13 hours ago, Garys said:

..but if we are starting to turn the corner where the skills stop at hitting the AP button at 400ft, then the  future of pilotless aircraft cant come soon enough.

Not if Boeing are building them! 😉

Can I lob another theory into the mix, have we considered that fear of MCAS might have been why he quickly engaged the AP. 

In the November Boeing OMB it says early on in bold DURING MANUAL FLIGHT ONLY.

Yes he could have kept the flaps up but with high ground and a need to climb (in the dark) maybe he just made a quick choice..

Pitch and power! Are we stalling.. airfield is high.. ok it's only my side, IAS DISAGREE, lets climb out of this, airfield is over 7000ft, could be AoA lets get higher and quick!  Bloody MCAS, but that's only manual flight, I will engage AP to allow me to focus attention on analysing problem. 

Do we not cut him slack at all for that logic with all that noise, flashing warnings and the terrifying MCAS in your mind? 

Perhaps ironically a fixation with MCAS derailed him from carrying out the UAS checklist that may have been a better choice.  

Edited April 14, 20197 yr by DellyPilot

6 hours ago, Bert Pieke said:

Sorry if this is old news... but this is an exceptionally well presented analysis

 

Yea not bad, few little omissions and notably wrong when he says the RUNAWAY TRIM checklist says do not re-engage STAB TRIM switches.

Technically it doesn't say that, that's only in Boeing's November OMB. 
 

 

November OMB

 

On ‎4‎/‎14‎/‎2019 at 6:11 PM, DellyPilot said:

This is wrong, the TRIM RUNAWAY checklist

1. Wrong. I’ve been linking to the bulletin that specifically says “and stay in cutout for the remainder of the flight”. You even just posted a copy of it again. All they had to do was call for their abnormal procedure and there is a chance they would have lived. The pitch only went nose down after the last MCAS trim when they turned the trim system back on. Look at the fdr readout again at 05:43:15-05:43:30.

2. The crucial factor is anything that would have broken the chain. The airspeed is but one link. Not turning on the trim system, as the procedure would have reminded them if they had pulled it out, would have also broken the link.

3. Quit it with the ad hominem attacks.

4. Like I said before already, this is not about exceptional skills, this is about basic training skills. As in calling for an emergency checklist during an emergency. What is so wrong with that in your mind? It is exactly when the airplane is trying to kill you that you need to fall back on your basic training. The basic training you got in the sim on how to deal with any abnormal. Like calling for the qrh. Because your only chance at surviving is going to be hiding in a checklist somewhere. Pull that checklist out. It’s the tool for these unfamiliar situations. The whole point of the training is to provide the most marginal pilot the toolkit to handle the worst and most unfamiliar situation. That’s why it is pass/fail, everybody is assumed to be and only required to be marginally good enough. Nobody gets a star or an A. A perfectly flown approach only gets you the same pass that your barely within limits partner got. But if you missed a callout, that’s your fail on your otherwise totally smooth plane handling. Training is not about stick and rudder skills, it is about procedures. Remembering to call for the emergency checklist is something you can do even if you’re ham fisted. Following procedures could have saved them because it could have kept them from flipping a switch that caused their immediate demise. It is apparent that we view things oppositely. You see an emergency as forget the checklist and do whatever. I see an emergency as the one time you better pull out the checklist and follow it.

Edited April 16, 20197 yr by n4gix
REMOVED EXCESSIVE QUOTE!!!

18 hours ago, honanhal said:

I don’t think we disagree about this. But I maintain the point about it being a dead end to rely on excellent pilotage to save lives is a critical one, because inevitably not all pilots will be excellent at all times.

Clearly, I’m not arguing that crew training and proficiency don’t matter. Obviously they do! But I also don’t think in this case a simple percentage allocation of blame makes sense, with a zero sum between Boeing and the pilots. If (as seems arguably to be the case based on what we know) the plane was effectively repeatedly doing its damndest to kill everyone on board, is it really the pilots’ “fault” in a meaningful way if they then proceed to make mistakes, without which they might have saved their and others’ lives?

I don’t think that question has an easy answer, genuinely.

Again, my point is not that they had to be excellent pilots, but rather they just needed to fallback on their most basic of training. The training that taught them to open up an emergency checklist during an emergency. Because if they had, they would have found a nugget of information that could have kept them from nosediving into the ground.

Edited April 15, 20197 yr by KevinAu

On 4/14/2019 at 1:05 PM, KevinAu said:

You cannot turn a deliberate blind eye to the crew factors either.

As I've said a million times, if you sat in my iocc for a month with me and listened to some of the stuff that goes on you'd never get on a plane ever again.  Not to mention if you'd done it for 10 years. 

As much as I have zero techinal knowledge on the 737 max, I can promise you there are some awful  pilots out there, both young and old from all parts of the world some with 20000 hours and some with 200.

Thats the unfortunate nature of the beast  however boeing will try every trick in the book here to shunt the blame, there's millions at stake here.  Millions and millions. 

 

Edited April 15, 20197 yr by tooting

On 4/14/2019 at 10:36 AM, Garys said:

Delly - Your points are very valid and I do agree. However lets not forget that this aircraft didn't experience any type of mechanical failure to the same severity as  the national air cargo 747-400  out of Bagram which rendered the aircrew helpless. 

 

 

 

I belive that was the Loadmaster not strapping the freight Down. 

We have an ex national guy working for us in engineering, (he's got 30 years experience)

It was nothing to do with the 747. The pilots where doomed from the get go with that.  He was due to on the next trip out of Bagram. 

He's a very interesting guy and especially his take on that accident if you get a chance to talk to him about it,

hes spend most of his life fixing planes in war zones and Africa where the standard of pilots and the way companies operate is some what salubrious.  If one of ours goes tech downroute or is in for a check in ZSAM he always out there sorting out the locals. He's a legend 

 

Edited April 15, 20197 yr by tooting

11 minutes ago, tooting said:

I belive that was the Loadmaster not strapping the freight Down. 

We have an ex national guy working for us in engineering, (he's got 30 years experience)

It was nothing to do with the 747. The pilots where doomed from the get go with that.  He was due to on the next trip out of Bagram. 

He's a very interesting guy and especially his take on that accident if you get a chance to talk to him about it,

hes spend most of his life fixing planes in war zones and Africa where the standard of pilots and the way companies operate is some what salubrious.  If one of ours goes tech downroute or is in for a check in ZSAM he always out there sorting out the locals. He's a legend 

 

It wasn’t as much the loadmaster strapping it wrong, it was the company manual on strapping loads that was wrong. A loadmaster from kalitta had walked aboard that plane to chitchat and noticed that the strapping of the mraps was inadequate. His remarks to that effect to the loadmaster of the mishap aircraft was met with insistance that it was correct according to his manual. As we know now, it was indeed inadequate as on takeoff, a vehicle rolled into the aft bulkhead and broke the stabilator jackscrew, causing the stabilator to float into a full nose up position. The manual that the loadmaster worked from incorrectly accounted for the angling of the straps, causing an inadequate amount of straps to be used as a matter of course at national.

I thought it was the straps yes

We also have a guy in work who sons an f/o at Royal Air maroc on the max, apparently its a real  bugger to slow down and a 'challenging aircraft to fly' due to the powerful engines 

The placing of the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches to CUTOFF to deactivate MCAS (plus the electrical vertical trim switches on the Yoke capability on top) is stated as per " FAA, AD 2018-23-51 to keep them off "for the remaining of the flight".

The why's to come to mind:

1.- If MCAS is inhibited with any flaps out, why not instruct the crew to push first for a safe altitude before retracting them completely? I am assuming here US/CAN speed 250 knots top below 10,000 feet standard (not universally btw) so a non issue until then.

2.- Why not tell the crew to be ready when cleaning the wings out of flaps during takeoffs to expect a quirk behavior in the these new models and be prepared to lower the nose and keep speed out of stall while still being able to climb? Rumor has it, the greatest primate on Earth nature went to the Moon and back six times successfully in what amounts to Tin Foil Cans. They can manage it.

3.- Why not have a CUTOUT switch(es), independently of the "electrical vertical trim switches on the Yoke" for MCAS to be deactivate alone? By switching the CUTOUT SWITCHES to OFF as designed now you leave the crews to only MANUAL control of the Vertical Stabilizer and if they haven't kept overspeed in check, good luck with that. Not good.

4.- Why having a MCAS at all? Unless, these models can't be flown at all without them and that will be a big boo-boo to explain.

This MAX project looks like was taken over and guided by the Sales Department of the Manufacturers. Not a new mistake but a big one every time this is allow to happen.

Cheers,

  

 

1 hour ago, mabe54 said:

The placing of the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches to CUTOFF to deactivate MCAS (plus the electrical vertical trim switches on the Yoke capability on top) is stated as per " FAA, AD 2018-23-51 to keep them off "for the remaining of the flight".

The why's to come to mind:

1.- If MCAS is inhibited with any flaps out, why not instruct the crew to push first for a safe altitude before retracting them completely? I am assuming here US/CAN speed 250 knots top below 10,000 feet standard (not universally btw) so a non issue until then.

2.- Why not tell the crew to be ready when cleaning the wings out of flaps during takeoffs to expect a quirk behavior in the these new models and be prepared to lower the nose and keep speed out of stall while still being able to climb? Rumor has it, the greatest primate on Earth nature went to the Moon and back six times successfully in what amounts to Tin Foil Cans. They can manage it.

3.- Why not have a CUTOUT switch(es), independently of the "electrical vertical trim switches on the Yoke" for MCAS to be deactivate alone? By switching the CUTOUT SWITCHES to OFF as designed now you leave the crews to only MANUAL control of the Vertical Stabilizer and if they haven't kept overspeed in check, good luck with that. Not good.

4.- Why having a MCAS at all? Unless, these models can't be flown at all without them and that will be a big boo-boo to explain.

This MAX project looks like was taken over and guided by the Sales Department of the Manufacturers. Not a new mistake but a big one every time this is allow to happen.

1. Good point. Not needed after the software fix has been implemented, though.

2. That exactly is what the November bulletin says. Pointing out what happens when MCAS kicks in erroneously and what to do. Any pilot who read that bulletin was told to be ready. Also, the accidents have nothing to do with stalls. MCAS kicked in based on wrong input from a defective sensor. MCAS 'believed' they were close to stalling but it was never the case.

3. Leaving only manual trim is the whole idea behind the stab trim cutouts. If the automatic stab trim system goes crazy switch it off and leave it off because, well, we've seen what can happen. The software fix will make a switch like that redundant because MCAS will stop when the pilots counter with manual electric trim rather than reset itself and kick in again.

When complaining about the manual trim at high speeds keep in mind this is kind of a luxury the 737 still has compared to other aircraft. Most leave you with no way to trim when the automatic trim system goes belly up and is disabled.

4. Why MCAS exists on the MAX has been explained several times in this thread, just go back some pages and read up on it. There is nothing to explain, though. The MAX is as stable as any other aircraft. All that's different is the increased nose up momentum at high AoAs which is countered by MCAS and helps the pilots avoid an impending stall. The issue is the flawed design of MCAS which in its current iteration is way too powerful and lacks redundancy. No issue anymore with the MCAS fix.

 

21 hours ago, DellyPilot said:

No, Boeing need to stop grandfathering old air frames to cut costs, stop producing untested cr$p like MCAS (they seem to be struggling to even fix this) and maybe the thing we agree on, fix the training.

There is no issue at all with Boeing going for another iteration of the 737. It makes perfect sense from a business point of view to not go for a whole new design but instead advance one of your existing ones to keep up in time with the competition which had already been announced. In my honest opinion, people need to step away from the assumption that the MCAS flaw or the software's sheer existence means the aircraft program shouldn't exist. While MCAS in its current state is a major design flaw, a proper design (software fix) makes the aircraft perfectly safe. Count in the popularity of the airframe (5000 orders and the speed at which it sold) and there is no reason the MAX shouldn't exist.

The real issue here is that Boeing have let themselves be driven too much by the pressure to keep up and, as a result, cut corners. Add the FAA's dubious certification procedures and it's much worse than a design gone wrong because it made design flaws not being spotted and queried possible in the first place and if it hadn't come to light in the wake of the accidents, would have had the potential to cause even more deaths when cutting corners in the certification of future aircraft.

22 hours ago, threegreen said:

1. Good point. Not needed after the software fix has been implemented, though.

-1

To little too late whatever comes in the future. Trust is lost.

Cheers,

 

 

Edited April 16, 20197 yr by n4gix
REMOVED EXCESSIVE QUOTE!!!

1 hour ago, mabe54 said:

-1

To little too late whatever comes in the future. Trust is lost.

Cheers,

 

 

I beg to differ..

Airbus crashed one of its earliest A320s because of computer systems overriding the pilot... They fixed the code, and went on from there.

Please folks, DO NOT QUOTE EXCESSIVELY. Have some respect for our members who have slow internet and/or use their phone or tablet. here.

I've been manually trimming those who quote several pages of text. Worse are those who quote several pages of text, only to reply with one or two sentences of their own.

On 4/15/2019 at 5:06 PM, threegreen said:

The real issue here is that Boeing have let themselves be driven too much by the pressure to keep up and, as a result, cut corners. Add the FAA's dubious certification procedures and it's much worse than a design gone wrong because it made design flaws not being spotted and queried possible in the first place and if it hadn't come to light in the wake of the accidents, would have had the potential to cause even more deaths when cutting corners in the certification of future aircraft.

Without insight into the engineering and program management organizations within Boeing, you can't really say "....Boeing have let themselves be driven too much by the pressure to keep up and, as a result, cut corners...." I suggest there is at least one alternative scenario. First of all, a company such as Boeing (or Airbus) does not create another baseline like the 737 Max, or the 320 NEO, without extensive analysis, calculations, trade studies, model testing, simulation, and flight testing. Each company has their own process they follow. Engineers (I am one) follow a structured design process which is specific to their company. An alternative scenario for the existence of MAX MCAS could well be that the nonlinear aerodynamic lifting effect of the LEAP cowl in the location forward of the wing was not initially recognized conceptually, predicted computationally, or witnessed in wind tunnel testing, and was not experienced before the first full scale (flight) testing. Computational fluid dynamics is used throughout the industry in design and has been a primary enabler for today's wing and lifting body design. But the solutions are computational, not closed form, and at the end of the day, approximations of reality. So, late in the MAX program, full scale prototype, the nose up tendency caused by the LEAP cowls was discovered, and a solution was needed to counter this effect. The system engineering process would then have been followed to develop alternate concepts for the solution, including FMECA analysis. Each concept would have been studied with respect to predicted technical success in countering the effect, risk, cost, and schedule. Alternative solutions would have been studied, evaluated for risk, and tested or modeled computationally when possible. There would have been a down-select, in this case, MCAS was chosen. Recently I became aware that MCAS-type algorithms exist in other aircraft, including Boeing 767 mid air refueling tankers for the USAF. So it may have been considered a reduced risk technical solution for the MAX, since there was experience with this type of software algorithm. However, and this is a key point, my understanding is that the MCAS type algorithm in the 767 tankers uses input from two AoA sensors, not one AoA sensor, as does 737 MAX MCAS. But the decision was obviously made to go forward with the as is one AoA MCAS solution. Why was that decision made? Only those inside Boeing really know. But it would be a mistake to think that Boeing made that decision only to sell aircraft, meet schedule, save money, or some such programmatic factor. My 30+years in aerospace (not Boeing) tells me quite the opposite.

Edited April 16, 20197 yr by Wink207
correction

The FAA have backed Boeing in that special training for MAX pilots will be required, this will be music to Airbus`s ears