7 ms·

This goes beyond aircraft at the moment. The NTSB and America in general used to lead. Now it seems the world is going to get on without them.

ncr100 8y ago
The US Government is sadly conflicted. FAA claiming there is "no evidence" of this aircraft having a systemic flaw. Meanwhile: Boeing brought $70B into Washington State's economy in one year. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeingrsquos-economic-impact-on-state-estimated-at-70b/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeingrsquos-economic-... Boeing is a major defense contractor, providing transportation, weapons, and other supplies to the US Military.
- mcv 8y ago
  From what I understand about the issue so far, the systemic flaw is not in the aircraft, but in the training of the pilots. Or the lack thereof. Boeing wanted the 737 MAX to be considered just another 737 that didn't require any new training, but there are apparently significant changes compared to other 737 models that leave pilots feeling ill-prepared.
  - DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
    Perhaps I haven't followed the news closely enough, but wasn't the Ethiopian plane also spewing excess smoke at the time of the crash? If so, wouldn't that suggest a failure mode other than the one that's viewed as a training issue?
    - xefer 8y ago
      There were eye witness reports to that effect, but the proof would be in the flight recorders. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-airplane-witnesses/ethiopian-plane-smoked-and-shuddered-before-deadly-plunge-idUSKBN1QS1LJ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-airplane-witness...
    - msbarnett 8y ago
      Eyewitness reports of plane crashes nearly always involve fires in locations no two eye-witnesses agree on, smoke, wings falling off, etc. These are rarely born out by subsequent investigations. See, eg, " Reliability of Eyewitness Reports to a Major Aviation Accident" https://commons.erau.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1040&context=ijaaa https://commons.erau.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1040&co.... A plane crash is a very fast, horrifying tragedy to witness. It shouldn't be surprising that peoples' imperfect memories afterwards are completely scrambled
      - ceejayoz 8y ago
        Yup. Even professional pilots get it all wrong: > almost all the eyewitnesses, including experienced pilots, gave grossly inaccurate accounts when compared to the film record
  - jostmey 8y ago
    My understanding is that the Boeing 737 max jet is unstable. Instead of redesigning a new plane from the ground up, Boeing placed the larger engines forward and upward on the wings. Boeing then tried to issue a "software patch" on a bad hardware design. Boeing came up with an automated system to seize control of the aircraft in the event that the flight became unstable and neglected to inform pilots of this new automated system. Although not confirmed, it appears that both crashes may be the result of pilots wrestling with the plane's automated system, which they knew little about and may have been faulty
    - lisper 8y ago
      Private pilot here. That is exactly right, based on everything that I've read and heard from other pilots, some of whom fly the Max 8.
      - djsumdog 8y ago
        Other articles posted said there is a way to turn off the auto-correction, but it's not intuitive. On earlier 737s which had this, it came on when engaging automatic ascents/descents and was disabled when a pilot disabled those systems. In the case of the Max8, it's always on and there is additional training needed to react quickly when this happens. I think all current pilots who are watching this situation should know what to do at this point, but the needed the awareness brought by the situation. In the two crashes so far, it seems like the pilots had years of commercial experience.
        lisper 8y ago
        Knowing what to do and actually doing it under stress are two very different things. The aircraft that I fly, a Cirrus SR22, also has an electric trim and so there is the potential for something to go wrong and the trim to go rogue. When that happens, dealing with it is a "simple" matter of pulling the right circuit breaker. But the circuit breakers are on a panel located near your right shin. They are not easy to see nor to reach, and if you don't have the location of the trim breaker memorized, the odds of being able to find it and pull it while the plane is trying to kill you are rather low. Happily, there has never been a runaway trim on an SR22 (AFAIK) so this doesn't keep me up at night. But I can certainly understand how even a pilot that was prepared for this eventuality might fail to deal with it properly while under duress.
  - elliekelly 8y ago
    My understanding is that it's a bit of both. This Slate article[1] described it as both a design flaw and an effort to paper over that design flaw by tweaking the autopilot system. >Boeing swapped out the engines for new models, which, together with airframe tweaks, promised a 20 percent increase in fuel efficiency. In order to accommodate the engine’s larger diameter, Boeing engineers had to move the point where the plane attaches to the wing. This, in turn, affected the way the plane handled. Most alarmingly, it left the plane with a tendency to pitch up, which could result in a dangerous aerodynamic stall. To prevent this, Boeing added a new autopilot system that would pitch the nose down if it looked like it was getting too high. Because of the changes to the autopilot system it functions differently than pilots expect it to during an emergency situation on this particular plane. [1] https://slate.com/technology/2019/03/ethiopian-air-crash-where-did-boeing-go-wrong-with-the-737-max.html https://slate.com/technology/2019/03/ethiopian-air-crash-whe...
    - msbarnett 8y ago
      Yeah, my understanding is essentially, the changes made the Max 8 not behave aerodynamically like other 737s. This would normally mean that pilots would need to requalify on it as a new plane type, in order to legally fly one. But that's more expensive for Boeing's customers, so to make it more attractive, they decided to "paper over" the differences in behaviour with software. Fly it like any other 737, and if it starts to stall in conditions where other 737s wouldn't, the software corrects things! Except, except, like all abstractions, this one's leaky -- and they've only shifted the difference in behaviour from "stalls at angles that would surprise a 737 pilot" to "noses-down in ways that would surprise a 737 pilot" along with "can't be muscle-overridden the way the autopilot on other 737s can be".
      - cmurf 8y ago
        It's not the autotrim that you can't fight. The plane can be trimmed (elevator surface) in such a way that pilot yoke input (stabilizer surface) cannot fight against. That is common to all 737's, and all pilots know about it. It is not that the autotrim feature can't be fought. What's new in the MAX is the autotrim doesn't terminate when the pilot gives back pressure on the yoke if MCAS senses high angle of attack, it will do an uncommanded nose down (every I think 10s). This is to compensate for the MAX engine nacelle which provides a meaningful amount of lift to cause a pitch up moment in high angles of attack, unlike previous 737's. I wonder whether the stall behavior between 737's is slightly dissimilar or very dissimilar without MCAS, between 737NG and 737 MAX? And then quantifying that difference. I also seriously wonder if it's even slightly more likely for a pilot to induce a stall as a result of not knowing about the natural uncorrected stall behavior of the new design compared to previous designs. MCAS is not my concern, it's how the plane flies without it that I wonder about. Also, WSJ is reporting that the MCAS software update mandated by the FAA in an airworthiness directive was delayed due to the nearly five week government shutdown. I'm already imagining the tweets...
  - carapace 8y ago
    What you are describing is a systemic flaw in the aircraft.
  - drewg123 8y ago
    Reminds me of a company I used to work for where when we updated our PCIe NICs, we would never, ever change the PCIe device or sub-device ID. This was to avoid a triggering a re-certification from various companies (MS WHQL, Vmware ESX testing, etc). The first thing the driver did was to talk to the firmware and ask it for a set of supported features..
  - nabla9 8y ago
    It is a systematic flaw. Boeing announced that it had been working on a flight control software upgrade that includes updates to the MCAS flight control law, pilot displays, operation manuals and crew training. It's coming in few weeks and expected to be made mandatory by April by an FAA airworthiness directive.
- pnathan 8y ago
  The conflict of interests here are pretty apparent to a cursory view. Unfortunately. The right thing to do is ground the plane and figure out a proper remediation going forward.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  Boeing was a big employer, contractor, etc. back in 2013 when the FAA grounded the entire 787 fleet. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/01/16/169555027/faa-grounds-all-787-planes-in-the-u-s-to-seek-a-fix-for-battery-issue https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/01/16/169555027...
  - dragontamer 8y ago
    Different President, Different Secretary of Transportation, different FAA chief. Obama's administration was run grossly different than Trump's administration. Case in point: FAA doesn't even have a Trump-appointed administrator yet (Daniel Elwell was only appointed to the position of Deputy administrator and is only "Acting Administrator" for now).
    - ceejayoz 8y ago
      That's fine, but that's a different claim entirely. The FAA has always had the "Boeing is a large employer and defense contractor" conflict. I'm perfectly fine with a "current management is bad" assertion.
      - dragontamer 8y ago
        Fair enough.
  - ridewinter 8y ago
    2013’s FAA was under an ethical Obama administration. Anything touched by Trump is assumed to be corrupt. Witness the black box being sent to Europe and not the USA. The soft power of ethics in action.
    - mcast 8y ago
      >FAA was under an ethical Obama administration Let's not be naive that any major political party can be ethical, Obama simply had a nicer public image but there were still scandals* during his administration. * = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Obama_administration_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Obama_administration_...
- ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
  Can an argument not be made for EU and China grounding the aircraft as well? The EU produces the only real competitor (Airbus A320), and China is in the middle of a 'Trade War' with the U.S and is trying to create a serious airplane manufacturer of their own. >Boeing is a major defense contractor, providing transportation, weapons, and other supplies to the US Military. I don't even know what that has to do with it, do you think if the FAA grounded 737's Boeing would... cancel all existing contracts with the World's largest military?
  - Waterluvian 8y ago
    My feeling is that if there is irrational decisionmaking by the FAA in Boeing's favour, it's not because of some grand strategy but more because FAA people are friends with Boeing people and don't want to upset them before their next golf game or fundraising event or whatnot. Friends of friends and a few phone calls... Maybe I'm very wrong. I hope I am. But it's the sense I've gotten about American politics and regulatory capture.
    - ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
      >My feeling is that if there is irrational decisionmaking by the FAA in Boeing's favour There seems to be a lot of feelings going around. I just don't get why they're only going against the U.S and Boeing, who obviously don't want another 737 Max crash if only because that would definitely call the entire program (and $500 billion) into question, when the EU hosts literally the only competitor to Boeing.
- pbarnes_1 8y ago
  Kleptocracy kills. The current "admin" is full of Boeing people. Also, there's no one doing anything at the FAA.
  - davidw 8y ago
    Also: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/13/18263719/boeing-ceo-dennis-muilenburg-trump-tweet-call https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/13/18263719/b...
    - pbarnes_1 8y ago
      The most unsurprising development in the history of things that have happened: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/03/surprise-trump-kept-737-max-jets-flying-after-personal-call-from-boeing-ceo https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/03/surprise-trump-kept-... Ah, good old kleptocracy. Who could have predicted this?
odorousrex 8y ago
KAYAK has reported that people in the USA are filtering out 737 MAX8/9 flights now in ever increasing numbers. (Orbitz and Expedia have followed KAYAK's lead and added filters to filter out this plane.) IMO, It's only a matter of time before public pressure forces either the government, or the carriers themselves to ground the planes.
- tobinfricke 8y ago
  > people in the USA are filtering out 737 MAX8/9 flights now Is that actually an option for Kayak? The usual sites I use to search for flights do not allow filtering on airplane type (except maybe "exclude prop planes").
  - odorousrex 8y ago
    After researching further, it appears they are adding it in response to this incident [1] I had heard on my local NPR this morning that they had already done so, apparently they have just been receiving ever increasing requests for this feature. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-booking-hldg-kayak/kayak-soothes-nervous-boeing-flyers-with-airplane-search-filter-idUSKBN1QU1AW?feedType=RSS&feedName=internetNews https://www.reuters.com/article/us-booking-hldg-kayak/kayak-...
- dharmab 8y ago
  Even if customers don't have safety concerns, the stories if 737 MAX 8 flights being turned around midair are surely causing people to pick other jets to avoid travel inconvenience.
pastor_elm 8y ago
>The NTSB and America in general used to lead. Correction: America used to dictate.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

ncr100 8y ago

The US Government is sadly conflicted. FAA claiming there is "no evidence" of this aircraft having a systemic flaw. Meanwhile: Boeing brought $70B into Washington State's economy in one year. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeingrsquos-economic-impact-on-state-estimated-at-70b/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeingrsquos-economic-... Boeing is a major defense contractor, providing transportation, weapons, and other supplies to the US Military.

mcv 8y ago
From what I understand about the issue so far, the systemic flaw is not in the aircraft, but in the training of the pilots. Or the lack thereof. Boeing wanted the 737 MAX to be considered just another 737 that didn't require any new training, but there are apparently significant changes compared to other 737 models that leave pilots feeling ill-prepared.
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
  Perhaps I haven't followed the news closely enough, but wasn't the Ethiopian plane also spewing excess smoke at the time of the crash? If so, wouldn't that suggest a failure mode other than the one that's viewed as a training issue?
  - xefer 8y ago
    There were eye witness reports to that effect, but the proof would be in the flight recorders. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-airplane-witnesses/ethiopian-plane-smoked-and-shuddered-before-deadly-plunge-idUSKBN1QS1LJ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-airplane-witness...
  - msbarnett 8y ago
    Eyewitness reports of plane crashes nearly always involve fires in locations no two eye-witnesses agree on, smoke, wings falling off, etc. These are rarely born out by subsequent investigations. See, eg, " Reliability of Eyewitness Reports to a Major Aviation Accident" https://commons.erau.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1040&context=ijaaa https://commons.erau.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1040&co.... A plane crash is a very fast, horrifying tragedy to witness. It shouldn't be surprising that peoples' imperfect memories afterwards are completely scrambled
    - ceejayoz 8y ago
      Yup. Even professional pilots get it all wrong: > almost all the eyewitnesses, including experienced pilots, gave grossly inaccurate accounts when compared to the film record
- jostmey 8y ago
  My understanding is that the Boeing 737 max jet is unstable. Instead of redesigning a new plane from the ground up, Boeing placed the larger engines forward and upward on the wings. Boeing then tried to issue a "software patch" on a bad hardware design. Boeing came up with an automated system to seize control of the aircraft in the event that the flight became unstable and neglected to inform pilots of this new automated system. Although not confirmed, it appears that both crashes may be the result of pilots wrestling with the plane's automated system, which they knew little about and may have been faulty
  - lisper 8y ago
    Private pilot here. That is exactly right, based on everything that I've read and heard from other pilots, some of whom fly the Max 8.
    - djsumdog 8y ago
      Other articles posted said there is a way to turn off the auto-correction, but it's not intuitive. On earlier 737s which had this, it came on when engaging automatic ascents/descents and was disabled when a pilot disabled those systems. In the case of the Max8, it's always on and there is additional training needed to react quickly when this happens. I think all current pilots who are watching this situation should know what to do at this point, but the needed the awareness brought by the situation. In the two crashes so far, it seems like the pilots had years of commercial experience.
      - lisper 8y ago
        Knowing what to do and actually doing it under stress are two very different things. The aircraft that I fly, a Cirrus SR22, also has an electric trim and so there is the potential for something to go wrong and the trim to go rogue. When that happens, dealing with it is a "simple" matter of pulling the right circuit breaker. But the circuit breakers are on a panel located near your right shin. They are not easy to see nor to reach, and if you don't have the location of the trim breaker memorized, the odds of being able to find it and pull it while the plane is trying to kill you are rather low. Happily, there has never been a runaway trim on an SR22 (AFAIK) so this doesn't keep me up at night. But I can certainly understand how even a pilot that was prepared for this eventuality might fail to deal with it properly while under duress.
- elliekelly 8y ago
  My understanding is that it's a bit of both. This Slate article[1] described it as both a design flaw and an effort to paper over that design flaw by tweaking the autopilot system. >Boeing swapped out the engines for new models, which, together with airframe tweaks, promised a 20 percent increase in fuel efficiency. In order to accommodate the engine’s larger diameter, Boeing engineers had to move the point where the plane attaches to the wing. This, in turn, affected the way the plane handled. Most alarmingly, it left the plane with a tendency to pitch up, which could result in a dangerous aerodynamic stall. To prevent this, Boeing added a new autopilot system that would pitch the nose down if it looked like it was getting too high. Because of the changes to the autopilot system it functions differently than pilots expect it to during an emergency situation on this particular plane. [1] https://slate.com/technology/2019/03/ethiopian-air-crash-where-did-boeing-go-wrong-with-the-737-max.html https://slate.com/technology/2019/03/ethiopian-air-crash-whe...
  - msbarnett 8y ago
    Yeah, my understanding is essentially, the changes made the Max 8 not behave aerodynamically like other 737s. This would normally mean that pilots would need to requalify on it as a new plane type, in order to legally fly one. But that's more expensive for Boeing's customers, so to make it more attractive, they decided to "paper over" the differences in behaviour with software. Fly it like any other 737, and if it starts to stall in conditions where other 737s wouldn't, the software corrects things! Except, except, like all abstractions, this one's leaky -- and they've only shifted the difference in behaviour from "stalls at angles that would surprise a 737 pilot" to "noses-down in ways that would surprise a 737 pilot" along with "can't be muscle-overridden the way the autopilot on other 737s can be".
    - cmurf 8y ago
      It's not the autotrim that you can't fight. The plane can be trimmed (elevator surface) in such a way that pilot yoke input (stabilizer surface) cannot fight against. That is common to all 737's, and all pilots know about it. It is not that the autotrim feature can't be fought. What's new in the MAX is the autotrim doesn't terminate when the pilot gives back pressure on the yoke if MCAS senses high angle of attack, it will do an uncommanded nose down (every I think 10s). This is to compensate for the MAX engine nacelle which provides a meaningful amount of lift to cause a pitch up moment in high angles of attack, unlike previous 737's. I wonder whether the stall behavior between 737's is slightly dissimilar or very dissimilar without MCAS, between 737NG and 737 MAX? And then quantifying that difference. I also seriously wonder if it's even slightly more likely for a pilot to induce a stall as a result of not knowing about the natural uncorrected stall behavior of the new design compared to previous designs. MCAS is not my concern, it's how the plane flies without it that I wonder about. Also, WSJ is reporting that the MCAS software update mandated by the FAA in an airworthiness directive was delayed due to the nearly five week government shutdown. I'm already imagining the tweets...
- carapace 8y ago
  What you are describing is a systemic flaw in the aircraft.
- drewg123 8y ago
  Reminds me of a company I used to work for where when we updated our PCIe NICs, we would never, ever change the PCIe device or sub-device ID. This was to avoid a triggering a re-certification from various companies (MS WHQL, Vmware ESX testing, etc). The first thing the driver did was to talk to the firmware and ask it for a set of supported features..
- nabla9 8y ago
  It is a systematic flaw. Boeing announced that it had been working on a flight control software upgrade that includes updates to the MCAS flight control law, pilot displays, operation manuals and crew training. It's coming in few weeks and expected to be made mandatory by April by an FAA airworthiness directive.
pnathan 8y ago
The conflict of interests here are pretty apparent to a cursory view. Unfortunately. The right thing to do is ground the plane and figure out a proper remediation going forward.
ceejayoz 8y ago
Boeing was a big employer, contractor, etc. back in 2013 when the FAA grounded the entire 787 fleet. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/01/16/169555027/faa-grounds-all-787-planes-in-the-u-s-to-seek-a-fix-for-battery-issue https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/01/16/169555027...
- dragontamer 8y ago
  Different President, Different Secretary of Transportation, different FAA chief. Obama's administration was run grossly different than Trump's administration. Case in point: FAA doesn't even have a Trump-appointed administrator yet (Daniel Elwell was only appointed to the position of Deputy administrator and is only "Acting Administrator" for now).
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    That's fine, but that's a different claim entirely. The FAA has always had the "Boeing is a large employer and defense contractor" conflict. I'm perfectly fine with a "current management is bad" assertion.
    - dragontamer 8y ago
      Fair enough.
- ridewinter 8y ago
  2013’s FAA was under an ethical Obama administration. Anything touched by Trump is assumed to be corrupt. Witness the black box being sent to Europe and not the USA. The soft power of ethics in action.
  - mcast 8y ago
    >FAA was under an ethical Obama administration Let's not be naive that any major political party can be ethical, Obama simply had a nicer public image but there were still scandals* during his administration. * = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Obama_administration_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Obama_administration_...
ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
Can an argument not be made for EU and China grounding the aircraft as well? The EU produces the only real competitor (Airbus A320), and China is in the middle of a 'Trade War' with the U.S and is trying to create a serious airplane manufacturer of their own. >Boeing is a major defense contractor, providing transportation, weapons, and other supplies to the US Military. I don't even know what that has to do with it, do you think if the FAA grounded 737's Boeing would... cancel all existing contracts with the World's largest military?
- Waterluvian 8y ago
  My feeling is that if there is irrational decisionmaking by the FAA in Boeing's favour, it's not because of some grand strategy but more because FAA people are friends with Boeing people and don't want to upset them before their next golf game or fundraising event or whatnot. Friends of friends and a few phone calls... Maybe I'm very wrong. I hope I am. But it's the sense I've gotten about American politics and regulatory capture.
  - ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
    >My feeling is that if there is irrational decisionmaking by the FAA in Boeing's favour There seems to be a lot of feelings going around. I just don't get why they're only going against the U.S and Boeing, who obviously don't want another 737 Max crash if only because that would definitely call the entire program (and $500 billion) into question, when the EU hosts literally the only competitor to Boeing.
pbarnes_1 8y ago
Kleptocracy kills. The current "admin" is full of Boeing people. Also, there's no one doing anything at the FAA.
- davidw 8y ago
  Also: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/13/18263719/boeing-ceo-dennis-muilenburg-trump-tweet-call https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/13/18263719/b...
  - pbarnes_1 8y ago
    The most unsurprising development in the history of things that have happened: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/03/surprise-trump-kept-737-max-jets-flying-after-personal-call-from-boeing-ceo https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/03/surprise-trump-kept-... Ah, good old kleptocracy. Who could have predicted this?

odorousrex 8y ago

KAYAK has reported that people in the USA are filtering out 737 MAX8/9 flights now in ever increasing numbers. (Orbitz and Expedia have followed KAYAK's lead and added filters to filter out this plane.) IMO, It's only a matter of time before public pressure forces either the government, or the carriers themselves to ground the planes.

tobinfricke 8y ago
> people in the USA are filtering out 737 MAX8/9 flights now Is that actually an option for Kayak? The usual sites I use to search for flights do not allow filtering on airplane type (except maybe "exclude prop planes").
- odorousrex 8y ago
  After researching further, it appears they are adding it in response to this incident [1] I had heard on my local NPR this morning that they had already done so, apparently they have just been receiving ever increasing requests for this feature. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-booking-hldg-kayak/kayak-soothes-nervous-boeing-flyers-with-airplane-search-filter-idUSKBN1QU1AW?feedType=RSS&feedName=internetNews https://www.reuters.com/article/us-booking-hldg-kayak/kayak-...
dharmab 8y ago
Even if customers don't have safety concerns, the stories if 737 MAX 8 flights being turned around midair are surely causing people to pick other jets to avoid travel inconvenience.

pastor_elm 8y ago

>The NTSB and America in general used to lead. Correction: America used to dictate.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]