Boeing 737s Grounded

TRocket said:
I realize the information I have is limited, but from what I do know, these crashes could have been avoided by simply....disengaging the autopilot!
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Nobody really knows anything about these crashes, outside the investigators. But, if you are implying that the MCAS could have been disabled by turning off the autopilot, that is exactly 180° out from correct. The MCAS in question that everyone is talking about is disabled when the autopilot is engaged. So, if you are assuming that the MCAS is to blame (I’m not saying it is, I’m saying if), then turning on the autopilot would have disabled that system.

TRocket said:
Seems a lot like that Asian airline that crashed at SFO when they missed the runway short on a CAVU day because the ILS was out....
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It’s nothing like that at all. Except they both both involve a Boeing logic system that wasn’t described fully in the system manuals and was unknown to pilots until incidents started happening. Then Boeing decided to publish information on the FLCH trap (Asiana accident) that you can find yourself in.

Granted, I’m not saying that these guys shouldn’t have controlled their airspeed on a visual approach and not hit the sea wall, but the Boeing ‘logic’ in this one case surely didn’t help things at all.
 
SkyDog58 said:
There is a lot of speculation and fear driving both the conversation and decision making on this issue here on POA. But there is very little actual knowledge on the part of most people doing the talking and even making the decisions posting.

I'd still fly on them.
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FIFY

When China and Ethiopia grounded the MAX... sure that was political and knee-jerk. When other, Western countries started banning them days later... I’m not sure that there wan’t information being giving to their Aviation Authorities by the investigators. Now that the FAA (along with Boeing) has fallen, I’m not sure that there isn’t something that is knowledge-based.

But, I’m speculating along with everyone else. I guess we’ll know when we know.
 
IDK but i would fly the darter ------------ and not fly big 1 Till its all figured out just
saying :confused:
 
Greg Bockelman said:
What can possibly be different about the AIRFRAME that would have any bearing on these accidents?
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fuselage length.....and new engines & placement....and new software. But, Boeing sez they were minor design enhancements that only required differences training. ;)
 
Greg Bockelman said:
What can possibly be different about the AIRFRAME that would have any bearing on these accidents?
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The engines are mounted further forward which results in an increased nose up moment when already pitched up. Hence the electronic gizmo to pitch down by "trimming" the horizontal stabiliser.

The engines were moved forward clear of the wings and raised to accommodate the increased diameter of the new engines.

It is strongly suspected that said electronic gizmo was involved with the Lion Air crash. The flight profile of this new incident is almost identical (per flightradar24) to the first one.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/13/world/boeing-737-crash-investigation.html

Lion Air first. Rate of climb.
vspeed-chart-lionair-slice-600.png



vspeed-chart-ethiopia-600.png
 
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Some more smoke.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5766398-ASRS-Reports-for-737-max8.html
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5766398/ASRS-Reports-for-737-max8.pdf
"Contributed by: Cary Aspinwall, The Dallas Morning News"
HTML has some summary material (metadata) not in the pdf.

ASRS Reports for 737 max8
A 737 Max 8 captain noted problems on takeoff
An unidentified captain says the Airworthiness Directive does not address the problem in November 2018.
An airline captain called the flight manual for the Boeing 737 Max 8 "inadequate and almost criminally insufficient."
A co-pilot reported an altitude deviation in November.
Co-pilot said after engaging autopilot, aircraft pitched nose down.
Co-pilot reported that aircraft pitched nose down on departure.
A Boeing 737 Max 8 goes nose down suddenly during takeoff, pilot reports incident.
 
dtuuri said:
How many other POTUS's have hired chief pilots or captains for jet aircraft and helicopters? I mean, actually interviewed them, flown with them, had meetings and lengthy operational conversations with them? How many others have acquired and outfitted aircraft with equipment, including technology options, and participated in the financial decision making involved. Or bought an airline? None, I think is the answer. Anybody else doing this would tempt me to think "politics" drove the decision.
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And do you believe that helping to decide what aircraft to buy and what its cabin decor will be bestows any level of expertise on actual aircraft systems or flight dynamics? My experiences with maintenance and operations departments of both airlines and corporations tell me that the CEOs of both very rarely have a sophisticated understanding of aircraft systems unless they rose through the ranks at the airline.
 
SkyDog58 said:
And do you believe that helping to decide what aircraft to buy and what its cabin decor will be bestows any level of expertise on actual aircraft systems or flight dynamics? My experiences with maintenance and operations departments of both airlines and corporations tell me that the CEOs of both very rarely have a sophisticated understanding of aircraft systems unless they rose through the ranks at the airline.
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Since you asked, my experience is that the CEOs of small companies, in terms of employees, have many conversations with the Chief Pilot about operational aspects and pros and cons of various equipment. Chief Pilots better be able to communicate the salient facts in an understandable way for Chief Executives to be comfortable too, after all, their lives are in the balance and their time is precious.
 
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Briar Rabbit said:
Largest airplane I am familiar enough to want to fly as PIC is a Cessna 421, so this is probably a stupid question - but if all else fails can you turn the master switch off killing all the electronic controls and manually fly a 737? Pilots already alerted the tower they had problems and were coming back. No big deal if the radios are off unless they are IFR?
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No "Master Switch" in the same sense, but the primary components of the electrical system can be shut off until you're down to the bare essentials. It'd still be flyable, and is something that occasionally gets practiced in the sim. But nonetheless, in the case of a stabilizer trim runaway, the 737 has a pair of switches that essentially serve the same function as pulling the circuit breakers to the electric trim in your 421. It's a much less disruptive solution than powering down electrical busses. :)
 
Checkout_my_Six said:
fuselage length.....and new engines & placement....and new software. But, Boeing sez they were minor design enhancements that only required differences training. ;)
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The pointy tailcone makes the fuselage a few feet longer on the ass end, but it'd still fall under ''essentially the same', at least to me. Are you and SkyDog arguing that this thing should have a separate type? I would have preferred *more* differences training, but from a pilot's perspective Greg isn't wrong - this thing isn't wildly different from an -800. It flies the same, our procedures and checklists are identical, and the manner in which we use the automation is exactly the same. Yes, the engines take forever and day to start. The screens are bigger. It likes to taxi fast because the engines idle higher. Don't accidentally put the gear back down after cleaning up the flaps. But does it need its own long course? Nah.
 
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Huckster79 said:
That’s probably the only thing we agree on in this thread! Lol
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My whole thing with this crash is, it just seems like a "when in panic, when in doubt, yell in circles scream and shout" as opposed to a thoughtful fact based review

When they grounded the 787 I got that.. the things were spontaneously combusting. When they grounded the DC-10 we had baggage doors blowing off and engines ripping off. But this, I'm sorry, but this just stinks of poor pilot training .. a couple pilots couldn't figure out how to deal with a trim issue and crashed.. The fact that two airlines with dodgy safety records at best crashed them and yet the orders of magnitude more planes that were flying in the US / Canada were flying around just fine tells you something

Oh well. Good time to buy Boeing stock at least!
 
Another reason the media sucks.. this is New York Times.. I made a snapshot of it:

upload_2019-3-14_12-12-12.png

That is PATENTLY false. Boeing planes are not grounded.. one type of model is. Is it so hard to specify that in the headline? This just feeds into the media hysterics. The average moron is going to read that, see they're flying on a "Boeing" plane (be it another 737, 757, 767, etc.) and have a panic attack
 
Spring Ford said:
Some more smoke.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5766398-ASRS-Reports-for-737-max8.html
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5766398/ASRS-Reports-for-737-max8.pdf
"Contributed by: Cary Aspinwall, The Dallas Morning News"
HTML has some summary material (metadata) not in the pdf.

ASRS Reports for 737 max8
A 737 Max 8 captain noted problems on takeoff
An unidentified captain says the Airworthiness Directive does not address the problem in November 2018.
An airline captain called the flight manual for the Boeing 737 Max 8 "inadequate and almost criminally insufficient."
A co-pilot reported an altitude deviation in November.
Co-pilot said after engaging autopilot, aircraft pitched nose down.
Co-pilot reported that aircraft pitched nose down on departure.
A Boeing 737 Max 8 goes nose down suddenly during takeoff, pilot reports incident.
Click to expand...


The reports unfortunately are in reality very mundane ...
Reality is most aircraft have had some kind of teething problems... Unfortunately for some time at the inception of real world service..or even after giving yomen service for a few years..THEN Horribly unfortunate when there's loss of life until some mod or addition of is needed to cure the problem that the powers to be didn't think of...sometimes crew induced "Hey I've been on this thing for a while we can skip that part or it's been doing that since FLLS or watch this...sometimes crew contamination from diff model...etc etc.
Aircraft with modifications of "Stub 61 panel", "No in flight spoiler mod only main wheel spin up" "Lower compartment door mod" "Sioux city mod equipment check list" etc etc...all great mods all needed to routinely fly the aircraft with some reasonable degree of safety... unfortunately not until there was loss of life were they added.

I'm sure we agree the -100 to max has many differences..kinda looks the same , make a left at the entrance to the pointy end to operate....surely not requiring a diff type rating...surely a differences addendum..or like, maybe more than a few words...surely more than just your hotel info while on your first trip to LaPaz kinda thing.

The 8 what I ...speacilized in the beginning...ok I'm old..but you flew it...flight mgmt lol , FMS lol...had some horrible teething problems but ended up a remarkable aircraft...ok I'm bias

Aircraft like the 10 and MD-11 your a bit spooked and miffed to say the least at the loss of life and initial design..your to busy talking ..to think about it...automation ..and then after it's teething it morphs into a pretty dam good machine.

Not to say in certain parts of the world you may not end a trip and head to the hotel to commercial out the following day....there are some places you just want to stay on the aircraft to head home.

The Maximo will fly again ....soon....albeit with a revision or 2 in the FOM and AOM or like.

But hey if it's a Boeing I'm not going ! J/k The 75 is a good kite....

I'm not a big ETOPS fan I like my engine out etp and second engine out etp....ive been spoiled, im old and if it was less than 4 or 3 starting out on occasion I wouldn't be writing this now. Yea yea yea reliability and all....but that's another story. The sun is up it's time to sleep say goodnight Gracie.....good night gracie.

God Speed.
 
Tantalum said:
.. a couple pilots couldn't figure out how to deal with a trim issue and crashed..
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I find it hard to accept that as a definitive answer. The fact is we just don't know at this time what is going on and two seemingly identical catastrophic crashes of identical new aircraft certainly warrants the grounding until we find out.

As for the design differences of the Max they obviously created, in Boeing's mind, a need for MCAS for whatever reason. I'm not a software guy so I'm sure this is way more complex than I am imagining but I struggle to understand, if you are going to allow automated control of stab trim based at least partially on AOA data, how you can do it with only two sensors? If one goes bad how does the system determine which one it is?

A couple of other weird things: this happened four days ago and the boxes are "being taken to Paris" for analysis. How? By a boat down the Nile river? In the Indonesian crash the FDR was found but not the CVR. Aren't they both mounted on the same rack?
 
Silvaire said:
I find it hard to accept that as a definitive answer. The fact is we just don't know at this time what is going on and two seemingly identical catastrophic crashes of identical new aircraft certainly warrants the grounding until we find out.
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I assume the electric trim servos can always be disconnected or disabled. So if the plane is having vertical pitch oscillations that are induced by trim or AP servos.. can they not be shut off and the plane hand flown?

Silvaire said:
As for the design differences of the Max they obviously created, in Boeing's mind, a need for MCAS for whatever reason. I'm not a software guy so I'm sure this is way more complex than I am imagining but I struggle to understand, if you are going to allow automated control of stab trim based at least partially on AOA data, how you can do it with only two sensors? If one goes bad how does the system determine which one it is?
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This is where I think the blame on Boeing is fair.. your point is correct.. how will the system know which to trust? If the assumption is the pilot will make that judgment then surely the POH (or whatever the equivalent is called for big jets) should have specifically detailed that and pilots been trained on it

It just takes a few minutes of reading the comments from many news outlets and you can see that this fire is being stoked heavily for click bait and political reasons. I'd still get on a MAX in the states

I mean, 100 people die *every day* in car crashes in the states.. nevermind worldwide. There is definitely an element of hysteria here.
 
Tantalum said:
I assume the electric trim servos can always be disconnected or disabled. So if the plane is having vertical pitch oscillations that are induced by trim or AP servos.. can they not be shut off and the plane hand flown?...
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Yes, there are a pair of cut-out switches on the pedestal and every airliner has them. There's also a standard procedure for stab trim runaway and that's why it's hard for me to understand how two crews could spend several minutes fighting this and never flip those switches. There has to be something more to this story.
 
I lost my trust Boeing has this handled on there own when they “forgot” to bring pilots up to speed on this new gizmo... I don’t know the intricacies of flying heavy iron but I know the 737 driver I spoke with was livid they didn’t tell them more about this- which leads me like to similiar speculation as #Silvaire that there’s more to this than just hitting or forgetting to hit a switch. If it were that simple why would that 737 driver I talked with have been so upset they weren’t told about it?
 
Tantalum said:
the pilot will make that judgment then surely the POH (or whatever the equivalent is called for big jets) should have specifically detailed that and pilots been trained on it
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As I understand it, the MCAS uses existing controls to change the stabilizer trim, i.e., it did not add anything new to the mechanical control system. As such, the existing emergency procedure for a "runaway stabilizer" is still valid regardless what item commanded the stabilizer to move. The AD last Nov reiterated this existing emergency procedure and added more supporting info but the actual procedure remained the same.

So the question(s) remain: in the Lion Air accident, they may not have known of the MCAS, but did they follow the correct stabilizer emergency procedure or not? And with this same incident, what where the actions of the previous Lion crews when they encountered this same problem on 4 previous flights with the stabilizer trim? In the Ethiopia accident, they knew about the MCAS (hopefully), but did they apply the proper corrective procedures?
 
Silvaire said:
that's why it's hard for me to understand how two crews could spend several minutes fighting this and never flip those switches. There has to be something more to this story
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There are also crews that shut off the wrong engine in an engine out, more than once mind you, and crash airlines into sea walls on clear VFR days.. with instructor pilots on board. Crews making stupid mistakes also tend to come from a different culture. A quick review of Lion Air's accidents will not inspire confidence. And, statistically, two events do not make a trend. Plus, after take off, with confusion in the cockpit, sometimes the most obvious thing goes missing.. IE, they're wrestling with controls, trying to understand the AP, etc. It's a confusing time up there if the plane is doing something you were not expecting it to just seconds into the air. Pilots make mistakes, heck, the Air France guys ultimately stalled the airliner and couldn't fly pitch / power. It's an insidious thing, and we're indicting an entire aircraft manufacturer for it
 
Greg Bockelman said:
The airframe is not significantly different than the earlier versions.
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You don't consider a pitch instability requiring MCAS (a "bandaid" if you will) to be a significant difference?

If pilots were not even informed of MCAS, one might imagine they also were not informed of the pitch instability. Were the simulators even programmed to accurately represent the new model's handling characteristics?
 
dmspilot said:
Were the simulators even programmed to accurately represent the new model's handling characteristics?
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Can't speak for the others, but AA does not have any MAX simulators.
 
dmspilot said:
If pilots were not even informed of MCAS, one might imagine they also were not informed of the pitch instability.
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Curious. Even if all pilots were informed of the MCAS and the "pitch instability," what alternate procedure/method would they have performed other than the existing "Runaway Stabilizer" procedure found in the AFM or equivalent operations manual?
 
Just a thought, has anyone ever considered requiring something along the lines of having airline pilots complete one entire flight by hand flying... all the way from takeoff to landing every month or bi-weekly or something along those lines?
 
cowman said:
Just a thought, has anyone ever considered requiring something along the lines of having airline pilots complete one entire flight by hand flying... all the way from takeoff to landing every month or bi-weekly or something along those lines?
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Yea it’s called a deferred autopilot. We had one two nights ago. That’s when I did my captain duty and delegated the responsibility to the FO! Our company data showed we hand fly on average for about 6 minutes each flight. Depending on the airspace, I’ll hand fly up to 10K then turn on the AP because it gets boring. If I’m flying out of busy airspace, I usually throw on the AP at our minimum altitude (600ft AGL) so I don’t overload the pilot monitoring. There’s a time and place to use and not use the AP.
 
Bell206 said:
Curious. Even if all pilots were informed of the MCAS and the "pitch instability," what alternate procedure/method would they have performed other than the existing "Runaway Stabilizer" procedure found in the AFM or equivalent operations manual?
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An adverse aircraft handling characteristic isn't a "procedure" but I think an awareness of the issue would be the first step.
 
Tantalum said:
...It's an insidious thing, and we're indicting an entire aircraft manufacturer for it
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I don't think we are. Let's go back 50 years and imagine two brand new airliners crash months apart under suspiciously similar circumstances. I'm pretty sure the aircraft would have been grounded pending investigation. That's all that is going on here. The only indictment is due to the reluctance of Boeing to initiate or agree to this. It's basically a PR screw up at this point and the investigation could possibly fully exonerate Boeing but the fact that there is some kind of "fix" in the works following the Lionair crash that has not been implemented yet puts them on sketchy ground.

Bottom line is we need to figure out what's going on and correct it even if it ends up that these two crashes are completely unrelated and this is simply a matter of coincidence.
 
dmspilot said:
An adverse aircraft handling characteristic isn't a "procedure" but I think an awareness of the issue would be the first step.
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As you suspected, we weren't told anything about it.
 
Silvaire said:
Bottom line is we need to figure out what's going on and correct it
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Yup, and unfortunately Boeing may have missed an opportunity to prevent this back when the Lion Air plane crashed.. but I think the "fix" lies more in some better software documentation and ultimately pilot training, as opposed to a discreet design flaw in the aircraft itself
 
Juliet Hotel said:
Because of the tall nose gear?
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Heh - it was an inside joke. The -800s had a three position gear handle - UP, OFF, and DOWN. At least at my company, once the flaps were selected up, part of the flow was to move the gear handle 'down' from the UP position to the OFF position. The MAX only has the two positions for the gear - UP and DOWN. The running joke is that someone really used to the three position gear handle would instinctively reach up and move the gear handle on the MAX back to what they intended to be the OFF position - which since such a position doesn't exist - would put the gear back down. As far as I know *nobody* has done this, but we brief it all the time. Nobody wants to be the first. :p
 
Bell206 said:
Curious. Even if all pilots were informed of the MCAS and the "pitch instability," what alternate procedure/method would they have performed other than the existing "Runaway Stabilizer" procedure found in the AFM or equivalent operations manual?
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The best hypothesis that I have seen is from Slugo63-- that the auto-trim runaway presented differently than in the simulator. Rather than just going to the stops, with the MCAS it was intermittent such that it would stop on its own, and then re-engage. That seems consistent with the available flight data for the Lion Air crash. I can envision where that would mislead the pilot to not just disable it immediately per the checklist procedure. Training to make the pilots aware of this failure mode could have made a difference in this scenario. Of course, that is all just hypothesis at this point.
 
PPC1052 said:
I'm flying KIND to KDFW in a couple of weeks on AA. Please don't kill me. m'kay? Thanks.
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We haven't been putting a MAX on that route yet, so no worries. I can't help you otherwise, though. ;)
 
kayoh190 said:
We haven't been putting a MAX on that route yet, so no worries. I can't help you otherwise, though. ;)
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Yeah, its a 737-800. Hopefully your overhead bins won't attack me. I understand from sources that 14 of those have been grounded, too.
 
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