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American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

zdnet.com

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Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#121

Post by ajarmst »

ajarmst wrote: post #75

What's the alternative? There was a flaw in the aircraft design, a dreadful one. Some fundamental structural issues and conflicts of interest at the FCC (that the NTSB has been complaining about for roughly its entire existence) were again highlighted. Boeing executives turned out to be as subject to lying to themselves when making difficult decisions as the rest of humanity. Other nation's certification processes tu…

Addendum: If you are interested in the facts of the event, and not the simplistic good-vs-evil narrative, the full Lion Air accident report is available at (warning, large PDF) http://knkt.dephub.go.id/knkt/ntsc_aviation/baru/2018%20-%20...

It lists no fewer than 89 findings about the causes that lead to that crash and 25 recommendations for how to make sure it doesn't happen again. The industry culture that makes such reports possible, makes them public, and takes them very seriously is why I would feel safe flying on a 737 MAX tomorrow. Because I have very good, very well supported, evidence that it would be safe to do so.

We don't yet have a final report on the Ethiopian Airlines mishap, and the investigation process has been a little more political that what we saw with Indonesia, but the preliminary reports and analyses point to a similar complexity of causes, and will undoubtedly generate a similarly thorough and useful set of recommendations.

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#122

Post by d-sc »

atharris wrote: post #87
phkahler wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing has kind of a poor track record for software lately, from the Max to the SLS. Time will tell if this has resulted in real change.

Ah - I didn't say Boeing's ability to write and test that control software was particularly good (in fact, I think their current track record says exactly the opposite.) I just hate when non-domain experts make judgements about things being 'fundamentally flawed.' Insufficiently tested and documented? Sure. Bad UI/UX? Most definitely. Irredeemable 'because of aerodynamics' according to some private pilot that flew a…

Amen. If we don’t focus on the root cause it will be harder to solve the problem. And understand that we have actually solved it.

(Student Pilot and Mechanical Engineer here)

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#123

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

wycy wrote: post #67

I still don't think I'd trust it. While it's probably true that they fixed the software to never again produce this kind of error, I don't like the idea of software being used to correct the fundamental physics that the airframe is dynamically unstable. While the software probably does a good job of correcting it under a wide range of normal operating conditions, can it deal with evolving or abnormal operating condit…

737MAX is not nor never has been dynamically/aerodynamically unstable. Full stop. No airliner is permitted to be unstable by FAA regulations. At no point in the flight envelope will the aircraft pitch up into a stall without pitch-up inputs, thus it is not unstable.

MCAS was used to augment flight stick characteristics, namely to simulate a linear relationship between flight-stick input force and pitch-up/AoA. This was, and always has been, about single-certification and pilot UX, not anything about the stability of the airplane. Having stick forces be somewhat lower than expected at high AoA does not make the plane unstable. The linear relationship is considered ideal, but many planes such as the 757 have a similar non-linear relationship. MCAS is not anti-stall.

Granted, this has widely been mis-reported. The real issue is that the MCAS system was made dramatically more powerful, and thus dangerous, over the course of development. Without a concomitant change to the reliability of MCAS inputs (namely the AoA sensors), this resulted in disaster.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/as-th...

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#124

Post by alavesto »

jonas21 wrote: post #88
kqr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless, of course, it was fixed and scrutinised by organisations which still have the same systemic flaws as the first time around. Until the sociotechnical systems that do the work change, they will keep overlooking problems and making similar mistakes, from a high-level perspective.

Do you mean the same regulatory organizations that have reduced the US airline fatality rate by 50x over the last 50 years to the point where it's now over 100x safer per mile to fly than to drive? I mean the FAA certainly has some flaws, but it's important to keep things in perspective.

I think the passenger miles statistic is baloney (calculated by multiplying the number of passengers by the number of miles travelled), and I'm a bit sick of seeing it trumpeted everywhere to claim flying is vastly safer than driving. The collective risk of everyone on board the plane is meaningless to calculating risk to your personal safety. At least for me, the fatality rate per journey, per hour of travel, or at the very least per mile I myself am travelling, is far more relevant. According to one source, flying is actually three times deadlier per journey than driving (fun fact, this is the metric aviation industry insurance companies use), but about four times safer per hour travelled. So flying certainly can be safer than driving in the right context, but these crazy "100x safer than driving" stats are kinda useless and take a lot of "creativity" for airlines to arrive at.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Transport_comp..., citing Beck, L. F.; Dellinger, A. M.; O'neil, M. E. (2007). "Motor vehicle crash injury rates by mode of travel, United States: using exposure-based methods to quantify differences"

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#125

Post by hourislate »

iso1631 wrote: post #108
lbriner wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference with AF447 was that the aircraft at no point was defective, it was purely confusion on part of the flight crew and the issue with two pilots "in control" which the Captain absolutely should have dealt with.

I won't fly Air France, not just because of AF447, but also the time they diverted into an airport in the middle of a civil war and had a whip round in first class to pay for the gas to get out of there. https://www.independent.ie/life/travel/travel-news/air-franc...

I can understand why but a part of me is left thinking, what an adventure that could have been. Sitting around over a drink and telling your story of the time you got caught up in the Syrian Civil War.

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#126

Post by [deleted] »

phire wrote: post #17
tuna-piano wrote: post #12

737Max is certainly tainted now. But will that last forever? And do non-HN-aviation-geek consumers really care enough to check the model of the plane they'll be flying on, let alone make a flight decision based on the model? Certainly another crash could be devastating to the model. But was the 737Max a poorly designed death trap rushed to production or a super safe airplane with a single fatal flaw? Time will tell..…

Certianlly not just a single flaw. They found and fixed multiple other flaws while checking though everything for re-certification. In my opinion, the 737Max is probably one of the safest planes right now, simply because of the amount of scrutiny it's been though.

[deleted]

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#127

Post by scarier »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #82
tboyd47 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me remind you of why we're all still talking about Boeing. Not once, but TWICE, software taking readings from faulty sensors caused the airplane to nosedive into the ground, killing every single person on board, with the pilots powerless to take over. It happened once, Boeing and the U.S. government reassured everyone that it wasn't going to happen again, then it happened again. When nations around the world bega…

>Not once, but TWICE, software taking readings from faulty sensors caused the airplane to nosedive into the ground, killing every single person on board, with the pilots powerless to take over. I believe technically if they followed the runaway trim in memory checklist the system would have been disabled? This is how the pilot of the Lion Air flight the day before prevented disaster. >At this point, I would consider…

>I believe technically if they followed the runaway trim in memory checklist the system would have been disabled? This is how the pilot of the Lion Air flight the day before prevented disaster.

Yes, but the failure they experienced feels absolutely nothing like runaway trim. It's great that some pilots were able to troubleshoot the failure in time, but that's not something you can really expect from everyone. Adequate training may well have prevented the mishaps, but the airplane as a system was still poorly designed.

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#128

Post by ethbr0 »

iso1631 wrote: post #106
deeblering4 wrote: post #23

I’m at a point where I just opt for carriers with Airbus fleets. I do not trust modern day American corporations nor the oversight bodies. There are too many financial incentives to cut corners.

If it's Boeing, I ain't going

> If it's Boeing, I ain't going

You're not going to fly one of the statistically safest [0] planes on the planet in the 737-6/7/8/900?

[0] http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#130

Post by NikolaeVarius »

knaq wrote: post #115
lbriner wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference with AF447 was that the aircraft at no point was defective, it was purely confusion on part of the flight crew and the issue with two pilots "in control" which the Captain absolutely should have dealt with.

It sure looks defective to me: It was controlled more by pressure than movement, using joysticks instead of the traditional huge yoke. When one person was screwing up, the other could not observe this. On a Boeing, each person would feel the other person's force because the controls are physically linked. The stall warning was designed for mild stalls, not severe stalls, and would turn off if the stall was really bad…

Notice how 5/6 reasons the accident report contains are "crew screwed up"
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