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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

#31

Post by codedokode »

cco wrote: post #11
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do I need always a VPN from Europe? Beeing GDPR compliant is not rocket science. "Unfortunately, our site is unavailable to European Union visitors... blablabla" If you think there's a compelling business case for enabling European access, you may wish to contact the publisher.

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.

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

#32

Post by mannykannot »

There are at least three inter-related issues here: 1) Was MCAS an issue in the Ethiopian Airlines crash? 2) Did Boeing err, prior to the Lion Air crash, in not informing pilots of the existence of MCAS, and the way it changes how a failure is experienced by the flight crew? 3) Does MCAS pose a risk that cannot be adequately addressed through appropriate awareness and training?

IIRC, after the existence of MCAS was disclosed, the US pilots' unions were divided over this issue, with the union representing Southwest pilots castigating Boeing for its nondisclosure, while that representing United pilots did not consider it to be a big issue. Unfortunately, this article does not make it clear where pilots stand on issue 3, and the investigation of the Ethiopian Airlines crash might reveal additional issues.

The forthcoming software upgrade for MCAS certainly implies that there were improvements to be made.

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

#33

Post by V-eHGsd_ »

Someone1234 wrote: post #25

This article is less compelling than the title would suggest. After the Lion Air crash the FAA released a Emergency Airworthiness Directive, these five comments are in response to that directive. That differentiates it from pilots that had a negative run-in with MCAS or other defects in the 737 Max 8 (which would be significant news). This article might inform you pilots are unhappy, but that fact has been widely cir…

I assumed they were talking about nasa reports. You can find a few if you search for 737-800 and AOA on the asrs site.

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

#34

Post by stefan_ »

qrbLPHiKpiux wrote: post #19
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?

Yes. Recalls with autos happen more often with a lot less. Consider the amount of cars out there. It only takes a few to put one in play.

If the US would treat car safety like airplane safety there would be no SUVs driving out there.

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

#35

Post by tuna-piano »

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?

There have been 865 total 737 reports in the ASRS database since 1/1/2018 (linked the results of my search in another comment in this thread). There doesn't appear to be a 737-MAX filter (groups all 737-800s and 737-900s together it seems), so it's tough to say.

In addition, it seems like some pilots were motivated to submit reports on their MAX experiences due to the Lion Air incident.

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

#36

Post by k_sh »

stefan_ wrote: post #34
qrbLPHiKpiux wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Recalls with autos happen more often with a lot less. Consider the amount of cars out there. It only takes a few to put one in play.

If the US would treat car safety like airplane safety there would be no SUVs driving out there.

Airplane safety should be more strict than car safety, because the damage an airplane crash causes is a handful of orders of magnitude higher than a car accident...

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

#37

Post by mrpippy »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #29
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?

They mostly seem to agree with each other which is the scary part. Several of them reference a completely unexplained pitch up/down behavior during a climb. During landing an unplanned nosedive would be disastrous.

MCAS can only activate when flaps are raised, it shouldn't cause any unexpected trim changes during landing. This is why the Lion Air flight had a normal takeoff/climb until they raised the flaps.

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

#38

Post by stefan_ »

k_sh wrote: post #36
stefan_ wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the US would treat car safety like airplane safety there would be no SUVs driving out there.

Airplane safety should be more strict than car safety, because the damage an airplane crash causes is a handful of orders of magnitude higher than a car accident...

Yet deaths in the latter vastly outpace adverse events in the former. What is the criteria by which public safety should operate? Is it biggest explosion?

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

#39

Post by ddoolin »

mannykannot wrote: post #32

There are at least three inter-related issues here: 1) Was MCAS an issue in the Ethiopian Airlines crash? 2) Did Boeing err, prior to the Lion Air crash, in not informing pilots of the existence of MCAS, and the way it changes how a failure is experienced by the flight crew? 3) Does MCAS pose a risk that cannot be adequately addressed through appropriate awareness and training? IIRC, after the existence of MCAS was d…

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 the nose goes down inappropriately.

My question is, should the onus be on the pilots? Yes, they should know about it if they're going to be piloting an aircraft with it, but is this expected behavior? To me it seems more like a bug than expected behavior...why would you want to pitch downwards in a climb?

I don't really understand defense of Boeing in any scenario. This seems like a mistake in any case, whether it's just lack of instruction or documentation in the relevant flight manuals, or an outright system failure.

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

#40

Post by blackflame7000 »

mannykannot wrote: post #32

There are at least three inter-related issues here: 1) Was MCAS an issue in the Ethiopian Airlines crash? 2) Did Boeing err, prior to the Lion Air crash, in not informing pilots of the existence of MCAS, and the way it changes how a failure is experienced by the flight crew? 3) Does MCAS pose a risk that cannot be adequately addressed through appropriate awareness and training? IIRC, after the existence of MCAS was d…

Another issue is that the engines on the Max version are larger than the NG version and didn’t fit under the wing. So they had to raise the mounting point forward and up as well as extend the nose gear 18 inches. These changes caused the plane to have a different flight profile to the NG version. However it would have been disasterous if pilots already certified for the 737 couldn’t fly the 737 max. So boeing implemented the MCAS so make the max handle like the NG. That move is drawing a lot of skepticism because if the computer screws up then the pilots were never really trained to fly the Max

https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/what-is-the-boeing...

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