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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.
- "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.
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.
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.
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.