4 ms·

In the other news, on the previous day on the same plane there was a retired pilot flying in cockpit who correctly diagnosed problem & told how to disable malfu

by jve 8y ago

In the other news, on the previous day on the same plane there was a retired pilot flying in cockpit who correctly diagnosed problem & told how to disable malfunctioning system: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-19/how-an-extra-man-in-cockpit-saved-a-737-max-that-later-crashed https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-19/how-an-ex...

gojomo 8y ago
That's the most amazing revelation to me so far. The same plane had an identical uncontrolled-dive problem the day before, which required an emergency power cut to the improperly-engaged motor, and somehow that incident didn't ground the plane or even result in any effective advisory to the next crew. Further, the Bloomberg story reports: "The Indonesia safety committee report said the plane had had multiple failures on previous flights and hadn’t been properly repaired." Lots of blame to go around here.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- acqq 8y ago
  > Lots of blame to go around here. Only if the faulty sensor was listed as "critical." Boeing didn't declare it as such and reported to nobody the way it was used in the unreported MCAS. That the MCAS even exists and that a single faulty sensor was enough to mess with the flight erratically enough to confuse the pilots was somehow acknowledged by Boeing only after the first crash. It took the second crash for most observers to recognize that just blaming the pilot or maintenance won't keep the planes from not crashing.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    Even if they didn't know about the MCAS, they still knew the plane had had an uncontrolled-dive problem from an unknown cause. How is it responsible to fly it without understanding the issue? Boeing is still fully culpable, but the airline should have debugged the issue before using the plane again.
    - acqq 8y ago
      > How is it responsible to fly it without understanding the issue? There is not only "the issue" there are a lot of "issues" happening all the time. The problem is even knowing which are "too serious." That the single faulty sensor which didn't affect anything on the previous planes could mean the difference between the life and death was specifically not reported by Boeing. How it is responsible to certify the plane without properly analyzing the MCAS implementation? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/business/boeing-elaine-chao.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/business/boeing-elaine-ch... And how it is responsible to claim "everything is OK everywhere" after the two crashes? https://www.barrons.com/articles/faa-not-grounding-boeing-737-max-51552483639 https://www.barrons.com/articles/faa-not-grounding-boeing-73...
      - icebraining 8y ago
        > That the single faulty sensor which didn't affect anything on the previous planes could mean the difference between the life and death was specifically not reported by Boeing. We're not talking about a faulty sensor, we're talking about an uncontrolled dive. The airline is not at fault for not connecting the two, but that only means they had information of an uncontrolled dive from an unknown cause, and still flew the plane. > How it is responsible to certify the plane without properly analyzing the MCAS implementation? (...) And how it is responsible to claim "everything is OK everywhere" after the two crashes? It's not, but that's whataboutism. Boeing's neglect doesn't excuse the FAA, and the FAA's neglect doesn't excuse the airline.
        jacobush 8y ago
        Didn't you get the memo? You pick a team and stick with, Apple or Google, Democrats or Republicans. Sorry, I'm getting jaded.
- cyberferret 8y ago
  Or at the very least, entered into the aircraft maintenance log. Back in my flying days, we had to enter every issue, large or small, into the aircraft maintenance logbook, and we also had to check it before each new flight to see what other crews had experienced, and whether the fault was signed off as 'fixed' or an 'up' fault that we could take into the air with us on the next flight. I believe the tighter turnaround times of flights these day may either mean this step is rushed too quickly or omitted altogether...
  - erentz 8y ago
    It wasn’t clear to me from the article if this was the exact same plane or merely same type. But the hiding of this information on the initial reports of that incident suggest there might be some fear of corporate culpability. Perhaps the pilots DID log it and it was ignored and the plane was turned around and flown again with a faulty AoA and without passing on the “lessons learned”. Will be interesting as we learn more.
    - tntn 8y ago
      It was exactly the same plane.
- michaelt 8y ago
  The same plane had an identical uncontrolled-dive problem the day before, [...] and somehow that incident didn't ground the plane or even result in any effective advisory to the next crew. This is the problem with the Boeing blame-the-pilots-for-not-switching-the-stab-trim-cutout-switches approach. If the pilots fear near misses will be called pilot error, and they'll be called incompetent/dangerous or punished for endangering passengers, that would do a lot to discourage near miss reporting.
  - gojomo 8y ago
    Not sure that follows, either theoretically or practically. Non-reporting of any observed aircraft issues puts their fellow pilots, and all other passengers, in grave risk. A tiny shred of mutual respect for other flight crews, or for human life of passengers in general, should easily overwhelm any concern an anomaly report will harm their record. In this case, the prior crew could've reported the problem, and their successful resolution. There's little risk of an actual malfunction requiring the emergency disengagement of normal systems being mislabeled "pilot error", especially when they made a proper recovery according to trained procedures. For all I know, the crew did make this report, but the report failed to have the necessary impacts, in either grounding/fixing the plane or reminding followup crews of relevant emergency procedures. If that incident or prior failures weren't reported, or were reported but not acted upon, then the fault for that lies with some mix of the crews, the airline, and relevant regulators – in addition to any other failures by Boeing.
- mlindner 8y ago
  Just to be clear this is not "an uncontrolled dive problem". The amount of misreporting on this incident is maddening. When trim is adjusted you can feel it in the controls as the control stalk will put increasing pressure against you because of the trimmed controls. If you get increasing pressure on your controls the correct response is to adjust the trim to stop it. This is not a problem for any competent pilot.
  - pkd 8y ago
    Your comment reads like you're blaming it on the incompetence of pilots, although I don't think that's what you mean. Can you clarify your comment a bit more?
acqq 8y ago
It's mentioned it the OP article: "The cause of the Lion Air crash has not been determined, but the preliminary report mentioned the Boeing system, a faulty, recently replaced sensor and the airline’s maintenance and training. On the same aircraft the evening before the crash, a captain at Lion Air’s full-service sister carrier, Batik Air, was riding along in the cockpit and solved the similar flight control problems, two of the sources said. His presence on that flight, first reported by Bloomberg, was not disclosed in the preliminary report."
7952 8y ago
I wonder if it would be useful to have a mission control style setup that could be used in an emergency. So the pilot has a problem, the plane broadcasts data, humans analyse the problem, and then give advice to the pilot. The staff would specialise in an aircraft type, and do regular simulated training.

by jve 8y ago

gojomo 8y ago

That's the most amazing revelation to me so far. The same plane had an identical uncontrolled-dive problem the day before, which required an emergency power cut to the improperly-engaged motor, and somehow that incident didn't ground the plane or even result in any effective advisory to the next crew. Further, the Bloomberg story reports: "The Indonesia safety committee report said the plane had had multiple failures on previous flights and hadn’t been properly repaired." Lots of blame to go around here.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
acqq 8y ago
> Lots of blame to go around here. Only if the faulty sensor was listed as "critical." Boeing didn't declare it as such and reported to nobody the way it was used in the unreported MCAS. That the MCAS even exists and that a single faulty sensor was enough to mess with the flight erratically enough to confuse the pilots was somehow acknowledged by Boeing only after the first crash. It took the second crash for most observers to recognize that just blaming the pilot or maintenance won't keep the planes from not crashing.
- icebraining 8y ago
  Even if they didn't know about the MCAS, they still knew the plane had had an uncontrolled-dive problem from an unknown cause. How is it responsible to fly it without understanding the issue? Boeing is still fully culpable, but the airline should have debugged the issue before using the plane again.
  - acqq 8y ago
    > How is it responsible to fly it without understanding the issue? There is not only "the issue" there are a lot of "issues" happening all the time. The problem is even knowing which are "too serious." That the single faulty sensor which didn't affect anything on the previous planes could mean the difference between the life and death was specifically not reported by Boeing. How it is responsible to certify the plane without properly analyzing the MCAS implementation? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/business/boeing-elaine-chao.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/business/boeing-elaine-ch... And how it is responsible to claim "everything is OK everywhere" after the two crashes? https://www.barrons.com/articles/faa-not-grounding-boeing-737-max-51552483639 https://www.barrons.com/articles/faa-not-grounding-boeing-73...
    - icebraining 8y ago
      > That the single faulty sensor which didn't affect anything on the previous planes could mean the difference between the life and death was specifically not reported by Boeing. We're not talking about a faulty sensor, we're talking about an uncontrolled dive. The airline is not at fault for not connecting the two, but that only means they had information of an uncontrolled dive from an unknown cause, and still flew the plane. > How it is responsible to certify the plane without properly analyzing the MCAS implementation? (...) And how it is responsible to claim "everything is OK everywhere" after the two crashes? It's not, but that's whataboutism. Boeing's neglect doesn't excuse the FAA, and the FAA's neglect doesn't excuse the airline.
      - jacobush 8y ago
        Didn't you get the memo? You pick a team and stick with, Apple or Google, Democrats or Republicans. Sorry, I'm getting jaded.
cyberferret 8y ago
Or at the very least, entered into the aircraft maintenance log. Back in my flying days, we had to enter every issue, large or small, into the aircraft maintenance logbook, and we also had to check it before each new flight to see what other crews had experienced, and whether the fault was signed off as 'fixed' or an 'up' fault that we could take into the air with us on the next flight. I believe the tighter turnaround times of flights these day may either mean this step is rushed too quickly or omitted altogether...
- erentz 8y ago
  It wasn’t clear to me from the article if this was the exact same plane or merely same type. But the hiding of this information on the initial reports of that incident suggest there might be some fear of corporate culpability. Perhaps the pilots DID log it and it was ignored and the plane was turned around and flown again with a faulty AoA and without passing on the “lessons learned”. Will be interesting as we learn more.
  - tntn 8y ago
    It was exactly the same plane.
michaelt 8y ago
The same plane had an identical uncontrolled-dive problem the day before, [...] and somehow that incident didn't ground the plane or even result in any effective advisory to the next crew. This is the problem with the Boeing blame-the-pilots-for-not-switching-the-stab-trim-cutout-switches approach. If the pilots fear near misses will be called pilot error, and they'll be called incompetent/dangerous or punished for endangering passengers, that would do a lot to discourage near miss reporting.
- gojomo 8y ago
  Not sure that follows, either theoretically or practically. Non-reporting of any observed aircraft issues puts their fellow pilots, and all other passengers, in grave risk. A tiny shred of mutual respect for other flight crews, or for human life of passengers in general, should easily overwhelm any concern an anomaly report will harm their record. In this case, the prior crew could've reported the problem, and their successful resolution. There's little risk of an actual malfunction requiring the emergency disengagement of normal systems being mislabeled "pilot error", especially when they made a proper recovery according to trained procedures. For all I know, the crew did make this report, but the report failed to have the necessary impacts, in either grounding/fixing the plane or reminding followup crews of relevant emergency procedures. If that incident or prior failures weren't reported, or were reported but not acted upon, then the fault for that lies with some mix of the crews, the airline, and relevant regulators – in addition to any other failures by Boeing.
mlindner 8y ago
Just to be clear this is not "an uncontrolled dive problem". The amount of misreporting on this incident is maddening. When trim is adjusted you can feel it in the controls as the control stalk will put increasing pressure against you because of the trimmed controls. If you get increasing pressure on your controls the correct response is to adjust the trim to stop it. This is not a problem for any competent pilot.
- pkd 8y ago
  Your comment reads like you're blaming it on the incompetence of pilots, although I don't think that's what you mean. Can you clarify your comment a bit more?

acqq 8y ago

It's mentioned it the OP article: "The cause of the Lion Air crash has not been determined, but the preliminary report mentioned the Boeing system, a faulty, recently replaced sensor and the airline’s maintenance and training. On the same aircraft the evening before the crash, a captain at Lion Air’s full-service sister carrier, Batik Air, was riding along in the cockpit and solved the similar flight control problems, two of the sources said. His presence on that flight, first reported by Bloomberg, was not disclosed in the preliminary report."

7952 8y ago

I wonder if it would be useful to have a mission control style setup that could be used in an emergency. So the pilot has a problem, the plane broadcasts data, humans analyse the problem, and then give advice to the pilot. The staff would specialise in an aircraft type, and do regular simulated training.