To make a plane could intentionally point itself straight down and fly itself into the ground at full speed, with no way for a pilot to stop it, is criminal mass murder. And for the CEO's first call to be to trump to keep these death traps in the air instead of to his own engineers to find out how to stop this carnage is obscene.
15
If I understand this correctly, the system had two sensor inputs that diverged. Instead of properly disabling the system or reverting to some other “safe” state, the system instead initiated unintended and unanticipated response. This violates fundamental precepts of safe design practice and constitutes gross malpractice on the part of the systems engineers. As an someone involved in design of machinery (hardware, firmware, and software) to comply with directives on safe design practices, I find it in conscionable that this was not detected- through proper analysis of failure modes and/or through fault testing- and corrected prior to production of this aircraft. More frightening, it suggests a serious problem with the safety culture within Boeing that has broad implications beyond this particular design. The trust is gone and this calls into question whether all new Boeing designs should undergo deep dive audits on safety.
13
@Rek: Disabling the system leaves the jackscrew to be hand-cranked by the pilots.
3
Until they redesign the physical plane, instead of applying software patches to compensate for a dangerous inherent design flaw, I will never fly on a 737 Max. I’ve been a software developer for 30 years, and software is not infallible. And because one can’t be sure that the plane designated for a flight won’t be changed, this means I will never fly on an airline that owns these planes. That’s you, American, and you, United, and you, Southwest, and countless other airlines.
4
@marywest
You may want to take a train, because there are many other aircraft models you fly today that are completely 'fly by wire' systems. The control surface inputs are sent by a computer and software link, not by some cable, pulley or hydraulic system directly linked to the pilot's control column like in the 1930's. The pilot is merely telling the plane where to go when it is hand flown, but the computer link is actually controlling the airplane surfaces, all of the time. The Airbus A320 has been flying since 1988, and many other models are also 'fly by wire'. In fact, most of the time, the airplane is never hand flown, and it is left to the autopilot and auto throttle systems.
To be truthful, you would not want many of these inexperienced pilots to hand fly the aircraft at cruising altitude and speed...it is literally flying on the head of a needle and can stall easily if yo are lacking the skills to fly it.
6
They may all fly by wire, but they don’t have MCAS because they are inherently stable in the pitch axis.
8
Wait what? The emergency instruction starts with “ try unplugging the computer for a minute and see if it reboots?”
Seriously?
9
After briefly shutting off the MCAS the pilots turned it on again! The fact is that most third-world airline pilots are barely competent to hand fly an airliner and are over reliant on automation. It even effects major airlines, the Air France crash in the south Atlantic and the Continental Express crash in Buffalo being examples.
Something goes wrong and they are passengers.
3
@Bill
The report states the 36 year old first officer went from a single engine land rating (April 2009) to a 737 type rating (June 2009) in less than 90 days..he had 673 hours total flying time and 350 hours in the 737 (58 hours in the 737 Max).
There is no way he would qualify for an ATP rating in the U.S., much less make the right seat in a commercial 737 with this level of inexperience.
5
Boeing "owns it." Is that atonement or damage control or a slick marketing move? When we punish the "corporation"...aka those anonymous people around the conference table who said, nah...let's make that safety device an extra. When we identify and hold criminally responsible the miserly and money-grubbing executives...and put their surnames on the front page...
10
It would have taken Boeing just two years longer to design and build this airplane around the engines from scratch.
2
Re Ethiopian : On many Boeing aircraft when encountering issues perceived as being in relation to the horizontal stabiliser, the manufacturers procedure of disarming the power to the horizontal stabiliser should be carried out BUT then Re-arming the horizontal stabiliser is not correct and is not part of the procedure and would almost always bring back the issue that was perceived in the first place.
Re Lion Air : I have read that Lion Air did not disarm the horizontal stabiliser as per procedure on its fatal flight although the flight prior on this same lion air aircraft, the same issue occurred and the horizontal stabiliser was disarmed and the flight continued with no further issue.
Perhaps Both these aircraft crashes could of been averted just by closely following procedure
2
Or by using a different plane - one that is properly engineered.
7
@Dion: That jackscrew has to be turned to change elevator pitch, one way or another.
1
Will Boeing's new software fix change your mind about flying on this airplane?
Vote!
(1) No...not a chance!
(2) Yes...but must have parachute thanks!
1
I'm wondering why the NY Times has only (3) sentences noting that the chief executive of Boeing has accepted blame for the two accidents? Why isn't this a headline on its own? Boeing released a statement yesterday accepting blame for the two accidents and I haven't found it on any major headlines anywhere. Extremely disappointing.
6
Boeing executives and engineers are learning- the hard way- that basic human safety is not up for sale to the highest competitive bidder.
I know I will never fly on one of their Max 8 monstrosities. They have forever lost my trust.
6
It is proxy season now, when owners of share of means of production get to vote on corporate governance. I think an awful lot of corporate governors pay themselves so much that they don't have enough time to do their jobs properly after deciding how to spend their lavish incomes, so I signal that viewpoint when voting proxies.
4
An airplane that can’t be safely flown by its pilots without use of a software system required to correct its inherent design flaws should not be allowed to fly. These airplanes need to be taken out of service. If Boeing wants to stay in the game, they need to do what they should have done in the first place: design a new airplane
14
The Airbus A-321 has high bypass ratio geared fan engines that are so efficient the fan hardly runs at idle waiting for takeoff. They work superbly on airframes designed for them.
3
Time to dismantle those planes put them back in the box and return to sender;postage paid
2
After reading two reports, there's a bunch of stuff that I still don't understand:
1. If MCAS is shut off by the switch, then why did it try to move stabilizer at 5:40:45? If not, then why didn't it try to move it afterwards?
2. Why did the manual trim commands at 5:43:15 fail to move trim up by an amount comparable with earlier commands? Why do they look very similar to last attempts in Lion Air?
3. What about airplaine roll? It was pretty significant, at least according to the black box. Was it a factor?
4. Has Boeing actually tried applying their own checklist in a physical plane?
3
@Andy:
1. The cutout switches stop power to the electrically-activated hydraulic trim system. It appears that MCAS was not designed to check for the state of the switches and, thus, may continue to attempt to apply trim even when that is not possible. It is the *attempt* that is registered by the FDR.
2. The commands at 5:43:15 were likely not "manual" but manual activation of electrical trim after the cutout switches were re-enabled. It's not clear whether the FDR data properly records the duration of the switch use. By that point, it is entirely possible that the load on the horizontal stabilizer (the force of the high-speed airflow) was too great for electric trim to overcome it.
3. Roll (and yaw) are not unexpected, given the weird and inappropriate movement of control surfaces, but probably weren't major contributors to the crash.
4. Yes, but at much higher altitude and with test pilots who understood the systems and knew what was happening. They definitely have not tried it at low altitude and high speed -- they probably aren't anxious to kill themselves.
4
@Douglas: I doubt the elevator works properly once this airplane stalls. It is located in the turbulent wake of a stalled wing.
1
@Douglas: "Dutch roll" is intrinsic to large airplanes. It involves the yaw and bank axes of the airplane, not the pitch axis so critical to stalling. It is damped by autopilots for the comfort of the passengers.
It is interesting to note that this plane hit the ground at over 500 mph and made a crater 32 feet deep and left pieces of airplane all over the place. Yet we are led to believe that the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11 left a crater and nothing was left of the plane.
@johnnonothing
Great start to another conspiracy theory, but there must
be dozens of variables that affect the size distribution of the debris.
To me, there is a tremendously important difference between a plane that has a serious design flaw and one
that has been taken over by hijackers.
4
@johnnonothing
Not sure where you get there was nothing left of Flt. 93, except in a conspiracy theory. According to the official report: "The first responders described the crater as about 15 feet deep and about 30 feet across... The wreckage around and inside the crater consisted of largely unrecognizable pieces of twisted metal, pieces of the landing gear of the plane, a tire, the frames of some of the seats, bits of charred paper, and remnants of luggage and clothing... Many more [small] pieces of wreckage... were recovered during the investigation when the crater was excavated. ... A pond about 900 feet southwest of the crater was partially drained to recover debris... The largest and heaviest pieces recovered were parts of the plane's two engines and a piece of fuselage with several window openings... Lightweight paper items were found as far away as New Baltimore, eight miles away."
They also found the two black boxes. The plane went nose down from 10,000 feet and hit at 563/mph while carrying 7000 lbs of fuel. There are pictures.
https://www.nps.gov/flni/learn/historyculture/sources-and-detailed-information.htm
3
The truther nonsense just won't go away.
No one with actual knowledge of the crash and investigation has ever said or implied that there was "nothing left of the plane" after the United Flight 93 crash. What was left was, as you would expect when an airliner hits the ground at 40-degrees nose down and under high engine power, extremely fragmented and much was consumed by the massive fire that engulfed the crash site.
Even with the enormous impact forces and the fire, both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder were recovered and were readable.
Everyone is entitled to her or his own opinions, but facts simply facts. In this case, the known facts are entirely at odds with the truther claims.
4
Here's what I don't get in this whole story: maybe, just maybe, one can understand how Boeing didn't realize how moronic it was to have the MCAS be controlled by a single sensor. But how is it possible that after they were explicitly informed about the staggering moronitude of this decision via 189 deaths on the lion air flight, they didn't immediately notify all airlines of the critical safety flaw and fix the situation?!?!?!
10
Even worse is the use of the earlier screw jack trim system in an application that requires a hydraulic actuator for fast response.
Why am I not surprised? The main problem started with compensating airframe aerodynamic changes with a software solution. As someone with quite a bit of experience in engineering and commissioning industrial automation, I know software is considered to be NOT control reliable. At least in the province of Ontario, no regulatory body nor any licensed engineer would sign off on a software based safety solution. That’s only part of the story. More disturbing is the reality of disabling MCAS leaving the aircraft in a potentially unsafe state, a state MCAS was designed to prevent in the first place. This is a poor engineering practice to say the least. Finally no proper failure mode analysis was conducted, no failsafes and no redundancies at least in sensor output if not in input (as it should have been) provided unless the clients paid extra. A few people at Boeing should, at the very least lose their engineering licenses.
15
>>> " I know software is considered to be NOT control reliable. At least in the province of Ontario, no regulatory body nor any licensed engineer would sign off on a software based safety solution."
Safety-critical software is developed for and in use in virtually every modern technological system. That definitely includes aviation, where, for instance, software-dependent avionics are central to the design and operation of fly-by-wire airliners. Google, e.g. "fly-by-wire +Airbus" for more information.
1
@Douglas not without adequate redundancy that will work even in the eventuality of a total engine power loss. I stand by my assessment. Boeing’s airframe modifications were not handled properly. No proper FMEA, no redundancy no failsafe. Period. No engineer should have signed on that.
4
@Bogdan:
I hope you don't mean that you're standing by the assertion that I quoted, because it's just factually wrong.
The points about lack of redundancy, attempting to correct for an unstable airframe with a software patch, etc. are spot on. No argument from me.
1
So thus far it appears Boeing made two errors: 1) the MCAS software does not handle the case of divergent sensor readings properly. When one sensor indicates stall conditions, and the other indicates a normal pitch, the software chooses to believe and act upon the one indicating a stall, which is by far less probable; and 2) the recommended corrective action is ineffective at high speeds.
While fully admitting the difficulty of foreseeing every possible combination of events that could occur with a complex system like a modern aircraft, these do seem like egregious and easily foreseeable errors, particularly the former.
6
What is really mind boggling to me, is that Boeing seemed to have totally failed at the root cause analysis following the first crash!
That was the first wake up call that something was very wrong.
For any serious company, that should have triggered an immediate freeze everything and let's understand what just happened. Lost causation analysis software are plentiful.
Instead of this, it seemed that Boeing concentrated on blaming anything but themselves.
Faulty sensor, inadequate pilots...
Then comes the second crash, and still, we have a total faith on the safety of our planes!
I wonder what would have happened if the world had not started to ground the 737's Max? they may still have continued to fly in the US?
8
Doing so would have endangered the 30 million bonus payout their CEO was receiving in January.
We can safely assume that this has played a major part in Boeing dragging their feet after crash 1. This is business as usual. And never ever has a CEO been incarcerated for catastrophic decisions they had taken. Worst case, they will resign with a golden handshake and full retirement contributions.
9
Boeing should know that cutting the corner to quickly obtain a final product is the recipe for a disaster. This is true in several sectors but in aviation, like in critical medical equipment, lives are at stake.
There are no excuses to kill so many people especially when company profits appear to be at the origin of those tragedies.
7
Boeing has tried to insinuate that the crashes were due to incompetence of the pilots. Although the idea was plausible initially, it's becoming clearer that the pilots were most likely competent, while the lack of competence may have been in Boeing's engineering or management or both.
12
Not incompetence, but criminal negligence caused crash 2.
And let's not forget the US airlines pressing for keeping those shoddy American engineered aircraft flying!
3
Gee at least there was no strike at the Seattle area plants so Boeing executives' most important goal was achieved.
No matter that outsourcing major 787 portions caused a massive distraction, and that setting up a new set of plants in South Carolina was a massive distraction, gee at least there was no machinist or design engineer strikes. Who cares about the planes crashing, our prime directive is to control labor costs. Boeing's profits are so huge that they could have paid their workers more and avoided all those distractions so as to concentrate on excellence in engineering. Distracted!!!!
5
@Will Hogan
The distraction led to a delay by boeing execs in deciding to go ahead with the 737 max, so they were rushed in its design and they were behind airbus in the race to market.
Hard to concentrate when all your 787 outsourcing was going bad at the same time! These boeing execs and the stockholders that hired them were just too greedy and got what they deserved.
2
@Will Hogan: The choice to go ahead with a design that lacked inherent pitch axis stability is beyond comprehension to even a pilot with just 175 hours of experience.
2
I am conflating advice I have received over the years here.
In Aviation it is important how a design works, more important is how it fails.
There is a reason "History" is important when thinking things through, the Captain here conveys his learned knowledge in one statement.
"Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect."
— Captain A. G. Lamplugh, British Aviation Insurance Group, London. c. early 1930's.
6
A monumental and avoidable tragedy. Do not blame the evil mr Trump for this one. This goes to our senators and congress persons who do not like their jobs and have not be managing and providing oversight to the bureaucrats in our government agencies. Get elected , and now I should be president.
1
@John R. Kennedy Its that he is so easy to blame ...rightfully so...for everything
This is a product of the cult of MBAs can manage anything.
2
If Boeing expects to sell their planes all over the world, then they should not expect the pilots to all be experts with decades of experience, that can do a "Sully" if there is an emergency. If you sell all over Africa and Asia, your planes must have emergency procedures that are so simple they can be done while the plane is plunging or rocking and while the controls are beeping and shaking wildly which gets your attention but also disorients you. Separately, it would be good to rely on 3 sensors. But when you require the stabilizing computer to disconnect when the sensors don't agree, then you still need an underlying plane that is not inherently unstable.
9
>>> " If you sell all over Africa and Asia, your planes must have emergency procedures that are so simple they can be done while the plane is plunging or rocking and while the controls are beeping and shaking wildly which gets your attention but also disorients you."
The same, of course, is true regardless of the geographic market.
And let's drop the implied (sometimes direct) criticism of non-Western flight crews. Last year, crews in the Asia-Pacific and Africa regions, together, flew about 38% of the world's airline passengers, compared to approximately 23% for North America. The vast (overwhelming!) majority of flights were safe and uneventful.
Just to keep things in perspective, From 1945 through early last month (statistics take a little time to be updated), there were *many* more fatal civil aviation accidents in the US than in any other nation.
7
..not going to drop this notion.
...based on direct experience.
With Boeing in charge of the "fix" and the "US investigation" expect more accidents before a permanent repair.
Looks like the competing Airbus at 6.5 Million less per plane, and no crashes, is the only viable alternative.
Since we have allowed Douglass- Boeing to become a Monopoly in the USA...
3
As an design engineer with 30+ years of design experience, It is self evident the MCAS software has not been seriously tested of if it has, the system emulator in no way accurately simulated the performance of the plane.
Furthermore, a critical control system on an airplance that takes significant corrective action (and overrules the pilot) based on a single sensor is seriously flawed.
Clearly this system was designed and developed by incompetent engineers who had little understand of safety critical control systems.
Then to make the make the dashboard indicator of the error between two safety-critical sensors an "optional" feature is stunning! (Especially when the knew they had failed in the first crash.)
Lastly, given the Indonesian crash incident and the failure to take meaningful corrective action is truly astounding.
This Boeing series of planes need a major re-design (how about adding gyroscope). They should also have test pilots fly the airplane under extreme conditions to prove to the regulators and the public the control system works. This will require all of these planes to grounded for at least another 6-10 before-flying commercially.
Boeing needs to pay dearly for this level of incompetence.
I question if people will fly in this airplane or there are other options (Air Bus) available.
4
@Norm It doesn't make sense from an engineering standpoint. This scenario does:
To save time and a few bucks did Boeing subcontract the original MCAS design to someone else like a video game designer? Because their own engineers said to do it properly would take months and Sales was in a hurry? It doesn't resemble anything an aircraft control designer would do. Many errors were found after the first crash but they weren't grounded while Boeing worked on corrections to be done by April. Almost made it. Talk about criminal negligence causing 346 deaths. How it all got past the FAA is another issue. What else is wrong with the 737 Max design? It's now the deadliest mainstream airliner.
2
@Norm
Your comments might be credible except that you have a huge bias based on Boeing and the US competing directly with Bombardier, the latter which eventually has become part of Airbus. You are cutting down your economic rival and promoting your current employer. And if you are in the industry you know your employer Airbus has no space between air and bus so I think you are also trying to camouflage your situation. Not OK.
1
This aircraft engineering catastrophe cost people and flight crews their lives.
This aircraft engineering catastrophe will cost the Boeing executives who made the decision to manufacture the unsafe aircraft absolutely nothing!!!
4
It is striking from the report how little time and experience the pilot in command (Captain) and the co-pilot (First Officer) had in the 737 type aircraft, much less the 737 Max. The captain had only been certified to fly the 737 as pilot in command since October 2017, and the 737 Max since July 2018. He was 29 years old.
The co-pilot had even less time on both aircraft and incredibly, had only 361 hours total flight time in his log book, 56 of those in the 737 Max. He was 25 years old.
In the report, there are outtakes of Boeing's instructions on what pilots should do in the event this series of problems cascades into a potentially catastrophic situation, which is dated April 2018. It doesn't seem clear that the pilots underwent this instruction, which may have been crucial to a safe flight.
Regardless the degree of negligence caused by Boeing's design, it seems obvious the pilots were light on experience and this has to be factored in to avoid these accidents in the future. Inexperienced flight crews have factored into other fatal accidents in S.E. Asia..it may be due to a limited supply of highly experienced pilots.
Experience and training counts flying any airplane of any type.
1
@J House
Even Boeing is admitting failure, yet some on here continue to smear the pilots. The bias is showing.
2
@Otilia
The fact is, the pilots did not follow Boeing’s procedures, one of them being they did not disengage the auto throttles and slow down which made it impossible to manually trim the plane...and they turned the cut out switches back on, which against procedure...that is not smearing the pilots, that is observing facts that are pilot error so we can avoid another catastrophy.
@J House
Are you sure the co-pilot had only 361 hrs total flight time, in all types or aircraft?
Or is the number referring to just 737 hours?
If indeed you are correct I find that highly alarming....
There should be an airworthiness directive requiring simulated flight training before this aircraft is deemed safe to fly. Have pilots test the software update on the ground, asking for feedback to make the procedure more intuitive and failsafe. This is clearly a system that necessitates familiarity in certain cases. The first time a flight crew encounters an MCAS issue shouldn't be somewhere around 2,000 feet a minute or two after takeoff.
5
@Andrew
Agree. FAA AD req'd!
Also MCAS should be "inactive" before & after take-off & below a certain altitude in Visual Meterological Conditions (VMC). Because in these conditions there is better 'situational awareness' by pilots & gives them full authority to correct for wing "Stall".
2
There are two possibilities:
1. The 737MAX is safely controllable without MCAS. In this case, the MCAS system should be eliminated and replaced with pilot training and an appropriate stall warning system. It will not be as easy as anticipated to switch between flying the 737NG and 737MAX, but the 737MAX will still be usable.
2. The 737MAX cannot be safely controlled without MCAS. In this case, it must taken out of service permanently, and will go down as the most expensive mistake in aviation history.
Also, Boeing should not charge airlines $80,000 for a "disagree" light that probably costs under $50 and for which the software already exists.
5
This airframe is not stable in pitch with these engines. That is why Boeing resorted to MCAS.
3
Boeing probably still won't get the fix right. Just checking both sensors is good but not enough. If the revised software doesn't check the change in altitude along with the sensors any new certification by the FAA should be rejected.
Personally, I am in favor of an audible alarm only, but that is not going to happen given the intrinsic instability of this aircraft. It really needs to be scrapped.
2
A life and death feature had one sensor, and, a flawed computer program to correct the decrease in aerodynamic design by the addition of heavier, larger engines being placed forward and higher on the wing than the original engine design. This was hastily done, when Boeing learned Airbus had entered the market with a better designed, more efficient jet than the 737. That the FAA would allow Boeing to self-inspect this hurried modification to re-capture profit in the lucrative passenger jet market, is unconscionable. 350+ people are dead as a result. Inspectors who approved this modification need to be held accountable in the legal system. Boeing needs to be fined a significant financial penalty, and forced to financially compensate relatives of all the victims a significant amount. This disregard for safety in pursuit of profit needs to be discouraged and a huge financial penalty will accomplish that.
9
Boeing is responsible for the deaths of 300 innocent people in 2 separate but related accidents. In an effort to save money in the short term by cutting corners and putting millions of flying passengers at risk Boeing has proven itself now to be an unreliable and questionable airline manufacturer. If there were any real competition in airline manufacturing then Boeing would be on its way out of business. But because it’s such a huge conglomerate and there is no other American airplane manufacturer to compete against them, Boeing will most likely survive this disaster and that’s the problem. They shouldn’t be allowed to continue to manufacture airplanes but they will be because America has no other option. Can you say monopoly?
9
I've been following this story at great lengths because aviation is of intrigue to me and because I fly frequently. From the many articles and pilots blog I've read it seems that what is causing the Max 8 to stall is the forward placement of the larger engines. If that is the root cause shouldn't that cause be addressed? How does Boeing expect to restore public trust by updating a software that addresses faulty physical design?
10
These new huge engines are a game changer for Airlines to save money on fuel cost so, yeah the airlines scoop them up like mad to save money in an industry that’s very competitive… Too bad those humongous engines affect the planes aerodynamics and the aircraft company decided a non redundant (or triple redundant) software/instrument fix would cure the problem (mcas)
1
While the GOP whines and moans about regulations, we have some clear examples of why regulations are needed.
Boeing took shortcuts to keep up with Airbus. The FAA should have stopped that instead of rubber stamping Boeing’s testing.
Self regulation doesn’t really work when money is to be made.
11
Remind me again why everyone thinks self-driving cars are a good idea?
2
Even including these two crashes, flying is far, far safer than driving and part of that is due to a great deal of automation in flying. Self driving cars don't have to be perfect, they just have to be better than human drivers.
2
@chris l - Sure and that is not necessarily due to automation alone. There are many other factors, and one among them is safety that comes with sound design and thorough testing of planes. Just imagine the causalities and damage if one of these ill-designed planes fall into an urban city.
And just because flying is statistically safer does not give a license to any Engineer or Manufacturer or the regulatory body to ignore basic common-sense engineering while testing these planes. Do you agree?
3
let us not forget that Donald initially attempted to help Boeing slip-slide past government oversight on this matter.
Come on, America. The guy's a crook and sleeze all wrapped up to appear halfway decent.
At the pleas of Boeing's muckety-mucks, who begged for help, at least you can thank your lucky stars you and/or yours weren't one of those Boeing flights Donald tried to slide pass the eyeballs the eyes of our safety net.
4
@Melvyn D Nunes, let's not forget that 737 MAX certification was performed by Obama's FAA, while we are at it.
Boeing took the cheap way out putting profits over lives. Refashion the 737 design rather than design an airplane from scratch as it should have done. Instead, depend on a lousy software bandaid to compensate for dangerous aerodynamic tendencies of the Max. The 737 was first built in the 60s....these new, larger fuel efficient engines demanded a new airframe but Boeing wanted to sell airlines on the notion it was just another 737. Simple right? Wrong. I’ll never fly on one.
6
@Ellen The problem isn't this plane vs a brand new one. The problem is that this plane exists to eliminate the need to pay to re-retrain pilots. If Boeing had undertaken proper re-retraining on all the new systems to all the pilots who fly this plane, the costs to airlines would have started to look like buying a brand new plane.
Boeing went cheap on *training* which explains some of the problem. The inexplicable part of the problem is how a company with as much experience as Boeing built a human-rated safety system that depending on a single sensor for input. That mistake/error needs to be explained before all this is over - someone made that decision and needs to be held accountable. Probably it was done for marketing reasons - to sell the two sensor system as an upgrade - if so that might be criminal.
2
You have a guy with 200 hours total time in the right sear, I wouldn’t let him fly my 1966 Mooney much less a B-737.
1
@Paulie. The pilot had more than 8000 hrs flight time and was in command.
5
@Pathe preminary data from investigation say he did what Boeing instructed him to do. Would you let the engineers who design this flawed plane design your 1967 money
2
Okay, Boeing made a mistake. “They must die!” We may all regret those words one day when it’s our own turn.
1
@John Doe
No no no. they must no die. If Boeing disappear it takes away the competition and honestly this duopoly is quite good: good competition, better planes and costs downward pressure.
But Boeing must pay (and they have tons of money) and more importantly learn.
4
When following the recent B737Max accidents and being an aerospace engineer myself I’m puzzled by what is becoming known so far.
Generally, to get an aircraft certified a system safety analysis (SSA) must be established. This analysis would show the component fault, resulting impact on aircraft and risk classification. In this case the entry would be:
Loss of one AOA sensor -> unjustified nose down command -> catastrophic
An errouness nose down command, especially at low altitudes, cannot be classified other than catastrophic. Consequently such a critical function must have a very high reliability. Such high reliability can never be achieved based on just one sensor alone. At least a monitoring routine should have been included to detect a faulty sensor. E.g. compare both AOA sensors and in case of disparity deactivate the MCAS function. The pilot should be informed on warning display accordingly (e.g. MCAS...lost). By such simple means the problems could have been avoided.
Another point is, why did Boeing give the MCAS priority over pilot inputs? Usually Boeing always gave final control to the pilot, meaning the pilot could always override the flight computers by applying additional force on the steering column. Now they have a mixture of two philosophies, never a good idea. By sticking to their proven philosophy the catastrophic losses would have been avoided.
19
@Torsten Schwan Thanks for this sophisticated analysis. I am also perplexed that a human-rated safety or control system could depend on a single sensor - it seems like a first year engineering student would know enough not to build a system in this way.
Notably, Boeing seems to have offered an "upgraded" system that includes a warning light when the AoA sensors were not in agreement. The decision not to include that feature as standard seems likely to come to back to haunt them now.
Your point about the safety system overriding pilot inputs is excellent, and not one I've seen discussed in the media yet.
3
>>> "Another point is, why did Boeing give the MCAS priority over pilot inputs?"
In their minds, they didn't do that. They believed (or wanted to believe) that inappropriate MCAS activation would be seen by a flight crew as runaway trim and that the crew would be able to recover by following the relevant non-normal checklist.
Apparently, it somehow escaped Boeing's and the FAA's analysis that (a) MCAS trim might not be noticed before the situation became critical (STS is trimming all the time), (b) expecting a crew to run the runaway stab NNC at low altitude with multiple warnings and a stick-shaker making racket is unreasonable, and (c) under high loads, operating the manual trim wheels might be effectively impossible.
Frankly, the entire constellation of terrible engineering decisions, and the failure of the certification process to spot them, is stunning. I don't think the MAX variants are going to be flying again anytime soon.
10
The emerging picture of this tragedy suggests that there is more to the story of the 737 MAX aircraft design, and potential catastrophic design flaws, in both plane and onboard systems.
No plane or onboard system should rely solely on a singular software to ensure safe flight, and no pilot should be required to shut off critical systems, either software or mechanical, to ensure safe flight or to recover from a potentially deadly maneuver, that was the result of faulty readings or poorly implemented software or design elements.
According to reporting, the 737 MAX was designed with larger engines, placed forward and higher on the wing. If the plane itself was not meant to handle this design, it may point towards a radical departure from Boeing’s long history and stellar reputation in aircraft design and manufacturing.
11
I hope that Boeing upper management will be hold criminally accountable for selling faulty planes, the sham of apologizing for the deaths of 300 people is not enough.
An apology may be enough when you serve luke warm coffee at a dinner, but not when your negligence causes the death of a human being, 300 human beings.
7
Boeing safety concern is a public
relations stunt perpetrate by their
communication department. If they
were truly concerned they wouln't be
selling safety devices as options at
hefty profit. Profit motive is the
only concern that matters to the
management because their bonuses
and spike in their shar holdings depend
on the profit. Boeing is as dedicated
to cutting corners on cost as BP
was on oil wells in gulf of Mexico
which led to the disaster. Pay now
or pay many times more later is not
understood by the management because of their short time horizon.
Boeing is a damaged brand. FAA is
untrustworthy.
7
trump has blood on his hands! His reckless government shutdown caused protracted delays in identifying and correcting problems with the Boeing 737 Max aircraft and his reckless incompetence in the lax handling of senior management appointments including directorships at the FAA seriously compromised aircraft safety diligence. This guy is dangerous.
7
Dennis A. Muilenburg, Boeing’s chief executive, acknowledged the role of the software in the accident....“It’s our responsibility to eliminate this risk. We own it, and we know how to do it.”
Right, Dennie, take your golden parachute and say good bye. You've done good work for Boeing getting those government contracts and paying off Congressmen across this great nation.
5
@george eliot This CEO needs to go. He does not understand the basics of engineering safety critical control systems. He is a Bean Counter running an engineering company. POFITS FIRST, ENGINEERING & SAFETY SECOND.
3
Is this plane still flying? If so, why?
@Jacob Opper It is not still flying - the plane has been grounded for commercial flights. Some planes have been flown to repair or storage locations with only flight crews on board, but no passengers have ridden in these planes since the FAA and Boeing called for their worldwide grounding. That call for grounding happened a little late, and many international bodies and airlines grounded them sooner.
@Steve Midgley Thank you, Steve.
A peanut executive was sentenced to 28 years in prison for the deaths of 9 individuals. How much time will Boeing executives get for their corporate homicide?
8
Both these crashes took place in tropical airspace. I do hope they factor that in when they look to correct the problem.
That said, Boeing has begun their process for accounting for being at fault. The New York Times continues to play this like a big scandal. That doesn't match up, no matter how many eyeballs the articles gain by positioning them that way.
Got news for Boeing: the flying public is never going to get in this airplane no matter how many “fixes” you claim. Another tragic lesson in greed and hubris.
8
There needs to be a criminal investigation - and from the evidence so presented, someone will go to jail for criminal neglicencs.
It won't bring the dead back, but it will make their relatives feel better, and make the airline industry safere
1
@John Preliminary reports do not constitute evidence.
Let's not mince words: Boeing put profits over people and ended up killing some 300 people because it was too greedy to act responsibly. The executives of the company should be held criminally responsible and tried for murder. More people died than in all but the worst terrorist attacks. Those whose greed facilitated this slaughter should pay the same price that other mass murderers pay.
2
There is no bigger sin in life, when you knowingly let someone in a harm's way. An act of negligence, ignorance, and arrogance leading to deaths, and continuous threat of leading to death, is just immoral.
Sin is not tried in court - Crime is. And you might easily get away with criminal conduct, because it is man made. However, you cannot get away with sin, no matter what your justification. Burden of guilt is a very difficult thing to cure.
Enjoy your share buybacks, stock price, and strong pipeline of thousands of planes in order. Get your fat paychecks, stock options, bonuses in multi-million dollars, for what they're worth. But please, don't continue to put people lives at risk, because money can buy the silence of people, but it will never buy the suffering of loss.
It is so painful to continue reading this saga, even as an observer, because the risks were so obvious, especially when NY Times reported in a well researched article after the first crash last year, which pointedly said that there was no evidence that MCAS was tested against the erroneous data both in US and Europe. Unfortunately, it caught my eye and I even commented with politeness on the article to get BA engineers attention, but another tragedy was not stopped. So Sad..
3
The title of the article does not represent what is presented. The pilots initially followed the procedure, but also re-engaged the MCAS system seemingly instigating the final dive. That is NOT in the procedure, the title is misleading.
Clearly they were struggling with the aircraft, and doing their best in a very short period of time and I mourn the loss of so many lives. Boeing has clear culpability, but every crash has multiple factors and human behavior is nearly always part of a cascading event.
Boeing, regulators and, the airlines have a long road ahead before this aircraft returns to the air, and that is the way it should be.
4
@J Lafond Additionally, they didn't pay attention to the airspeed. In the report it says that that the overspeed clacker was sounding for half of the incident. With nose down trim, this high speed would have made it even more difficult to hold the nose up. By reactivating the trim system at high speed, they sealed their fate.
1
@Nu11us - Fully agree. My sense if there is so little hand flying that the basics of flight can be lost in the confusion.
@Nu11us BTW, the plane hit the ground at 575mph
It would appear as though they are hiding something. I would be afraid to go on one of those planes until an independent body approves it.
2
I spent years developing and testing safety systems for the electric utility industry. When a computer monitoring safety-related sensors detects such a gross disagreement between two redundant sensors, one of the inputs has failed and the computer cannot determine which one. The only acceptable solution is to place the system in a safe state. In the current context that would mean suspending corrective action and immediately alerting the human operator of the failure.
Aircraft employ more redundant systems than almost any other product, so how could this most very basic rule of safety have been overlooked? How could this system with its single-point-of-failure issue pass the design reviews? It sounds to me like the software may have been changed after the reviews, or was never fully implemented as designed. Software changes happen and can be invisible to most of the parties affected by them.
It doesn't make any sense to outfit the plane with redundant sensors and then allow the computer to make corrections based on only one of them. If so, it appears to be a sudden and unexplained departure from design standards. It is so hard to believe the teams of engineers who were developing these systems were not trained well enough to realize the risk, and their peers and managers not trained well enough to correct it.
Why are the sensors themselves not being reported on? Why do they fail? Resonance, vibration, misapplication? The silence is deafening.
16
@Kevin "sudden and unexplained departure from design standards". Correct. My thoughts exactly. It doesn't make sense from and engineering standpoint. This scenario does:
To save time and a few bucks did Boeing subcontract the original MCAS design to someone else like a video game designer? Because their own engineers said to do it properly would take months and Sales was in a hurry? It doesn't resemble anything an aircraft control designer would do. Many errors were found after the first crash but they weren't grounded while Boeing worked on corrections to be done by April. Almost made it. Talk about criminal negligence causing 346 deaths. How it all got past the FAA is another issue. What else is wrong with the 737 Max design? It's now the deadliest mainstream airliner.
5
@Kevin
This is a great starting point to discuss failsafe, an imperative requirement for recovery.
I still don't understand the sensor itself which has been characterized as preventing the incipient increase in AOA. What causes the indeterminate increase in the AOA. All jets stall then spin when equipped with super critical wings, within a hair's breadth of the loss of lift (nose high).
How does the sensor located on the co-pilot side of the fuselage detect excess nose up if the plane is climbing and turning (right or left) at the same time for example. Perhaps the ultimate answer is not a second sensor on the pilot side of the forward cone (redundancy). If the issue is due to the use of new materiels and/or our lack of certainty with a new propulsion paradigm within the engines which actually increases thrust over time given the same control inputs, put a sensor set there. The notion of the nose inexorably, yet unpredictably, rising due to a 'new engine' is not an acceptable conclusion of this discussion. If the thrust were predictable then weight and balance can be used to control some of the variance.
Further, the issue of software and proper critical software development for aviation, obviously is beyond the skillset of Boeing to design, develop and test alone.
Finally for those that look down upon the pilots flying in the third world, I ask them to describe recovering from unanticipated porpoising in the take off leg.
Really. That dog just don't hunt.
3
@Kevin It is called incompetence! These engineers did not understand even the basics of safety critical systems. Now they are promoting they have a software fix. Just imaging how bad is the rest of the code is! Management just wants the planes back in the air! They have no idea what they are doing. It will take 8-12 months to re-write, test, approve and release.
1
This is what happens when a company is run by bean counters. All they understand is money. There will be lawsuits; there may be fines - but there should also be resignations and jail time for the people at the top who allowed this to happen.
I hope the shareholders enjoy the value created for them.
9
@Larry Roth I always compare it to a baseball game. Bean counters are score keepers. Score keeping is important but score keepers aren't allowed to play. Or, most importantly, pitch.
1
The software was "too aggressive." Anybody who has done any programming at all knows that software is full of bugs. In fact, all you need is the experience of trying to do an audiovisual presentation from your computer, and Windows wants to update itself, or you can't connect to the resource you want. As a colleague said on such an occasion, "These things never work."
And so we are going to have self-driving cars?
2
Sad that an iconic company like Boeing put the bottom line over passenger safety. It is reported they build 53 of these planes a month. At almost 100 million a plane how much would Boeing had of lost if it had not cut corners? Talk about being pennywise and pound foolish. Can the company ever recover the trust of the flying public?
12
As someone who flies United out of Newark I’m comforted that Hart Langer is an executive and no longer piloting.
Why even cite his nonsensical views when later in the article it clearly states the Ethiopian pilots did exactly what Boeing instructed after Lion Air’s crash and what Langer himself posited?
12
@doug
I suspect Boeing "Damage Control" got to him. Coming from Langer makes it sound more convincing & points the finger at the Ethiopian pilots. Too late...we know who's to blame...don't we lol?
2
I have no doubt that it was pilot error, I think a poor country is withholding certain facts so to place a monetary blame on Boeing. Hand over the black box......................................
Someone isn't sleeping at night because that someone knew.
4
The evidence from Ethiopean 302 indicates that this is no longer an MCAS problem, because the pilots had shut that system off. This means that the Primary Flight Control (PFC) system had to be forcing the plane into a dive. According to the article: "They shut off the electricity that allows the automated software to push the plane’s nose down and took manual control of the jet."
Primary Flight Control (PFC) system cannot be shut off because it contains, among other things, the servo loops needed to manipulate the control surfaces. This means that there had to be a catastrophic failure in the PFC.
Another possibility is a cyber air piracy attack. Such an attack is theoretical possible, and there have been widespread rumors that this was the cause for the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines 370 in 2014. Boeing has never publicly disclosed if the 737 MAX 8 had this type of system.
This technology is the subject of Matos et al. '317, a U.S. Patent for remotely controlling a fly-by-wire aircraft. A cyber attack against the aircraft would probably be made through the satellite communication system. Honeywell (20 NOV 2013) provides a very good overview of aircraft SATCOM systems, but does not say whether their system includes a remote control capability.
Cite:
Matos et al., METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR CONTROLLING A HIJACKED AIRCRAFT, US Pat. No. 7,840,317, issued: 23 NOV 2010.
Honeywell (video), published 20 NOV 2013
Introduction to SATCOM Systems
https://youtu.be/t6jd-s0zUik
1
@W This isn't at all what happened. The aircraft's trim was simply in a nose down position when they cut out the system. Their high speed exacerbated the out-of-trim condition, making it more difficult to hold the nose up (the report indicates high speed). They then reactivated the faulty system, causing the trim to move further down. Doing so at such a high speed caused the crash. Thad they simply slowed down and refrained from reactivating the system, the aircraft could have landed safely.
2
@Nu11us Excellent analysis - the MCAS system started the crisis, but the pilots' continued to exacerbate the problems - basically their situational awareness was diminished by the crisis, possibly compounded by too narrow a training focus. As you say, excessive airspeed and incorrectly positioned trim settings created a challenging flight environment for the pilots. It seems clear that MCAS is implicated as the primary cause of the problems here, but not the sole driver to the crash event.
1
@Steve Midgley and Nu11us
The same evidence exists for a failure of the Primary Flight Control (PFC) in both the Lion Air 610 and Ethiopian 302 (both 737 MAX 8). In both cases, it was reported that there were multiple, simultaneous, flight sensor (avionics) errors. In the PFC, most sensors appear to be independent units connected together by four (4) redundant data buses: Boeing's version of the ARINC 629 Digital Data Bus (the internal computer network used inside the fly-by-wire aircraft). Multiple errors of this type indicate a common problem with the sensors, such as with a common data bus, or power supply or with the computer(s) that tie them together.
According to the report of the Lion Air 610 crash by BBC News (28 NOV 2018): "23:31 - The crew say they cannot determine the altitude of the plane, because all the aircraft instruments are indicating different altitudes. They ask the arrivals controller to block the air space 3,000 ft above and below them so they can avoid other traffic. The controller approves this request."
According to report of the Ethiopian 302 crash in yesterday's N.Y. Times article: "That report said that pilot-side sensor readings connected to the computer system varied wildly and affected everything from their understanding of the plane’s pitch to its airspeed."
This is not a problem with MCAS.
Cite:
BBC News. Lion Air JT610 crash: What the preliminary report tells us. 28 NOV 2018. From: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46373125"
I am a 737 pilot and was flying the max before it was grounded. After reading this report, it sounds like the Ethiopian pilots followed the same procedures that I was given.
Using the stab trim cutout as the only means of disengaging the MCAS makes it very difficult to recover from an MCAS malfunction.
I think the best fix would be to install a separate MCAS cutoff switch so the trim systems would still work and could be used to recover the airplane.
I hope the FAA will insist on this fix.
28
@M W Dravis Good point. However, it doesn't fix the engineering problem with the weight of the heavier and larger engines installed forward of the center of gravity which necessitated the MCAS in the first place. The 737 frame was never designed for these engines. I am sure you are a good skilled pilot but do you want to continue to fly a 737 MAX that could nose dive on you at anytime especially during take off or landing?
7
@M W Dravis Notice, though, that the overspeed clacker was sounding for half the incident. Had they slowed down, they would have had an easier time holding the nose up. Instead, they reactivated the system at 350+ kts, causing the aircraft to crash. Tunnel vision.
2
These are good points. But makes Boeing look even worse.
Who designs a plane where the alternatives are either disconnecting the trim stabilizer, or turning off a critical software that controls that system? Or worse, in the case of the MAX, you had only one option, to turn off both at the same time.
Anyone with a brain at Boeing, or the FAA would tell you this is a complete travesty and a nonsensical corrective action.
Pilots are trained to fly a plane that works, not a plane that has malfunctioned or has a design that makes it impossible to fly, given certain unfavorable circumstances.
8
Whatever else is true, one thing can be said with certainty: the handling of the investigation by those doing it has been atrocious. When the plane crashed in Buffalo about 10 years ago, the black box data was released the next day. Why wasn't that done in the case of the Ethiopia crash? The rest of the study and analysis could have followed later. ... And there has been a steady drip drip drip of leaks of incomplete information fueling speculation that in the end is unsubstantiated until we have all the information. ... I expected the tabloids and the more sensational news sites to say that the reports yesterday cast doubt on the safety of the 737 Max. But we don't really know. For example what about the speed of the plane? Some pilots have said that on a plane is traveling so fast, you can't control the trim manually, due to air pressure on the rudders. Why did the pilots fly the plane so fast? So it might be pilot error too. Certainly Boeing software, and their failure to update the software more quickly, bear part of the blame, but it's likely that a software update can correct the problem. ... I'm not saying that a conclusion can or can't be drawn. I'm just saying that it's premature at this point, and the investigators should have been more forthcoming with information as it became available, and not through leaks
2
I think I can make a pretty good argument that the MCAS system was never needed and in fact made the airplane less safe.
Today we know that with the 737 Max 8 if you are entering a full stall and push the power up before you've dropped the nose and gained speed, the new engine position may prevent you from lowering the nose.
But if you are hand flying a jet transport aircraft and changing airspeed and power settings or reconfiguring flaps, you will be constantly changing the stabilizer trim with the switch on your yoke which controls the same stabilizer trim motor that the MCAS does.
So if you somehow got into a deep stall while you were hand flying a departure climb out after takeoff and you pushed the yoke full forward and couldn't get the nose down wouldn't you just use the switch on the yoke to roll in some nose down trim with the stabilizer trim to gain airspeed. Doing this would be such a natural reaction to a high angle of attack that it is hard to believe that you would have to train pilots to do it, but of course you could train them if they were new to this version, and you were afraid they wouldn't do it naturally.
I can't think of a single crash where an airliner got into a high angle of attack deep stall during the takeoff and initial climb regime.
I think this was an ill-conceived solution to a problem that didn't exist.
8
Quotes and observations in context from The Preliminary Report.
Ethiopian Airlines Group
March 10, 2019
"At 05:41:46, the Captain asked the First-Officer if the trim is functional. The First-Officer has replied that the trim was not working and asked if he could try it manually. The Captain told him to try."
"At 05:41:54, the First-Officer replied that it is not working."
My observation:
The First Officer's statement above shows a mechanical failure. That is, manually rotating the stabilizer trim wheel was not positioning the horizontal stabilizer. This is a failure of the manual stabilizer trim system. At this point the pilots could not overcome the automatic nose down stabilizer motion. The First-Officer could not manually trim the nose up by rotating the stabilizer trim wheel. The runaway stabilizer procedure depends on this system functioning. (Regardless of the Stab Trim switches position)
From the 737 Flight Crew Operation Manual, Flight Controls-System Description shown on Page 18 of the Preliminary Report, second paragraph, "The stabilizer may also be positioned by manually rotating the stabilizer trim wheel."
My observation:
The stabilizer trim wheel manual operation is part of the pre-flight check. So this system failed between the pre-flight check and 05:41:54 UTC.
May all those lost Rest in Peace.
7
@DTMak Excessive airspeed may have made the trim adjustment difficult or impossible - it might not have been mechanical failure of the controls, but overspeed that made recovery from the MCAS induced problems challenging.
2
This article title should reflect that some experts (including in this article disagree with the report) I think the NY Times should do better. I expect them to fair and neutral without misleading titles. When you contradict what your title says, you should include that it is not universally accepted.
I am not blaming only the pilots, but they did not do everything right. When they had level flight after take off, they should have decreased thrust. They continued to accelerate. That is NOT recommended or normal procedure. The high unusually high speed made it nearly impossible to manually trim the plane. The captain appeared to not help with the data released. They also could have worked together to manually trim the aircraft.
#2 an this is MOST important, they re-enabled the MCAS system (or perhaps never turned it off - the data most suggests it was re-enabled) Turning it back on (or never turning it off) is NOT part of the procedure. It does not get enabled until you safely land.
5
My feelings are that there is more to this than meets the eye. Whilst it is possible that a faulty sensor caused these problems, it is equally possible, in my opinion, that the sensor and its data were correct, but its processing by MCAS or some other system control hardware was corrupted or misinterpreted, which would explain why there are aspects of this tragedy that simply are not explicable with what we know so far.
After a working lifetime's experience maintaining and repairing electronics, I would suggest that it's possible that with the complexity of modern electronics and electro-mechanical systems these days, we may have had a hardware defect somewhere in the system; otherwise how can it be explained that aircraft speed increased throughout the flight, but the throttles were not increased?
3
Ralph Nader’s grand-niece was on the Ethiopian flight and he’s going after Boeing. This makes me hopeful that change may happen.
7
Why do we have a FAA? Seems we need to blame FAA for this. Where were the do nothing employee's. Why is the American taxpayer paying these deadbeats?
7
@Abenaki I suggest you read the article. Airline experts outside the of The FAA say that the pilots made mistakes. Many expert pilots have been saying that it is recoverable, and the pilots made mistakes. The fault is NOT all on them, but it was avoidable based on the data in the report, even though the Ethiopian conclusion is different. Watch the press conference. NON US aviation officials asked tough questions, some were not answered because it points to pilot errors. I am not saying Boeing is innocent.
1
@Michael Sears, is pilot also
suspect in case of Lion airline
crash in Indonesia. Strangely
pilots of two different airlines
making same mistake. Why
Boeing says they are fixing MACS system.
3
Stay classy, Hart Langer.
3
@MD, MD Langer's correct. The crew went off-procedure when they did the electrical shutdown. The Ethiopian govt' is trying to shape the narrative but the fact remains they didn't spend the money for a Max simulator to give all their pilots adequate access to retraining and 'what ifs'.
1
@GCE
Not true. Ethiopia has one of the few 737 MAX stimulators in existence. And I’m pretty sure both pilots trained on it.
6
@carole Do you really think the simulator can account for all these complex factors and defective/poorly written software?
It's really a pity that Hart Langer, the ex-Pan Am pilot, was not flying the aircraft; he could have saved the day.
4
The 737 Max is not airworthy - without special sensors and software. This was a deliberate - and dangerous - choice by Boeing to speed up the delivery of a new plane.
Any plane should be aerodynamically safe to start with. That should be the bottom line!
Adding sensors and software for further safety? Go right ahead.
But the 737 Max should be scrapped. And a substitute designed from the ground up. Anything else is subterfuge. And Boeing has already done too much of that in the 737 Max.
Whether its air travel or medicine, when lives are at stake, corners cannot be cut!
21
@TheraP This is not true. Boeing in not innocent, but this system is designed to prevent a stall. Their system needs work, and think they should have done better. However this system is NOT new. The military has used it in Boeing aircraft for decades without incident.
NEXT. This system is like the common car feature that keeps modern cars on the road. Often called lane keeping assist. It can go wonky too, and you can turn it off.
Did you know the pilots very likely turned off (as per procedure) and then turned back on (not part of the procedure. Did you know they allowed the aircraft to accelerate past it speed rating (before the nose dive). These are facts.
Also there are no plans to add sensors. Your and the media's understanding needs improvement. They are adding a display for the sensor that it already there. It is technical data, and usually only military jets use indicator for the sensor.
3
@Michael Sears My main concern is that the MCAS relies on a single sensor for input/control, even though there are two sensors installed on the plane. How did Boeing decide to design the system to function in this way? Human-rated control or safety systems cannot rely on single points of failure - period.
The fact that Boeing offered an upgraded safety feature that would show if the two AoA sensors disagreed is worrisome also, when combined with the core system's reliance on only a single senor's input.
Where are all the experts who were insunuating that the problem is with the airline and/or the pilots? Commentators on CNBC, Fox, etc were very quick to lay blame on an easy target when suspicion should have naturally fallen on Boeing, given a recent crash involving the same plane. These biases have real consequences.
10
Why wasn’t the sensor-failing scenario tested in flight simulators with real pilots? Such testing should be an absolute requirement, for every sensor on the plane.
8
@Ilya Shlyakhter This is a good question. The investigation will answer it.
Why the software...to correct a structural failure due to engine placement. Fail.
6
@Christopher There is no structural failure. The plane will fly without the system. It is used to assist. It is clear that there are some very important improvements needed. However there is a procedure to follow if it goes wonky, and the system can be disabled, and probably was, but for some unknown reason it was re enabled. This was the straw the broke the camels back. Very likely Boeing, the airline, and pilots all share blame.
Go back to the basic problem. The pair of the engine is not matching with the airplane body. The software fixing is not going to fix this basic engineering problem.
17
Criminal negligence on Boeing's part.
10
If it is true that the Ethiopian pilots followed all Boeing procedures, then the inescapable conclusion is that the plane’s physical design is so critical that the software patch was incapable of overcoming the design deficiencies, and if defective the control patches may have actually created or exacerbated the problem. At extreme angles of flight, control recovery can become so difficult that LOTS of altitude is required to save the aircraft, particularly an aircraft which is inherently unstable. You don’t have lots of altitude on takeoff and climb, arguably the most critical phases of flight.
47
@Steve Bemis
Why can I not write this clearly? Beautiful job SB !!!
2
There are three reasons for this fiasco: greed, greed and greed. Which is said to be blind, until the planes start falling from the sky unfortunately.
In February my two kids flew four times in a plane of that type... I feel a lot of sadness for all the victims’ family.
I doubt very much that anything will ever change if the people at Boeing who took the decisions leading to those tragedies, and their whole chain of command, do not go to jail for life.
10
"It’s our responsibility to eliminate this risk," Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg cla imedin a video. "We own it, and we know how to do it."
More than 350 human lives lost later we can only wonder about the "we know how to do it" part of Muilenburg's assertion. This tragedy was an unacceptably costly dollar short and a day late.
The problem seems to be a prevailing governing philosophy that puts the regulated in charge of their own regulation. The results are grimly predictable whether we are talking about food supply, the environment, auto safety, health care or air transportation.
Corporations care more deeply about profit margins than about human safety. Self-regulation is the ultimate conflict-of-interest. It takes a robust public sector to protect the public trust and the human lives which depend upon that trust being properly sustained.
40
Spot on, John!
4
The underlying problem with this plane is that it was a rush job so as to compete with Airbus. So, they took an old plane, attached engines that are too powerful, then added software to try to help control plane. I guess the moral of the story is that a very sophisticated plane should be optimally designed from the beginning, and speed to market should not be the priority.
25
MCAS turns the 737 into a death trap. It will require an in depth investigation to understand how Boeing failed to recognize this fatal design flaw and why it delayed a correction.
10
The graphic shows the plane climbing steadily after the initial problems, then a final plunge. The graphic omits two critical data points: when the pilots turned MCAS off, and when they re-engaged it. If it was climbing, why did they re-engage? And if it was off, why did the climb turn into the dive that forced re-engagement?
4
@Chris Hynes
Why do you continue to blame the pilots when it's clear from almost every source that the Max has a serious design flaw a single point of failure?
4
When software is expected to compensate for a design flaw in the plane it is just plain reckless, unconscionable. Boeing must recall the MAX and start from scratch and design a new plane.
21
If a company has nothing else it must have the market's confidence in it's products and the company that builds them. That could not be more true than in an aircraft manufacturer. Boeing is teatering on the edge of a cliff and if they can't pull themselves back by flawlessly managing this crisis, it is going to find itself going down the path of Firestone Tires, Takata (airbag) Corp, Trump Steak, Trump University, Trump Air, etc.
Sadly, going from a soaring eagle to an extinct Pterodactyl can happen in an instant in this corporate environment. Time for Boeing to stop trying to chase profits and earnings reports and focus on regaining faith in buyers and users of their planes or they will find the Europeans (Airbus) and Chinese (Comac) will be knocking on their customers doors and finding those doors open.
7
Anyone besides me find it odd that it appears that an angle of attack sensor failed the same way in both crashes? I assume they must be pretty reliable in general since they must be used for autopilot flying normally. Seems like they can fail by giving a false nose up or nose down reading or fail to give a signal at all. How common is it for an AAS to fail on a new plane and to fail in the same manner? My intuition says highly unlikely but it could be wrong. Anyone know anything about the normal failure rate of these sensors?
9
Well, things break down. Things stop working. That is normal. That’s why there are multiple attack sensors on a plane in the first place.
The really scary thing, is that what was thought to be a function for safety and redundancy - putting two sensors on a plane - made it very, very unsafe (at least in terms of airplane security). Mathematically, the probability that two independent components both break down is very, very low. However, the probability that either one of two independent components breaking down is about double that of a single one breaking down. Thus, the redundancy was effectively turned into a critical single-point of failure.
That such software was allowed to fly a plane, that it was entrusted with lives of hundreds of people, is shocking, scandalous, and downright outrageous.
10
@Kerry Edwards Unsurprisingly, they apparently fail when a bird hits them.
1
@Johan Krisár
" Mathematically, the probability that two independent components both break down is very, very low."
This is not necessarily true. If 2 or more sensors are located near each other an events like birdstrikes, extreme enviromental factors, or other common mode failures (voltage spike on same circuit, shared sampling tube blockage) can damage both sensors. Typically these types of risks are evaluated and designed for on critical equipment, but I've worked on plenty of (non aircraft) systems that have tripped due to those types of failures. All agree that a safety system should not ever depend on a single sensor.
Nikki Haley is due to be voted onto the Board of Boeing on April 29th. Shareholders should think long and hard about electing such an individual to the Board of Directors at this point in time for the only possible reason she could be of use to this company is to bring influence to bear in Washington. And her kind of influence is what has created this mess in the first instance. She is a diehard Republican who, we must assume, supports the deregulatory imperatives of this administration. Will shareholders have the sense to ensure she never sees the inside of this or an other boardroom in the interests of public safety?
38
@Hopeoverexperience She was governor of South Carolina and made the decision to move the Confederate flag from the state capitol. Hard for you to believe, but there are some Republicans who know how to do the right thing, especially if lives are at stake.
1
@Bill
I had that attitude about Republicans up until 2 1/2 years ago…
6
@T. Monk
I find the best way to evaluate a politician is to check 2 key data points...
- Donor List
- Voting Record
In that order
3
How calloused can a company be? They offered a safety feature as an option. That is tantamount to offering brakes, lights, horn and windshield wipers as options in autos.
14
“They did not follow the Boeing procedures,” said Hart Langer, a former Pan Am pilot and United Airlines executive.
Lol! Boeing "Damage Control" department is desperately trying to point the finger at the Ethiopian pilots for the disaster.
Sorry Boeing but the public are not that gullible & won't be fooled! No wiggling out of this situation!
It's easy for anyone to speculate when on 'terra firma'! But in an airplane that's gone 'berserk' with the nose pointing vertically 'up' & the next second straight 'down' towards the rushing ground & rapidly changing 'g' forces... not many can be expected under be calm & perform at their best in that frenzied situation!
Like Dennis A. Muilenburg, Boeing’s chief executive, acknowledged the role of the software in the accident. “As pilots have told us, erroneous activation of the MCAS function can add to what is already a high workload environment,” he said in a statement on Thursday. “It’s our responsibility to eliminate this risk. We own it, and we know how to do it.”
I hope they (Boeing) know how to do it...for the safety of both the "flying public & people on the ground". And not to forget ...Boeing's future depends on it!
14
This is what happens when you hire software managers who know Agile methodologies, but not basic hazard analyses, like FMEA and FTA. That, or else they didn’t push back on a higher level program manager, and schedule pressure. Add to that the heads-in-the-sand crisis management approach of upper management after planes fell out of the sky, who continued to claim the plane (with single point failure mode) was safe to fly. C’mon, it’s 2019!! PLEASE READ: “Mr. Feynman Goes to Washington”
13
"A sensor that measures the angle at which the plane is flying began producing erroneous readings, suggesting that the plane was about to stall. .... The faulty data activated the software that automatically pushed down the nose of the plane."
Boeing appears to be trying to hide a much bigger problem with its planes' control software (MCAS) than it is ready to admit. Those with experience in this area will tell you that if the problem, as Boeing claims, was a single faulty, non-redundant, sensor, then:
1) Fixing that problem is largely a hardware issue. And it is as simple as installing additional redundant sensors; and,
2) Assuming that MCAS is not a kluge, then there should be no need to make any change to MCAS core software. The required software change should be minimal and has to be at Measurements Pre-processing level where, for each measured quantity, the best measurement from multiple sensors is selected and made available to MCAS.
If the problem is only that, then the company's statement that "it needed more time to finish a software update and training, which will be necessary before the planes can fly again" appears out of place.
The required software changes, and testing and validating them, should not take more than a few days, if not shorter. A much longer time is indication of a much deeper problem and Boeing, for legal and commercial reasons, is reluctant to admit.
8
It was reported that a 737 Max simulator reproduced the crash and that Boeing's procedure to recover from MCAS full down trim doesn't work. The forces on the tail are so high you can't manually turn the trim wheel.
Google "Doomed 737 MAX’s pilots apparently followed Boeing’s safety directions to no avail" on Seattle Times.
Software "fixes" for bad aerodynamics should be immediately banned. The 737 Max pos should stay grounded until Boeing corrects the bad aerodynamics and MCAS isn't needed.
No other airliner design is so bad that it needs MCAS.
A "patch" to fix really bad software that was supposed to fix really bad/unacceptable aerodynamics isn't going to cut it.
There's a chain that needs to be eliminated. Redesign the aerodynamics properly. Whatever that takes. No MCAS.
Obviously Boeing is NOT focused on safety. They are only focused on the fastest and cheapest bandaid for a really bad design that has already killed 346 people.
Muilenburg is the guy who tried to stop Trump from grounding the planes after two crashes even though the rest of the world had already grounded them. He was "fully confident" in the 737 Max. Why would anyone believe anything he says about safety now?
Google "MIT Expert Highlights "Divergent Condition" Caused By 737 MAX Engine Placement". The 737 Max pos design is "not acceptable" according to a MIT professor of aeronautics.
43
@Jay Cee
Thanks for the links to two informative articles!
2
@Jay Cee
It’s my understanding that other airliners do have similar systems. Airbus, for instance has anti-stall systems like this. Their computers do, however poll three separate sensors to greatly reduce the chance of a single sensor failure causing an unwanted trim adjustment. I may be wrong about this, however. And I do agree that Boeing should probably scrap this 1960s design and build a new plane from the ground up.
1
@T. Monk No any other airliner design has a divergent condition. "Because the engines are further forward, the lift tends to push the nose up -- causing the angle of attack to increase further. This reinforces itself and results in a pitch-up tendency which if not corrected can result in a stall. This is called an unstable or divergent condition. It should be noted that many high performance aircraft have this tendency but it is not acceptable in transport category aircraft". Quote from "MIT Expert Highlights "Divergent Condition" Caused By 737 MAX Engine Placement"
2
PSA: To translate this article:
The pilots disabled MCAS by cutting power to MCAS. But on the 737 max, cutting power to MCAS also cuts power to “power steering.”
(Cars use power steering to help you turn the steering wheel, when it fails, the wheel on a car becomes very heavy and some girls don't have enough strength in their arms to turn the steering wheel. Go to your car while it is parked with no keys in the ignition, try moving the steering wheel as hard as you can (make sure its been parked for awhile) - thats what it is like to turn the wheels on your car with no power steering. On airplanes, it is harder to ‘turn the wheel’ the faster you are traveling.)
So when the pilots lost power steering (because they turned off MCAS), the plane was traveling too fast for them to manually ‘turn the steering wheel’. They physically didn’t have the strength to turn the wheels.
So when they realized that it wasn’t working. They turned the MCAS back on in hopes that they could use the power steering to change the direction of the plane before the autopilot kicked in and pushed the plane further down
12
Echoes of the DC-10. Control of its design had been usurped by the cost accountants, and it was brought to market with several flaws. After a few fatal crashes it was grounded. Fixes were made, but it was doomed as a passenger airliner. The public wouldn’t fly it and airlines wouldn’t buy it. Giving it a new name didn’t help. It’s still a reliable plane. FedEx has the largest fleet; they carry parcels rather than people.
The 737 MAX, likewise, is a flawed design. Rushed to market with a 50 year old airframe unsuited to the new engines, the necessary cost and delay of building a new model were finessed. Instead, a software patch was added to keep a flawed plane in the air. Influential people are already saying they will not fly on a 737 MAX. When enough of the flying public refuse to board it, it will disappear from commercial fleets.
Anyway, that’s my guess.
29
@Paul Ephraim
By the way, it was the introduction of the 737, which took control of the short to mid range market from the DC-9, that forced the economies on the DC-10. Now, 30+ years later, Airbus put Boeing in the same dilemma.
2
@Paul Ephraim
"The 737 MAX, likewise, is a flawed design. Rushed to market with a 50 year old airframe unsuited to the new engines, the necessary cost and delay of building a new model were finessed. Instead, a software patch was added to keep a flawed plane in the air."
Why does it take me nearly 2 pages & 1000 words to communicate what you've composed in 2 sentences?
Beautifully written !! Well done.
3
Looking to an updated piece of software is not the answer. Go to the source of the problem: Boeing moved the engines forward and higher on the wings to avoid costly changes in the landing gear. The result; an increased possibility for the plane to nose upward and stall. Thus MCAS was created to accommodate for a potentially fatal engineering flaw. MCAS created more problems and did nothing to solve the original problem, the root cause of failure. Fix the root cause.
11
This event is tragic and probably criminal, and it is also an extreme example of the sort of thing that happens every day in situations where engineers make decisions without consulting users. From Microsoft Office to our car's computers to "smart house" technology and traffic control systems, there is inadequate attention paid by designers to the experience of users. This time the cost has been hundreds of lives, but the syndrome has been increasingly evident for some time in everything we do.
15
@Rebecca and I concur that some of the biggest names in home automation, automobiles and now Boeing assume that their engineers are smarter than users. Why weren't pilots brought into the design phase, this a classic part of "Design Thinking" that is touted by major manufacturers but rarely followed
4
The greater the complexity the more likely system failure becomes.
Just look at the human body.
You just discovered the secret of aging.
Probably because any pilot would have said that constructing an inherently aerodynamically unstable civilian airliner that needs software support to remain in the air is crazy.
13
Yes, the MCAS system malfunctioned, and the pilots may have followed the Boeing emergency procedures, but they did not follow the cardinal rule of flying. When anyting does wrong, first fly the airplane. From this report, it seems like the throttles were left at a high power setting, and the resulting speed increased the forces needed to regain manual control. Never would a checklist include such a step, as that would assume a particular circumstance and airplane configuration. It sounds like both pilots were totally focused on the electronic systems and the position of the nose, but forgot about the throttle position. Plenty of blame for Boeing and a lack of simulator training for this emergency, but reducing power should have been a normal pilot reaction.
6
Correct. Watch your airspeed, level the plane (unless there is a mountain straight ahead), then sort out the problem.
Easier said than done in a panic situation, but you are correct. This was in part pilot error, but 90% of the fault still lies with Boeing.
7
@Pete Wrong he was very low and wanted to climb. Climbing requires power. If he finally got the nose up he wanted lots of power. The dive was unrecoverable. It was reported that a 737 Max simulator reproduced the crash and that Boeing's procedure to recover from MCAS full down trim doesn't work. The forces on the tail are so high you can't manually turn the trim wheel.
Google "Doomed 737 MAX’s pilots apparently followed Boeing’s safety directions to no avail" on Seattle Times.
2
@Pete
Have you flown the MAX with its singular point of failure design?
No? Then I'll take Captain Sully's view over yours.
This plane was a bad idea in the first place for the simple reason that because it's not aerodynamically sound, it requires computer software to override the laws of nature. I'm sure Boeings engineers are smart, but they should never have done this.
12
Most of the blame will go to Boeing. The pilots will get some blame too. At the end of the article it is mentioned that the throttles were never moved. It may be proven that had they pulled the power back off the engines the the MCAS system would not have caused such a massive push over. Perhaps "decrease thrust" was not one of the steps written into failed MCAS system procedures. Perhaps it was assumed a pilot will decrease thrust when going so fast over what is normal at that altitude.
1
Flying coffins, anyone ?
Heckuva' job, Boeing.
Heckuva job, unregulated, fatal 'free-market' ?
There's nothing free about an early manmade funeral.
24
Notably, the day before the Lion Air 610 crash, there the pilots experienced the same issues with the plane as during the day of the crash. The pilots did not know how to respond, but there was a "dead-head" pilot (traveling as a passenger but for work) who recalled his memorized checklist and turned off the power to the trim, saving the plane.
There should be a "registry" system maintained by Boeing that keeps track of all of these adverse events and *automatically* reports them to:
1. Maintenance crews.
2. Pilots about to fly the plane.
3. Airline executives (e.g. Lion Air).
4. Boeing.
This is not a difficult thing to do and Boeing should have instituted this system for all of its planes years ago.
Perhaps the new Boeing CEO will conduct an internal review of all safety systems and will institute just such a registry system. I certainly hope so.
As an additional matter, the co-pilot for the Ethiopian Air crash had only 200 hours of flight experience. *5 years ago* the FAA increased the minimum flight hours from 250 to 1500 for a co-pilot. I would have thought that Ethiopian regulators would have followed updated guidelines by the FAA but they did not. This is another structural problem and I wonder in how many cases are airlines not following FAA recommended safety practices.
There needs to be some internationally funded study that in detail examines airlines throughout the world and see where they deviate from FAA standards and ameliorate the discrepancies.
5
@David MD
The FAA approved an airplane with a fatal design flaw and allowed Boeing to offer safety features as optional and at additional cost.
Spare me the "perfection" of an American agency in bed with those it regulates.
1
@Coco
The FAA was wrong to make the approval, that is an error of omission, not implementing proper protocols.
But the FAA *upgraded* the requirement from 250 hours to 1500 hours minimum just 6 years ago which is adding an additional safety stringency because it was deemed necessary.
Why should first world Americans have a safer airline system than the Ethiopians? The Ethiopian authorities should be adopting FAA safety suggestions.
If the Ethiopian regulatory authorities didn't follow this particularly FAA safety protocol, what other ones did they not follow?
Do you really feel safe taking any Ethiopian flights when they are not following FAA regulatory standards? I don't.
@David MD. If third-world airlines were required to follow FAA standards there would be no third-world airlines. Simple problem of inadequate skilled pilots available.
Criminal charges should be made against the executives at Boeing. They basically killed over 300 people in their quest for money. At the very least, they are guilty of second degree murder.
21
On an industry that prides itself on having redundant safety systems it's a real head-scratcher to read that there was no such system in place if the attack angle sensor malfunctioned.
All commercial aircraft passenger jets have two, three, four or more redundant systems as backups if any one fails. Amazing to me that even after the first fatal plunge last October there was still only one system in place for the sensors.
11
The Real Root Cause
The angle of attack sensor, not the MCAS, is the root cause of the crashes.
The MCAS responds to the erroneous signals from the angle of attack sensor. If there were no MCAS pilots would still be faced with a sensor indicating the plane is at a dangerous angle of attack and may stall.
The angle of attack sensor is widely used, on just about every Boeing jet. Why is the sensor on the 737 Max 8 failing? Even if MCAS is fixed the sensor will still be a problem.
Why is there no discussion of this?
6
@Ed
There has been some discussion of this in other reports. Given how hard Boeing (and Airbus) are leaning on suppliers to cut costs I wouldn't be surprised if the next phase of the scandal involves the supplier cutting corners and pushing out shoddy parts. But that's why we need a thorough investigation.
Besides, when a single malfunctioning alpha vane causes MCAS to intervene aggressively you can't say MCAS isn't at fault. It is a poorly designed system. Hence, Boeing is "Fixing" this with the updated software. They should have got this right initially, since the current design violates industry standard practices.
4
@Ed The root cause is the placement of the engines which increases the possibility for nose up stalls. That is why MCAS was created. Fix MCAS and the plane as engineered will still have this engineered flaw.
6
@Rob Good point, but even if they fixed the engine placement there's still the issue of the angle of attack sensors are failing.
2
Looks like Boeing is going to be facing some very expensive lawsuits from relatives of the crash victims. But the U.S. government is liable too. Boeing's cosy relationship with the FAA and the whole issue of "self-certification" needs to be examined, since the agency was so starved of funding it can no longer afford to make the necessary safety inspections. This is what happens when the GOP continually demands budget cuts in the interests of "limited government."
18
Blood is on someone's hands. i wonder if Boeing bigwigs told their loved ones not to fly the Max after the first crash.
8
Remember how Boeing fiercely defended the safety of this aircraft AFTER THE SECOND FATAL CRASH?
I have nothing to add....
29
Kindly allow me to add that the day of the second crash, the Boeing CEO, by a mere phone call, managed to reduce Trump to be his personal sock puppet, making the POTUS spout his lies of the MAX 8 being safe despite the deaths of hundreds.
Trump only grounded the MAX 8 when the rest of the world has done so because when it comes to safety, America last.
10
@Opinioned! I'm glad the investigation is in France, and not here. Here, it would just be covered up. We can trust no one while the drumpfies are in charge.
4
How does a high tech AoA sensor fail in a brand new plane?
MC
5
@Michael C A bird likely hit it.
Boeing has to remove that plane and redesign it. Period. No one should ever fly on a 737 MAX again. Their behavior is inexcusable and what a tragedy for the people who died to prove it.
20
CEO Muilenburg and other senior mgmt directly involved should resign or be fired. The world-wide public trust is lost
14
The key point of the whole story continues to be that in order to use an old airframe (737) changes needed to be made that made the new plane non-airworthy with a software patch to solve the design flaw!!
And that could happen without any serious consideration? I thought that in 2008 we learned that self-regulation of huge companies does not work, but apparently it was necessary that we learn that lesson again?????
24
This is a typical American marketing problem .
Every time I see a product afflicted with the super relative "Max ",
I know there is a lie and a trap there .
You take an average mediocre product and you give it a slight modification to make it look up to date and then to seal the whole image they name it " Max " ...for Maximum .
Everybody who has been educated in that mystique loves the Max.
In reverse thinking ,it makes me laugh when I see those prices labeled 2. 99 $ This lease is for 399 $.(then at the minute of signing - the car has a special paint it is 30 $ more ) A pound of pork is 4.99 $.
The logic of 1929.
Yesterday I went to try mattresses at a big department store.
The salesman : " I like your shoes ! " The mattress was 14999 $ . He said : " I like you . I'll give it to you for 7999 $ ! ".
Take my card " - I don't want your card !
4
My nephew is a young commercial pilot. Under no circumstances would I want him to get assigned to one of those aircraft.
4
He would happily fly a 737 Max. Getting pummeled at lower altitude in a shifty twin prop is the Greyhound of the skies.
1
@Hollis Greyhounds haven’t killed 300+ people within a few months.
2
It sounds like the pilot re-engaged the MCAS because when he disengaged it, following procedure, the software didn't give up control. This is the nightmare of "AI". As if once engaged, the machine was programmed to override pilot judgement and not give up full operational control.
We charge machines life or death authority but they are incapable of ascertaining their own flaws or the flaws of inputs connected to them. And, they have no regard for human life or respect for the judgement of their competitor, the human operators.
7
No, they probably reengaged it, because the trim (last set by the MCAS before shutting off the electricity to the motors) was pushing the plane down while the pilot now had to pull the yoke back like crazy to compensate for the excessive trim. However, at their airspeed the copilot could not mechanically overcome the forces on the control surfaces to move the trim back manually. They were probably hoping to be able to use the motors to help, but that let the evil Jeannie (MCAS) back out of her bottle again, she regained control of the elevators and the plane went nose down.
6
The more we find out, the less credibility is left of Boeing. It appears Boeing was both reckless and negligent in pushing out the 737 Max in a hurry. By adopting a more powerful engine in essentially the same old airframe, they found eventually there was no easy fix the tendency to stall. The solution? A hastily cooked software solution. How ridiculous was this patchwork?
1. The MCAS relies on only 1 sensor when there are 2 available.
2. The software does 1 thing: When the sensor indicate AoA of a critical degree, it forces the nose down. Too laughably simplistic.
3. There is a AoA disagree warning available but it is optional equipment. That's marginally ok. What is not ok is when the plane knows there is an AOA disagree, why isn't MCAS disengaged with a warning to the pilots?
4. The pilot can use the electric trim switch to undo the erroneous nose down action by MCAS. But the software, basing only on sensor input, will drive the nose down again and again.
5. The software is very very simplistic. 1 sensor. 1 action. It doesn't care about other available sensor inputs. It doesn't care what the pilots want(as expressed by button/trim-wheel actions).
The MCAS remedial procedure offered to pilots are probably insufficient too. If the pilot cuts off power to the MCAS system, will the system(the stabilizer) get "stuck" at an irreversible position? Why is there not a neutralize or normalize override process? Cutting off power is so crude!
Unbelievable!!!
19
I’ve had the misfortune of catching the Boeing CEO read a carefully prepared statement at the BBC.
It seems that he is treating the deaths of hundreds as a PR issue. He dressed casually, blocked himself inside the plane assembly line, spoke somberly, and had good lighting.
Nowhere in the speech outsourced to professional wordsmiths did it say that Boeing will redesign the MAX 8.
The problem of too big an engine was addressed via a line of code.
When this code killed hundreds, the CEO (after making Trump his sock puppet to tell the world that the MAX 8 is safe) now is saying that the “fix” is another line of code.
My friend Albert has said something about doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
The good news is that we all have a choice not to fly the MAX 8 ever.
Do the right thing Boeing. Have your engineers—and not your accountants—redesign the plane in its entirety.
17
We live in an age where almost all machines we use are run by a concert of computer software to include aircraft. I work for a company that processes vehicle repair orders that are submitted to the manufacturer for reimbursement.
I can type the words 'computer software malfunction' faster than a speeding bullet and the word 'sensor' even faster. When I first heard about this crash, my gut said it's the malfunction of sensor(s) sending erroneous messages. Boeing engineers knew about the possibility of this happening and rather than choosing to do the right thing recalling these machines they send out a checklist;
"insisting that pilots could deal with any problems by following a checklist of emergency procedures."
I can not begin to imagine what it was like for the pilots playing tug of war with a piece of malfunction software.
Boeing's rush to market has cost the loss of precious souls. It's all too clear to me that all certification must be taken out of the hands of the giant corporation called Boeing.
25
@mary I wish the MCAS software is as good as the ones inside our cars. There are multiple design deficiencies. Single point of failure (1 sensor). Disregard of an available AoA disagree signal. Cut-off procedure that can leave the stabilator trim at a dangerous angle. MCAS not easily (or automatically) over-ridden.
2
Most companies have real competition. While there are no longer hundreds of car makers in the US there are dozens.
Could you imagine your car maker saying: Upgrade options: brakes, steering wheel.
When Boeing declares bankruptcy will Donald and the other 1% foot the bill?
13
@TheBackman
With the profit motive (aka capitalism), you get shortcuts. In transportation industries, shortcuts kill.
6
@TheBackman I can imagine HN(gm) invents a clever option to automatically compensate wheel imbalance. The pitch? We will never need to worry the car straying off to the left or to the right. A smart sensor and a steering override acting in concert will give the driver the most comfortable steering experience. And I can imagine some poor driver fighting with the steering wheel on highway 66.
2
This effort to shift the blame to the pilots only highlights yet another point of failure in the aircraft that Boeing designed, namely to expect that training the human pilots to override the automated system that operates in cycles measured in microseconds would be sufficient to mask the flaws in the system. There were bad decisions all up and down the food chain -- management, marketing, sales, design, implementation, validation, and verification -- and those processes aren't going to be corrected with just a software patch.
19
@Sharon Foster There seemed to be more than a touch of racism in the rush to blame the pilots as well. There were numerous references the airlines and pilots being from "less developed" countries, and much emphasis on American and European pilots not reporting problems with the system and the plane's design.
13
@Baltimore 16 I expect a good many American Airlines pilots are happy the plane has been grounded; it seems to me their number was just about up...
3
@Baltimore 16 Oh yeah. Get the good pilots out to fly the innocent planes again. Save Boeing.
Some Boeing executive, perhaps more than one, will have to do time in federal prison. Someone glossed over a serious problem, probably in the rush to meet some target delivery date, and that irresponsible decision played out with deadly consequences.
10
What an absolute tragedy. Boeing has failed miserably with the 737 Max to the point that many passengers will not want to fly a 737 in the future. If it’s Boeing I ain’t going.
23
It is the practice in American industry that when a problem arises such as this, to throw some money at those effected by it and hope that it will go away.
Boeing and others need to be held accountable for mistakes like this and for putting greed over human life.
20
As a regular traveller I will never ever fly in a Boeing 737 max. Should Boeing develop a 'fix' it will be irrelevant to me as I will choose airlines that don't have these planes. Multiple airlines cancelling orders because of consumer pressure may bring Boeing to its knees.
35
It's standard practice in the aerospace business to analyze every system to identify failure modes and their effects. This is called an FMECA (failure modes, effects, and criticality analysis). The whole point of this practice is to identify every type of possible failure and determine what the outcome of such a failure would be on the safety of the system.
Somebody clearly dropped the ball on this one. A system with a single point failure that results in loss of life should be impossible to qualify for flight, in the aerospace business.
63
@SalinasPhil
I'll bet the engineers were screaming for more time to refine this system but management kept pushing the schedule. A very thorough investigation is needed.
11
@Duncan
Boeing better clear out of Chicago fast and put the engineers in charge of the company if Boeing is to survive. There is no place for stock options traders when safety decisions are being made.
4
Top management never, ever should have relocated the corporate headquarters business office out of Seattle to Chicago.
When they made the move, they lost the continual, daily interactions they had with Seattle based design engineers, and the test flight personnel on Boeing Field.
( In Seattle, they also were within half an hour of the major factories.)
The present CEO should be booted out, pronto. And headquarters should move back to being in Seattle.
42
@Jean
But being in Chicago is sooooo important, think of how many lawyers and accountants are within half an hour, not to mention the all important CME group trading computers. A few milliseconds faster to the CME can translate into a few hundred thousand more value in executives stock option value. Why waste good money paying bonuses to engineers and machinists?
2
What I do not understand is why the presumably functioning right AoA sensor indicates an excessive, but fairly constant, negative AoA for most of the flight, yet the altitude was variable and increasing steeply. That suggests to me that both inputs were faulty.
8
@Kara Ben Nemsi — The left AoA was slightly negative because the plane was in an overspeed condition. It was functioning properly.
I am not certain that that is the entire enchilada. While a cambered wing can produce some lift even at a slightly negative AoA, I doubt that an AoA of -6 degrees, which is the indicated position of the right AoA for most of the time, is compatible with the steep gain in altitude. What’s more, that AoA did not move much despite the pilots fighting with the MCAS and it remained consistently negative despite the plane ascending steeply.
One would need to see the aerodynamic profile of the 737 wings, lift and drag curves and an airspeed graph to calculate the wing forces and derive the calculated AoA that way, but just on the looks of it, it just doesn’t seem right.
4
This is what the U.S. has become. The comments here look at the Bowling/FAA disaster in isolation. The same issues apply in most resulted industries. For example from personal experience in a regulatory agency I can say it applies in banking; witness our most recent financial crisis. A robust effective government requires resources. "Maximizing shareholder value," gutting regulation, starving the government, putting the corporate foxes in charge of the henhouse... what else can we expect from finance capitalism run amok? We reap what we sow.
69
Yup - Boeing’s ceo sure nailed it. The “erroneous” activation of a faulty software system designed to keep an inherently unstable aircraft in the air would, indeed,
“Add to what is already a high workload environment.”
7
What makes the situation even worse is that those 300 people didn't die "in the name of science": the MCAS is not a revolutionary technology which will change the history of civil commercial aviation.
No, it's just a band aid that shouldn't even exist. Even if its software is perfected by the best team ever assembled, it will still be a plane with defective design, riddled with unecessary riskes, inferior to its Airbus counterpart in every way.
29
I think this should go beyond civil penalties. I think criminal penalties should be looked into starting from the top Trump, to his FAA appointees to the Boeing CEO.
30
@Paul — The Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft and its MCAS system were approved by an FAA Director appointed by Obama and employees that were hired and promoted during the Obama administration. Trump had nothing to do with it.
Trump's the guy who grounded the aircraft against the advice of the FAA.
2
@puma The FAA was defunded under Bush.
4
@puma-Thank you for your reply. Nice try punting the ball away from the incompetent Trump.
Trump has been in power for over two yrs. and has deregulated nearly everything to the point where Boeing is actually the regulator of themselves. They are in a business life and death struggle with their European competitor and this was bound to happen with the pressure put on them and an incompetent like Trump in the WH letting them regulate themselves.
Trump finally grounded the planes after most of the entire world did and pilots and passengers were paranoid about getting on the planes in America.
Conservatives are big on personal responsibility. They should not shirk their misdeeds and own up to them.,
10
here is my honest technical question, and possibly ignorant and naive. If a stall occurs, the aircraft loses lift entirely and regardless of its horizontal speed starts free-falling to Earth. Now, instead of solely relying on a two bit, error prone, archaic weather vane-like mechanical device called the angle of attack sensor, can't the anti-stall software get the ultimate confirmation of a stall from the plane's altimeter? Regardless of what the weather vane says, if the plane's altitude is not getting smaller, that means there is lift and therefore no stall, so do not activate that killer robot, the MCAS. Looks like really simple logic to me, but I am probably missing something.
6
@s e I think the whole idea of MCAS was to prevent a stall from happening. It was designed(not sure there was much intelligence in the engineering effort to be called design) to take action before a stall actually occurs. But you are right. If there were no altitude loss, the MCAS software should be at a less aggressive mode. I.e. don't fight with the pilots so hard :)
1
Not quite. Ironically, the plane can be stalled but still go up (albeit very briefly). In fact, the plane WILL usually be going up before it stalls, as loss of air speed (and excessive wing loading) determine when the airflow disruption, which defines the stall will occur.
Once the plane is stalled and in a spin, I.e. actually falling, control has been lost and only aerobatic maneuvering can restore control and save the plane.
3
The Republican mantra of "cut taxes and government regulations" was a factor in allowing Boeing to dictate regulatory approval by the FAA (formerly a government agency). I recall Steve Bannon saying that Trump will eliminate the administrative state. Maybe we need more government regulation (and higher taxes) instead of less. Ya think?
25
@Phil Dunkle — The Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft and its MCAS system were approved by an FAA Director appointed by Obama and employees that were hired and promoted during the Obama administration. Trump had nothing to do with it.
Trump's actually the guy who grounded the aircraft against the advice of the FAA.
Obama was also the president in charge while the opioid crisis spun out of control under his FDA. More people die every year from the opioid crisis every year than were killed in the entire Vietnam War.
2
@puma - I never said the Max 8 was approved by a Trump appointee, I referred to the ongoing Republican mantra of deregulation in general. Eliminating the administrative state, as Bannon promised Trump would do, would involve reducing or eliminating administrative agencies like the FAA. They need to be strengthened, not eliminated. Same with the FDA, FCC, etc. Trump was right to ground the Max 8, but needs to follow up by investigating how and why FAA failed by approving the aircraft in the first place. The FAA should not be run by Boeing, Boeing should answer to the FAA. To your point, The FDA should not answer to Big Pharma either.
2
The planes aren't safe, it's questionable if they even plan to fix them. As a consumer my only choice is to ask what type of plane my airline is flying. If it's that one, I make other arrangements.
16
@Tom J
In the booking system I use the type of aircraft is shown. And I have definitely opted for one flight over another due to the aircraft type. That doesn't mean they can't change "the equipment" on your right up to departure, but you can typically see what you will be flying on.
7
Had Boeing built a mandatory and not optional redundancy feature for this new system it's likely the crashes would not have happened. The fact that a second sensor was on the plane but Boeing charged an optional fee to have it a function is absolutely criminal and anybody involved in that decision needs to be charged in the murders of hundreds. A safety feature never ever should be an optional purchase on a plane. The software fix Boeing keeps touting utilizes this second sensor so obviously it is intra go to the safety of the plane. Hopefully an investigator will dive deep into the question of why the second sensor was not utilized on every single plane to begin with. That should be where the people who need to be charged with murder will be identified.
25
@Garth — the safety feature Boeing sold as an option ($60,000) was NOT a "second sensor" that would have prevented these crashes.
Both accident aircraft had two (2) fully functional AoA sensors, albeit one malfunctioned in both cases. The option Boeing sells for extra is only a graphic display (i.e. a gauge) of the AoA vane that appears on the primary flight display of the pilots. It would not have changed the outcome of these crashes.
2
@puma
So you feel safe in your job at Boeing? I can guarantee, this plane will never reach the skies again as a commercial passenger airline.
As a pilot, I’ve never liked fly-by-wire.
4
Hear, hear sir.
1
US Southwest, American, and United Airlines have a total of 72 737 Max 8s in operation. They have been flying them daily, hundreds of flights every day, for more than a year.
None have crashed.
The problem isn't the planes. The problem is the pilots. US airlines require every co-pilot to have at least 1500 hours flight time to get a job. No US airline would allow a co-pilot with only 200 hours of flight time into their cockpits.
Ethiopian did.
1
@Diogenes The Ethiopian pilots were qualified to fly this aircraft and the data shows, so far, that they followed the correct emergency procedures. Ethiopian Airlines is a very safe airline with a very good safety record. While thankfully no Max8s in the US have crashed, there have been a number of Max pilots reporting control issues after takeoff
19
@Diogenes
When 2 planes out of only about 360 in use crash within the first year of that model's release, the statistics are disturbing. If 72 of the 360 were being flown in the US, that means that 4/5 (the vast majority) of the planes were being flown outside the US. Simple statistics then place odds in "favor" (poor word, in this situation) of a crash occurring outside the US. So that fact that no crash occurred in the US cannot be chalked up to pilot training.
If all planes in commercial use were replaced overnight with the Boeing 737 Max 8, the statistics we have so far would predict a dismal safety record for commercial flying.
13
@Diogenes
With the pilots experience and all the other factors that were in play blaming the crash on the co-pilot is absurd.
9
It is clear the responsibility for the two crashes belongs to Boeing and no one else.This has turned back the clock on air travel.They must come up with a credible explanation to bring back the confidence of the public.
8
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The author of this ludicrous idea of putting greedy Boeing in charge of certifying it’s death chambers safe also needs to be accountable for each of these 356 homicides. International conventions limiting victims’ recovery must be suspended because of Boeing’s stunning disregard for human life. And any other airline that dares to fly one of these Max failures after this software fix makes them “safe” is clearly on notice that your liability will not be limited in case your pilots cannot override Boeing’s death spin. A software fix is only a partial solution. There is a fundamental design flaw that makes Max 7 and 8s best fit for scrap metal.
10
I am afraid the US taxpayer will end up paying for Boeing's disastrous and criminal mistakes in a big way. Boeing is "too big to fail." It is too important to the US economy, US defense, and world aviation.
The 737 Max accounts for 1/3 of Boeing's revenue and half of its profits. It has multiple design flaws, including the engines that are too big for the frame and the horrific software designed to compensate for that but instead causes the plane to crash.
I am an aviation buff and close to lifelong admirer of Boeing as being one of world's greatest companies. But, I will never ever fly on a 737 Max even when we are told the flaws and dangers have been fixed, whatever that means.
McDonnell-Douglas never sold another DC-10 after they had been grounded after the pylon flaw that caused the Chicago crash in the 1970s when the engine fell off on takeoff. I wonder if the same will happen to Boeing and whether Boeing can survive that given how much it is relying on the 737 MAX for revenue and profit. If they can't, the US taxpayer will have to step in (and, yes, Dennis Muillenberg will still be a millionaire).
48
@David — The MD-10 didn't have a pylon flaw. It was an unapproved engine maintenance procedure adopted by the airlines (to save time & cost) and never approved by McDonnell Douglas that damaged the engine pylon and lead to the Chicago O'Hare crash (American Flight 191).
2
@puma - You're right, thank you. But, my point is that the public lost confidence and McDonnell Douglas never sold a single one again.
3
@David The DC-10 remained in the air despite design flaws that caused numerous lethal accidents, including a cargo door prone to blowouts and engines that occasionally destroyed the plane when a fan blade failed.
Despite the catastrophes, the FAA and manufacturers were able to maintain the “gentlemen’s agreement” that still separates safety (NTSB) from political regulators (FAA) 40 years later.
It looks like they dusted off the old DC-10 playbook for this jet.
3
My understanding is that Boeing added more fuel efficient engines to the 737 design to compete with the Airbus 320 neo. The larger engines on the MAX had to be placed higher and more forward on the wing in order to provide sufficient ground clearance. That engine placement affected the aerodynamics of the aircraft making it susceptible to stall in some situations. So they added a computer to detect such stalls and correct for it by adjusting the stabilizer trim automatically. And didn't reveal system to avoid pilots having to re-train for the MAX. It was more profitable to jury-rig a 50 year old airframe than to design a new one from scratch. Thus it seems profit was their highest priority, not safety. Now they will pay the price for making bad decisions based on greed.
16
Are murder charges being prepared against Boeing and FAA executives?
9
When we fly, we know the plane type ... does anyone remember the British movie starring Jimmy Stewart (No Highway in the Sky)? -- it explains a lot. There are movies and books which were written in the past fifty years which clearly describe the disasters that were caused by irresponsible training (now software), or industrial creations (like planes that can't fly). Caveat Emptor!!
1
Not that anyone cares about the facts, but the details in the preliminary report are very confusing (I’m a pilot, I’ve read the entire thing).
The pilots reacted wonderfully initially, and I give them all the credit in the world (particularly the very inexperienced first officer, who I suspected had probably made mistakes - he was on the ball). But the technical faults they received don’t seem to point the finger at MCAS, but rather at some sort of issue with the angle of attack indicator. They received an icing warning related to the left side sensor immediately after liftoff, which is pretty strange.
They did struggle to physically pull the nose up, and seem to have re-engaged the electric trim at some point (which they had correctly turned off per Boeing’s recommendations and standard procedure). The other strange thing is that they never reduced power to the engines, which you would expect them to do if they were diving.
Having read every word of this preliminary report, there is more here than MCAS. I can’t help but notice that both accidents happened in extreme environments: very high heat and humidity in Indonesia, and very high airport elevation and temperature in Addis Ababa (75 degrees Fahrenheit and 80% humidity at 7,200 feet above sea level is extremely high). Could the high humidity have something to do with the icing warning?
It’s impossible to draw any conclusions from this report, and anyone who says you can is lying. Let’s wait for the final report.
14
@Mike
Have you flown a Max? I'll take the word of pilots who have and described their erratic operation along with the continuing investigation which points to Boeing's focus on money not safety (i.e., one point of failure).
3
@Mike
Perhaps a stuck alpha vane triggers an icing warning, as well as activating MCAS? More information is needed about how that warning system is designed.
I agree, there's some baffling information here. It's heartbreaking to learn that these pilots did disengage the MCAS initially, then re enabled the system in their confusion.
1
I have over 80 hours in the MAX 8; I have over 6,000 hours in various 737 variants and I have over 9,000 total flight hours in USAF trainer and fighter aircraft, civilian light aircraft and commercial aircraft. My company has over 80,000 hours flown using the MAX 8.
My company, my pilot union, my coworkers, and I, all report no anomalies in MAX 8 performance.
3
I wonder that by all consideration of the Events that happened after the take off it seems more important to blame someone who has to be responsible.
When such a System is implemented of course does it need to proof for human error.
An emergency System should assist in the possible most easiest way.
1
Wasn't Boeing and the FAA just a few weeks ago touting the safety of the plane and saying the world-wide grounding was unnecessary? Oh course they were lying as we all knew they were. Common sense told everyone that two brand new planes do not just crash minutes after takeoff in very similar ways with evidence pointing to a malfunctioning sensor and defective software. It's sad that over three hundred lives were sacrificed on the alter of corporate greed for profit.
Boeing, rather than design a new plane to accommodate the newer and more efficient engines "MacGyvered" the planes knowing that it was potentially unsafe. It looks like they and the FAA rushed this design to market even after warning about this problem was evident. We will see the internal emails from Boeing about who knew this and when they knew it, and I wouldn't be surprised if the countries involved in these crashes didn't issue arrest warrants and extradition requests for those at Boeing who are responsible for the hundreds of deaths.
18
Can Boeing fix the Max-8? We'll see.
Can Boeing then convince the public to fly in them? Start by having every member of top Boeing management, including board members, fly on 100 randomly selected commercial Max-8 flights drawn from every one of their customer airlines,: 25 flights in the US and 75 flights outside the US. Economy class of course.
9
@Lawrence Love your idea but of course never will happen. But if there are congressional hearings this would be an excellent proposal to put forward to the Boeing’s CEO on down. As a psychologist this appears to be a classic example of groupthink-people kowtowing to strongest voices so all fall in line with a very high risk decision. Common occurrences in hierarchical organizations.
So many were blaming the pilots as being untrained in contrast to U.S. pilots who fly the same model airplane. Flying this airplane is more complex than just flipping a switch as some surmised.
2
I gleaned something interesting from a perusal of the American and European aviation regulators' sites regarding the issuing of 'Airworthiness Directives'. An AD is a mandatory compliance directive issued to the operators of specific aircraft types within the jurisdiction of the regulator concerned. The AD can direct specific policies to be altered or equipment modified, replaced or even prohibited. An AD issued by, say, the FAA is only operative on aircraft within the US - it has no effect elsewhere in the world.
I did however find that the European regulator, EASA, adopts automatically any AD issued not only by the FAA, but also those issued by all other aviation national regulators - most commonly those from Canada, Brazil and Russia. And the FAA does exactly the SAME (although there's a bit of obfuscation done, issuing the foreign directive, text unchanged but under an FAA case number). Most likely, other regulatory bodies, Australian, Japanese and so on do the same.
I looked to find examples of the FAA issuing any ADs applicable to Airbus planes that didn't actually originate from EASA. There were none. Similarly, there NO instances of the European regulator making any directives applicable to Boeing aircraft. None.
I'm happy to be corrected but, on top of the FAA's 'self certification', it looks as if there's quite a bit of pan-global regulatory 'rubber stamping' going on too. It wasn't what I was expecting to find.
14
@nolongeradoc: Yes, with respect to this particular plane, only Brazilian authorities broke from the pack and required additional training for pilots on the MCAS system. (Perhaps they're more cautious these days due to the Air France crash some years ago?) I believe European regulators initially balked at Boeing's assertion that no MCAS training was necessary but eventually caved and followed the FAA.
3
@Rupert Thanks for your research-will be very interesting to see if European nations will continue to conform with FAA AD’s. And why is no one pursuing the fascinating story of Brazil flying solo-so to speak-in their insistence that their pilots receive far more training flying using the MCAS system?
1
There seems to be some element of pilot error involved. The question is whether you can blame desperate pilots trying to avoid an imminent crash. Surely, they should never have been put into this situation by Boeing.
2
@AACNY
Actually this article suggests the very opposite of what you write.
4
A textbook example of why we need government oversight of safety critical systems, because clearly you can not trust the judgement of for profit companies. They are constituted to prioritize profit above all else as this plane demonstrates.
I know that I will never fly on a 737 Max again, even after it is certified as air worthy. It also makes you wonder just how safe other Boeing planes really are, doesn't it?
8
@Ellwood Nonnemacher who commented earlier
Exactly. Your points:
"Two, the management that are approving and over seeing these designs are incompetent or not properly educated for their positions, i.e. MBAs instead of engineers.
Three, top level marketing execs forcing impossible products and/or dangerous cost cutting to improve profit and market share to increase the bottomline at the cost of human life."
are glaringly illustrated in the current medical industry in the US. Almost exclusively, hospitals and health care systems are run by people with no medical education. I've been working inside a hospital system for over two decades along with several of my colleagues and we've never been asked for our input in any of the inner or outer workings of the hospital. Instead we are seeing young inexperienced people with MBAs appointed to critical areas of leadership in patient care.
Health care dollars are being spent on their salaries instead of on patient care...and aircraft design improvements are in the hands of non-technical MBAs
It really should be no surprise when fatalities occur in both situations...
8
@Shahbaby the list goes on. We have put the oil and gas industry in charge of the earth's atmosphere. I think this will turn out to be our more critical error as a species.
3
@Dharmabumcdn
Again, exactly! The fox in charge of the chicken coop
To me, the critical issue is not the emergency procedure. It is that the 737 Max planes are NOT safe. It's too bad and sad that it takes 346 lives to expose the greed and recklessness of Boeing and the complacency and incompetence of the FAA. People found responsible for the two tragic crashes must be brought to justice, even though no punishments will bring back the people who perished, may they rest in peace.
9
Let's see:
- No fight simulators for this aircraft
- No "new aircraft" training since the Max 8 was an "upgrade"
- Faulty sensors sending conflicting signals
- Complicated software that can malfunction
- Two "optional" safety features sold separately
You don't need to be a rocket scientist to know this is all wrong. Common sense will tell you that.
Boeing clearly knew of the possibility of serious issues on takeoff when pilots are already overloaded with "control" data.
But they got the FAA -- that every other agency looks to as the gold standard in safety -- to exempt the Max 8 from having pilot training in simulators. It saved the airlines money and got the Max 8 to market sooner. Hooray!
Boeing failed miserably. The airlines and pilot associations also failed by not demanding simulators and insisting that the optional features be offered as standard. The FAA is too cozy with the industry they regulate. They failed too.
This is a shocking and sad chapter in the history of modern aviation. It is also emblematic of a society gone mad with greed at the expense of morality and humanity's core values.
Since when does "optional" and "safety" belong together? Those who lost their lives did not ask. They trusted Boeing, the airline, the regulators and the "system".
A trust that was very misplaced.
102
And on top of all these, the regulators are in house—in the literal sense too as they are physically housed inside the Boeing plant enjoying all the perks and privileges bestowed by the company they should have been keeping in check.
8
@Opinioned!
No, the regulators are not in the Boeing Renton plant, they are across the Chicago River from the CME stock futures exchange.
3
My heart goes out to the family and friends of those killed on Ethiopian Air 302. Whatever the ultimate conclusions it seems obvious that Boeing and the FAA prioritized profits over safety and backup systems. I am particularly disheartened to read the United Airlines executive quoted in this article who is second guessing the adequacy of the pilots responses. This diverges from statements made by US pilots unions and I will think twice about my next United booking as a result.
20
@D Gayle: I agree as to the United pilot. Making a statement like that when you haven't even tried to replicate the accident in a simulator to see how you might have responded (remember this all happened in about 6 minutes when the plane was barely off the ground) is arrogance of the worst sort. The response by United Airlines, more generally, to this incident has gotten my attention, and I'll be flying Delta more often in the future.
6
“What needs to be understood and explained is why the airspeed basically increased throughout the flight and the throttles did not move,” said Jon Weaks, the president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association."
"When the manual process didn’t work for the Ethiopian Airlines pilots, they appear to have turned back on the electricity to the flight control system in a last-ditch effort at recovery. But the software activated one last time, sending the plane into a deadly nose dive."
But the pilots followed Boeing's procedures, right? On what planet? When you turn a malfunctioning system off, it STAYS OFF UNTIL YOU'VE LANDED! (pilot training 101).
2
@Norman Rogers `... it STAYS OFF UNTIL YOU'VE LANDED!` except they were heading for imminent impact in the next minute or so. You just can t accept a sure death by blindly following a procedure that didn t have any effect. As Sully said `“This never should have happened.”
10
@Norman Rogers They couldn't move the manual controls because the pressure on the surface was too high. They had to turn the power to the system back on to move the surfaces. Read Leeham.
1
So letting an industry regulate itself killed a bunch of people. Great - why don't we also let the pork industry regulate itself. What could go wrong?
7
Or, for that matter, the auto industry to design self driving cars. That have systems that can be turned off. (In addition to not being hugely expensive to repair, in the event of a even minor crash.)
2
In the petrochemical business, which is fraught with potentially deadly hazards, whenever a process requires instruments to determine if a system is operating abnormally, the only way to achieve a sufficiently high level of protection is by using triply redundant instruments with 2 out of 3 voting logic in the control system, This is Control Systems 101 and I'd guess every process engineer who graduated in the last 20 years knows this. When I first read about the Lion Air disaster and the description of how Boeing designed the system I realized this fundamental flaw. As far as I know, there is no control software extent that can decide which of two instruments is faulty in real time. It was very naive or criminal for the Boeing engineers to ignore this principle. I'll predict that all these planes will be retrofitted with a triply redundant system when all is said and done.
9
And who will be on those plane’s once they return to the sky? Retrofit away...but it won’t be me!
1
I wonder what the basis is for Hart Langer's assertion, since it does not indicate that he was part of the investigative team or with internal Boeing knowledge.
3
@Bob Garcia United Airlines executive Hart Langer seems to be the only one on the planet that understands what happened that sad day in Ethiopia, blaming the pilots for not following Boeing's checklist. Either that, or he's another airline executive who is way too cozy with Boeing's management team. I wonder how many rounds of golf Mr. Langer has played with someone from Boeing?
3
European professors who teach mathematic or science in the USA, or Post Doc lab expatriates in the US will tell you that the way science and math are taught in the USA is metonymic and that post PHD researchers have no sense of logic.
Mathematics programs in high school are made of automatic practice of calculations, not understanding the concepts of the operative function.
In France a mathematic exam in high school has to be redacted like a dissertation with the progression of the logic of the resolution step by step , not just provide the results or a quiz with 3 solutions to choose from.
US programs in geometry are very poor compared to Europe .
6
Certification done by the manufacturer, how can this possibly be safe? Greed prevails over every other aspect of manufacturing and export, one sees, given a fresh impetus by the fascist Trump regime. How many other patently unsafe products have entered the market under the less-than-watchful aegis of our exorbitant federal regulatory regime?
7
There is a huge amount of blame to spread around with this tragic loss of life. Lives lost twice for no reason except carelessness and greed on the art of Boeing. IPads instead of simulators,,,,, really!! But the one thing that angers me most after the loss of lives, was how the U.S. did not ground the Max jets after the second crash. Most people err on the side of caution in such cases, like the rest of the world did. But not, for example, Elaine Chao, transportation secretary, who claimed there was no reason to suspect the crashes were linked. Well Elaine, in the absence of information, does the word caution exist in your vocabulary? Same goes for the Boeing CEO, and how about Southwest Airlines, who kept flying more than 30 of these defective jets. Dumb luck saved them all from explaining more deaths. I mean one of these jets had the same problem while finally being flown to a storage area after the groundings. How any of these people can face their lack of competence boggles my mind. Can we please get someone in charge who knows what they are doing please!
55
@Barry
I believe the grounded 737Max returning to be mothballed had an engine overheating problem, not the MCAS issue.
@Michael Percy
My mistake, thanks for correcting Michael.
@Barry
Unfortunately, the chances of getting competent people in charge are very low for the near future. Only thing you can do for this particular problem is make very sure you
never get on one of these planes!
No, they did not follow procedures. They switched the MCAS on again and that contributed greatly to the mishap.
2
@BeanerECMO
Yes, they did. They cut the power and tried to manually trim the plane with no effect. Whoever blame the pilots for repowering the stabilizers I guess they don't realize that the plane was heading for imminent impact. (like in the next minute or so) You just can t follow a procedure that is a sure death sentence, you may try everything else.
19
@BeanerECMO
They turned on MCAS only after they disabled MCAS and were still unable to level the plane. The plane would have crashed anyway with the MCAS off because the plane was flying so fast that forces on the control surfaces were too great to allow them to be moved manually. The article mentions that electrical controls should have been used. Was that procedure listed in the checklist provided by Boeing?
In any case, as many readers have pointed out, the plane is inherently unstable (enters a divergent condition) due to nacelle lift, which Boeing tried to mitigate using sensors (subject to failure) and software, a foolhardy endeavour.
17
@Hakuna Matata I'm not a pilot, but my understanding is that if the nose goes down, the plane speeds up. So, though I haven't seen the checklist, perhaps it needs to be augmented to ensure that the plane slows down more so that the manual controls work.
It isn't inconceivable that by the time a pilot gets through the checklist, that the plane, due to the repeated "nose down" movements by the MCAS, may already be moving too fast for the manual controls to work, in which case, there may already be no way to save the plane.
Software cannot replace good aircraft design.
The B-737 Max-8 tended to raise its nose in flight, a movement called pitch. If an aircraft pitches too high, it risks stalling and crashing. This was the result of adding newer heavier, more powerful engines that both improved range and fuel efficiency while not redesigning the wing and fuselage to accommodate the engine.
To counteract this tendency, Boeing introduced a computerized system called Maneuvering Characteristic Augmentation System (MCAS.) MCAS is an anti-stall system. At too low a speed, a higher than normal attitude can put an aircraft into a stall. If this happens, the MCAS activates and moves the horizontal stabilizer to push down the aircrafts nose. MCAS is designed to automatically reduce the pitch in manual flight without pilot input. The system is constantly fed data from two synchronized wing-like Angle of Attack (AOA) sensors, located on the plane’s nose. If the AOA sensors detects the plane is pitching too high, the MCAS automatically adjusts the tail’s stabilizer — the horizontal part of the aircraft’s tail — to level out the plane. However, if the AOA sensors feed faulty or contradictory data to the MCAS, the system can force the aircraft into a dive.
14
@Robert Pryor software cannot replace well trained and experienced pilots. Time will tel if this was a software problem, a design problem or pilot error. Or perhaps all three and others problems.
@Robert Pryor Apparently the MCAS only uses the input of one of the sensors, which greatly increased the likelihood of this problem.
2
@G. Alistar
Or additional problems.
The last seven paragraphs of this article add a significant amount of information to the issue of: Why the Ethiopian pilots could not control the aircraft?
1. Pilots followed procedures from Boeing
2. MCAS activated again.
3. Disabled electrical system and took manual control of stabilizer. Manual control not working.
4. The plane’s speed may have made it impossible for pilots to turn the wheel that controls the tail.
5. Pilots did not try to slow the plane down.
6. Planes airspeed increased during the flight and throttles did not move.
7. When Manual process did not work, they appear to have turned back on the electricity to the flight control system in a last-ditch effort at recovery. But the software activated one last time, sending the plane into a deadly nose dive.
1
A very tragic lesson for those working to rush artificial intelligence and autonomy into daily life. I hope they pay attention to this very unfortunate example of things gone wrong.
10
Let's call this plain: Poorly maintained, badly trained, economy minded airlines are having trouble with the MAX. It is a fact that no First World country has had anything close to the catastrophes that the Ethiopian and that farcically badly equipped Malaysian airplane had. Yes the crashes are tragedies but let's plainly label what the tragedies actually are. Airlines that are attempting to cast the responsibility on Boeing and not blaming themselves for their share of the tears.
1
@Richard Mclaughlin
Except Ethiopian is a top notch airline with an excellent safety record. EA partners and code shares with US and European carriers.
44
@nolongeradoc. With a co pilot with only 200 hours? A cockpit crew who repeatedly turned on the MCAS system? Smells fishy to me!
2
@Richard Mclaughlin
I urge you to read the op-ed by Captain Sullenberger in Market Watch. He would not agree with you.
The Lion Air pilots did not know about the MCAS system because it was not in the manual provided by Boeing. Not their fault. The Ethiopian Air pilots followed the procedure recommended by Boeing after the Lion Air crash. Ethiopian Air has an excellent pilot training program. The Max 8 simulators provided to them does not simulate the MCAS system, which is hardly their fault.
4
I can't speak for anyone else following this story but I can tell you that I will never fly on a Boeing Max. There is nothing that Boeing can do -- fix the software, rename the model -- that will ever get me or my family on board one of these planes. This is the bigger problem facing Boeing because surely, once they've fixed the software and the plane has been re-certified as safe by the relevant authorities, who in their right mind will agree to be a passenger? The answer is: no-one. Boeing has a P.R. disaster on their hands. They should scrap this plane now and go back to the drawing board and come up with a new model.
93
@GinNYC Nope... Boeing will figure this out, and in a few months people will be looking for the cheapest ticket to their destinations, as they always have, Max or no Max. It’s like tossing a rock into a pond... the ripples are soon gone.
8
@GinNYC
Precisely. Nothing Boeing can fix will restore your faith in this aircraft. The 737 Max 8 is toast - just like the DC-10 and the de Havilland Comet which proved to be competent planes - but commercially doomed - after their glaring design faults were properly fixed.
The thing I can't understand is why Boeing were so slow footed in appreciating how much of a threat the A320neo was to their share of the narrow body passenger jet market. This left Boeing scrambling to breath new life into an old design. Whilst Airbus achieved exactly that, Boeing's rush and muddle has ended up looking more like lipstick on the proverbial pig. Why did the management leave things so late?
I guess Boeing, with its large stable of civilian planes and huge military contracts can shrug off this setback but the 737 Max debacle isn't the only one. The company has watched other manufacturers vacuum up the lucrative and rapidly expanding regional jet market - with Airbus having controlling interests in ATR and now in Canada's Bombardier. Boeing have no regional jets in the portfolio leaving it scrambling, again, this time to cobble together a partnership with Brazil's Embraer.
Boeing has excellent engineers and has made great planes (and will continue to do so). Then top management... not so much.
7
@GinNYC
I agree. But before they can make a good airplane again, they need to boot the senior management that only cares about profits, make sure they hire all the great engineers they need, and give them power. Otherwise they will go the way of Lucent Technologies from a couple decades ago.
3
When the left AOA value reached 74.5° MCAS should have automatically disengaged. This is clearly an abnormal reading, you don t need confirmation from another sensor or system.
It looks to me like a very rushed software. A few lines of code could prevented this.
22
There's been a lot of reporting about the Max 8 but virtually no mention of the term "triple redundancy", which refers to the standard in commercial aviation requiring three sensors for critical systems, of which two must agree.
MCAS represents a radical departure from this industry standard.
This is an issue that won't be resolved by software.
50
@EW
Agreed. With only two, you (or the software) doesn't know which one is faulty. So yiu need three to make an informed judgement.
“Boeing has made good aircraft over the years, but this is a radical departure from that,” said Chesley B. Sullenberger III, the aviation expert and retired pilot who landed a jet in the Hudson River...."
The jet Sullenberg refers to is the Airbus A320, the main competitor to the B737, he landed in the Hudson river. Various aspects of that event are instructive here.
When the A320 lost both engines because of bird strikes, the accompanying loss of hydraulic pressure was augmented by a "wind turbine" driven hydraulic pump that was deployed so that flight control could be maintained.
The other characteristic of the A320 is that it glides well which "Sully" used to advantage to approach and land in the river. That landing was notable for two things, the airframe didn't structurally fail and so remained afloat. Staying afloat was aided greatly by an Airbus provision for automatically closing all openings when it landed to further avoid water entry.
Throughout the event the plane remained afloat allowing the safe removal of all passengers and crew. It never sank.
The point here is that even for a rare event such as a water landing, which usually are devastating, Airbus designers accounted for it in the plane's design for survivability.
In the case of Boeing 737 MAX 8, they were faced with an augmented lift over previous models of the 737 but in their haste to compete with the A320 neo implemented a means of dealing with it that simply failed.
123
@GerardM
Sully also claims that it was his huge flying experience that got him out of trouble - by being able to manage the highly automated A320 in a critical situation. He points out that because of that automation, Airbus pilots have got rusty at 'real' flying and that the average Airbus jock would NOT have been able to ditch safely in the Hudson.
I had rather thought that Capt. Sullenberger (retd.) had become something of an anti-Airbus Boeing consultant. Given his comments on the 737 Max series today, I reckon he's party company with them.
1
@nolongeradoc
I think what Sully may have been referring to when he said that the average Airbus pilot could not have done what he did had more to do as to where to land, which was a major issue at the FAA hearing on the incident. He argued, and Airbus simulations confirmed, that the preferable option of returning to an airport was not possible and so the water landing.
As for gliding, I think it's fair to say that any pilot knows how to glide. It's a basic form of flight when engines fail, something that is not that uncommon in non-commercial aircraft. Their problem is not the gliding with power loss but having no safe place to land.
7
Software patches for hardware problems in cell phones, tablets, or computers is no big deal because if they are faulty, people are just inconvenienced.
Bad designs and bad software patches in aircraft result in death. Designing aircraft that are inherently dangerous and then trying to use software to try and "fix the design" says one of three things or a combination of all.
First, there are simply no longer competent enough designers to do a proper design or those that achieve their positions are not there based on their expertise.
Two, the management that are approving and over seeing these designs are incompetent or not properly educated for their positions, i.e. MBAs instead of engineers.
Three, top level marketing execs forcing impossible products and/or dangerous cost cutting to improve profit and market share to increase the bottomline at the cost of human life.
All three of these factors are becoming more and more common in many American industries, but most of those do not result in possibly deadly products.
34
If I’m driving my car and cruise control tries to careen me off the road, I deactivate it and resume driving manually. I don’t drive off a bridge and curse the software manufacturer after the fact. The bottom line is modern pilots should turn off flight control software at the hint of trouble and fly the airplane. Return safely to the airport and then point the finger all you want but if you’re in the air fighting auto pilot, reading a manual, praying, etc. you’re not doing your job which is to fly the plane.
They’re saying the Ethiopian pilots switched off MCAS but their fatal mistake was switching it back on; that they didn’t fully understand what was going on. But that’s not on Boeing that’s on the pilots. That’s why I don’t think these accidents have happened in the US because pilots generally are better and more experienced e.g. no major carrier in the US would allow a first officer to only have 200 hours flight experience. The default should always be a human. I know it’s not so black and white especially at takeoff but if a pilot is unsure what’s going on eliminate the guesswork by switching off the software immediately and fly manually. If the software is pitching the nose down erroneously switch MCAS off and live to tell about it.
Airlines pay pilots to step up in emergencies; even if Boeing were 1000% at fault the onus is on the pilot and the airline that trained him/her to make split second decisions that result in safety.
7
But it appears the pilots followed the instructions as given by Boeing to the tee.
The problem appears to be the software and training, not the pilots,
12
Until they made the fatal mistake of turning it back on. The point of turning off automation is to fly manually. No US pilot would flip through a manual rather he would take command of the aircraft. This was pilot error.
5
@Hollis - " and cruise control tries to careen me off the road, I deactivate it "
And that is exactly the point. You don't even have to turn it off - you can deactivate it automatically, quickly, and instinctively by simply stepping on the break. The same with GM's SuperCruise (which I've driven). If the car isn't properly changing directions you simply take the steering wheel and steer where you want to go and the system deactivates. No complicated procedures while staring at the bridge abutment coming at you.
In fact Boeing even equipped the regular 737s with a system that shut off the autopilot when the pilots simply took the stick back instinctively. And they removed that feature in the MAX version.
So comparing your experience with cruise control to that of the pilots of the 737 MAX is utterly dishonest in support of your need to belittle the pilots and pretending that there has never been a major crash of a US airliner due to pilot error. Blaming it on the co-ilot seems to be stretch to accommodate an agenda.
And it was clear that switching the system off wasn't solving the problem else all would have gone well when they did so.
Boeing built a poorly designed and executed aircraft.
All the replies like this are part of the blame shifting that accompanies handing power over to the corporations to do as they wish and make you at fault in the user agreement.
7
Still Boeing won't come clean. They need stop with the software update. They need to first come out and admit their stupendous negligence. Any junior software engineer can see this a mile away. They didn't do the most basic tests on this software, in a software simulation test bed. And secretly put this buggy software in to try to hide the planes basic flight flaw: it's tendency to stall. Being all secret, they didn't train the pilots how to try deal with the problem, they probably don't know how to anyway. And now they want us to get on this plane, which so far they debug and test by studying crashes. Boeing committed the ultimate sin: they put the business executives in charge of airplane design. Now these executives must be purged deep. Boeing must pay the victims deep. And only then sometime far in the future, Boeing may fly again.
201
@ssamalin: "Now these executives must be purged deep."
Just watch. There might be a token resignation. But in a year or so, the executives will get multi-million-dollar bonuses for having "guided Boeing through a difficult period."
Boeing is the fifth-largest largest defense contractor in the world and this nation's biggest exporter of any kind by dollar value. Accordingly, its executives are among the most powerful men on Earth. They are untouchable.
56
@ssamalinThey also needed training with a simulator (it came later and cost extra).
4
@Mark
Exactly correct. An executive or two might resign "to spend more time with their family" and with full pension of course, but that will be all.
13
The moment we discovered that Boeing is allowed to assist with certification of its own planes we could smell a rat.
Boeing is in bed with the FAA and there is no way to avoid this kind of corporate corruption.
FAA needs to redesign its approval certification process to eliminate the temptation to fudge safe guidelines in airplane design.
145
The whole narrative until this revelation has been blame it on the pilots - foreign pilots, to be precise - and their training. It is not just Boeing and FAA but also the American pilot association even though the flight attendant association thought it might be a good idea to ground the planes in the immediate aftermath.
Perhaps the designers of the plane were too reliant to a single sensor but the real problem may be they were too confident in software over hardware. An airplane is a physical object governed by physical laws. A singleminded approach to be cost efficient, both in terms of producing the plane and the operating of it subsequently, might have undermined the other objectives. Using software to compensate it. They need to look at the auto industry. Pinto. Ignition switch. The unsafe car at any speed.
So, even if they fix the software and add sensors, there is no substitute for optimal design with the foremost criterion safety. If there have to add engines and redundancies, it may worth it
104
@Bos
Yeah and even if they fix the plane, who's going to want to go for a ride? Not me that's for sure.
Boeing is going to go bankrupt over this. So savvy investors start shorting Boeing stock, you'll reap a ton of money and put a bad actor out of business as a merited act of justice.
17
@David I agree. There is no way in heck I'm ever getting on a Boeing Max, no matter what lipstick they may apply to this pig. I've even been skittish flying other 737 models since 3/10 which I know is irrational but there you go. Moving forward I'm booking flights which use Airbus as much as I can.
12
@Bos What if the planes had been US airlines, flying in country? Do you think the FAA and Boeing would have been so slow in grounding the aircraft? It galls me that people seem willing to blame "foreign" pilots and foreign airlines for these tragedies. Are Ethiopian lives worth less than American lives? My heart breaks for all the families in mourning as a result of these disasters. I hope they take Boeing to the cleaners!
17
How do we trust our government to regulate manufacture of these planes when our president only appoints crooks and incompetents???
118
@Patty. Not helpful. Politics? Really?
1
@Patty He is just a symptom of the whole.
Not the other way around.
You have not figured that out yet ?
5
@G. Alistar
Yes, Sir. Really!
Guess what, when many Nations, led by China, already grounded this freak of a plane, the CEO of Boeing called his special buddy in the White House and they agreed to keep them flying. Only when Canada grounded the planes also, did the President stop listening to the CEO.
Politics! Really!
11
Go figure. When a company (Boeing) offers to sell safety features of a plane at an additional cost, need we really wonder what their goal is? It’s not safety - it’s money. That’s what Boeing did. It’s been reported numerous times. They made airline companies pay “extra” for safety features!
The F.A.A. oversaw Boeing. We depended on them. We still depend on them. They let us down.
A new Administrator for the F.A.A. Was not appointed by Donald Trump until after the second crash. The previous administrator, Mr. Huerta, retired in January, 2018, What took Trump over a year to appoint a new F.A.A. Administrator?
First, Muilenburg of Boeing needs to get fired. He led Boeing. And Boeing caused 356 people to die. No matter how you put it - Boeing caused these accidents.
Second, Congress needs to investigate the F.A.A. And they need answers what was going on with their oversight. One accident, maybe. Two accidents? Never, ever should have happened. We need the full report. We deserve it. We need to know how they allowed this to happen.
Boeing, and F.A.A. - you toyed with two of my family members - both work as parts of flight crews.
You toyed with their families. You toyed with many crew members. You toyed with the passengers they serve - and have served for decades. You make me sick. Your greed and self gratification has been more important than human life. What has happened to you?
81
@MIMA
The additional cost was 80 K for a light to indicate that the two angle of attack sensors disagreed.
10
@MIMA
If you want justice, start shorting Boeing's stock and send the company and its directors into an unrecoverable nose dive.
Prosecute the executives on 356 counts of negligent homicide and let the company slowly put itself back together under competent leadership.
Oh and scrap the 737 Max 8 and 9's and go back to the drawing board.
11
@MIMA
About your point on the FAA administrator - Trump didn't need one because he has such a good feeling for science he could do the job himself.
/S
2
If the pilots turned off the MCAS but the plane was still uncontrollable, then the plane has a fatal flaw! If these preliminary findings turn out to be correct, this plane should be grounded until the aerodynamic issues, not just software problems, that seem to plague the 737 Max are resolved to the satisfaction of safety experts. And to be sure, those experts should be selected mostly from outside of Boeing and FAA.
49
Pilots have long been taught don't get into a fight with an autopilot, if it does something unexpected or counter to what you want turn it off and hand fly the plane. The MCAS system seems to have not been thought through all that well by Boeing and the regulators. When a failure mode as simple as one angle of attack vane can put the safety of flight in doubt, hey Houston we have a problem.
Angle of attack vanes have failed in the past and will continue to fail. While fairly simple devices they live in a difficult environment on the outside of the plane with wiring connections that have to pass through the fuselage into the computers that analyse their data and decide what to do as a result of that data. I find it simply astounding that a single source of data was used for this system. Two sources would be good but 3 is even better.
I'm kind of surprised that the crew found it difficult or impossible to move the manual trim wheel after shutting down MCAS by disabling the electric trim system in accordance with the Boeing procedure. Slowing the plane down would help of course but I'm not going to second guess the crew looking at a windshield full of earth coming up at them at a astonishing rate.
I'm confident this can be fixed and my industry is going to learn a lot about automation and the human interface with it. And as important how to properly teach these systems to the pilots that have deal with them and the mechanics that have to diagnose and fix them.
20
@Chris. Voice of reason, thanks!
1
@Chris The only sensible comment here so far, in a sea of ignorant conclusions by people who have no idea about what they are talking about and are quick to blame Boeing or the pilots.
This is a preliminary result. Final verdicts in air accident investigations often change, so trying to pin the blame a priori is often senseless and perhaps wrong.
2
Boeing as any aircraft manufacturer must be held to the utmost standard. It is clear that they failed their duty in this regard.
I wonder whether anyone would feel confident in boarding one of these planes ever again.
14
@Stephen Exactly. I will never fly in one of the planes, no matter how they "fix" it.
3
The only way to convince Boeing's mgmt they lied to the world and to every pilot that flew the 737 Max is to take every board member up for flight test. Yes, like the process a navy pilot goes through, he creates a stall on purpose and then follows the procedures to safety reignite the engines and return his plane to normal. So, do it on the 737, follow the procedures, and see if the pilot can override/turn off the MCAS anti stall system. I wonder if those board members believe what Boeing is telling the public. Until this is done, all 737s should remain grounded, and I'm sure the financial impact to Boeing is something the board clearly understands.
48
@Me Too
Better yet, short Boeing stock and send the company's directors into an unrecoverable nose dive.
3
@Me Too
And make sure that pompous know-it-all, Hart Langer, the United Airlines executive and former Pan Am pilot, is strapped in back near the bathroom.
2
A full redesign is needed and not only a s/w patch. MCAS seems to be a messy solution to a design problem (airplane stalling).
10
@Someone
I agree, scrap the existing 737 Max 8's and 9's and go back to the drawing board.
Boeing will go bankrupt and hopefully will eventually be taken over by competent operators who care enough to create safe, reliable products.
3
It's hard to understand how a procedure that could be rendered ineffective "at high speeds" could ever be allowed to be implemented. Planes operate at high speeds, no? I'd fire everyone who conducts testing for Boeing.
28
I’d put them in jail too
4
@AACNY
It's not the testers. It's the management. The testers only have the resources and the guidance that management provides. I'm sure there were many that said "this is not right", but were ignored. Persisting would have cost them their jobs.
1
Ralph Nader said the Max 8 should be recalled. And just look at all the design shortcuts and the rush to roll-out this aircraft quickly. Nader is probably right.
54
@voice of reason
And what has just been made known is Mr. Nader's niece was on the plane. The family is filing a wrongful death suit against the airlines.
3
"And some pilots in the United States raised doubts about whether the problems on board had been properly handled"
This is bizarre for two reasons. There shouldn't be such a problem in the first place. This was created by Boeing, which doesn't seem to have anticipated the catastrophic consequences of malfunctioning MCAS. For some pilots (who have not encountered this problem) to say that the unlucky guys in the hot seat with little time to react were wrong is quite something. Second, all indications are that the Ethiopian pilots did exactly what they were required to do by Boeing - cut off the motor controlling the movement of the stabilizer and hand crank a wheel. Boeing hadn't realized that this might not work in all cases. Boeing also seems to have completely missed the scenario of MCAS malfunctions at low altitudes. Please don't blame the victims here.
212
More work is needed to analyze the pilots’ actions and the conditions affecting control, but the emerging fact is that after initially following the emergency procedure, they abandoned it, reengaged the electric trim and lost control. So in the end they did not follow the procedure. This is not to blame them, but it cannot be ignored as it seems to be by the bandwagon rolling over Boeing.
3
@David Leddy It sounds like they followed the emergency procedure, but it didn't work, because the 'nose down' attitude resulted in the plane moving too fast for the hand cranking to work.
That they re-engaged the MCAS may be a red herring, since it sounds like the plane was already in a dive at that point, and if they continued trying to use the manual wheel, they knew they were *definitely* going to crash. IOW, they were probably desperately trying *anything* to get control of the plane. With a faulty MCAS and a high speed dive preventing the manual wheel from working, there was no way to recover.
25
@Bala How is this bizarre? The Ethiopian Airlines crash seemed like a 1-to-1 copy of the Lion Air Crash, it was anything but unreasonable to assume the pilots acted in the same way because your second argument did not exist until the preliminary report was released today.
With the preliminary report out, it seems there was no fundamental pilot error since the pilots followed Boeing’s service bulletin - at least in part: the bulletin advises pilots to leave the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches in the CUTOUT position for the remainder of the flight. It is unfortunate that the pilots seem to have needed electric trim to be able to move the stabilizer out of its position after the MCAS activation. If MCAS really doesn’t activate with the flaps extended, the only way they might have been able to save the plane would have been to extend the flaps when they moved the cutout switches from the cutout position.
2
Why are the sensors failing? Why only 2 if they're that sensitive to failure. Failure rate of those sensors should be very very low, and there should be at least three. If one disagrees, it should be ignored and the other TWO should be used. TWO sensors is not enough because you can't have a vote as to which one is wrong. I believe spacecraft have triple redundancy for this reason.
17
@RickF. They do definitely need three or four sensors. The failure rate of the sensor doesn't seem to be unusually high though, especially considering that it needs to be heated to stop it freezing. There were thousands of flights.
It's clearly Boeing who at fault here.
2
Exactly. If one out of two sensors failing can bring down the plane, then adding the second sensor has actually increased the likelihood of a crash!
No , not enough guidance and mandatory training required by
The manufacturer to become familiar
With the new system and how to handle the plane if it malfunctions.
Result was chaos and panic in the cockpits with an out of control plane
For which Boeing will be largely responsible.
As an international operator they must to make sure that all pilots get enough training and instruction to manage the new system before they go airborne.
6
Boeing, boeing, gone—
Is the 737 Max 8.
The public's confidence is NOT going to be restored, and that's all that really matters in this business.
Boeing should recall ALL of these aerodynamically and design flawed 737 Max 8s and salvage what they can, and try to salvage their reputation if that's possible.
[It's good they've got $billions because that's what they're going to be losing and paying out.]
81
@srwdm The disappointing part is that if Boeing had implemented their fix rather than just putting it down as a "known issue" and offering guidance on how to work around it then the Ethiopian crash could have been avoided.
But Boeing thought they could do it cheaper by changing the pilot guidance, and now it is going to cost them a fortune.
18
@Mark
I hope it is costing them a fortune and opens the eyes at companies that accounts and sales executives should not run businesses that rely on faultless engineering.
14
@srwdm
I agree and your solution would be effective immediately if investor short the bejesus out of Boeing stock to send the obviously corrupt incompetent managers into an unrecoverable nose dive.
Also, any and all of those executives responsible for the short-cuts that foreshadowed these disasters should each face 356 counts of negligent homicide, and be jailed and fined to the extent of confiscating all their personal assets.
That would be justice in such an egregious lack of oversight in an industry that demands 100% perfection in every aspect of its products.
14
Time to Break up Boeing; like many banks [and Amazon, Google, FB, etc] it has become too big. Need DOMESTIC competition. Is the US a capitalist economy or not.
35
@Tamza
Our Anti-Trust laws are all mere window dressing. We have huge conglomerates left and right.
12
@Tamza. That can't really be the answer here. The economics of scale are huge. You can't expect a little startup in a garage to build a jet airliner which costs over $100 million. And they need to build hundreds to cover the costs of development. There are only two companies in the world working on this scale. The Chinese might be able to finance a competitor, and there's also Bombardier but that would be it.
So if they can't be split up, the only answer is to regulate them effectively. There is no other way.
5
@Tamza
Investors: Short Boeing into the ground to force the break-up suggested by Tamza.
And scrap the 737 Max 8's and 9's. Nobody with a brain will ever be willing to board one of these death traps again anyway.
3