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Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument failure

cnn.com

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Re: Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument failure

#11

Post by whoknowsidont »

philip1209 wrote: post #6

I'm skeptical of this account - Newton's First Law says that an object in motion stays in motion. Losing instruments for a second doesn't cause a change in momentum - that would have needed to be a stall, a change in trim, or an external weather event such as a downdraft. A stall would have been accompanied by a stall recovery procedure involving attitude + thrust changes, and nobody seems to be reporting that in the…

>Newton's First Law says that an object in motion stays in motion.

How is this relevant? There is turbulence and gravity, this isn't "empty" space.

> Losing instruments for a second doesn't cause a change in momentum

No, but modern jets need computer-aided control of flight control surfaces to keep the aircraft stable.

If the account is accurate sounds like quite literally everything had a blip for a second, which would have prevented computer-intervention when encountering severe turbulence, or worse, flight control surfaces became "stuck."

Re: Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument failure

#12

Post by cm2187 »

rob74 wrote: post #10
joecasson wrote: post #3

A blip of zero controls - not ideal! Although hearsay from a passenger hardly sounds reliable. The thing I'm wondering is: are quality issues happening elsewhere? Or are we caught in an anti-Boeing hype cycle? I'm skeptical whenever the media really grabs hold of a narrative that's so one-sided.

Even with zero controls, and even if one or more of the various computers decided spontaneously to restart, I would expect the plane to continue flying the way it did before the incident rather than going into an (apparently) uncommanded descent? I mean, we had that with the 737 MAX, so I wouldn't rule it out, but it sounds suspiciously like the pilot messed up and is trying to blame the airplane. However I'm no spec…

Well, something of that sort happened with the A330 also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72

Re: Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument failure

#13

Post by zoeysmithe »

joecasson wrote: post #3

A blip of zero controls - not ideal! Although hearsay from a passenger hardly sounds reliable. The thing I'm wondering is: are quality issues happening elsewhere? Or are we caught in an anti-Boeing hype cycle? I'm skeptical whenever the media really grabs hold of a narrative that's so one-sided.

" hearsay from a passenger hardly sounds reliable."

Maybe, but also the alternative is that pilots may be pressued not to report these things due to career or crony capitalist concerns like pressure from their employer or are told this crash is 'normal'. Airlines and Boeing are not "nice guys" and are historically toxic and vindictive companies against the working class.

So that leaves us whistleblowers of lower professional value than pilots. The same way Snowden was a lowly sysadmin contractor and not a high ranking NSA general or CISO or whatever. Or Reality Winner or Chelsea Manning had relatively low level positions.

At a certain point, in a corrupt system, we have to accept the quality of whistleblower is never going to be that gold standard we want. Maybe this is fake, but its worth taking on face value considering what we know about Boeing culture and the capitalism dynamics and government corruption they've helped create that keeps them away from proper regulation and disclosure.

Not to mention we still know next to nothing about Malaysia Airlines flight 370, which was a Boeing too. The narrative of "nothing to see here, its just a pilot suicide or freak swamp gas accident" is now a lot more questionable as we've seen Boeing quality decline lately.

"Hey this isnt good enough" is wrong thinking here. In a system of corruption and secrecy its rare to have "good enough" but instead we have to deal with the cards we're dealt by witnesses and whistleblowers.

Re: Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument failure

#14

Post by kayodelycaon »

rob74 wrote: post #10
joecasson wrote: post #3

A blip of zero controls - not ideal! Although hearsay from a passenger hardly sounds reliable. The thing I'm wondering is: are quality issues happening elsewhere? Or are we caught in an anti-Boeing hype cycle? I'm skeptical whenever the media really grabs hold of a narrative that's so one-sided.

Even with zero controls, and even if one or more of the various computers decided spontaneously to restart, I would expect the plane to continue flying the way it did before the incident rather than going into an (apparently) uncommanded descent? I mean, we had that with the 737 MAX, so I wouldn't rule it out, but it sounds suspiciously like the pilot messed up and is trying to blame the airplane. However I'm no spec…

Airbus had a problem like this on an A330 due to corrupted AOA data in the flight computers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72

Re: Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument failure

#15

Post by thombat »

rob74 wrote: post #10
joecasson wrote: post #3

A blip of zero controls - not ideal! Although hearsay from a passenger hardly sounds reliable. The thing I'm wondering is: are quality issues happening elsewhere? Or are we caught in an anti-Boeing hype cycle? I'm skeptical whenever the media really grabs hold of a narrative that's so one-sided.

Even with zero controls, and even if one or more of the various computers decided spontaneously to restart, I would expect the plane to continue flying the way it did before the incident rather than going into an (apparently) uncommanded descent? I mean, we had that with the 737 MAX, so I wouldn't rule it out, but it sounds suspiciously like the pilot messed up and is trying to blame the airplane. However I'm no spec…

But what control input could a pilot make that abruptly produces significant negative gees for just a couple of seconds? Other than the bland references to "technical issue" it sounds like clear air turbulence. (Although one possible mistake could be that the weather radar did warn of it and the pilot didn't react?)

Re: Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument failure

#16

Post by honkycat »

joecasson wrote: post #3

A blip of zero controls - not ideal! Although hearsay from a passenger hardly sounds reliable. The thing I'm wondering is: are quality issues happening elsewhere? Or are we caught in an anti-Boeing hype cycle? I'm skeptical whenever the media really grabs hold of a narrative that's so one-sided.

Did you really not hear about one of their door plugs falling off mid air? Or how TWO of their passenger planes crashed into the ocean killing all passengers due to gross negligence in implementing their computer assisted control for their new plane?

They are having HUGE quality issues for the exact reason you would expect: finance bros took over the company and they now blow tons of money on stock buybacks and not unnecessary things like QA.

Businesses doing Big Things cannot just blow all of their money on stock buybacks and expect to do great things. It is all profits without prosperity. It used to be illegal for a reason.

It is not just hype. They have screwed the pooch.

Re: Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument failure

#17

Post by cjbgkagh »

joecasson wrote: post #3

A blip of zero controls - not ideal! Although hearsay from a passenger hardly sounds reliable. The thing I'm wondering is: are quality issues happening elsewhere? Or are we caught in an anti-Boeing hype cycle? I'm skeptical whenever the media really grabs hold of a narrative that's so one-sided.

Boeing being safe was the default, what we're seeing is the disillusion of this default. What's the alternative for the news; "plane lands successfully and without issue". As with any complex system things when things go wrong they go wrong in a myriad of ways with a great deal of uncertainty and randomness - which in and of itself makes them interesting. The erosion of the culture of safety at Boeing is a slow gradual process that has occured over several decades. Incidents that make it to the public are a lagging indicator, which suggests that there is much more to come. Culture is easy to destroy and very very hard to fix, like how cutting down a forest is much faster and easier than growing one. And a culture that has destroyed itself is very unlikely able to fix itself. So we could very well be witnessing a terminal decline. Boeing will make a ton of money providing drones for the US military so there is no real incentive to force leadership to do any course corrections - instead they will just have to act surprised each time a new Boeing issue pops up.

Re: Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument failure

#18

Post by pxeboot »

joecasson wrote: post #3

A blip of zero controls - not ideal! Although hearsay from a passenger hardly sounds reliable. The thing I'm wondering is: are quality issues happening elsewhere? Or are we caught in an anti-Boeing hype cycle? I'm skeptical whenever the media really grabs hold of a narrative that's so one-sided.

If you are curious just how common minor incidents are, https://avherald.com does a good job of listing most of them.

Re: Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument failure

#20

Post by psunavy03 »

If the FBW system is getting spurious inputs, that's a Very Bad Thing. But I'm skeptical about CNN reporting from some rando non-aviator being accurate as to what exactly is going on. This is like asking some random person what their doctor or lawyer told them, and expecting them to get it all right.
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