d_1308.html Gearing: https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/gears-d_1307.html Here's some 737-800 dimensional analysis as a starting point. https://holdingpoint.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/boeing-737-800... Knock yourself out. Or if you stick around long enough I may do it for gits and…

[deleted]

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

#334

Post by AsyncAwait »

OneWordSoln wrote: post #272
bitreality wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Boeing's standpoint, it's actually even worse than this. The families of the people who perished pose a risk to their business. The company doesn't want these people drawing attention to the incident, and they want to minimize any legal recourse. It's about finding a balance, pay them a reasonably small amount to get them to shut up and go away. Capitalism, baby!

>> Capitalism, baby! I know what you are saying and fully agree but would like to put a finer point on it: the problem is with unfettered capitalism, especially after 100 years or more of the lawyers writing the laws for the wealthy, who own the vast majority of the corps. What we need is a balance between the entrepreneurial spirit of capitalism and governments that enforce corporate responsibility to its human work…

> would like to put a finer point on it: the problem is with unfettered capitalism

Sure, but then I'd like for people to also realize that the problem is with authoritarian communism. Sadly, only capitalism seems to get a break.

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

#335

Post by windexh8er »

treis wrote: post #312
kaveh_h wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between Wolkswagen and Boeing is the latter is an american company and hence is probably not going to face billion of dollars of damage from american authorities and current administration. Probably no jail time either.

That and Volkswagen knowingly and deliberately conspired to break the law.

Agreed. It remains to be seen if Boeing deliberately used a loophole to avoid reclassification of the MAX8. If so, I'm curious to see how this would be different in a court of law. Especially if Boeing is compelled to provide email around the comms with specific regard to MAX8 certification.

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

#336

Post by mattrp »

ndespres wrote: post #55

I know better than to read between the lines on a press release like this, but can't help but notice that it falls far short of accepting responsibility for the problem. He admits that MCAS "activated in response to erroneous angle of attack information" but doesn't admit that this alone directly resulted in the crashes. Rather, he implies that this sets off a chain of events which the pilots are unable to deal with…

Unfortunately, there's nothing different he can say at this point. If he wrote it they way you and I would like it to be, he'd probably be facing shareholder lawsuits and SEC fines and none of that would lead to a productive outcome. And it wouldn't change the fact that 300 people are still dead. All we can do at this point is hope they don't rush the MAX fleet back into service before its really ready and that the Boeing board really inspects the company's culture to ensure the whole fiasco has a lasting impact. Almost a "never again" sort of approach. Boeing has been doing a tremendous amount of innovative stuff and pushing the envelope in way more areas - commercial flight, space, military - than ever before, but apparently at the expense of what got it to its dominant position in the first place -- uncompromising engineering excellence. I would agree with you that before we, as the passengers of their products, can move forward, a stronger statement needs to at least address the specifics of how this is going to change.

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

#337

Post by mattrp »

mattrp wrote: post #336
ndespres wrote: post #55

I know better than to read between the lines on a press release like this, but can't help but notice that it falls far short of accepting responsibility for the problem. He admits that MCAS "activated in response to erroneous angle of attack information" but doesn't admit that this alone directly resulted in the crashes. Rather, he implies that this sets off a chain of events which the pilots are unable to deal with…

Unfortunately, there's nothing different he can say at this point. If he wrote it they way you and I would like it to be, he'd probably be facing shareholder lawsuits and SEC fines and none of that would lead to a productive outcome. And it wouldn't change the fact that 300 people are still dead. All we can do at this point is hope they don't rush the MAX fleet back into service before its really ready and that the B…

And not to diminish this one issue - but if this can happen to Boeing, imagine the risks that many other companies with less of a track record in engineering may be inadvertently taking with introductions/reliance on ML. We've focused a lot on the ethics of AI making life/death decisions but in this case, based on what we know today, the prime culprit seems to lie in the decisions of humans (i.e. not to put two devices in place, or three as many have suggested, the decision to place engine mass in a different area, the lack of UI in the cockpits, etc)

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

#338

Post by salawat »

salawat wrote: post #316
treis wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wing Load https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/wind-load-d_1775.html Screw Jack and effort force https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/screw-jack-d_1308.html Gearing: https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/gears-d_1307.html Here's some 737-800 dimensional analysis as a starting point. https://holdingpoint.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/boeing-737-800... Knock yourself out. Or if you stick around long enough I may do it for gits and…

Okay, let's start with wind load.

737-800 has a 32.776m^2 horizontal stabilizer area. Let's double that to 65.556 to accomodate both airfoils.

Wing load is 1/2p(v^2)A Where A=65.556m^2 (352.8 ft^2) v=180.556m/s (350 knots) And we'll guess our air density around .95ish kg/m^3 given our altitude of 2334m (7625 ft plus change) asl

Barring any flawed fundamental assumptions, that gives us a wind load of 1015087 N (228200.636 pounds-force (lbf)), and a dynamic pressure of 15485 N/m^2

I'll leave this out there to offend any actual aerospace engineers that might be reading so they'll tell us I'm doing it all wrong while I try to work out whether I can use the screw jack equations and what we've calculated thusfar in the hopes of figuring out something that even remotely makes sense.

I have a feeling I'm oversimplifying or misapplying the wind load equation. But hey, it's the internet. I'm allowed to be wrong.

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

#339

Post by BurningFrog »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #236
objektif wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is corruption in some countries is more than others? I dont know the answer but it is.

If anything corruption seems more common in countries with fewer regulations, if anything (not that I have any data to back this up).

Many - not all, but perhaps most - of those who get corrupted are regulators.

So without regulations, there are fewer people to corrupt.

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

#340

Post by mpcjanssen »

EngineerDude wrote: post #300
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're partway there. The design isn't inherently unstable under normal conditions, it just becomes unstable under slightly different extreme conditions than the previous 737. Rather than training pilots on this difference, Boeing tried to emulate the old behaviour in software.

OK, so maybe it’s unfair to say that MCAS (as a concept) is a hack, since it could be seen as a good-faith effort to provide a predictable aircraft?

Not quite, without MCAS the flight behavior is quite predictable, it just doesn't match the existing type certification and it falls outside of the allowed parameters for this class of planes.
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