Is the Boeing 737 Max a lemon suitable only for suicidal thrill-seekers

[Denizen]

More details are emerging of the design of the 737 Max that is causing a stall condition at low speed. The Indonesian pilots experienced difficulty and erratic performance on take-off.

Is Boeing trying to hide its culpability for the Lion Air crash in Indonesia?

Is the FAA complicit by not acting more strongly to ground 737s until the problems were identified and elaborated?

Boeing’s New Jet Hit Problem in Tests Before Fatal Crash

Before Fatal Lion Air Crash, Boeing’s New Jet Hit Problem in Tests
The 737 MAX-8 presented pilots with a challenge that the company thought could be solved with a system that airline pilots need not know about.

Clive Irving
11.23.18 10:31 AM ET

When Boeing pilots were flight testing the new MAX-8 version of the venerable 737 jet they discovered a problem that made the airplane difficult to handle when its speed dropped to a point where it was in danger of triggering an aerodynamic stall, and a loss of control that could lead to a crash.

This is revealed in new reporting by Aviation Week. The report suggests that in order to mitigate the problem Boeing introduced a new system to the flight controls – a system called Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, MCAS, that is at the center of the investigation of the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 that plunged into the Java Sea, killing all 189 people on board.

Pilots flying the more than 200 MAX-8s now in service with airlines across the world have said that they were unaware that the MCAS had been installed and were never instructed in how to use it. That would have included the Lion Air pilots. They were also, therefore, unaware of the reasons why Boeing decided to add the MCAS system.

KILLER COMPUTER
Boeing Didn’t Tell Doomed Pilots About Dangerous System
Clive Irving
The problems that were revealed in the test flights arose from the adoption of new engines for the MAX series of the 737. They are larger, heavier and more powerful than on earlier models of the jet.

Fixing these engines to the 737’s wings put Boeing’s engineers up against some unique and challenging problems caused by the age of the jet’s basic design, originating in the mid-1960s.

The 737 sits lower to the ground than other Boeing jets. This is because its designers wanted baggage and cargo to be hand-loaded from the tarmac without mechanical assistance, since the airplane was intended to bring jet service for the first time to many small airports not then equipped for that purpose.

This innovation swiftly became pointless as airports became better equipped and, more vitally, the 737 became the best-selling single-aisle jet in history and Boeing’s most enduring cash cow.

However, the 737’s shorter ground clearance, just 17 inches, became problematic as jet engines grew larger. This could have been countered by a new fuselage and normal length landing gear. But although Boeing introduced new wings, tail surfaces and many other upgrades the fuselage and landing gear remained fundamentally unchanged over decades.

A final crunch moment came with the MAX series. The performance of the 737 was greatly enhanced by the new engines, jointly made by General Electric and the French company Safran, providing a new sweet spot for airlines who wanted the improved economies of a small jet that could fly longer routes, often over oceans.
But those virtues were possible only with an increase in the size of the engines. The size of the MAX engines, specifically the diameter of the huge fan blades at the front, is nearly 70 inches, compared to 61 inches on the older engines, and they weigh 849 pounds more.

In order to attach the new engines and still get a safe distance between them and the ground Boeing lengthened the nose wheel by 9.5 inches and, crucially, had to move the engines, inside their bulging nacelles, further forward from the wing.

It now appears that the changes in the 737’s low-speed handling characteristics resulted from this shift in the weight of the engines, as well as the effects of their increased power.
(In response to questions from The Daily Beast, Boeing declined to confirm the details of the Aviation Week report.)

Normally the onset of an aerodynamic stall is indicated by “stick shake” – the joystick, more accurately the yoke, begins to shake and pilots are trained to instinctively increase speed and push the nose down to recover stability.

As a result of the test flights Boeing seems to have decided that the airplane itself should be able to sense this problem and cure it through its automated flight management system, using MCAS to move the horizontal stabilizer to push down the nose. What they apparently did not anticipate was the possibility that an erroneous message from another system, an angle of attack (the pitch of the wings) sensor, could initiate action by the MCAS, unknown to pilots.

Who's really flying?
This decision goes to the core of a continuing debate among pilots and safety experts about how far cockpit automation should intervene between pilots and the airplane to detect and correct problems, like this one, that are directly related to retaining control in a potentially dangerous sequence of events.

Many details of a modern jet’s automation systems are buried layers down in architecture that pilots are not required to understand or even know about – unless they turn out to have a potentially dangerous role in some circumstances.

“Loss of control” is now the last remaining consistent cause of crashes. Other once fatal events like flying into unseen terrain or into undetected wind shear on approach to landing have been virtually eliminated by technology that automatically gives the airplane and pilots a new level of situational awareness.

LOST FOR ANSWERS
Did a Computer Send Lion Air Flight Into a Death Dive?
Clive Irving
One of several studies directed at loss of control made in the last decade, led by the Federal Aviation Administration, warned that “A high level of competency in hand-flying (both the physical and the cognitive aspects) is necessary for safe flight operations, regardless of the level of autoflight equipment installed…[italics added for emphasis].”

But the challenge to pilots becomes a lot more acute if they are unaware of a critical new system, as in the case of MCAS in the 737 MAX-8.

Aviation Week quotes a pilot who has flown three generations of the 737 who pointed out that a pilot confronted with the “stick shake” alert of an imminent stall could be unaware that the MCAS was activated. He said this was “the most insidious problem” in the new system that “makes the aircraft more difficult to control.”

Keeping a secret in the sky
Boeing president and CEO Dennis Muilenburg has pushed back against the idea that the company had intentionally withheld information about the new system in the MAX-8. In an internal memo directed to employees he said, “You may have seen media reports that we intentionally withheld information about airplane functionality from our customers. That is simply untrue. The relevant function is described in the [operations manual] and we routinely engage customers about how to operate our airplanes safely.”

This seems, at best, disingenuous. The FAA had to issue an emergency directive to airlines to update their flight manuals according to new instructions from Boeing. Muilenburg seems to be alluding to “runaway trim procedures” common to all models of the 737, a series of manual interventions required by the pilot in the event of an upset in the jet’s stability.

Another pilot with a deep knowledge of the 737’s systems told The Daily Beast that Boeing would be looking at whether the Lion Air pilots should have been able to have recovered from the problem by using the runaway trim procedure “in a timely manner.”

But, as the veteran 737 pilot pointed out to Aviation Week, if a pilot is unaware that the problem has been triggered by the MCAS, and was unaware even of that system’s existence, he may not understand the crisis he is confronting in a situation that requires a rapid series of manual actions to correct it.

These are issues that the investigation into the Lion Air crash is attempting to understand in the absence of the one of the most relevant piece of evidence: the cockpit voice recorder. This remains lying at the bottom of the Java Sea (again underlining the aviation industry’s failure to adopt real time streaming of key data to ground bases). Retrieving that data would reveal how the pilots lost control in the final minutes of the short flight on the climb out of Jakarta.

Earlier this week Boeing cancelled a conference call with airlines intended to explain its position on the MAX-8’s flight control systems. It now plans to brief airlines, region by region, next week. More than 90 airlines have ordered the jet, making a total so far of 4,783 due for delivery over the next few years. More than 10,000 737s have been produced since the first flight in 1967.

Its safety record has been outstanding. As each successive model entered service the accident rate has decreased and now stands at 9 fatal accidents for every million flights. The pressure is on Boeing to reassure the airlines – and the public – that the problems with the MAX-8 will not setback that reputation and will be swiftly understood and explained transparently.

“Boeing needs to communicate more and better – not less” Jim Corridore of the aviation research firm CFRA told the Financial Times.

A pilot told the Seattle Times: “I’ve been flying the MAX-8 a couple of times per month for almost a year now, and I’m sitting here thinking, what the hell else don’t I know about this thing?” ...

 

[miketx]

Keep air speed above stall speed.

 

[fncceo]

More details are emerging of the design of the 737 Max that is causing a stall condition at low speed.

All airplanes stall at low speed.

What constitutes low speed is different for every aircraft.

 

[Mikeoxenormous]

More details are emerging of the design of the 737 Max that is causing a stall condition at low speed. The Indonesian pilots experienced difficulty and erratic performance on take-off.

Is Boeing trying to hide its culpability for the Lion Air crash in Indonesia?

Is the FAA complicit by not acting more strongly to ground 737s until the problems were identified and elaborated?

Boeing’s New Jet Hit Problem in Tests Before Fatal Crash

Before Fatal Lion Air Crash, Boeing’s New Jet Hit Problem in Tests
The 737 MAX-8 presented pilots with a challenge that the company thought could be solved with a system that airline pilots need not know about.

Clive Irving
11.23.18 10:31 AM ET

When Boeing pilots were flight testing the new MAX-8 version of the venerable 737 jet they discovered a problem that made the airplane difficult to handle when its speed dropped to a point where it was in danger of triggering an aerodynamic stall, and a loss of control that could lead to a crash.

This is revealed in new reporting by Aviation Week. The report suggests that in order to mitigate the problem Boeing introduced a new system to the flight controls – a system called Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, MCAS, that is at the center of the investigation of the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 that plunged into the Java Sea, killing all 189 people on board.

Pilots flying the more than 200 MAX-8s now in service with airlines across the world have said that they were unaware that the MCAS had been installed and were never instructed in how to use it. That would have included the Lion Air pilots. They were also, therefore, unaware of the reasons why Boeing decided to add the MCAS system.

KILLER COMPUTER
Boeing Didn’t Tell Doomed Pilots About Dangerous System
Clive Irving
The problems that were revealed in the test flights arose from the adoption of new engines for the MAX series of the 737. They are larger, heavier and more powerful than on earlier models of the jet.

Fixing these engines to the 737’s wings put Boeing’s engineers up against some unique and challenging problems caused by the age of the jet’s basic design, originating in the mid-1960s.

The 737 sits lower to the ground than other Boeing jets. This is because its designers wanted baggage and cargo to be hand-loaded from the tarmac without mechanical assistance, since the airplane was intended to bring jet service for the first time to many small airports not then equipped for that purpose.

This innovation swiftly became pointless as airports became better equipped and, more vitally, the 737 became the best-selling single-aisle jet in history and Boeing’s most enduring cash cow.

However, the 737’s shorter ground clearance, just 17 inches, became problematic as jet engines grew larger. This could have been countered by a new fuselage and normal length landing gear. But although Boeing introduced new wings, tail surfaces and many other upgrades the fuselage and landing gear remained fundamentally unchanged over decades.

A final crunch moment came with the MAX series. The performance of the 737 was greatly enhanced by the new engines, jointly made by General Electric and the French company Safran, providing a new sweet spot for airlines who wanted the improved economies of a small jet that could fly longer routes, often over oceans.
But those virtues were possible only with an increase in the size of the engines. The size of the MAX engines, specifically the diameter of the huge fan blades at the front, is nearly 70 inches, compared to 61 inches on the older engines, and they weigh 849 pounds more.

In order to attach the new engines and still get a safe distance between them and the ground Boeing lengthened the nose wheel by 9.5 inches and, crucially, had to move the engines, inside their bulging nacelles, further forward from the wing.

It now appears that the changes in the 737’s low-speed handling characteristics resulted from this shift in the weight of the engines, as well as the effects of their increased power.
(In response to questions from The Daily Beast, Boeing declined to confirm the details of the Aviation Week report.)

Normally the onset of an aerodynamic stall is indicated by “stick shake” – the joystick, more accurately the yoke, begins to shake and pilots are trained to instinctively increase speed and push the nose down to recover stability.

As a result of the test flights Boeing seems to have decided that the airplane itself should be able to sense this problem and cure it through its automated flight management system, using MCAS to move the horizontal stabilizer to push down the nose. What they apparently did not anticipate was the possibility that an erroneous message from another system, an angle of attack (the pitch of the wings) sensor, could initiate action by the MCAS, unknown to pilots.

Who's really flying?
This decision goes to the core of a continuing debate among pilots and safety experts about how far cockpit automation should intervene between pilots and the airplane to detect and correct problems, like this one, that are directly related to retaining control in a potentially dangerous sequence of events.

Many details of a modern jet’s automation systems are buried layers down in architecture that pilots are not required to understand or even know about – unless they turn out to have a potentially dangerous role in some circumstances.

“Loss of control” is now the last remaining consistent cause of crashes. Other once fatal events like flying into unseen terrain or into undetected wind shear on approach to landing have been virtually eliminated by technology that automatically gives the airplane and pilots a new level of situational awareness.

LOST FOR ANSWERS
Did a Computer Send Lion Air Flight Into a Death Dive?
Clive Irving
One of several studies directed at loss of control made in the last decade, led by the Federal Aviation Administration, warned that “A high level of competency in hand-flying (both the physical and the cognitive aspects) is necessary for safe flight operations, regardless of the level of autoflight equipment installed…[italics added for emphasis].”

But the challenge to pilots becomes a lot more acute if they are unaware of a critical new system, as in the case of MCAS in the 737 MAX-8.

Aviation Week quotes a pilot who has flown three generations of the 737 who pointed out that a pilot confronted with the “stick shake” alert of an imminent stall could be unaware that the MCAS was activated. He said this was “the most insidious problem” in the new system that “makes the aircraft more difficult to control.”

Keeping a secret in the sky
Boeing president and CEO Dennis Muilenburg has pushed back against the idea that the company had intentionally withheld information about the new system in the MAX-8. In an internal memo directed to employees he said, “You may have seen media reports that we intentionally withheld information about airplane functionality from our customers. That is simply untrue. The relevant function is described in the [operations manual] and we routinely engage customers about how to operate our airplanes safely.”

This seems, at best, disingenuous. The FAA had to issue an emergency directive to airlines to update their flight manuals according to new instructions from Boeing. Muilenburg seems to be alluding to “runaway trim procedures” common to all models of the 737, a series of manual interventions required by the pilot in the event of an upset in the jet’s stability.

Another pilot with a deep knowledge of the 737’s systems told The Daily Beast that Boeing would be looking at whether the Lion Air pilots should have been able to have recovered from the problem by using the runaway trim procedure “in a timely manner.”

But, as the veteran 737 pilot pointed out to Aviation Week, if a pilot is unaware that the problem has been triggered by the MCAS, and was unaware even of that system’s existence, he may not understand the crisis he is confronting in a situation that requires a rapid series of manual actions to correct it.

These are issues that the investigation into the Lion Air crash is attempting to understand in the absence of the one of the most relevant piece of evidence: the cockpit voice recorder. This remains lying at the bottom of the Java Sea (again underlining the aviation industry’s failure to adopt real time streaming of key data to ground bases). Retrieving that data would reveal how the pilots lost control in the final minutes of the short flight on the climb out of Jakarta.

Earlier this week Boeing cancelled a conference call with airlines intended to explain its position on the MAX-8’s flight control systems. It now plans to brief airlines, region by region, next week. More than 90 airlines have ordered the jet, making a total so far of 4,783 due for delivery over the next few years. More than 10,000 737s have been produced since the first flight in 1967.

Its safety record has been outstanding. As each successive model entered service the accident rate has decreased and now stands at 9 fatal accidents for every million flights. The pressure is on Boeing to reassure the airlines – and the public – that the problems with the MAX-8 will not setback that reputation and will be swiftly understood and explained transparently.

“Boeing needs to communicate more and better – not less” Jim Corridore of the aviation research firm CFRA told the Financial Times.

A pilot told the Seattle Times: “I’ve been flying the MAX-8 a couple of times per month for almost a year now, and I’m sitting here thinking, what the hell else don’t I know about this thing?” ...

I remember when Alaska Air had that crash, they tried to pin it on Boeing, but it was found out that they Alaska Air union mechanics didnt follow the PM schedule and went about 3 months past due. Jets can only work when are properly serviced and instructions followed to the T.. All during my 11 years of working on jets, not one of mine ever went down....

Oh yeah, working in Saudi Arabia on their F-15s I found electrical tape on their wiring in the wheel wells, a strict no no, because hydraulic fluid destroys the stickiness of the tape.. What can you say about camel jockeys that have no clue about technical stuff....

Alaska Airlines Crash That Killed 88 Is Tied to Long Failure to Lubricate Tail-Control Part

 

[fncceo]

I'm getting the impression that Denizen is an angry, angry man.

 

[Denizen]

More details are emerging of the design of the 737 Max that is causing a stall condition at low speed. The Indonesian pilots experienced difficulty and erratic performance on take-off.

Is Boeing trying to hide its culpability for the Lion Air crash in Indonesia?

Is the FAA complicit by not acting more strongly to ground 737s until the problems were identified and elaborated?

Boeing’s New Jet Hit Problem in Tests Before Fatal Crash

Before Fatal Lion Air Crash, Boeing’s New Jet Hit Problem in Tests
The 737 MAX-8 presented pilots with a challenge that the company thought could be solved with a system that airline pilots need not know about.

Clive Irving
11.23.18 10:31 AM ET

When Boeing pilots were flight testing the new MAX-8 version of the venerable 737 jet they discovered a problem that made the airplane difficult to handle when its speed dropped to a point where it was in danger of triggering an aerodynamic stall, and a loss of control that could lead to a crash.

This is revealed in new reporting by Aviation Week. The report suggests that in order to mitigate the problem Boeing introduced a new system to the flight controls – a system called Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, MCAS, that is at the center of the investigation of the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 that plunged into the Java Sea, killing all 189 people on board.

Pilots flying the more than 200 MAX-8s now in service with airlines across the world have said that they were unaware that the MCAS had been installed and were never instructed in how to use it. That would have included the Lion Air pilots. They were also, therefore, unaware of the reasons why Boeing decided to add the MCAS system.

KILLER COMPUTER
Boeing Didn’t Tell Doomed Pilots About Dangerous System
Clive Irving
The problems that were revealed in the test flights arose from the adoption of new engines for the MAX series of the 737. They are larger, heavier and more powerful than on earlier models of the jet.

Fixing these engines to the 737’s wings put Boeing’s engineers up against some unique and challenging problems caused by the age of the jet’s basic design, originating in the mid-1960s.

The 737 sits lower to the ground than other Boeing jets. This is because its designers wanted baggage and cargo to be hand-loaded from the tarmac without mechanical assistance, since the airplane was intended to bring jet service for the first time to many small airports not then equipped for that purpose.

This innovation swiftly became pointless as airports became better equipped and, more vitally, the 737 became the best-selling single-aisle jet in history and Boeing’s most enduring cash cow.

However, the 737’s shorter ground clearance, just 17 inches, became problematic as jet engines grew larger. This could have been countered by a new fuselage and normal length landing gear. But although Boeing introduced new wings, tail surfaces and many other upgrades the fuselage and landing gear remained fundamentally unchanged over decades.

A final crunch moment came with the MAX series. The performance of the 737 was greatly enhanced by the new engines, jointly made by General Electric and the French company Safran, providing a new sweet spot for airlines who wanted the improved economies of a small jet that could fly longer routes, often over oceans.
But those virtues were possible only with an increase in the size of the engines. The size of the MAX engines, specifically the diameter of the huge fan blades at the front, is nearly 70 inches, compared to 61 inches on the older engines, and they weigh 849 pounds more.

In order to attach the new engines and still get a safe distance between them and the ground Boeing lengthened the nose wheel by 9.5 inches and, crucially, had to move the engines, inside their bulging nacelles, further forward from the wing.

It now appears that the changes in the 737’s low-speed handling characteristics resulted from this shift in the weight of the engines, as well as the effects of their increased power.
(In response to questions from The Daily Beast, Boeing declined to confirm the details of the Aviation Week report.)

Normally the onset of an aerodynamic stall is indicated by “stick shake” – the joystick, more accurately the yoke, begins to shake and pilots are trained to instinctively increase speed and push the nose down to recover stability.

As a result of the test flights Boeing seems to have decided that the airplane itself should be able to sense this problem and cure it through its automated flight management system, using MCAS to move the horizontal stabilizer to push down the nose. What they apparently did not anticipate was the possibility that an erroneous message from another system, an angle of attack (the pitch of the wings) sensor, could initiate action by the MCAS, unknown to pilots.

Who's really flying?
This decision goes to the core of a continuing debate among pilots and safety experts about how far cockpit automation should intervene between pilots and the airplane to detect and correct problems, like this one, that are directly related to retaining control in a potentially dangerous sequence of events.

Many details of a modern jet’s automation systems are buried layers down in architecture that pilots are not required to understand or even know about – unless they turn out to have a potentially dangerous role in some circumstances.

“Loss of control” is now the last remaining consistent cause of crashes. Other once fatal events like flying into unseen terrain or into undetected wind shear on approach to landing have been virtually eliminated by technology that automatically gives the airplane and pilots a new level of situational awareness.

LOST FOR ANSWERS
Did a Computer Send Lion Air Flight Into a Death Dive?
Clive Irving
One of several studies directed at loss of control made in the last decade, led by the Federal Aviation Administration, warned that “A high level of competency in hand-flying (both the physical and the cognitive aspects) is necessary for safe flight operations, regardless of the level of autoflight equipment installed…[italics added for emphasis].”

But the challenge to pilots becomes a lot more acute if they are unaware of a critical new system, as in the case of MCAS in the 737 MAX-8.

Aviation Week quotes a pilot who has flown three generations of the 737 who pointed out that a pilot confronted with the “stick shake” alert of an imminent stall could be unaware that the MCAS was activated. He said this was “the most insidious problem” in the new system that “makes the aircraft more difficult to control.”

Keeping a secret in the sky
Boeing president and CEO Dennis Muilenburg has pushed back against the idea that the company had intentionally withheld information about the new system in the MAX-8. In an internal memo directed to employees he said, “You may have seen media reports that we intentionally withheld information about airplane functionality from our customers. That is simply untrue. The relevant function is described in the [operations manual] and we routinely engage customers about how to operate our airplanes safely.”

This seems, at best, disingenuous. The FAA had to issue an emergency directive to airlines to update their flight manuals according to new instructions from Boeing. Muilenburg seems to be alluding to “runaway trim procedures” common to all models of the 737, a series of manual interventions required by the pilot in the event of an upset in the jet’s stability.

Another pilot with a deep knowledge of the 737’s systems told The Daily Beast that Boeing would be looking at whether the Lion Air pilots should have been able to have recovered from the problem by using the runaway trim procedure “in a timely manner.”

But, as the veteran 737 pilot pointed out to Aviation Week, if a pilot is unaware that the problem has been triggered by the MCAS, and was unaware even of that system’s existence, he may not understand the crisis he is confronting in a situation that requires a rapid series of manual actions to correct it.

These are issues that the investigation into the Lion Air crash is attempting to understand in the absence of the one of the most relevant piece of evidence: the cockpit voice recorder. This remains lying at the bottom of the Java Sea (again underlining the aviation industry’s failure to adopt real time streaming of key data to ground bases). Retrieving that data would reveal how the pilots lost control in the final minutes of the short flight on the climb out of Jakarta.

Earlier this week Boeing cancelled a conference call with airlines intended to explain its position on the MAX-8’s flight control systems. It now plans to brief airlines, region by region, next week. More than 90 airlines have ordered the jet, making a total so far of 4,783 due for delivery over the next few years. More than 10,000 737s have been produced since the first flight in 1967.

Its safety record has been outstanding. As each successive model entered service the accident rate has decreased and now stands at 9 fatal accidents for every million flights. The pressure is on Boeing to reassure the airlines – and the public – that the problems with the MAX-8 will not setback that reputation and will be swiftly understood and explained transparently.

“Boeing needs to communicate more and better – not less” Jim Corridore of the aviation research firm CFRA told the Financial Times.

A pilot told the Seattle Times: “I’ve been flying the MAX-8 a couple of times per month for almost a year now, and I’m sitting here thinking, what the hell else don’t I know about this thing?” ...

I remember when Alaska Air had that crash, they tried to pin it on Boeing, but it was found out that they Alaska Air union mechanics didnt follow the PM schedule and went about 3 months past due. Jets can only work when are properly serviced and instructions followed to the T.. All during my 11 years of working on jets, not one of mine ever went down....

Oh yeah, working in Saudi Arabia on their F-15s I found electrical tape on their wiring in the wheel wells, a strict no no, because hydraulic fluid destroys the stickiness of the tape.. What can you say about camel jockeys that have no clue about technical stuff....

Alaska Airlines Crash That Killed 88 Is Tied to Long Failure to Lubricate Tail-Control Part

You evidently had no concerns about leaking hydraulic fluid.

 

[miketx]

More details are emerging of the design of the 737 Max that is causing a stall condition at low speed. The Indonesian pilots experienced difficulty and erratic performance on take-off.

Is Boeing trying to hide its culpability for the Lion Air crash in Indonesia?

Is the FAA complicit by not acting more strongly to ground 737s until the problems were identified and elaborated?

Boeing’s New Jet Hit Problem in Tests Before Fatal Crash

Before Fatal Lion Air Crash, Boeing’s New Jet Hit Problem in Tests
The 737 MAX-8 presented pilots with a challenge that the company thought could be solved with a system that airline pilots need not know about.

Clive Irving
11.23.18 10:31 AM ET

When Boeing pilots were flight testing the new MAX-8 version of the venerable 737 jet they discovered a problem that made the airplane difficult to handle when its speed dropped to a point where it was in danger of triggering an aerodynamic stall, and a loss of control that could lead to a crash.

This is revealed in new reporting by Aviation Week. The report suggests that in order to mitigate the problem Boeing introduced a new system to the flight controls – a system called Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, MCAS, that is at the center of the investigation of the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 that plunged into the Java Sea, killing all 189 people on board.

Pilots flying the more than 200 MAX-8s now in service with airlines across the world have said that they were unaware that the MCAS had been installed and were never instructed in how to use it. That would have included the Lion Air pilots. They were also, therefore, unaware of the reasons why Boeing decided to add the MCAS system.

KILLER COMPUTER
Boeing Didn’t Tell Doomed Pilots About Dangerous System
Clive Irving
The problems that were revealed in the test flights arose from the adoption of new engines for the MAX series of the 737. They are larger, heavier and more powerful than on earlier models of the jet.

Fixing these engines to the 737’s wings put Boeing’s engineers up against some unique and challenging problems caused by the age of the jet’s basic design, originating in the mid-1960s.

The 737 sits lower to the ground than other Boeing jets. This is because its designers wanted baggage and cargo to be hand-loaded from the tarmac without mechanical assistance, since the airplane was intended to bring jet service for the first time to many small airports not then equipped for that purpose.

This innovation swiftly became pointless as airports became better equipped and, more vitally, the 737 became the best-selling single-aisle jet in history and Boeing’s most enduring cash cow.

However, the 737’s shorter ground clearance, just 17 inches, became problematic as jet engines grew larger. This could have been countered by a new fuselage and normal length landing gear. But although Boeing introduced new wings, tail surfaces and many other upgrades the fuselage and landing gear remained fundamentally unchanged over decades.

A final crunch moment came with the MAX series. The performance of the 737 was greatly enhanced by the new engines, jointly made by General Electric and the French company Safran, providing a new sweet spot for airlines who wanted the improved economies of a small jet that could fly longer routes, often over oceans.
But those virtues were possible only with an increase in the size of the engines. The size of the MAX engines, specifically the diameter of the huge fan blades at the front, is nearly 70 inches, compared to 61 inches on the older engines, and they weigh 849 pounds more.

In order to attach the new engines and still get a safe distance between them and the ground Boeing lengthened the nose wheel by 9.5 inches and, crucially, had to move the engines, inside their bulging nacelles, further forward from the wing.

It now appears that the changes in the 737’s low-speed handling characteristics resulted from this shift in the weight of the engines, as well as the effects of their increased power.
(In response to questions from The Daily Beast, Boeing declined to confirm the details of the Aviation Week report.)

Normally the onset of an aerodynamic stall is indicated by “stick shake” – the joystick, more accurately the yoke, begins to shake and pilots are trained to instinctively increase speed and push the nose down to recover stability.

As a result of the test flights Boeing seems to have decided that the airplane itself should be able to sense this problem and cure it through its automated flight management system, using MCAS to move the horizontal stabilizer to push down the nose. What they apparently did not anticipate was the possibility that an erroneous message from another system, an angle of attack (the pitch of the wings) sensor, could initiate action by the MCAS, unknown to pilots.

Who's really flying?
This decision goes to the core of a continuing debate among pilots and safety experts about how far cockpit automation should intervene between pilots and the airplane to detect and correct problems, like this one, that are directly related to retaining control in a potentially dangerous sequence of events.

Many details of a modern jet’s automation systems are buried layers down in architecture that pilots are not required to understand or even know about – unless they turn out to have a potentially dangerous role in some circumstances.

“Loss of control” is now the last remaining consistent cause of crashes. Other once fatal events like flying into unseen terrain or into undetected wind shear on approach to landing have been virtually eliminated by technology that automatically gives the airplane and pilots a new level of situational awareness.

LOST FOR ANSWERS
Did a Computer Send Lion Air Flight Into a Death Dive?
Clive Irving
One of several studies directed at loss of control made in the last decade, led by the Federal Aviation Administration, warned that “A high level of competency in hand-flying (both the physical and the cognitive aspects) is necessary for safe flight operations, regardless of the level of autoflight equipment installed…[italics added for emphasis].”

But the challenge to pilots becomes a lot more acute if they are unaware of a critical new system, as in the case of MCAS in the 737 MAX-8.

Aviation Week quotes a pilot who has flown three generations of the 737 who pointed out that a pilot confronted with the “stick shake” alert of an imminent stall could be unaware that the MCAS was activated. He said this was “the most insidious problem” in the new system that “makes the aircraft more difficult to control.”

Keeping a secret in the sky
Boeing president and CEO Dennis Muilenburg has pushed back against the idea that the company had intentionally withheld information about the new system in the MAX-8. In an internal memo directed to employees he said, “You may have seen media reports that we intentionally withheld information about airplane functionality from our customers. That is simply untrue. The relevant function is described in the [operations manual] and we routinely engage customers about how to operate our airplanes safely.”

This seems, at best, disingenuous. The FAA had to issue an emergency directive to airlines to update their flight manuals according to new instructions from Boeing. Muilenburg seems to be alluding to “runaway trim procedures” common to all models of the 737, a series of manual interventions required by the pilot in the event of an upset in the jet’s stability.

Another pilot with a deep knowledge of the 737’s systems told The Daily Beast that Boeing would be looking at whether the Lion Air pilots should have been able to have recovered from the problem by using the runaway trim procedure “in a timely manner.”

But, as the veteran 737 pilot pointed out to Aviation Week, if a pilot is unaware that the problem has been triggered by the MCAS, and was unaware even of that system’s existence, he may not understand the crisis he is confronting in a situation that requires a rapid series of manual actions to correct it.

These are issues that the investigation into the Lion Air crash is attempting to understand in the absence of the one of the most relevant piece of evidence: the cockpit voice recorder. This remains lying at the bottom of the Java Sea (again underlining the aviation industry’s failure to adopt real time streaming of key data to ground bases). Retrieving that data would reveal how the pilots lost control in the final minutes of the short flight on the climb out of Jakarta.

Earlier this week Boeing cancelled a conference call with airlines intended to explain its position on the MAX-8’s flight control systems. It now plans to brief airlines, region by region, next week. More than 90 airlines have ordered the jet, making a total so far of 4,783 due for delivery over the next few years. More than 10,000 737s have been produced since the first flight in 1967.

Its safety record has been outstanding. As each successive model entered service the accident rate has decreased and now stands at 9 fatal accidents for every million flights. The pressure is on Boeing to reassure the airlines – and the public – that the problems with the MAX-8 will not setback that reputation and will be swiftly understood and explained transparently.

“Boeing needs to communicate more and better – not less” Jim Corridore of the aviation research firm CFRA told the Financial Times.

A pilot told the Seattle Times: “I’ve been flying the MAX-8 a couple of times per month for almost a year now, and I’m sitting here thinking, what the hell else don’t I know about this thing?” ...

I remember when Alaska Air had that crash, they tried to pin it on Boeing, but it was found out that they Alaska Air union mechanics didnt follow the PM schedule and went about 3 months past due. Jets can only work when are properly serviced and instructions followed to the T.. All during my 11 years of working on jets, not one of mine ever went down....

Oh yeah, working in Saudi Arabia on their F-15s I found electrical tape on their wiring in the wheel wells, a strict no no, because hydraulic fluid destroys the stickiness of the tape.. What can you say about camel jockeys that have no clue about technical stuff....

Alaska Airlines Crash That Killed 88 Is Tied to Long Failure to Lubricate Tail-Control Part

You evidently had no concerns about leaking hydraulic fluid.

you are hilarious.

 

[Denizen]

More details are emerging of the design of the 737 Max that is causing a stall condition at low speed. The Indonesian pilots experienced difficulty and erratic performance on take-off.

Is Boeing trying to hide its culpability for the Lion Air crash in Indonesia?

Is the FAA complicit by not acting more strongly to ground 737s until the problems were identified and elaborated?

Boeing’s New Jet Hit Problem in Tests Before Fatal Crash

Before Fatal Lion Air Crash, Boeing’s New Jet Hit Problem in Tests
The 737 MAX-8 presented pilots with a challenge that the company thought could be solved with a system that airline pilots need not know about.

Clive Irving
11.23.18 10:31 AM ET

When Boeing pilots were flight testing the new MAX-8 version of the venerable 737 jet they discovered a problem that made the airplane difficult to handle when its speed dropped to a point where it was in danger of triggering an aerodynamic stall, and a loss of control that could lead to a crash.

This is revealed in new reporting by Aviation Week. The report suggests that in order to mitigate the problem Boeing introduced a new system to the flight controls – a system called Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, MCAS, that is at the center of the investigation of the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 that plunged into the Java Sea, killing all 189 people on board.

Pilots flying the more than 200 MAX-8s now in service with airlines across the world have said that they were unaware that the MCAS had been installed and were never instructed in how to use it. That would have included the Lion Air pilots. They were also, therefore, unaware of the reasons why Boeing decided to add the MCAS system.

KILLER COMPUTER
Boeing Didn’t Tell Doomed Pilots About Dangerous System
Clive Irving
The problems that were revealed in the test flights arose from the adoption of new engines for the MAX series of the 737. They are larger, heavier and more powerful than on earlier models of the jet.

Fixing these engines to the 737’s wings put Boeing’s engineers up against some unique and challenging problems caused by the age of the jet’s basic design, originating in the mid-1960s.

The 737 sits lower to the ground than other Boeing jets. This is because its designers wanted baggage and cargo to be hand-loaded from the tarmac without mechanical assistance, since the airplane was intended to bring jet service for the first time to many small airports not then equipped for that purpose.

This innovation swiftly became pointless as airports became better equipped and, more vitally, the 737 became the best-selling single-aisle jet in history and Boeing’s most enduring cash cow.

However, the 737’s shorter ground clearance, just 17 inches, became problematic as jet engines grew larger. This could have been countered by a new fuselage and normal length landing gear. But although Boeing introduced new wings, tail surfaces and many other upgrades the fuselage and landing gear remained fundamentally unchanged over decades.

A final crunch moment came with the MAX series. The performance of the 737 was greatly enhanced by the new engines, jointly made by General Electric and the French company Safran, providing a new sweet spot for airlines who wanted the improved economies of a small jet that could fly longer routes, often over oceans.
But those virtues were possible only with an increase in the size of the engines. The size of the MAX engines, specifically the diameter of the huge fan blades at the front, is nearly 70 inches, compared to 61 inches on the older engines, and they weigh 849 pounds more.

In order to attach the new engines and still get a safe distance between them and the ground Boeing lengthened the nose wheel by 9.5 inches and, crucially, had to move the engines, inside their bulging nacelles, further forward from the wing.

It now appears that the changes in the 737’s low-speed handling characteristics resulted from this shift in the weight of the engines, as well as the effects of their increased power.
(In response to questions from The Daily Beast, Boeing declined to confirm the details of the Aviation Week report.)

Normally the onset of an aerodynamic stall is indicated by “stick shake” – the joystick, more accurately the yoke, begins to shake and pilots are trained to instinctively increase speed and push the nose down to recover stability.

As a result of the test flights Boeing seems to have decided that the airplane itself should be able to sense this problem and cure it through its automated flight management system, using MCAS to move the horizontal stabilizer to push down the nose. What they apparently did not anticipate was the possibility that an erroneous message from another system, an angle of attack (the pitch of the wings) sensor, could initiate action by the MCAS, unknown to pilots.

Who's really flying?
This decision goes to the core of a continuing debate among pilots and safety experts about how far cockpit automation should intervene between pilots and the airplane to detect and correct problems, like this one, that are directly related to retaining control in a potentially dangerous sequence of events.

Many details of a modern jet’s automation systems are buried layers down in architecture that pilots are not required to understand or even know about – unless they turn out to have a potentially dangerous role in some circumstances.

“Loss of control” is now the last remaining consistent cause of crashes. Other once fatal events like flying into unseen terrain or into undetected wind shear on approach to landing have been virtually eliminated by technology that automatically gives the airplane and pilots a new level of situational awareness.

LOST FOR ANSWERS
Did a Computer Send Lion Air Flight Into a Death Dive?
Clive Irving
One of several studies directed at loss of control made in the last decade, led by the Federal Aviation Administration, warned that “A high level of competency in hand-flying (both the physical and the cognitive aspects) is necessary for safe flight operations, regardless of the level of autoflight equipment installed…[italics added for emphasis].”

But the challenge to pilots becomes a lot more acute if they are unaware of a critical new system, as in the case of MCAS in the 737 MAX-8.

Aviation Week quotes a pilot who has flown three generations of the 737 who pointed out that a pilot confronted with the “stick shake” alert of an imminent stall could be unaware that the MCAS was activated. He said this was “the most insidious problem” in the new system that “makes the aircraft more difficult to control.”

Keeping a secret in the sky
Boeing president and CEO Dennis Muilenburg has pushed back against the idea that the company had intentionally withheld information about the new system in the MAX-8. In an internal memo directed to employees he said, “You may have seen media reports that we intentionally withheld information about airplane functionality from our customers. That is simply untrue. The relevant function is described in the [operations manual] and we routinely engage customers about how to operate our airplanes safely.”

This seems, at best, disingenuous. The FAA had to issue an emergency directive to airlines to update their flight manuals according to new instructions from Boeing. Muilenburg seems to be alluding to “runaway trim procedures” common to all models of the 737, a series of manual interventions required by the pilot in the event of an upset in the jet’s stability.

Another pilot with a deep knowledge of the 737’s systems told The Daily Beast that Boeing would be looking at whether the Lion Air pilots should have been able to have recovered from the problem by using the runaway trim procedure “in a timely manner.”

But, as the veteran 737 pilot pointed out to Aviation Week, if a pilot is unaware that the problem has been triggered by the MCAS, and was unaware even of that system’s existence, he may not understand the crisis he is confronting in a situation that requires a rapid series of manual actions to correct it.

These are issues that the investigation into the Lion Air crash is attempting to understand in the absence of the one of the most relevant piece of evidence: the cockpit voice recorder. This remains lying at the bottom of the Java Sea (again underlining the aviation industry’s failure to adopt real time streaming of key data to ground bases). Retrieving that data would reveal how the pilots lost control in the final minutes of the short flight on the climb out of Jakarta.

Earlier this week Boeing cancelled a conference call with airlines intended to explain its position on the MAX-8’s flight control systems. It now plans to brief airlines, region by region, next week. More than 90 airlines have ordered the jet, making a total so far of 4,783 due for delivery over the next few years. More than 10,000 737s have been produced since the first flight in 1967.

Its safety record has been outstanding. As each successive model entered service the accident rate has decreased and now stands at 9 fatal accidents for every million flights. The pressure is on Boeing to reassure the airlines – and the public – that the problems with the MAX-8 will not setback that reputation and will be swiftly understood and explained transparently.

“Boeing needs to communicate more and better – not less” Jim Corridore of the aviation research firm CFRA told the Financial Times.

A pilot told the Seattle Times: “I’ve been flying the MAX-8 a couple of times per month for almost a year now, and I’m sitting here thinking, what the hell else don’t I know about this thing?” ...

I remember when Alaska Air had that crash, they tried to pin it on Boeing, but it was found out that they Alaska Air union mechanics didnt follow the PM schedule and went about 3 months past due. Jets can only work when are properly serviced and instructions followed to the T.. All during my 11 years of working on jets, not one of mine ever went down....

Oh yeah, working in Saudi Arabia on their F-15s I found electrical tape on their wiring in the wheel wells, a strict no no, because hydraulic fluid destroys the stickiness of the tape.. What can you say about camel jockeys that have no clue about technical stuff....

Alaska Airlines Crash That Killed 88 Is Tied to Long Failure to Lubricate Tail-Control Part

You evidently had no concerns about leaking hydraulic fluid.

you are hilarious.

Please don't thank me.

 

[fncceo]

You evidently had no concerns about leaking hydraulic fluid.

Fluid is gonna leak.

 

[SavannahMann]

More details are emerging of the design of the 737 Max that is causing a stall condition at low speed. The Indonesian pilots experienced difficulty and erratic performance on take-off.

Is Boeing trying to hide its culpability for the Lion Air crash in Indonesia?

Is the FAA complicit by not acting more strongly to ground 737s until the problems were identified and elaborated?

Boeing’s New Jet Hit Problem in Tests Before Fatal Crash

Before Fatal Lion Air Crash, Boeing’s New Jet Hit Problem in Tests
The 737 MAX-8 presented pilots with a challenge that the company thought could be solved with a system that airline pilots need not know about.

Clive Irving
11.23.18 10:31 AM ET

When Boeing pilots were flight testing the new MAX-8 version of the venerable 737 jet they discovered a problem that made the airplane difficult to handle when its speed dropped to a point where it was in danger of triggering an aerodynamic stall, and a loss of control that could lead to a crash.

This is revealed in new reporting by Aviation Week. The report suggests that in order to mitigate the problem Boeing introduced a new system to the flight controls – a system called Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, MCAS, that is at the center of the investigation of the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 that plunged into the Java Sea, killing all 189 people on board.

Pilots flying the more than 200 MAX-8s now in service with airlines across the world have said that they were unaware that the MCAS had been installed and were never instructed in how to use it. That would have included the Lion Air pilots. They were also, therefore, unaware of the reasons why Boeing decided to add the MCAS system.

KILLER COMPUTER
Boeing Didn’t Tell Doomed Pilots About Dangerous System
Clive Irving
The problems that were revealed in the test flights arose from the adoption of new engines for the MAX series of the 737. They are larger, heavier and more powerful than on earlier models of the jet.

Fixing these engines to the 737’s wings put Boeing’s engineers up against some unique and challenging problems caused by the age of the jet’s basic design, originating in the mid-1960s.

The 737 sits lower to the ground than other Boeing jets. This is because its designers wanted baggage and cargo to be hand-loaded from the tarmac without mechanical assistance, since the airplane was intended to bring jet service for the first time to many small airports not then equipped for that purpose.

This innovation swiftly became pointless as airports became better equipped and, more vitally, the 737 became the best-selling single-aisle jet in history and Boeing’s most enduring cash cow.

However, the 737’s shorter ground clearance, just 17 inches, became problematic as jet engines grew larger. This could have been countered by a new fuselage and normal length landing gear. But although Boeing introduced new wings, tail surfaces and many other upgrades the fuselage and landing gear remained fundamentally unchanged over decades.

A final crunch moment came with the MAX series. The performance of the 737 was greatly enhanced by the new engines, jointly made by General Electric and the French company Safran, providing a new sweet spot for airlines who wanted the improved economies of a small jet that could fly longer routes, often over oceans.
But those virtues were possible only with an increase in the size of the engines. The size of the MAX engines, specifically the diameter of the huge fan blades at the front, is nearly 70 inches, compared to 61 inches on the older engines, and they weigh 849 pounds more.

In order to attach the new engines and still get a safe distance between them and the ground Boeing lengthened the nose wheel by 9.5 inches and, crucially, had to move the engines, inside their bulging nacelles, further forward from the wing.

It now appears that the changes in the 737’s low-speed handling characteristics resulted from this shift in the weight of the engines, as well as the effects of their increased power.
(In response to questions from The Daily Beast, Boeing declined to confirm the details of the Aviation Week report.)

Normally the onset of an aerodynamic stall is indicated by “stick shake” – the joystick, more accurately the yoke, begins to shake and pilots are trained to instinctively increase speed and push the nose down to recover stability.

As a result of the test flights Boeing seems to have decided that the airplane itself should be able to sense this problem and cure it through its automated flight management system, using MCAS to move the horizontal stabilizer to push down the nose. What they apparently did not anticipate was the possibility that an erroneous message from another system, an angle of attack (the pitch of the wings) sensor, could initiate action by the MCAS, unknown to pilots.

Who's really flying?
This decision goes to the core of a continuing debate among pilots and safety experts about how far cockpit automation should intervene between pilots and the airplane to detect and correct problems, like this one, that are directly related to retaining control in a potentially dangerous sequence of events.

Many details of a modern jet’s automation systems are buried layers down in architecture that pilots are not required to understand or even know about – unless they turn out to have a potentially dangerous role in some circumstances.

“Loss of control” is now the last remaining consistent cause of crashes. Other once fatal events like flying into unseen terrain or into undetected wind shear on approach to landing have been virtually eliminated by technology that automatically gives the airplane and pilots a new level of situational awareness.

LOST FOR ANSWERS
Did a Computer Send Lion Air Flight Into a Death Dive?
Clive Irving
One of several studies directed at loss of control made in the last decade, led by the Federal Aviation Administration, warned that “A high level of competency in hand-flying (both the physical and the cognitive aspects) is necessary for safe flight operations, regardless of the level of autoflight equipment installed…[italics added for emphasis].”

But the challenge to pilots becomes a lot more acute if they are unaware of a critical new system, as in the case of MCAS in the 737 MAX-8.

Aviation Week quotes a pilot who has flown three generations of the 737 who pointed out that a pilot confronted with the “stick shake” alert of an imminent stall could be unaware that the MCAS was activated. He said this was “the most insidious problem” in the new system that “makes the aircraft more difficult to control.”

Keeping a secret in the sky
Boeing president and CEO Dennis Muilenburg has pushed back against the idea that the company had intentionally withheld information about the new system in the MAX-8. In an internal memo directed to employees he said, “You may have seen media reports that we intentionally withheld information about airplane functionality from our customers. That is simply untrue. The relevant function is described in the [operations manual] and we routinely engage customers about how to operate our airplanes safely.”

This seems, at best, disingenuous. The FAA had to issue an emergency directive to airlines to update their flight manuals according to new instructions from Boeing. Muilenburg seems to be alluding to “runaway trim procedures” common to all models of the 737, a series of manual interventions required by the pilot in the event of an upset in the jet’s stability.

Another pilot with a deep knowledge of the 737’s systems told The Daily Beast that Boeing would be looking at whether the Lion Air pilots should have been able to have recovered from the problem by using the runaway trim procedure “in a timely manner.”

But, as the veteran 737 pilot pointed out to Aviation Week, if a pilot is unaware that the problem has been triggered by the MCAS, and was unaware even of that system’s existence, he may not understand the crisis he is confronting in a situation that requires a rapid series of manual actions to correct it.

These are issues that the investigation into the Lion Air crash is attempting to understand in the absence of the one of the most relevant piece of evidence: the cockpit voice recorder. This remains lying at the bottom of the Java Sea (again underlining the aviation industry’s failure to adopt real time streaming of key data to ground bases). Retrieving that data would reveal how the pilots lost control in the final minutes of the short flight on the climb out of Jakarta.

Earlier this week Boeing cancelled a conference call with airlines intended to explain its position on the MAX-8’s flight control systems. It now plans to brief airlines, region by region, next week. More than 90 airlines have ordered the jet, making a total so far of 4,783 due for delivery over the next few years. More than 10,000 737s have been produced since the first flight in 1967.

Its safety record has been outstanding. As each successive model entered service the accident rate has decreased and now stands at 9 fatal accidents for every million flights. The pressure is on Boeing to reassure the airlines – and the public – that the problems with the MAX-8 will not setback that reputation and will be swiftly understood and explained transparently.

“Boeing needs to communicate more and better – not less” Jim Corridore of the aviation research firm CFRA told the Financial Times.

A pilot told the Seattle Times: “I’ve been flying the MAX-8 a couple of times per month for almost a year now, and I’m sitting here thinking, what the hell else don’t I know about this thing?” ...

I remember when Alaska Air had that crash, they tried to pin it on Boeing, but it was found out that they Alaska Air union mechanics didnt follow the PM schedule and went about 3 months past due. Jets can only work when are properly serviced and instructions followed to the T.. All during my 11 years of working on jets, not one of mine ever went down....

Oh yeah, working in Saudi Arabia on their F-15s I found electrical tape on their wiring in the wheel wells, a strict no no, because hydraulic fluid destroys the stickiness of the tape.. What can you say about camel jockeys that have no clue about technical stuff....

Alaska Airlines Crash That Killed 88 Is Tied to Long Failure to Lubricate Tail-Control Part

You evidently had no concerns about leaking hydraulic fluid.

For about twenty years, the venerable CH-47 Helicopter leaked Hydrolic fluid regularly. The joke was that if it was leaking, then you knew there was still fluid in the system. If the leak stopped, you were out.

Airplanes are not examples of perfection of human engineering by any stretch of the imagination. No aircraft is, from any manufacturer. This includes Cirrus which puts parachutes into the plane to give the pilot one more tool to deal with an emergency.

Was Boeing wrong not to inform the pilots about the new system? Yes. Again, not the first time it has happened, and it probably won’t be the last. The plane is no more dangerous than any other aircraft, at least not so far as I can see, considering that we’re still dealing with a lot of initial information.

Now, is there a fix? I’m sure there is. One of the great things about aircraft accident investigations is that the Investigators don’t stop until they know all they possibly can, and they come up with a lot of suggestions, and sometimes even requirements, to make sure it never happens again. Often, the policy, or technique, or technology was introduced with the best of intentions, and it just didn’t work quite the way they were expecting, or it failed in a way they did not imagine.

This doesn’t mean that Boeing is a bunch of evil bastards who deserve to die. It doesn’t mean that Boeing aircraft are death traps. It does mean that we need to learn, and apply those lessons to insure that this type of accident, doesn’t happen again.

About 99% of the aviation world’s knowledge has been gained from accidents and incidents. Microbursts. We had no idea that they existed, until we tried to figure out what caused some planes to crash. We discovered an atmospheric phenomenon and we started to find ways to stop the accidents. Is it terrible when an accident happens? Yes. Are there things we can learn? You bet. Will we learn those lessons and do it better next time? You’re damned right we will.

If you want to know where and when Modern Aviation and accident investigations really began, you probably wouldn’t believe the answer. But it is true. 1956, a mid air collision of a United Airlines, and a TWA aircraft over the Grand Canyon. But just because we started the modern world of Aviation at that time, doesn’t mean we’ve got it all figured out.

We are learning new things all the time. Going all anti-corporate and down with the greedy bastards may make you feel better, but it isn’t going to make a better world, a safer way to travel, or even better aircraft. We need to learn, and we need to figure out how to stop it from ever happening again. You don’t learn anything erecting the gallows to kill all the corporate bastards to teach them a lesson.

 

[airplanemechanic]

For people who think airplanes are not safe......it's been over 9 years since we've had passenger fatalities on any US carrier in the continental United States. Keep in mind we have over 87,000 commercial flights that criss cross this nation EVERY SINGLE DAY. The last crash was Colgan Air 3407 that crashed because the pilots failed to maintain airspeed because they neglected to take the proper measures to prevent icing on their pitot tube (part of the airspeed indicator system), so that one wasn't even the planes fault and that was in 2009.

Flying is INCREDIBLY safe.

 

[Mikeoxenormous]

More details are emerging of the design of the 737 Max that is causing a stall condition at low speed. The Indonesian pilots experienced difficulty and erratic performance on take-off.

Is Boeing trying to hide its culpability for the Lion Air crash in Indonesia?

Is the FAA complicit by not acting more strongly to ground 737s until the problems were identified and elaborated?

Boeing’s New Jet Hit Problem in Tests Before Fatal Crash

Before Fatal Lion Air Crash, Boeing’s New Jet Hit Problem in Tests
The 737 MAX-8 presented pilots with a challenge that the company thought could be solved with a system that airline pilots need not know about.

Clive Irving
11.23.18 10:31 AM ET

When Boeing pilots were flight testing the new MAX-8 version of the venerable 737 jet they discovered a problem that made the airplane difficult to handle when its speed dropped to a point where it was in danger of triggering an aerodynamic stall, and a loss of control that could lead to a crash.

This is revealed in new reporting by Aviation Week. The report suggests that in order to mitigate the problem Boeing introduced a new system to the flight controls – a system called Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, MCAS, that is at the center of the investigation of the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 that plunged into the Java Sea, killing all 189 people on board.

Pilots flying the more than 200 MAX-8s now in service with airlines across the world have said that they were unaware that the MCAS had been installed and were never instructed in how to use it. That would have included the Lion Air pilots. They were also, therefore, unaware of the reasons why Boeing decided to add the MCAS system.

KILLER COMPUTER
Boeing Didn’t Tell Doomed Pilots About Dangerous System
Clive Irving
The problems that were revealed in the test flights arose from the adoption of new engines for the MAX series of the 737. They are larger, heavier and more powerful than on earlier models of the jet.

Fixing these engines to the 737’s wings put Boeing’s engineers up against some unique and challenging problems caused by the age of the jet’s basic design, originating in the mid-1960s.

The 737 sits lower to the ground than other Boeing jets. This is because its designers wanted baggage and cargo to be hand-loaded from the tarmac without mechanical assistance, since the airplane was intended to bring jet service for the first time to many small airports not then equipped for that purpose.

This innovation swiftly became pointless as airports became better equipped and, more vitally, the 737 became the best-selling single-aisle jet in history and Boeing’s most enduring cash cow.

However, the 737’s shorter ground clearance, just 17 inches, became problematic as jet engines grew larger. This could have been countered by a new fuselage and normal length landing gear. But although Boeing introduced new wings, tail surfaces and many other upgrades the fuselage and landing gear remained fundamentally unchanged over decades.

A final crunch moment came with the MAX series. The performance of the 737 was greatly enhanced by the new engines, jointly made by General Electric and the French company Safran, providing a new sweet spot for airlines who wanted the improved economies of a small jet that could fly longer routes, often over oceans.
But those virtues were possible only with an increase in the size of the engines. The size of the MAX engines, specifically the diameter of the huge fan blades at the front, is nearly 70 inches, compared to 61 inches on the older engines, and they weigh 849 pounds more.

In order to attach the new engines and still get a safe distance between them and the ground Boeing lengthened the nose wheel by 9.5 inches and, crucially, had to move the engines, inside their bulging nacelles, further forward from the wing.

It now appears that the changes in the 737’s low-speed handling characteristics resulted from this shift in the weight of the engines, as well as the effects of their increased power.
(In response to questions from The Daily Beast, Boeing declined to confirm the details of the Aviation Week report.)

Normally the onset of an aerodynamic stall is indicated by “stick shake” – the joystick, more accurately the yoke, begins to shake and pilots are trained to instinctively increase speed and push the nose down to recover stability.

As a result of the test flights Boeing seems to have decided that the airplane itself should be able to sense this problem and cure it through its automated flight management system, using MCAS to move the horizontal stabilizer to push down the nose. What they apparently did not anticipate was the possibility that an erroneous message from another system, an angle of attack (the pitch of the wings) sensor, could initiate action by the MCAS, unknown to pilots.

Who's really flying?
This decision goes to the core of a continuing debate among pilots and safety experts about how far cockpit automation should intervene between pilots and the airplane to detect and correct problems, like this one, that are directly related to retaining control in a potentially dangerous sequence of events.

Many details of a modern jet’s automation systems are buried layers down in architecture that pilots are not required to understand or even know about – unless they turn out to have a potentially dangerous role in some circumstances.

“Loss of control” is now the last remaining consistent cause of crashes. Other once fatal events like flying into unseen terrain or into undetected wind shear on approach to landing have been virtually eliminated by technology that automatically gives the airplane and pilots a new level of situational awareness.

LOST FOR ANSWERS
Did a Computer Send Lion Air Flight Into a Death Dive?
Clive Irving
One of several studies directed at loss of control made in the last decade, led by the Federal Aviation Administration, warned that “A high level of competency in hand-flying (both the physical and the cognitive aspects) is necessary for safe flight operations, regardless of the level of autoflight equipment installed…[italics added for emphasis].”

But the challenge to pilots becomes a lot more acute if they are unaware of a critical new system, as in the case of MCAS in the 737 MAX-8.

Aviation Week quotes a pilot who has flown three generations of the 737 who pointed out that a pilot confronted with the “stick shake” alert of an imminent stall could be unaware that the MCAS was activated. He said this was “the most insidious problem” in the new system that “makes the aircraft more difficult to control.”

Keeping a secret in the sky
Boeing president and CEO Dennis Muilenburg has pushed back against the idea that the company had intentionally withheld information about the new system in the MAX-8. In an internal memo directed to employees he said, “You may have seen media reports that we intentionally withheld information about airplane functionality from our customers. That is simply untrue. The relevant function is described in the [operations manual] and we routinely engage customers about how to operate our airplanes safely.”

This seems, at best, disingenuous. The FAA had to issue an emergency directive to airlines to update their flight manuals according to new instructions from Boeing. Muilenburg seems to be alluding to “runaway trim procedures” common to all models of the 737, a series of manual interventions required by the pilot in the event of an upset in the jet’s stability.

Another pilot with a deep knowledge of the 737’s systems told The Daily Beast that Boeing would be looking at whether the Lion Air pilots should have been able to have recovered from the problem by using the runaway trim procedure “in a timely manner.”

But, as the veteran 737 pilot pointed out to Aviation Week, if a pilot is unaware that the problem has been triggered by the MCAS, and was unaware even of that system’s existence, he may not understand the crisis he is confronting in a situation that requires a rapid series of manual actions to correct it.

These are issues that the investigation into the Lion Air crash is attempting to understand in the absence of the one of the most relevant piece of evidence: the cockpit voice recorder. This remains lying at the bottom of the Java Sea (again underlining the aviation industry’s failure to adopt real time streaming of key data to ground bases). Retrieving that data would reveal how the pilots lost control in the final minutes of the short flight on the climb out of Jakarta.

Earlier this week Boeing cancelled a conference call with airlines intended to explain its position on the MAX-8’s flight control systems. It now plans to brief airlines, region by region, next week. More than 90 airlines have ordered the jet, making a total so far of 4,783 due for delivery over the next few years. More than 10,000 737s have been produced since the first flight in 1967.

Its safety record has been outstanding. As each successive model entered service the accident rate has decreased and now stands at 9 fatal accidents for every million flights. The pressure is on Boeing to reassure the airlines – and the public – that the problems with the MAX-8 will not setback that reputation and will be swiftly understood and explained transparently.

“Boeing needs to communicate more and better – not less” Jim Corridore of the aviation research firm CFRA told the Financial Times.

A pilot told the Seattle Times: “I’ve been flying the MAX-8 a couple of times per month for almost a year now, and I’m sitting here thinking, what the hell else don’t I know about this thing?” ...

I remember when Alaska Air had that crash, they tried to pin it on Boeing, but it was found out that they Alaska Air union mechanics didnt follow the PM schedule and went about 3 months past due. Jets can only work when are properly serviced and instructions followed to the T.. All during my 11 years of working on jets, not one of mine ever went down....

Oh yeah, working in Saudi Arabia on their F-15s I found electrical tape on their wiring in the wheel wells, a strict no no, because hydraulic fluid destroys the stickiness of the tape.. What can you say about camel jockeys that have no clue about technical stuff....

Alaska Airlines Crash That Killed 88 Is Tied to Long Failure to Lubricate Tail-Control Part

You evidently had no concerns about leaking hydraulic fluid.

Nice try on using the Rules for Radicals. I doubt you ever worked on a jet, and probably not on a car either.