Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

dallasnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 307 posts

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

#281

Post by freeflight »

userbinator wrote: post #160
jrockway wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1593699 is amazing.

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.

It's not just the civilian aviation industry who has this problem, by now it's even an issue with military hardware [0]

[0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/uss-m...

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

#282

Post by ric2b »

pfortuny wrote: post #226
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…

I have always thought the only relevant statistics is accidents per travel. But good luck getting this data.

Seems to be here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Transport_comp...

And traveling by air seems to be 3x more deadly than by car, if measuring by journey.

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

#283

Post by [deleted] »

aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #55
ddoolin wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know the answer to 1 or 2, but regarding 3, if the issue in the reports via this article are the same issue, which it seems like they may be, then no I don't believe it poses a risk that can't be addressed through training. Through awareness these pilots and FOs filing reports seemed to know, at least through intuition if not outright knowledge of the new MCAS system, to disconnect the autopilot system when t…

>why would you want to pitch downwards in a climb To avoid stalling?

[deleted]

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

#284

Post by scoot »

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…

Please get in touch. Email in profile.

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

#285

Post by untog »

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.

I very much doubt they're using consumer grade Linksys boxes in there, though.

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

#286

Post by cco »

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.

Ok, now you are supporting two different user experiences, depending upon your site that could have massive software implications, i.e. extra cost, versus just checking IP location and saying "sorry no".

I'm not defending the decision, I'm just providing a possible explanation as to why businesses, when faced with GDPR might choose to block EU users.

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

#287

Post by inferiorhuman »

oasisbob wrote: post #270
inferiorhuman wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why did you leave off steps 4 and 5?

Because that's where many pilots would stop. The "runaway" stops when the pilot inputs opposite trim.

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

#288

Post by stephenrcastle »

jashkenas wrote: post #53
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…

Great links! Here are the three 737-related ASRS reports that mention MCAS: ACN: 1597286 "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 ge…

Is it possible auto pilot altitude target was set to zero by mistake?

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

#289

Post by myth2018 »

stephenrcastle wrote: post #288
jashkenas wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great links! Here are the three 737-related ASRS reports that mention MCAS: ACN: 1597286 "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 ge…

Is it possible auto pilot altitude target was set to zero by mistake?

Not at all.
Post reply on HN