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Boeing 737 Max Jets Grounded By FAA Emergency Order (nbcnews.com)
President Trump announced an emergency order from the Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday grounding Boeing 737 Max jets in the wake of an Ethiopian Airlines crash Sunday and a Lion Air accident in October that together killed 346 people. The emergency order comes two days after the FAA said the Boeing 737 Max planes are still airworthy. NBC News reports: Trump's announcement came as the FAA faced mounting pressure from aviation advocates and others to ban flights of the planes pending the completion of investigations into the deadly accidents. Sunday's crash killed 157 people and the one in Indonesia in October left 189 dead. "We're going to be issuing an emergency order of prohibition to ground all flights of the 737 Max 8 and the 737 Max 9 and planes associated with that line," Trump announced, referring to "new information and physical evidence that we've received" in addition to some complaints.
The FAA said it decided to ground the jets after it found that the Ethiopian Airlines aircraft that crashed had a flight pattern very similar to the Lion Air flight. "It became clear that the track of the Ethiopian flight behaved very similarly to the Lion Air flight," said Steven Gottlieb, deputy director of accident investigations for the FAA. United States airports and airlines reacted to the order Wednesday, acknowledging that it will lead to canceled flights. American has roughly 85 flights a day on the Boeing Max 8 and Max 9 jets. United Airlines has about 40 such flights. Southwest Airlines has the most, about 150 flights per day on these types of jets out of the airline's total of about 4,100 flights daily.
The FAA said it decided to ground the jets after it found that the Ethiopian Airlines aircraft that crashed had a flight pattern very similar to the Lion Air flight. "It became clear that the track of the Ethiopian flight behaved very similarly to the Lion Air flight," said Steven Gottlieb, deputy director of accident investigations for the FAA. United States airports and airlines reacted to the order Wednesday, acknowledging that it will lead to canceled flights. American has roughly 85 flights a day on the Boeing Max 8 and Max 9 jets. United Airlines has about 40 such flights. Southwest Airlines has the most, about 150 flights per day on these types of jets out of the airline's total of about 4,100 flights daily.
It's a critical safety system, required to obtain flight certification because of the larger, more powerful engines.
Without it, on full throttle, the aircraft doesn't have enough authority to bring the nose down once it goes up too high.
That's why only the MAX variants have this system, because they have larger engines.
It has nothing to do with auto-pilot, except the system is disabled when auto-pilot is engaged.
A clean-sheet design would absolutely have better positioning of the engines. Unfortunately, the 737 platform comes from an era of much smaller engines, so there just isn't enough under-wing clearance to fit modern turbines in the original locations (even versions with engine updates from 10-20 years ago have odd bulges around the nacelle where parts had to be relocated to fit).
The MCAS system was implemented because the 737-MAX engines are placed more forward of the wing which will tend to induce a nose up pitching moment particularly at high angles of attack near stall. This would've probably been a certification issue.
Now the 737 MAX had the engines placed so far forward to enable enough ground clearance. The original 50-year old 737 had low bypass engines which much smaller and could be placed directly under the wings. The newer models already ran into ground clearance issues, and this was initially solved by putting the engine systems to the side of the engine creating a distinct ovoid nacelle shape. With the new GE Leap engines, this fix was no longer sufficient due to larger engine diameter, hence the repositioning forward.
Newer aircraft like the airbus a300 series and the airbus a220 (bombardier cseries) never had this issue because they were designed to accomodate large diameter newer generation engines. The basic design of the 737 has always suffered from this flaw and really Boeing should have invested in a new aircraft design rather than try to re-engine an aircraft that was never designed for it. This was like fitting a V-12 engine into a model T.
Sad to see the once-proud remnant of American industrial might, Boeing, brought low like this. I thought Airbus lost it on Air France 447 when the pilot pulled his sidestick all the way back and kept it there until the plane crashed. On a Boeing, the dual control sticks would have revealed this and lives would have been saved. But now, we have this:
"One high-ranking Boeing official said the company had decided against disclosing more details to cockpit crews due to concerns about inundating average pilots with too much information â" and significantly more technical data â" than they needed or could digest."
So they:
1) Design an aircraft that has an inherent tendency to pitch up
2) Implement an a system to persistently add control inputs during critical phases of flight
3) Do NOT disclose system description to pilots in FCOM
How about fundamental rules:
Understanding what automation systems do.
Control the automated systems according to strong pilot skills.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Boeing considered raising the landing gear, but considered it too costly as it meant changes to the centre wing box and associated structure, so they bodged it with an engine higher on the wing and software to compensate for the negative handling characteristics. And then they didnt tell anyone who actually flew the aircraft...
The NTSB came to its own conclusions regarding its investigation (they blamed both, but primarily the airlines training), but AA wanted Airbus to pay all the compensation and costs of the crash, as well as publicly assuming responsibility, so as to preserve AAs reputation.
There is a 'neutral' point for the engines to be located such that a large amount of thrust causes the body to remain mostly neutral.
Yup, and that's how the other versions are configured. These new MAX configs have physically larger engines, so - to prevent have to redesign the whole aircraft to deal with them - the engines are positioned a little bit further forward, and a centre of the engine a little bit higher off the ground (ie closer to the wing). The centre of thrust is consequently moved forward and up in relation to the centre of gravity. The result is the craft will nose-up under full throttle.
The other problem is that companies were assured pilots would not need training in the new system, however a critical difference between this system and normal auto-pilot systems is that this system does not turn off when pilots attempt an overide.
No people under the jurisdiction of the FAA have died in those two crashes. Incase you are unaware, the FAA is an American agency, and only has control over US skies, and US bound flights.
The FAA pays attention to world wide flight data and bases some decisions on what it sees there. The Lion and Ethiopian crashes we're under the jurisdiction of the counties in which they originated from and crashed.
Similarly, China has its own agency too, and that agency grounded the planes well in advance of when the FAA did.
Do you guys know who the director of the Federal Aviation Authority is right now? Nobody does, because Trump has never gotten around to appointing one. To be fair, he's been very busy with the golf co-championship and everything, and it probably just slipped his mind.
Nothing matters any more.
You are welcome on my lawn.