U.S grounds ALL 737 Max
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Originally Posted by ivor toolbox
And finally, don't believe Flight Radar, they are not infallible, they get 737-800NG and 737-8Max mixed up, as do a lot of spotters.)
As for spotters, well it's easy to tell a Max from the others; it has crinkly nacelles. Even a 12yo by the fence at Gatters will tell you that.
Erm, FR24 and other trackers don't squint up at the overflying aircraft and try to guess the variant; they look the ADS-B or Mode-S emitted ICAOhex up against a database of aircraft. It's not possible to mix a 737-8 and a 737-800 up unless the FAA, CAA etc has already done so in their national registry.
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Some on this thread point to a Boeing conspiracy to willfully put into operation an unsafe aircraft
I find it hard to believe every individual involved in the Max program, from designer to operator, would engage in a conspiracy of silence allowing and condoning Boeing to put out an unsafe aircraft.
Every Boeing design engineer, programmer, supervisor, and test pilot coupled with every FAA official conspired to purposefully put to market an unsafe aircraft? Every major airline which accepted the aircraft purposefully and ignorantly accepted the aircraft and training plan as designed by Boeing?
I am not referring to airlines which don’t have the financial wherewithal and deep historical training expertise in operating the 737, I am referring to the SWA, AA, UAL’s (apology’s to international operators which have commensurate expertise) which accepted on blind faith Boeing’s plan.
And then let’s not leave out the pilots unions. ALPA, the most powerful pilots union in the history of commercial aviation (of which I am a proud member) APA, SWAPA all have robust safety and training committees. Did they fail due diligence, were they also complicit in the Max coming to operation purposefully overlooking obvious aircraft and training flaws? Did the Standards Captains, the Line Check Airmen, and pilot instructors at those airlines also engage in a willful conspiracy of ignorance and silence?
I am not by any stretch excusing or absolving Boeing, the FAA, the airlines, the unions or the supervisory pilots (who should know better) I am merely stating to believe a few executives at Boeing could alone get away with producing and deploying an unsafe aircraft requires a willing belief in a improbable widespread conspiracy - from producer to regulator to airline to hands on (pilot) operator.
I find it hard to believe every individual involved in the Max program, from designer to operator, would engage in a conspiracy of silence allowing and condoning Boeing to put out an unsafe aircraft.
Every Boeing design engineer, programmer, supervisor, and test pilot coupled with every FAA official conspired to purposefully put to market an unsafe aircraft? Every major airline which accepted the aircraft purposefully and ignorantly accepted the aircraft and training plan as designed by Boeing?
I am not referring to airlines which don’t have the financial wherewithal and deep historical training expertise in operating the 737, I am referring to the SWA, AA, UAL’s (apology’s to international operators which have commensurate expertise) which accepted on blind faith Boeing’s plan.
And then let’s not leave out the pilots unions. ALPA, the most powerful pilots union in the history of commercial aviation (of which I am a proud member) APA, SWAPA all have robust safety and training committees. Did they fail due diligence, were they also complicit in the Max coming to operation purposefully overlooking obvious aircraft and training flaws? Did the Standards Captains, the Line Check Airmen, and pilot instructors at those airlines also engage in a willful conspiracy of ignorance and silence?
I am not by any stretch excusing or absolving Boeing, the FAA, the airlines, the unions or the supervisory pilots (who should know better) I am merely stating to believe a few executives at Boeing could alone get away with producing and deploying an unsafe aircraft requires a willing belief in a improbable widespread conspiracy - from producer to regulator to airline to hands on (pilot) operator.
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Some on this thread point to a Boeing conspiracy to willfully put into operation an unsafe aircraft
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Some on this thread point to a Boeing conspiracy to willfully put into operation an unsafe aircraft
I find it hard to believe every individual involved in the Max program, from designer to operator, would engage in a conspiracy of silence allowing and condoning Boeing to put out an unsafe aircraft.
Every Boeing design engineer, programmer, supervisor, and test pilot coupled with every FAA official conspired to purposefully put to market an unsafe aircraft? Every major airline which accepted the aircraft purposefully and ignorantly accepted the aircraft and training plan as designed by Boeing?
I am not referring to airlines which don’t have the financial wherewithal and deep historical training expertise in operating the 737, I am referring to the SWA, AA, UAL’s (apology’s to international operators which have commensurate expertise) which accepted on blind faith Boeing’s plan.
And then let’s not leave out the pilots unions. ALPA, the most powerful pilots union in the history of commercial aviation (of which I am a proud member) APA, SWAPA all have robust safety and training committees. Did they fail due diligence, were they also complicit in the Max coming to operation purposefully overlooking obvious aircraft and training flaws? Did the Standards Captains, the Line Check Airmen, and pilot instructors at those airlines also engage in a willful conspiracy of ignorance and silence?
I am not by any stretch excusing or absolving Boeing, the FAA, the airlines, the unions or the supervisory pilots (who should know better) I am merely stating to believe a few executives at Boeing could alone get away with producing and deploying an unsafe aircraft requires a willing belief in a improbable widespread conspiracy - from producer to regulator to airline to hands on (pilot) operator.
I find it hard to believe every individual involved in the Max program, from designer to operator, would engage in a conspiracy of silence allowing and condoning Boeing to put out an unsafe aircraft.
Every Boeing design engineer, programmer, supervisor, and test pilot coupled with every FAA official conspired to purposefully put to market an unsafe aircraft? Every major airline which accepted the aircraft purposefully and ignorantly accepted the aircraft and training plan as designed by Boeing?
I am not referring to airlines which don’t have the financial wherewithal and deep historical training expertise in operating the 737, I am referring to the SWA, AA, UAL’s (apology’s to international operators which have commensurate expertise) which accepted on blind faith Boeing’s plan.
And then let’s not leave out the pilots unions. ALPA, the most powerful pilots union in the history of commercial aviation (of which I am a proud member) APA, SWAPA all have robust safety and training committees. Did they fail due diligence, were they also complicit in the Max coming to operation purposefully overlooking obvious aircraft and training flaws? Did the Standards Captains, the Line Check Airmen, and pilot instructors at those airlines also engage in a willful conspiracy of ignorance and silence?
I am not by any stretch excusing or absolving Boeing, the FAA, the airlines, the unions or the supervisory pilots (who should know better) I am merely stating to believe a few executives at Boeing could alone get away with producing and deploying an unsafe aircraft requires a willing belief in a improbable widespread conspiracy - from producer to regulator to airline to hands on (pilot) operator.
As far as we can tell, no pilots were aware that the MCAS existed. No airlines, trainers, nobody. The only public reference to the MCAS prior to Lion Air was the Brazilian CAA, see this article: Flight control feature of Boeing 737 MAX under scrutiny after Lion Air accident. There is a comparison between the response from Canada and Brazil to the MCAS implementation.
It give the appearance that the FAA accepted Boeings word for it, this FAA certification was then accepted without question by every airworthiness authority except Brazil. No conspiracy necessary, more likely a global failure of due diligence. It is similar to the global issue of flammable cladding on high rise buildings. A single regulatory sign-off then gives carte blanche to accept a product without further investigation or due diligence locally. Regulators have simply given up.
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I find it hard to believe every individual involved in the Max program, from designer to operator, would engage in a conspiracy of silence allowing and condoning Boeing to put out an unsafe aircraft.
Every Boeing design engineer, programmer, supervisor, and test pilot coupled with every FAA official conspired to purposefully put to market an unsafe aircraft? Every major airline which accepted the aircraft purposefully and ignorantly accepted the aircraft and training plan as designed by Boeing?
Every Boeing design engineer, programmer, supervisor, and test pilot coupled with every FAA official conspired to purposefully put to market an unsafe aircraft? Every major airline which accepted the aircraft purposefully and ignorantly accepted the aircraft and training plan as designed by Boeing?
I don’t know how true this is but I heard Boeing are compensating the operators to the tune of $50k per aircraft per day. If true, that’s a cool $18 million for every day. I also heard Boeing expect the aircraft to be grounded until the end of May at the earliest. That’s knocking on the door of $1.5 billion 
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I don’t know how true this is but I heard Boeing are compensating the operators to the tune of $50k per aircraft per day. If true, that’s a cool $18 million for every day. I also heard Boeing expect the aircraft to be grounded until the end of May at the earliest. That’s knocking on the door of $1.5 billion
I don't believe that in this day and age you can run a commercial aircraft programme while simultaneously incorporating "secret stuff" than only a handful of people in the company know about. Many, many people inside (and outside) Boeing will have been involved in the design, implementation and flight testing of MCAS.
It may well be true, however, that only a few knew (even before Lion Air, if the rumours of internal Boeing memos turn out to be true) that MCAS could, under certain circumstances, come back and bite you. If there's a smoking gun to be found, that's where it is.
It may well be true, however, that only a few knew (even before Lion Air, if the rumours of internal Boeing memos turn out to be true) that MCAS could, under certain circumstances, come back and bite you. If there's a smoking gun to be found, that's where it is.
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Let me put this question to all readers. Would you or your family be happy to fly in a B737 MAX as soon as Boeing say that they have given the MAX a software upgrade and all is well?
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Boeing may be saying 10 days for an update to be ready to install but the installation is likely to stretch the timeframe out. Note also that the FAA has stated that " The grounding will remain in effect pending further investigation, including examination of information from the aircraft’s flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders." This from the FAA website and referencing ET302 boxes. Given the position this puts the FAA and French led discovery process in, a sofware update and installation may not be sufficient for certification authorities to rescind the grounding order. This presents an interesting dynamic since those boxes are now in BEA's hands which leads me to wonder,
1) At what point will BEA be comfortable with its findings since the FAA is stating the grounding will remain in effect pending 'further investigation' to which there is no current timeframe or specified endpoint from the FAA's wording;
2) Is any 'fix' sufficient to allay airline concern about the fundamental airworthiness of the Max? If airlines can't fill the seats on the type because of the enormous press coverage of two horrific accidents, what then? The press coverage and viral responses are not comparable to any other sequence of accidents for any other type;
3) Is any fix to MCAS sufficient for crews that fly the aircraft to be comfortable in the safety of the type or will there still be some crew who have a little voice in the back of their heads saying 'oh s**t, a Max on this leg (and I do not refer to capability of crew, but workload of maybe a tired crew on their last leg of the day with just another pay attention to jolt)?
1) At what point will BEA be comfortable with its findings since the FAA is stating the grounding will remain in effect pending 'further investigation' to which there is no current timeframe or specified endpoint from the FAA's wording;
2) Is any 'fix' sufficient to allay airline concern about the fundamental airworthiness of the Max? If airlines can't fill the seats on the type because of the enormous press coverage of two horrific accidents, what then? The press coverage and viral responses are not comparable to any other sequence of accidents for any other type;
3) Is any fix to MCAS sufficient for crews that fly the aircraft to be comfortable in the safety of the type or will there still be some crew who have a little voice in the back of their heads saying 'oh s**t, a Max on this leg (and I do not refer to capability of crew, but workload of maybe a tired crew on their last leg of the day with just another pay attention to jolt)?
Yes!
I put my trust in the pilot who knows a lot more than I do and is prepared to act on it
the day I refuse to fly is when the pilot community refuses to fly
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I can guarantee in Boeing and their contractors there are engineers, IT and otherwise, that at the time felt very SQUASHED by management to just get the thing (MCAS) in and stuff all the questions and analysis said engineers wanted to get done. Just as in Erin Brocovich. What would be disappointing is if the subsequent inquiries in Congress or anywhere else do not hear from the coal face engineers on this project, and how it got into production despite being unsafe on so many counts. That's the real failure of leadership and safety first imho. I definitely understand the commercial pressure to see off the A321neo and to keep the 737 commonality cash cow to keep on producing.But hundreds dead is not an acceptable price to pay for this terrible engineering shortcut. What happened to integrity? Personally I would hope to see Boeing exec's in Jail, but suspect the system will keep Trump's favourite exporters away from any meaningful scrutiny, which will be another regulatory failure, this time of corporate governance and product safety.
G
G
may be behind paywall but
starts
Federal Aviation Administration managers pushed its engineers to delegate wide responsibility for assessing the safety of the 737 MAX to Boeing itself. But safety engineers familiar with the documents shared details that show the analysis included crucial flaws.
By
As Boeing hustled in 2015 to catch up to Airbus and certify its new 737 MAX, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) managers pushed the agency’s safety engineers to delegate safety assessments to Boeing itself, and to speedily approve the resulting analysis.But the original safety analysis that Boeing delivered to the FAA for a new flight control system on the MAX — a report used to certify the plane as safe to fly — had several crucial flaws.Dominic GatesSeattle Times aerospace reporter
The people who spoke to The Seattle Times and shared details of the safety analysis all spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their jobs at the FAA and other aviation organizations.Both Boeing and the FAA were informed of the specifics of this story and were asked for responses 11 days ago, before the second crash of a 737 MAX last Sunday.Late Friday, the FAA said it followed its standard certification process on the MAX. Citing a busy week, a spokesman said the agency was “unable to delve into any detailed inquiries.”
I find conspiracy theories about the MAX pretty hard to believe. What is easy to believe is a Boeing management engineering culture that prioritized the absolute minimum changes to the 737 so that Boeing could advertise upgrading to the Max would not incur any training cost to airlines. This combined with the fact that the inevitably individual engineers work on one small part of the aircraft perhaps without a full realization of how "their" system could effect others results in the fact that the AOA sensor has now become a single point of failure which can result in so much uncommanded down trim being applied aircraft control is lost.
The big picture question is IMO what and how should regulatory oversight work in a world where aircraft feature increasingly sophisticated materials and complex integrated electronic architectures. Is this accident the canary in the coal mine for all regulators ?
The big picture question is IMO what and how should regulatory oversight work in a world where aircraft feature increasingly sophisticated materials and complex integrated electronic architectures. Is this accident the canary in the coal mine for all regulators ?
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However, pilots and aviation experts say that what happened on the Lion Air flight doesn’t look like a standard stabilizer runaway, because that is defined as continuous uncommanded movement of the tail.On the accident flight, the tail movement wasn’t continuous; the pilots were able to counter the nose-down movement multiple times.In addition, the MCAS altered the control column response to the stabilizer movement. Pulling back on the column normally interrupts any stabilizer nose-down movement, but with MCAS operating that control column function was disabled. These differences certainly could have confused the Lion Air pilots as to what was going on.Since MCAS was supposed to activate only in extreme circumstances far outside the normal flight envelope, Boeing decided that 737 pilots needed no extra training on the system — and indeed that they didn’t even need to know about it. It was not mentioned in their flight manuals.
responsible miss- managemet should be fired- passports removed and/or given a window seat in a blank room and not allowed to touch anything related- or talk to anyone involved
If there's a smoking
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Why would FAA (which btw is led by a former military pilot, is it not?) resisted the groundings? In the past they were always on the side of caution. Two planes down in 5 months, the public is very concerned, yet they don't act. I don't want to speculate about the obvious suspicion of corruption but what could any other reasons be?
The same reason that the FAA did NOT require all US aircraft to auto-report to satellites after the AF447 crash.
The same reason that the FAA did not do LOTS of safety related changes.
The shareholders didn't want their profits reduced.
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Let me put this question to all readers. Would you or your family be happy to fly in a B737 MAX as soon as Boeing say that they have given the MAX a software upgrade and all is well?