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Costly Airbus paint flaw goes wider than the Gulf

reuters.com

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Re: Costly Airbus paint flaw goes wider than the Gulf

#91

Post by Gravityloss »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #65
Gravityloss wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well at least carbon fiber composites are not new, used in Formula 1 probably when most posters here weren't born. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLaren_MP4/1

Ha ha, I was a teenager. Formula 1 though were never looking for 50-year integrity for their cars. While your example establishes the beginning of the use of carbon fiber, it seems otherwise orthogonal to its present use in commercial aircraft.

1981 is hardly the beginning. It was for example used in the Airbus A300, which entered service in 1974.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A300

Infamous but acquitted from the rudder incident on American Airlines Flight 587 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Fractured-carbon-fibers-...

Re: Costly Airbus paint flaw goes wider than the Gulf

#92

Post by AnimalMuppet »

missedthecue wrote: post #87
OldHand2018 wrote: post #59

Halfway through the article is this extraordinarily helpful information (given that I know nothing at all about aircraft paint): > When Airbus 15 years ago launched the A350, it chose to follow Boeing's new 787 in using carbon-fibre instead of metal. > Experts say the lighter jets consume less fuel but are harder to deck out in a way that makes paint stick. > The new jets also need a layer of metallic mesh to dissipa…

You'd think we'd have more sophisticated paint in this day and age.

Paint isn't a new technology. Paint on that kind of material, though, is new enough to not be well understood yet.

Re: Costly Airbus paint flaw goes wider than the Gulf

#93

Post by kazinator »

diskzero wrote: post #83

Imagine doing the walk-around inspection as part of the flight crew and seeing that sort of degradation? The flight crews were possible told it wasn't a major issue and to keep on schedule. As a pilot myself, I get very concerned whenever I see any sort of abnormal surface feature. I am lucky in that I can cancel my own flights. Any commercial pilots here willing to share their experience with this sort of thing? In…

Aircraft paint has to provide a tough, weather-proof surface that can withstand being blasted by dust and hail at 900 km/h.

When you call it cosmetics, you're likening that to eye shadow or lipstick.

No engineer would care to be named as the source of that idiotic statmeent.

Re: Costly Airbus paint flaw goes wider than the Gulf

#94

Post by slownews45 »

sokoloff wrote: post #81
slownews45 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent point. A lot of focus is on pilots, but the safety chain was also weak. Maint, communication with flight dept, communication to subsequent pilots etc, training dept and required experience / education to fly. Not a good combo. Someone with 200 hrs of time, plane badly maintained, no good handoff around prior issues etc. I still think Boeings safety model with humans as the backup for computers probably does…

There’s a genuine question as to whether someone with 240 hours should be holding the yoke of a jet airliner. For me, that answer is “hell no!” as we saw in Colgan 3407 (and others) which led to the FAA 1500-hour minimum for an ATP. At 240 hours, I couldn’t be trusted with a Bonanza.

Yes, in the US we (now) think of 250 as too low.

1,500 is pretty dang high. Persoanlly, 500 - 1000 wouldn't be unreasonable in my view.

Major airlines might still be at 3,000+ hours.

Remember, it used to be in the US you could also fly as a FO with a commercial pilots license at 250 hours!

FAA Commercial Pilot is 250 (50 of which need to be in powered airplane). https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/active-pilots/safet...

50 hours behind the actual yoke? 200 lives 30,000 feet in the air?

Overseas, some of the cadet / local pilot programs - you get pretty low time and/or connected pilots into the seat.

"The committee noted that these deficiencies had been identified previously in training and reemerged during the accident flight. When the MCAS activated, it took the first officer four minutes to locate the proper checklist because he wasn’t familiar with required memory items. During training, the same pilot had shown unfamiliarity with Boeing and airline standard operating procedures and had weak aircraft handling skills, the report revealed. His training record reflected numerous deficiencies, including “major problems” controlling the aircraft."

There is a reason Boeing initially said there might have been some pilot factors. They look at that memory item checklist, and think, trim problem, stab cutout memory item.

In the US they have Capt Sully (glider / fighter pilots, lots of experience, with a strong FO) gliding a plane with two engines out to a safe landing. So human in the loop kind of works in the US. Could you program a computer for that? Probably, but not there yet.

That said, I still blame Boeing to a large degree. If you are going to sell new planes to countries that have this type of system, you must design the plane for purpose. Ie, low time pilots who struggle / are connected / can't be fired etc - you don't then design the plane assuming the human in the loop will have hand flying ability to step in. That was pure greed, roll out this type of plane in the US / EU / UK etc. Good maintenance, good safety reporting systems (ASAP etc) work out the kinks, then go overseas.

First Max 8 to Malindo air!!? Really??

They really need to get to airbus and beyond envelope protection etc in these markets.

I'm also curious about checkrides overseas. Stuff like engine out on takeoff etc is just hammered into folks in the US.

Re: Costly Airbus paint flaw goes wider than the Gulf

#95

Post by jollybean »

1cvmask wrote: post #5

It seems that victim blaming is not something specific to just Boeing. Airbus blamed Qatar airways and the hot weather till similar issues emerged with planes of Finn Air and Air France in colder climates. Whatever happened to the customer is always right? Guess it is easier to victim blame when you operate in essence a duopoly. Competition is critical to solve these issues in the long run.

"Whatever happened to the customer is always right?"

These are serious issues with massive costs and liabilities. We don't resort to platitudes at that scale.

'Who is Right' should be as objective as we can feasibly determine and it may be complicated.

Re: Costly Airbus paint flaw goes wider than the Gulf

#97

Post by Symbiote »

slownews45 wrote: post #75
smnrchrds wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am no expert, but I remember the main culprit was that Boeing had insisted no further training is required for pilots to avoid some sort of expensive recertification. Weakness of pilots was the direct result of this. Pilots having experience with previous 737 planes were told in no uncertain terms that they can fly this new plane the exact same as the previous one and no further training or testing is required or e…

The old procedure was Control Column - Hold Firmly Autopilot - Disengage. Do NOT re-engage. Control pitch attitude manually with column and electric trim. If runaway continues, stab trim cutout (both) to cutout. http://www.b737.org.uk/images/runawaystab2000.jpg The new procedure is not that much different. With PK-LQP - previous flight it took 6 minutes for them to get to this procedure - and it was suggestion of a d…

> Overseas ... in the US

It's a bad habit to split the world into US/overseas. Canada and Western Europe are clearly much closer to the US than Indonesia and Pakistan, and Eastern Europe / CIS states have a history of ex-military/experienced pilots too.

Re: Costly Airbus paint flaw goes wider than the Gulf

#98

Post by redwood »

hinkley wrote: post #47
SmellTheGlove wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I had a similar reaction. The wording is just strange. Like on Reddit when bots are trying to create fud.

I'm having "MongoDB is webscale" flashbacks.

Was that brilliant guerilla marketing or just serendipity for them?

Re: Costly Airbus paint flaw goes wider than the Gulf

#99

Post by S_A_P »

ethbr0 wrote: post #40
Someone wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it’s also unavoidable. To really know how an airplane will age during its lifetime, you have to build it and use it for 50+ years. That would mean all ‘in service’ aircraft would be based on 50+ year old designs. That clearly is undesirable, if only because it would be too expensive. So, instead, one uses models for the effects of aging, for example by repeatedly freezing and heating parts while they also are bei…

I guess GP's point could be summarized as "Does the amount of complexity required to improve planes now exceed our ability to manage?" Curious in responses from that perspective. Are airframes that much more complicated? Or just better due to advances in aerodynamic understanding, but not much more complicated? And same question for engines. Are modern high-bypass turbofans more complex?

This. It seems that to some degree our knowledge rests on prior experience and passed down knowledge. As we build abstraction layers on top of technology the bare metal understanding is lost.

I’m going to contradict my original question to some degree by stating that I know that air travel is safer than ever.

My question is more just wondering out loud if there is a point where we rely on “solved” problems so much that we start to lose comprehension of the factors that are involved. It feels like the MCAS was an example.

Agree that you can never “know” how an airframe will age until you build it and doesn’t seem like this is as critical as MCAS issue but it could be that we have to wait 15 years to find out.

Re: Costly Airbus paint flaw goes wider than the Gulf

#100

Post by sokoloff »

WalterBright wrote: post #90
sokoloff wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Boeing had the audacity of blaming the pilots when they inevitably died in crashes. That wasn’t a great look, but Boeing is correct that if the pilots had followed the existing checklist memory items for stab trim runaway, the airplanes would not have crashed. The difficulty is that prior generations had breakout switches which would inhibit the stab trim from running in a direction counter to the control column de…

The first Lion Air flight crew correctly followed the runaway trim procedure and landed safely. The next crew on the same airplane crashed. Boeing then issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive to ALL 737MAX PILOTS: "Initially, higher control forces may be needed to overcome any stabilizer nose down trim already applied. Electric stabilizer trim can be used to neutralize control column pitch forces before moving th…

ET302 (the second crash) is worse in some ways. That crew correctly diagnosed the stab trim runaway, (eventually) executed the stab trim cutout procedure, got the aircraft somewhat under control (albeit still at full thrust), flew for a time, then (somewhat correctly) judged that unless they were going to pull power, they needed to use the electric stab trim (the manual trim was difficult to move because of the high airspeed), turned the stab trim back on and commanded electric nose-up trim (which the airplane did), then for some unknowable reason stopped commanding nose-up trim while leaving the stab trim powered, whereupon the aircraft MCAS commanded the final round of nose-down trim that they couldn’t overcome.

They were this close to saving the airplane, had ID’d the issue, patched it, largely recovered control, and lost the airplane subsequent to that.

(This is not meant to denigrate the crew. They were dealt a bad hand, including continuous stick shaker activation which surely added to confusion and likely led them to leave the thrust at max. Additionally, they were getting split airspeed and FD command bars for the crew. It’s frustrating how tantalizingly close they were to saving it even with those hurdles.)

https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20190310-...

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