Boeing 2016 internal messages suggest employees may have misled FAA on 737 MAX • Hacker News Board

Re: Boeing 2016 internal messages suggest employees may have misled FAA on 737 MAX

#71

Post by bronson » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 8:06 PM UTC

privateSFacct wrote: post #69

bronson wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By US-based mentality, you mean one where it's OK to design an automation system that takes input from a single sensor? And this is somehow OK for American pilots, but not for foreigners? I think evidence will show you're wrong. The MCAS is a terrible design no matter where you intend to fly it.

Yes - automation in the US context has historically evolved with pilots pilots considered a key and reliable redundancy. So yes - the automation is not full automation / full redundancy. The idea has (historically) been then that the pilots bring overall safety to required standard and the pilot is the redundancy. The evidence in the US has showed that this approach works from everything from stab trim cutout issues…

You hype up reliance on US pilot training, but ignore Boeing's intent to NOT train pilots on MCAS (and especially its differences from existing behavior). Plenty of US pilots have gone on record saying that their US-based MAX-8 training left them unprepared to fly the MAX-8 as it was originally delivered.

In fact, even the Southwest pilots you mention disagree with you: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/in-sc...

You're still trying really hard to blame the pilots and ignore critical and unarguable airframe deficiencies. It hasn't worked yet but maybe if you keep writing lots and lots of words you'll get somewhere.

Re: Boeing 2016 internal messages suggest employees may have misled FAA on 737 MAX

#72

Post by privateSFacct » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 1:50 AM UTC

bronson wrote: post #71

privateSFacct wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - automation in the US context has historically evolved with pilots pilots considered a key and reliable redundancy. So yes - the automation is not full automation / full redundancy. The idea has (historically) been then that the pilots bring overall safety to required standard and the pilot is the redundancy. The evidence in the US has showed that this approach works from everything from stab trim cutout issues…

You hype up reliance on US pilot training, but ignore Boeing's intent to NOT train pilots on MCAS (and especially its differences from existing behavior). Plenty of US pilots have gone on record saying that their US-based MAX-8 training left them unprepared to fly the MAX-8 as it was originally delivered. In fact, even the Southwest pilots you mention disagree with you: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-ae…

And despite no training we have what may have been some amazingly good MCAS recoveries within the US during takeoff into things like turbulence triggered MCAS nosedowns - pilots thought their own fault / couldn't understand what was going on but the limited reports in terms of response are great for totally untrained situations. I'm sure pilots were pissed, they should be!

I think you are failing to understand how the chain of safety works. Ideally you have a great design. If you don't then ideally the flaws / weaknesses don't get hit because you have things like good maintenance. If you don't have that then maybe next hope is the pilots. Worst case you then you require instrumentation to help reduce risk of the next tragedy. Etc.

This system has resulted in an incredibly safe mode of transport despite many challenges / crazy tolerances etc.

Re: Boeing 2016 internal messages suggest employees may have misled FAA on 737 MAX

#73

Post by bronson » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 4:29 PM UTC

privateSFacct wrote: post #72

bronson wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hype up reliance on US pilot training, but ignore Boeing's intent to NOT train pilots on MCAS (and especially its differences from existing behavior). Plenty of US pilots have gone on record saying that their US-based MAX-8 training left them unprepared to fly the MAX-8 as it was originally delivered. In fact, even the Southwest pilots you mention disagree with you: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-ae…

And despite no training we have what may have been some amazingly good MCAS recoveries within the US during takeoff into things like turbulence triggered MCAS nosedowns - pilots thought their own fault / couldn't understand what was going on but the limited reports in terms of response are great for totally untrained situations. I'm sure pilots were pissed, they should be! I think you are failing to understand how th…

"Amazingly good MCAS recoveries" are a crew success, yes, but they are even more a sign of aircraft and regulatory failure. You aren't acknolwedging that the MAX-8 has serious issues no matter where the pilot learned to fly.

American pilots are top notch. However, the pilots themselves don't want to be put in the position of saving the aircraft, and a big part of the FAA's charter is to ensure that they don't have to.

Does your chain of safety include feeding a twitchy automated system from a single sensor?

Re: Boeing 2016 internal messages suggest employees may have misled FAA on 737 MAX

#74

Post by arcticbull » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 11:05 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #67

arcticbull wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interpreted that as “I may be a bad pilot but MCAS made my trying to fly in the simulators particularly unsuccessful”

Nope he was complaining they made changes to the MCAS without telling him and he was concerned the simulator wasn’t accurate to the planes actual experience. Those are the pilots words and he’s saying the messages are being misinterpreted and cherry picked without context.

That's not what it appears from context.