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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

#261

Post by privong »

siwatanejo wrote: post #156
ams6110 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. The basic 737 design dates to the 1950s. The first ones flew in the 1960s. The 737 Max is an augmented version of the original.

Right, I'm (we're) obviously talking about 737MAX

> Right, I'm (we're) obviously talking about 737MAX

I think @ams6110 is saying that it may not be fair to identify the 737MAX as a completely new plane, since the 737MAX can be identified as more of an evolution of the 737 rather than a new, from-scratch plane design.

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

#262

Post by gerbilly »

kalleboo wrote: post #198
untog wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 worl…

> You should, in the course of day to day operation, be able to expect a WiFi router will work. My experience with WiFi routers is the opposite. I will wire anything important.

Yeah me too.

You know if WiFi was so awesome, wifi routers wouldn't have wires in them!

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

#263

Post by fsloth »

mcv wrote: post #244
fsloth wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The appeal of the 737 MAX for airlines was that it was intentionally made so that you could take crews with a 737 qualification and put them in. I.e the airlines could save money on training. The main design constraint on that bird was that it should pass most of the old paperwork so that Boeing nor airlines would need to go through expensive training and quification. Yet, they modified the plane quite a bit - but th…

> The appeal of the 737 MAX for airlines was that it was intentionally made so that you could take crews with a 737 qualification and put them in. Really? Everything I heard so far sounds like the 737 MAX has a few new, unusual or counter intuitive features that require extra training, and that training material skimped on training for that. > "just old 737 nothing new here hop in" Am I correct in understanding that…

Not an expert, I'm basing my comment on stuff I've learned from third party sources.

It does not sound to me like lying, more like a confusion of project constraints. I.e. "make the plane better but don't touch this and this and this arbitrary system".

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

#264

Post by marcus0x62 »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #247
blattimwind wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Boeing poached the guys responsible for Tesla's panel gaps, who knows?

Speaking of panel gaps. The panel gaps shrink in warm weather. In case anyone was wondering that was actually a thing with early plastic body panels. They eventually refined it to the point where the gaps don't change noticeably and now pretty much every car has some plastic body panels.

Saturn had a lot of fit-and-finish issues, but man the S-series was reliable. I had one for 13 years/250,000 miles and barely put more than tires, brakes, and oil into the car.

The oil, though, was interesting. The s-series engine had a design flaw with the oil control piston ring where it would get stuck in its groove due to carbon build-up. The engine would then start burning prodigious amounts of oil — mine burned 1 quart every 500 miles. I put the cheapest oil I could find in as a result and when I did a filter change I’d save the old oil to pour back into the engine (diluted — about 1 qt of old oil and 3 qts of new.). By the time I used up all of the old oil it was time to change filters again.

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

#265

Post by usrusr »

fsloth wrote: post #208
selectodude wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably southwest pilots. If it’s not analog it’s too much for them.

The appeal of the 737 MAX for airlines was that it was intentionally made so that you could take crews with a 737 qualification and put them in. I.e the airlines could save money on training. The main design constraint on that bird was that it should pass most of the old paperwork so that Boeing nor airlines would need to go through expensive training and quification. Yet, they modified the plane quite a bit - but th…

In short: the safety requirements for doing it properly are so high that they were artfully avoided. The aeronautical analog to byzantine password requirements that only make people susceptible to post-it password management?

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

#266

Post by NikkiA »

vultour wrote: post #236
bredren wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are a number of situations where the checklist calls for reinsertion of the flightplan during flight, they would be lost in those situations.

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

#267

Post by vonmoltke »

codedokode wrote: post #31
cco wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The compelling business case is avoiding the burden of complying with GDPR regulations. At a minimum someone has to answer those requests for info and/or deletion, if Europe represents a small percentage of your traffic it might not be worth bothering with.

Or they might just not collect any data from EU users.

I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but if you are running a web server you have to try to not collect data on people who hit it. My personal website )if it were up, oops) is not GDPR-compliant, and it is completely hosted on my own server using nothing but static HTML with a bit of Bootstrap JavaScript. I have no ads. I have no referral links. I have no analytics. I don't even have comments on the articles I post.

If I were running this site as a business I would need to evaluate how much it would cost to bring, and keep, the site into compliance versus how much revenue I derive from European visitors. Don't give me the "it's simple if you aren't tracking people" line, either. It's not simple, and I'm not going to trust the health of a business to the interpretations of random Internet posters or the benevolence of regulars on the other side of an ocean.

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

#268

Post by ethbro »

JshWright wrote: post #254
ethbro wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in this particular instance... how is it Boeing and aviation authority's faults that pilots are given an hour's notification they'll be flying a new model of plane? That would seem to fall directly on the operator / carrier. Boeing takes responsibility if the training manuals were not comprehensive. Aviation authorities take responsibility if they under-mandated training. But ultimately neither know a given…

I assume an hours notice is quite typical for pilots to find out which specific airplane they will be flying. If the carrier was told by Boeing and the FAA that no additional training was needed, why would they use any different procedure.

Because their pilots had previously told them they didn't feel comfortable? (See report)

At some point this falls back on nannyism. Either you have a functional company, where your employees are empowered to communicate internally, and your company does something about it... or you don't.

Boeing's job is to engineer the billion things required to keep an airplane flying. The government's job is to validate Boeing performed due diligence and mandate what training is required to the carriers. The carriers have a job too.

I wouldn't be surprised if Boeing pushed hard to have it same type certified. Why wouldn't they? Ultimately, regulatory agencies agreed. Maybe that was correct, maybe not.

But absolving the pilots' direct parent company of responsibility is bullshit. Aerospace is a different industry, but it's not that different vis what a healthy, functioning company does.

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

#269

Post by anticensor »

dpwm wrote: post #234
flukus wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I can conclude they are different enough just based on display layout. How could aerospace experts not?

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

#270

Post by oasisbob »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #197
lsh123 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorrect analogy. Runaway trim is a common and known problem with a solution to pull the electric trim breaker. MCAS failure is very similar in appearance and have exactly the same solution.

MCAS failure is very similar in appearance and have exactly the same solution. MCAS doesn't behave like a runaway stabilizer. MCAS adjusts the trim periodically and will back off if you apply opposite trim. The steps to deal with runaway trim are[1]: 1 Control column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hold firmly 2 Autopilot (if engaged) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Disengage Do not re-engage the autopilot Control airpla…

Why did you leave off steps 4 and 5?

4. If the runaway continues: STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches (both) . . . . . . . . . CUTOUT

If the runaway continues: Stabilizer trim wheel . . . . . . . . . . Grasp and hold

I don't see why someone would stop at step 3, given that the MCAS pause cycle is only 5 seconds long.

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