US administration blames foreign pilots for 737 Max crashes
Those with long memories may remember the baggage handler vilification back at Ermenonville, airplane apparently was fine... certification was fine... FAA (dumb and) happy... nothing changes.
Quote - Sam Graves 15 May 2019.
"In the last decade, in the United States there have been nearly 7 Billion passengers flown on 90 Million flights with ONE fatality."
Atlas Air FLT 3591 - 23 Feb 2019 - 3 Fatal
SWA FLT 1380 - 17 Apr 2018 - 1 Fatal
UPS FLT 1354 - 14 Aug 2013 - 2 Fatal
National Air FLT 102 - 29 Apr 2013 - 7 Fatal
UPS FLT 6 - 3 Sep 2010 - 2 Fatal
"In the last decade, in the United States there have been nearly 7 Billion passengers flown on 90 Million flights with ONE fatality."
Atlas Air FLT 3591 - 23 Feb 2019 - 3 Fatal
SWA FLT 1380 - 17 Apr 2018 - 1 Fatal
UPS FLT 1354 - 14 Aug 2013 - 2 Fatal
National Air FLT 102 - 29 Apr 2013 - 7 Fatal
UPS FLT 6 - 3 Sep 2010 - 2 Fatal
The USA pilots that did a SIM reconstruction used up all 8,000 ft of altitude to recover by using the yo-yo procedure not in MAX checklist.
So that would a NO, or if the Yo-Yo was in the checklist a maybe but dependant on calibration tolerances.
And they were prepared for the reconstruction.
So that would a NO, or if the Yo-Yo was in the checklist a maybe but dependant on calibration tolerances.
And they were prepared for the reconstruction.
Join Date: Dec 2018
Location: Hawaii
Posts: 4
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
So said one Pierre-Cedric Bonin.
Now for the second bird with that one stone, perhaps Airbus might not want to sell aircraft to Air France, since only God knows how many Bonins are flying their aircraft.
And for the idiotic let's all blame Trump and the Repubs crowd:
“This is an example of a win-win situation where the people of the region are going to be able to benefit from an outstanding airline,” President Barack Obama said in 2011 when Lion Air Group signed a $22 billion order for Boeing planes, the largest single order in the manufacturer’s history.
So where we're you when it came to blaming ole Obama for that sale in light of Lion Air's rather pathetic history? Don't bother answering. I mean, he's lauding the sale in light of: Over the years, Lion planes have collided with a cow, a pig and, most embarrassingly, each other. Two days in a row in 2011, Lion planes skidded off the same airport runway. Can't post a URL but there is a 2018 NYT piece on Lion Air following the 737 Max crash that indeed details the rather pathetic history.
Now for why you sell the planes and never mind the safety history:Barr, the USC safety instructor, said even equipped with the best planes from Boeing or Airbus, airlines still must provide routine maintenance and highly trained crews to operate safely."It doesn't matter how good the plane is if you give it to a bunch of mechanics who don't know what to do or to a bunch of pilots who fall asleep in the cockpit," said Barr. Kinda like this:
One of the latest problems was aboard a Jet Airways flight in August from Mumbai to Brussels that plunged 5,000 feet over Turkey with one pilot asleep and the other busy with an iPad. Nobody was injured.
By the way, since I mentioned the late Pierre-Cedric Bonin, to give him some small measure of relief, that accident does not happen if the flight was during the day. A look out the window would have told him that he was not flying but instead falling. And, yeah, generally safe, and then there's the money, but one wonders what some think of those WWII stories where trained pilots crashed at night, inverted, into the sea. Maybe that its better to fly during the day? And so interesting that such wasn't a causal factor in the report, when it very clearly was. Oh, and did I mention as well, generally safe, so 1 in 1 million flights in the developing world we have a fatality whereas 1 in 23.9 million in the developed world, or so wrote the one MIT statistician who examined the data. And some of the developing are worse than others, so sub-Saharan Africa the worst and so on. Hello Ethiopian Airlines. And another bad spot, consider Lion Air in the NYT piece. Not just them but that part of the world. I'd also avoid India and China like the plague. Well, all of India except for the one biggie, and in Lion Air's part of the world there's always PAL. The difference between the two isn't the corruption and/or love of money, by the way, as the difference is instead that PAL flies to LA, SF, HNL, Vegas, Newark, NYC and London Gatwick and Heathrow while Lion Air doesn't. So PAL has to play by our rules.
The largest sale of aircraft ever. What were saying then?
He did not say one passenger fatality - just one fatality.
The most recent Atlas Air flight 3591 has a non paying passenger certainly he was not crew>
Given Graves full comments on "one" fatality being attributed to United States superior flight training compared to the rest of the world - every one of the dead crew were trained in the United States and some of them caused fatalities on American soil.
Can you also comment on Graves accuracy on his "look out the window and the AH's, they are your primary AoA's" at the 57:50 mark of the hearing.
think the issue may be does anybody learn to actually FLY anymore, or is it all procedures and checklists, any reerence to the USA sim re-constructions? what about trimming out the pitch when it happens and then stab trim de-activate...people are complaining they didnt know about MCAS, fair enough, regardless, take necessary actions to keep the airplane upright...
Keep in mind number one event was stick shaker and trim wheel movement is normal due STS, and a fair call for Sully reaction time just to turn or not was 35 seconds. Sully did not get a second startle event like a MCAS, that most likely he would have had if that was a B737 MAX (Flaps up and damaged AoA).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19902068
"WASHINGTON—A simulator session flown by a U.S.-based Boeing 737 MAX crew that mimicked a key portion of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 (ET302) accident sequence suggests that the Ethiopian crew faced a near-impossible task of getting their 737 MAX 8 back under control, and underscores the importance of pilots understanding severe runaway trim recovery procedures.Details of the session, shared with Aviation Week, were flown voluntarily as part of routine, recurrent training. Its purpose: practice recovering from a scenario in which the aircraft was out of trim and wanting to descend while flying at a high rate of speed. This is what the ET302 crew faced when it toggled cutout switches to de-power the MAX’s automatic stabilizer trim motor, disabling the maneuvering characteristics augmentation system (MCAS) that was erroneously trimming the horizontal stabilizer nose-down.
In such a scenario, once the trim motor is de-powered, the pilots must use the hand-operated manual trim wheels to adjust the stabilizers. But they also must keep the aircraft from descending by pulling back on the control columns to deflect the elevator portions of the stabilizer upward. Aerodynamic forces from the nose-up elevator deflection make the entire stabilizer more difficult to move, and higher airspeed exacerbates the issue.
The U.S. crew tested this by setting up a 737-Next Generation simulator at 10,000 ft., 250 kt. and 2 deg. nose up stabilizer trim. This is slightly higher altitude but otherwise similar to what the ET302 crew faced as it de-powered the trim motors 3 min. into the 6 min. flight, and about 1 min. after the first uncommanded MCAS input. Leading up to the scenario, the Ethiopian crew used column-mounted manual electric trim to counter some of the MCAS inputs, but did not get the aircraft back to level trim, as the 737 manual instructs before de-powering the stabilizer trim motor. The crew also did not reduce their unusually high speed.
What the U.S. crew found was eye-opening. Keeping the aircraft level required significant aft-column pressure by the captain, and aerodynamic forces prevented the first officer from moving the trim wheel a full turn. They resorted to a little-known procedure to regain control.
The crew repeatedly executed a three-step process known as the roller coaster. First, let the aircraft’s nose drop, removing elevator nose-down force. Second, crank the trim wheel, inputting nose-up stabilizer, as the aircraft descends. Third, pull back on the yokes to raise the nose and slow the descent. The excessive descent rates during the first two steps meant the crew got as low as 2,000 ft. during the recovery.
The Ethiopian Ministry of Transport preliminary report on the Mar. 10 ET302 accident suggests the crew attempted to use manual trim after de-powering the stabilizer motors, but determined it “was not working,” the report said. A constant trust setting at 94% N1 meant ET302’s airspeed increased to the 737 MAX’s maximum (Vmo), 340 kt., soon after the stabilizer trim motors were cut off, and did not drop below that level for the remainder of the flight. The pilots, struggling to keep the aircraft from descending, also maintained steady to strong aft control-column inputs from the time MCAS first fired through the end of the flight.
The U.S. crew’s session and a video posted recently by YouTube’s Mentour Pilot that shows a similar scenario inside a simulator suggest that the resulting forces on ET302’s stabilizer would have made it nearly impossible to move by hand.
Neither the current 737 flight manual nor any MCAS-related guidance issued by Boeing in the wake of the October 2018 crash of Lion Air Flight 610 (JT610), when MCAS first came to light for most pilots, discuss the roller-coaster procedure for recovering from severe out-of-trim conditions. The 737 manual explains that “effort required to manually rotate the stabilizer trim wheels may be higher under certain flight conditions,” but does not provide details.
The pilot who shared the scenario said he learned the roller coaster procedure from excerpts of a 737-200 manual posted in an online pilot forum in the wake of the MAX accidents. It is not taught at his airline.
Boeing’s assumption was that erroneous stabilizer nose-down inputs by MCAS, such as those experienced by both the JT610 and ET302 crews, would be diagnosed as runaway stabilizer. The checklist to counter runaway stabilizer includes using the cutout switches to de-power the stabilizer trim motor. The ET302 crew followed this, but not until the aircraft was severely out of trim following the MCAS inputs triggered by faulty angle-of-attack (AOA) data that told the system the aircraft’s nose was too high.
Unable to move the stabilizer manually, the ET302 crew moved the cutout switches to power the stabilizer trim motors—something the runaway stabilizer checklist states should not be done. While this enabled their column-mounted electric trim input switches, it also re-activated MCAS, which again received the faulty AOA data and trimmed the stabilizer nose down, leading to a fatal dive.
The simulator session underscored the importance of reacting quickly to uncommanded stabilizer movements and avoiding a severe out-of-trim condition, one of the pilots involved said. “I don’t think the situation would be survivable at 350 kt. and below 5,000 ft,” this pilot noted.
The ET302 crew climbed through 5,000 ft. shortly after de-powering the trim motors, and got to about 8,000 ft.—the same amount of altitude the U.S. crew used up during the roller-coaster maneuvers—before the final dive. A second pilot not involved in the session but who reviewed the scenario’s details said it highlighted several training opportunities.
“This is the sort of simulator experience airline crews need to gain an understanding of how runaway trim can make the aircraft very difficult to control, and how important it is to rehearse use of manual trim inputs,” this pilot said.
While Boeing’s runaway stabilizer checklist does not specify it, the second pilot recommended a maximum thrust of 75% N1 and a 4 deg. nose-up pitch to keep airspeed under control.
Boeing is developing modifications to MCAS, as well as additional training. Simulator sessions are expected to be integrated into recurrent training, and may be required by some regulators, and opted for by some airlines, before pilots are cleared to fly MAXs again. The MAX fleet has been grounded since mid-March, a direct result of the two accidents."
OK.
I was assuming that you had quoted him accurately (I haven't listened to the recording yet):
I was assuming that you had quoted him accurately (I haven't listened to the recording yet):
What the U.S. crew found was eye-opening. Keeping the aircraft level required significant aft-column pressure by the captain, and aerodynamic forces prevented the first officer from moving the trim wheel a full turn. They resorted to a little-known procedure to regain control.
But the flights numbers clearly seem to include large cargo operations regular flights including international operations not just domestic.
At 1:23:00 the NTSB guy Sumwalt then use this statistic as if fact.
It is worth the 3 hrs 10 minutes to watch, not listen and certainly do not use the transcript (that is very inaccurate on what was said).
Last edited by Bend alot; 17th May 2019 at 09:20.
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: The Home of the Gnomes
Posts: 412
Likes: 0
Received 3 Likes
on
2 Posts
The pitch-power couple with a thrust reduction would also cause the aircraft to pitch down in that situation and require a nose-up pitch input to counter. Intuitive maybe but not necessarily helpful.
Reasons they did not are human factor issues not procedure issues or memory items and do not forget never ever has an American crew been faced with a MCAS issue in 57,000 flights. So it is only an assumption they may have been equal in performance to one other crew that faced it. Never has an American crew correctly dealt with a MCAS event but only a foreign crew with less than a 1500 hr limit for a commercial licence .
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Vance, Belgium
Age: 61
Posts: 270
Likes: 0
Received 5 Likes
on
3 Posts
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19902068
"WASHINGTON—A simulator session flown by a U.S.-based Boeing 737 MAX crew
...
but did not get the aircraft back to level trim, as the 737 manual instructs before de-powering the stabilizer trim motor.
...
"
"WASHINGTON—A simulator session flown by a U.S.-based Boeing 737 MAX crew
...
but did not get the aircraft back to level trim, as the 737 manual instructs before de-powering the stabilizer trim motor.
...
"
There is nothing in the FCOM nor in the QRH that instructs to use electric trim buttons to put the aircraft in trim prior to flip the cutout switches,
even though I reckon that, calmly sitting in a chair in front of a computer, it looks like a good idea.
The QRH just says
If the runaway continues:
STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches (both) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CUTOUT.
STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches (both) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CUTOUT.
Note: Initially, higher control forces may be needed to overcome any stabilizer nose down trim already applied. Electric stabilizer trim can be used to neutralize control column pitch forces before moving the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches to CUTOUT.
"can be used", in a note, is hardly an instruction.
Join Date: Aug 2000
Posts: 1,499
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
With the trim near full nose down, you need all your strenght to keep the aircraft somewhat level. If you let go for just a few seconds, you will lose 4-5000 ft before to get it level again. This happens really fast.
Manual trim is impossible when you maintain «level» flight. It’s not a matter of difficult, it’s impossible.
Manual trim is impossible when you maintain «level» flight. It’s not a matter of difficult, it’s impossible.
That statement is wrong.
There is nothing in the FCOM nor in the QRH that instructs to use electric trim buttons to put the aircraft in trim prior to flip the cutout switches,
even though I reckon that, calmly sitting in a chair in front of a computer, it looks like a good idea.
The QRH just says
The only information akin to that is in the airworthiness directive AD 2018-23-51 and it only says:
(my emphasis)
"can be used", in a note, is hardly an instruction.
There is nothing in the FCOM nor in the QRH that instructs to use electric trim buttons to put the aircraft in trim prior to flip the cutout switches,
even though I reckon that, calmly sitting in a chair in front of a computer, it looks like a good idea.
The QRH just says
The only information akin to that is in the airworthiness directive AD 2018-23-51 and it only says:
(my emphasis)
"can be used", in a note, is hardly an instruction.
The note is misleading in such an event in my opinion. I expect it was that way for Loin Air reasons (blame the pilot!)
Thing is a MCAS event before MCAS was known, was reported as a STS operating the wrong direction as the fault - after fighting it for a very long time.
While that certainly is a good reason to shut down the trim - it is not a trim runaway. Then what exactly is going to work opposite to what it should? Manual trim wheel??
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Zulu Time Zone
Posts: 730
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
That statement is wrong.
There is nothing in the FCOM nor in the QRH that instructs to use electric trim buttons to put the aircraft in trim prior to flip the cutout switches,
even though I reckon that, calmly sitting in a chair in front of a computer, it looks like a good idea.
The only information akin to that is in the airworthiness directive AD 2018-23-51 and it only says:
(my emphasis)
"can be used", in a note, is hardly an instruction.
There is nothing in the FCOM nor in the QRH that instructs to use electric trim buttons to put the aircraft in trim prior to flip the cutout switches,
even though I reckon that, calmly sitting in a chair in front of a computer, it looks like a good idea.
The only information akin to that is in the airworthiness directive AD 2018-23-51 and it only says:
(my emphasis)
"can be used", in a note, is hardly an instruction.
Presumably they retracted the flaps because of the high speed after take off, not recognising the T/O power was still set.
Obviously MCAS is a problem in the Max, but if flown by properly experienced and trained crews ( and the naughty word Airmanship) the tragedies might not have happened.
As above. Leaving the thrust Levers at TOGA from T/O until it impacted, must be a major reason for the crews inability to control the MCAS problem. If the crew had disengaged the automatics (anathema as an SOP in some airlines) and manually flown a quick circuit to land ,(they would not be continuing the flight with an erroneous stick shaker) No need to retract the flaps, and MCAS would not have activated.
Presumably they retracted the flaps because of the high speed after take off, not recognising the T/O power was still set.
Obviously MCAS is a problem in the Max, but if flown by properly experienced and trained crews ( and the naughty word Airmanship) the tragedies might not have happened.
Presumably they retracted the flaps because of the high speed after take off, not recognising the T/O power was still set.
Obviously MCAS is a problem in the Max, but if flown by properly experienced and trained crews ( and the naughty word Airmanship) the tragedies might not have happened.
So simple tasks or simple people?
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Paris
Age: 74
Posts: 275
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Look at it from the point of view of the FAA
First the FAA is going to deny all wrongs so as to preserve their pensions. Which is why they will explain that their certification is only appropriate for US-trained pilots.
Then they will cooperate with Boeing to get the plane flying fairly safely. Because the pressure is huge.
Lastly they will take some measures to fix their process. Probably they will erase the possibility of easy certification of a follow-on type, and respecify startle factor as a risk in itself. At this point they might even move to ask for additional verification of the MAX systems.
Edmund
PS. Apparently in the US lawyer-based culture *any* admission of there being an issue is evidence. So the FAA guys cannot admit any problem existing, notrcan Boeing, and any hearings become empty posturing.
First the FAA is going to deny all wrongs so as to preserve their pensions. Which is why they will explain that their certification is only appropriate for US-trained pilots.
Then they will cooperate with Boeing to get the plane flying fairly safely. Because the pressure is huge.
Lastly they will take some measures to fix their process. Probably they will erase the possibility of easy certification of a follow-on type, and respecify startle factor as a risk in itself. At this point they might even move to ask for additional verification of the MAX systems.
Edmund
PS. Apparently in the US lawyer-based culture *any* admission of there being an issue is evidence. So the FAA guys cannot admit any problem existing, notrcan Boeing, and any hearings become empty posturing.
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: dublin
Posts: 2
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I guess we have a few posters here from the "the hatch just blew" school of accident investigation. I agree with you, though, that this whole thing is highly politicized, which helps nothing.
I've been reading the observations from experienced flight deck pros on PPRuNe for a bit over 10 years (so I am a relative newby).
What is rather apparent from soaking that all up is that there is NOT an international standard for airline pilots that any of us can comfortably assume when we sit down in the tube and strap that seat belt on while the CC brief us on the O2 mask and where the exits are. Culture informs cockpit culture; lessons learned sometimes aren't; corporate cultures - not just national culture - have influences that may or may not have been addressed in the testimony in re what you can assume that a given crew on a flight deck does or can do. After decades of folding in the hard lessons learned in the interest of safety, I am not impressed by those who will stick their heads in the sand and pretend that those lessons have been spread evenly across all passenger carrying organizations.
The 777 @ SFO reopened that can of worms. But even that crash points to something else also - being comfortable with one system, and then transitioning to another system where some functions are "similar but different" ... can lead to technical surprise and crew confusion. The remedy to that is training and system mastery: where's that as a priority? (Was the Captain in the ET Max crash well served by that, training? Color me skeptical).
There seems to be a problem, that a few posts in this thread demonstrate, with confronting the fact that not all flight deck crews are equal in ability nor in experience. (FWIW, the US regulators made a decision to demand 1500 hours experience before carrying passengers, as compared to 200 hours in a variety of other countries, to include maybe a few in Europe. How much that helps safety I don't know, but I don't think it hurt).
But that's one data point of many that hardly addresses the issues of assaults on training/recency/currency due to financial pressure.
None of the above relieves Boeing of: (1) some (IMO) bizarre choices in implementing the systems in the Max (single point of failure being one such choice in re AoA signal and triggering ... ) and (2) how crews were taken by surprise by a new feature due at least in part to the roll out/implementation scheme.
Those are causal factors related to the machine, and to training philosophy, but I digress.
I will ask posters to stop with the hair pulling in re someone speaking a truth - not all systems that produce Captains and FOs are equal. Well, no, they aren't. (I won't begin to offer which is the best, but anyone running an airline and/or a national regulatory agency sure as hell ought to be looking into that ...)
FACT for you: some airlines are so egregiously bad that certain nations or aviation authorities ban them from their airspace.
It isn't their machines that are the problem, it's the wet ware.
If one is to believe PPRuNe's collective memorey/experience* base of flight deck professionals over the course of 20 years of putting stuff down into internet posts, there is a willful failure demonstrated (in the posts here) to confront the variabilty of FD crews across the globe where some causal factors are Not The Machine.
And of course, some factors are related to The Machine.
Unbunch your knickers.
What irks me about this political process (as reported in the news article, so who knows how much of it is even right?) is that someone seems to be looking for a single smoking gun barrel.
Sorry, that's wrong headed.
A gatling gun is what's smoking.
I've been reading the observations from experienced flight deck pros on PPRuNe for a bit over 10 years (so I am a relative newby).
What is rather apparent from soaking that all up is that there is NOT an international standard for airline pilots that any of us can comfortably assume when we sit down in the tube and strap that seat belt on while the CC brief us on the O2 mask and where the exits are. Culture informs cockpit culture; lessons learned sometimes aren't; corporate cultures - not just national culture - have influences that may or may not have been addressed in the testimony in re what you can assume that a given crew on a flight deck does or can do. After decades of folding in the hard lessons learned in the interest of safety, I am not impressed by those who will stick their heads in the sand and pretend that those lessons have been spread evenly across all passenger carrying organizations.
The 777 @ SFO reopened that can of worms. But even that crash points to something else also - being comfortable with one system, and then transitioning to another system where some functions are "similar but different" ... can lead to technical surprise and crew confusion. The remedy to that is training and system mastery: where's that as a priority? (Was the Captain in the ET Max crash well served by that, training? Color me skeptical).
There seems to be a problem, that a few posts in this thread demonstrate, with confronting the fact that not all flight deck crews are equal in ability nor in experience. (FWIW, the US regulators made a decision to demand 1500 hours experience before carrying passengers, as compared to 200 hours in a variety of other countries, to include maybe a few in Europe. How much that helps safety I don't know, but I don't think it hurt).
But that's one data point of many that hardly addresses the issues of assaults on training/recency/currency due to financial pressure.
None of the above relieves Boeing of: (1) some (IMO) bizarre choices in implementing the systems in the Max (single point of failure being one such choice in re AoA signal and triggering ... ) and (2) how crews were taken by surprise by a new feature due at least in part to the roll out/implementation scheme.
Those are causal factors related to the machine, and to training philosophy, but I digress.
I will ask posters to stop with the hair pulling in re someone speaking a truth - not all systems that produce Captains and FOs are equal. Well, no, they aren't. (I won't begin to offer which is the best, but anyone running an airline and/or a national regulatory agency sure as hell ought to be looking into that ...)
FACT for you: some airlines are so egregiously bad that certain nations or aviation authorities ban them from their airspace.
It isn't their machines that are the problem, it's the wet ware.
If one is to believe PPRuNe's collective memorey/experience* base of flight deck professionals over the course of 20 years of putting stuff down into internet posts, there is a willful failure demonstrated (in the posts here) to confront the variabilty of FD crews across the globe where some causal factors are Not The Machine.
And of course, some factors are related to The Machine.
Unbunch your knickers.
What irks me about this political process (as reported in the news article, so who knows how much of it is even right?) is that someone seems to be looking for a single smoking gun barrel.
Sorry, that's wrong headed.
A gatling gun is what's smoking.
To Lonewolf
In an airline that I worked for I reckoned on a scale of 1-10 that most pilots were 1-5. Some 5-8 and a few scraping along at 10 where 10= can just pass annual checks. Where 1= nothing and I mean nothing would get past them.
And that Airline was No 1
Then the airlines are the same where No1 is like the No. 1 hospital - a centre of excellence. The worst at 10 is, along with hundreds of others, banned from flying in the EU.
So it. isn't a mystery.
The best pilots in the best airlines are probably 100 times better than the worst in the worst. Now, I realise I am no being dead accurate in these stats but they are not far wrong.
And like my pals who know which hospital go to and even which consultant to see there, I know who to fly with.
Happy flying
Y
