Originally Posted by
boofhead
They did not ground the aircraft until forced to by the negative publicity and apparent anger from the public. They did not ground the aircraft because of a fault in the aircraft as it was accepted by those authorities including the FAA until the public pressure from those who were not qualified to apply it but were emoting and not analyzing nor applying scientific reasoning. For example the fact that the pilots of those aircraft did not follow the checklist for the emergency was hardly discussed but it should have been. Why did those crews fail so badly? Were they incompetent? Poorly trained? Inexperienced? To date none of those possibilities have been looked at, even cursorily.
Boeing is doing its job to thoroughly test the airplane. They could not just zip around the pattern and call it good, even if they were sure there was nothing wrong with the design or construction of the airplane. The public, driven by the blood in the water and wanting to bring down Boeing, would never tolerate that. Facts be damned. I still read that the MCAS system was put in the aircraft to prevent a stall when it has nothing to do with that. I read comments by pilots on this forum who buy into the ill-informed and emotive reporting by the media (when will we learn that they have nothing to contribute to the news but their twisted agenda?) that ignore the facts and join the pile-on to destroy the company that has done so much to make aviation the most successful and safe industry and public service in modern times. For what reason? Politics? Ignorance? Follow the leader?
Boeing is working on a fix. They could have provided it on day One. That fix is to leave it as it is. There is nothing they need to do and they will never find anything that would satisfy the great unwashed who do not understand the subject. The airplanes were always flyable. There was always a procedure to fly them safely with the MCAS system not working as it should. There were at least six ways to stop those airplanes from plummeting into the ground out of control. After the investigation is over Boeing will not be able to come up with a fix because there is not a fix available because there is not a design defect or construction error that needs to be fixed. It is like having a car hit a pothole on the road and the driver allows the car to cross the median and kill the people in the other lane by running into them head on. Was the fault the road maintenance crews? The people who issued that driver a license? The tire manufacturer? Or was it simply that the driver did not know how to handle that type of problem and lost control? My daughter nearly did that when she hit a patch of ice that had run over the road from a broken water main in the winter. She was lucky that the other driver immediately drove his car off the road into a ditch to avoid the head on accident because my daughter could not get her car back onto her side of the road. Two of my daughters were on board that car and I could have lost both of them. I could have kissed that other guy, a middle aged chap who had good reflexes, but I had to blame my daughter a little because her first instinct was to slam on her brakes which caused an instant loss of control. She should have steered the car through and braked on the other side. I also know that she was facing something way out of her experience and she did not panic. She got her car under control and nobody was hurt, But these pilots managed to kill over three hundred innocent people despite being trained and qualified, including how to handle this specific problem of runaway trim. There is a difference between blaming a driver of a car who had never been given training on how to handle a sudden skid or had never experienced it before and a professional who had been so trained but failed to recognize the problem and failed to act correctly. Who allowed himself to lose the plot and give up. I would have respect for someone who went down fighting as did the pilot of that FedEx 767, or the 747 pilot in Dubai, even the ValuJet pilot, rest their souls, but to throw a perfectly good airplane into the ground simply because he lacked basic flying skills is not acceptable to me.
Those pilots should not have been there. They did not know what to do. Whether that was their fault or the trainers, or the management, the regulators or the shortage of pilots that is making all of us lower the bar I don't know and if it is not examined and if something is not done to correct the problem when it is identified we can expect to see more of the same.
What a wonderful post! You deserve a premium from Mr Boeing!
Just some extracts form your post:
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They did not ground the aircraft until forced to by the negative publicity and apparent anger from the public" Until the aircraft was grounded worldwide, the public was not involved nor reacting....
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They did not ground the aircraft because of a fault in the aircraft as it was accepted by those authorities including the FAA" The FAA seems now to have less willingness to accept the aircraft "as is".
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wanting to bring down Boeing" Any evidence of that?
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That fix is to leave it as it is" Even Boeing did not try this one, marvellous!
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But these pilots managed to kill over three hundred innocent people despite being trained and qualified, including how to handle this specific problem of runaway trim." At least for the Lion Air pilots, they cannot have been trained on the consequences of MCAS operation as MCAS was not known by the pilots, NOT INCLUDED in the Boeing's manual; it even seems that FAA was not fully informed of the working details of MCAS.
You should suggest creating a worldwide certification agency and apply to be the Chairman; you have the required talents.
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