The Boeing MAX 8 Accidents

[keelhauled]

But wait, there's more!


Boeing Pilot Complained of ‘Egregious’ Issue With 737 Max in 2016, via the New York Times.

 

[ehbowen]

But wait, there's more!


Boeing Pilot Complained of ‘Egregious’ Issue With 737 Max in 2016, via the New York Times.

Manslaughter charges. For everyone in the senior engineering staff who did know, and for all the executives who should have known but were negligent...or, even worse, did know but were hiding behind a convenient "firewall".

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

Charging a corporate officer with manslaughter is next to impossible. Shareholder revolt has a better chance.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Charging a corporate officer with manslaughter is next to impossible. Shareholder revolt has a better chance.

It's not technically impossible, in the same way it's not impossible to charge a police officer with on-duty murder, but you're going up against more than a century of protective corporate surrogacy. That means your successful conviction rate is going to be very low until the laws and legal perception changes. For these and other reasons prosecutors rarely bother, especially for medium and large sized corporations, but if that's what the people really want they can work to elect a government that shares those goals and values in about a year's time.

 

[Dakota 400]

Shareholder revolt has a better chance.

That's what this shareholder did with the proxy vote this Spring. I voted opposite on every issue that the Board of Directors recommended. I will do it again in 2020. I am going to consider attending the Annual Meeting usually held in Chicago. Could be a rather interesting one to see "live and in person", I think.

(Also would be a good reason to ride the Cardinal.)

 

[keelhauled]

Why Is This Airplane Still Flying?’ The FAA Missteps That Kept Boeing’s MAX Aloft, from the Wall Street Journal.

A Federal Aviation Administration analysis showed a good chance the same malfunction would crop up again [after JT610], according to agency officials and people briefed on the results. Even under the most optimistic scenario, the agency’s statistical models projected a high likelihood of a similar emergency within roughly a year.

Yet in the end, the FAA didn’t formally consider grounding the MAX or taking other drastic steps, based on the sketchy early information from the October 2018 accident. It simply reminded pilots how to respond to such emergencies.

[...]

In a critical misstep, FAA officials relied extensively on Boeing’s initial flight-simulator test results, some of the people said. Boeing largely used its cadre of highly experienced test pilots, an industry practice the FAA and accident investigators later acknowledged wasn’t appropriate to gauge how the other pilots would react in a real emergency.

 

[Anderson]

That article makes me wonder why the FAA (if they felt the need to "remind" pilots of how to deal with that situation) didn't at least require re-training.

(The irony of the FAA punting is that an airline disruption was almost assuredly greater with another two quarters of deliveries in hand.)

 

[Dakota 400]

Why Is This Airplane Still Flying?’ The FAA Missteps That Kept Boeing’s MAX Aloft, from the Wall Street Journal.

There needs to be a rather thorough "house-cleaning" at Boeing, which has begun and which to needs to be extended in the opinion of this Boeing shareholder, and at the FAA.

What is our Secretary of Transportation doing with regard to this serious issue? Isn't the FAA part of the jurisdiction of Secretary Elaine Chao's Department?

 

[Bob Dylan]

There needs to be a rather thorough "house-cleaning" at Boeing, which has begun and which to needs to be extended in the opinion of this Boeing shareholder, and at the FAA.

What is our Secretary of Transportation doing with regard to this serious issue? Isn't the FAA part of the jurisdiction of Secretary Elaine Chao's Department?

Remember, Sec Chao is Moscow Mitch's Spouse!! Where's he on this???

 

[adamj023]

The more that I hear and read about these two accidents are concerning. It's concerning for me who often fly on a Boeing product. It's concerning me as a Boeing shareholder looking at my Proxy Card for the Annual Meeting and wondering if it's time to register a vote of "no confidence" in Management.

Company's financials look good, but what is the corporate culture? Is there some regulatory "coziness" between the Company and the FAA that is a contributing factor? Is trying to rush the development and deployment of an aircraft that competes with a similar Airbus aircraft a contributing factor?

The Boeing 737 Max is an incredible plane. Before the plane was grounded, all of the airborne planes in the same takeoff trajectory were flying without issue as per all trackable data. There was absolutely no reason to ground these planes as there was no design defect. The source code was never reviewed by an independent third party of the alleged MCAS failures. It would take a lengthy document to discuss what happened and actual possession of the airplane and a full review of the source code and all related electrical equipment onboard the plane to prove what really did happen but my belief without those is that the crashes were not an actual specific 737 Max design fault nor caused by the existing MCAS system in place and involves geopolitical interests such as Boeing being a huge Department of Defense contractor and other conflicting interests. If the MCAS system was really the issue, the fix would have been to completely disable the system and further flight training programs to know how to fly these jets without the system enabled. But instead, we see a huge delay even after they allege a software fix will resolve the problem. Its bogus. The public won’t fly these jets now and Boeing can’t admit what really happened. So I predict the 737 Max jets will likely be scrapped and recycled and perhaps some parts reutilized but they will never fly again. Airbus will get all the narrow body orders until Boeing comes up with a replacement jet, perhaps named as the 797. I would be really surprised if the 737 Max gets placed back into service even though design was safe to begin with as Boeing will do better by introducing a replacement jet which would be better for them at this point in time.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Reminds me in a way of the DC-10 troubles after the Chicago Crash when people were afraid to fly on them after that!

I flew many times on them, Fine planes and due to the lack of passengers after the Crash, I was upgraded to FC Regularly as a Frequent Flyer!!!

 

[Devil's Advocate]

In my view the original spec DC-10 could be case study in leverage over logic and profits over planning, but later variants eventually corrected many of the design flaws and were moderately successful. Too little too late for MD though. One benefit the 737 Max has over the DC-10 (and other flawed designs) is that it remains similar in size, shape, and name to other aircraft passengers are still flying without worry or fear. Frequent travelers and aviation enthusiasts can obviously tell the difference on sight alone, but your uncle and grandmother probably won't notice the differences unless they ask. Some safety modifications, testing and executive promises, a different name (Max Plus?), and a public relations campaign featuring pilots vouching for safety will persuade many passengers to eventually return. The primary problem, at least as I see it, is that merely cleaning house at Boeing won't actually change the dynamic that promotes safety shortcuts in the airline industry. In my view the conflict of interest at the FAA (regulate and promote) needs to be removed from their charter and replaced with a directive to test and approve designs without trusting profit driven companies to keep passengers safe from profit driven risks. Unfortunately, we live in the era where many people believe almost all business is good business and almost all regulation is bad regulation, so we're virtually guaranteed to see yet another round of safety lapses in the future.

 

[ehbowen]

The Boeing 737 Max is an incredible plane. Before the plane was grounded, all of the airborne planes in the same takeoff trajectory were flying without issue as per all trackable data. There was absolutely no reason to ground these planes as there was no design defect.

If there was/is no design defect, then why is it physically impossible to hand-crank the stabilizer trim back to a safe flight attitude if MCAS (or for that matter, any other system on the aircraft) wrongly runs away with the trim controls?

Edit To Add: And, oh yes, why is it that MCAS in its final form had to have FOUR TIMES the authority which Boeing engineers originally anticipated...and why was the FAA never notified of that "little" discrepancy?

 

[jis]

And why was the MCAS on the Max using input from a single AoA and not multiple ones as in the other uses of MCAS in a couple of previous cases e.g. in 767 derivatives?

 

[Trogdor]

That’s one of the most confusing, nonsensical posts I’ve read in a long time. The 737MAX is an incredible plane and there’s no reason for it to be grounded, yet for some reason that involves Boeing being a contractor for the DoD, every plane will be scrapped and Boeing has to cede all narrowbody commercial jet orders to Airbus for the next decade.

Riiiiiight.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Have any of our Member Pilots flown this Plane or the simulator? Boots on the ground info is always best!!!

 

[adamj023]

If there was/is no design defect, then why is it physically impossible to hand-crank the stabilizer trim back to a safe flight attitude if MCAS (or for that matter, any other system on the aircraft) wrongly runs away with the trim controls?

Edit To Add: And, oh yes, why is it that MCAS in its final form had to have FOUR TIMES the authority which Boeing engineers originally anticipated...and why was the FAA never notified of that "little" discrepancy?

The plane correctly adjusts trim controls and the true cause was being masked by other causes where outside factors are to blame. The actual internal controls function as expected. If outside causation happens then manually adjusting the trim controls gives control back to the pilots. If the MCAS system was the issue then Boeing could have required all pilots to manually control the plane instead and disabled MCAS altogether which would be a permanent fix from the beginning. This would have been relatively easy to implement and would have required modifications that could have been started much earlier.

 

[jis]

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/29/boe...n-garamendi-warns.html?__source=facebook|main

 

[adamj023]

Power flows through Washington DC and there is a lot of corruption and incompetence. If it was up to me I would break up Boeing as a company as it is too large and unwieldy as a company.

Boeings key commercial aviation product as of now is the 787. Airbus is doing better with the A32X derivatives with upcoming LR and XLR, A330 is selling as well as A350 and the former Bombardier which is now A220 for its regional jets. Boeing is selling mostly 787 and a few 777. A380 was doing well in the past but I think sales are slow now along with the Boeing 747-8. The 737 Max is a bust. I would eliminate all 737 Max production if I was Boeing and reallocate to the 787 and future 797 perhaps or they can bring back the 737-700,737-800,737-900 with a refresh.

 

[Dakota 400]

Reminds me in a way of the DC-10 troubles after the Chicago Crash when people were afraid to fly on them after that!

I do remember that and I will add the L-1011 to that list. I flew on both, a TWA L-1011 and a United DC-10. Both were comfortable planes on which to fly.

 

[Dakota 400]

Remember, Sec Chao is Moscow Mitch's Spouse!! Where's he on this???

The Boeing issue has to be a very insignificant dinner table conversation between the two.

 

[Ryan]

my belief without those is that the crashes were not an actual specific 737 Max design fault nor caused by the existing MCAS system in place

You've already demonstrated in other areas that your "beliefs" contradict actual evidence and veer wildly into conspiracy theorist playground territory.

Care to try and prove this one, or should we just continue to trust your thoughts and feelings?

 

[railiner]

If the airliner market has strong demand, and in view of Boeing's woes....perhaps now might be an opportune time for Lockheed Martin to get back into the market?
Curious what other's think of that....

 

[Devil's Advocate]

If the airliner market has strong demand, and in view of Boeing's woes....perhaps now might be an opportune time for Lockheed Martin to get back into the market? Curious what other's think of that....

My perperspective: The L-1011 nearly bankrupted Lockheed and any passenger aircraft designs they still possess will be decades behind the rest of the mainline commercial market, an industry which is driven by a completely different concept of cost and efficiency from Lockheed's military customers. Boeing has been allowed to grow so large that our government will be forced to keep them viable with taxpayer bailouts no matter what they do or who they harm. Even if Lockheed was willing to risk everything to reenter the commercial airline market, by the time they caught up with Airbus and Boeing (in design, financing, testing, manufacturing, outsourcing, and sales) any remaining backlog would be insufficient to maintain sustained profitability.

 

[adamj023]

You've already demonstrated in other areas that your "beliefs" contradict actual evidence and veer wildly into conspiracy theorist playground territory.

Care to try and prove this one, or should we just continue to trust your thoughts and feelings?

i normally wouldn’t respond to these comments and was about to ignore it. With that being said, my comments never did any of these things.

My points were clear. If an MCAS issue was affecting the jets, system could have been permanently disabled and pilots could have hand flown these planes with stringent flight training procedures. Different aircraft designs have different flight characteristics and pilots are trained specifically to equipment types they are certified for. And if this was true why issue a software fix instead of permanently disabling the system and making sure pilots can fly the jets.

Before the groundings, and after the two crashes I saw all movements of 737 Max planes and on takeoff which is where both crashes happened, no Max in the sky of all of them flying had any deviations caused by a failed MCAS system as relayed by any ads-b, radar, air traffic control data and so on and so forth. A failed trim control would have showed the plane making inappropriate maneuvers which would have been seen. Data is publicly available from multiple sources including Flightaware, Flightradar24 and others who retrieve data from multiple methods. The groundings were initiated from the federal government.

I attest to the fact that I would have myself flown on the Max without issue before the groundings on American Airlines for instance and never thought the planes should have been grounded and if if it was not grounded I still would have flown on the Max. I would never have flown on Ethiopian or Lion Air which are not the same quality as other airlines and also are in nations which have poor, well not sure exactly how to say or put this but poorly developed militaries and aviation systems as they can lose control of a jet like the 737 Max easily. We saw that also with Malaysia airlines as well where they lost a jet.

Data on all the air communications and flight data recording units on all Max flown flights would have told the true story. NY Times is full of trash and since when does an honorable news organization put an article behind a paywall. I have caught them in so many lies over the years and I do not pay for any of their content.