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E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

nytimes.com

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Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#81
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a disincentive to buy American aircraft. If you're a reasonably sized international airline, it seems like a reasonable possibility that you'd have to (or want to) land in a territory that the US in unfavourable toward. Why take the risk?

In the Iran case, there are similar sanctions from the EU, so the Airbus A320 family are also out of the question. And if you want something the size of the best selling variants of the A320 family and 737 MAX you have essentially no choice.

And whats more, even the Russian jets are 'not russian enough' so Iranians could buy them[0].

"The US approval for the transaction was needed, as Sukhoi aircraft contained more than 10% (22%, according to state news RIA) of American-made parts."

[0] https://www.aerotime.aero/ina.hladyshava/22228-not-russian-e...

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#82
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like Norwegian is already asking its 737 Max flights to return to their departing airports, at least according to this recent screenshot I found on reddit [1] [1] https://i.redd.it/6gtecemacpl21.png

Yikes. How would ya like to be a passenger on one of those planes: "We're returning to our departure airport because this airplane has been grounded."

[deleted]

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The MCAS system in the new 737-MAX's only have 2 AoA sensors That's pretty damning if true.

This is what i was told (it was something like "they have 2 flight computers, and 1 AoA sensor hooked up to each"). The reddit thread linked from elsewhere says the same thing. The preliminary report on the Lion air crash ( http://knkt.dephub.go.id/knkt/ntsc_aviation/baru/pre/2018/20... ) says they replaced and tested the AoA sensor 2 days prior. They repeatedly refer to the AoA sensor using only singular nouns every…

Some acquaintance of mine told me – which I really can't believe given the seriousness of aviation security – that there is in fact just one sensor.

If true than that's preposterous.

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me also enter the impopular Null Theory: Maybe there is nothing in particular wrong with these planes, and they were just hit with two random accidents.

Malaysian Airlines would say that's always a possibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370 2 Boeing 777-200ERs down within three months of each other (one was shot down by Russia and the other is speculation)

The fact that the safety record of the 777 was near perfect before 2014 honestly makes me more concerned about what happened to MH370 if it's an inherent fault.

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's definitely a mischaracterization of what the airlines do. Anyone that has been in a cockpit of a plane knows that you fly by checklists. There's a checklist procedure for almost any scenario they will run into (of course not every). This exact issue was seen by other airlines and the pilots followed the checklist procedures to safely regain control of the plane as expected. In theory, these checklists are opti…

I mean, initially pilots were not informed this system existed. Certainly the assumptions that went into that decision seem to match up with what the person above you is describing.

In theory (not saying I agree), the "regain control checklist" is very similar before and after this change which is apart of why they did not see a need to communicate this until after the 1st crash.

Reviewing the video below - it appears to still line up with this. He doesn't mention the actual memory items changing. His explanation is the pilots starting using the wrong memory items because of information overload.

Example - They could have been going through the stall memory items instead of the runaway vertical stabilizer memory items.

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#86
post #38
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a reference to confirm that this was a knee-jerk/optics reaction, out of interest? (definitely curious to see how airlines/authorities are reaching these decisions) The MCAS system and the way it was introduced sound a little like a patch, and slightly haphazard. While training & runbooks and procedures are important, take-off is a busy time, and the Max-8 is (afaik) intended to operate very-nearly-like a…

Over 300 people dead sounds pretty serious to me. It's probably safest to ground the plane model until we know more.

I should have been clearer here; I was responding to the parent post's assignation of blame towards the airline/air authority.

Generally do agree with grounding the Max 8 fleet as a precaution, and also given the poor engineering smell around the MCAS.

But not keen to assign blame/failure and damage reputations until there are credible investigation results, or without providing references.

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#87
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, that was the big selling point since airlines hate retraining pilots. Totally backfired in that regard though.

It sounds really stupid for Boeing if you put it that way. I can imagine it looks good on the marketing material, 'no pilot retraining required!', but as far as I understand from all the analysis so far, it's actually not that hard to disable the new MCAS system and prevent a crash. As a pilot you only need to know it is there, and what happens if it somehow fails. I would be surprised if they had sold even a single…

From what I understand, there were design decisions that were reworked to be more similar and keep the same type class as a requirement of customer 1, Southwest Airlines who is a major consumer of the max 8.

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#88
post #5

Does anyone actually know or suspect what's wrong with these planes? Hardware issue? Software issue?

The engines are larger than previous models and had to be moved forward, which causes it to (potentially) stall, so they implemented an anti-stalling mechanism called MCAS which relies on a particular sensor, which can malfunction potentially. They also didn't inform pilots that this system even existed which means they have trouble diagnosing the problem and will potentially only make it worse by trying other things…

If yesterday's Post Reports podcast [0] is anything to go by, there's also an issue with the autopilot refusing to give back control to the pilot in some situations because of what you just mentioned, on the basis that it would spare their clients the associated pilot retraining costs.

Picture being at the wheel of a self-driving car, with an obvious crash looming, and the car refusing to let you, the driver, take back control and steer the wheels or step on the brakes.

[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/questio...

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#89
post #5

Does anyone actually know or suspect what's wrong with these planes? Hardware issue? Software issue?

The engines are larger than previous models and had to be moved forward, which causes it to (potentially) stall, so they implemented an anti-stalling mechanism called MCAS which relies on a particular sensor, which can malfunction potentially. They also didn't inform pilots that this system even existed which means they have trouble diagnosing the problem and will potentially only make it worse by trying other things…

Are there any statistics available for how often there has been a need for a pilot to disengage MCAS?

If we speculate (e.g. before the facts are in) that this was similar in cause to Lion air incident, then I would be curious to know how often AoA sensor has malfunctioned and|or MCAS has otherwise gone haywire and pilots have needed to revert to manual control during the two years of service MAX8s have had.

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