Downfall, Netflix documentary
 

For those who have Netflix and find crash investigations interesting, I can highly recommend “Downfall, The Case Against Boeing”. It’s a very good look at what happens when a massive aviation company who talks the safety talk finally gets caught out.

Shocking how willing this company was to lie about known safety issues even after killing hundreds of people. All in the name of profits and saving face.

Not pointing any fingers but it should really serve as a warning to any companies who operate in a similar way here in Oz. Safety is never a product of your past record but rather a product of your present ethics.

Pay the $2.5 billion fine for fraud and conspiracy and the company is NOT GUILTY. Questions?

Just watched it, it is astounding that Boeing have got away with this. I guess money talks.

Here we go again. For those that haven't flown the 737 there are two switches to turn off if the stab moves in an unintended way. They are turned off as a 'Memory Item'. The Lion crew never turned them off and the Ethiopian crew turned them off after the aircraft was so out of trim it was impossible to fly and then turned them back on again!!! Boeing is not entirely to blame for these two accidents but is certainly not blameless.

I have not flown the 737 ...
But lets do what you say.
The system kicks in and trims the aircraft, lets say, 8 or 10 degrees Nose Down, before you react by acting on those 2 switches.
Now you have an aircraft trimmed 8 or 10 degrees Nose Down, and, to the best of my knowledge, you can not trim Nose Up because those switches are Off.
Do you think that you are going to get out of it ?

Yes. I would do the memory items for Runaway Stab and then fly the aircraft manually. There is no way if you had been trained properly on the aircraft, if you were armed with MCAS knowledge as the ET crew were, if you could fly a jet with pitch and power, if you valued your life, you would not have immediately hit the the Stab Trim switches or asked your colleague to do it the second the thing was trimming away from your desired state. Read the report and tell me how long it took ET to put the Stab Trim switches to cutout and how many cycles of MCAS nose down they had before the FO, yes FO, suggested to the Capt to put them to cutout. Yes they had simultaneous stall and overspeed warnings but Boeing didn't invent the Unreliable Airspeed memory items after these crashes. Keep in mind both aircraft were in daylight VMC. They could see their horizon. Boeing took short cuts for sure to keep their competitor from gaining an edge on them. They assumed pilots were more capable and that's their gross miscalculation.

apparently Boeing internal comms suggested that you had as little as 10 seconds to flick those switches to prevent an unrecoverable scenario.
And that was discussed internally pre Ethiopian. As for the whole MCAS tied to a single AoA vane, well fck me, words can’t describe how insane that is

About 35 seconds and two MCAS AND trim events.

you can still trim manually via the big trimwheels. However, if the trim is out by a lot, the forces will be too high and the crew is unable to overcome it. So you would have to be pretty quick in using the cutout switches.

Has this max been aircraft had the required changes to ensure this type of event will not happen again? There is a few flying around now.

Mate, you’re kidding aren’t you!

The best players and coaches are always the spectators in the stands.

Thanks for your input ! :ok:

Very likely this detail has been discussed before, but what is the reason that causes Boeing to be so afraid that the Max gets into a stall situation, to the point that they came up with MCAS ?
Goes into something similar to a super stall situation, that is impossible to get out of it, or is it something else ?
It's been a very long time since I last studied stability :O

Technical discussions aside. How is it that a company can go from a beleaguered cash strapped airplane maker who had to hide certain elements of its design from the FAA in order to avoid new type rating status, to one who can afford to pay a multi billion dollar fine in order to avoid criminal charges? And remain in business? Let us not forget the guy who was at the helm, the captain of the company you could say, got a golden handshake in return for overseeing the culpable homicide of a few hundred people. Corporate filth masquerading as leaders pedalling profits disguised as safety, I’m glad we are above all that down under.

I just watched it yesterday, sums up everything that is wrong with aviation today, in fact probably most industry. Well worth a watch.

Southwest Airlines wanted the aircraft to handle almost exactly the same way as the 737NG with minimal traning for crew. It didn't due to the size and position of the engines, so MCAS was introduced to make it fly like the NG. In theory.

Sigh… you clearly have no idea about airworthiness. Although I would agree that Boeing is not the only party at fault. The FAA also failed as the regulator to ensure that this aircraft type was airworthy. That’s their job, it’s why they issue a certificate.

It’s one thing doing memory items in a simulator, when you are expecting things to go wrong, but it’s quite different in the actual aircraft. If you have had a serious system failure for real then you will know what I am talking about. A failure situation that starts off with a stick shacker, altitude and speed disagreements with master cautions, does not immediately shout out trim failure, unless of course, you’ve seen it in the simulator before hand, along with what will happens to the aircraft if you don’t catch it in time and how you might dig yourself out of that hole.

A critical component of the flight control system that can quickly trim the aircraft full nose down, taking its input from only one sensor?? Seriously mate, have a word with yourself. As far as I’m concerned, Boeings once incredible reputation for safety and reliability will never be the same again, especially with the amount of BS they have spouted since the accidents.

As for the FAA, they should have led the groundings of this Frankenstein aircraft. Instead it was the Chinese CAAC, then even when almost every other civil aviation authority had grounded them, the FAA were still kissing Boeings backside.

in most accidents there is usually something the pilots could have done to avert the disaster, yet fortunately we have come a long way from just simply blaming the aircrew. Instead, quite rightly, we look at the system as a whole, including the design, certification, regulation, training and operation of the aircraft. There is no blame here that can or should be directed at the pilots.

Runaway Stab training only entered the syllabus after these events.
No one is immune to startle factor. Even heros - both real heros and pprune heros!

System design must not rely on an ace response in 10 seconds.

You are entirely missing the point, this is not about those two specific accidents. It is about a company culture where the internal communications showed:

- They deliberately downplayed and hid information about MCAS so that it didn't trigger any additional training for customers.
- They penalised financially any employee who put in writing any safety concerns about ANY aircraft programme or quality issues
- They determined that they had made the MCAS response so powerful with it related to a single source of information that crew would have 10 seconds to respond appropriately or face a catastrophic loss of the aircraft.
- They knew should they release internal documents about the design of MCAS it would lead to a grounding of the fleet so they didn't release them.
- They knew the design was likely the main contributing factor in the loss of lives but once again internal emails show them openly discussing that they should just pin it on the pilots as most will believe that since they weren't American pilots they acted badly.
- Should ANY aircraft with a system design that can lead to loss of the aircraft in 10 seconds be certified?

Had Runaway Stab training in every Boeing simulator I have attended, starting in 1988, second
nature to flip those 2 switches to OFF.
Surely every Boeing pilot had to do it as well.

Good history of the B737 runaway stabiliser procedure here.

737 Runaway Stabilizer Procedure

Is a runaway stab on the 737 accompanied by several warnings more likely to be encountered during an airspeed unreliable event?

Only from 2019 in Australia.

Ansett blue shirt on, clear throat.............."I did runaway trim drills on my conversion course in 1982. Part of the syllabus and still have my notes". Blue shirt off, runaway to hide from the Ansett haters.

The MCD influence with DC10 standards combined with Wall St greed and money focus took an engineering led Boeing to an almost terminal position. Add up the total costs and it is around $80Bn - enough to develop new NMA, new narrow body (and more) to put Boeing in a longer-term market leading position based on product and engineering.

Muilenburg paid an exit bonus of USD$62m for leading the decimation of Boeing! Nice one.

Dreamliner quality issues continue that impact customers like AA with their route plans.

All companies evolve. Maybe the Seattle forever focus was not realistic but they sure lost the plot.

Greed. Lies. Criminal-like behaviour covered by shareholders $20Bn in cash. It is a disgrace.

This has to be the worst example of corporate corruption in history. The costs are well beyond BP - Deepwater, Exxon Valdez and Volkswagen dieselgate.

Good insights and well worth watching the doco. Thanks Ron Howard and Netflix.

No hate mate. I think any Ansett hate has come about from the same corporate mentality bull**** that cause these accidents.

I agree.
I did runaway stab drills in the simulator on the B707 late in the 1960s. In other Boeing types later in life , the hard bit was getting the verbiage word perfect eg Stabiliser Hydraulic Cutoff Swiches : Cutoff.

Apparently not. That was one of the findings of the Joint Authorities Technical Review of the MAX Flight Control System - the training didn't accurately reflect what a crew would be faced with. And as Boeing decided to leave any mention of MCAS out of the FCOM (in fact, content on MCAS functionality was originally in the draft FCOM and was subsequently removed without any proper consultation) that meant that the FSB was not in a position to adequately assess training needs.

This documentary was certainly well worth watching because it shows the current corporate ethic beautifully - MONEY IS EVERYTHING!

The same credo was to blame in the lead up to the GFC in 2008. A book about the failure of Lehman Brothers and the narrowly-avoided collapse of the American financial system was called “Too big to Fail”. I think the title of this book also applies to Boeing - as the only remaining manufacturer of airliners in the US, there is no way that it will be allowed to fail.

It’s a pity that Wall Street, Boeing and Alan Joyce can’t understand that “you can’t put a dollar value on reputation but, once it’s gone, it’s very difficult (if not impossible) to get back”. As well as probably being more expensive than having done the job properly in the first place.

Ansett blue shirt on

Ansett, back in the old days, had a decided over training philosophical attitude and it showed in general line flying standards back then. Not always, and not everyone but, certainly, as a general observation. George and I were of similar vintage, as I recall, he a little after me.

I can’t believe ( OK yes I can) that the CEO who led this mess.. got the sack.. with $60 million. It’s fxxking repulsive.

A few people here seem to have missed an important part of the memory items for the Runaway Stabilizer procedure, namely the bit that says (my emphasis):

Selecting the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches to CUTOUT is NOT the first step in the procedure.

The pilot of the Lion Air aircraft managed to keep the aircraft under control through several cycles of MCAS nose down trim and main electric trim in the opposite direction before he lost control. If he had thought to select the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches to CUTOUT while the aircraft was in a reasonable trim state, the accident might not have occurred.

NOTE: That does not excuse the design faults of the MAX aircraft, or Boeing’s behaviour.

Of course it’s easy to say crew should do this or that and it was possible to save the aircraft. I don’t really think this is the point. The point it the design was bad and the faults covered up. At best negligence that resulted in hundreds of lives lost. The most sickening thing for me was they bet it wouldn’t happen again so doubled down.

It still comes down to an automation in a primary flight control which operates silently and uses only a single data source. Even Boeing know that's not the right way to design aeroplanes, which is why they hid it from the regulators. All the rest is just the consequences - the core crime is (and remains) inacceptable, which is why the corporate and engineering leadership should be facing murder charges.

Ideally in a death penalty State.

PDR

Yes, there have been significant changes that were required before the MAX was certified to fly again. MCAS Article here provides a good summary of what has changed

Hi Zerograv. You can trim nose up with both switches off using the manual trim wheel. Unfortunately on the Ethiopian crash, these switches were set to off too late and the speed and stabiliser position made it virtually impossible to use the manual trim wheel. That is probably why they switched them back on again, hoping they could use the electric control column trim switches.

Nonsense. Runaway Stab has been a Memory item for decades. So long that they used to be called Recall Items.

So by your reasoning pilots should be allowed more than ten seconds to input the correct rudder when an engine fails just after V1. Try arguing that with your next 737 sim checker as you roll inverted at 20 feet.

Corporate greed, incompetence, arrogance all caused the Max to be rolled out with a flaw. I won't argue with that. However a pilot with a left seat type rating in the 737 should know that when faced with an aircraft that has a trim wheel moving forward that the corrective action is to first use electric trim and if it's still trimming forward to do the Memory Items that you are paid to do. Lion crew never touched the switches. Ethiopian Captain had to be prompted by the FO and by then the stab was well out of trim.

The previous sector prior to the crash of Lion Air 610 was flown with continuous stick shaker and trim runaway but the pilots of that flight didn’t report it. 31 pages of the technical log were missing. It’s all there in the NTSC report.
Draw your own conclusions. Read the report. It’s eye watering. Gross negligence on so many fronts at Lion Air.