6 ms·

Is this the same Greg Feith who said: Investigators including Boeing are going to have to determine whether or not this crew is properly trained and of course,

Is this the same Greg Feith who said: Investigators including Boeing are going to have to determine whether or not this crew is properly trained and of course, Boeing is going to have to focus on whether or not they have a software or technical issue.

jquery 8y ago
Probably? He's very famous in the ACI community. And as he always says, a plane never goes down for a single reason. The Airbus that crashed into the Atlantic ocean could've been saved if they made the design decision not to "average" inputs from the sticks. Is that a design flaw? Or bad pilot training? Crashes are always the nexus of a chain of unfortunately and unlucky events. I have no reason to suspect this crash is any different. The only thing I'm confident of is that no matter what the problem is, Boeing will make changes and pilots will receive additional training, and perhaps be required to do simulator time. Once the 737-MAX is ungrounded I will have no qualms getting inside of one.
- gotocake 8y ago
  Well, the upside here is that we can literally wait and see. Let’s make out a bookmark in this and resume when the investigation is over.
- serf 8y ago
  >The only thing I'm confident of is that no matter what the problem is, Boeing will make changes ... Yeah, but it doesn't take Nostradamus to make that prediction. If Boeing doesn't fix their issues, they won't sell planes. So, say we blame the pilot for incorrectly deactivating the faulted system within a time-frame that allows for recovery; which I think is a silly thing to do : at what level of added complexity and extended abnormal checklists do we transfer the blame from the pilot being unable to follow a checklist thoroughly and quickly enough, to the airframe manufacturer for producing a product with so many potential failure vectors that were added primarily as a cost-savings or for-profit desire? The 737 MAX is unstable inherently for the sake of mileage, to reduce the overall cost per ticket, and increase corporate profit. I understand the importance of cost/benefit analysis, but at what point are corporations liable for teetering towards the profit side at the sake of safety?
  - gotocake 8y ago
    Plus they did everything they could to get it grandfathered in, and not have to re-certify it. As a result there’s no pilot training on it as a distinct type, and as a result...
  - jquery 8y ago
    You’re talking about this incident as if Boeing anticipated a crash per year but it is happening at an unacceptable 2 crashes per year. We don’t know what went wrong. We don’t know what went wrong. Inherently “stable” planes have been crashing for decades, it’s a little early to be mad at Boeing for a design decision considering we know almost nothing at this point. I’m not blaming the pilots, I’m not blaming anyone, I’m advising we wait for the report before getting out the pitchforks.
  - VBprogrammer 8y ago
    > The 737 MAX is unstable inherently for the sake of mileage This is blatantly false. The MCAS system isn't running a PID control loop or anything like that. It's applying stupidly simple logic to its inputs and giving equally simple outputs. At worst you could claim the aircraft is less stable than the original 737. But more specifically I'd say the 737 Max exhibits undesirable control behaviours at the approach to the stall. The MCAS system was required to make this behaviour certifiable.
    - acqq 8y ago
      As the plane "approaches a stall" the plane is actually in danger. Traditionally, the pilot is trained (on the simulator) to reflexively (every second matters) move the controls to avoid the danger in case of any problems (the different actual problems are simulated and separately trained for). But the new Boeing 737 Max planes exactly at that dangerous moment behave differently to the pilot's input than what the pilot was trained for, because these new planes have different geometry. They are new, but being sold as the "same old." Selling point: "no pilot's retraining needed." Boeing of course knew that planes behave differently, but actively tried to hide that, as much as not even reporting and documenting to the pilots that there's a new device built-in ("MCAS") to "move the controls itself" differently than what the pilot would do based on this training. Now, if the MCAS misbehaves, the pilot is supposed to recognize that the "moved controls" are undesired, manage to turn the MCAS off fast enough (even using a circuit breaker! according to the Boeing's explanation after the first crash), and then again rescue the plane which behaves differently than the plane for which he's trained to have built-in reflexes!" The pilots are supposed to be trained in the simulators to be prepared for the behavior in extreme situations, not to have a new plane that behaves by-design exactly not as they are trained. The way they were trained, when some undesired movement occur, their reflex reaction corrects the problem. Not so in this case. Their trained reflexes didn't help. Instead, the faulty MCAS continues. That's why even the circuit breaker step is mentioned. But even after turning the MCAS off, the plane still behaves differently because it is actually of different geometry. All that can happen at the moment the plane is not high enough to be safe to do enough maneuvering instead of hitting the ground. EDIT: responding to the answer under this post: > you seem to be assigning a lot of weight to a very minor system "I" seem? At this very moment there is a world-wide belief that what you name "very minor" issues lead to death of 350 people in only 5 months time-span, to the point of grounding all the MAX planes. Also relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19398267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19398267
- psadri 8y ago
  It’d be interesting to see if executives from Boeing are willing to fly the 737 Max, as a demonstration of their faith in the plane’s safety.
  - michaelt 8y ago
    They probably would; I'm sure Harley Davidson executives sometimes ride their bikes, despite motorbikes being much more dangerous than even the 737 Max.

jquery 8y ago

Probably? He's very famous in the ACI community. And as he always says, a plane never goes down for a single reason. The Airbus that crashed into the Atlantic ocean could've been saved if they made the design decision not to "average" inputs from the sticks. Is that a design flaw? Or bad pilot training? Crashes are always the nexus of a chain of unfortunately and unlucky events. I have no reason to suspect this crash is any different. The only thing I'm confident of is that no matter what the problem is, Boeing will make changes and pilots will receive additional training, and perhaps be required to do simulator time. Once the 737-MAX is ungrounded I will have no qualms getting inside of one.

gotocake 8y ago
Well, the upside here is that we can literally wait and see. Let’s make out a bookmark in this and resume when the investigation is over.
serf 8y ago
>The only thing I'm confident of is that no matter what the problem is, Boeing will make changes ... Yeah, but it doesn't take Nostradamus to make that prediction. If Boeing doesn't fix their issues, they won't sell planes. So, say we blame the pilot for incorrectly deactivating the faulted system within a time-frame that allows for recovery; which I think is a silly thing to do : at what level of added complexity and extended abnormal checklists do we transfer the blame from the pilot being unable to follow a checklist thoroughly and quickly enough, to the airframe manufacturer for producing a product with so many potential failure vectors that were added primarily as a cost-savings or for-profit desire? The 737 MAX is unstable inherently for the sake of mileage, to reduce the overall cost per ticket, and increase corporate profit. I understand the importance of cost/benefit analysis, but at what point are corporations liable for teetering towards the profit side at the sake of safety?
- gotocake 8y ago
  Plus they did everything they could to get it grandfathered in, and not have to re-certify it. As a result there’s no pilot training on it as a distinct type, and as a result...
- jquery 8y ago
  You’re talking about this incident as if Boeing anticipated a crash per year but it is happening at an unacceptable 2 crashes per year. We don’t know what went wrong. We don’t know what went wrong. Inherently “stable” planes have been crashing for decades, it’s a little early to be mad at Boeing for a design decision considering we know almost nothing at this point. I’m not blaming the pilots, I’m not blaming anyone, I’m advising we wait for the report before getting out the pitchforks.
- VBprogrammer 8y ago
  > The 737 MAX is unstable inherently for the sake of mileage This is blatantly false. The MCAS system isn't running a PID control loop or anything like that. It's applying stupidly simple logic to its inputs and giving equally simple outputs. At worst you could claim the aircraft is less stable than the original 737. But more specifically I'd say the 737 Max exhibits undesirable control behaviours at the approach to the stall. The MCAS system was required to make this behaviour certifiable.
  - acqq 8y ago
    As the plane "approaches a stall" the plane is actually in danger. Traditionally, the pilot is trained (on the simulator) to reflexively (every second matters) move the controls to avoid the danger in case of any problems (the different actual problems are simulated and separately trained for). But the new Boeing 737 Max planes exactly at that dangerous moment behave differently to the pilot's input than what the pilot was trained for, because these new planes have different geometry. They are new, but being sold as the "same old." Selling point: "no pilot's retraining needed." Boeing of course knew that planes behave differently, but actively tried to hide that, as much as not even reporting and documenting to the pilots that there's a new device built-in ("MCAS") to "move the controls itself" differently than what the pilot would do based on this training. Now, if the MCAS misbehaves, the pilot is supposed to recognize that the "moved controls" are undesired, manage to turn the MCAS off fast enough (even using a circuit breaker! according to the Boeing's explanation after the first crash), and then again rescue the plane which behaves differently than the plane for which he's trained to have built-in reflexes!" The pilots are supposed to be trained in the simulators to be prepared for the behavior in extreme situations, not to have a new plane that behaves by-design exactly not as they are trained. The way they were trained, when some undesired movement occur, their reflex reaction corrects the problem. Not so in this case. Their trained reflexes didn't help. Instead, the faulty MCAS continues. That's why even the circuit breaker step is mentioned. But even after turning the MCAS off, the plane still behaves differently because it is actually of different geometry. All that can happen at the moment the plane is not high enough to be safe to do enough maneuvering instead of hitting the ground. EDIT: responding to the answer under this post: > you seem to be assigning a lot of weight to a very minor system "I" seem? At this very moment there is a world-wide belief that what you name "very minor" issues lead to death of 350 people in only 5 months time-span, to the point of grounding all the MAX planes. Also relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19398267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19398267
psadri 8y ago
It’d be interesting to see if executives from Boeing are willing to fly the 737 Max, as a demonstration of their faith in the plane’s safety.
- michaelt 8y ago
  They probably would; I'm sure Harley Davidson executives sometimes ride their bikes, despite motorbikes being much more dangerous than even the 737 Max.