I just hate such links which I could not read without logging in into nytimes :(
Boeing 737 Max Hit Trouble Right Away, Pilot’s Tense Radio Messages Show
51–60 of 150 posts
Re: Boeing 737 Max Hit Trouble Right Away, Pilot’s Tense Radio Messages Show
#52The facts so far are that two new aircraft of the same model have crashed in a very short period of time, in the same stage of flight and exhibiting the same problem as evidenced by ATC recordings: loss of flight control.
We should not focus only on the software aspect, even though a very questionable (and dangerous in my opinion) decision was made to not communicate to the pilots the existence and operation of the software with no additional pilot training.
The software relied on input from sensors at least in the Lion Air crash and the fact is the sensors failed on new aircraft.
I would trust the NTSB as much as the European counterparts. I have read some of their reports and they are very dilligent and fair.
We should avoid placing blame now on anyone whether it is Boeing, pilots, national agencies, until the full reports are available. The grounding of the aircraft was perfectly justified with the available data from a security point of view. The air industry has been focused on avoiding a blame culture. Even I, as a passenger sometimes look for the lowest price, so the pressure for cost cutting may come from us as well.
Re: Boeing 737 Max Hit Trouble Right Away, Pilot’s Tense Radio Messages Show
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be extremely irregular for an aviation company to give training / instruction to exclusive clubs. The reality is that occident pilots tend to be a cut above the rest of the world. American Airline pilots tend to have military aviation experience and/or thousands of hours of experience. Pilots in less developed nations tend to have significantly less training, I heard the copilot of the lion air flight only h…
The copilot had 5000 flights hours. Bhavye Suneja, the pilot - Suneja had logged more than 6,000 flight hours, according to Lion Air. His co-pilot, whose name was Harvino - Harvino had logged more than 5,000 flight hours, according to Lion Air, which named him alongside Suneja. https://www.businessinsider.com.au/lion-air-plane-crash-vict...
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Re: Boeing 737 Max Hit Trouble Right Away, Pilot’s Tense Radio Messages Show
#54In the likely event that this is another MCAS related crash, I see only two possible reasons: 1. Boeing's suggested process (including flipping the two trim switches and spinning a wheel) does not work for some reason. -or- 2. The Ethiopian pilots did not follow this process. I see #1 as putting a huge, huge amount of blame on Boeing and the FAA - especially given their months of "safe plane" reaction after Lion Air…
I think both end up with blame on Boeing. If a discussion in world news isn't enough to prepare an experienced 737 pilot (ten years!) to counteract spurious MCAS, then nothing is, at least to the level of safety expected in airline travel. A plausible explanation for (1) that I've seen discussed is that, after disabling the auto trim, it may be impossible to manually re-trim while the yoke's pulled back, without firs…
I think it's unlikely that this crash will be attributed to the same set of circumstances as the lion air crash. I don't find it credible that an experienced pilot would fail to catch what, in essence, is a trim runaway event. There is a reason trim runaway is a memory item on almost all aircraft. Even in the Lion air case the previous flight experienced difficulty with the system and dealt with it. This was before the publication and a great deal of publicity of the details around MCAS. I don't think we've heard anything yet to suggest this particular aircraft had a fault in previous flights. Another failure in the AoA sensor on a brand new aircraft seems unlikely.
I don't find 1 particularly compelling, it would have been noted by now if it was impossible to trim the aircraft using the manual trim wheels. Unless this is very specific to the MAX.
That said, I think it's entirely possible there is something else wrong in the control of the MAX.
Re: Boeing 737 Max Hit Trouble Right Away, Pilot’s Tense Radio Messages Show
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably? He's very famous in the ACI community. And as he always says, a plane never goes down for a single reason. The Airbus that crashed into the Atlantic ocean could've been saved if they made the design decision not to "average" inputs from the sticks. Is that a design flaw? Or bad pilot training? Crashes are always the nexus of a chain of unfortunately and unlucky events. I have no reason to suspect this crash…
>The only thing I'm confident of is that no matter what the problem is, Boeing will make changes ... Yeah, but it doesn't take Nostradamus to make that prediction. If Boeing doesn't fix their issues, they won't sell planes. So, say we blame the pilot for incorrectly deactivating the faulted system within a time-frame that allows for recovery; which I think is a silly thing to do : at what level of added complexity an…
> The 737 MAX is unstable inherently for the sake of mileage
This is blatantly false. The MCAS system isn't running a PID control loop or anything like that. It's applying stupidly simple logic to its inputs and giving equally simple outputs.
At worst you could claim the aircraft is less stable than the original 737. But more specifically I'd say the 737 Max exhibits undesirable control behaviours at the approach to the stall. The MCAS system was required to make this behaviour certifiable.
Re: Boeing 737 Max Hit Trouble Right Away, Pilot’s Tense Radio Messages Show
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be extremely irregular for an aviation company to give training / instruction to exclusive clubs. The reality is that occident pilots tend to be a cut above the rest of the world. American Airline pilots tend to have military aviation experience and/or thousands of hours of experience. Pilots in less developed nations tend to have significantly less training, I heard the copilot of the lion air flight only h…
The copilot had 5000 flights hours. Bhavye Suneja, the pilot - Suneja had logged more than 6,000 flight hours, according to Lion Air. His co-pilot, whose name was Harvino - Harvino had logged more than 5,000 flight hours, according to Lion Air, which named him alongside Suneja. https://www.businessinsider.com.au/lion-air-plane-crash-vict...
To have some idea about the possible time span, we can estimate some "typical" flight frequency and length: if the average flight is 2.5 hours there, and if the pilot flights both to the destination and back in the same day (which is reasonable to expect) 6000 hours means 1200 flights to the destination and back, and if only one such is done per day (with the times on the ground it's surely more than 8 hours) then assuming 4 of such per week and 48 working weeks per year, that gives 6.5 years for the pilot and 5.2 years for the co-pilot.
Re: Boeing 737 Max Hit Trouble Right Away, Pilot’s Tense Radio Messages Show
#57Let's preface this by saying I am aware that cause of the accident has not been determined. Seeing reports of experienced pilots being assigned to 737 MAXs without prior flight experience of this precise model, prompts me to make this comment.
As a passenger I expect pilots to fully know the plane they are flying and to previously have flown this exact type and model of aircraft in training sessions without any passengers whatsoever. 737 MAXs seem to have significant differences compared to other 737 models and airlines appear criminally negligent in the use of these aircraft.
I used to be a mere bus driver as a college job and I _had_ to train on all models before transporting any sort of organism with a central nervous system.
But apparently, flying hundreds of people at hundreds of mph at several thousand feet above the ground doesn't require this sort of familiarity with the machine. Having flown other 737s and skimming a manual 20mins before departure was often deemed sufficient, resulting in flabbergasted and overwhelmed pilots.
Boeing, FAA, airlines... whoever is ultimately blamed in all of this, the crash has revealed some scary stories in regards to aviation - all for the sake of cutting costs because people demand to fly across continents for $100.
Re: Boeing 737 Max Hit Trouble Right Away, Pilot’s Tense Radio Messages Show
#58In the likely event that this is another MCAS related crash, I see only two possible reasons: 1. Boeing's suggested process (including flipping the two trim switches and spinning a wheel) does not work for some reason. -or- 2. The Ethiopian pilots did not follow this process. I see #1 as putting a huge, huge amount of blame on Boeing and the FAA - especially given their months of "safe plane" reaction after Lion Air…
I was thinking about what you call '#2' the other day, when a family member remarked that the FAA was right to keep the planes in the sky because US airline unions felt like their pilots had received adequate advice and information from Boeing. I'm not sure where they got that from, but why would it be okay if the US pilots got training immediately, while others had to wait?
> because US airline unions felt like their pilots had received adequate advice and information from Boeing.
And ET pilots felt they had received adequate advice and information from Boeing.
> I'm not sure where they got that from, but why would it be okay if the US pilots got training immediately, while others had to wait?
Something like https://www.forbes.com/sites/tedreed/2019/03/13/who-says-the...
How that statement meshes with
https://www.philly.com/business/boeing-max-pilots-complained...
"Pilots repeatedly voiced safety concerns about the Boeing 737 Max 8 to federal authorities, with one captain calling the flight manual “inadequate and almost criminally insufficient”
And
"U.S. regulators are mandating that Boeing upgrade the plane’s software by April"
is unclear.
Back in 2016 it seems that the pilots union felt the MAX was a different plane:
> hhttps://www.geekwire.com/2016/boeings-737-max-southwest-airl...
Re: Boeing 737 Max Hit Trouble Right Away, Pilot’s Tense Radio Messages Show
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be extremely irregular for an aviation company to give training / instruction to exclusive clubs. The reality is that occident pilots tend to be a cut above the rest of the world. American Airline pilots tend to have military aviation experience and/or thousands of hours of experience. Pilots in less developed nations tend to have significantly less training, I heard the copilot of the lion air flight only h…
Pilots in less developed nations tend to have significantly less training And yet at least one previous Lion Air crew had a run-in with MCAS and survived.
And 83% of people playing russian roulette survive.
Saying that some crews in some circumstances coped with the problem therefore all crews in all circumstances should be able to is disingenuous
Re: Boeing 737 Max Hit Trouble Right Away, Pilot’s Tense Radio Messages Show
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The only thing I'm confident of is that no matter what the problem is, Boeing will make changes ... Yeah, but it doesn't take Nostradamus to make that prediction. If Boeing doesn't fix their issues, they won't sell planes. So, say we blame the pilot for incorrectly deactivating the faulted system within a time-frame that allows for recovery; which I think is a silly thing to do : at what level of added complexity an…
> The 737 MAX is unstable inherently for the sake of mileage This is blatantly false. The MCAS system isn't running a PID control loop or anything like that. It's applying stupidly simple logic to its inputs and giving equally simple outputs. At worst you could claim the aircraft is less stable than the original 737. But more specifically I'd say the 737 Max exhibits undesirable control behaviours at the approach to…
As the plane "approaches a stall" the plane is actually in danger. Traditionally, the pilot is trained (on the simulator) to reflexively (every second matters) move the controls to avoid the danger in case of any problems (the different actual problems are simulated and separately trained for).
But the new Boeing 737 Max planes exactly at that dangerous moment behave differently to the pilot's input than what the pilot was trained for, because these new planes have different geometry. They are new, but being sold as the "same old." Selling point: "no pilot's retraining needed."
Boeing of course knew that planes behave differently, but actively tried to hide that, as much as not even reporting and documenting to the pilots that there's a new device built-in ("MCAS") to "move the controls itself" differently than what the pilot would do based on this training.
Now, if the MCAS misbehaves, the pilot is supposed to recognize that the "moved controls" are undesired, manage to turn the MCAS off fast enough (even using a circuit breaker! according to the Boeing's explanation after the first crash), and then again rescue the plane which behaves differently than the plane for which he's trained to have built-in reflexes!"
The pilots are supposed to be trained in the simulators to be prepared for the behavior in extreme situations, not to have a new plane that behaves by-design exactly not as they are trained.
The way they were trained, when some undesired movement occur, their reflex reaction corrects the problem. Not so in this case. Their trained reflexes didn't help. Instead, the faulty MCAS continues. That's why even the circuit breaker step is mentioned. But even after turning the MCAS off, the plane still behaves differently because it is actually of different geometry.
All that can happen at the moment the plane is not high enough to be safe to do enough maneuvering instead of hitting the ground.
EDIT: responding to the answer under this post:
> you seem to be assigning a lot of weight to a very minor system
"I" seem? At this very moment there is a world-wide belief that what you name "very minor" issues lead to death of 350 people in only 5 months time-span, to the point of grounding all the MAX planes.
Also relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19398267