The Boeing MAX 8 Accidents

[Cal]

Left an entire ladder in the horizontal stab by mistake? That takes a special level of lack of attention to "details".

I'm sorry, what?

 

[flitcraft]

In fact there have been many cases of construction debris and tools being accidentally left in 787s, including metal debris left adjacent to wiring. The South Carolina assembly crews are being pushed hard to get planes out the door, and not surprisingly, stuff like that happens. When Qatar Airways said that they would not accept any more 787s from South Carolina, you'd have thought that might have gotten Boeing to pay more attention to quality control. Nah, who am I kidding?

 

[west point]

For years I always found Boeing Aircraft were more complicated with more maintenance bugs. MD aircraft were simpler, but quality control items were more abundant. Once on a series of trips maintenance came at every stop trying to swap wiring for the HVAC packs to get them to operate properly. I had to monitor operation with lengthy check sheet. Evidently my imput helped because 4th or 5t leg it really worked well.

 

[Cal]

So what did you think?

Just finished it, I thought it was pretty good. Definitely helped me grasp a better understanding of the incident and what happened.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

 

[west point]

An anology. putting new flight crews into a 737-max is like putting a Cesna only pilot into a twin Beech craft. Recipie for disaster.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-1997-merger-that-paved-the-way-for-the-boeing-737-max-crisisOlder story that is still worth a read for those interested in how history can predict the future.

 

[jis]

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-1997-merger-that-paved-the-way-for-the-boeing-737-max-crisisOlder story that is still worth a read for those interested in how history can predict the future.

And then there is a slowly unfolding 787 manufacturing saga in South Carolina which has only recently been sort of resolved. Finding a ladder left in the tail plane by mistake is quite entertaining if it were not so consequentially dangerous I suppose.

It is still not clear when the 737-10 Max is going to be certified. The saga of ECAS continues.

 

[Asher]

I talked to an ex neighbor of mine who recently transferred to Alaska Airlines and had just finished training in the 737 Max. He seemed to sound like business as usual and was anxious to begin flying them On his normal routes out of Seattle.

 

[jis]

I talked to an ex neighbor of mine who recently transferred to Alaska Airlines and had just finished training in the 737 Max. He seemed to sound like business as usual and was anxious to begin flying them On his normal routes out of Seattle.

The problem in certifying the MAX 10 is that it is running out of time when the window closes on the special exception which enabled certification of the currently certified MAXs with a still inadequate and poorly designed fixup to avoid the most egregous problems of the MAXs. If Boeing is unable to complete certification by that deadline and Congress does not extend it, they will need to come up with a more complete automation solution with three effective sensors, one of which will be a synthetic one as is used on many other planes. And that will take additional time.

Incidentally, we have at least one active member of AU who flies the Max for a large airline.

 

[Asher]

The problem in certifying the MAX 10 is that it is running out of time when the window closes on the special exception which enabled certification of the currently certified MAXs with a still inadequate and poorly designed fixup to avoid the most egregous problems of the MAXs. If Boeing is unable to complete certification by that deadline and Congress does not extend it, they will need to come up with a more complete automation solution with three effective sensors, one of which will be a synthetic one as is used on many other planes. And that will take additional time.

Incidentally, we have at least one active member of AU who flies the Max for a large airline.

You saying they need to install more gadgets. That would be another revision to the overloaded manual they have now.

 

[jis]

You saying they need to install more gadgets. That would be another revision to the overloaded manual they have now.

Actually it will make the plane safer. Between a safer plane and a thinner manual I will at least tend to choose the former

 

[west point]

The low engines go all the way back to 737-500s . Bleed air was used to clear runways of FOD in front on engines. When the next 737-MAX crashes if any hint of the MCAS causing it will be curtains for the present version.
Have no idea if possible but maybe a version of 757 wings might attach to the vary similar fuselages. That landing gear would raise the airplane 4 - 6 feet. the 757 wings have the engines where they belong.

 

[jiml]

When the next 737-MAX crashes

While the rest of your post makes sense, this might be a little pessimistic. (An observation from someone who just had their flight next month changed from an A321 to a MAX.)

 

[jis]

While the rest of your post makes sense, this might be a little pessimistic. (An observation from someone who just had their flight next month changed from an A321 to a MAX.)

I think replacing the “when” with “if” makes that a less provocative and more dispassionate and speculatively correct statement. It is unlikely that another crash for the same reason will take place since the layer of lipstick applied to the pig is pretty thick at this point, in a manner of speaking.

I have actually flown in a Max both before the infamous crashes and after they re-entered service, just as a matter of full disclosure. If the current fix was all that good the whole Max 10 issue would probably be non-existent.

 

[MARC Rider]

The discussion seems to suggest that even though the MAXs are flying, it's possible that whatever money Boeing saved on its shortcuts was lost due to the groundings and redesign. It would be nice to think that this might cause the bean counter management mentality to go away and the engineers to return, but I am pessimistic about that.

 

[Asher]

The discussion seems to suggest that even though the MAXs are flying, it's possible that whatever money Boeing saved on its shortcuts was lost due to the groundings and redesign. It would be nice to think that this might cause the bean counter management mentality to go away and the engineers to return, but I am pessimistic about that.

This has all been thoroughly discussed to the point i‘ve lost track.
Was it the bean counters at Boeing or the airlines that took the cheaper option not to pay for the training for their pilots.

 

[Trogdor]

This has all been thoroughly discussed to the point i‘ve lost track.
Was it the bean counters at Boeing or the airlines that took the cheaper option not to pay for the training for their pilots.

The contract with Southwest Airlines said that if simulator training was required, Boeing had to discount the planes by $1 million each. I recall reading somewhere (but I can’t remember where, so take this for what it’s worth) that Southwest didn’t specifically ask for that provision this time around, but it was a leftover clause from previous orders dating back to when they started flying the 737NG, and they recycled most of the terms of the sales contract.

In any event, the decision was entirely Boeing’s to falsify information to the feds to get the approval for the no-sim conversion training.

 

[Trogdor]

The low engines go all the way back to 737-500s . Bleed air was used to clear runways of FOD in front on engines. When the next 737-MAX crashes if any hint of the MCAS causing it will be curtains for the present version.
Have no idea if possible but maybe a version of 757 wings might attach to the vary similar fuselages. That landing gear would raise the airplane 4 - 6 feet. the 757 wings have the engines where they belong.

The “low engines” goes back to the original 737-100. It was designed to operate from airports with minimal improvements, and the -100 and -200 are the ones with the mods to take off from gravel runways. The -500 wasn’t even the first one with the larger CFM engines, that was the -300.

The 757 is dead and done for. Ain’t coming back. The fact that it was sometimes considered a “heavy” for ATC spacing purposes should give a clue as to why sales shriveled to almost nothing as soon as the A320 and 737NG were on offer.

 

[Asher]

The contract with Southwest Airlines said that if simulator training was required, Boeing had to discount the planes by $1 million each. I recall reading somewhere (but I can’t remember where, so take this for what it’s worth) that Southwest didn’t specifically ask for that provision this time around, but it was a leftover clause from previous orders dating back to when they started flying the 737NG, and they recycled most of the terms of the sales contract.

In any event, the decision was entirely Boeing’s to falsify information to the feds to get the approval for the no-sim conversion training.

I don't know what was acknowledged as to the actual cause of the Accidents. Has there been a corrective action response as to the root cause. Is the plane now flying configured the same, or have they added stabilizers, deleted some.
Its a complicated aircraft, I’m sure lack of training, and hell, pilot expertise is not to be overlooked.

 

[Trogdor]

I don't know what was acknowledged as to the actual cause of the Accidents. Has there been a corrective action response as to the root cause. Is the plane now flying configured the same, or have they added stabilizers, deleted some.
Its a complicated aircraft, I’m sure lack of training, and hell, expertise is not to be overlooked.

The “long-story short” version (because, in the 1.5-year grounding, lots was going on with various regulators around the world) is that faulty angle-of-attack sensors caused the plane to think it was pitching up more than it actually was, potentially nearing a stall (it was not, but one of the sensors falsely indicated the AOA was high). This caused a system called MCAS to activate, which induces a nose-down trim. Pilots were not made aware that MCAS was even something that existed on this plane, since it had not existed on previous 737 versions (and the idea of minimal training meant that they were not expecting anything significantly new or different from what they were used to).

Subsequent investigations revealed that, not only had Boeing lied to the FAA about the limit of authority that MCAS would have (the system could induce more nose-down trim in a single activation than they told the FAA), they also did a lot to convince the FAA that whatever it was wasn’t important enough to require the additional training to pilots. On the technical side of things, the problems were that not only was the system susceptible to sensor failures (there are two AOA sensors, and if one gives erroneous data, there is no way for the computer to identify which data are bad and which are correct), but also that there were no pre-set limits to the number of times the system could activate (meaning, regardless of all the above, if the AOA sensor continued to indicate high, MCAS could trigger again and again and again). No alerts were given to the pilots that this would be happening, and Boeing assumed pilots would identify the anomaly and treat it as a runaway stabilizer trim event. When officials looked into the practicality of pilot action seemed to indicate that manually retrimming the plane took excessive physical force (since electronic trim could not be used on account of the system causing the failure in the first place), and that pilots realistically only had a few seconds to identify and correct the problem before the situation became unrecoverable.

The MCAS-related causes were corrected. I don’t recall if they changed the limit of authority, but they did change the system so it could not activate multiple times for the same event. I know there were also some changes to the prominence of the information provided to pilots, but I don’t know exactly what wound up being required or not on that end. The main sticking points have to do with how pilots are alerted to problems on the 737 (but that’s not MCAS-specific or even MAX-specific, and is related to the age of the design and the flight computer’s ability to handle certain things), and the need for a third AOA sensor so the computer can more effectively identify which one is giving bad data.

That is the “short” version of it. The long version involved two years of investigation, every major aviation authority conducting their own certification (instead of accepting the FAA’s certification), lots of rewrite to the code to software on the plane, a test pilot being indicted for fraud (but subsequently acquitted), and what could be major changes to how any “variant” of an airplane design will need to be certified from this point forward.

 

[railiner]

The “long-story short” version (because, in the 1.5-year grounding, lots was going on with various regulators around the world) is that faulty angle-of-attack sensors caused the plane to think it was pitching up more than it actually was, potentially nearing a stall (it was not, but one of the sensors falsely indicated the AOA was high). This caused a system called MCAS to activate, which induces a nose-down trim. Pilots were not made aware that MCAS was even something that existed on this plane, since it had not existed on previous 737 versions (and the idea of minimal training meant that they were not expecting anything significantly new or different from what they were used to).

Subsequent investigations revealed that, not only had Boeing lied to the FAA about the limit of authority that MCAS would have (the system could induce more nose-down trim in a single activation than they told the FAA), they also did a lot to convince the FAA that whatever it was wasn’t important enough to require the additional training to pilots. On the technical side of things, the problems were that not only was the system susceptible to sensor failures (there are two AOA sensors, and if one gives erroneous data, there is no way for the computer to identify which data are bad and which are correct), but also that there were no pre-set limits to the number of times the system could activate (meaning, regardless of all the above, if the AOA sensor continued to indicate high, MCAS could trigger again and again and again). No alerts were given to the pilots that this would be happening, and Boeing assumed pilots would identify the anomaly and treat it as a runaway stabilizer trim event. When officials looked into the practicality of pilot action seemed to indicate that manually retrimming the plane took excessive physical force (since electronic trim could not be used on account of the system causing the failure in the first place), and that pilots realistically only had a few seconds to identify and correct the problem before the situation became unrecoverable.

The MCAS-related causes were corrected. I don’t recall if they changed the limit of authority, but they did change the system so it could not activate multiple times for the same event. I know there were also some changes to the prominence of the information provided to pilots, but I don’t know exactly what wound up being required or not on that end. The main sticking points have to do with how pilots are alerted to problems on the 737 (but that’s not MCAS-specific or even MAX-specific, and is related to the age of the design and the flight computer’s ability to handle certain things), and the need for a third AOA sensor so the computer can more effectively identify which one is giving bad data.

That is the “short” version of it. The long version involved two years of investigation, every major aviation authority conducting their own certification (instead of accepting the FAA’s certification), lots of rewrite to the code to software on the plane, a test pilot being indicted for fraud (but subsequently acquitted), and what could be major changes to how any “variant” of an airplane design will need to be certified from this point forward.

Thanks...great 'capsule history' of the issue, worded so that even I can comprehend it.

 

[33Nicolas]

You saying they need to install more gadgets. That would be another revision to the overloaded manual they have now.

The problem is super convoluted and involves Boeing, the FAA, third-party companies, as well as Congress. Ultimately, Boeing is trying to match the Airbus 320x families with an over-stretched 60-year-old design that can't truly compete, at least, not in the future. I work in aviation. Most people I've spoken to in the industry, including the FAA, feel the 737 MAX should be certified as a new plane. Boeing won't do it because it would take too long, be too expensive, and it would lose sales. Yes, Boeing still needs to change and add many things in the 737 MAX, but it is twisting the FAA's hand to have it grand-fathered certified in order not to do the work it is supposed to do. They shouldn't have scraped the 797 they were working on and be patient.

It is a "safe" plane, but how willing is Boeing to be upfront about MCAS and other extra help it snuck into this Frankenstein of an airplane to its customer? How willing is it to clean up its east coast assembly plant so that we don't find the crap we have in all of its new airplanes once assembled? How will Boeing arrange flight deck warnings at a pace that can be processed by two human beings? How many human factor people will be involved in the process of redesigning the flight deck and tweaking the manual so that it can be better read? There are so many more questions the general (entertainment) media isn't asking and can't. They are by definition, generalists, not specialists. Boeing officials mislead customers, the public, and regulatory bodies, and are lobbying Congress for leniency. In the end, it is run by non-aviators who are business folks. They neglected aviation's safety first rule.

Sorry, I'm off-track here.

 

[flitcraft]

I showed my husband, a retired Boeing engineer, these posts, and he concurred that Trogdor and 33 Nicolas's posts are a succinct and accurate assessment of the situation. It's terrible what the merger caused at Boeing, and the consequences have been tragic. When shareholder value becomes the prime directive, we are all endangered.

 

[west point]

When shareholder value becomes the prime directive, we are all endangered.

Maybe that statement should apply to the class 1 RRs ?

What is important as a pilot is how fast did the MCAS move the trim? Cannot remember but a B-727 fast trim was about a 1 unit per second. About 2 units down and 8 - 10 units up. Take off setting about at 5 depending on Center of Gravity. Will look it up sometime.