boeing 737 max returns - coming back

[imcool]

hi,

Boeing is coming back, Get your popcorn. As no one went to jail and probably no one will if it happens 3rd time.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/737-max-bo ... ok-return/

[HavaJava]

<edit>Before the OP edited his post he suggested that you make a list of all the people you hate the most and buy them tickets on the Max. I should have quoted him so that my post would make more sense </edit>

Ooh, how do I get on your “people you hate most” list. I’ll take a ticket to Hawaii!

I wouldn’t hesitate to fly the Max. I would hesitate to fly on it with a third world airline...but I’d hesitate to fly on any aircraft type with a third world airline.

[valleyboy]

It has been an interesting voyage. In my mind I have always questioned if the aircraft should have been grounded in the first place. It was a media and social media farce. Tragic but it wasn't the aircraft but the human factor which caused the grief. Social media magnifies human knee-jerk emotional reactions by about a factor of a million.

Boeing made the mistake of thinking pilots were better trained than they are and companies opting for bare minimum training. Reduced experience levels didn't help either.

Like the rudder hard over in the 73 classic world with crew training it was controllable. Boeing came up with a fix but the aircraft continued to fly during that time. Why not now.

Is Boeing the dark angle as it's being portrayed, no, they are just a company, like any other who are in business to make money. Body count is defined as a dollar value in any company. People are naive if they think it's anything else. Lawyers know this and hence all the uproar fuelled by parading grieving families in front of the world.

Again, a truly tragic set of events but totally preventable if the crews involved had been better prepared. These airlines are at as much fault as Boeing.

[shaynemarshallporath]

Valleyboy, I disagree! Boeing failed, the pilots failed, the FAA failed. Enough blame to go around to all the guilty parties

[shaynemarshallporath]

And the airlines,,,, and ,,, and,,, and,,,

[valleyboy]

certainly "everyone" failed and the mindset that every new aircraft developed, (as the long history of airliner development shown), has an acceptable body count to make it safe needs to change. It's a daunting task since it's now software and automation and with dumbing down of stick and rudder skills it just adds to the problem. How does anyone debug software 100% before it's implemented. You don't so the responsibility falls back to training and improving pilot skills.

We have progressed from metal fatigue, new design, mechanical and aircraft systems to the software and automation. The body count is astronomical from 40's to now. Sadly the corporate profits and money always eventually trumps the carnage. Laws suits are just another aspect of "doing business".

The truly sad thing about the max is that unlike structural failure both these accidents should not have happened. A properly trained crew would have done the drills and dealt with the emergency. That is what falls back directly to boeing and the involved companies. That is the crime. Portraying the max as a death trap is just misguided. It's never that simple.

[linecrew]

Honest question. If Boeing had not tried to synthetically make the MAX fly like the other NG 737s (common type) with MCAS, would it have been a safe design? Assuming of course there would be the obligatory proper training required for a type rating on this fictitious non-MCAS version.

[boeingboy]

Honest question. If Boeing had not tried to synthetically make the MAX fly like the other NG 737s (common type) with MCAS, would it have been a safe design? Assuming of course there would be the obligatory proper training required for a type rating on this fictitious non-MCAS version.

Honest answer - yes. It's a safe design.

The actual answer is more complicated...and the way the question comes across to me only adds to the mis-information that's out there about this aircraft. While it's true that SOME aspects made it fly like the NG - The MCAS system actually operates in such small, tiny areas of the flight envelope - it's almost invisible (hardly operating at all) It's not like it controls everything all the time to make it electronically an NG.

The area of it's operation that came to light is actually not an "NG simulator" at all, and has to do with a part of certification that every aircraft must conform to. Which is where an aircraft should recover on it's own from a potential approach to stall scenario (a very small envelope). Meaning if you get slow and your nose up - you release the controls and the aircraft's nose should drop on it's own. The Max would keep it's nose in the up position leading to a stall (at which point the stall system would take over - being a separate system from MCAS) So the system inputs a down trim to lower the nose. It still does this but has now been fixed with various inputs in the the new software updates.

[shaynemarshallporath]

The MAJORITY of the fault lies with Boeing ( get it "lies" ) From an engineering and redundancy standpoint ( more in my filed) they failed in many ways . The FAA naively put Boeing in charge of many aspects of certification ( like the Canadian voters putting Trudeau in charge) but still, when the shepherd left the sheep in the care of the elder sheep, who is to blame ? It is wise to review ALL the pertinent facts surrounding the MANY failures of Boeing to do the RIGHT thing and make a system transparent ( to the pilots and airlines) and make it redundant, make it less aggressive ( as it was on a previous military A/C) This whole fiasco started when Boeing, now the bean counter, desperately trying to compete with Airbus, made a bastardized 737, then broke every moral and learned rule in the process to assure its "variant" would compete head to head with Airbus. Boeing was 90%+ at fault. FAA failed, Airlines failed and Pilots failed badly too !!!

[Eric Janson]

It has been an interesting voyage. In my mind I have always questioned if the aircraft should have been grounded in the first place. It was a media and social media farce.

Again, a truly tragic set of events but totally preventable if the crews involved had been better prepared. These airlines are at as much fault as Boeing.

@valleyboy

I disagree - the aircraft shouldn't have certified in the first place. That is quite obvious from the investigation.

The fact the nobody is in prison over this shows the unbelievable lack of accountability that exists in corporate culture.

There were 3 known incidents where a faulty AOA input activated MCAS repeatedly - 2 resulted in crashes.

I believe some Western crews also failed to handle this issue in Simulator tests.

Honest question. If Boeing had not tried to synthetically make the MAX fly like the other NG 737s (common type) with MCAS, would it have been a safe design? Assuming of course there would be the obligatory proper training required for a type rating on this fictitious non-MCAS version.

They needed MCAS to meet certification requirements. Where this went wrong is the lack of redundancy where a single faulty AOA input would cause the system to activate repeatedly.

Then there's the issue where there was no mention of MCAS in the manuals - that's criminal negligence imho.

In the current circumstances I doubt very many will be flying. With cheap fuel and very low lease rates on older generation aircraft there is no real market for this type at present imho.

[boeingboy]

There were 3 known incidents where a faulty AOA input activated MCAS repeatedly - 2 resulted in crashes.

True - however the investigations and the data both show the airlines and the crews were just as much at fault. One crew completely disregarded the info from both Boeing and the FCOM. The other crew had at least 1 pilot who couldn't tie his shoelaces. He could not recall or find even the most basic procedures, leaving the 1 pilot to fend for himself. Both crews kept the aircraft climbing for 6 to 12 mins. Neither followed established procedures that would have saved them.

You can blame Boeing for shortcomings, you can even argue about bad designs....but an aircraft that was recoverable is not necessarily a horrible plane. The crews and airlines must also accept their equal share of the responsibility for this.

[imcool]

The MAJORITY of the fault lies with Boeing ( get it "lies" ) From an engineering and redundancy standpoint ( more in my filed) they failed in many ways . The FAA naively put Boeing in charge of many aspects of certification ( like the Canadian voters putting Trudeau in charge) but still, when the shepherd left the sheep in the care of the elder sheep, who is to blame ? It is wise to review ALL the pertinent facts surrounding the MANY failures of Boeing to do the RIGHT thing and make a system transparent ( to the pilots and airlines) and make it redundant, make it less aggressive ( as it was on a previous military A/C) This whole fiasco started when Boeing, now the bean counter, desperately trying to compete with Airbus, made a bastardized 737, then broke every moral and learned rule in the process to assure its "variant" would compete head to head with Airbus. Boeing was 90%+ at fault. FAA failed, Airlines failed and Pilots failed badly too !!!

Spot ON
I feel sorry for those who cant figure out what you wrote above.

[imcool]

There were 3 known incidents where a faulty AOA input activated MCAS repeatedly - 2 resulted in crashes.

True - however the investigations and the data both show the airlines and the crews were just as much at fault. One crew completely disregarded the info from both Boeing and the FCOM. The other crew had at least 1 pilot who couldn't tie his shoelaces. He could not recall or find even the most basic procedures, leaving the 1 pilot to fend for himself. Both crews kept the aircraft climbing for 6 to 12 mins. Neither followed established procedures that would have saved them.

You can blame Boeing for shortcomings, you can even argue about bad designs....but an aircraft that was recoverable is not necessarily a horrible plane. The crews and airlines must also accept their equal share of the responsibility for this.

investigations, yeah right! done by their own people in their own country. That was not a clean investigation to be honest.
I will ask my first question again,
why no one went to jail
why no one was charged

Here as a pilot, if we make a mistake we get heavily penalized, and probably charged as well.

[valleyboy]

Most seem to be ignoring the fact that what happened to the max (crashes) was part of the aircraft manufacturing culture. History verifies this.
Boeing is caught in the past as far as company culture is concerned. That needs changing!

They endeavoured to produce a safe aircraft but in truth how can you know all of what can go wrong, especially when it comes to software. One must also understand that a software engineer likely does not think the same way a pilot does, especially when the stress levels are off the clock. What is logical to them is not necessary the same for us. I have seen this first hand.

Oversight, now that's such a can of worms. To put it briefly, why is there a lack of external oversight. We should all know that answer. Government cut backs and possibly backing off from being named as directly and being partly responsible in legal action. Just look at the present can of worms in Canada with AC and likely WS with doing their own oversight. SMS is the answer to all other carriers in TC eyes. Yup, lots of oversight here as well. Companies will always jump at such a system.

I think boeing truly thought they had produced a winner. The sales department did their job by selling companies on the ease of flying and that crews just need minimal conversion training . You now have an accident waiting to happen. Software engineers expecting pilots to react logically to their language combined with minimal training and experience levels at an all time low, we see the results.

I still maintain the NG muscle memory, even if it was wrong, combined with poor knowledge of drills and aircraft was a large factor that news media and especially lawyers are choosing to ignore. Local governments and companies also deflecting the notoriety.

Will the industry change and be able to produce a completely safe aircraft off the assembly line and going into service. I think that would be pretty naive thinking.

In the future with the movement into new tech such as back to supersonic flight and low earth orbit we will be right back to "field" testing new hardware and software. Will there be in flight breakups like with the first airliners. We hope not but production aircraft only show faults after being in service so all we can hope for are the tools to deal with "survivable" emergencies. and the beat goes on.

[boeingboy]

Spot ON
I feel sorry for those who cant figure out what you wrote above.

investigations, yeah right! done by their own people in their own country. That was not a clean investigation to be honest.
I will ask my first question again,
why no one went to jail
why no one was charged

Here as a pilot, if we make a mistake we get heavily penalized, and probably charged as well.

What the hell are you talking about? I can only assume you mean the Senate ones???

I'm talking about the actual investigations, from the Indonesians and Ethiopians. Have you actually read the reports?.. or studied the FDR/CVR data?
It's all right there. If you can read those with an open mind, then we can have an intelligent conversation. Unfortunately there is a lot of mis-information out there in the media, and a lot of people just run with that. To understand the truth and apply fixes to all the problems is the only way to move on.

I feel sorry for those who can't see that the airlines and crews are not to blame either.

[L39Guy]

If the MAX and the MCAS was such a poorly designed system, explain to me how the Lion Air incident flight (the same aircraft as the accident flight) the day prior had the MCAS failure and that the pilots, once they figured out it was a stab trim runaway, were able to fly the aircraft for 96 minutes using manual trim to their intended destination? Apart from not returning to the departure airport, they handled the emergency and recovered the aircraft, exactly what professional aviators are expected to.
In the case of the accident flight, the Captain flew the aircraft for 12 minutes using manual trim while his copilot was trying to figure out the emergency - if you read the accident report it will shock you about how little he knew. It was only after the Captain gave this First Officer control did the aircraft crash into the ocean, because the FO did not know how to trim an aircraft.

Blaming Boeing, FAA, etc is all smoke and mirrors; there is no aircraft in the world that is safe if the pilots flying them are incompetent.

[TheStig]

I agree with almost everything you've written on this subject L39Guy, but surely you must believe that not designing MCAS to work off data from dual AoA sensors was an engineering oversight?

Does anyone know why TC is delaying its approval?

Was everyone working on this file just fired for emails they shared 8 years ago, are we awaiting the results from an environmental impact study or whether the MCAS system has a gender bias? Or is this delay designed to purely give the impression that TC is simply no longer rubber stamping anything the FAA approves?

[L39Guy]

I agree with almost everything you've written on this subject L39Guy, but surely you must believe that not designing MCAS to work off data from dual AoA sensors was an engineering oversight?

I think you would need triple sensors to have a system that would exclude an errant signal; if it was a dual system and if one of the two AOA's is faulty, which one is correct and which one is at fault. With the modern, digital devices now I imagine a triple installation on a clean sheet aircraft makes sense.

At one time, the B737 had a single AOA. In fact, I had an AOA failure in a -200 series one day, got stick shaker on lift-off but both engines were working fine, the pitch attitude was correct so it could not have been a stall. We got to a safe altitude, pulled the CB and continued to Vancouver where it was replaced.

In the final analysis, there are certain systems where a single point of failure can be acceptable provided the pilot is trained and competent to recover the emergency. Engine failures and being able to fly the aircraft with that condition, rapid depressurization, and, yes, stab trim runaway are all examples of failures with no redundancy where the pilot is expected to perform the drill and recover the aircraft.

TC approval -it's all optics. TC putting their stamp on the MAX changes is a bit of a joke. What knowledge and experience do they have that the FAA and Boeing do not? None. I have seen this happen with Transport Canada in other areas of aviation where they think they are a little smarter than the Yanks. In some areas they are - cold weather operations, as an example, but in this case and many others they aren't but must need to give the impression that they are.

On a separate note, it is interesting that the Ethiopian final report has not been released. I suspect that they are having a difficult time crafting a report that blames everyone else but the home team.

[DadoBlade]

To sum up: "The Boeing 757 is such a good aircraft"..

BTW what is a "..retrurns.."? And if it means "return", isn't "return coming back" redundant? Yes it is.

[DadoBlade]

Families of victims of the 737-Max crashes express irrational fears, but they are fears nonetheless:


https://www.businessinsider.com/boeing- ... ns-2020-11