MAX’s Return Delayed by FAA Reevaluation of 737 Safety Procedures
I read it yesterday and still can't wrap my head around it. EASA has been saying for months that it would be doing its own assessment and then conduct its own test flights. Now, all of a sudden, they, or rather, he is saying they will lift the grounding before FAA. How is that possible!? FAA says they don't have a timeline but only safety in mind, but EASA gives a timeframe? They don't even know how the test flights will go and whether any anomalies will be discovered.
Ky says that the earliest the Max grounding could be lifted is January and that that's dependent on decisions to be made that month following the December flight tests. As timeframes go, that's a pretty woolly one. He also states that, while there might be a couple of weeks divergence, there won't be any significant difference between EASA's and the FAA's return-to-service dates.
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Chicago
Posts: 360
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Seems the 737Max issue may spill over to other Boeing products
https://www.cnbctv18.com/aviation/bo...ss-4571051.htm
https://www.cnbctv18.com/aviation/bo...ss-4571051.htm
No, it wasn't. And it comes as quite a shock. I read it yesterday and still can't wrap my head around it. EASA has been saying for months that it would be doing its own assessment and then conduct its own test flights. Now, all of a sudden, they, or rather, he is saying they will lift the grounding before FAA. How is that possible!? FAA says they don't have a timeline but only safety in mind, but EASA gives a timeframe? They don't even know how the test flights will go and whether any anomalies will be discovered. EASA's position has suddenly changed dramatically in relation to the MAX and I wonder why. Especially considering the recent emails and IMs revelations.
I know I'm always a bit on the dark side, but I can't help thinking that either some money changed hands or maybe Monsieur Ky was promised a cozy position on the Boeing Board. Wouldn't be the first time.
I know I'm always a bit on the dark side, but I can't help thinking that either some money changed hands or maybe Monsieur Ky was promised a cozy position on the Boeing Board. Wouldn't be the first time.
So we may end up with a couple of weeks of time difference but we are not talking about six months; we are talking about a delay which, if it happens, will be due mostly to process or administrative technicalities.
EASA Executive Director Patrick Ky said late on Friday.
EASA Executive Director Patrick Ky said late on Friday.
MCAS was required to meet certification requirements: otherwise they would not have used it. But it was not implemented to the performance standard of a safety critical system. Now that two smoking holes have demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt that MCAS is a safety critical system, it likely cannot meet certification requirments, even with a duplex system implementation.
Which is why, a year after Lion Air and seven months after Ethipian they still don't have a credible fix.
So it becomes political: will the FAA bend, and will EASA accept the compromise?
Which is why, a year after Lion Air and seven months after Ethipian they still don't have a credible fix.
So it becomes political: will the FAA bend, and will EASA accept the compromise?
Join Date: Jun 2019
Location: Tana
Posts: 0
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
That's not how I read it.
Ky says that the earliest the Max grounding could be lifted is January and that that's dependent on decisions to be made that month following the December flight tests. As timeframes go, that's a pretty woolly one. He also states that, while there might be a couple of weeks divergence, there won't be any significant difference between EASA's and the FAA's return-to-service dates.
Ky says that the earliest the Max grounding could be lifted is January and that that's dependent on decisions to be made that month following the December flight tests. As timeframes go, that's a pretty woolly one. He also states that, while there might be a couple of weeks divergence, there won't be any significant difference between EASA's and the FAA's return-to-service dates.
To me it sounds like EASA (or at least Ky himself) have already decided to lift the ban even before the test flights. (Decided before the flights, not lift before the flights.) The very fact that he talks about timeframes is very strange, to say the least. While everyone, including the "domestic supporter" FAA, talks about serious unresolved issues, EASA suddenly starts talking about lifting the ban some time in the near future. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt but he should certainly issue a clarification about what he said vs. what he meant to say.
Thread Starter
Join Date: Apr 2015
Location: Under the radar, over the rainbow
Posts: 788
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
That's not how I read it. He expressly said: ..."we are not talking about six months; we are talking about a delay which, if it happens, will be due mostly to process or administrative technicalities."
To me it sounds like EASA (or at least Ky himself) have already decided to lift the ban even before the test flights. (Decided before the flights, not lift before the flights.) The very fact that he talks about timeframes is very strange, to say the least. While everyone, including the "domestic supporter" FAA, talks about serious unresolved issues, EASA suddenly starts talking about lifting the ban some time in the near future. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt but he should certainly issue a clarification about what he said vs. what he meant to say.
To me it sounds like EASA (or at least Ky himself) have already decided to lift the ban even before the test flights. (Decided before the flights, not lift before the flights.) The very fact that he talks about timeframes is very strange, to say the least. While everyone, including the "domestic supporter" FAA, talks about serious unresolved issues, EASA suddenly starts talking about lifting the ban some time in the near future. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt but he should certainly issue a clarification about what he said vs. what he meant to say.
If EASA concludes an extra fallback is still needed, Ky did not exclude making this a “synthetic” or computerized sensor capable of imitating a probe and sending calculated data to aircraft systems to supplement data from actual sensors.“This has never been done before but we are open to discussing all possible solutions with Boeing,” Ky said.
He did not rule out introducing a transitional period in which the plane could be cleared with reduced pilot overload. “If you have a new operational procedure which simplifies the workloads for pilots and enables you to arrive at an acceptable level …. this can be done for the return to service,” he said. “Now, is this level acceptable for a longer period than just the transitional period? That is something we need to assess.”
He did not rule out introducing a transitional period in which the plane could be cleared with reduced pilot overload. “If you have a new operational procedure which simplifies the workloads for pilots and enables you to arrive at an acceptable level …. this can be done for the return to service,” he said. “Now, is this level acceptable for a longer period than just the transitional period? That is something we need to assess.”
Join Date: Dec 2012
Location: UK
Posts: 144
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
To me it sounds like EASA (or at least Ky himself) have already decided to lift the ban even before the test flights. (Decided before the flights, not lift before the flights.) The very fact that he talks about timeframes is very strange, to say the least. While everyone, including the "domestic supporter" FAA, talks about serious unresolved issues, EASA suddenly starts talking about lifting the ban some time in the near future. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt but he should certainly issue a clarification about what he said vs. what he meant to say.
It isn't written that EASA is about to lift the ban, and a lot can go wrong until then.
He's talking there about the delay, if any, between EASA lifting its grounding and the FAA lifting its (or vice versa). Clearly he means that those two dates won't be six months apart, but that doesn't mean that either is imminent.
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: USA
Posts: 487
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Seattle Times article
https://www.seattletimes.com/busines...ilot-messages/
Boeing’s defense of 737 MAX’s flight-control system in wake of pilot messages stands up
Oct. 21, 2019 at 8:16 pm Updated Oct. 21, 2019 at 10:12 pm
By Dominic Gates
Seattle Times aerospace reporter
After the release Friday of an instant message chat between two senior Boeing pilots, the jet maker faced skepticism when, two days later, it denied it had suppressed what seemed like early evidence that its 737 MAX flight control system had “run rampant” during simulator testing in 2016.
But Boeing’s defense stands up, according to three sources who spoke to the Seattle Times on Monday — two citing direct knowledge of inside information about the matter and the third an expert pilot from outside the company analyzing the flight details in the chat.
The bottom line is that the erratic behavior described in the 2016 chat by 737 MAX chief technical pilot Mark Forkner revealed a software bug in the MAX flight simulator he was using, a pilot training machine that he and his colleagues were then fine-tuning to get it ready for the MAX’s entry into service.
It was not evidence of the flaws that later showed up on the real airplane’s new flight-control system — known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) — that caused the fatal crashes of the jets in Indonesia and Ethiopia.
The question is important because the release of the messages sparked a furor with members of Congress and regulators, raising new doubts about Boeing’s integrity and transparency just as it prepares to seek approval to put the long-grounded MAX back into commercial service.
A former senior pilot at Boeing, who worked with Forkner in a similar role and who has direct knowledge of the type of simulator evaluations that Forkner was preparing at that time, said that the flight parameters mentioned in the chat indicate clearly that MCAS could not possibly have been engaging, even though the simulator faults made it seem so.
Furthermore, he added, it would have been impossible for Forkner to have been flying in the simulator any pattern similar to the accident flights, in both of which MCAS was triggered by a faulty angle of attack signal.
“I can tell you 100%, he couldn’t have been flying the scenario that occurred on the accident airplanes, because there was no physical way in that simulator to shut off one angle of attack sensor,” said the senior pilot, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he doesn’t wish to be drawn into the Department of Justice’s ongoing criminal investigation of the 737 MAX.
Bjorn Fehrm, an aerospace engineer and former fighter pilot who now is an analyst with Leeham.net and who has publicly criticized the MCAS design, concurred that the altitude and airspeed Forkner cited when the simulator flight controls went haywire rule out a real engagement of MCAS and indicate instead a glitch in the simulator.
“He was in normal flight. What’s wrong with the original MCAS design is not apparent when flying normally,” said Fehrm. “That said to me, this is just a simulator implementation issue.”
The problem Forkner identified in the simulator “was logged contemporaneously” apart from his chat messages, according to a third source familiar with the relevant documents, and Boeing afterward fixed the simulator software.
“The issue was not experienced in later sessions,” said this source, who also asked for anonymity because he’s involved in one of the MAX investigations. “The issue could not be re-created in mid-December.”
PR disaster
Boeing faced an epic public-relations disaster last Friday when a congressional committee released the text of the chat, in which Forkner described to his colleague Patrik Gustavsson a MAX simulator session that day in mid-November 2016 when MCAS started pushing the nose down, or “trimming” the jet.
“It’s running rampant in the sim on me,” Forkner wrote. “I’m levelling off at like 4000 ft, 230 knots and the plane is trimming itself like craxy (sic). I’m like, WHAT?”
“Granted, I suck at flying, but even this was egregious,” Forkner added.
Forkner also stated that since MCAS had evolved from its initial design and now —”Shocker AlerT,” as he put it — activates at low speed as well as in the originally intended high-speed scenarios, he “basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly).”
The disclosure understandably drew outrage from members of Congress, airline pilot unions and aviation experts who interpreted it as clear evidence that Boeing knew before the MAX entered passenger service that MCAS could behave erratically and dangerously.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had not been informed of the document, which Boeing had provided to the Department of Justice last February, the month before the second MAX crash. On Friday, FAA Administrator Steve Dickson sent an angry letter to Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg demanding an explanation.
Both Fehrm and the former senior Boeing pilot also initially reacted with dismay, until they read the transcript of the chat. Then their knowledge of flying and of the way simulators are developed led both to a different conclusion.
Technical pilots versus test pilots
Forkner was chief technical pilot on the 737, managing pilots in a group called Flight Technical and Safety within Boeing’s customer services division. This is a separate group from the test pilots who fly the planes under development, who are part of a different corporate division: Boeing Test and Evaluation.
As Forkner’s chat makes clear, the two don’t necessarily communicate well. “The test pilots have kept us out of the loop,” Gustavsson complains at one point.
The job of the technical pilots is to develop the pilot training simulators and manuals that airlines will use when the plane is in service. They typically don’t fly, but work in flight simulators.
Full flight simulators are complex machines, essentially an airplane cockpit re-created inside a closed box sitting on hydraulic jacks. The buttons and switches and control column inside are just like on the real airplane, but all are connected to multimillion-dollar computers that attempt to simulate what happens in a real airplane.
For this to work, engineers must enter reams of flight data, developed first from wind tunnel tests and computer simulations and then in the final stages from actual flight tests. Forkner’s exchange with Gustavsson indicates that new data related to the design change to MCAS had only then been fed into the simulator system.
It’s only toward the end of flight testing that all this data can be finalized to make the simulator a true mirror of the behavior of the real airplane. At the time of the chat, Forkner was working to develop the first MAX simulator at Boeing’s facility in Miami. It was manufactured by TRU, a Canadian-American simulator maker, a subsidiary of Textron headquartered in Goose Creek, S.C.
Like pilots, who must pass a test to be qualified to fly any specific airplane, simulators are also inspected and tested before they are qualified to be used by airlines. The FAA sends out inspectors every year to retest all the qualified simulators and make sure they are still working as they should.
According to the former Boeing senior pilot, the first MAX sim was not yet qualified and TRU personnel were working nonstop alongside Boeing software engineers to get the machine properly calibrated and the software finalized.
Still, “there were a lot of discrepancy reports. The sim was not performing as specified,” he said. In the chat, Forkner mentions signing some DRs, or Discrepancy Reports.
Ferhm believes that what happened in Forkner’s simulator on Nov. 15 was just another simulator discrepancy, something wrong with the coding.
He notes that Forkner says he was flying level at a low 4,000 feet altitude and at 230 knots. This is an appropriate speed for that altitude and he calculates the angle of attack could have been no more than about 5 degrees.
The design of MCAS would have required at least twice as high an angle to be triggered. And to get to such an angle, Forkner would have had to pull back the controls creating a severe force of around 2 Gs, the sort of extreme maneuver an airline pilot would never execute unless in a sudden emergency like pulling up to avoid a mountain.
Fehrm said that it’s clear from the chat Forkner wasn’t trying any such extreme maneuver, and so when he complains about MCAS kicking in, he’s referring to a crazy activation in the simulator that isn’t behaving as it would in a real airplane.
Fehrm has harshly criticized Boeing’s original design of MCAS and says that he has “a real problem with Boeing’s culture.”
“I’m all for criticizing when it’s due,” he said. “But you have to be fair.”
The former Boeing pilot concurs about the flight pattern not remotely fitting an activation of MCAS. He notes that Gustavsson says he experienced something similar in the simulator “on approach,” meaning coming in to land.
But when a plane is on approach, the flaps on the wings are extended, which automatically disables MCAS.
In addition, the former Boeing pilot points out that the MAX simulator at that time was set up so that the operator could push a button on a console to simulate various standard emergencies such as an engine failure. But there was no such button to simulate an angle of attack vane going wrong. There was no physical way to make that happen on the simulator, he said.
His conclusion was that the problems Forkner described were glitches that simply revealed the shortcomings of the simulator ahead of final qualification and “don’t relate to the MAX accident scenarios.”
“I have no loyalty to Boeing or to Mark Forkner,” he emphasized. “I have loyalty to the truth.”
Boeing last Friday offered no real evidence in its defense. On Sunday, it offered weak evidence: just a general statement by Forkner’s lawyer. Forkner is refusing to talk or to provide information under his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
In addition, the second part of Boeing’s defense on Sunday — its claim that the FAA knew all about the changes it made to MCAS — is questionable.
Multiple reports, initially in the Seattle Times, and most recently in the report by a team of international regulators, show that though some within the FAA may have been aware of some changes to MCAS, the FAA safety engineers tasked with analyzing its safety did not.
And Forkner’s statement that he basically lied to the FAA seems to stem from the disconcerting fact that the redesign of MCAS, made in March 2016, had only just filtered down to him.
However, Monday’s analysis of Boeing’s 2016 simulator issues suggests that the stories published over the weekend — including by the Seattle Times — reporting on the message exchange between the pilots were indeed misinterpretations, as Boeing claimed Sunday.
It doesn’t change the conclusion that MCAS as originally designed did lead to the accidents and the deaths of 346 people.
However, it means that these messages aren’t evidence that Boeing misled the world in 2016 and hid early evidence that MCAS was a death trap.
Dominic Gates: 206-464-2963 or [email protected]; on Twitter: @dominicgates.
Oct. 21, 2019 at 8:16 pm Updated Oct. 21, 2019 at 10:12 pm
By Dominic Gates
Seattle Times aerospace reporter
After the release Friday of an instant message chat between two senior Boeing pilots, the jet maker faced skepticism when, two days later, it denied it had suppressed what seemed like early evidence that its 737 MAX flight control system had “run rampant” during simulator testing in 2016.
But Boeing’s defense stands up, according to three sources who spoke to the Seattle Times on Monday — two citing direct knowledge of inside information about the matter and the third an expert pilot from outside the company analyzing the flight details in the chat.
The bottom line is that the erratic behavior described in the 2016 chat by 737 MAX chief technical pilot Mark Forkner revealed a software bug in the MAX flight simulator he was using, a pilot training machine that he and his colleagues were then fine-tuning to get it ready for the MAX’s entry into service.
It was not evidence of the flaws that later showed up on the real airplane’s new flight-control system — known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) — that caused the fatal crashes of the jets in Indonesia and Ethiopia.
The question is important because the release of the messages sparked a furor with members of Congress and regulators, raising new doubts about Boeing’s integrity and transparency just as it prepares to seek approval to put the long-grounded MAX back into commercial service.
A former senior pilot at Boeing, who worked with Forkner in a similar role and who has direct knowledge of the type of simulator evaluations that Forkner was preparing at that time, said that the flight parameters mentioned in the chat indicate clearly that MCAS could not possibly have been engaging, even though the simulator faults made it seem so.
Furthermore, he added, it would have been impossible for Forkner to have been flying in the simulator any pattern similar to the accident flights, in both of which MCAS was triggered by a faulty angle of attack signal.
“I can tell you 100%, he couldn’t have been flying the scenario that occurred on the accident airplanes, because there was no physical way in that simulator to shut off one angle of attack sensor,” said the senior pilot, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he doesn’t wish to be drawn into the Department of Justice’s ongoing criminal investigation of the 737 MAX.
Bjorn Fehrm, an aerospace engineer and former fighter pilot who now is an analyst with Leeham.net and who has publicly criticized the MCAS design, concurred that the altitude and airspeed Forkner cited when the simulator flight controls went haywire rule out a real engagement of MCAS and indicate instead a glitch in the simulator.
“He was in normal flight. What’s wrong with the original MCAS design is not apparent when flying normally,” said Fehrm. “That said to me, this is just a simulator implementation issue.”
The problem Forkner identified in the simulator “was logged contemporaneously” apart from his chat messages, according to a third source familiar with the relevant documents, and Boeing afterward fixed the simulator software.
“The issue was not experienced in later sessions,” said this source, who also asked for anonymity because he’s involved in one of the MAX investigations. “The issue could not be re-created in mid-December.”
PR disaster
Boeing faced an epic public-relations disaster last Friday when a congressional committee released the text of the chat, in which Forkner described to his colleague Patrik Gustavsson a MAX simulator session that day in mid-November 2016 when MCAS started pushing the nose down, or “trimming” the jet.
“It’s running rampant in the sim on me,” Forkner wrote. “I’m levelling off at like 4000 ft, 230 knots and the plane is trimming itself like craxy (sic). I’m like, WHAT?”
“Granted, I suck at flying, but even this was egregious,” Forkner added.
Forkner also stated that since MCAS had evolved from its initial design and now —”Shocker AlerT,” as he put it — activates at low speed as well as in the originally intended high-speed scenarios, he “basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly).”
The disclosure understandably drew outrage from members of Congress, airline pilot unions and aviation experts who interpreted it as clear evidence that Boeing knew before the MAX entered passenger service that MCAS could behave erratically and dangerously.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had not been informed of the document, which Boeing had provided to the Department of Justice last February, the month before the second MAX crash. On Friday, FAA Administrator Steve Dickson sent an angry letter to Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg demanding an explanation.
Both Fehrm and the former senior Boeing pilot also initially reacted with dismay, until they read the transcript of the chat. Then their knowledge of flying and of the way simulators are developed led both to a different conclusion.
Technical pilots versus test pilots
Forkner was chief technical pilot on the 737, managing pilots in a group called Flight Technical and Safety within Boeing’s customer services division. This is a separate group from the test pilots who fly the planes under development, who are part of a different corporate division: Boeing Test and Evaluation.
As Forkner’s chat makes clear, the two don’t necessarily communicate well. “The test pilots have kept us out of the loop,” Gustavsson complains at one point.
The job of the technical pilots is to develop the pilot training simulators and manuals that airlines will use when the plane is in service. They typically don’t fly, but work in flight simulators.
Full flight simulators are complex machines, essentially an airplane cockpit re-created inside a closed box sitting on hydraulic jacks. The buttons and switches and control column inside are just like on the real airplane, but all are connected to multimillion-dollar computers that attempt to simulate what happens in a real airplane.
For this to work, engineers must enter reams of flight data, developed first from wind tunnel tests and computer simulations and then in the final stages from actual flight tests. Forkner’s exchange with Gustavsson indicates that new data related to the design change to MCAS had only then been fed into the simulator system.
It’s only toward the end of flight testing that all this data can be finalized to make the simulator a true mirror of the behavior of the real airplane. At the time of the chat, Forkner was working to develop the first MAX simulator at Boeing’s facility in Miami. It was manufactured by TRU, a Canadian-American simulator maker, a subsidiary of Textron headquartered in Goose Creek, S.C.
Like pilots, who must pass a test to be qualified to fly any specific airplane, simulators are also inspected and tested before they are qualified to be used by airlines. The FAA sends out inspectors every year to retest all the qualified simulators and make sure they are still working as they should.
According to the former Boeing senior pilot, the first MAX sim was not yet qualified and TRU personnel were working nonstop alongside Boeing software engineers to get the machine properly calibrated and the software finalized.
Still, “there were a lot of discrepancy reports. The sim was not performing as specified,” he said. In the chat, Forkner mentions signing some DRs, or Discrepancy Reports.
Ferhm believes that what happened in Forkner’s simulator on Nov. 15 was just another simulator discrepancy, something wrong with the coding.
He notes that Forkner says he was flying level at a low 4,000 feet altitude and at 230 knots. This is an appropriate speed for that altitude and he calculates the angle of attack could have been no more than about 5 degrees.
The design of MCAS would have required at least twice as high an angle to be triggered. And to get to such an angle, Forkner would have had to pull back the controls creating a severe force of around 2 Gs, the sort of extreme maneuver an airline pilot would never execute unless in a sudden emergency like pulling up to avoid a mountain.
Fehrm said that it’s clear from the chat Forkner wasn’t trying any such extreme maneuver, and so when he complains about MCAS kicking in, he’s referring to a crazy activation in the simulator that isn’t behaving as it would in a real airplane.
Fehrm has harshly criticized Boeing’s original design of MCAS and says that he has “a real problem with Boeing’s culture.”
“I’m all for criticizing when it’s due,” he said. “But you have to be fair.”
The former Boeing pilot concurs about the flight pattern not remotely fitting an activation of MCAS. He notes that Gustavsson says he experienced something similar in the simulator “on approach,” meaning coming in to land.
But when a plane is on approach, the flaps on the wings are extended, which automatically disables MCAS.
In addition, the former Boeing pilot points out that the MAX simulator at that time was set up so that the operator could push a button on a console to simulate various standard emergencies such as an engine failure. But there was no such button to simulate an angle of attack vane going wrong. There was no physical way to make that happen on the simulator, he said.
His conclusion was that the problems Forkner described were glitches that simply revealed the shortcomings of the simulator ahead of final qualification and “don’t relate to the MAX accident scenarios.”
“I have no loyalty to Boeing or to Mark Forkner,” he emphasized. “I have loyalty to the truth.”
Boeing last Friday offered no real evidence in its defense. On Sunday, it offered weak evidence: just a general statement by Forkner’s lawyer. Forkner is refusing to talk or to provide information under his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
In addition, the second part of Boeing’s defense on Sunday — its claim that the FAA knew all about the changes it made to MCAS — is questionable.
Multiple reports, initially in the Seattle Times, and most recently in the report by a team of international regulators, show that though some within the FAA may have been aware of some changes to MCAS, the FAA safety engineers tasked with analyzing its safety did not.
And Forkner’s statement that he basically lied to the FAA seems to stem from the disconcerting fact that the redesign of MCAS, made in March 2016, had only just filtered down to him.
However, Monday’s analysis of Boeing’s 2016 simulator issues suggests that the stories published over the weekend — including by the Seattle Times — reporting on the message exchange between the pilots were indeed misinterpretations, as Boeing claimed Sunday.
It doesn’t change the conclusion that MCAS as originally designed did lead to the accidents and the deaths of 346 people.
However, it means that these messages aren’t evidence that Boeing misled the world in 2016 and hid early evidence that MCAS was a death trap.
Dominic Gates: 206-464-2963 or [email protected]; on Twitter: @dominicgates.
Thread Starter
Join Date: Apr 2015
Location: Under the radar, over the rainbow
Posts: 788
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
“I can tell you 100%, he couldn’t have been flying the scenario that occurred on the accident airplanes, because there was no physical way in that simulator to shut off one angle of attack sensor” . . .
. . .said the senior pilot, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he doesn’t wish to be drawn into the Department of Justice’s ongoing criminal investigation of the 737 MAX.
Join Date: Jun 2019
Location: Tdot
Posts: 48
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
The text exchange is still very bad. I never felt it’s significance was directly about MCAS anyway. Although it would have been nice if after seeing it activate inappropriately in the sim and the control difficulties it caused, someone dig deeper to see if there had been any testing on if it were to activate at an inappropriate time. Regardless of the reason.
But, I have felt it’s significance is that it shows the pressure that the development group was under. A candid conversation about what a gong show was going on. It shows that he was unaware of the low speed activation of MCAS and had previously not described that to the FAA, but they didn’t go back and try to correct the information provided they just let it slide.
Then the emails about “jedi mind tricking”, clearly describes what he knew he was doing was wrong. In regards to describing the training requirements to foreign regulators.
conclusion = still very bad. And as a Max pilot, infuriating.
But, I have felt it’s significance is that it shows the pressure that the development group was under. A candid conversation about what a gong show was going on. It shows that he was unaware of the low speed activation of MCAS and had previously not described that to the FAA, but they didn’t go back and try to correct the information provided they just let it slide.
Then the emails about “jedi mind tricking”, clearly describes what he knew he was doing was wrong. In regards to describing the training requirements to foreign regulators.
conclusion = still very bad. And as a Max pilot, infuriating.
Egregious
The former Boeing pilot concurs about the flight pattern not remotely fitting an activation of MCAS.
My reading of the Ky interview is, that he's taking all the precautions he can whilst being as neutral and positive minded as possible. His job is, after all, that of a politician. But he does leave behind several get-out clauses, should anything fail to go exactly to plan. He clearly can't speak his mind, but only rely on the evidence put before his authority. Since Boeing hasn't submitted their fix yet, EASA hasn't performed simulator and flight tests, nor subsequently collated all that data into a finding, he has to maintain a neutral and consensus building position. That could change either way tomorrow.
Think an earlier poster hit the nail with his earlier description of how HAL should handle an AoA failure: by gracefully handing over the aircraft to the crew without bells, horns, stick-shakers going off. In the light of that, the proposal is certainly not without merit. Now, whether it'll be easier to have the old girl fall over nicely, perhaps having to advise of her condition via EICAS, or bolt a synthetic sensor to her innards, is not something I'll hazard a guess on. Both sounds expensive though.
It appears to work fine on the tanker, the difference being the implementation.
And it's not much different conceptually than speed trim.
As for the new engine, it's as sound as any other re-engine. Again, the implementation is another matter.
Had they not been trying to meet customer requirements regarding similarity, many changes could have been made to simplify the task.
(Like taller gear to reposition the engine)
Thread Starter
Join Date: Apr 2015
Location: Under the radar, over the rainbow
Posts: 788
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Think an earlier poster hit the nail with his earlier description of how HAL should handle an AoA failure: by gracefully handing over the aircraft to the crew without bells, horns, stick-shakers going off. In the light of that, the proposal is certainly not without merit. Now, whether it'll be easier to have the old girl fall over nicely, perhaps having to advise of her condition via EICAS, or bolt a synthetic sensor to her innards, is not something I'll hazard a guess on. Both sounds expensive though.
In any event, I agree that Ky didn't really make any assertions about decisions or timing that should be seen as definitive.
Thread Starter
Join Date: Apr 2015
Location: Under the radar, over the rainbow
Posts: 788
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
But the reason for MCAS is a separate discussion from what MCAS was intended to do.
It appears to work fine on the tanker, the difference being the implementation.
And it's not much different conceptually than speed trim.
As for the new engine, it's as sound as any other re-engine. Again, the implementation is another matter.
Had they not been trying to meet customer requirements regarding similarity, many changes could have been made to simplify the task.
(Like taller gear to reposition the engine)
It appears to work fine on the tanker, the difference being the implementation.
And it's not much different conceptually than speed trim.
As for the new engine, it's as sound as any other re-engine. Again, the implementation is another matter.
Had they not been trying to meet customer requirements regarding similarity, many changes could have been made to simplify the task.
(Like taller gear to reposition the engine)
Join Date: Apr 2019
Location: Sweden
Posts: 13
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Regarding the SeattleTimes article of today:
No matter how these messages are interpreted, they clearly show that the Chief Technical Pilot (and "Vince") considered the possibility that MCAS was running rampant and trimming like crazy.
Now Boeing's defense is basically that their 737-MAX simulator was of the same low engineering quality as the actual plane, and therefore it's results could not be trusted as it was producing other errors unrelated to MCAS. Fair enough, I can believe that, but it does not make their actions look any better.
Does it really matter if the error in the sim was caused by MCAS or not, when the symptoms led Forkner (and others) to believe that MCAS was running rampant? This should have been enough for a risk analysis of MCAS that would have found the single point of failure and prevented the accidents. To make matters even worse for Boeing, these messages and therefore MCAS concerns, were known before the second crash.
No matter how these messages are interpreted, they clearly show that the Chief Technical Pilot (and "Vince") considered the possibility that MCAS was running rampant and trimming like crazy.
Now Boeing's defense is basically that their 737-MAX simulator was of the same low engineering quality as the actual plane, and therefore it's results could not be trusted as it was producing other errors unrelated to MCAS. Fair enough, I can believe that, but it does not make their actions look any better.
Does it really matter if the error in the sim was caused by MCAS or not, when the symptoms led Forkner (and others) to believe that MCAS was running rampant? This should have been enough for a risk analysis of MCAS that would have found the single point of failure and prevented the accidents. To make matters even worse for Boeing, these messages and therefore MCAS concerns, were known before the second crash.
Join Date: Sep 2018
Location: Laredo, TX
Posts: 133
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
The text exchange is still very bad. I never felt it’s significance was directly about MCAS anyway. Although it would have been nice if after seeing it activate inappropriately in the sim and the control difficulties it caused, someone dig deeper to see if there had been any testing on if it were to activate at an inappropriate time. Regardless of the reason.
But, I have felt it’s significance is that it shows the pressure that the development group was under. A candid conversation about what a gong show was going on. It shows that he was unaware of the low speed activation of MCAS and had previously not described that to the FAA, but they didn’t go back and try to correct the information provided they just let it slide.
Then the emails about “jedi mind tricking”, clearly describes what he knew he was doing was wrong. In regards to describing the training requirements to foreign regulators.
conclusion = still very bad. And as a Max pilot, infuriating.
But, I have felt it’s significance is that it shows the pressure that the development group was under. A candid conversation about what a gong show was going on. It shows that he was unaware of the low speed activation of MCAS and had previously not described that to the FAA, but they didn’t go back and try to correct the information provided they just let it slide.
Then the emails about “jedi mind tricking”, clearly describes what he knew he was doing was wrong. In regards to describing the training requirements to foreign regulators.
conclusion = still very bad. And as a Max pilot, infuriating.
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Canada
Posts: 603
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Boeing makes progress on 737 MAX, but FAA needs weeks for review. And then of course there is the need for some real tests using an aircraft and not the simulator.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/...151947720.html
Boeing and the FAA are grappling to contain a crisis in the wake of two 737 MAX crashes that have left 346 people dead, forced airlines to ground more than 300 aircraft, and put on hold Boeing deliveries worth more than $500bn [File: Gary He/Reuters]
The Boeing Company is making progress towards getting its 737 MAX aircraft in the air again, but the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will need at least several more weeks for review, FAA Administrator Steve Dickson said on Tuesday.