Engineers working on MCAS didn't even have a clue the system was being changed and, ultimately, turned into a safety risk? Talk about Boeing being transparent to rebuild trust when they don't even seem to be transparent within the company itself.

17 hours ago, threegreen said:

Engineers working on MCAS didn't even have a clue the system was being changed and, ultimately, turned into a safety risk? Talk about Boeing being transparent to rebuild trust when they don't even seem to be transparent within the company itself.

This goes back to what I said initially; to fix the Max, you need more that to fix the Max - you need to fix and replace management. 

And some of the attitude seems to be “so what if the MCAS system and its implementation was fundamentally flawed, no matter, properly trained pilots should be able to handle the resulting failures, so hey, there’s blame to go around.” Errrr, no...

The article above is really a must read.

1 hour ago, IUBrian said:

This goes back to what I said initially; to fix the Max, you need more that to fix the Max - you need to fix and replace management. 

And some of the attitude seems to be “so what if the MCAS system and its implementation was fundamentally flawed, no matter, properly trained pilots should be able to handle the resulting failures, so hey, there’s blame to go around.” Errrr, no...

The article above is really a must read.

That’s hardly the ‘attitude’. My point is the ethiopean minister lied when she said all procedures were followed by the pilots. They were not. Whether they would have crashed or not is not the issue. From the perspective of a fellow pilot, my issue is that they made no sign of following their emergency training. It could have made a difference in the outcome. Or it may not. The outcome is not the issue, the process is the issue. Because when you are in an emergency situation, or more importantly, if your loved one was riding as a passenger of an aircraft in an emergency situation, wouldn’t you want to see that their emergency training and protocols kicked in? Wouldn’t you want to know that all proper and required actions were taken? Wouldn’t you want to rest knowing that everything that could have been done to save the plane was done? Instead of being left wondering if those people could have been saved if they did what they were trained to do? Would you not agree that the best chance of a good outcome would be if the pilots actually followed their training and procedures? That is my ‘attitude’.

Edited June 4, 20197 yr by KevinAu

I saw a handful of TUI 737 MAX 8 planes parked to one side at Manchester Airport today when I went to pick up a friend.......right before the clutch totally failed on my car, and I had to be towed a hundred miles back home

Edited June 4, 20197 yr by Christopher Low

5 hours ago, KevinAu said:

That’s hardly the ‘attitude’. My point is the ethiopean minister lied when she said all procedures were followed by the pilots. 

Sorry, I can see that it would appear I was singling you out; that wasn’t my intent. I was referring to Boeing generally. 

By way of imperfect analogy, say Boeing, due to design failures, produces a plane with engines that fail at, say, 100 times the rate than should be expected. Obviously there are engine out procedures such that a properly trained crew could deal with the problem. If in a handful of failures the crew reacted improperly, resulting in fatal crashes, yes in hindsight we could say if the pilots had followed procedure the crashes wouldn’t have happened. But I think blame in that scenario would appropriately be assessed to the aircraft manufacturer. That’s really my point - Boeing’s flawed implementation of MCAS is where blame lies. In particular, while runaway trim is a known potential problem, its characteristics with a MCAS fault seem to be if not unique,  exceedingly rare. 

But again, my reference to “attitude” wasn’t to you; it’s towards Boeing generally, who has been the consistent subject of my complaints in this thread. I appreciate your perspective on pilots; it creates a fuller picture of the tragedy and I was not dismissing it. 

33 minutes ago, IUBrian said:

But I think blame in that scenario would appropriately be assessed to the aircraft manufacturer. That’s really my point - Boeing’s flawed implementation of MCAS is where blame lies. In particular, while runaway trim is a known potential problem, its characteristics with a MCAS fault seem to be if not unique,  exceedingly rare. 

I don’t think anybody on earth would argue with that. Not even boeing at this point. Prior to the ethiopean crash, boeing’s response to the lionair mcas issue was still conventionally rooted to liability mitigation. Their initial response to the lionair crash that merely applying trim runaway procedures was all that was necessary was obviously crafted by lawyers only. By now, the failures in the design, management and oversight process are clear and undeniable to all. Though the ethiopean pilots also had failures during the fatal flight, at most that can do for boeing is bring ethiopean airlines in to share in some of the liability. 

Let's remember that the Lion Air crash may have been averted had the crew previous to the accident crew been more descriptive and conclusive in logging their problems on the previous flight. The accident crew took over an airplane that should have been grounded for equipment fault.

When it rains it pours.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2019/06/03/boeing-737-max-planes-may-have-defective-parts-first-move-liebermann.cnn

Cheers,

 

5 hours ago, mabe54 said:

When it rains it pours.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2019/06/03/boeing-737-max-planes-may-have-defective-parts-first-move-liebermann.cnn

Meh.  More like "when it sprinkles, the media piles on."  These sorts of ADs happen just about on a daily basis...the fact that the manufacturers and the regulators analyze failures fleet-wide and check the rest of the fleet when there's a statistical bump that looks aberrant is one reason why failure and accident rates are at historical lows. 

But...preface it with a typical air of gloom and doom intended to sensationalize the mundane..."more bad news for Boeing"...and it becomes fodder for the fomentation of public hysteria over the facts of everyday life in the aviation world.  This is actually a good news story--how aviation safety systems and oversight work to solve issues early, before they become a problem.

 

 

Yet another article (pretty good one though)

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/the-inside-story-of-mcas-how-boeings-737-max-system-gained-power-and-lost-safeguards/

From an article in today's London Sunday Times:

The Sunday Times reports that thousands of tickets are still being sold for flights on Boeing planes that remain grounded following two accidents in which 346 people died.

It says a number of airlines, including American, Norwegian and TUI, have scheduled more than 32,000 departures on the 737 Max jets later this year.

One British tourist says he felt like "a guinea pig" when he found out he would be travelling to the Caribbean on one of the planes, despite being given assurances to the contrary when he booked the flight. He then asked for a refund but was refused one.

Some airlines are looking at cancelling some routes due to having to lease aircraft, causing the route to make a loss.

Edited August 18, 20196 yr by rjfry

Great new piece here: https://newrepublic.com/amp/article/154944/boeing-737-max-investigation-indonesia-lion-air-ethiopian-airlines-managerial-revolution?utm_content=buffer74268&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer&__twitter_impression=true

I watched an interesting film on TV the other week about 50 years of the 747 in which the original pilots talked about it, I did not relies that Boeing nearly want under at the launch and they were laying off workers all over and showed a sign in Seattle with last one out turn off the lights, and in the first year pilots said if you completed a flight with all four engine still working you were lucky, and it was only because it could fly on two engine that it was not grounded.