Prosecutors Were Already Investigating Whether Boeing Provided 'Incomplete or Misleading' 737 Information (yahoo.com)

Fox Business News reports:

- "Federal prosecutors are investigating whether Boeing provided incomplete or misleading information about its best-selling 737 Max aircraft to U.S. air safety regulators and customers, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal."

- That investigation began five months ago -- after the first crash that killed 189 people, but before the second one.

Nine days after that November 7 crash, America's Federal Aviation Administration had issued an international emergency order "warning that Boeing had discovered an 'unsafe condition' that is 'likely to exist or develop' in other planes," reports the Washington Post: The FAA directive said if erroneous data is received by the 737 Max jet's flight control system, the plane's nose could be pushed down repeatedly. Failing to address that "could cause the flight crew to have difficulty controlling the airplane," push the nose down and lead to "significant altitude loss, and possible impact with terrain," according to the notice. The notice told pilots that, if bad data causes problems to appear, they should "disengage autopilot" and use other controls and adjust other switches to fly the plane....

Investigators scouring black box data believe an automatic anti-stalling feature was engaged before a Boeing 737 Max jet crashed and killed 157 people in EthiÂoÂpia, an administration official said Friday. The feature, known as MCAS, also was a factor in the October crash in Indonesia, according to investigators. The investigators said inaccurate information from an outside sensor led MCAS to force the nose of the plane down over and over again.
That explanation is also supported by the positioning of equipment on the aircraft's tail "in a way that would push the plane's nose downward, consistent with the black box finding," reports the Washington Post.

Fox Business also reports that Boeing currently has over 4,600 "unfilled" orders for its 737 Max jets.

Comments

Bad handling all around.

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't let them inspect and self-authenticate their designs as safe, you don't have an automatic safety system ever rely on a single sensor under any circumstances, and you don't send people out untrained on the new system.

In this case all three major fails contributed. The FAA failed oversight, Boeing failed systems design and oversight, and Boeing and airliners and the FAA failed to ensure training was adequate for a new system.

Re:Bad handling all around.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll avoid flying on US made aircraft from now on if I can help it. Regulators there have zero powers.

Re: Bad handling all around.

[Anonymous Coward]

It only gets worse for Boeing.
Think of all the lawyers and investigator salaries they will be indirectly paying for years

Re:Bad handling all around.

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't put out flawed airplane designs. A software system is not enough to make up for the engines being in the wrong place.

Re:Bad handling all around.

[Richard_at_work]

The problem with self-certification being "bad" is that its an extremely intensive process, involving a significant investment in time and personnel to achieve, and it happens relatively *rarely*.

So for the FAA to independently certificate an aircraft manufacturers changes, they would have to maintain a significant number of employees or contractors through relatively short periods of intensive work (certification of a new aircraft or a new model) and relatively long periods of little work (small upgrades to existing aircraft parts, no new aircraft or models in progress).

The real problem is not self certification.

No, the real problem is grandfathering.

Grandfathering is the ability for an aircraft manufacturer to take an existing design, one which on its own would not meet *current* safety requirements, and significantly refresh it. So long as the changes to the aircraft stay within a certain set of parameters, the aircraft manufacturer doesn't have to certify the entire aircraft, meaning they can incorporate some changes extremely cheaply while working around issues such as those on the MAX where changes introduced handling issues.

Take, for example, the Boeing 747 - under safety requirements dating back decades, the Boeing 747 would not be certified to carry passengers forward of its front passenger doors, as it violates current evacuation requirements. And yet it is still sold as a passenger model in the 747-800i. Because its grandfathered in and not required to meet current safety requirements as a result.

The handling issues on the MAX are a similar issue - Boeing attempted to manage handling differences by introducing a system to attempt to bring the handling characteristics back in line with those of the 737NG, so they could get away with certifying the aircraft under the grandfathering rules. They could have not introduced that system and instead detailed the changes, but that would have meant they could no longer have grandfathered in the handling characteristics of the MAX, meaning pilots would have been required to undergo specific conversion training to the MAX from the 737NG.

So yeah, get rid of grandfathering - it will drastically hurt aircraft manufacturers, but at the same time it will stop those same manufacturers from being allowed to introduce new models of aircraft that do not meet current standards.

Re:Bad handling all around.

[Anonymous Coward]

"they would have to maintain a significant number of employees or contractors through relatively short periods of intensive work" = The job. That's why we have the FAA, to do this intensive work for safety.

Boeing can work with the regulators, they can make this process streamlined, but ultimately if the FAA is handing over the oversight reigns to a corporate board, THAT WILL ALWAYS BECOME A PROBLEM EVENTUALLY.

There is not such thing as an altruistic corporate board, they are hedging the line between maximizing profits and "just enough" safety and oversight as to keep the planes from falling out of the sky. Well, that line is RIGHT HERE.

They designed and self-certified a system that was unsound, they sold stripped-down versions of this system without even a warning light, and they failed to ensure the training regimen was adequate.

Frankly the fault lies on both FAA and Boeing for that, both neglected their responsibilities even AFTER a major catastrophe which then was allowed to repeat, and even then they tried to pretend it was some minor bug.

Having an automatic safety system in any life-threatening operation like commercial airliners relying on a SINGLE SENSOR, or even with a single backup sensor, that's just simply not good enough as these events demonstrate.

And it wasn't just the two crashes, there were DOZENS of complaints from pilots if not hundreds, we don't have a full tally. Even AFTER two major similar catastrophes, they try to keep flying without changes?

It's absurd. It really is a confluence of avoidable failures here. But in the disaster response, Boeing and the FAA both massively dropped the ball in pretending the aircraft didn't need a system overhaul there.

It will cost the company tens if not hundreds of Billions of dollars, bottom line. Hundreds died, preventably! THIS IS CLEARLY NOT GOOD ENOUGH, PERIOD.

So "grandfathering" is an issue sure but it's not THE issue of the several preventable and foreseeable issues that caused these people to be killed. Bottom line.

Re:Bad handling all around.

[Richard_at_work]

Ok - you make the justification for increasing the FAAs budget by several orders of magnitude just to put enough engineers on the payroll to handle all the certification testing and validation in-house then....

Re:Bad handling all around.

[Anonymous Coward]

"you make the justification for increasing the FAAs budget by several orders of magnitude" - Show your math.

Even if it were the case, which it's probably not, you put a lowest-dollar-figure on safety systems? Think about how much the lives of ~500 people are worth, you ignorant clod. Yes, we invest in safety assurance.

If more engineers were needed to accomplish this, rather than the same number and a longer turnaround for new designs entering the market, (a point you haven't made or proven either way) then I'd still say fund it properly.

Given how vital aviation travel is to the economy overall and how precariously the industry is already, the idiotic "deregulate and self-regulate" mantra could end up killing not just the industry, but injuring the economy.

Think about how much better of a position Boeing would be in, had this problem been caught in design, certification, or prior to sale? It's economically sound on that basis to invest in zealous prevention and QA.

Learn how that works before you design anything at all, but absolutely before you design something to carry living beings please.

Or was your argument that there was no trifecta of avoidable failures here?

So show your budget math to us and prove to me this couldn't have been avoided for under 20 Billion dollars, which is a rough low estimate of what this will cost Boeing in just the first year or so now.

Yes, safety costs money and effort. Pretending that's redundant is about as dumb as pretending 1 sensor is good enough.

Re:Bad handling all around.

[aaarrrgggh]

Using your simple example of no passengers forward of the exit door on the 747, does the safety record of the 747, over its millions of flight hours, suggest that this is unsafe? If not, why should it not be allowed to be certified?

“Grandfathering” just avoids certification to current standards of elements that have not changed and the regulator does not feel would have an adverse impact on safety.

There are real things on the 737 that should have been upgraded to current standards, like the exit doors. MCAS was a miserably implemented system which should have never been certified as designed, but the next logical step is almost a fly by wire flight envelope protection, where things start to look a lot less like a 737.

Re: Bad handling all around.

[Anonymous Coward]

500 people you say? Well, not much, not much at all. Current hourly population growth rate is about 1700 people. The 500 people are replaced in about 20 minutes...

Re: Bad handling all around.

[Anonymous Coward]

LAWL, Boeing is a monopoly, they have so many contracts with the Military, suppliers who depend on it spread through many states, politicans in their back pocket, sweetheart deals to keep their state taxes super lower, associations with the POTUS..."worse for Boeing?"... They might have to pay something for the first time in a long while.

Did you forget Trumps budget included further reductions to FAA funding.

Re: Bad handling all around.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are an idiot. This was KNOWN before the recent crashes and Boeing themselves designed the MCAS to compensate for it. Their engineers were so confident that it would without the need for pilot intervention that they decided they didn't even need to tell the pilots about it.

They took an older airframe design, made the nacells bigger to get better efficiency out of them then had to move them forward of the center of gravity and higher on the wings than the old engines and banked on the software to make things work. Which it does, until it fecking doesn't.

It was a failure of Boeing engineering, Boeing sales for upselling it, and Boeing management and leadership for both pushing it out and for decades long lobbying efforts by it and other makers to reduce governmental FAA oversight.

They sh#t the bed HARD and deserve every legal action taken against them. If they disappear completely, the world would be better off. Better for having crooks no longer in control of their own oversight and putting profits and paychecks before people's lives. The harder anyone tries to deny or defend them, the worse it is going to get for them. A company so blatantly as they have done in the MCAS case has done so elsewhere, and its only a matter of time before it comes to light.

Re: Bad handling all around.

[Anonymous Coward]

https://leehamnews.com/2018/11/14/boeings-automatic-trim-for-the-737-max-was-not-disclosed-to-the-pilots/

Re: Bad handling all around.

[Anonymous Coward]

You avoided the question about what their lives are worth with a dumbasses quip "not much" - because you're judging them by your own measure which is worthless. You're just trash that's bad at math.

500 people are going to cost Boeing tens of Billions of dollars, to make no estimate of what their lives are worth in terms of investments already paid into them, their families, their properties, their wrongful death suits, etc.

It's fitting that you'd have such a low estimation as you probably did simplistic estimation of your own worth multiplied by 500, lol. 500 x 0 = 0. Go get replaced ASAP.

Re: Bad handling all around.

[Anonymous Coward]

boeing engineers are ok, the problem is their mindset and/or assumptions, assuming sensors are working and if not, replaced and maintained properly as specified in technical bulletin 12345, assuming that it's being done all over the world. they never thought about what if the maintenance is a bit iffy at times etc etc.
it's just like those brilliant google engineers designing Google maps, you have people using it to navigate until they get to area with zero or unreliable cell signal, like driving around in less developed countries, the cell signal is ok in the city, then you drive a bit further out and oops!

Re:Bad handling all around.

[rtb61]

They did not just fail, they did not try to do it properly and failed at it, they conspired to cheat the system because of greed and lots of people died or more accurately to US law, were murdered because Boeing and US government officials conspired to maximise Boeing profits killing people and then tried to cover up that conspiracy killing more people and then they got busted. An American corporation murdered people out of pure greed, corrupted the system to facilitate it and then conspired to cover it up and more people died.

Not three major failures, an actual criminal conspiracy to maximise profits, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people and leading to Boeing and the FAA no longer being trusted in the rest of the world. It could not be much worse, other than a bunch more jets falling out of the sky but the rest of the world taking action forced a corrupt FAA to eventually corruptly take action LAST and ohh look the puppet Canada second to last, completely taken over by the US deep state.

Re:Bad handling all around.

[b0s0z0ku]

No FBW needed -- a stick pusher (as implemented in many non-FBW aircraft) would have worked fine. It would have to have been documented and would have required pilot re-certification for the MAX vs the 737-800. Barring that, redesign the wing and/or tail to prevent a deep stall with the new engine configuration.

Re: Bad handling all around.

[Anonymous Coward]

The engineer who snuck in the code to bring down 2 planes is definitely not ok

Re: Bad handling all around.

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony is that you call someone else stupid!

Re:Bad handling all around.

[Luckyo]

The training part was intentional. Certification for piloting a new aircraft type ("type rating" in lingvo of this field) is prohibitively expensive. Therefore Boeing made a great effort to make 737 MAX to only require "same aircraft, different model" kind of training for adapting it for other 737 certified pilots. The new anti-stall system is in fact one of the key parts of this effort, it's there to make aircraft behave more like other 737 models in spite of the fact that it had very different aerodynamic characteristics due to engines sitting in a different position.

Example of this shows on flight school sites, such as this one:

https://panamacademy.com/boein...

This is for NG, the previous variant of 737 but it makes a solid example. It takes 21 days to get the certification, but only 4 days to get differences training. And flight and simulator times are a small fraction as well. So this wasn't some kind of an anomaly. This was a conscious effort, and the problem appears to be the fact that this effort lead to the situation where pilots were insufficiently trained in some of the new systems and how to disengage them specifically because Boeing made those systems to be transparent to the pilot to make it easier to retrain from other 737 types. Which in turn lead to critical omissions from training programs entirely, as they were likely judged unnecessary, "since this is the aircraft designed to fly like the older 737s".

Good intention, good effort, one small miss and two crashes. Welcome to the world of aerospace, where best intentions can sometimes lead to worst outcomes.

Re:Bad handling all around.

[mvdwege]

But it gets worse. If the MCAS is there to make the MAX behave like an NG, so that pilots can fly it with just variant retraining, what is the implication if the plane reaches a flight regime where the MCAS is a hindrance or a danger and has to be turned off?

I'll tell you: you now have two pilots with only variant training flying an aircraft that they actually need a type rating for, that they don't have because the MCAS was there to obviate it.

Who ever thought this was a good idea in safety terms?

Re: Bad handling all around.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he's right, you're uninformed. There's nothing "flawed" about the physical design of the aircraft. The new engines change the handling characteristics under some conditions, but this is no more a "flaw" than changing the suspension on a car would be. Unlike with a car, though, pilots require extra training to be familiar with an aircraft which handles differently. MCAS was added to avoid the need for that training.

Re: Bad handling all around.

[Anonymous Coward]

How many of these new people are doctors, or even hairdressers at birth? They aren't like-for-like replacements even in a strictly utilitarian sense.

Re:Bad handling all around.

[Xylantiel]

I think the bigger sticky question for the 737 MAX is whether, in the end, it genuinely needs to be a separate type. The MCAS, as originally designed, was supposed to be a minor adjustment at the edge of the flight envelope. But it really appears that, in testing, it had to be made much stronger than originally designed. The issue that caused the crashes is that it should have then required multiple sensors. Boeing is fixing that. However, it brings up the larger question: are the flight characteristics too different for it to be the same type?

Re: Bad handling all around.

[Anonymous Coward]

He probably did the needful.

Re:Bad handling all around.

[Jfetjunky]

You don't let them inspect and self-authenticate their designs as safe

I see a lot of people harping on this. Irrespective of how true the other points may be, the truth is this happens in all sorts of industries, even where safety is involved. Even UL allows it, if you are a big enough company. You are essentially just submitting your results and analysis to them. They give it the okay, and there you go, UL approved.

We can argue if it's the right way to do things, but acting like it's a unique instance doesn't align with reality.

Re:Bad handling all around.

[Anonymous Coward]

Take, for example, the Boeing 747 - under safety requirements dating back decades, the Boeing 747 would not be certified to carry passengers forward of its front passenger doors, as it violates current evacuation requirements. And yet it is still sold as a passenger model in the 747-800i. Because its grandfathered in and not required to meet current safety requirements as a result.

You're correct about the later revisions of the 747 only being certified due to grandfathering but not the reason why it would never get certified under modern regulations. The problem is horrible visibility from the cockpit. It was put on the upper deck to maximize space for cargo but at an angle (= every landing!) it's much harder for pilots to see the runway than from other aircraft. Airbus put the cockpit between the decks on the A380 (may she RIP!) to avoid the same problem.

Re:Bad handling all around.

[Obfuscant]

what is the implication if the plane reaches a flight regime where the MCAS is a hindrance or a danger and has to be turned off?

If you ever manage to reach a "flight regime" where the MCAS is a danger, then you follow the emergency checklist for the demonstrated problem. You are only hypothesizing that there is some "flight regime" where a properly functioning MCAS is a danger, however. The problem at hand is when a faulty sensor gave MCAS faulty data and the pilots failed to follow the emergency procedures to stop MCAS from being a problem.

As TFS and TFA point out, the FAA issued an emergency AD last November covering the MCAS system and how to disable its effects. And Boeing disseminated a message to every customer with the same info. Last November. Explain why the pilots of the March crash were not properly trained, again?

I'll tell you: you now have two pilots with only variant training

Describe for us specifically what the difference in resolving a runaway stabilizer problem is between the non-MAX and MAX variants, please. Answer: there is none.

Re: Bad handling all around.

[Anonymous Coward]

The plane is trash. Deal with it. It was a rushed plane to compete with airbus. They didn't want to build a new plane and create
The training required needed. This falls on boeing and the FAA.

Re: Bad handling all around.

[Anonymous Coward]

MCAS was added to avoid the need for that training.

That is the problem. The system was silently added without a proper notification/documentation. It didn't exist in the manual before the Lion Air incident. Besides, its spec was changed after passing certification (maximum change of angle from 0.6 to 2.5), so the changed didn't make it into the manual.

Furthermore, the "avoid the need for training" is another assumption Boeing made because Boeing believed that their system will never go wrong or it wouldn't cause any crisis even if the system goes wrong. Sadly, the system went wrong and caused a tragedy (look at Lion Air incident). Why do you think that Boeing wanted to avoid training? It is obvious. The purpose is NOT really for anyone who will be using the plane but rather Boeing and its customers.

The new engines change the handling characteristics under some conditions, but this is no more a "flaw" than changing the suspension on a car would be.

I don't know why people keep using a car in their analogy with a plane. It is uncomparable! The car analogy doesn't give the same critical sense of the issue but rather lessen it way down. When a car starts to act up, the driver can simply slow down and/or stop the car in most situations. A plane CANNOT just do that because there is no way to park the plane while it is in the air. If the plane stops in the air, you know what will happen. Also, you cannot land a plane anywhere you want while it is in the air either. That's the reason why a pilot needs a lot more training than driving a car. Please stop comparing a car with a plane.

Re: Bad handling all around.

[Shotgun]

Not "to make things work".

That added the MCAS to make it FEEL like flying the older 737. It would work just fine, but with a different feel. If you join a flying club, you'll have to get checked out in the Cherokee, even if you've been flying that Cessna for decades. The Cherokee will have a different feel when you abruptly apply power.

Boeing's reason for adding the MCAS was *stupider* than, because the airplane wouldn't work without it. It was because they didn't want to have to say that the pilots would need a little extra training.

Re: Bad handling all around.

[Shotgun]

The mindset and assumptions of engineers working on life-critical systems are what makes the engineers. That's why they are paid. The evidence supports the notions that Boeing engineers are NOT ok.

Re:Bad handling all around.

[Tough Love]

This is a bullshit argument being repeated by the uninformed or illiterate. Engine placement did not cause the planes to crash.

Yes it did, asshole. The 737 Max is dynamically unstable in near stall, because of the unwanted lift generated by the engine nacelles in that particular placement. Everybody knows this but you.

Re: Bad handling all around.

[Tough Love]

Boeing employees and surrogates are pumping out spin on social networking sites because they are trying desperately to deflect liability, and they desperately want to keep selling zombie 737 airframes to grab business from Airbus.

Re: Bad handling all around.

[Tough Love]

Let's try some word association: 737 + deathtrap. Google that.

Re: Bad handling all around.

[Tough Love]

Boeing's reason for adding the MCAS was not stupid, it was nefarious. Boeing intended to avoid the expense and delay of certifying a new type, that is the entire story. So sorry about killing hundreds of people, it's just business.

Re:Bad handling all around.

[mvdwege]

You are only hypothesizing that there is some "flight regime" where a properly functioning MCAS is a danger, however.

I actually have empirical data: two crashed planes and Boeing doing massive damage control.

You really live up to your nick. I'm not going to discuss an idiot like you. Goodbye.

Re:Bad handling all around.

[Obfuscant]

I actually have empirical data: two crashed planes and Boeing doing massive damage control.

You lie. You have two instances of where a failed sensor led to incorrect MCAS operation and pilots who could not diagnose a problem that they face on every simulator checkride. That's not proving what you claim.

I'm not going to discuss an idiot like you. Goodbye.

When the facts elude you, ad hominem to the rescue.

Re:Bad handling all around.

[mvdwege]

I'm not going to discuss an idiot like you. Goodbye.

When the facts elude you, ad hominem[sic] to the rescue.

You know, when you get called an idiot, it is usually not a good idea to prove the point. Of course, you being an idiot wouldn't recognise a good idea when it hit you on the head.

Boeing managers to engineers:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Look, just reuse the old airframe, we need to preserve our investment. And hooking this new safety system up to multiple sensors sounds like overkill. Can't we charge for that?"

Re: Boeing managers to engineers:

[Anonymous Coward]

Just bleed the lines and let er rip

Now, before we blame anyone...

[bogaboga]

The notice told pilots that, if bad data causes problems to appear, they should "disengage autopilot" and use other controls and adjust other switches to fly the plane....

Let's understand that time is a factor in the successful disengagement of this MCAS. Pilots had less than a minute to figure out what was going on.

Imagine a car doing its own thing even as you try to tame its erroneous behavior. You literally run out of time resulting in a catastrophic outcome.

Re:Now, before we blame anyone...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's understand that time is a factor in the successful disengagement of this MCAS. Pilots had less than a minute to figure out what was going on.

Imagine a car doing its own thing even as you try to tame its erroneous behavior. You literally run out of time resulting in a catastrophic outcome.

so a TESLA?
got it i'l Imagine a Tesla slamming into a firetruck.

Re:Now, before we blame anyone...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why doesn't it have one switch to just turn all that shit off -- how hard is this?!

Re:Now, before we blame anyone...

[Brandano]

I hope they meant "disengage autotrim". MCAS is not active if the autopilot is engaged, so engaging autopilot would probably bring the plane under control. However, if the plane is already upset it is probably impossible to engage the autopilot at all.

Re:Now, before we blame anyone...

[Anonymous Coward]

And then what? You expect pilots to fly an unfamiliar aircraft since suddenly it behaves even less like a familiar 737? In what most likely is an emergency at that point. The physical design of the 737 Max isn't just unfamiliar, it's bad and some morons at Boeing thought they could make up for it through software. Corporate greed and they deserve to pay for it. In my opinion by a physical redesign even if it then means that (1) it will be a new aircraft that needs to be certified from scratch, (2) pilots have to receive a new type rating and (3) those already in service need to be rebuilt or scrapped.

Re:Now, before we blame anyone...

[Obfuscant]

Pilots had less than a minute to figure out what was going on.

Really? The pilot of the Indonesia flight had, according to the story, time to try resolving the issue 21 times by pulling back on the yoke, retrimming, and letting go. Twenty one times. And then he had time to hand the problem to the co-pilot who gave it a couple more shots.

And neither of them correctly identified the basic problem and applied the standard emergency checklist proecdure to resolve it.

You literally run out of time resulting in a catastrophic outcome.

Here's how much time it would take to keep from crashing into the ground: pull back on the yoke. MCAS, according to the stories of how it works, stops trimming the airplane if you do that. You've stopped MCAS from killing you.

The PROBLEM is that the pilots retrimmed the aircraft so they could let go of the yoke again. And MCAS took over. The pilot pulled back on the yoke again. MCAS stopped. The pilot trimmed the aircraft back to normal and let go. MCAS started again. ...

You know, about the second time the aircraft starts showing a runaway stabilizer, smart pilots do the immediate action of pulling back on the yoke and then NOT LETTING the electric trim system get control again, because there is obviously something wrong. If the electric trim has control taken away from it, MCAS cannot kill you.

Re:Now, before we blame anyone...

[Obfuscant]

However, if the plane is already upset it is probably impossible to engage the autopilot at all.

The emergency procedure for runaway stabilizer is to DISengage the autopilot (if engaged), not engage it. And then you pull the circuit breakers for the electric trim motors, which prevents anything from changing the trim without the pilot's direct action.

If you have a trim system that is out of control for some reason when the autopilot is not on, then you must assume there is something outside the autopilot that is broken. Turning on the autopilot will not fix that.

Re:Now, before we blame anyone...

[Shotgun]

A design factor of any flight intervention system is that it be able to be overpowered by a human with his hands on the controls. I've flown badly trimmed planes more than once. It isn't that difficult to keep them from nosing into the ground.

Re:Now, before we blame anyone...

[Shotgun]

Ever flown a flight simulator? Recording a record time in a Red Bull race with an unfamiliar plane might be hard. All these trained pilots, who had flown MANY different planes to get to where they were in their careers, had to do was not hit the ground. I tell you with all confidence that *I* could do that with ease. . . AS LONG AS. . . the MCAS doesn't intervene.

There is/was/and will not be anything wrong with Boeing's physical design. They had a problem with their marketing design. Boeing wanted to market it as an airplane that didn't require new training for the pilots, so that added a dangerous augmentation system to the controls.

Re:Now, before we blame anyone...

[Anonymous Coward]

Next time you play a flight simulator, use realistic settings. I've played around with plenty of sims too and done ridiculous shit like landing a 747 on an aircraft carrier. However, as soon as the aircraft is no longer indestructible, every maneuver you thought you could do causes structural damage and disintegration in the air. A passenger aircraft is not a fighter jet (or Cessna for that matter) in real life even if you can fly it like one in a simulator when it's made of indestructium. A pilot that does not through proper training (and not just some 1 hour ipad course) know the limitations of the aircraft is not well-equipped to save it once it's in trouble with little altitude for recovery.

You're also very generous if you call what they did marketing. I call it regulatory cheating at now the expense of a few hundred human lives. The 737 MAX does not fly enough like previous 737s not to require separate training and certification of pilots. Plenty of orders for it would not have been made if airlines had from the very beginning been told the truth that in addition to paying for the aircraft, airlines have to pay for a lot more training.

I think that this is the biggest fuckup in the history of Boeing. Perhaps also the history of modern aviation. Heads should roll.

Already losing orders...

[Anonymous Coward]

First major sales loss due to the 737-Max fiasco. $5B loss to Boeing from that order alone, and several other airlines are now said to be going down the same path.

The kind of blatant disregard for safety is not something that comes without a steep price, once your customers understand what you did and how you fooled them by failing to mention the kind of hackery that was done to this plane. By all rights it should have been a new model redesigned for bigger engines like Airbus did, but Boeing did not want to wait and lose even more market share to Airbus while they did that. Well, it looks like are going to lose that market share now whether they want to or not.

Hold onto your hat Rufus, we've seen nothing yet.

Re:Already losing orders...

[Anonymous Coward]

The DC-10. We've seen this show before.

Re:Already losing orders...

[Anonymous Coward]

Except this time Boeing won't be stirring up innuendo to help create orders for its forthcoming 747.

Re:Already losing orders...

[bobbied]

Except the DC-10 had serious flaws in the mechanical designs, the 737 MAX just doesn't have this kind of thing. The DC-10 had issues with the cargo doors, all three hydraulic systems routed too close to to an engine without the means of isolating them and ill advised maintenance short cuts breaking things.

Even then, it was fixable... But the economics of it's operation and the loss of reputation did the aircraft in.

Re:Already losing orders...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're splitting hairs calling a systems design flaw not mechanical, it's a major flaw. The 2-sensor-rely-on-1-in-error is a major flaw. Yes, it can be mitigated, but you're splitting hairs to not call a design flaw "mechanical"
- it doesn't matter, it contributed to the planes coming down and was unaddressed by Boeing until it happened a second time and then they tried to keep flying despite it anyway. This is entirely wrongheaded decision making.

"But the economics of it's operation and the loss of reputation did the aircraft in." Nope, it was simply replaced by better designs and retired.

Your little spiel about the DC-10 cargo doors has nothing to do with anything, but you present it as if it's some kind of rebuttal. It isn't.

Re:Already losing orders...

[Anonymous Coward]

The 737 Max has a design flaw that is not fixable. It has engines placed in a different position than what the airframe is designed for, so it is easy to stall the plane when you pull the nose up. To "fix" that flaw they have a system pushing the nose down automatically when it is too high. Does that sound like an actual fix?

Re:Already losing orders...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not quite the case, the plane's engine/frame refit is airworthy but like all aircraft it has its quirks. Any plane "can" stall when you pull the nose up under xyz conditions. MCAS was a new system implemented to do what older systems do also, in just about every comm jet. The problem is it did it poorly, such that when one of two sensors encountered unexpected erroneous data the system was then relying 100% on the remaining sensor for an automatic safety system, which as anyone and everyone knows is not... good. That, and then FAA let Boeing self-certify this system and sell this cheaper, inferior system subset to airlines while also not properly ensuring pilots knew how (or even when, given the "optional" error light was not present in either plane) to disengage these systems in critical low-altitude operations like directly after takeoff. One can talk about the design "worthiness" from an aeronautics vs budgetary consideration of putting new efficient engines on existing airframe designs, but ultimately this is not what is causing them to crash. It's not even close enough to say it contributed to these crashes. MCAS' flaws and the lack of training for the new system resulted in this, not engine placement. The aircraft is otherwise said to fly smoothly, quietly and responds well. So yes, if they fix the MCAS subsystem and FAA does its job to ensure that, and then they both make sure pilots are properly trained, that does sound like an actual fix to the actual problem here.

When the first engine falls off the aircraft or a pilot MANUALLY stalls it out on takeoff, I'll be happy *(wrong word, given an aeronautic disaster) to admit I was wrong about that.

Boeing's major fail was how it responded, rather than biting the bullet and really diving into fixing the MCAS flaws right after the first crash. That mistake WILL ultimately cost them tens of billions.

Re:Already losing orders...

[Travelsonic]

and ill advised maintenance short cuts breaking things.

You cannot reasonably blame the DC-10, or McDonnell-Douglas for crashes caused by maintenance shortcuts airlines performed despite their (MDD's) disapproval (such as the shortcut that caused the metal fatigue that brought down American 191), that'd be quite absurd.

Re:Already losing orders...

[Tough Love]

Except the DC-10 had serious flaws in the mechanical designs, the 737 MAX just doesn't have this kind of thing.

Yes it does does. The 737's landing gear is so stubby that it risks a tail strike on landing and can't flare properly, so is forced to land at higher than optimal speed, requiring more runway length and otherwise reducing safety factors. And the stubby landing gear also caused the crashes, by forcing the large turbofans to be mounted so far forward it makes the plane inherently unstable in near-stall, which unfortunately is the normal condition at takeoff. Instead of naturally dropping the nose in a stall, the 737 max will go even deeper into the stall, which will be followed by a cartwheel or catastrophic dive.

Boeing needs to admit it: the 737 had a glorious run but now in its old age is nothing more than an obsolete old wreck of an airframe that is dangerous to fly. It just can't be stretched safely without design changes so fundamental that it would become an entirely new type. The 737 should now be retired to the junkyard of aviation history instead of shuffling along like the bloodthirsty old zombie it is, and murdering more unsuspecting passengers.

Re: Already losing orders...

[Anonymous Coward]

Found the Airbus stockholder.

Re: Already losing orders...

[Tough Love]

You did not. You found the guy who knows why the 737 is obsolete junk and would advise friends to avoid flying in them.

But I guess, we found the Boeing stockholder.

Re:Already losing orders...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it does does. The 737's landing gear is so stubby that it risks a tail strike on landing and can't flare properly, so is forced to land at higher than optimal speed, requiring more runway length and otherwise reducing safety factors.

That's not the only problem. Its rudder is insufficient which also forces higher landing speeds in crosswind conditions (compared with other aircraft in the same conditions).

Revolving door

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure they were. And the revolving door if executives running between the FAA and Boeing and probably law firms were in no way impeding the proper scrutiny and oversight of aviation safety.

What a crock of shit. More cya press from the executive caste. First they blamed the pilots, next the software, next the pressure from airbus. The fucking plane was unstable. Probably Boeing is such an MBA'd clusterfuck the planes are literally only just able to fly anymore.

In a just world the entire c suite would be made to fly 10000 hours in these death traps before they were allowed a single press release. Evil fucking cunts.

Re:Revolving door

[Richard_at_work]

Add to the mix the fact that Boeing has railed against Airbuses flight envelope protection software since it was launched in 1988 with the A320, insisting that Boeing pilots have final say at all times under Boeings ethos. And then they go and add this, without telling pilots....

Now thats indicative of something endemic in Boeing.

Re: Revolving door

[Type44Q]

Now thats indicative of something endemic in Boeing.

It certainly is; they're called "MBA's."

Re: Revolving door

[Anonymous Coward]

Now thats indicative of something endemic in Boeing.

It certainly is; they're called "MBA's."

Do we REALLY REALLY need the MBA's ? I propose we round them up and throw them into the sun (along with lawyers, corrupt cops and politicians).
The world would be a much better place. Did you ever notice countries go into decline when they end up having anomalous amount of lawyers and Mba's running around pulling shit like nobody's business ?

Re:Revolving door

[Ambient Sheep]

Add to the mix the fact that Boeing has railed against Airbuses flight envelope protection software since it was launched in 1988 with the A320, insisting that Boeing pilots have final say at all times under Boeings ethos. And then they go and add this, without telling pilots....

Yes, this to me is the biggest surprise and irony about the whole thing. Having spent years lurking on the PPRuNe pilots' forum, watching smug Boeing lovers loudly proclaiming how they'd never fly an Airbus because Boeing doesn't have all that automated protection stuff (that to be fair, can catch you out in incredibly rare circumstances, much rarer than two fatals in five months though)... well if it weren't for the several hundred dead people the schadenfreude would be glorious.

Erroneous data?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is erroneous data? Signal line noise? bad sensor data? unauthorized remote operation of the flight control?

Re:Erroneous data?

[Anonymous Coward]

Engineers don't work in the realm of beliefs they have to know.

Re: Erroneous data?

[Anonymous Coward]

are they still hemorrhaging money as fast as when they designed the plane? Do they even really make planes or is all this a big pretense with no underlying substance?

Re: Erroneous data?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hemorrhaging money sir? That's blood on the field I see.

Maybe they skate on Lion Air...

[Anonymous Coward]

but the situation was fully understood after. They have complete responsibility for not grounding before Ethiopia Air happened.

The band aid for a questionable design

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously the bigger more forward mounted engines are a problem and the software fix was meant to control this to enough degree to be safe. However I think its unclear whether it actually does more harm then good? If pilots know the characteristics of the aircraft they can adjust for its tendencies. The DC10 also had some handling issues and by the time its was addressed the public had lost confidence in the aircraft. If Boeing isn't careful this could happen to the 737Max. Because you basically only are in one crash and your dead.

Who did develop 737 Max?

[Anonymous Coward]

[1] Industrial Engineers.
[2] Computer Science Engineers.
[3] Pilots.

The company must have these 3 kinds of people working together for the construction of each new model of aircrafts.

Otherwise, it will be hazardous.

But there are another kind of unwanted people involving in this system:
[4] CEO and partners of the company.
[5] Contractors.
[6] Black Men from the secret elite (they want that you don't know about this secretive thing).

"Unfilled" orders

[Anonymous Coward]

Quote: Boeing currently has over 4,600 "unfilled" orders for its 737 Max jets.

Anybody want to place bets on how many of those orders are going to switch from "unfilled" to "canceled" now that Boeing has conclusively demonstrated that they cannot be trusted with human lives?

Re:"Unfilled" orders

[Anonymous Coward]

Boeing could always fall back to producing the previous version of the 737. The one without the MCAS. So it wouldn't be as fuel efficient, who cares ? With consolidation in the industry the various companies can just hike the fares to compensate for increase in fuel consumption and the travelers would be fucked anyway. If that's not enough, let the orangutan in the white house pass an excutive order that makes it illegal to sell Airbus planes in the US. See ? Problem solved.

Re:"Unfilled" orders

[Anonymous Coward]

i could see that happening.

Re: "Unfilled" orders

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, repubtards saying they want regulation? Wtf is going on.

MCAS and autopilot

[Brett Buck]

There is something wrong with both the summary and TFA. MCAS only works when the airplane is being hand-flown, it does not operate when the autopilot is on (because the autopilot already controls the angle).

Re:MCAS and autopilot

[Anonymous Coward]

^Brett Buttfuck has never flown a plane and knows nothing real about MCAS, to preface that bullshit assertion...

Re:MCAS and autopilot

[Anonymous Coward]

If you know more than the offical investigators WTF are you doing on /. anyway ?

Re:MCAS and autopilot

[etudiant]

Not sure that matters.
The Ethiopian flight never got up high enough to engage the auto pilot, they were in trouble essentially from the time the wheels left the runway.
Separately, the autopilot is only as good as its inputs. If there is a sensor problem, as was the case with both these accidents, the autopilot is equally misled.

Criminally Complacent?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought I read one pprune.net or airliners.net that if you do not quickly take action with MCAS doing it's thing when it's pushing the nose down with errornous data that the system has no trim limit so it will trim the nose down to a point where the pilots CANNOT recover and pull the nose up no matter what if corrective action is not taken quickly. Add in the factor of time where your trying to Aviate first (keep the nose up) and try to troubleshoot the problem in real-time and in a situation you were likely not expecting and unprepared for mentally.

No wonder 2 different planes ended up embedded underground in extremely small pieces from the what.... 300+ MPH nose dive?

Add on top of this Vanilla Sunday that they did not give any notice to pilots before the first crash on this information and just expected pilots to know to immediately disable MCAS with switches that you have to flip in the total OPPOSITE direction from switches to turn things OFF in all the rest of the systems in the cockpit? Criminally complacent territory.... You look at the string cheese of compounding factors and it's amazing this only happened twice, guess they can thank the AoA sensors for not failing more frequently in the short time this has happened (which in itself would mean it would happen a lot more over the birds lifetime).

At least the Comet had the whole plane explode apart due to metal fatigue from pushing totally new boundaires in aviation whereas this is completely inadequate computer software for a system that can literally crash the plane quickly considering all the real-time factors if immediate and corrective action is not taken. I hope if really bad stuff is found that they are made examples of to knock them off their high horse.

Re:Criminally Complacent?

[Ambient Sheep]

Add on top of this Vanilla Sunday...

I prefer BDSM Saturdays myself...

(Good post otherwise, though.)

Very unlike training for driving a car

[gotan]

... pilots trained to fly one of these planes with hundreds of passengers are also trained how to handle all kinds of emergency situations. Additionally they have some kind of emergency manual (Quick Reference Handbook = QRH) at hand detailing procedures for all kind of in flight emergencies.

"Less than a minute" (*) is still sufficient time to switch off a system if you're trained to identify the problem and do that in such a situation, it might even be enough time to find the instructions in the QRH and implement them.

AFAIK pilots accused Boeing of being not properly informed about the characteristics of the MCAS-System, that probably means they weren't informed how to identify failure modes and/or how to react to them (i.e. switch the thing off).

(*)
According to this it's less than 40 seconds:
https://interestingengineering...

The switches are jammed!

[Latent Heat]

If a crew member has the presence of mind to reach for the correct switches -- which it is claimed someone did on a prior flight of the Indonesian plane -- I don't think the direction that the switches operate is that significant a human-factors problem.

I doubt we will get a recording on the Cockpit Voice Recording of the First Officer yelling in terror, "Captain, I am pulling on the disconnect switches, but they are jammed!"

There is strong evidence that the stabilizer was pushing the nose down of both ill-fated planes. At this point, however, we really need to wait for more results from the accident investigation as to the particular hardware fault (The vane sensor? The electronics reading vane position? The flight-control computer? Whether other sensors were also giving bad readings?) and a more complete picture regarding conditions the crew were facing (Did they receive proper training -- part of what we expect from the crew of such a craft is the ability to recover from expected and unexpected fault conditions? Were they overwhelmed by multiple alarms?)

The accusations of criminal complacency, the desire that the executives of Boeing along with the thousands of people working for their company be somehow punished, along with the formal criminal investigation, all of these seem premature until the accident investigators get a better picture.

Re:Bullshit, the engines did not cause the crash.

[toddestan]

Grandfathering didn't cause the planes to crash, but if there wasn't grandfathering, there wouldn't even be a 737 MAX. The whole reason that Boeing still makes 737's after 50 years is grandfathering - they'd much rather tweak an old design so they can still sell planes under the old rules. If they couldn't grandfather this stuff there would be little advantage to trying to make a 50-year old airframe do things it was never intended to do versus just designing an entirely new airplane. If it wasn't for grandfathering we wouldn't have Boeing trying to mount engines under a wing where they don't physically fit, creating a plane that's unstable in some situations, with a software hack to try to correct for it. And we wouldn't have people killed when the system goes haywire.

Re:Bullshit, the engines did not cause the crash.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to hunt you down and inject colloidal mercury into your brain stem.

are you completely thick?

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the world of aerospace, where best intentions can sometimes lead to worst outcomes.

Best intentions? Are you retarded?
They only did it to save a few bucks or else everyone would have just switched to airbus.