Possibility of Boeing 737 Max 8/9 being permanently grounded?

[ChanceSchmerr]

3 hours ago, rp99pts said:

It's pretty rare that a mechanical issue on a newer plane will cause it to crash, most crashes are from pilot error.  Who the hell knows what the pilots did after take off, flipped the wrong switch and didn't know know how to identify and correct the problem(lack of training) and prob panicked.   Perfect example was the Air France crash coming out of Rio with a frozen Pitot Tube causing the air speed indicator to give a false reading. Co Pilot didn't know to identify and fix the problem, panicked and crashed.  

My old man's an AC pilot, so I look at these incidents closely.  He's still on Airbus equipment, thankfully.  His often raises the point that AC is safer than most because of the source of their pilots (the RCAF, like him). When a military pilot goes civilian with the airlines, he comes in with 5000, 10000, etc hrs flown - they've seen a lot, and done a lot of flying by hand without instruments, the instincts are there when the software blinks. There are other airlines with pilots like that too, not just AC - but that was one of the big things on the Air France flight, all three pilots (IIRC) were relatively inexperienced, and panicked with their plane dropping like a stone while their instruments were saying something different.

I won't fly AIr France to this day because of that crash.......

[FireMedic]

3 hours ago, bpm32 said:

For as much as I complain about security, flying, etc., we really are in a golden age of air travel. Fatalities are way, way down since the 1970s--something like 50x--and costs are comparatively low as well. My grandfather paid $510 for a one way trip from SFO to Hong Kong in 1953 (to find himself a wife)--that would be nearly $5000 today.

It is very easy to get from point a to point b, my biggest issue is the security lines, not necessarily the security, just the absurd wait times at certain airports 

[NSXCIGAR]

5 hours ago, FireMedic said:

That Air France flight was the first thing I thought of when this all took place

Yep. Another case of poor training/lack of experience and failure to simply take manual control of the aircraft. 

How many recent accidents have been caused by the failure of pilots to execute a simple stall recovery procedure? Far too many.

[FireMedic]

15 minutes ago, NSXCIGAR said:

Yep. Another case of poor training/lack of experience and failure to simply take manual control of the aircraft. 

How many recent accidents have been caused by the failure of pilots to execute a simple stall recovery procedure? Far too many.

Lack of confidence, training, skill or D all of the above?

[Duxnutz]

18 hours ago, nKostyan said:

Elongation of the fuselage of the base model is a common practice. Also known side effect of elongation-rocking (rising the nose of the aircraft). Before the advent of computer systems, the pilot had to align the aircraft manually on similar elongated gliders.

There is an assumption that with some flight parameters, the computer mistakenly believes that it needs help in leveling the aircraft, which leads to a dive

What?????

16 hours ago, rp99pts said:

Don't be surprised if the cause of the crash is a lack of training in this specific aircraft by the pilots.   You would be amazed how little training smaller airlines pilots receive due to costs....

Ya know I initially thought the same but have since read some reports that indicate to the contrary. The MCAS is supposed to only initiate the nose down action when the autopilot is off and a small rate over a 10 sec period but from the data I’ve been reading on reports from current 737max pilots at reputable airlines the forcible and erroneous nose down force has occurred with autopilot on and in non warranted situations. So there’s definitely an issue, the main one being that the MCAS gets data off one probe (angle of attack) which leaves zero redundancy for an error in that probe. Should be off an average of multiple sources, pretty basic stuff in aviation. 

Other issues like the new higher thrust engines and their placement causing a different nose up pitching moment vs the current NG 737 are cause for thinking they may have stretched the 737 too far. 

Dont get me wrong, the type (737) as a whole is an amazingly reliable and beautiful flying airplane. I believe this will get resolved (as all the problems with modern airliners tend to do) reasonably quickly. 

[nKostyan]

Unofficial sources reported that the pilots fought with MCAS in manual mode with the lowering of the nose before the accident of the first aircraft in Indonesia

[helix]

Have to wonder if the MCAS system has a lot of undetected influence regarding AOA and flight stability. Is the nose up issue severe in this design ? Reports of Pilots being overpowered by the MCAS when malfunctioning .  

[Duxnutz]

1 hour ago, helix said:

Have to wonder if the MCAS system has a lot of undetected influence regarding AOA and flight stability. Is the nose up issue severe in this design ? Reports of Pilots being overpowered by the MCAS when malfunctioning .  

Bigger engines that are further fwd than the old design so change the CG. In order to meet certification req the MCAS was needed I guess. 

[helix]

Investigation should turn out to be definitive as to the cause(s) .  

[HDGSN]

Good and scary article:

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/failed-certification-faa-missed-safety-issues-in-the-737-max-system-implicated-in-the-lion-air-crash/

[NSXCIGAR]

Yes, it appears that MCAS gets its info from only one AoA sensor. And it appears the Lion Air flight had a faulty AoA sensor. Wow. How did this get by safety engineers? MCAS should totally disengage when conflicting sensor data is present. Nothing that controls the plane to the degree of MCAS should be fully dependent one one sensor that could fail. 

And it's clear that the pilots were totally unaware of how MCAS functioned and how to recognize and respond to unwanted MCAS inputs to the stabilizer, or that yoke movement resets MCAS and it will keep fighting the pilot trying to raise the nose and that switching off the stab trim control is the only way to stop MCAS from controlling the stabilizer. Even fully disconnecting the autopilot won't stop MCAS from controlling the stabilizer.

And as the Seattle Times points out the maximum stabilizer movement allowed by MCAS was changed after test flights and not reported to the FAA for their safety evaluation of whether that was too much control for MCAS to have.

These seem like things that could easily have been fixed or adjusted either with software or training and should never have been allowed to be rolled out as is.

I wonder how much liability all parties is going to have on this in civil court. 

[helix]

Air Canada has announced the 737 Max 8/9's grounded until at least July 1.

https://globalnews.ca/news/5071188/air-canada-suspend-boeing-737-max-planes-until-july-1/

[helix]

Was this incident not enough to set off the alarm bells ? Stunning. 

"Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 Day Before Deadly Crash ".

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/pilot-who-hitched-a-ride-saved-lion-air-737-day-before-deadly-crash/ar-BBUZHNw?ocid=spartandhp

[trose]

On 3/18/2019 at 12:06 PM, Duxnutz said:

What?????

Ya know I initially thought the same but have since read some reports that indicate to the contrary. The MCAS is supposed to only initiate the nose down action when the autopilot is off and a small rate over a 10 sec period but from the data I’ve been reading on reports from current 737max pilots at reputable airlines the forcible and erroneous nose down force has occurred with autopilot on and in non warranted situations. So there’s definitely an issue, the main one being that the MCAS gets data off one probe (angle of attack) which leaves zero redundancy for an error in that probe. Should be off an average of multiple sources, pretty basic stuff in aviation. 

Other issues like the new higher thrust engines and their placement causing a different nose up pitching moment vs the current NG 737 are cause for thinking they may have stretched the 737 too far. 

Dont get me wrong, the type (737) as a whole is an amazingly reliable and beautiful flying airplane. I believe this will get resolved (as all the problems with modern airliners tend to do) reasonably quickly. 

This is exactly what I've heard from pilots operating this model.  One of the issues is even when the nose down action is overridden by the pilots it resets every 10 seconds. To fully override the system the pilots need to remove the circuit breakers which clearly they aren't trained for in this situation.  Furthermore flight simulations have shown in some instances both pilots have to apply nearly 40kg of force (80kg total) on the yoke to simply keep the plane in level flight. One report says a pilot had to brace himself with his feet against the console..... With the plane hurtling towards the ground at 380 knots in the case of Lion air could even the best trained pilots have saved the aircraft.....?

[helix]

Having to remove circuit breakers ? What was Boeing thinking (hiding)? This is craziness.

[nKostyan]

Interesting fact: Boeing 737 Original the most emergency passenger aircraft in the history of aviation, Boeing 737 Original of the first generation has become the most unreliable aircraft in the history of aviation. One disaster accounts for 510 000 flight hours.

[Duxnutz]

On 3/21/2019 at 9:59 AM, helix said:

Having to remove circuit breakers ? What was Boeing thinking (hiding)? This is craziness.

It’s too easy to locate toggle switches on the main console near the thrust levers. No biggie. The issue is that they had a stick shaker going off with simultaneous aural warnings in addition to the MCAS pushing nose down. Lots going on so near to the ground. 

[NSXCIGAR]

18 hours ago, Duxnutz said:

It’s too easy to locate toggle switches on the main console near the thrust levers. No biggie. The issue is that they had a stick shaker going off with simultaneous aural warnings in addition to the MCAS pushing nose down. Lots going on so near to the ground. 

According to this Asia Times article the pilots did switch off stab trim and it appears only the one stick shaker was activated and the co-pilot's did not. Also, MCAS apparently continued to manipulate the stabilizer trim even after autopilot was turned on.

So there's some very confusing things going on here...if these details are true, I fully agree all the MAX aircraft need to be grounded until what exactly caused this is determined and rectified.

https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/03/article/was-the-737-max-problem-just-bad-software/

[Cigar Surgeon]

On 3/20/2019 at 10:29 PM, nKostyan said:

Interesting fact: Boeing 737 Original the most emergency passenger aircraft in the history of aviation, Boeing 737 Original of the first generation has become the most unreliable aircraft in the history of aviation. One disaster accounts for 510 000 flight hours.

Sorry to jump in here but that's completely untrue. The modern series of 737 (after 1998) have a crash rate of 0.08, 0.24 for aircraft after 1984. For comparison the Airbus A320 is at 0.9

The 737 airframe is the workhouse around the world, and Boeing is one of the only companies to have multiple airframes in service for 30+ years with a perfect service record.

[nKostyan]

11 hours ago, Cigar Surgeon said:

Sorry to jump in here but that's completely untrue. The modern series of 737 (after 1998) have a crash rate of 0.08, 0.24 for aircraft after 1984. For comparison the Airbus A320 is at 0.9

The 737 airframe is the workhouse around the world, and Boeing is one of the only companies to have multiple airframes in service for 30+ years with a perfect service record.

Read carefully: it was about the first model “ 737 original”

[Cigar Surgeon]

15 hours ago, nKostyan said:

Read carefully: it was about the first model “ 737 original”

I definitely misread that. But I'm not sure what your point is as lots of things are safer than 50 years ago?

[nKostyan]

I definitely misread that. But I'm not sure what your point is as lots of things are safer than 50 years ago?

I think that any new model requires improvement in the process of trial operation. Accidents were with 737, after completion, he became one of the most reliable aircraft. I think it would be with the 737-Max. In the meantime, I will fly on the good old models of Airbus / Boeing

[Duxnutz]

If it wasn’t for Southwest, we’d probably have a re-engined 757 flying by now. 

[helix]

On ‎3‎/‎22‎/‎2019 at 1:15 PM, NSXCIGAR said:

According to this Asia Times article the pilots did switch off stab trim and it appears only the one stick shaker was activated and the co-pilot's did not. Also, MCAS apparently continued to manipulate the stabilizer trim even after autopilot was turned on.

So there's some very confusing things going on here...if these details are true, I fully agree all the MAX aircraft need to be grounded until what exactly caused this is determined and rectified.

https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/03/article/was-the-737-max-problem-just-bad-software/

 

On ‎3‎/‎21‎/‎2019 at 7:12 PM, Duxnutz said:

It’s too easy to locate toggle switches on the main console near the thrust levers. No biggie. The issue is that they had a stick shaker going off with simultaneous aural warnings in addition to the MCAS pushing nose down. Lots going on so near to the ground. 

Reportedly only had 40 seconds to pull all this off.

[NSXCIGAR]

2 hours ago, helix said:

Reportedly only had 40 seconds to pull all this off.

Yep: https://interestingengineering.com/pilots-have-40-secs-to-try-to-save-737-max-8-if-autopilot-malfunctions

Amazing that the previous Lion Air crew (specifically the jumpseat pilot) was able to recover the plane. Tremendous skill and awareness.