I think you have a solid outlook on this and as with the domestic automobile industry building quality products was not possible until management made it top priority.

One could blame the line workers all day long, but if management promoted speed/quantity over quality the end result was predictable.

Good Work Ain’t Cheap... | RAW & UNFILTERED
https://66.media.tumblr.com/af024e1d...r6sx7k_500.jpg

Wow, this is the most informative big picture presentation of the 737 Max system/situation I've seen to date.

Thank you for posting it.

It kind of smacks me in the head with a big "duh" moment.

A comment from the link above.


EDIT-1:

A link from Dan's link.

737 MAX - MCAS
http://www.b737.org.uk/mcas.htm
Band-aids don't fix everything, I learned that as a kid.

EDIT-2:

Based on a reader's comment in Dan's link I looked up an earlier 737 problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_rudder_issues

I have a feeling that inadequate training is going to be factor in this accident. It looks pretty certain that MCAS was involved and I’d wager that the pilots did not deal with it correctly. The root cause is still far from known but what has been published of the flight data so far shows some really odd values for the airspeed.

Unfortunately, the CNN article is all too familiar to me. When SH-60B's were being refurbed at the Corpus Christi Army Depot, the acceptance test flight, which in a fleet squadron might take an hour, was an all day affair.

When I was the Chief Government Pilot at the Sikorsky factory the emphasis on FOD and other "clean" processes was unrelenting. The Air Force folks that accepted the tanker should be fired.

The extra training and MCAS would not be nessary if this plane didn't have a design flaw, or should I say shortcoming.

I know this sounds like blaming the design of the 911 and not the driver when in a turn the driver slams on the brakes or stomps on the gas and spins off the road tail first.

When you have a machine that is different the operator should be well aware of it's limitations.

Punch the gas too much on a 737 Max, nose goes up, MCAS puts you into a nose dive to avoid stall and the pilot is no longer in control of the aircraft - NOT GOOD.

Automation should be an aid to make the craft fly better and easier to control, and not a band-aid to fix a major design flaw - in my opinion.

Pilots complained about autopilot issues with Boeing jets involved in two deadly crashes
https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/13/18263751/boeing-737-max-8-pilot-complaint-autopilot-mcas
.....................some unique aircraft handling characteristics................like flying into the ground on it's own?

I don't think you understand the MCAS system. There's a lot of info out there, some of it accurate, some of it not (like what you posted above.)

My experiences exactly. In the manufacturing side of the house, anyway. I'm afraid, or strongly suspect anyway, that every large manufacturer is like that, at least to a degree.

AOG was a haven from that. We had the luxury of the ability to quite thoroughly screen anyone and everyone who aspired to join our team. And yes, quite credible threats of "my foot up your ass" occurred on a daily basis. Failure, or even any measure of underperformance, was simply not an option.

Probably 3/4 of the guys who tried to get on the team washed out. We all had to travel on at least a couple, maybe three "tryout" trips, whereupon every member of the team on that trip got to vote on the new guy. Managers, engineers, QA personal - everyone voted. There was no hiding, no just "getting along" - you rocked your job or you went back to manufacturing.

Those of us who made the cut were in aerospace heaven - surrounded by the best of the best. Everyone worked their asses off. Everyone went that "extra mile" - or ten. We knew we could count on each other to do that. Everyone knew their stuff inside out, upside down, backwards and forwards. Fakes and morons were outed before their first trip was over. No "google educated experts" putting shopping cart wheels under their cars need apply.

The last link wasn't exclusively about the Ethiopia incident, sorry about any confusion that may have caused you. :confused:

Ethiopian Airlines says analysis of flight recorders begins
https://www.apnews.com/e3feece30da04f8c801e63d45b9cdb87
Doing a Google search with the terms "titan-server.arc.nasa.gov" I found this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19373707
I never knew pilots had to write so many reports, some of these are almost novels based on detail and length.

Some scary stuff, like flight recorders not even installed.

A question to pilots: how many planes nose up when you throttle up?

They almost ALL nose up but it's a question of degree. Under wing mounted engines will nose up to some degree when power is increased. An increase in speed will also necessitate a down movement with the trim wheel because of a nose up tendency. This should be easily controlled and is not a violent change in pitch attitude. (At least it shouldn't be).

The 200 hour FO was most likely the pilot-not-flying, if the high time captain had been PNF the MCAS system would likely have been inhibited right away, turned off and breakers pulled.
Both PNF and PF have duties that can be critical depending on the flight phase. A 200 hour guy in the right seat is honestly absolutely a disaster waiting to happen.

Mac McClellan has a good article on it. The one above isn't as concise as it should be and misses a couple points. One thing odd is the transponder on the Ethiopian flight cuts off while still at altitude which may corroborate some witnesses mentioning fire on board.

https://airfactsjournal.com/2019/03/can-boeing-trust-pilots/

"This concept of adding artificial feel using the pitch trim has been around for years. It has been used to add stick force at high speed cruise where Mach effects can alter stick force as well as at higher AOA where stall margins must be maintained.

What’s critical to the current, mostly uninformed discussion is that the 737 MAX system is not triply redundant. In other words, it can be expected to fail more frequently than one in a billion flights, which is the certification standard for flight critical systems and structures."

"Though the pitch system in the MAX is somewhat new, the pilot actions after a failure are exactly the same as would be for a runaway trim in any 737 built since the 1960s. As pilots we really don’t need to know why the trim is running away, but we must know, and practice, how to disable it."

Not necessarily true...I have flown with some low time in model folks that had it wrapped.

The issue to me is needing to pull a circuit breaker...that is completely unsat...and would be the reason I would have grounded the aircraft.

A pilot needs an on/off switch, a method of overriding all "aids" to flight that is in scan and reach immediately; day and night, visual and instrument scan.

The start of a flight and the terminal phase of a flight are when the aircrew is most diligent...that is when the majority of aircraft accidents happen.



http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1552673141.gif

In this case the engines are further forward, larger and more powerful moving the thrust line further from the center of gravity which exacerbates the issue. The MCAS was designed, in part, to make the MAX feel the same as an older airframe like the NG. Making it fly like the older airframe means there does not have to be significant training involved to fly the new airframe saving airlines money.

So apparently Boeing is going to roll out a software fix in 10 days.

I am curious how are airplanes updated, I imagine it is more than a USB drive?

The MCAS system is disabled temporarily by a trim switch input by either pilot. That would buy enough time to flip the circuit breaker’s. I think the difficulty lies in the pilots recognizing what’s going on. There of been incidents in the US where the pilots had to intervene and they had no difficulty.

I think there is a difference in how the AOA information is fed into the computer, on the left and right sides of the cockpit. I don’t recall the details, but I think there was something different on the right side, which made me wonder at the time why they did it.

I really wonder how much of the problem lies with the complexity of the training and of the manuals and the fact that for many of these pilots English is not their first language.

That isn't entirely true.


From post #44:
From post #87:

Agree.

From post #116:

To disengage, you are correct, but to disable it is to pull the breakers. Using the trim buttons will disengage it temporarily as well. In any case, they should all know that pulling the breakers will disable the electric trim.

Just to clarify, there is no "pulling a breaker" here. This isn't a 707, lol. :p

As mentioned previously, there are 2 stab. trim switches on the center pedestal. Flipping those down to "cut-out" completely disables all auto trim. Been that way (and in that location) for several generations now.

Visual aid:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1552679145.jpg

I violated my own rule of accident investigations!

Thanks for the visual.

Sorry, my bad on that.

I read that radar data showed the plane accelerating to very unusual speed during the flight. What's that about?

Added to that question is why radar data showed it to be airborne at 93 kn ground speed. I have no idea what the wind speed and direction were but that’s an astonishingly low speed, especially at the airport elevation.

It makes me wonder if they had a faulty airspeed indication, I think that was a problem on the Lion Air flight.

Edit: There’s no way I’m reading that chart correctly. It couldn’t have been airborne at 93 knots, that quickly. Maybe that airport runway has a hell of a hump in it...

200 hours total?

as in flight time?

as in not very much more than necessary to solo a Cessna 172?

It's a function of where the thrust line is in relation to the pitch axis. You can see that on virtually all commercial jets, the engines are the lowest thing under the airplane when in flight. They are well below the pitch axis, so thrust will make the airplane pitch up. Pilots just adjust trim for the long haul to maintain level flight, or give it some down stick if its temporarily pitching up more than desired. Software takes care of that today.

Speaking of software, it may be as easy as downloading the fix from Boeing's My Boeing Fleet customer service website. That can be done right there in the cockpit. Technology can be so cool...

If the fix requires any hardware changes, it could take awhile to implement. Some avionics components are about a five minute swap, "plug and play" with a big ass multi-pin connector on them, just like your car. With some components, you're done right there. Others need calibration to their various input sources, or with other components.

I don't think these particular components, if some indeed need to be replaced to accept the new software, will be all that easy. These communicate with the "where am I and what am I doing" external and internal sensors. These would include the AOA sensors we have already discussed, plus the airspeed indicators (these are the little pitot tubes seen in the photos right next to the AOA sensor), altitude sensors, nav gyros, and that sort of stuff. This all requires calibration and verification.

That calibration was one my jobs on site. I was responsible for those tasks as the Tooling and Equipment Engineer. Not just performing those tasks on site, but designing the equipment with which we performed those tasks. Any time we worked on the airplane in such a way as to have disturbed the nav gyros, the AOA sensors, etc. we had to re-calibrate those components. Think about it - what is "straight ahead"? What is "level" (both pitch and roll)? How do you "tell" the airplane all of that? What is your baseline for measurement?

Seat tracks. They do far more than just hold seats (and lavs and galleys) - they serve as the "zero" for yaw, pitch, and roll. These are some of the most carefully aligned components in the airplane, but not because we mount seats to them - we mount a lot of our alignment equipment to them. In this case, the very equipment that tells the aircraft what "straight and level" is.

Here is a quick high level overview of just one of our alignment procedures. This is for the nav gyros. We start by mounting an electronic gyro (of my design) to the seat tracks on the centerline of the aircraft, somewhere near where the front or rear main spars of the wing would meet (if they actually extended all the way to the center of the fuselage - they don't). We mount targets both forward and outboard of the gyro, in the seat tracks. Kind of like surveyors' targets. We then use lasers to align the gyro housing to those targets. Once physically aligned, we then turn on the gyro and let it find "straight and level".

Once aligned, we dismount it from its housing, quick scurry out the door and down the stairs, and head for the forward EE (electrical equipment) rack, located up by and accessed through the nose gear wheel well. The gyro is electronically "spinning" this whole while, and the clock is ticking. We only have so much time before it starts to "drift", so we have to work fast.

Once in the forward EE bay, we mount our gyro to a shelf that will be mounted on the EE rack. This shelf is loose - it is not yet hard mounted to the rack. Once the gyro is mounted to it, we can begin aligning this shelf to the rack. Once the gyro tells us that shelf is "straight and level", we hard mount the shelf to the rack and remove the gyro. This shelf will then hold the nav gyros.

AOA sensors are easier. We align these optically all from the outside of the aircraft. Hopefully you guys kind of get the idea, though. If it's not just software, depending on which hardware, it could mean a fair amount of fiddly-dicking around, which would lead to delays.

So, hopefully, it's just software. :D

Just about shot Merlot through my nose! lol!

So the Seattle Times has an article about Boeing's cozy relationship with the FAA and 737's flawed certification process (link) .

I was thinking about the crash last night and as flawed as the MCAS implementation appears to be, I have to agree with their statements in the article

With all the focus on control issues with the Lion Air flight, I can't believe the Ethiopian Air pilots did recognized the issue and at least disable MCAS. These are supposed to be trained professionals, or maybe they were just professionals. But if I were a 737Max pilot, after the Lion Air crash, I certainly would have familiarized myself with the process. Boeing certainly appears culpable, but poor piloting, at this point, appears to be the cause of the crash.

I am fairly certain that the pilots will get their fair share of the blame for this. It's hard to not notice the trim wheels spinning away next to your knee. If nothing else, they should have seen that.

Poor training is almost certainly going to be an issue too, but that captain needed someone in the right seat with more than 200 hours. That's on the airline.

From the article.
Thank you for posting the article, the 737 Max still seems like a pit-bull that can turn on it's owner/operator at any moment. As with pit-bulls, proper training seems to be essential.

I disagree. If a pilot sees and hears the trim wheels spinning and he hasn't activated the trim switch, he should recognize he has a problem. Never mind what caused the trim wheels to spin, the fix is the same.

It's not hard to notice them.

https://youtu.be/ULCrAZyNk34

A useful summary of what's transpired:

Crash: Ethiopian B38M near Bishoftu on Mar 10th 2019, impacted terrain after departure

FWIW:

http://files.abovetopsecret.com/file...vz5c8c0001.jpg

That's weird. I caught part of a show over the weekend with some scary similarities.

the show is called air disasters on the Smithsonian channel. Pretty good show.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9838136/?ref_=ttep_ep_cur

It described several incidents involving airbusses where the altitude reading was confused with the AOA reading and caused the controls to go 10 degrees down instantly.
Note that the passengers did not go 10 degrees down, they went up into the ceiling. Lots of serious injuries.
the same thing happened on a few other identical planes, almost all off the west coast of Afrika.

They never did figure out why the hardware mislabeled the altitude readings as AOA readings, but they wrote a software fix to prevent the plane from over-reacting.

IIRC they didn't pull breakers either ;)

And before you go sayin' i don't know nuthin about the subject, I sat right seat in a Citation business jet once. I remember it because he kept telling me not to touch ANYTHING.



http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1552939158.gif

And that's another thing: why do people take off their seat belts on a plane?

I never do that unless my bladder is bursting.
if I'm not heading to the lav or on the way back, I'm always belted in.

But apparently others do not do that and tend to get hurt by turbulence. Prolly the same people who get runned over by trains.

I’m not so sure, there was zero training on the system, no override, and no manual on it available to crews according to what I read.

Grand jury has started looking at the certification process. I recall (un)fondly what it was like to receive a grand jury subpoena at Boeing. Sends everyone into ass-covering mode.

Actually, I think it is described in the manual. There are not very many simulators for the Max 8 yet, but...

I’m fairly certain that a competent pilot would recognize the fact that the stabilizer trim is being manipulated without pilot input. That is something that they do train for, it really doesn’t matter why the stabilizer is moving uncommanded. The fix is the same and it’s been that way for 50 years.

I don’t mean any disrespect to the pilots that crashed these two jets but I truly believe that that would not of happened with the frontline pilots we have here in this country.