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Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max crashes killing 157


Nueces River Rat

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1 hour ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Um, how often does shit go pear shaped mid flight?

and another question for the pilots:  if the crashes never happen but MCAS incidents happen at whatever frequency, does Boeing ever get around to fixing it and does it ever get grounded?

i assume it is a land ASAP issue and not a fix it at the destination issue. 

The answer is a fair amount over the course of a career. Some guys have better luck than others. 

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2 hours ago, Bobby_Batronic said:

No. You’re an idiot because you posted that Boeing isn’t blamed for their part in this. That they aren’t being blamed for the majority of this along with the FAA. Never mind the fact that there are numerous posts by numerous posters on the last two pages doing just that. 

So does your reading comprehension suck that bad, or are you issued a helmet before leaving the house each day?

You seem to be taking this all very personally and are constantly insulting anyone you deem unworthy of knowing your true level of pilot expertise. 

Nevertheless, I have a question which hopefully you can come down from your pilot mountain and answer. 

On multiple occasions you have implied that articles over the safety of the system are being leaked by pilot unions (who presumably as a pilot you would support) in relation to contract negotiations with management. 

Kindky explain to the great unwashed how this alleged leaking by unions would enhance the bargaining position of the pilots union vis a vis management. 

Because frankly I don’t get it. Is management looking for less safety on planes? 

Thanks. 

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1 hour ago, C-Man said:

Boeing -- or its insurance -- is probably going to pay north of $1B to the victims in both crashes families so I'd say they're going to get their share of the blame here.

Not if they hire Bobby Batronic to testify at trial as an expert witness pilot to testify how badly the crews fucked up and how he would have saved the plane.

Or maybe they will anyway when the jury doesn’t believe that. Guess we shall see what happens.

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2 hours ago, JimmyJames said:

You seem to be taking this all very personally and are constantly insulting anyone you deem unworthy of knowing your true level of pilot expertise. 

Nevertheless, I have a question which hopefully you can come down from your pilot mountain and answer. 

On multiple occasions you have implied that articles over the safety of the system are being leaked by pilot unions (who presumably as a pilot you would support) in relation to contract negotiations with management. 

Kindky explain to the great unwashed how this alleged leaking by unions would enhance the bargaining position of the pilots union vis a vis management. 

Because frankly I don’t get it. Is management looking for less safety on planes? 

Thanks. 

You’ll find I’m quite cordial until you make an aggressive post pointed at me, and or ask questions pointed gotcha questions that have been debunked, by my very own posting on the very page where you  tried to lay your trap. 

Or you take a pot shot with your snide little expert witness quip above. With regard to that ... life is short, but being a bitch is a choice.

Your latest gotcha query is the perfect snapshot of your posting on this thread.  The comments about unsafe planes were both made with regard to mechanics unions at the airlines and at the assembly plant, and not by a pilot union.  However, put your thinking cap on and see if you can imagine what kind of pressure a unionized group could put on a management group during negotiations by publicly stating that that management groups’ policies jeopardize safety.  And then pull back to the bigger picture where you’ve got a hard on to blame only Boeing for these crashes due to....policies that jeopardize safety.  I’m not expecting neurons to connect, but we might get lucky here.

Btw, aviation management groups by and large would staff their planes with turd chunking monkeys and accept a fatal crash a day if they thought it would net them a few more dollars.  I mean, here’s a thread replete with examples of said groups purchasing aircraft with single sourced safety systems.    

 

 

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22 hours ago, Telegraph_it said:

Automation beyond the scenes is something standard in aviation nowadays. Airbus has it as well. Just google Qantas Flight 72. 

 

22 hours ago, Bobby_Batronic said:

They don’t want to hear it. Not even from an airbus pilot. 

@Bobby_Batronic is there another part on an airplane besides AOA sensors associated so frequently with crashes or other incidents? or we are just hearing about them due to current events?

On 5/19/2019 at 8:51 AM, 4th and 5 said:

 

You sound like my brother who flies the 73 for AA

I'm like...this is an outrage, Boeing should fry!

him: shitty third world pilots, no experience

me: you’d know what to do quickly, from memory?

him: yes, bad pilots. No experience

me: you’d fly the MAX tomorrow? Bet your life on it?

him: sure, no problem

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Moby Ric said:

My bud who flies the 737 for United basically explained it this way to me at dinner.  

Cocky bastards, aren't they?

Eh, I like it. You should think you are the best. I have multiple friends with planes, won't ride with any of them, flying is a fucking hobby. But I'll ride with my brother on his plane. Maybe not in the MAX just yet. He's been doing it since he was a kid and it is in his blood. Dad flew Hueys in Vietnam in an Assault Helicopter Company and then Air Cavalry like he stole it and never expected to return.

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19 minutes ago, 4th and 5 said:

is there another part on an airplane besides AOA sensors associated so frequently with crashes or other incidents? or we are just hearing about them due to current events?

Just luck of the draw I imagine. The Airbus is particularly susceptible to data input errors since the pilot is only a voting  member with regard to aircraft control. It is also triple redundant with AOA input, and the loss of one leads to a checklist that says only “pilot awareness”. 

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28 minutes ago, Bobby_Batronic said:

You’ll find I’m quite cordial until you make an aggressive post pointed at me, and or ask questions pointed gotcha questions that have been debunked, by my very own posting on the very page where you  tried to lay your trap. 

Or you take a pot shot with your snide little expert witness quip above. With regard to that ... life is short, but being a bitch is a choice.

Your latest gotcha query is the perfect snapshot of your posting on this thread.  The comments about unsafe planes were both made with regard to mechanics unions at the airlines and at the assembly plant, and not by a pilot union.  However, put your thinking cap on and see if you can imagine what kind of pressure a unionized group could put on a management group during negotiations by publicly stating that that management groups’ policies jeopardize safety.  And then pull back to the bigger picture where you’ve got a hard on to blame only Boeing for these crashes due to....policies that jeopardize safety.  I’m not expecting neurons to connect, but we might get lucky here.

Btw, aviation management groups by and large would staff their planes with turd chunking monkeys and accept a fatal crash a day if they thought it would net them a few more dollars.  I mean, here’s a thread replete with examples of said groups purchasing aircraft with single sourced safety systems.    

 

 

Thank you for the substantive reply. 

It’s easy to appear to be enemies on the bathroom wall known as the net. 

I bet if we actually met in person we could probably easily resolve these differences of opinion. 

Its just the nature of the medium. 

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On 5/19/2019 at 8:51 AM, 4th and 5 said:

 

You sound like my brother who flies the 73 for AA

I'm like...this is an outrage, Boeing should fry!

him: shitty third world pilots, no experience

me: you’d know what to do quickly, from memory?

him: yes, bad pilots. No experience

me: you’d fly the MAX tomorrow? Bet your life on it?

him: sure, no problem

 

 

 

top gun bite GIF

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I continue to marvel at people arguing some key points and ignoring others by the pilots in this thread...who are not only professionals in this arena, but (even if they don’t fly the 73), have a much higher risk of suffering a crash than 99.999% of the public out there.

Your Mom has the reasoning behind MCAS (while fully acknowledging it was done very poorly) well covered in layman’s terms and Bobby points out that there are other factors at play that leads to these bombastic articles...makes sense to me, then again I’m a dedicated enough nerd on aviation that I like reading FCOMs and approach plates, but y’all keep on keeping on I guess.

Well...I’m an ex-aerospace engineer that designed airplanes for many years and his answers indicate he didn’t understand the point by I was making, so rather than waste time on the thread, I’ll leave it to you guys to debate. Good luck.
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13 hours ago, 4th and 5 said:

 

@Bobby_Batronic is there another part on an airplane besides AOA sensors associated so frequently with crashes or other incidents? or we are just hearing about them due to current events?

 

Cocky bastards, aren't they?

Eh, I like it. You should think you are the best. I have multiple friends with planes, won't ride with any of them, flying is a fucking hobby. But I'll ride with my brother on his plane. Maybe not in the MAX just yet. He's been doing it since he was a kid and it is in his blood. Dad flew Hueys in Vietnam in an Assault Helicopter Company and then Air Cavalry like he stole it and never expected to return.

Not really.  He is actually one of the most dedicated and safest guys I know.  He has busted his ass to get where he is today and takes his job very seriously.  We have been friends for 35 years.

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14 hours ago, Dbeasy said:


Well...I’m an ex-aerospace engineer that designed airplanes for many years and his answers indicate he didn’t understand the point by I was making, so rather than waste time on the thread, I’ll leave it to you guys to debate. Good luck.

I’m curious to hear your take on this situation. Was the design inadequate given known potential pilot or carrier errors? If so, why? If not, why not? 

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oi.

Comedy plaintextpasted for your time to value.  Bezos not holding back on his Seattle neighbors.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/faa-to-bring-international-regulators-together-thursday-to-talk-about-ungrounding-boeing-737-max/2019/05/22/fdf72708-7ccd-11e9-8ede-f4abf521ef17_story.html?utm_term=.d9d1e7eacc5f

European pilots say FAA, Boeing moving too fast toward lifting Boeing 737 Max ban

May 23 at 6:45 PM

An organization representing European pilots said Thursday that the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing have failed to resolve fundamental questions about the oversight and design of the 737 Max, adding that it is “deeply disturbing” that the FAA and manufacturer are pushing to allow the planes back in the sky before first addressing systemic problems.

“How can a design and regulatory setup that originally failed by approving a flawed aeroplane’s entry into service credibly provide the solution without significant reform?” asked officials with the European Cockpit Association, which represents pilots from more than 30 countries.

The criticism came on the day the FAA gathered dozens of the world’s top aviation officials in Fort Worth to offer them its “safety analysis” of the plane and Boeing’s planned fixes to an automated system that officials say contributed to two deadly crashes involving the jet.

Acting FAA Administrator Daniel K. Elwell told officials Thursday that the agency had determined the “technical steps and sequence of events that we anticipate would be involved in ungrounding the Max fleet in the United States,” though he declined to offer a public timetable for when that would occur. He told questioners it could be as early as next month or as late as next year, depending on safety findings.

Among those steps could be a new focus on maintaining external angle of attack indicators, which measure the relative position of the nose of the airplane and the oncoming wind, one meeting participant said.

“We just had 33 countries in one room for eight hours, giving them every piece of information, data, thinking, process that we’ve been going through since the Lion Air accident — nothing unshared, nothing unanswered,” Elwell said, referring to the October crash in Indonesia. “We are going through an incredibly intensive and robust process to make the safety case to unground the Max. We won’t unground the Max until we’ve made that safety case.”

Ali Bahrami, the FAA’s associate administrator for aviation safety, said colleagues from around the world questioned the agency about its analysis of how the flight ban can be lifted safely.

“Rightfully, they’re asking for clarification on the basis for those assumptions, validation of those assumptions,” Bahrami said.

Investigators say faulty information from the external sensors led the anti-stall feature known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System to repeatedly — and mistakenly — force down the noses of the planes that crashed in Indonesia and Ethi­o­pia.

Some participants in Thursday’s meeting, including representatives of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, have indicated to the FAA that they won’t commit to clearing the troubled jet to resume flights until their own safety questions are answered.

EASA spokesman Jagello G. Fayl said the agency would “revoke the suspension” only once it approves design changes proposed by Boeing, finishes its own “additional independent design review,” and is certain pilots are adequately trained.

Boeing has said it has designed a software fix that makes the MCAS feature reliant on two external sensors, rather than one, and is essentially meant to make the system less aggressive to prevent it from overpowering pilots.

Fayl said the European aviation agency is “in continuous contact with the FAA and Boeing.” He said the information provided so far from preliminary investigations into the crashes “is deemed to provide sufficient understanding of the safety issues to be addressed,” though the agency will also analyze “any new information that the investigations make available.”

The issue of what would constitute sufficient pilot training is a crucial one. Among the questions is whether simulators should be required before the planes are allowed back in the air, which would be more expensive and time consuming, yet also more immersive, or whether the needed training could be done on a tablet computer.

Elwell said the issue is under review. He also said that under international protocols the United States will be the first to lift the grounding, since it was the country that originally certified the Max, and that that would happen “only when we determine based on facts and technical data that it is safe to do so.”

After the March 10 crash in Ethi­o­pia, aviation authorities in China, Europe and elsewhere grounded the aircraft. The United States was among the last to do so.

The United States’ reluctance to take quick action earned it criticism and raised questions about the rigor and independence of its decision-making and certification of the 737 Max under a system that grants Boeing far-reaching responsibilities for overseeing the safety of the company’s own products.

Elwell again defended the United States’ decision to wait several days after the Ethiopian crash before grounding the aircraft, saying it was right to wait for data showing similarities with the Indonesia crash. Many of the regulators in the room in Fort Worth had made that same call earlier.

“We were all right, weren’t we?” Elwell said.

The FAA has been seeking to regain the confidence of its peers and its leadership position in aviation safety, and agency officials described what they’ve been doing to restore confidence in the plane they first certified as safe more than two years ago. They also emphasized the importance of international cooperation.

One panel Thursday, for example, included aviation authorities from Brazil, Canada and the European Union discussing ways Boeing’s design changes would be validated, Elwell said.

Boeing and the FAA have faced sharp questions about why pilots were not given detailed information about MCAS before the crashes, and about their shared assurances that the plane was safe to fly.

Ethio­pian Airlines said last week that it was one of the only countries to purchase a Boeing Max 8 simulator, but “it’s very unfortunate” that the simulator “was not configured to simulate the MCAS operation by the aircraft manufacturer.”

The perceived closeness between the United States’ top aviation regulator and one of the nation’s most important manufacturers also remained an issue internationally.

The European Cockpit Association said in its statement Thursday that it was “extremely worrying” that “the manufacturer and the authorities are difficult to distinguish” in the FAA’s certification system, which delegates broad safety oversight responsibilities to Boeing.

“Boeing essentially built a plane to a wish list that would sell well — meeting attractive fuel, cost and performance metrics, with minimal additional pilot training requirements,” said Jon Horne, the cockpit association’s president.

“But the problem is that it seems there was no independent regulator to look at this in-depth from a safety perspective and scrutinize what appears to be a design philosophy driven by commercial priorities,” Horne said. “What has been revealed is an oversight and regulatory setup that leaves pilots’ trust and confidence severely undermined.”

Elwell has strongly defended the FAA’s certification system, saying it has contributed to an extraordinary safety record. A U.S. “technical advisory board,” which includes experts from the U.S. Air Force, NASA, the FAA and the U.S. Department of Transportation who were not involved in the original certification of the Max, will make recommendations that will “directly inform” the FAA’s decision on when to unground the plane, he said.

Several other reviews into the certification system are ongoing, he said, but are “not directly related to the Max return to service.”

Boeing officials said “safety is our shared priority,” and have argued that they followed long-standing certification procedures for the Max that resulted in generations of safe airplanes.

Boeing “continues to fully support airline customers and regulators from around the world” as its software fix is examined and certified, and is supporting “enhanced pilot training and education that will help prevent accidents like these from happening again,” the company said in a statement.

[FAA chief says pilot decisions contributed to Boeing 737 Max crashes]

Over the past two weeks, the company has held seven global conferences for airlines that operate the Max “to answer their questions and provide them with the information needed to safely return the updated Max to service, once FAA certification is complete and approval is gained from regulators around the world,” the company said.

Under congressional questioning last week, Elwell described the uncomfortable position the United States found itself in following the March crash in Ethi­o­pia and a cascade of grounding announcements around the world, even as U.S. officials insisted there was no data to support such moves. And he made a remarkable appeal for global unity regarding the 737 Max and its future.

Given that “there is the perception, at least, of a crisis in confidence, particularly with regard to the airplane, and maybe larger,” the FAA is seeking to “sort of fix a process that didn’t, in my opinion, go in a way that we’re used to internationally,” Elwell said.

“Internationally, we are collaborative 99 percent of the time. When the Ethiopian accident happened, it was not a collaborative process, from Sunday night until Wednesday morning, despite our best efforts and attempts to have conversations. I know countries act, and they act for various reasons,” Elwell said.

[Ethiopian Airlines pushes back on criticism, says pilots followed emergency procedures before March crash]

Elwell was referring to the period following the Ethio­pian Airlines crash on Sunday, March 10, when a succession of countries, seeing similarities between it and the October crash in Indonesia, barred the 737 Max from flying. It was Wednesday, March 13, when President Trump announced that the United States was following suit.

Elwell said the decision to allow the Max to return to service should be done together as much as possible.

“On the ungrounding, I think it’s just critically important that, as a global aviation community, we do what we do best — we collaborate, we exhibit transparency,” Elwell said.

“My hope is that they have the confidence in our work and our analysis to make their ungrounding decisions, if that’s where the discussion is, as close to our decision as possible, because I think that’s important for the world to have some level of confidence,” Elwell said.

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Ethio­pian Airlines said last week that it was one of the only countries to purchase a Boeing Max 8 simulator, but “it’s very unfortunate” that the simulator “was not configured to simulate the MCAS operation by the aircraft manufacturer.”

If the Ethiopians have a simulator with algorhitms, code, and a fidelity model which has no MCAS at all, Boeing is fucked.

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So the plane was easier to recover from a stall than the simulator?

Boeing will take it in the shorts regardless, but, as detailed above, AOA vane failures leading erroneous nose down trim inputs weren’t in anyone’s training syllabus. This is just nibbling at the crust of the of the FUBAR pie. 

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Ethio­pian Airlines said last week that it was one of the only countries to purchase a Boeing Max 8 simulator, but “it’s very unfortunate” that the simulator “was not configured to simulate the MCAS operation by the aircraft manufacturer.”

The first time I saw the airplane was a revenue flight to Anchorage. We don't have a MAX9 sim yet and don't really need one because it's a 900 ER with an unnecessary (not an anti stall) device installed.

 

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Ethio­pian Airlines said last week that it was one of the only countries to purchase a Boeing Max 8 simulator, but “it’s very unfortunate” that the simulator “was not configured to simulate the MCAS operation by the aircraft manufacturer.”

Got damn it next time don't forget to run the update install CD:
s-l300.jpg

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Article ^

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Boeing Built Deadly Assumptions Into 737 Max, Blind to a Late Design Change

After Boeing removed one of the sensors from an automated flight system on its 737 Max, the jet’s designers and regulators still proceeded as if there would be two.CreditCreditRuth Fremson/The New York Times

By Jack Nicas, Natalie Kitroeff, David Gelles and James Glanz
June 1, 2019

SEATTLE — The fatal flaws with Boeing’s 737 Max can be traced to a breakdown late in the plane’s development, when test pilots, engineers and regulators were left in the dark about a fundamental overhaul to an automated system that would ultimately play a role in two crashes.

A year before the plane was finished, Boeing made the system more aggressive and riskier. While the original version relied on data from at least two types of sensors, the ultimate used just one, leaving the system without a critical safeguard. In both doomed flights, pilots struggled as a single damaged sensor sent the planes into irrecoverable nose-dives within minutes, killing 346 people and prompting regulators around the world to ground the Max.

But many people involved in building, testing and approving the system, known as MCAS, said they hadn’t fully understood the changes. Current and former employees at Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration who spoke with The New York Times said they had assumed the system relied on more sensors and would rarely, if ever, activate. Based on those misguided assumptions, many made critical decisions, affecting design, certification and training.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said a former test pilot who worked on the Max. “I wish I had the full story.”

While prosecutors and lawmakers try to piece together what went wrong, the current and former employees point to the single, fateful decision to change the system, which led to a series of design mistakes and regulatory oversights. As Boeing rushed to get the plane done, many of the employees say, they didn’t recognize the importance of the decision. They described a compartmentalized approach, each of them focusing on a small part of the plane. The process left them without a complete view of a critical and ultimately dangerous system.

The company also played down the scope of the system to regulators. Boeing never disclosed the revamp of MCAS to Federal Aviation Administration officials involved in determining pilot training needs, according to three agency officials. When Boeing asked to remove the description of the system from the pilot’s manual, the F.A.A. agreed. As a result, most Max pilots did not know about the software until after the first crash, in October.

“Boeing has no higher priority than the safety of the flying public,” a company spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, said in a statement.

He added that Boeing and regulators had followed standard procedures. “The F.A.A. considered the final configuration and operating parameters of MCAS during Max certification, and concluded that it met all certification and regulatory requirements,” Mr. Johndroe said.

At first, MCAS — Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System — wasn’t a very risky piece of software. The system would trigger only in rare conditions, nudging down the nose of the plane to make the Max handle more smoothly during high-speed moves. And it relied on data from multiple sensors measuring the plane’s acceleration and its angle to the wind, helping to ensure that the software didn’t activate erroneously.

Then Boeing engineers reconceived the system, expanding its role to avoid stalls in all types of situations. They allowed the software to operate throughout much more of the flight. They enabled it to aggressively push down the nose of the plane. And they used only data about the plane’s angle, removing some of the safeguards.

 

Ray Craig, shown in a 2003 Boeing magazine, was the chief test pilot when he put the Max through maneuvers in a flight simulator in 2012.Creditvia Boeing's Aero Magazine
The disasters might have been avoided, if employees and regulators had a better understanding of MCAS.

A test pilot who originally advocated for the expansion of the system didn’t understand how the changes affected its safety. Safety analysts said they would have acted differently if they had known it used just one sensor. Regulators didn’t conduct a formal safety assessment of the new version of MCAS.

The current and former employees, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigations, said that after the first crash, they were stunned to discover MCAS relied on a single sensor.

“That’s nuts,” said an engineer who helped design MCAS.

“I’m shocked,” said a safety analyst who scrutinized it.

“To me, it seems like somebody didn’t understand what they were doing,” said an engineer who assessed the system’s sensors.

 

MCAS Is Born

In 2012, the chief test pilot for the Max had a problem.

During the early development of the 737 Max, the pilot, Ray Craig, a silver-haired retired Navy airman, was trying out high-speed situations on a flight simulator, like maneuvers to avoid an obstacle or to escape a powerful vortex from another plane. While such moves might never be necessary for the pilot of a passenger plane, the F.A.A. requires that a jet handle well in those situations.

But the plane wasn’t flying smoothly, partly because of the Max’s bigger engines. To fix the issue, Boeing decided to use a piece of software. The system was meant to work in the background, so pilots effectively wouldn’t know it was there.

Mr. Craig, who had been with Boeing since 1988, didn’t like it, according to one person involved in the testing. An old-school pilot, he eschewed systems that take control from pilots and would have preferred an aerodynamic fix such as vortex generators, thin fins on the wings. But engineers who tested the Max design in a wind tunnel weren’t convinced they would work, the person said.

Mr. Craig relented. Such high-speed situations were so rare that he figured the software would never actually kick in.

To ensure it didn’t misfire, engineers initially designed MCAS to trigger when the plane exceeded at least two separate thresholds, according to three people who worked on the 737 Max. One involved the plane’s angle to the wind, and the other involved so-called G-force, or the force on the plane that typically comes from accelerating.

The Max would need to hit an exceedingly high G-force that passenger planes would probably never experience. For the jet’s angle, the system took data from the angle-of-attack sensor. The sensor, several inches long, is essentially a small wind vane affixed to the jet’s fuselage.

 

Adding More Power

On a rainy day in late January 2016, thousands of Boeing employees gathered at a runway next to the 737 factory in Renton, Wash. They cheered as the first Max, nicknamed the Spirit of Renton, lifted off for its maiden test flight.

“The flight was a success,” Ed Wilson, the new chief test pilot for the Max, said in a news release at the time. Mr. Wilson, who had tested Boeing fighter jets, had replaced Mr. Craig the previous year.

“The 737 Max just felt right in flight, giving us complete confidence that this airplane will meet our customers’ expectations,” he said.

But a few weeks later, Mr. Wilson and his co-pilot began noticing that something was off, according to a person with direct knowledge of the flights. The Max wasn’t handling well when nearing stalls at low speeds.

In a meeting at Boeing Field in Seattle, Mr. Wilson told engineers that the issue would need to be fixed. He and his co-pilot proposed MCAS, the person said.

The change didn’t elicit much debate in the group, which included just a handful of people. It was considered “a run-of-the-mill adjustment,” according to the person. Instead, the group mostly discussed the logistics of how MCAS would be used in the new scenarios.

“I don’t recall ever having any real debates over whether it was a good idea or not,” the person said.

The change proved pivotal. Expanding the use of MCAS to lower-speed situations required removing the G-force threshold. MCAS now needed to work at low speeds so G-force didn’t apply.

The change meant that a single angle-of-attack sensor was the lone guard against a misfire. Although modern 737 jets have two angle-of-attack sensors, the final version of MCAS took data from just one.

 

Using MCAS at lower speeds also required increasing the power of the system. When a plane is flying slowly, flight controls are less sensitive, and far more movement is needed to steer. Think of turning a car’s steering wheel at 20 miles an hour versus 70.

The original version of MCAS could move the stabilizer — the part of the tail that controls the vertical direction of the jet — a maximum of about 0.6 degrees in about 10 seconds. The new version could move the stabilizer up to 2.5 degrees in 10 seconds.

Test pilots aren’t responsible for dealing with the ramifications of such changes. Their job is to ensure the plane handles smoothly. Other colleagues are responsible for making the changes, and still others for assessing their impact on safety.

Boeing declined to say whether the changes had prompted a new internal safety analysis.

While the F.A.A. officials in charge of training didn’t know about the changes, another arm of the agency involved in certification did. But it did not conduct a safety analysis on the changes.

The F.A.A. had already approved the previous version of MCAS. And the agency’s rules didn’t require it to take a second look because the changes didn’t affect how the plane operated in extreme situations.

“The F.A.A. was aware of Boeing’s MCAS design during the certification of the 737 Max,” the agency said in a statement. “Consistent with regulatory requirements, the agency evaluated data and conducted flight tests within the normal flight envelope that included MCAS activation in low-speed stall and other flight conditions.”

 

‘External Events’
After engineers installed the second version of MCAS, Mr. Wilson and his co-pilot took the 737 Max for a spin.

The flights were uneventful. They tested two potential failures of MCAS: a high-speed maneuver in which the system doesn’t trigger, and a low-speed stall when it activates but then freezes. In both cases, the pilots were able to easily fly the jet, according to a person with knowledge of the flights.

In those flights, they did not test what would happen if MCAS activated as a result of a faulty angle-of-attack sensor — a problem in the two crashes.

Boeing engineers did consider such a possibility in their safety analysis of the original MCAS. They classified the event as “hazardous,” one rung below the most serious designation of catastrophic, according to two people. In regulatory-speak, it meant that MCAS could trigger erroneously less often than once in 10 million flight hours.

 

That probability may have underestimated the risk of so-called external events that have damaged sensors in the past, such as collisions with birds, bumps from ramp stairs or mechanics’ stepping on them. While part of the assessment considers such incidents, they are not included in the probability. Investigators suspect the angle-of-attack sensor was hit on the doomed Ethiopian Airlines flight in March.

Bird strikes on angle-of-attack sensors are relatively common.

A Times review of two F.A.A. databases found hundreds of reports of bent, cracked, sheared-off, poorly installed or otherwise malfunctioning angle-of-attack sensors on commercial aircraft over three decades.

Since 1990, one database has recorded 1,172 instances when birds — meadowlarks, geese, sandpipers, pelicans and turkey vultures, among others — damaged sensors of various kinds, with 122 strikes on angle-of-attack vanes. The other database showed 85 problems with angle-of-attack sensors on Boeing aircraft, including 38 on 737s since 1995.

And the public databases don’t necessarily capture the extent of incidents involving angle-of-attack sensors, since the F.A.A. has additional information. “I feel confidence in saying that there’s a lot more that were struck,” said Richard Dolbeer, a wildlife specialist who has spent over 20 years studying the issue at the United States Department of Agriculture, which tracks the issue for the F.A.A.

 

A Simple Request

On March 30, 2016, Mark Forkner, the Max’s chief technical pilot, sent an email to senior F.A.A. officials with a seemingly innocuous request: Would it be O.K. to remove MCAS from the pilot’s manual?

The officials, who helped determine pilot training needs, had been briefed on the original version of MCAS months earlier. Mr. Forkner and Boeing never mentioned to them that MCAS was in the midst of an overhaul, according to the three F.A.A. officials.

Under the impression that the system was relatively benign and rarely used, the F.A.A. eventually approved Mr. Forkner’s request, the three officials said.

Boeing wanted to limit changes to the Max, from previous versions of the 737. Anything major could have required airlines to spend millions of dollars on additional training. Boeing, facing competitive pressure from Airbus, tried to avoid that.

Mr. Forkner, a former F.A.A. employee, was at the front lines of this effort. As the chief technical pilot, he was the primary liaison with the F.A.A. on training and worked on the pilot’s manual.

“The pressure on us,” said Rick Ludtke, a cockpit designer on the Max, “was huge.”

“And that all got funneled through Mark,” Mr. Ludtke added. “And the pushback and resistance from the F.A.A. got funneled through Mark.”

 

Like others, Mr. Forkner may have had an imperfect understanding of MCAS.

Technical pilots at Boeing like him previously flew planes regularly, two former employees said. “Then the company made a strategic change where they decided tech pilots would no longer be active pilots,” Mr. Ludtke said.

Mr. Forkner largely worked on flight simulators, which didn’t fully mimic MCAS.

It is unclear whether Mr. Forkner, now a pilot for Southwest Airlines, was aware of the changes to the system.

Mr. Forkner’s attorney, David Gerger, said his client did not mislead the F.A.A. “Mark is an Air Force veteran who put safety first and was transparent in his work,” Mr. Gerger said.

“In thousands of tests, nothing like this had ever happened,” he said. “Based on what he was told and what he knew, he never dreamed that it could.”

The F.A.A. group that worked with Mr. Forkner made some decisions based on an incomplete view of the system. It never tested a malfunctioning sensor, according to the three officials. It didn’t require additional training.

William Schubbe, a senior F.A.A. official who worked with the training group, told pilots and airlines in an April meeting in Washington, D.C., that Boeing had underplayed MCAS, according to a recording reviewed by The Times.

“The way the system was presented to the F.A.A.,” Mr. Schubbe said, “the Boeing Corporation said this thing is so transparent to the pilot that there’s no need to demonstrate any kind of failing.”

The F.A.A. officials involved in training weren’t the only ones operating with outdated information.

An April 2017 maintenance manual that Boeing provided to airlines refers to the original version of MCAS. By that point, Boeing had started delivering the planes. The current manual is updated.

Boeing continued to defend MCAS and its reliance on a single sensor after the first crash, involving Indonesia’s Lion Air.

At a tense meeting with the pilots’ union at American Airlines in November, Boeing executives dismissed concerns. “It’s been reported that it’s a single point failure, but it is not considered by design or certification a single point,” said Mike Sinnett, a Boeing vice president, according to a recording of the meeting.

His reasoning? The pilots were the backup.

“Because the function and the trained pilot work side by side and are part of the system,” he said.

Four months later, a second 737 Max crashed in Ethiopia. Within days, the Max was grounded around the world.

As part of the fix, Boeing has reworked MCAS to more closely resemble the first version. It will be less aggressive, and it will rely on two sensors.

Jack Nicas reported from Seattle, and Natalie Kitroeff, David Gelles and James Glanz from New York. Julie Creswell, Tiffany Hsu and Agustin Armendariz contributed reporting from New York. Kitty Bennett and Alain Delaquérière contributed research.

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4 hours ago, retread said:

“Boeing has no higher priority than the safety of the flying public,” a company spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, said in a statement.

Hahahahahaha.

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Using MCAS at lower speeds also required increasing the power of the system. When a plane is flying slowly, flight controls are less sensitive, and far more movement is needed to steer. Think of turning a car’s steering wheel at 20 miles an hour versus 70.

 

Is this the worst analogy ever printed?

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22 hours ago, tucker said:

Does this finally put to rest the theory that the private sector would do best for our safety as the financial repercussions would be so consequential 

You realize that the government body, who you apparently trust to do right by the people, completely abdicated their responsibility for oversight  in this whole fustercluck right?

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You realize that the government body, who you apparently trust to do right by the people, completely abdicated their responsibility for oversight  in this whole fustercluck right?

 

You keep saying that but Boeing played a key role both directly over policy and indirectly with campaign contributions to key elected officials. Congress then cuts agency funding. The practice is called “regulatory capture.”

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3 hours ago, Eskimohorn said:

 

You keep saying that but Boeing played a key role both directly over policy and indirectly with campaign contributions to key elected officials. Congress then cuts agency funding. The practice is called “regulatory capture.”

Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that those things weren’t possible with other government agencies....

 

People were involved.  They failed.  Until you cure the human condition you can forget any pretense of untouchables running a government body without interference from the groups  being regulated. 

 

Edited by Bobby_Batronic
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Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that those things weren’t possible with other government agencies....
 
People were involved.  They failed.  Until you cure the human condition you can forget any pretense of untouchables running a government body without interference from the groups  being regulated. 
 


Would you say the Shah of Iran abdicated his throne? No, he was overthrown. Stop saying the FAA abdicated their role as if it made a decision.

Boeing played a huge role in transforming how their industry is regulated by the Federal government. And, was actively campaigning (and still is) to keep their planes from being grounded when the rest of the world already had done what was necessary and obvious.
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Did someone in the FAA, say someone with oversight authority governing Boeing, decide to let Boeing self certify?  Why yes. Yes they did. Was it their job to actually perform the oversight themselves. Why yes. Yes it was.

You don’t get to say that evil, money hungry companies put profits before safety while simultaneously absolving the agency charged with oversight when said agency passed of its responsibility to said evil company. 

 

Btw, the second definition in the dictionary for abdicate complete with use in a sentence is...

 

fail to fulfill or undertake (a responsibility or duty).
"the government was accused of abdicating its responsibility"
 
 
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People both at Boeing and at the FAA should go to prison. The blood of all the victims is on their hands. And if Boeing or any “industry group” gave legislators money so that they would cut the FAA budget in order to force its hand and allow the industry to police itself, then the people who paid should go to prison, and the people who got paid should go to prison. But who am I kidding, nobody will go to prison.

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more 737 problems reported over the weekend


https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/02/boeing-notifies-faa-of-737-max-parts-that-may-be-susceptible-to-failure.html

Quote

More than 300 Boeing 737 jets, including the Max, may have faulty wing parts that don’t meet strength and durability standards, the Federal Aviation Administration said Sunday, following a joint investigation with the aircraft manufacturer.

The FAA plans to order airlines to remove and replace the parts if their aircraft are affected, the agency said.

 

As many as 148 parts made by a Boeing supplier could be “susceptible to premature failure or cracks,” the FAA said in a statement about the slat tracks.

Stock reaction is BA down almost 10 this morning to about  <$335/share. This makes it about a 25% price drop from the 52 week high, or over $60 billion in lost market value. Seems like those bean counters screwed the pooch on this calculation. I was looking to buy some at around $350, but have decided to wait to see if there is another shoe to drop on problems with the new airframe errr updated version of the 737

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Did someone in the FAA, say someone with oversight authority governing Boeing, decide to let Boeing self certify?  Why yes. Yes they did. Was it their job to actually perform the oversight themselves. Why yes. Yes it was.
You don’t get to say that evil, money hungry companies put profits before safety while simultaneously absolving the agency charged with oversight when said agency passed of its responsibility to said evil company. 
 
Btw, the second definition in the dictionary for abdicate complete with use in a sentence is...
 
fail to fulfill or undertake (a responsibility or duty). "the government was accused of abdicating its responsibility"    


The FAA does not have the minimum resources, expertise, nor the will to properly oversee Boeing’s operations, because Boeing. They have captured the FAA with specific lobbying, public relations, and soft lobbying efforts (i.e. approving FAA budget cuts) so that they can self-regulate. And why wouldn’t they?
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18 minutes ago, Eskimohorn said:

 


The FAA does not have the minimum resources, expertise, nor the will to properly oversee Boeing’s operations, because Boeing. They have captured the FAA with specific lobbying, public relations, and soft lobbying efforts (i.e. approving FAA budget cuts) so that they can self-regulate. And why wouldn’t they?

 

Yeah, it’s not only Boeing I’m sure.  It’s not a one to one relationship like you are trying to ascribe. And regardless of how it’s done, it further proves the point that some untouchable agency doesn’t exist to regulate facets of our life. 

 

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3 minutes ago, Bobby_Batronic said:

Yeah, it’s not only Boeing I’m sure.  It’s not a one to one relationship like you are trying to ascribe. And regardless of how it’s done, it further proves the point that some untouchable agency doesn’t exist to regulate facets of our life. 

 

Phfffft... tell that to the IRS.....

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