Netflix Releases Documentary on the Boeing MCAS Failures

kgruber said:
The 800MAX will NEVER be a good airplane.
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There is no such thing as an 800MAX.

The reason why the MAX line has sold so well is that it is the most efficient aircraft in its class. The 737-8 is more efficient than the similarly-sized A320neo. The 737-7 is more efficient than the A319neo. The 737-9; A321neo. The A320 line has a disadvantage that it can't overcome--physics. The cabin cross-section is wider than the cabin cross-section of the 737.

That is why airlines ordered them. That is why airlines didn't want to wait years for a similarly efficient, more expensive clean sheet design. Market forces picked the MAX line over a clean sheet design.

Boeing can't build what its customers don't want.
 
It's always easier to extended an existing design. It's cheaper, it requires less talent, and less time. If it's possible, some people will copy the design, too. But eventually, some engineering team is going to say "this design sucks. It's old, and we can do it better." More or less, that's one theory of how we ended up with the P-51, and probably a lot of other aircraft. If we didn't have that, we'd have DC-3's with turboprops and glass panels flying passengers up and down the east coast of the US, right though the ice. We'd lose a few because of that, but hey, cheaper than designing a new aircraft.

Blaming customers for poor products isn't a reasonable argument. Now, if they were to be honest about it and say "hey, this isn't as good, it's a little dangerous, but people are buying it because it's cheaper." Then sure. And let's change the slogan. "We build OK to fly aircraft, more or less." or "We're like walmart, but we build planes. good luck!"
 
kmacht said:
...I would still like to know who financed the film and wouldn’t be surprised at all if it was a group or lobbyist organization involved in the crash lawsuit.
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I just assumed that Netflix paid for it.
 
Albany Tom said:
Blaming customers for poor products isn't a reasonable argument.
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That's not how any of it works.

Manufacturers are in constant contact with their customers. They bring ideas for airplanes they can make. Customers bring proposed specs of airplanes that they want. They negotiate over what is wanted and what can be produced. What it will cost vs. what they are willing to pay. Nothing is built until an agreement is reached and launch orders are received.

The customers wanted a more efficient 737. If they couldn't have that, they were going to order the A320neo family. A clean sheet design was not an option because nobody wanted to wait for it or pay for it.
 
Palmpilot said:
I just assumed that Netflix paid for it.
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Nope. Netflix bought the documentary after the fact. It debuted at a film festival before they bought it. This wasn’t a film they commissioned or produced themselves.
 
SWA wanted a more efficient 737 but didn't want it to be a separate type rating. They leaned on their buddies at Boeing and the FAA to make sure no information that would encourage a separate type rating made it into the AFM? Occam's Razor.
 
kmacht said:
I never said Boeings design didn't play a major role in the crashes, just that the documentary was very lopsided against them and did not even talk about any of the other contributing factors.
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The minute I saw that it was co-produced and directed by Rory Kennedy (Robert F. Kennedy's daughter) I knew it was going to be a hit piece.. :mad:
 
Larry in TN said:
That's not how any of it works.
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It is. In any field. Since the beginning of time. And it always will be. The airlines aren't in court defending their decisions to ORDER a lousy airplane. That's true in any field. A customer can ask for anything they want. And if a company builds it, they, the company, are responsible for that. That applies to an 18 yr old welder fixing a boat trailer, or to a Fortune 100 company building aircraft. Spinning it to be the customer's fault isn't a valid argument. It's the equivalent of saying "well, if we didn't design an aircraft to meet their needs, someone else would have."

What a company does is update its designs so it remains competitive in the marketplace. Sometimes that requires a lot of risk, and it means taking a short term cost to allow future prosperity. Companies that aren't willing to sacrifice short term profit for long term gain don't belong in the game. They're supposed to be weeded out, and replaced by newer companies with better designs. You can't push old designs forever, and we can't afford to have companies that we "can't afford to lose".

And of course it was slanted. All documentaries are slanted.
 
Albany Tom said:
It is. In any field.
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FYI: It isn't the same for the aviation field whether you want to believe that or not. It's the main reason you don't see new innovations or models get introduced every year or every other year in aviation like all those other fields you try to compare. A simple comparison of the list of new models introduced between those fields/industries will show that.
 
Albany Tom said:
The airlines aren't in court defending their decisions to ORDER a lousy airplane.
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The airlines are lining up to take delivery of, and order more, 737 MAX aircraft. Why are they taking delivery of "a lousy airplane" instead of the better A320 series or demanding an even better clean sheet design?

The design of the A320 family is from the early 1980s. Why hasn't Airbus created a new clean sheet design? Because their customers don't want to wait for it or pay for it.
 
Larry in TN said:
The airlines are lining up to take delivery of, and order more, 737 MAX aircraft. Why are they taking delivery of "a lousy airplane" instead of the better A320 series or demanding an even better clean sheet design?
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I don’t know but the term “Too big to fail comes to mind.”
 
Larry in TN said:
The airlines are lining up to take delivery of, and order more, 737 MAX aircraft. Why are they taking delivery of "a lousy airplane" instead of the better A320 series or demanding an even better clean sheet design?

The design of the A320 family is from the early 1980s. Why hasn't Airbus created a new clean sheet design? Because their customers don't want to wait for it or pay for it.
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:) The airlines don't care about how good the design is. They just care which is most profitable to operate. I think everyone agrees on that one. They don't care if it's comfortable, or easy to fly, or cool, and as far as safety goes, that's up to Boeing, the FAA, and the pilots, as long as they send the pilots to the right training, and setup the right procedures. Everybody on here also probably agrees that in the event of another mcas related crash, the airlines are going to take two steps backward, certain that the fault will lie with Boeing, the FAA, and/or the pilots. The only risk the airlines have is in getting stuck with the aircraft if the public changes its mind and don't want to fly on them anymore. And that's unlikely.

The 737 family is way earlier than the A320, something like 20 years. But it's not the time, it's the technology. The 737 is a manually controlled aircraft that was modified with engines too big to fit it, with a computer to compensate for that. It was a hack. The compensation required wasn't minor, it was major. They concealed that, and we all know where that ended. But now they've made it all better, put lots of engineers on it, and they've got software that they pinky promise isn't going to crash any more planes. Maybe it's safe now. I hope so. But it's still a hack. And it's not the customer's fault.
 
Albany Tom said:
Everybody on here also probably agrees that in the event of another mcas related crash, the airlines are going to take two steps backward, certain that the fault will lie with Boeing, the FAA, and/or the pilots. The only risk the airlines have is in getting stuck with the aircraft if the public changes its mind and don't want to fly on them anymore.
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Yeah, that's not evenly remotely true.
 
nauga said:
Take a guess at the cost difference for a total design/development/cert program between a clean-sheet design and a mod to an existing airplane. *Then* take a guess at the difference in operating costs between a jet with a (new) type rating and no (new) type rating required. Same mission both airplanes. Add the two differences and see if you can guess how many customers wanted a clean sheet design. Show your work.

Nauga,
who doesn't work for free
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I completely get your point, and I certainly fault neither the airline nor the manufacturer for wanting to avoid a clean sheet development cost and time requirement to provide a mission capable aircraft. I don't subscribe to the belief that corporations are necessarily evil just because they want to reduce costs. However, it seems that it wasn't really possible to bring this produce to market without bending (breaking?) a few rules by misrepresenting the true nature of their design to the FAA. I gather that MCAS was a requirement to put the new engines on the old airframe. If that is true, would it have been possible to safely get the product to market without a new type certificate and pilot training program that the airlines and Boeing were both trying to avoid?
 
I just finished watching this and it’s a very good documentary. Regardless of your opinion of Boeing, it’s definitely worth watching.
 
Larry in TN said:
The airlines are lining up to take delivery of, and order more, 737 MAX aircraft. Why are they taking delivery of "a lousy airplane" instead of the better A320 series or demanding an even better clean sheet design?

The design of the A320 family is from the early 1980s. Why hasn't Airbus created a new clean sheet design? Because their customers don't want to wait for it or pay for it.
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Airbus has the A220, albeit designed by Bombardier as the “C” series
 
kmacht said:
just that the documentary was very lopsided against them and did not even talk about any of the other contributing factors. It was never mentioned why the AOA was bad, that the pilots flew the plane even after the previous flight experienced a similar issue and had to disabled the trim system. They never went into why Boeing was pushing so hard to make the plane fly like previous models (i.e the insane certification process), who at the FAA was in charge of oversight and why they never caught or questioned the MCAS system, what training was provided regarding a runaway trim failure, anything related to the 10 second scenario they kept falsely claiming, etc. The whole documentary just tried to paint Boeing as doing everything because of corporate greed and while that was likely part of it, it wasn’t the only contributing factor.
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That's my general sense. I didn't see too much in the documentary that I thought was just wrong. But it didn't provide any of this context.

I guess where I come down on this is that the product should not have gone out the door in this condition so that pilots don't have to face what these crews faced. But those crews absolutely should have done better.
 
How can you say the crew in the first crash should have done better when Boeing actually hid the existence of MCAS to everyone outside Boeing to avoid additional pilot training; training that could have addressed what MCAS was and how to deal with a malfunction. Can't believe how many people in this thread are ****ing on the graves of these pilots.
 
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At one level the documentary is about the Boeing crashes. At a higher level though, it is an indictment of a corporate culture that values maximizing shareholder value above all else. The show made wonder, how many potential "737 maxes" are out there, waiting to happen?
 
FlyingTiger said:
How can you say the crew in the first crash should have done better when Boeing actually hid the existence of MCAS to everyone outside Boeing to avoid additional pilot training; training that could have addressed what MCAS was and how to deal with a malfunction. Can't believe how many people in this thread are ****ing on the graves of these pilots.
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Just because there was a significant issue with the product doesn't mean that the crews and the airlines can't have also made mistakes. There is clear evidence of their failures in both of these accidents.

1) When the Lion Air plane was acting up on the flight before, they should have taken the plane out of service and maintenance should have fixed the problem with the AOA sensor. Instead, the pilots simply disabled the auto trim feature, flew to their destination, and let the aircraft be used again without repairs.

2) When MCAS auto-trims nose down, the pilots can use the electric trim switch to re-trim. We all learned from day one to trim the plane to relieve pressure on the controls as private pilots. That isn't hard. It should have been their first instinct. Once back in trim, then you can disable the auto trim feature just like the pilot is supposed to do for any other auto-trim runaway failure and then trim manually. The only thing different in terms of this auto-trim failure mode is that it would run for ten seconds and stop, rather than just run away. But there is no reason why the crew shouldn't have responded as they should have to any other runaway trim failure. That is the expectation for a professional pilot crews entrusted with the lives of over a hundred souls on a transport category aircraft.

The documentary notes that the Ethiopian Air pilots disabled the auto-trim like they were supposed to. However, they failed to mention that the captain had been retrimming the aircraft to counteract the MCAS activation for some time, but when he transferred control to the first office, the first officer failed to do so and let it get all the way to full downward force before they disable the auto-trim. At that point, the aerodynamic forces made it nearly impossible to manually retrim. On top of that, the pilots failed to reduce power as provided in the manual, which had they done so, would have given more time and reduced the aerodynamic forces resisting their effort to re-trim.
 
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Mostly agree with this....but it certainly was the folks in Seattle that did the deed. Head quarters in Chicago did push for earlier $$$$ which did influence the design and timeline. Had they had the correct oversight it would have been a clean sheet design. But, Airbus was eating their lunch.....o_O
kgruber said:
The 737-MAX would/should have never been designed the way it was.....with the MCAS band-aids. It would have/should have been a clean sheet. Nope.....MCAS was quite definitely a band-aid.

It WOULD have been designed and certified correctly had it been designed by the engineers in Seattle rather than the paper pushers in Chicago.
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FlyingTiger said:
How can you say the crew in the first crash should have done better when Boeing actually hid the existence of MCAS to everyone outside Boeing to avoid additional pilot training; training that could have addressed what MCAS was and how to deal with a malfunction. Can't believe how many people in this thread are ****ing on the graves of these pilots.
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How does one avoid suffering the same fate as the accident pilots without discussing what they needed to do differently?

I'm also wondering if the accident pilots were adequately trained on how to respond to a runaway trim condition.
 
Albany Tom said:
The only risk the airlines have is in getting stuck with the aircraft if the public changes its mind and don't want to fly on them anymore. And that's unlikely.
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The risk is larger in some cases. It can be more than just the public don't want to fly a particular model. The A380 flew only 10 years before production was ceased after its main customers cancelled orders for it. And it was a $25Bn clean sheet design. Guess who was left holding the debt after the customer walked away?
PPC1052 said:
I gather that MCAS was a requirement to put the new engines on the old airframe. If that is true, would it have been possible to safely get the product to market without a new type certificate and pilot training program that the airlines and Boeing were both trying to avoid?
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It wasn't so much a requirement as it was a result of the larger engines. Regardless, if the following portion of Part 25.203 was not needed for recertification there would be no need for the MCAS addition to the STS: "No abnormal nose-up pitching may occur. The longitudinal control force must be positive up to and throughout the stall." In general, the placement of the engine thrust line higher on the wing caused the nose to pitch longitudinally differently and when it was in rocket mode at the upper edges of the flight envelope the same control force would reduce and go neutral vs remaining positive.
FlyingTiger said:
How can you say the crew in the first crash should have done better
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FlyingTiger said:
how to deal with a malfunction.
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Perhaps if you can explain difference in how 2 pilots did manage the Lion MCAS failure without losing control but the 3rd pilot could not maybe we would have a better answer. However, the Ethiopian flight had more involved that may never be explained from a crew standpoint.
 
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kmacht said:
I wonder who funded that documentary? Seemed like nothing but a hit job on Boeing while ignoring every other contributing factor.
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I don’t actually know if anyone funded the film as a hit piece, but the filmmaker, Rory Kennedy, is a renowned, multi-award winning documentary filmmaker. She is accomplished enough, connected enough, and probably wealthy enough that she could have funded it herself regardless of who eventually bought it. I suspect the film was gonna get made no matter who paid for it.

Unrelated: Rory is the daughter of RFK. Her cousin, JFK Jr. was on his way to Rory’s wedding when he crashed.
 
mryan75 said:
Pro-tip: don’t fly third-world airlines. And yes, Ethiopian is a third-world airline.
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I flew Ethiopian Air about 20 years ago from Djibouti to Sanaa, Yemen. We hit some mild turbulence and about half the overhead compartments opened. The whole thing was like a comedy skit, especially the airport at Djibouti. People walking around with goats on leashes and chickens in crates. The lone security guard was asleep on the floor of his cubicle, stoned on khat. This was post-911.
 
Bell206 said:
It wasn't so much a requirement as it was a result of the larger engines. Regardless, if the following portion of Part 25.303 was not needed for recertification there would be no need for the MCAS addition to the STS: "No abnormal nose-up pitching may occur. The longitudinal control force must be positive up to and throughout the stall." In general, the placement of the engine thrust line higher on the wing caused the nose to pitch longitudinally differently and when it was in rocket mode at the upper edges of the flight envelope the same control force would reduce and go neutral vs remaining positive.
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"Requirement" probably wasn't the best choice of words on my part. I just mean to say that MCAS was the design choice they made to allow them to marry the new engines to the old airframe while still meeting the performance criteria for certification.
 
sleeper-319 said:
I don’t actually know if anyone funded the film as a hit piece, but the filmmaker, Rory Kennedy, is a renowned, multi-award winning documentary filmmaker. She is accomplished enough, connected enough, and probably wealthy enough that she could have funded it herself regardless of who eventually bought it. I suspect the film was gonna get made no matter who paid for it.

Unrelated: Rory is the daughter of RFK. Her cousin, JFK Jr. was on his way to Rory’s wedding when he crashed.
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Well, it's an easy story to tell, and a lot of folks are ready to lap it up: "Big corporation cuts corners to make money and the results are that lots of innocent people die in a plane crash (and so could you!)." Of course, Boeing gave her a lot of ammunition to work with. As I said above, I didn't see much that I thought was wrong. My issue is that it is a little more complex, and she chose not to water down the above story line with some critical details that reduce, somewhat, the culpability of Boeing by showing that the airlines themselves in this case bear some responsibility, too.
 
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Larry in TN said:
I've posted this link before and I don't think many have read it. I know, it's long. If you want to understand how the accident crews performed then this is the link you need to read.

https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/...GNHUU4mmx-Y_gSkFBWDEgSikRvXo1Lz7NODddBu5xB358
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I’ve read it, and if people were complaining about the Netflix doc being a “hit job” then they should really skip that article as well.

I think you and I went round and round on this last time there was a long thread on here. I definitely think we have a different opinion on where the majority of the blame lies.

I really don’t have the desire or energy to rehash the whole thing again. Suffice to say that people who think that this presented like a runaway stab trim like is practiced in the sim are mistaken and to think that it would have been an easy solution to come up with in the heat of the moment is naïve.
 
Sluggo63 said:
Suffice to say that people who think that this presented like a runaway stab trim like is practiced in the sim are mistaken and to think that it would have been an easy solution to come up with in the heat of the moment is naïve.
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If the nose is heavy, trim it back up. That's what we do when we're hand flying. If the trim gets to full nose-down, nobody was flying the airplane.

1. Fly the airplane
2. Silence the warnings
3. Confirm the emergency
 
Sluggo63 said:
I really don’t have the desire or energy to rehash the whole thing again. Suffice to say that people who think that this presented like a runaway stab trim like is practiced in the sim are mistaken and to think that it would have been an easy solution to come up with in the heat of the moment is naïve.
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I may certainly be in that category, and I definitely respect your knowledge and experience in this area. I thought I read that use of the electric trim to pitch up would arrest, at least temporarily, the MCAS automatic nose down pitch input. Is that not true?
 
PPC1052 said:
I thought I read that use of the electric trim to pitch up would arrest, at least temporarily, the MCAS automatic nose down pitch input. Is that not true?
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It is true. Any electric trim input would pause the MCAS activation and full trim control would be available to the pilot. Once the electric trim input is released, MCAS started its five-second pause and then, if the triggering condition continued to exist, another MCAS activation would begin.

This is how the Lion Air accident Captain kept the airplane in-trim through 21 MCAS activations.
 
Sluggo63 said:
...Suffice to say that people who think that this presented like a runaway stab trim like is practiced in the sim are mistaken and to think that it would have been an easy solution to come up with in the heat of the moment is naïve.
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Yea let's not forget you have stall warning, unreliable airspeed and altitude, master warning with multiple messages on your displays, no idea that MCAS even exists and about a minute and a half to figure it all out. Even if they didn't do everything perfect to the T like a mythical Steve Canyon nobody here has any business bad mouthing them.

As for the documentary being a "hit job" - while it did focus on the Boeing end there weren't any lies in it nor was it overly sensationalized. That stuff really did happen.
 
Larry in TN said:
It is true. Any electric trim input would pause the MCAS activation and full trim control would be available to the pilot. Once the electric trim input is released, MCAS started its five-second pause and then, if the triggering condition continued to exist, another MCAS activation would begin.

This is how the Lion Air accident Captain kept the airplane in-trim through 21 MCAS activations.
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Makes me want to cry, thinking of how elementary that is. Sure, nobody and no organization was covered with glory in the lead-up to those accidents, but all it would have taken is some really dirt simple airmanship to break the chain. This has mystified me since the beginning.
 
Piperonca said:
Makes me want to cry, thinking of how elementary that is. Sure, nobody and no organization was covered with glory in the lead-up to those accidents, but all it would have taken is some really dirt simple airmanship to break the chain. This has mystified me since the beginning.
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That’s because most pilots not trained in the west are procedural only. They can’t actually fly for ****. Pretty much every single pilot on this board is a better stick and rudder pilot with a more natural understanding of airmanship than the ones flying that day. Even @steingar is better.
 
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