Boeing Black Box Data Shows Similarities Between Ethiopian and Lion Air Crashes

Lets try this, until they figure this out require pilots to hand fly until they get to FL 180 then go auto now you have altitude to handle a situation.

Pilots really should be able to shut off the automated system when fighting it as Michael Michaelis said would be the case. Additionally, pilots should be informed by the system when they're taking over.

In light of the two recent disastrous crashes, perhaps flight logs for all Max 8's should be reviewed. Last fall, my wife and I were on a relatively new plane (I am not sure if it was a Max 8) and experienced more sense turbulence than we had ever before. The plane rocked and bucked frighteningly. The pilots turned on the seat belt advisory and flew through what they identified as unanticipated air turbulence successfully. Reading this discussion of the novelty in the max 8's design, I wonder if mechanics reviewing logs that talked of successful encounters with turbulent conditions would consider that something was amiss with aeronautics software. maybe there are more least misses we can learn from.

We just begin to see the disastrious consequence of an incompetent administration and the deregulation policies set forth by a con man in the Wlhite House. Trump has no interest in running the country. His day starts out with a tweet in the early morning, follow by chaos and lies. Trump has not appointed one third of the top government positions. The one that he appointed is either unqualified, incompetent, or corrupted. 1. FAA, only has acting chair. FAA allows jetmakers to “ self certify “ potentially have direct or indirect effect on the outcomes of the two 737 MAX 8 crashes. 2. The economic team supposed to reduce import/export deficit and balance the national debt. In 2018, US has the highest import/export deficit and national debt in history. During the current negotiation with China regarding trade, Secretary Mnuchin asks China to open the “ Movie “ market. In my mind this is probably on the bottom list of concerns until you find out Mnuchin has a big investment in Hollywood. 3. DOE, Rick Perry is the secretary and ironically he is the one wanted to dismantle the DOE during 2016 presidential debate in which he could not name the DOE. Piror secretary were Dr. Ernest Moniz and Dr. Steven Chu who are MIT professor in physics and Physics Nobel Price laureate in 1997 respectively. Trump continues to appoint incompetent and crony to the top position, the dire consequences will be felt years after he left the office and if he is not re-elected.

Are designers of airplanes engineers who understand both the principles of aerodynamics as well as how to write software that is FOOL PROOF? Easy on the ground to say, WOOPS, -- we need a patch. It's nothing but incomprehensibly tragic if a vulnerability allows airplanes to fall out of the sky. Then it's just pure greed and gross negligence to allow human error to override assured passenger safety. Why not remove the need for software and depend on actual machinery that designers understand and pilots know how to navigate?

Very scary ... software trying to "correct" bad aeronautical engineering, which it appears, was dominated by financial and sales and marketing concerns, not safety ... and a dysfunctional regulatory agency ... and science ignorant non-skeptical business people ... and public not understanding government's role in public safety, especially when it comes to technology and machines ... we saw all this on a less dramatic scale when the auto industry pushed back on manditory air bags and other crashworthiness measures in the 80's ... the government regulatory agencies are sorely needed to tilt the scale towards the public's and away from the corporate interests, If this is called "socialism" so be it ... Germany, England, Canada, Nordic countries, Japan all better examples of advocating for the public's safety ...

A deeper analysis of the flaws in FAA management of the 737 MAX certification is available here: https://bit.ly/2W7KoMp. Based on Seattle Times' aerospace reporter Dominic Gates' interviews with current and former engineers directly involved in the process, the cascading human-machine errors encountered when MCAS engages is described in harrowing detail. Stabilizer movement, which was limited to 0.6 in original FAA safety assessments became 2.5 after Boeing flight tests, but "none of the [FAA] engineers were aware of the higher limit," according to a current FAA engineer. In fact, this wasn't reported to the FAA until after the Lion Air crash. Further, as pilots try to compensate and manually pull the nose up, a new increment of 2.5 degrees nose down would kick in until the stabilizer was "at full stop." At this point, the Lion Air flight was nose down into the sea at 500 miles an hour.

The FAA's subservience to the airplane and airline industry is not new. In the late 1970s, at a party for parents at our daughters' school, I bumped into a seasoned FAA lawyer. To a question about airplane safety, the gentleman responded with a a word salad indicating that the FAA's principal task was to help the industry prosper. The NSTB, which I have seen in action, is a different cat; it thoroughly investigates accidents and makes to the point recommendations for changes to address their causes. Wouldn't it make sense for Congress to transfer some of the FAA's power to the NSTB, which has shown it can be trusted to act to protect the flying public? I have a modest question. What's the point of automating a response (MCAS) to a sensor caused anomaly if pilots are kept in the dark? Whether he knew it or not, the President said something quite profound when he questioned whether modern commercial aircraft were too complex. (That doesn't excuse him from apparently having held off the grounding of the MAX 8). It looks like Boeing was writing machine friendly software when it should have written a pilot friendly version.

The Justice Department should open up a criminal investigation into Boeing's failure to notify the pilots of the MCAS system and their conduct between the Lion Air crash and the Ethiopian crash in telling the flying public, the airlines, and the pilots that the plane was perfectly safe. Congress should hold public hearings. All 737 MAX planes should have been grounded immediately after the Ethiopian crash, if not before. The US should have been the first to ground them instead of the last, particularly since it is an American plane and Boeing is one of America's premier companies. It is also embarassing and telling that Ethiopia sent the black boxes to France insteaf of the US for analysis. They don't trust us, and why should they? These failures are another example of the US following the rest of the world instead of leading. The head of Boeing, the head of the FAA, and Elaine Chao should be fired. 350 people died violent and terrifying deaths because of their leadership failures. Even after the software fix, I will be afraid to fly the Boeing 737 Max and will not, nor do I want my family flying on one. I don't want to fly on a plane with engines that are too big for the air frame and need software to compensate for their size and placement. I don't trust anything Boeing says after this and have little faith in the FAA which approved all this.

At the time of the Lion Air crash, this issue was not well-known. But after that crash, surely every commercial pilot in the world is familiar with the MCAS issue and with the workaround. So either the Ethiopian pilot didn't apply the workaround (why not?), the workaround didn't work (why not?), or it was a different issue. Let's not reason ahead of our evidence.

No way I'm getting on one of these planes even if they say they've fixed the problem. Why would anyone believe them? And who would want to be their guinea pig?

Qantas Flight 72, 2008, an automated flight system goes amok sending the wrong signals from the ADIRU (air data internal reference unit) to the flight computer causing the Airbus 300-303 to go into two steep dives as though correcting for a stall. An accomplished pilot and crew overcame the near tragedy and saved the aircraft and its 303 passengers. The captain of Flight 72 who appeared on Smithsonian's "Air Disasters" and recounted the episode, concluded the ordeal by saying, "Pilots first, computers second."

Two airplanes going down for flight control issues in such a short span of time is plenty of reason to ground them and do some thorough checking. Hundreds of people are dead, due to something that should not occur on a modern airliner. Safety first.

All we have so far is self-serving statements by Ethiopian Airlines and the Ethiopian government. They are investigating themselves, and have, through selective characterization of info (that nobody else has access to), declared that this is Boeing's fault. Let's see actual transcripts of the tower tapes and CVR. None of that is available. The Lion Air accident was due to pilot error in the face of a mechanical malfunction on an improperly maintained airplane. The pilots failed to disengage the pitch trim, even though that was the standard procedure for a runaway pitch trim (regardless of cause). The Ethiopian Air accident looks nothing like the Lion Air accident. Ethiopian Air insists its pilots were trained in proper response to MCAS activation (presumably they were already trained in the proper response to runaway pitch trim generally). So they shouldn't have made the same mistake the Lion Air pilots made. The climb and speed profiles look different. The only way you see similarity in the radar data is if you want to (confirmation bias). The jackscrew position is consistent with other scenarios. For example, an overloaded plane with an aft CG. Where's the weight & balance info (and not just Ethiopian Airlines' s characterization of it). Did the plane fail to climb because it was overloaded for the 9,600' density altitude? Did the pilots pitch forward to compensate for an aft CG? The rush to judgment by the press is unhelpful.

It is heartbreaking that over three hundred people across several nations have sacrificed their lives for the truth. Boeing, and by extension, Southwest and American Airlines have lost my confidence. I will be flying airlines that fly Airbuses moving forward.

But even "a tacit admission by Boeing that its automated system was flawed" will enable a multitude of lawsuits against the company, especially since they've been dragging their feet with regards to the 'software update'. Now is not the tie to buy Boeing stock!

Boeing and the FAA have bloodied themselves with hundreds of innocent victims and destroyed its reputation and credibility for a long time to come. Guess what voters? Government is not the problem, it is the solution. By relying on Boeing to check itself we have privatized the FAA rather than adequately funded through tax revenue. Neoliberal Democrats and Reagan Republicans have done this. We need to undo it. Start with the Robber Barons.

The jackscrew's configuration showing the stabilizers being tilted upward is said to push the nose down. I am no expert here, but my knowledge from model airplanes tells me that if the stabilizers are up, that pushes the tail down and the nose up- which is what I suspect the pilots were trying to do to correct the MCAS action.

As a retired airline captain with nearly 30,000 hours of flight time and almost 9,000 hours in various models of the 737,(but not Max 8), I feel the real cause of the Lion Air accident was the mechanics who cleared an unrepaired aircraft to fly again. Recall the AOA problem was written up on a previous flight where the pilots had flight control issues due to it but still flew it safely. Maintenance did not repair it and allowed what we call an unairworthy aircraft to fly. Realize in the US almost every day a trained mechanic will review the aircraft logs and do an inspection declaring it air worthy. If there is criminal neglect it's on Lion Air and its push to keep the aircraft in the air In the case of Ethiopian vague details are being leaked to the media from the Transportation minister. Is he seeking to push the blame away from an airline that employs a pilot with 200 hours total flight time? In all honesty a pilot with that little flight time would be useless in normal operations much less in an emergency. In the US system a pilot must have 1500 hours minimum to be hired by an airline. In reality they will have far in excess of that before they are employed at a major carrier. Personally I have no problem getting on a 737 max 8 with my family if I know that it's been maintained, the pilots are qualified and are aware as they are now of MCAS system. Bill G Ponte Vedra FL

There will be a huge loss of trust and reputation for Boeing and the FAA worldwide how they handled this. Congress has to step in and start the investigation transparent and swiftly.

"Launched in response to competitive pressure from Boeing’s chief rival, Airbus, the project to design and build the 737 Max was pushed quickly from the start." There is the answer. Not ready for Prime Time. All the kinks not worked out because competitive and financial pressures were priorities to safety. Then other insidious events unfold such as blaming pilots who were not totally trained on the new system for the crash. The CEOs phone calls to Trump to keep his company's planes flying. In the future, the only thing which will crash is Boeings CEO's career.

I can't help but think that a too-cozy relationship between Boeing and the Trump administration, or more specifically the FAA, may have caused the delay in correcting what could be a fatal design flaw in the 737 Max.

Dennis Muilenberg, top dog of Boeing needs to go. Muilenberg specifically requested Trump to keep his faulty aircraft in the sky after 356 people perished because of the aircraft’s faults. He has not provided my family members, who are airline crew members, and all airline crew members the proper equipment for training - simulators. He has rather insisted these employees take an iPad training to diminish tragic ramifications of his airline product. What multi million corporation provides iPad training instead of the real necessity to assure safe travel? Likewise, Dan Elwell, acting administrator of the F.A.A. has supported Boeing’s inept motivation, rather than taken action for supporting the airline crews and thousands of passengers. He should also be dismissed. In fact Trump has a hand in this too because he has not even attempted to appoint an F.A.A. Administrator since January, 2018 when Mr. Huerta resigned. All over the world passengers and crews have depended on leadership to assure safe airline travel. Boeing and the F.A.A. have let down airline employees, passengers, and the world. They represent the United States of America! How embarrassing and irresponsible! Lives have been lost. Families have buried their innocent members. Airline families wonder if their crew members are next, and when? And the top directors of these agencies are still collecting paychecks. We can’t do better than that?

This is a case of willful ignorance by Boeing and a huge failure of American style capitalism. Let me explain. This aircraft and most new aircraft today are highly automated so they can be sold/leased to third world airlines who employ crews with minimal experience who may have been trained mostly in simulators and don't have much hand-flying experience. The first officer in the Ethiopian accident had 200 hours. Laughable and useless cargo in an extreme emergency. (The Captain was experienced but really alone). Boeing sold this 737 model as merely a step up from the last model instead of seeking a new type certificate. This certainly aided the bottom line and was a ploy to sell to emerging markets and keep training costs minimal. Anonymous reports from US pilots have cited the few training materials and unfamiliarity with the airplane and these are people with thousands of hours in type. The dual mandate as pointed out in other comments is the failure of capitalism in my opinion (certainly an arguable point). The suits at the very top of Boeing who approved this marketing and lack of training in the MCAS system should be dealt with severely, even to the point of "falling on their swords" and resigning in shame. Punishment in the market or gigantic fines/lawsuits are in order.

For strictly competitive commercial (i.e., profit, money, greed) reasons, Boeing designed an aircraft to keep pace with Airbus that was not particularly aerodynamic during take-offs and forced their computer programmers to develop a half-baked program to correct their unsound airplane design. The program 'works' most of the time, except when it works too much, overrules experienced pilots and crashes the airplane into the ground so violently that 'empty' coffin funerals are required for its passengers because the human remains are so disintegrated. America's bankrupt FAA, its bankrupt campaign finance corruption cancer and its bankrupt corporate culture caused this crash. Boeing has revealed itself to the world as another American Merchant of Death. Boeing needs to start over; so does America.

One paragraph in this article seems to suggest a simple answer. Boeing redesigned the engines and gave them a different placement on the wing. As mentioned in other reports this causes the plane's nose to tilt upward. Rather than recognize this as a structural design flaw and fixing the flaw - Boeing chose to compensate for the flaw through a software correction. Clearly, Boeing should have recognized that this plane would have different handling characteristics. Boeing's remedy was analogous to putting a splint on a broken bone rather than fixing the broken bone from the inside out. It is remarkable that no simulator was available to train pilots on this new plane before flying it. Imagine a surgeon who obtains all of his/her surgical training on an IPad. On balance, Boeing is a great company, but the decisions made around the Max 737 will be discussed in business schools for years to come.

Don't fix the existing software. Fix the faulty design of the plane and equip it with new software.

How will Boeing and the FAA atone for the killing of more than 300 people?

There will be lawsuits and a 'Discovery' phase where Boeing's internal engineers and management emails will be combed over . It would not be surprising if some internal warning voices had been ignored, and then Boeing will be in serious trouble. It would be even worse if there were no internal dissenting voices, and Boeing was completely blind to the risks of MCAS.

A systemic problem here is captured in this quote from the article: "Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration decided that pilots did not be told about the new software, called MCAS ". Wonder why the FAA agreed so readily ? Let's recall that much of the FAA's safety review of Boeing's designs and airplanes was and continues to be conducted by, yes, Boeing employees who are deputized by the FAA as FAA reviewers and inspectors. Amazing, right? Yes, but it's legal, as least as of now. It's not mentioned in the article, but it is very telling that the Ethiopian government sent the black box to France for examination, not to the FAA. Given the cozy relationship and entanglement between the FAA and Boeing, I am not sure we should trust either of those two with this, either! Congress needs to investigate, and pass a law that prohibits employees of an aircraft manufacturer serving as reviewers and inspectors of their own planes and plane designs.

There were about three hundred and fifty 737 max 8 flying on average about 6 months since the last MCAS software update, equivalent to about 750,000 hours in total for all 737 max 8 around the world. There were two fatal crashes in that interval. That gives an estimated FIT rate (failure in time ) of 2700. How can Boeing continue to claim this is a safe plane and, the new untested softwaer uodate will “make a safe plane safer”, and continue to hint at pilot error? There would be a fatal crash about every 4 months if the aviation regulators outside north america had not taken action to ground the 737 max 8. The risk of about one chance in 200,000 that if you get on a 737 max 8 it will crash is far, far below the industry standard of safe.

One last thought, The FAA should not have the dual mandate of promoting aviation and overseeing aviation. Those missions need to be separated.

Watch out Boeing - you might end up like McDonnell Douglas with their never ending problems with the DC 10 - the airlines just stopped buying the DC 10 - and none is flying passengers anymore - the company went bankrupt and Boeing bought what was left - todays still flying DC 10's are only flying as cargo planes - think about it Boeing - would the 737 Max 8 make a reliable cargo choice? Design a plane without the software gimmick to make up for the design flows we can trust !!!

When you allow yourself to be strapped into a claustrophobic cylinder and hurtled and buffeted at greater than 450 mph— There must be great trust in the manufacturer, the certifying agency, and the operating airline. The trust has been eroded.

Boeing's actions are criminal. So are the actions of the FAA.

If the final analysis shows the MCAS to be the primary cause of the crash, Boeing has a big problem. From a systems perspective, the solution is not fixing MCAS, it's redesigning the aircraft to be stable. Fighter jets are not stable so pilots have to rely on the flight management system. This is because speed and agility are paramount in national defense operations. Furthermore, fighters don't carry passengers. However, this is not acceptable for commercial aircraft.

If these two "accidents" are due to the same cause, then the entire management and Board of Directors should be replaced immediately. Further, all bonuses for all managers should be eliminated for at least the next five years. The post-1980 selfish management culture of "profit before people" in all large corporations needs a complete overhaul.

The very fact that Boeing needed to add the MCAS software to the 737 Max 8 and Max 9 planes is sufficient evidence that the design of the planes was faulty. But Boeing was more concerned with the HUGE loss of profits that a re-design would entail. But even worse, many airlines and their pilots were NOT even told that the MCAS software was part of the planes. Nor were they told what to do if the MCAS software malfunctioned: turn off the auto pilot. Both Boeing AND the FAA are guilty of murdering over 300 innocent people to protect Boeing's bottom line. Those responsible for approving the design, claiming that minimal additional training was needed, and then hiding the existence of the MCAS system should all face murder charges.

Yes, with 346 people dead— The criminal aspect of the 737 Max 8 saga is just waiting to be explored. The public is angry, and rightfully so.

is Boeing speeding up the release of the software update because of the second crash? And does that mean they will be skipping procedures that otherwise would have been carried out were the no second crash? it all calls in to question the wisdom of allowing an airplane manufacturer to be responsible for the quality control of their own airplanes. such a massive conflict of interest shouldn't be allowed. responsibility for this plane's quality should be transferred to the FAA and the plane should be grounded until the FAA is satisfied that the problem had been fixed.

Boeing has done three things: 1. Made people aware that software, not pilots, has been flying planes. 2. Made itself liable for those two crashes, which will probably cause those 4600 orders to go away. 3. Made drone cars that much more less likely.

Inasmuch as 737Max planes fly hundreds of flights a day without incident I have to believe that the pilots of the 2 planes that went down were inadequately trained on these new planes.

“Deep trouble” indeed— And if Boeing thinks that a “software fix” is going to restore public confidence in the 737 Max 8, they are deluding themselves.

We need the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth from: Boeing, the FAA, the NTSB, and the Department of Transportation. Here are the questions: 1. Was MCAS designed to automatically reduce the pitch in manual flight without pilot input? 2. Is the aircraft inherently unstable? 3. If 1 and 2 are true, is the plane flyable without the assistance of computerized controls? 4. If the answer to 3 is no, should the plane be certified?

Should we trust the software update? Is Boeing going to test it? Is the FAA going to test it? I'm not so confident right now. I do not want to be the guinea pig of the situation.

How many people are going to feel safe flying on the first plane using the Boeing software "fix"? It sounds like this plane has a design flaw that needs to be corrected, not use software to patch the problem. Anyone believe software works 100% of the time?

It is hard to tell what is going on because there is too much incorrect information in the media and Boeing has said very little - they are restricted from discussing the accident during the investigation but they could be explaining why they had to develop MCAS for the 737 Max jets and how the system works. This morning I heard the announcers on CNBC (none of whom know anything about aircraft or flying) make one totally wrong statement after another. I suspect that Boeing introduced MCAS because at full thrust there would be insufficient elevator authority to push the nose down so they added a system that would trim the horizontal stabilizer nose down That this system could be activated by the failure of a single angle of attack sensor is a flaw in the system that will no doubt be one aspect of the software change.

like aircraft, corporations are supposed to have built-in redundancy systems, too: they are known as product quality (and some pride in what is sold) and greed (feeding the top an bottom lines and boosting share price)--when doing the right thing by customers, almost always a last consideration, fails. in boeing's case, neither of these backups kicked in. further investigation will likely reveal that executives knew about these fatal problems long before they took orders for the planes and made a conscious decision not to address them. even if not, they have served all constituents about as poorly as possible.