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MAX’s Return Delayed by FAA Reevaluation of 737 Safety Procedures

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MAX’s Return Delayed by FAA Reevaluation of 737 Safety Procedures

Old 7th Oct 2019, 15:27
  #2941 (permalink)  
 
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Originally Posted by ARealTimTuffy


I’m all for more training, but let’s not kid ourselves. Yesteryear was not all that pretty either. Go take a look at the accident reports from the 70s and 80s and even into the 90s. There were a lot more crews back then flying perfectly good airplanes into the ground on a semi regular basis, then there are today.
Dear Tim
I am not kidding anyone. Those accidents you speak of led, through a painful learning process to a situation in 2017 when nobody (maybe <4 persons) died on a recognised civil airliner world wide.
And that was the lowest point in history for crashes. It came at massive cost but the lessons were learned. My problem is that we are in the process of UN-learning them so rapidly that in no time it will be back to the bad old days for a very different cause. Lack of training.
In the early days it was lack of knowledge, poor designs, and poor CRM in particular.
In my first decade our airline, one of the best, lost a plane per annum pretty much and that was considered exemplary. Why - its very dangerous up there old chap. Jolly well done.
Then in my second decade we lost 2
In my third and fourth we lost none - no fatal accidents.
That is some change over 40 years.
Cheers
Yan
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Old 7th Oct 2019, 16:06
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Originally Posted by yanrair
Dear Tim
I am not kidding anyone. Those accidents you speak of led, through a painful learning process to a situation in 2017 when nobody (maybe <4 persons) died on a recognised civil airliner world wide.
And that was the lowest point in history for crashes. It came at massive cost but the lessons were learned. My problem is that we are in the process of UN-learning them so rapidly that in no time it will be back to the bad old days for a very different cause. Lack of training.
In the early days it was lack of knowledge, poor designs, and poor CRM in particular.
In my first decade our airline, one of the best, lost a plane per annum pretty much and that was considered exemplary. Why - its very dangerous up there old chap. Jolly well done.
Then in my second decade we lost 2
In my third and fourth we lost none - no fatal accidents.
That is some change over 40 years.
Cheers
Yan
My point exactly. We learned from the mistakes those of the past have made. Many of them foolish. Let’s not “go back to the good old days”. Let’s move forward with training and experience all around.

I do disagree that these 2 particular accidents were about lack of training. Although that is still an issue. I see these accidents as design deficiencies that only appeared when they hit the limit of human cognitive resources. There is only so much attention that one person can pay to anything at one time. Pickpockets take advantage of this.

Both these accident crews were at the limit. How did the previous flight make it home? I’m going to say not because the 3rd pilot was a gift to aviation but that there was more cognitive resources available. And his resources weren’t being used up flying the aircraft freeing him up to diagnose and analyze the problem.
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Old 7th Oct 2019, 16:47
  #2943 (permalink)  
 
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There's always a twist - Ethopian Airlines news

Just recently came up on the news feed... Why am I not suprised?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/engineer-...152202407.html

C2j
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Old 7th Oct 2019, 17:26
  #2944 (permalink)  
 
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And there's nothing in it for the whistleblower is there? It's not like he's seeking asylum in the U.S......... oh hang on.....
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Old 7th Oct 2019, 17:44
  #2945 (permalink)  
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Originally Posted by Vendee
And there's nothing in it for the whistleblower is there? It's not like he's seeking asylum in the U.S......... oh hang on.....
Has it not occurred to you that it might be very prudent for a whistleblower in his situation to seek asylum away from Ethiopia?

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Old 7th Oct 2019, 18:52
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Originally Posted by bill fly
If the thing can break - and if, when it breaks it can kill you - then it’s time either to fix it, or find something better, no matter what the probability equations say.
Then no airplane will fly. Every one of them has a risk of catastrophic failure and only flies because the likelihood of such failures is low.
The whole point of safety processes is to identify, quantify and mitigate the inherent risks.

No airplane will ever be risk free. All we can do is mitigate them to an acceptable level.

And what's acceptable is constantly changing, with an ever more risk averse society. What was an acceptable risk in the 80's isn't today.
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Old 7th Oct 2019, 18:57
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Originally Posted by Grebe
"But the NTSB only faulted some of the assumptions, not the analysis with those assumptions."

Oh - ever hear of GIGO ? garbage in garbage out ??
Sure, but those assumptions were acceptable in the past.
The time for certain conditions to be recognized and acted on was well established and used for certification of many aircraft. This wasn't a number Boeing just made up for this situation or even for the MAX.

Or testing the effects/recovery of inappropriate activation of MCAS w/o looking at the ancillary effects of the faults that caused it. Again, common practice across the industry for a long time.

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Old 7th Oct 2019, 19:11
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Having had the need to fly with Ethiopian on a number of occasions it is probably time for its operations are audited. If they are cutting corners on maintenance and flying hours, the threat of loosing their prestige international routes would be a good incentive to prove they are up to scratch.
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Old 7th Oct 2019, 20:22
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Originally Posted by ST Dog
Then no airplane will fly. Every one of them has a risk of catastrophic failure and only flies because the likelihood of such failures is low.
The whole point of safety processes is to identify, quantify and mitigate the inherent risks.

No airplane will ever be risk free. All we can do is mitigate them to an acceptable level.

And what's acceptable is constantly changing, with an ever more risk averse society. What was an acceptable risk in the 80's isn't today.
I agree with you Salty,
But the quote is out of context, which was that running statistical probabilities and accepting less than best solutions on the basis of probability isn’t good enough. Common sense should dictate the safest solution possible be used.
B
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Old 7th Oct 2019, 22:34
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July 25th, 2019
Boeing is warning that it might have to halt production of the 737 Max if grounding continues much longer.

The company reported its largest-ever quarterly loss of $3.4bn (£2.7bn) on Wednesday due to the troubled plane.

If hurdles with regulators worldwide continue, Boeing said it would consider reducing or shutting down production of the 737 Max entirely.

However, Boeing boss Dennis Muilenburg is confident the plane will be back in the air by October.
So is Boeing going to temporarily shut down production of 737MAX or it was just another sweet little lie, wasn't it?
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Old 7th Oct 2019, 22:57
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Originally Posted by jantar99
July 25th, 2019


So is Boeing going to temporarily shut down production of 737MAX or it was just another sweet little lie, wasn't it?
If the reported move by Silk Air to shift its MAX aircraft to long term storage in Australia is any indication, the return to service is rather more than a quarter away.
Boeing was building around 600 MAXes annually, worth at least $30 billion. Not sure how much longer they can afford to keep building them if the customers cannot fly them.
Where that financial blow will fall, given the extensive global supplier network involved, is a huge legal issue that has few precedents.
Perhaps it is darkest before dawn, but it sure does not look good to me.
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Old 7th Oct 2019, 23:39
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Boeing sued by Southwest Airlines pilots over $100 million in lost pay due to the 737 MAX grounding
Pilots for Southwest Airlines (LUV) have sued Boeing over $100 million in lost compensation they say was caused by the grounding of its 737 MAX plane.

Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, in a complaint filed Monday on behalf of the pilots, claims Boeing (BA) "deliberately" misled pilots about the safety of the aircraft, which caused two fatal crashes in less than six months killing 346 people. It also alleges the ongoing grounding of the 737 MAX — which has resulted in thousands of flight cancellations at many airlines including Southwest — has reduced the pilots' opportunities for work. This has resulted in lost compensation to pilots of more than $100 million, the complaint states.
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Old 8th Oct 2019, 02:17
  #2953 (permalink)  
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Originally Posted by Ian W
Or to put it simply all the holes in the cheese matter
In some cases, the cheese also matters.

Aviation is managed by exception. The SMS programs output stats that drive managers to implementing changes to show that some action was undertaken. Each change carries inherent risk of unintended consequences that need to be considered, however if the Max debacle has shown anything, it is that there are limits to current ability to reliably assess consequences of actions, and that state of affairs will continue to be the status quo until we have some level of AI that does not suffer the limits of imagination that humans do. As we are about as good as it gets, not expecting that to happen anytime soon.

Separately, looking back longingly with rose glasses at the past competency does not assure a solution comes from going back to the future... I'm not that sure that the statistics support the fact that hand flying skills trump SA enhancement. I is an easy

The reliance on SMS as outlined in Doc 9859 essentially keeps the industry in a bandaid solution on a mobius strip. The bright point in recent musings has been the fact that Reason is now associated to an extent with Holnagel, and that gives hope that the non linear causation camp of Holnagel will get some traction through the historical importance of Reason's work. I hope to survive long enough to see that implemented, at which time there will be a meaningful change to risk management in the industry. I have quoted Santayana and Burke recently elsewhere, and that is not inconsistent with my concerns with SMS and our risk processes today, We are obliged to look back for comprehension, but the risks of today and tomorrow are not an extrapolation of what happened before, they are altered by our actions, by the changes in the dynamic system we are in, and by Sod's(Murphy's) Law of Quantum Physics.

Separately, I'm not that certain that a longing look back at the past to the age of hand flying really makes up for what is essentially a continued softness in SA maintenance and the lack of SA enhancement training. I think we are about to embark on a questionable "back to the future" policy that will still not resolve the problem that underlies almost all of our events, that of SA failures.
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Old 8th Oct 2019, 04:47
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From Seattle times today 7 Oct evening
By Dominic Gates
Seattle Times aerospace reporter

The union representing almost 10,000 pilots who fly for Southwest Airlines filed suit against Boeing in Dallas Monday, alleging in blistering language that the jetmaker deliberately misled its pilots about the safety of the 737 MAX aircraft.

Filed on behalf of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA) — whose pilots fly the largest fleet of 737s in the world — the lawsuit seeks damages for loss of wages and other costs due to the grounding of the MAX, which the union estimates at $115 million through the end of this year.

In a scathing indictment of Boeing, the suit directly attacks the manufacturer’s integrity. It accuses Boeing of deliberately putting profits ahead of safety considerations.

The lawsuit alleges Boeing falsely represented that the “737 MAX aircraft was safe, airworthy, and was essentially the same as the time-tested 737 aircraft that SWAPA pilots already were flying.”

“Boeing made a calculated decision to rush a re-engined aircraft to market to secure its single-aisle market share and prioritize its bottom line,” the introduction to the suit states. “In doing so, Boeing abandoned sound design and engineering practices, withheld safety critical information from regulators and deliberately mislead its customers, pilots and the public.

“Boeing’s misrepresentations caused SWAPA to believe that the 737 MAX aircraft was safe,” the suit goes on, then adds starkly: “Those representations proved to be false.”

Southwest, an all-737 airline, has 34 MAXs parked on the ground in Victorville, California, a fleet that was expected to grow to 58 MAXs by year end. The six-month grounding of the jet has forced the airline to cancel 30,000 scheduled flights, hitting its pilots with lost flying and lost pay.

Boeing issued a statement expressing “the greatest respect” for Southwest’s pilots but declaring that “we believe this lawsuit is meritless and will vigorously defend against it.”

“We will continue to work with Southwest Airlines and its pilots on efforts to safely return the MAX to service,” Boeing added.
737 MAX Crisis Complete Coverage »

Boeing rejected 737 MAX safety upgrades before fatal crashes, whistleblower says
Boeing pushed FAA to relax 737 MAX certification requirements for crew alerts
Engineer: Ethiopian Airlines went into records after 737 MAX crash


In a statement, the Dallas-based airline said it will strive to share with its employees the compensation Southwest expects to receive from Boeing.

“As our CEO Gary Kelly has previously stated, all Southwest Employees have been impacted by the MAX grounding, and it is our intent to allocate, as appropriate, any compensation received from a Boeing business settlement with all Employees via Profit Sharing.”

SWAPA anger

Southwest has a large fleet of 715 Boeing 737s, so the MAXs represent more than 8% of its planned year-end fleet, with service not set to resume until 2020.

SWAPA said the grounding means “a significant and ever-expanding financial loss as a result of Boeing’s negligence.”

In an interview, SWAPA president captain Jon Weaks said the estimate of $115 million consists mostly of lost pay, with an additional amount to cover the union’s legal costs associated with responding to subpoenas from the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Weaks defended the complaint’s strident attack on Boeing, citing the design of the aircraft’s new flight-control system — Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) — that activated erroneously on the two crash flights in Indonesia and Ethiopia.
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“If fed erroneous data from a single angle-of-attack sensor, (MCAS) would command the aircraft nose-down and into an unrecoverable dive without pilot input or knowledge,” the lawsuit states, adding that the two air accidents, in which a total of 346 people died, were “tragic and preventable.”

“This centers around MCAS,” said Weaks. “You cannot train for what’s not in the (pilot) manual. And MCAS was not in the manual.”

Weaks pointed blame at Boeing’s design and rejected the idea that the pilots on the two crashed flights should be held responsible because they may have lacked the skills of the best-trained U.S. pilots.

“I’ve got the greatest level of admiration and confidence in our SWAPA pilots,” he said. “But the overriding premise is that Boeing should never have put any pilot in a situation like that.”

At the same time, Weaks maintained that when the MAX returns to service, it will be safe to fly.

“This will be the most examined airplane known to man when it’s brought back,” he said. “The errors that made MCAS such a predator will be engineered out of the system. It’ll be one of the safest airplanes in the fleet.”

Dennis Tajer, a spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association (APA), the union representing pilots at American Airlines, said APA’s members are working both to win compensation for financial loss and also to ensure that the mistakes in the original design of the MAX “are not repeated in the recertification of this airplane.”

However, he said that for now, “we’ll go through our company to ensure the financial damage is repaired,” while reserving the right to take additional action later “if we don’t see success.”

“We understand that American Airlines will seek compensation repair from Boeing,” he said. “We believe our pilots … are better served seeking this compensation through American Airlines rather than directly from Boeing.”

American has 24 MAXs currently grounded and had planned to have 40 in its fleet by year end.

The Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), the union that represents pilots at United, the third U.S. carrier with MAXs grounded, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

SWAPA’s lawsuit mentions that in July 2016, Boeing’s 737 chief technical pilot, Mark Forkner, invited Southwest pilots to participate in training for the differences between the 737 MAX and the previous 737 model already in the airline’s fleet.

“Boeing’s differences training did not include instructions on MCAS and at no point during Boeing’s presentation did Boeing disclose the existence of MCAS or its associated risks,” the complaint states.

During the certification of the MAX, it was Forkner who suggested to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in an email that MCAS not be included in the pilot manual.

Forkner left Boeing in 2018 and is now a first officer with Southwest Airlines. Last month, The Seattle Times reported that Forkner has refused to provide documents sought by federal prosecutors investigating the crashes, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Dominic Gates: ***** or [email protected]; on Twitter: @dominicgates.
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Old 8th Oct 2019, 06:56
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It has been already mentioned a few times that the (now ex) Pilot and Instructor of Ethiopian Airlines Bernd Kai von Hoesslin has expressed concerns regarding the training and operations of ET in general and specifically the MAX BEFORE the ET crash. Some excerpt of his bloomberg interview ("Expat Pilot Turns Self-Styled Whistle-Blower After 737 Max Crash") from mid August has been posted here a few days ago.

What seems to be less known is that von Hoesslin has posted on youtube a series of videos and audios (secretly?) recorded while he was still working for ET.
One example is a 13 minutes video of various "interviews" with ET pilots regarding the post Lion Air crash MAX's AD, where it appears that most pilots had very little knowledge of that AD.

The tiny number of views (few tens) this videos and audios have on youtube suggest that so far they have not been noticed.
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Old 8th Oct 2019, 07:39
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Any one else spot Boeing’s self contradictions in this quote ? ““Boeing made a calculated decision to rush a re-engined aircraft to market to secure its single-aisle market share and prioritize its bottom line,” the introduction to the suit states. “In doing so, Boeing abandoned sound design and engineering practices, withheld safety critical information from regulators and deliberately mislead its customers, pilots and the public.

“Boeing’s misrepresentations caused SWAPA to believe that the 737 MAX aircraft was safe,” the suit goes on, then adds starkly: “Those representations proved to be false.”

Southwest, an all-737 airline, has 34 MAXs parked on the ground in Victorville, California, a fleet that was expected to grow to 58 MAXs by year end. The six-month grounding of the jet has forced the airline to cancel 30,000 scheduled flights, hitting its pilots with lost flying and lost pay.

Boeing issued a statement expressing “the greatest respect” for Southwest’s pilots but declaring that “we believe this lawsuit is meritless and will vigorously defend against it.”

“We will continue to work with Southwest Airlines and its pilots on efforts to safely return the MAX to service,” Boeing added.
737 MAX Crisis Complete Coverage »”
Max was safe........lawsuit is meritless and will vigorously defend against it.............to safely return MAX to service.
Time to smell the coffee in Chicago and stop shooting yourselves in the foot folks!!
David
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Old 8th Oct 2019, 09:32
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I have a dream!

One day, The Chairman, or CEO, or even better a respected senior factory pilot will make a from the heart, truthful, (non lawyer vetted) statement about the Max,
and how it was done wrong! and show non-racial sympathy to the flightcrews who were caught out by this terrible mistake.

Mistakes can happen. Footballers can drop passes, Tennis players can miss the line,
They learn, try harder and move on.
Ongoing legal resistance will gain nothing in the long run.
Boeing...you are one of the Worlds most admired companies and certainly at the forefront of the aviation inustry. Fess up and move on.

Last edited by Deepinsider; 8th Oct 2019 at 09:59.
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Old 8th Oct 2019, 09:52
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Don't we know what is needed to be changed? Why can't it be done? Why has Boeing still not officially passed their mods to the FAA for certification? What is stopping the MAX from being returned to service?
If there is something else we should know, shouldn't we? And if it can't be recertified in any way we should know as well.
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Old 8th Oct 2019, 10:23
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Originally Posted by Less Hair
Don't we know what is needed to be changed? Why can't it be done?
My uninformed speculation is that Boeing hasn't come up with a solution that
- resolves the flight issues that MCAS was supposed to solve
- doesn't require a significant rework of the flight systems
- doesn't require training beyond an iPad.
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Old 8th Oct 2019, 10:37
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Originally Posted by w1pf
My uninformed speculation is that Boeing hasn't come up with a solution that
- resolves the flight issues that MCAS was supposed to solve
- doesn't require a significant rework of the flight systems
- doesn't require training beyond an iPad.
Forgot one.

That regulators other than the FAA, will agree with as acceptable.

The FAA is happy with the above if "others" will say yes.

They may be happy with the above "again" anyway - they just need to be told they are happy.
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