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Boeing 737 Max pilots complained to feds for months about suspected safety flaw

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Re: Boeing 737 Max pilots complained to feds for months about suspected safety flaw

#171

Post by rectang »

jussij wrote: post #129
tuna-piano wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The forthcoming software upgrade for MCAS certainly implies that there were improvements to be made. Not according to Boeing... "Boeing has been developing a flight control software enhancement for the 737 MAX, designed to make an already safe aircraft even safer."[1] To me an incredibly infuriating statement. The 737-MAX has a fatal crash rate of ~4 per million, when compared to .1 per million for the 737-NG model…

It really does not matter what spin Boeing comes up with regarding the cause of these crashes. The reality is in a very short space of time two 737-MAX have fallen out of the sky. You only have to look back at the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 to understand once a plane gets a bad reputation, it is doomed. For an example of how this can go bad so very quickly, here in Australia this issue has become so new worthy, it's now…

The DC-10's infamous cargo door was a grievously poor design choice, violating well-understood safety principles for the sake of a little more cargo space. It's everything you fear about psychopath executives rolling the dice on safety because what do they care?

The DC-10 deserved its ignominious reputation and the McDonnell-Douglas deserved every bit of the scorn they received and more.

Re: Boeing 737 Max pilots complained to feds for months about suspected safety flaw

#172

Post by flukus »

dpwm wrote: post #91
ehsankia wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be ironic if the lack of 737-MAX category for reports is why these reports never made it to the people who needed to see them, which caused the issue to go unnoticed.

1555013 is pretty damning in telling how the airlines treated the MAX as the same type as the 737-800: "I had my first flight on the Max [to] ZZZ1. We found out we were scheduled to fly the aircraft on the way to the airport in the limo. We had a little time [to] review the essentials in the car. Otherwise we would have walked onto the plane cold.My post flight evaluation is that we lacked the knowledge to operate th…

> The instrumentation is completely different - My scan was degraded, slow and labored having had no experience w/ the new ND (Navigation Display) and ADI (Attitude Director Indicator) presentations/format or functions (manipulation between the screens and systems pages were not provided in training materials. If they were, I had no recollection of that material).

Are these changes not noticeable until you're in the air or should pilots have been refusing to take off in a plane they're not familiar with?

Re: Boeing 737 Max pilots complained to feds for months about suspected safety flaw

#173

Post by kijin »

mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #166
userbinator wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, it's rather scary that even the aviation industry is now seemingly changing the UI and confusing users; HN (and a lot of other people) love talking about how much they hate a redesign of some site or software because it broke their workflow and hid/removed critical functionality, and now it's happening to pilots in life-or-death situations.

I use webflow regularly. Recently they updated the UI but didn't bother addressing the hundreds of other requests for obvious missing features. If anyone here has the capacity to make a dumb webflow - you'll make a lot of money. Include all the basic building like drop-down menus, tabs, carousels etc... And make some freely available premium themes (I can help with this) and you have yourself some loyal users myself…

I'm generally okay with fixing what's not broken. At worst it's a waste of time. What most people hate is intentionally creating breakage by removing and/or shuffling around features they'd been relying on.

Re: Boeing 737 Max pilots complained to feds for months about suspected safety flaw

#174

Post by cjbprime »

tibbydudeza wrote: post #169
yeukhon wrote: post #50

Are we grounding MAX yet? Seriously...

Sec of Defense is an ex-Boeing man.

And on a less individual level, just the MAX order book alone is larger than the market cap of Apple. Boeing is the largest exporter in the US.

Re: Boeing 737 Max pilots complained to feds for months about suspected safety flaw

#175

Post by untog »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #100
iforgotpassword wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well this shit doesn't sound any better: 1565207 At cruise flight, our Wi-Fi stopped working. I then saw that I was unable to access the Pilot Mobile app. Since I do not routinely copy the flight plan to iBook or acrobat (we are not required to do this), I was unable to access the flight plan. I've lost Wi-Fi before but not had this problem. Maybe it's a 737max thing. My First Officer had a copy on iBook and airdropp…

Boggles the mind on several levels: 1. That airlines would use consumer tablets without hard-copy backup as matter of procedure. I remember Air Canada announcing it and how it would save so much weight for both pilots and the airplane, and thinking... I print my Google Maps as a backup for roadtrips, I sure as heck would do it on a flight! 2. Perhaps I'm misjudging, but the tone and perspective of pilot makes me worr…

I'd be curious to know what "WiFi" means here exactly. If it means "my flight plan is stored on the internet and I didn't save a local copy" then yeah, I think that's insane. But if it's a local WiFi network it doesn't seem so weird to me. You should, in the course of day to day operation, be able to expect a WiFi router will work.

Of course, it'll fail at some point, but it's not like they were cut off from the world, they could have radioed for the information if the copilot didn't have it, or something.

Re: Boeing 737 Max pilots complained to feds for months about suspected safety flaw

#176

Post by mrhappyunhappy »

ergocoder wrote: post #62

This is off topic. But I've been skeptical of the commercial aviation accident risk compared to cars. I'm not saying cars are safer. But using accident count per mileage seems a bit odd, especially when the most risky parts of flying are taking off and landing. A plane travelling 400 more miles doesn't incur much more risk. But a car travelling 400 more miles incur a much bigger risk (e.g. fatigue, car malfunctioning…

Not to mention you have a fairly good chance of surviving a car accident whereas a plane falling out of the sky is almost ways bad news for passengers.

Re: Boeing 737 Max pilots complained to feds for months about suspected safety flaw

#177

Post by j16sdiz »

ams6110 wrote: post #155
dtagames wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the database, #1597286, "agressive" uncommanded nose down. Day 3 of 3 departing in a MAX 8 after a long overnight. I was well rested and had discussed the recent MAX 8 MCAS guidance with the Captain. On departure, we had strong crosswinds (gusts > 30 knots) directly off the right wing, however, no LLWS or Micro-burst activity was reported at the field. After verifying LNAV, selecting gear and flaps up, I set "UP…

MCAS is not active with autopilot engaged, according to Boeing.

"should not", not "is not". That's why boeing promise a software fix ...

Re: Boeing 737 Max pilots complained to feds for months about suspected safety flaw

#178

Post by mirimir »

oliveshell wrote: post #75
JKCalhoun wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm ignorant of aviation, oversimplifying, but my summary: they fixed issues with the hardware in software. A little scary?

> A little scary? Perhaps, but it’s not unprecedented. The B2 stealth bomber, for example, famously lacks a vertical stabilizer (tail fin) and so is inherently unstable and relies on computerized control surfaces to maintain stable flight [1]. This seems to have worked fine, although the things definitely log way fewer flight hours than an airliner. I believe several other aircraft do this as well (fighter jets and s…

I've also been reminded of that. But performance / safety tradeoffs are totally different for military vs civilian aircraft. Military pilots have agreed to far greater risks than civilian pilots. And far^N greater risks than civilian passengers.

Re: Boeing 737 Max pilots complained to feds for months about suspected safety flaw

#179

Post by rconti »

jcroll wrote: post #2

> The News found at least five complaints about the Boeing model in a federal database where pilots can voluntarily report about aviation incidents without fear of repercussions. Is this a lot?

Exactly my reaction.

I'm appalled at Boeing's response, and I agree with the Europeans, other countries, and Senator Cruz and others that the planes should probably be grounded, at least very briefly.

But the news reporting that an unknown-relative-to-other-planes percentage of complaints were filed by pilots, especially when those reports could theoretically be merely annoyed pilots responding to a perceived lack of training, or piling on after Lion Air, doesn't tell me a whole lot I didn't already know.

Re: Boeing 737 Max pilots complained to feds for months about suspected safety flaw

#180

Post by CamperBob2 »

hannasanarion wrote: post #120
CamperBob2 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't the flaps up during landing?

I think you're confusing flaps with air brakes. Flaps are wing extensions that deploy downwards to increase lift and drag, air brakes are panels that deploy upwards to produce lots and lots of drag to slow the plane down after landing, like a parachute.

Ah, that makes sense, thanks.
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