4 ms·

Ok, I got a little carried away there. From what I understood from reading the reports on the various crashes, (I don't have a background in aviation so take th

Ok, I got a little carried away there. From what I understood from reading the reports on the various crashes, (I don't have a background in aviation so take this with a gigantic pair of tweezers) the crashes could have been prevented by simply informing, and briefly training the pilots with the newly introduced systems that corrected the pitch of the nose to compensate for the change in engines while maintaining the same body. But instead of doing that from the start, Boeing marketed the plane to airlines as a drop in replacement for their old 737 fleet where the pilots would need no extra training as it should behave "exactly the same" as the old one. Whoever decided on that should be mainly responsable for this. Of course the passengers don't have the fault and the airline would be at fault only if they continued using the decommissioned planes that were known to be unsafe. I'm not mistaken issues have been mitigates and those planes are in use in many areas of the world now. There's nothing wrong with designing an upgrade with lower carrier costs in mind, but any potencial differences on how the plane behaves should always be informed, even if a computer is supposed to correct for it.

_0w8t 5y ago
It is not a matter of simple pilot training. It turned out pilots had only 10 seconds to disable the system after that it would be too late. This is exactly what happened at the second crash. The disable switch was pushed but it was not possible to recover.
- ummonk 5y ago
  I believe they would have been able to recover had they cut the throttle and let the airspeed reduce to the point that they could manually trim the aircraft. Hard to blame them though - while it was definitely pilot error when they got stuck focusing on trying to fix the elevator trim issue and neglected to heed the overspend warning and take the aircraft out of military power, this issue was no doubt precipitated by the lack of proper information that Boeing had provided to pilots regarding the functioning of the MCAS system.
  - peheje 5y ago
    A few extracts from the wiki site. Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX_groundings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX_groundings ..The 737 MAX's larger CFM LEAP-1B engines are fitted farther forward and higher up than in previous models. The aerodynamic effect of its nacelles contributes to the aircraft's tendency to pitch up at high angles of attack (AOA). The MCAS is intended to compensate in such cases.. ..MCAS was supposed to compensate for an excessive nose up angle by adjusting horizontal stabilizer before the aircraft would potentially stall.. ..MCAS played a role in both accidents, when it acted on false data from a single angle of attack (AoA) sensor.. ..elected to not describe it in the flight manual or in training materials, based on the fundamental design philosophy of retaining commonality with the 737NG.. ..thus minimizing the need for significant pilot retraining.. ..Thus, airlines can save money by employing and training one pool of pilots to fly both variants of the Boeing 737 interchangeably.. ..As an automated corrective measure, the MCAS was given full authority to bring the aircraft nose down, and could not be overridden by pilot resistance against the control wheel as on previous versions of the 737.. - Fixing a problem (engine size/placement not analysed) with a more complex solution (MCAS). - Acting on only 1 sensor. - Not described in manuals. - Not able to override. Text-book red flags. Definitely greedy managers that pushed towards this. However the engineers involved must have a bad taste (at Boeing and FAA). Engineers should take an oath like doctors do "Hippocratic Oath". The relationsship between business and engineering must be strictly defined. Compromises has to be taken, even in safety critical systems, but when taken it can't be the same business that can assess it OK. Engineers must be able to say categorically no and have it recorded outside business, without fear of losing jobs.

_0w8t 5y ago

It is not a matter of simple pilot training. It turned out pilots had only 10 seconds to disable the system after that it would be too late. This is exactly what happened at the second crash. The disable switch was pushed but it was not possible to recover.

ummonk 5y ago
I believe they would have been able to recover had they cut the throttle and let the airspeed reduce to the point that they could manually trim the aircraft. Hard to blame them though - while it was definitely pilot error when they got stuck focusing on trying to fix the elevator trim issue and neglected to heed the overspend warning and take the aircraft out of military power, this issue was no doubt precipitated by the lack of proper information that Boeing had provided to pilots regarding the functioning of the MCAS system.
- peheje 5y ago
  A few extracts from the wiki site. Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX_groundings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX_groundings ..The 737 MAX's larger CFM LEAP-1B engines are fitted farther forward and higher up than in previous models. The aerodynamic effect of its nacelles contributes to the aircraft's tendency to pitch up at high angles of attack (AOA). The MCAS is intended to compensate in such cases.. ..MCAS was supposed to compensate for an excessive nose up angle by adjusting horizontal stabilizer before the aircraft would potentially stall.. ..MCAS played a role in both accidents, when it acted on false data from a single angle of attack (AoA) sensor.. ..elected to not describe it in the flight manual or in training materials, based on the fundamental design philosophy of retaining commonality with the 737NG.. ..thus minimizing the need for significant pilot retraining.. ..Thus, airlines can save money by employing and training one pool of pilots to fly both variants of the Boeing 737 interchangeably.. ..As an automated corrective measure, the MCAS was given full authority to bring the aircraft nose down, and could not be overridden by pilot resistance against the control wheel as on previous versions of the 737.. - Fixing a problem (engine size/placement not analysed) with a more complex solution (MCAS). - Acting on only 1 sensor. - Not described in manuals. - Not able to override. Text-book red flags. Definitely greedy managers that pushed towards this. However the engineers involved must have a bad taste (at Boeing and FAA). Engineers should take an oath like doctors do "Hippocratic Oath". The relationsship between business and engineering must be strictly defined. Compromises has to be taken, even in safety critical systems, but when taken it can't be the same business that can assess it OK. Engineers must be able to say categorically no and have it recorded outside business, without fear of losing jobs.