I don’t necessarily agree that the 737-MAX fiasco was a result of climate hysteria. Yes, the new design reduced emissions, but it did that by reducing fuel consumption, which is intrinsically a desirable goal for airlines. I’m sure that Boeing wanted to claim that it was lower emissions, for PR purposes, but fuel efficiency has always been a driver of new-aircraft design.
BTW, got home from DC yesterday morning. I had quite a week at IAC, but posting may return to the (subdued) normal this week.
My take on all this is that it’s more like a stretch too far. They’d already stretched the original 737 design a long long way while retaining decent flying characteristics. This time, they decided to accept bad high-AOA airframe behavior (how bad? not clear, but hints are a ham-handed pilot could put it into an unrecoverable stall on transition from takeoff to climbout) addressed primarily by slapping a REALLY poorly conceived digital patch over it. No new pilot training to deal with the significantly changed flight characteristics was a *feature*. Right…
Boeing’s HQ move from Seattle to Chicago a while back looked to me (to a lot of people) like Marketing counting coup on taking over from the airplane people. Looks to me like those chickens are coming home to roost now.
A bad design would have shown up in more places. A bad reaction to a little understood system, would be rare and widely separated. Both crews left power at max, and one even turned MCAS back on after they turned it off. Still looks a lot like pilot error. That said, I was not there, nor did I know any of the crew members involved.
A system should not be that prone to pilot error.
If a pilot extends the landing gear, then retracts it before touchdown, is it still pilot error?
If you are an engineer, there should be no such thing as pilot error. If you are a pilot, everything is pilot error.
Anything else is madness. Take responsibility for anything you can make better. Even if the other guy is stupid.
And the flight manual should inform the pilots:
1) That the system exists
2) Provide a basic description of how it works
3) How to disable or otherwise react if it starts doing things it’s not supposed to do
None of that was initially done by Boeing.
How many crashes have been caused by pilots forgetting to extend flaps and slats?
In the commercial world, the computers have now been programmed to throw a fit if they detect takeoff power on the ground without flaps and slats, but even so, a few enterprising pilots have managed to find ways around the protections.
What amazes me about the whole MCAS thing is how much smaller of an issue it is than the automation issues of Airbus. Lots of people have died because of software issues, where the pilots had no idea what was going on, and yet there was never this level of furor. It makes me suspect that something else is going on.
Coupla points RE “pilot error”, Art. If as I recall pilots weren’t routinely told MCAS existed and how to deal with it failing in training, it’s hard to fault them in these crashes. (Though on the Ethiopian flight they should have known anyway, since it had already happened once.) And the amazingly dumb things about how MCAS was set up – IIRC it only looked at one of two AOA sensors at a time with no sanity checking, plus again IIRC the “AOA Sensors Disagree” warning light in the cockpit was an extra-cost option – can hardly be blamed on the pilots.
Henry, my and your lack of knowledge of content of Lionair and Ethyopian airlines training programs have led us to a disagreement. We have come to our respective positions based on a shortage of information.
Art, I have seen reported in the press in multiple places over months of time that MAX pilots in general were not initially informed of the existence of MCAS, let alone trained how to deal with it misbehaving. Until that’s proved incorrect, I’m inclined to think that only one of us is making assertions about pilot error based on a shortage of information.
Talk to a jet pilot. Ask them what the steps are for recovery from a nose-low unusual attitude. You will find the press has been mis-informed on this matter.
With a 737, it’s actually pretty easy. If the trim gets adjusted by any means, a pair of large wheels next to the throttles spin around noisily. These wheels are the manual backup trim controls, and worst case, then can be stopped by simply having one pilot grip and hold one of them.
“Both crews left power at max, and one even turned MCAS back on after they turned it off.”
If what I’ve read is true, they turned it back on because the only way to turn it off was to disable electric assist on the trim wheel, and it was physically impossible for the pilot to turn the trim wheel back without the electric assist, due to forces on the trim tabs in the environment where they were flying.
And they presumably kept power high because they needed all the power they had to keep flying with the trim completely out of whack?
Edward, what you have read is not true.
A bad design would have shown up in more places.
The 737-MAX has been out for two and a half years and grounded since March. It hasn’t had time to show up in more places yet.
Thanks Rand. I heard this excuse recently and found it annoying as it is counterproductive. Climate change or its hysteria had nothing to do with Boeing making poor design choices. I’m also still laughing at those blaming the pilots, because if I’m Airbus, this just adds to my sells. You can buy 737 Max and spend more money training your crew, or you can buy a 320 Neo with better efficiency and less training. The Boeing guys make the argument for Airbus. Boeing needs to own this issue and quit blaming others. That’s the only way to regain the trust of airlines and passengers.
Alas, I think they are hoping for a bailout, which under Trump, isn’t likely to happen.
Geez, I expected better in this place from the aerospace engineers.
No, Henry, MCAS is out of the loop while the flaps are down so can’t do anything during the transition from takeoff to climbout.
There are 5 other systems that can cause the stab trim to move and runaway stab trim is a memory item.
MCAS only can trigger when flaps are up and the airplane is being hand flown. It was using one AoA sensor which detected if the pilot was pulling in to a high AoA situation and rolled in some down trim to increase the backwards stick force required because without MCAS the airplane didn’t quite meet the certification requirement for slope of the stick force vs AoA in that very small part of the envelope, which would NEVER normally be encountered in service.
In the accident airplane from LionAir the AoA sensor being used by MCAS was faulty, detected by crew the day before. Supernumery pilot in jump seat was actually a pilot not airplane driver and saved the day and yet somehow the system wasn’t fixed properly before launching the airplane next day with airplane drivers in charge. As soon as the preliminary investigation was in Boeing warned the operators.
No excuse for the Ethiopian crash.
Before praising Airbus take at look at their appalling human interfaces in the cockpit like side sticks that aren’t linked and throttles which don’t move when the autopilot is controlling them. Also rudder controls which can easily break off the vertical stab. They’ve had plenty of crashes too.
Note also the A320NEO and A321NEO with similarly larger engine nacelles both now have airworthiness directives limiting C of G envelope pending a 2020 FCS software update because a flight crew may have difficulty controlling pitch in the event of a late go round. Airbus assures the world this is not related to the 737MAX problem, though.
The way things are going, the current crop of airliners going through development will be the last, as gun shy regulators are likely to seriously delay certification of anything new, completely destroying any business case.
Mike – I was going on comments in news reports about the AOA problems being relevant at takeoff. Additional detail appreciated.
Though, mind, what you say only makes MCAS as implemented look even worse – from what you say, they killed hundreds of people to save a very minor bit of pilot retraining in a very obscure corner of the flight regime.
That said, I don’t quite see where I “praised Airbus” here. Implicitly praised Boeing as it was back when airplane people ran the show, yes. But Airbus? Puh-lease. As far as I’m concerned, all this mess has done is prove Boeing has also fallen to Airbus’s depths in building airliners where the computer can decide to fly the airplane into the ground before an average pilot can figure out what it’s doing and how to stop it.
Henry, I think Mike was referring to my comments re Airbus. Then again, I wasn’t praising Airbus. I was noting, as you are, “from what you say, they killed hundreds of people to save a very minor bit of pilot retraining in a very obscure corner of the flight regime.” That’s how I read the argument as a neutral third part. However, if I was an airline, I’d see Boeing shifting blame to my company and pilots, which would make me think about switching to Airbus.
I’m no fan of Airbus and avoid flying on them when I can. But the issue here is Boeing’s (or maybe its supporters) response, and to reiterate my point; Boeing needs to own this in order to regain trust. Climate change had nothing to do with this. What did was Airbus delivery of the Neo and Boeing’s competitive response.
The armchair aerospace engineers going on an on about “oh, noes, the 737 is a 1960s design and Boeing was too cheap to start with a clean sheet of paper” are beginning to annoy me.
Engineering is all about making decisions among different design compromises. All commercial airliners are a collection of design compromises.
Engines under the wings? Increased thrust can pitch the nose up. Loss of an engine can yaw the plane enough to require a much larger vertical fin and rudder. Engines in the rear fuselage? You then put the horizontal tail up high where you can get into an unrecoverable “deep stall” from the disrupted airflow off the wings hitting the tail. You also put a lot more weight in back, which gets worse with the heavier, more fuel efficient high bypass engines, which creates balance problems when the plane is lightly loaded.
Why didn’t they keep the 757 in production? They tell me the 757 has a much bigger wing than a 737 (or the A32x models for all that matters) — it climbs much faster and higher with a heavier fuel load than a 737 that airlines are pressing into intercontinental service — but that comes at a cost of less fuel efficiency?
It appears that the trouble with the MCAS is about a faulty angle-of-attack vane calling for repeated “shots” of elevator down trim. The interaction of the MCAS with a faulty A-O-A reading appears to be something the engineers along with their FAA certification oversight didn’t anticipate. So fix this, limit the amount of MCAS down trim to something the pilots can muscle-override — the MCAS was intended to only restore nose-down feel on approach to the stall, not to outright prevent stall entry?
But now both Boeing and especially the FAA “have egg on their face”, meaning they are too embarrassed and fearful to act, fix this plane and get it back in the air and move on.
And there is this thing about basic airmanship. Part of the “drill” of finding your noise pointed earthward and recovering from that unusual attitude is to “chop the power” — I mean, this is part of the private pilot certificate training syllabus? And the pilots on the ill-fated planes didn’t do that?
Airbus had that thing about a pitot tube icing up giving a false airspeed reading and Boeing has this thing about an AOA failing and giving a false stall warning. Both of those situations leading to fatal accidents are recoverable by a pilot with presence-of-mind to follow their training, false airspeed or false stall warning can create confusion working against that training really, really fast, and a pitot tube that doesn’t ice and an AOA that doesn’t go haywire, these are basic quality control measures to have an airworthy airplane?
I am on the Boeing fandom e-mail list (I put my name on it because yes, I thought the Air Force should purchase Boeing and not EADS Airbus-derivative tankers, so argue with me about that), and I got this bullet pointed list of some 20 things Boeing is either going to fix on the plane or fix with their “processes.”
Gee, there must be a book out there writing about how if you have a 20-item bullet-pointed list about how to “fix your processes” to atone for loss of life occurring in accidents like what happened to NASA, you are on the wrong track?
Note also there are few similarities between the original 737 and the MAX.
The original got high bypass engines in 1982 or so (CFM56), then in the mid 1990’s, new wings and tail. The MAX is actually a redone mid 1990’s airplane, just as the Airbus NEO’s are revamped late 1980’s airplanes.
Functioning aircraft + qualified pilots + clear weather = two crashes with no survivors.
Apparently, at least one pilot raised issues that were ignored.
Boeing made a series of decisions, every one of which was wrong. Every one of which made the plane less predictable. The FAA was either talked into agreeing, too ignorant to recognize the issue or never informed. The airlines are willing to do anything it takes to have competent pilots as long as it doesn’t cost them anything. This is called a safety culture.
They may have been “qualified” pilots but were they competent? Lets see: The big wheel next to your leg starts whizzing around making coffee grinder noises as soon as the flaps come up at about 1000 feet after takeoff. Is this the normal behaviour? If no, grab the wheel. It over rides the trim motor. Or put the flaps back down, reduce power, stop increasing airspeed. Hit stab trim cutout switches. Manually trim airplane, return to airport. I can’t help but think these crews and passengers were all going to die the next time a stab trim runaway occurred for any reason.
That was my point, they had met all necessary qualifications at the time. The U.S. is running out of very well trained ex-military pilots. Expect to see more and more “pilot academy” pilots trained to absolute minimum standards and hours here as well.
Add the cost of aircraft time, especially multi engine transport to the average student debt. The airlines are either going to have to spend real money on training or we will find equally qualified pilots as the norm here.
I have been working my way through the NYT article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-crashes.html
So far nothing on how Trump caused it but lots of information.
It’s not that I want this to happen, but it is easy to predict this would happen:
“It was only last week when we reported Florida-based Spirit Airlines bought 100 new Airbus SE A320neos. The low-cost air carrier was contemplating between Airbus SE A320neo and Boeing 737 Max planes, but since the 737 Max has been grounded across the world for nearly eight months due to severe design flaws, Spirit went with Airbus. ”
As Stephen Green notes at Instapundit: “Ultimately, trust keeps passenger jets flying every bit as much as the Bernoulli effect does.”