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

dallasnews.com

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

#301
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow... I wonder how much of this could have been avoided if the 737-Max had just been given an entirely new model name like "738". I'd assume that when the 777's came out even pilots with experience on the 767 and other Boeing planes were still given ample training beforehand. The minor difference in the Max's model name disguises the seemingly large difference in their operation.

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…

Boeing was doing what the airlines wanted, which is provide a new more efficient airplane that requires minimal training for existing 737 pilots to fly, much like the A320neo. Airlines are the ones who schedule the pilots and their training, and from what we have heard, there _is_ training for pilots new to the Max that apparently some airlines have not administered.

Ultimately Boeing and the airlines share responsibility for ensuring the training is adequate, thats why many airlines have lots of training that goes above and beyond what Boeing supplies.

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

#302
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not in this case. B738 is the official icao code for the aircraft, just like B38M is for the max.

Oh, well that's totally different then. Still feels weird to "consume" other potential model numbers like that though :)

When you have limited space to show some information, sometimes the space it takes up needs to be reduced.

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

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thanks for sharing it. It seems, if the risk is based on the distance, then air is 60x safer. But, for per journeys, air travel is worse. For per hours, the air travel is only 3x safer. The popularized concept of air travel's risk gave me the impression that air travel was sooo much safer than car. smh. If you asked me a month ago, I would say air travel should be, at least, 1000x safer than car.

Read the paragraphs below the table.

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

#304
post #57
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? Because due to the different shape and position of the nacelles, there are aerodynamic effects that cause the plane to want to pitch up at high AoA. If you are already close to a stall condition, and you were caught unawares, bad times would be had. The major issue though is pilots were left to 'just figure this out' instead of being informed of the change. I have a…

From what I have read, the NG series had the habit of pitching up under go-around conditions and this system exists because Boeing expected that issue to be more prevalent on the Max and also to try and solve it.

So its not a new thing on the Max, its just expected to be more prominent.

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

#305
post #92

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…

The Dallas News report shows two separate complaints where the pilots knew of and discussed MCAS on the flight deck before take off and still had serious problems with it.

They had serious problems with the autopilot, which also disables MCAS.

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

#306
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing it. It seems, if the risk is based on the distance, then air is 60x safer. But, for per journeys, air travel is worse. For per hours, the air travel is only 3x safer. The popularized concept of air travel's risk gave me the impression that air travel was sooo much safer than car. smh. If you asked me a month ago, I would say air travel should be, at least, 1000x safer than car.

Read the paragraphs below the table.

I read it, but I don't know what you are trying to convey. Please elaborate. Thank you.

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

#307
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

For cars they count all passenger-miles equally. Car accidents are much more strongly correlated with distance than aircraft accidents, but I don't know the actual risk factors - these are all heuristics for much more detailed models that I'm sure some academic is building.

What is eye-opening here is that: Aviation industry insurers base their calculations on the deaths per journey statistic while the aviation industry itself generally uses the deaths per kilometre statistic in press releases

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Transport_comp...

So, insurers don't wanna use this death per distance.

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