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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

#231

Post by hanszarkov »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #166
whatshisface wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funniest thing is that Boeing is barely industry, with all the two-way regulatory ties and of course the monopoly, it's like a nationalized company that just happens to be nominally owned by investors. The only ideology that Boeing makes look bad is the Soviet system! :-)

>The only ideology that Boeing makes look bad is the Soviet system! Boeing is 100% a product of the American system. All the acquisitions, mergers, lobbying and loss of engineering culture in favor of short-term profit seeking that got it to where it is today happened under capitalism. Nothing resembling Boeing ever existed on the USSR, its airplane manufacturers worked very differently, with different incentives and…

This

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

#232

Post by sofixa »

drstewart wrote: post #160
jajko wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet competition can and does better, much better re safety currently. Any issue of Airbus would get at least same press coverage, in US even more since media are usually not impartial. Are we already into some boeing whitewashing cycle too?

>Yet competition can and does better, much better re safety currently. Oh wow I had no idea. Can you compare hull losses / fatalities of the 787 to the A350?

It's not a fair comparison since the A350 is newer, has less planes in operation and less flight cycles. It does have 1 hull loss with 0 fatalities due to human error either in the ATC or another plane that resulted in a crash - nothing to do with the A350 or its crew in any way outside of its and their good management of the crash (the plane composite materials delayed the fire long enough for the crew to be able to perform a perfect evacuation and save everyone).

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

#233

Post by ricardobeat »

sio8ohPi wrote: post #150
ricardobeat wrote: post #146

Aren’t turbulence / tailwinds / low pressure zone the only things that can cause a plane to suddenly lose lift and drop? I don’t think there’s any control input that can cause that, this story doesn’t seem to make sense.

Quantas 72 is a flight that experienced a sudden uncommanded pitch-down (-0.8g), causing injuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72 So it's in principle possible. But passengers are notoriously clueless, to the point that "there was a go around and I thought we were all going to die" is practically a meme in aviation circles. Wait a few days and see what comes to light once it's investigated.

Wow, I never imagined these aircraft could make violent maneuvers like this, at cruise speeds, without structural damage.

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

#234

Post by sofixa »

nradov wrote: post #213
bbor wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just meant that there are only two companies in the industry at all - the industry being “commercial passenger flight”, or what they seem to call “airliners” (?): Still, in the large commercial aircraft market, there are just two major players: the U.S.-based Boeing (BA) and the Airbus Group (EADSY), formerly known as the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS). I totally understand your pushback again…

That depends on how you define the market. Boeing and Airbus are the only two manufacturers of large civil airliners on the worldwide market. But there is a second tier including Bombardier, Embraer, Comac, Mitsubishi, and UAC which either manufacture smaller (regional) airliners or have more limited sales options.

> Bombardier

Protectionism bullshit by Boeing forced them to sell to Airbus, they only do business jets now.

> Embraer

Regional jets only. They saw what happened with Bombardier and they're highly unlikely to move upmarket in short haul jets.

> Mitsubishi

Cancelled their regional jet, so nothing.

> UAC

Severely hampered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the resulting supply chain collapse and sanctions. The MC-21 and SSJ-100 were decent planes on paper, but cannot be manufactured because critical components are European or American (like the engines). The Tu-214 is back in production but it's a pretty obsolete plane by modern standards.

> Comac

By most accounts, roughly a decade behind equivalent Airbus planes in terms of efficiency, but realistically the only real alternative to Boeing/Airbus in the medium term.

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

#235

Post by sofixa »

robmusial wrote: post #95

In the Air France flight 11 [0] situation the pilots thought they were having instrument and control issues, they had to go around, and there was much panic in the cockpit. It turned out the entire thing was pilot induced and the aircraft was fine. Because of Boeing's massive failures on the minds of everyone it'll be interesting to see if this was truly an instrumentation failure or something else. [0] https://simpl…

If you read the final incident report[1] from BEA, you'll see that there was a hardware failure - the control yokes got desynchronised from one another which isn't supposed to happen, and the pilots were therefore unaware of conflicting inputs. Worst of all, Boeing doesn't warn in any way if that happens, because why would they? Airbuses (which don't have synchronised sticks) have "dual input" warnings audio and visual warnings.

They should have communicated better, but we've seen this many times - in panic situations or under pressure, communication is hard.

https://bea.aero/fileadmin/user_upload/F-GSQJ_finalreport_EN...

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

#236

Post by inamberclad »

josephg wrote: post #195
inamberclad wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm working on an aircraft program right now. We have a requirement to power cycle the plane every N days. It's in the manuals.

Why?

Simple: we have timer counters in the code. This is easier than handling them rolling over.

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

#237

Post by inferiorhuman »

sofixa wrote: post #235
robmusial wrote: post #95

In the Air France flight 11 [0] situation the pilots thought they were having instrument and control issues, they had to go around, and there was much panic in the cockpit. It turned out the entire thing was pilot induced and the aircraft was fine. Because of Boeing's massive failures on the minds of everyone it'll be interesting to see if this was truly an instrumentation failure or something else. [0] https://simpl…

If you read the final incident report[1] from BEA, you'll see that there was a hardware failure - the control yokes got desynchronised from one another which isn't supposed to happen, and the pilots were therefore unaware of conflicting inputs. Worst of all, Boeing doesn't warn in any way if that happens, because why would they? Airbuses (which don't have synchronised sticks) have "dual input" warnings audio and visu…

> the control yokes got desynchronised from one another which isn't supposed to happen

No, that's precisely what's supposed to happen.

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

#238

Post by __d »

drstewart wrote: post #160
jajko wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet competition can and does better, much better re safety currently. Any issue of Airbus would get at least same press coverage, in US even more since media are usually not impartial. Are we already into some boeing whitewashing cycle too?

>Yet competition can and does better, much better re safety currently. Oh wow I had no idea. Can you compare hull losses / fatalities of the 787 to the A350?

They're too young for that, I think?

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

#239

Post by ianburrell »

breadwinner wrote: post #226
Retric wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never is a loaded word. It’s almost impossible for a completely fresh design to be safer on day one. There’s so many different ways to fuck up many of them are counterintuitive because nobody ever considers if someone could install this backwards until someone does. 20+ years of debugging written with people’s lives tests just about everything in a way engineers never really think about

The difference here is that 737 MAX has a flaw (forward positioning of the engine) that cannot be fixed as a "bug".

The flaw was fixed with MCAS. The problem that caused the two crashes was that pilots weren't trained on the new system because Boeing wanted to act like it was the same plane. The pilots didn't know what was going on or how to disable MCAS when it started misbehaving because of bad sensor.

With training, improved systems, and redundant sensors, MCAS should be safe. There are other planes that have similar systems. And there procedures for disabling bad sensors or misbehaving sensors.

I'm not sure if MCAS is necessary, there is some indication it is only there to mimic older 737 and plane would be safe without it and with training.

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

#240

Post by avs733 »

nsguy wrote: post #144
avs733 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether time proves that out - and whether 'more than a narrative' (meaning..safety culture) is actually related to this incident matter and are independent of it emerging as a narrative. A very similar thing happened post Air France 447's crash into the Atlantic ocean. The reporting on it began to include any incident involving any airbus plane for quite a while until it was determined the crew was primarily at faul…

IIRC there were other Airbus incidents and concerns. It's been so long I don't recall the details but I remember being worried about flying Airbus.

Right…there are always going to be concerns, no manufacturer is perfect…some are bad, some good, soon change with time, some don’t.

What the conversation was pointing out that coverage of such issues tends to shift with the closeness in time to something really bad. If your one of your planes crashes, anytime your planes has an issue for a whole the coverage is going to be amplified. The manufacturer is irrelevant…it’s the nature of media coverage and human biases

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