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Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

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Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#71

Post by bronson »

matz1 wrote: post #66
bronson wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact is, Greece also has 0 crashes. Your statement doesn't make any sense. What is different about the US? (Other than we had fewer MAX-8 deliveries than the rest of the world)

Which of my statement doesn't make any sense ? >What is different about the US? Thats the question that I asked.

"fact remain that the number of crash so far is 0" makes zero sense.

And you even got an answer to your question. The number of deliveries is different. What's your point?

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#72

Post by PaulHoule »

markbnj wrote: post #29
xvector wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the motivation for this? Regulatory, I get that. But why use direct mechanical linkage in an era where fly-by-wire would probably be faster/safer/etc?

I'm not a pilot, but from what I have read many pilots actually prefer mechanical linkage to the control surfaces. Sullenberger even indirectly blamed fly-by-wire systems (in this case the lack of a link between pilot and copilot controls) for the crash of Air France 447: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/air-france-flight-447s-lessons-...

One of the most popular features of Boeing aircraft is that there is a mechanical linkage between the yokes of the pilot and copilot.

Boeing's modern planes (not the legacy 737) have fly by wire where there is still a mechanical connection between the yokes. Thus you have the nice shared feel, but you have the benefits of fly-by-wire.

There have been accidents where fly-by-wire has been part of the problem but there have also been failures of the old mechanical linkage systems. Airliners have had active systems to cancel out unstable modes for a long time (e.g. to suppress "Dutch Roll" on the old 727)

The A320 has particularly been plagued by extreme "human error" situations where people crashed the plane after seemingly trying to crash it. For instance the first passenger flight involved a stunt that resulted in a crash. later on New Zealand regulators who were investigating fly-by-wire glitches tried to provoke the fly-by-wire system into failing when they were approaching a runway and they wound up dead.

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#73

Post by matz1 »

bronson wrote: post #71
matz1 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which of my statement doesn't make any sense ? >What is different about the US? Thats the question that I asked.

"fact remain that the number of crash so far is 0" makes zero sense. And you even got an answer to your question. The number of deliveries is different. What's your point?

> "fact remain that the number of crash so far is 0" makes zero sense

My statement is not a fact ? okay

>And you even got an answer to your question. The number of deliveries is different

And I didn't refute or deny that either.

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#74

Post by DuskStar »

FabHK wrote: post #9

> What's more, over the course of his 55 years in the profession, he [lawyer Marc Moller] [has] learned that every plane crash can be traced back to a single, simple cause. I don't know, that strikes me as nonsense. It's precisely the interplay of many factors that lead to an accident - and if any one of them had been different, the outcome might have been different. See Reason's "swiss cheese" model of accidents - a…

I mean, if the crashes were due to a single cause, that cause should probably be either the failure of the last backstop, or the failure that started the chain. IMO the start of the chain would be the AOA sensor failure, and the last backstop would be the pilots running through the stab trim runaway checklist...

That doesn't get him settlement money, though.

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#75

Post by semerda »

FabHK wrote: post #13
linuxftw wrote: post #7

It's obvious to me neither the FAA nor Boeing attempted to accurately replicate the first crash scenario, because this could have wholly averted the second crash. As soon as the planes were grounded, we were getting all sorts of reports about the stablizer being too hard to move and basically an unrecover situation. Jail time is the only outcome I will accept.

How is it obvious to you that they didn't investigate the first crash sufficiently? I'd say some time after the first accident it was reasonably well understood what had happened, and the FAA (and many others!) concluded that it was still safe to fly the plane, as the pilots could easily interrupt the accident chain by doing the right thing quick (as the pilots on the Lion Air flight preceding the accident flight had…

"as the pilots could easily interrupt the accident chain" -- No they couldn't!

To survive a runaway trim, pilots had to know the rollercoaster maneuver and have enough altitude to aerodynamically relieve airloads off the jackscrew so they could manually trim the plane back. If FAA and many others knew this then they should have instantly communicated it to all boeing max pilots. Instead none of that happened.

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#76

Post by simion314 »

iamtheworstdev wrote: post #68
simion314 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any reason you think that this crashes would not have ever happened in US? Before the first crash the pilots did not even known abut MCAS existence so I am not sure why you think that US pilots are extraordinary, I assume that not all MAX pilots are ex fighter pilots with super skills and whatever you imagine that makes ALL US pilots superior to the rest of the world.

In all seriousness, i believe the reason why many think the crashes would not have happened in the US is because Southwest and others all ordered the planes with redundant sensors (in the area where it pertains to these crashes) whereas many overseas airlines did not.

But did the checklist had the correct instructions on what to do in the case the extra alarm light would turn on? I think since MCAS was not disclosed there must not have been mentioned in the checklists either

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#78

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

SilasX wrote: post #56
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me a great deal of cynicism here. I suspect that a more accurate statement is "he learned that it works well for him to argue that every plane crash can be traced back to a single, simple cause." We don't ask lawyers to do surgery. We don't ask them to design bridges. And we don't ask them to do root cause analysis. We leave all of those things to those who actually know what they're doing in those areas.

Yeah, but the work of lawyers has often forced industries to do things differently, even when the best science says they shouldn't do it that way. For example, lawsuits over botched baby deliveries that argued "you should have c[aesarean]-sectioned" resulted in extreme overuse of the procedure in the US, with higher resultant risks. So ... I wish it worked like you described.

I suspect the reasons for increased c-sections are manifold.

When we medicalise pregnancy and childbirth, then fill hospitals with profit driven policy, and surgeons who fear malpractice accusations, is it any wonder c-sections can become over used?

Fear of malpractice alone can’t explain it all, as it some other lawyer could demonstrate c-sections are over used and lead to complications.

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#79

Post by privateSFacct »

tempguy9999 wrote: post #31
privateSFacct wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. We have an drug problem that kills 40,000+/year from overdoses. Over a million people die driving in the world PER YEAR. A small bit of perspective. Plane flying used to be much MORE dangerous before the "corrupt" FAA got involved with the airplane companies to regulate things more closely. The 737 MAX has had no US passenger fatalities flying with US licensed pilots. The record of safety in aviation in the last…

> The 737 MAX has had no US passenger fatalities flying with US licensed pilots As a non-US citizen, I find that comment really disturbing. > Just interesting that big pharma walks free "Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson must pay $572m (£468m) for its part in fuelling Oklahoma's opioid addiction crisis, a judge in the US state has ruled." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49452373 I understand other states are lining up…

US / FAA airlines, particularly on a per passenger mile flown basis (which for US carriers is a huge number) are incredibly safe - both against other modes of transit and same mode in a number of other countries.

I won't get into all the reasons - many understandable, many addressable. But one small point - it generally takes a chain of issues (from design to maintenance to PIC) to result in an fatality these days.

Paying fines is not jail time. The big white collar criminals never seem to actually do jail time. Many don't even pay back their bonuses or sell their second homes. A guy selling MJ can get jail time and someone killing 10K people get's a vacation home in the bahamas.

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#80

Post by privateSFacct »

uniformlyrandom wrote: post #33
tempguy9999 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The 737 MAX has had no US passenger fatalities flying with US licensed pilots As a non-US citizen, I find that comment really disturbing. > Just interesting that big pharma walks free "Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson must pay $572m (£468m) for its part in fuelling Oklahoma's opioid addiction crisis, a judge in the US state has ruled." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49452373 I understand other states are lining up…

As a human being (that happens to be a US citizen), I find OP's comment really disturbing. The whole comment is whataboutism, so maybe this was just an intentional red herring.

If you think folks who have a record in the US (where they can enforce regulations around maintenance, training, ATC, airport design) should be in JAIL for creating a system which has an incredible safety rate among ALL modes of transit I find that disturbing. Seriously - we need MORE folks attracted to public service, not going to jail because armchair quarterbacks on the internet are upset.

The safety chain in the US has an absolutely incredible record. And there have been PLENTY of design and other failures along the way even in the US BTW

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