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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

#231

Post by rurban »

More context missing in this news. Southwest certainly was aware of the MCAS issues, they are the only airline having demanded a second AOA sensor to be installed and used, they also changed the UI to display the attack angle.

So they lied. Even if it's safer to fly a SW max than AA.

> A spokesperson for Southwest Airlines told The News that it hasn't received any reports of issues with MCAS from its pilots, "nor do any of our thousands of data points from the aircraft indicate any issues with MCAS."

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

#232

Post by yason »

tomaskafka wrote: post #227
yason wrote: post #222

The thing that worries me most is that, based on mere amateur observations in the media, the number of incidents involving user interfaces, repeated changes to procedures, and software fixes to "unexpected" corner-cases seems to have been in the increase. To the uninitiated, it seems that problems in airline incidents used to revolve around mechanical failures, bad wiring, sensor malfunctions, toasted electronics cau…

If you split a complex systems into a tiny pieces, you imo just shift a locus of problems from individual modules into their more and more complex network of interactions and emergent behaviors.

Hence you keep the number of pieces small to avoid the exponential interactions. You only ever implement what is really needed instead of letting feature creep and excess convenience work their way into your plane. It's not like N times more of that sweet complexity is required to fly a plane today than what was needed in the 80's or 90's.

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

#233

Post by pbhjpbhj »

43920 wrote: post #167
tuna-piano wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some other MAX reports: 1583028: B737 MAX-8 Captain reported the engine fuel burn was higher than expected. Maintenance confirms that several 737-MAXs are burning fuel faster than expected. 1593699: ATIS sheet fell through the slot forward of the center pedestal and the blank off plate. We had Maintenance come out to remove it. We discovered 20 other ATIS sheets mixed into the wiring. The aircraft is only six months…

Another one: 1603376: B737 Captain reported the flight recorder light was inoperative, which led to the discovery that the flight data recorder was not installed. Can anyone anyone with more experience with this say whether this is normal for a new aircraft? I get that it's easy to forget parts of the assembly process, but how do you put an aircraft into service without verifying that all the parts (especially import…

That's got to be illegal, having no flight recorder?

Wouldn't it fail preflight checklists? Depending on the country I'd have thought that's a "lose your license to operate" kinda deal??

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

#234

Post by dpwm »

flukus wrote: post #172
dpwm wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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?

I'm not familiar with the plane and I'm not a pilot, but from reading the report it sounds like they were able to do the checks OK – but that took time.

It also sounds like the instrumentation displays on the plane very helpfully have modes and some kind of menu system. The references to stages of flight make it sound like these modes become available dynamically. So it seems quite probable that it isn't possible to actually navigate the screens in the air in the same way as on the ground.

Compare the 737 MAX8 cockpit [0] with the 737-800 cockpit [1] and the 737-300 cockpit [2]. Then consider that all of these planes are under the same type rating [3] – so a pilot trained on one of them is good for all of them.

There's also a lot of commercial pressure on pilots to not refuse to take off in a plane – which could lead to bizarre consequences like the airline questioning their competence for their current type rating.

[0] https://i.ytimg.com/vi/tCXPJkC7ZwI/maxresdefault.jpg

[1] https://drscdn.500px.org/photo/35641948/m%3D2048_k%3D1_a%3D1...

[2] https://magazin.lufthansa.com/content/uploads/2016/07/Boeing...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_rating

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

#236

Post by vultour »

bredren wrote: post #146
addicted wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non technical person, who is about to fly an 80 ton vehicle for extended distances, local backups of WiFi dependent data is not likely to be a major concern. Especially if (a) it’s not part of your extensive checklists, which would reasonably be expected to be included if it was important, and (b) you’ve lost WiFi in other planes before without losing your flight plan.

I’m a technical person and it is a major concern.

They were in cruise, which means the flight plan was already set and can be viewed on the MCDU. Sure they lost a fancy map on the ipad but that doesn't mean they suddenly don't know where to go.

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

#237

Post by bananasbandanas »

tuna-piano wrote: post #47
tuna-piano wrote: post #30

Some context: 1. There have been 865 737 related ASRS reports since 1/1/2018 2. I don't know how to quickly separate out 737-MAX reports from the non 737-MAX reports, as the ASRS database doesn't include 737-MAX as an airplane type! From scanning, I can say that there are more than five MAX related reports, though. [1] All 865 737 reports since 1/1/2018 CSV - http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=5466867979406…

Some other MAX reports: 1583028: B737 MAX-8 Captain reported the engine fuel burn was higher than expected. Maintenance confirms that several 737-MAXs are burning fuel faster than expected. 1593699: ATIS sheet fell through the slot forward of the center pedestal and the blank off plate. We had Maintenance come out to remove it. We discovered 20 other ATIS sheets mixed into the wiring. The aircraft is only six months…

1555013: B737 MAX First Officer reported feeling unprepared for first flight in the MAX, citing inadequate training.

1593017: B737MAX Captain expressed concern that some systems such as the MCAS are not fully described in the aircraft Flight Manual.

Edit: A CSV of all incidents that include "MAX" in their report text: https://pastebin.com/ezhffWRn

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

#238

Post by pbhjpbhj »

lixtra wrote: post #183
cjbprime wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing fought extremely hard to avoid having this happen, since then any pilot wanting to fly the Max would have to first achieve a type rating certificate for the new type of plane, and the FAA would have to test and certify it instead of Boeing "self-certifying" that it was a type of 737. The determination to shoehorn what aerodynamically kind of is a new type of plane into the 737's type rating seems likely to be…

> seems likely to be the root cause of these deaths. Given that investigation in both accidents is still ongoing and all we know is wild speculation your conclusion is premature even though it finally may turn out to be true.

Flip that around: would you expect that pilots flying a new aeroplane without any conversion training would be more likely to cause an accident.

It's a damning indictment of Boeing, and whichever authorities let them get away with it, that they pushed through an aircraft with a different pilot UI/UX knowing that pilots would then be under trained when using it: like someone said we train baristas better.

I've driven minibuses before and always ensure to get an hour of driving a new model before taking passengers.

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

#239

Post by jrib »

azernik wrote: post #89
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…

It's a useful metric because, when comparing auto and plane safety, consumers are usually deciding between taking a plane and a car for the same distance. We could give them risk as a function of distance by taking the increased takeoff/landing risk into account, but generally people only compare the two for fairly long trips.

Do the car incident statistics only take into account long distance trips?

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

#240

Post by nicktelford »

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…

Wikipedia has a pretty handy table of metrics here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Transport_comp...

Ignoring the silly ones (Space Shuttle, Skidiving and Paragliding), we see that Motorcycles are by far the most dangerous mode of transport, across all metrics. Buses do very well, only losing out to Aircraft on distance.

When you look at Aircraft by number of journeys, the risk is significantly higher - nearly 3 times higher than car journeys!

That said, there are othe factors to consider here: these metrics only track _deaths_. So non-fatal incidents (of which the majority involving cars are) aren't considered.

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