Everybody on that list has the ability to have themselves removed if they want to,
Uhh, sure. There's a company whose name I shall not mention, but their business model is to keep spammers, I mean companies, in constant contact with their victims, I mean customers. They charge for this service, so have a vested interest in never removing anyone from any list. One of my suppliers decided I should get their regular newsletters and it was simply impossible to get off that list. It was one of the early entries in my procmail junk filter.
Just because an email has email management information doesn't mean there is anyone or anything paying attention to the unsub attempts. And even if it works once, there's nothing stopping the spammer from putting you right back on the list.
but there are ways of cleaning those addresses.
The only way I know of knowing whether your email to someone has been opened is if you send HTML email (strike one) which includes a one pixel image (strike two) linked from a special URL that is logged and monitored (strike three).
Social media was never a particularly great way of making a sale,
Spammers always knew that, and that's what makes this amazing discovery by the "technology writer" so utterly unamazing. He's a tech writer and suddenly figured out that email is a great way of dumping his message out onto others? Really?
you're counting on FB or whoever to do the right thing
I've found that FB more often does the right thing than the spammers running their email "newsletters".
The best you could hope for is shooting a hole through a window
No, the best you could hope for is just the threat of shooting a flight attendant gets the pilot to divert or open the door and your associate takes control of the aircraft.
Likely, you shoot someone, and your associate then covers the rest with his zip gun while you reload.
Worst is you kill someone and then get taken down. But you've still killed someone, you'll be headline news, and you'll scare people out of flying. This is a major goal of terrorists.
Which of those three results is "good" for the public? I think they all rate as "bad", and trying to prevent all of them is good.
This assumes that a person could A) assemble the parts of the zip gun B) handle and load the ammunition, and C) aim and fire the weapon--all without anyone else noticing.
They're called "lavatories", and someone can go inside and close the door. They'll be out of sight of everyone else for as long as they need. I can tell, you've never been on an airplane, have you?
And, lo and behold, if you deal with the sensors disagree light, there will be no runaway trim since you'll have turned it off.
If you deal with the fact that the trim is running away, you'll have stopped the problem without needing a "sensor disagree" light. The "sensor disagree" light doesn't mean you have to disable the electric trim system, it means the sensors disagree. It might have no effect on the MCAS at all.
In the pilot's mind, the sensors disagree light will become the turn off MCAS light,
Son, if "the trim is running away nose-down" doesn't mean "disable the electric trim system", then there is no hope that a more esoteric, less obviously dangerous "sensor disagree" light will result in any better outcome.
Why then did the pilots of two planes not do what you said they should know that they should do?
You can only lead the horse to water, you can't make him drink. Why they didn't diagnose a problem that they'd certainly seen in a lot of simulator rides is a mystery. Why do pilots fall asleep and fly past their destination? Why do pilots ignore approach minima and fly into the ground 100 feet short of the runway? Pilots make mistakes.
As for the usefulness, it would provide an unequivocal indication of the problem which should cause the pilot to take the appropriate action.
I've already covered this. An "AOA disagree" light doesn't tell you how to stop a runaway trim situation, nor does it even tell that you're going to experience one. It just means the sensors disagree. And then you'll waste time dealing with that instead of the real problem you need to stop.
Had they had a clear indication of exactly what was causing the plane to fight them for control, the pilots could have managed to shut off MCAS.
The thing that was causing them to fight for control was a runaway stabilizer trim. How to deal with this is well documented. What caused the runaway trim is a matter to be diagnosed after the plane is stable, not before.
Yeah, AFTER they solved the trim problem it would have been convenient for them to be able to see a light that says the AOA disagree, and then maybe realize it was the MCAS that created the physical problem. But even if they did that, what would they do? They can't fix the MCAS, they can't replace the AOA. All they can do is report it later. Which happened in previous flights. Even lacking their report, the flight computers would report the fault to maintenance, who would have to come fix it anyway.
That flight was saved by the third pilot (non-flying) who was in a jump seat and could afford the luxury of observation from the side.
So now it is a luxury to look at the flight instruments and indicators?
The two flying pilots
There is only one flying pilot. The other is the PNF (pilot not flying) and he had plenty of time to look and feel and think, just like the dead-heading pilot did.
It has nothing to do with experience.
It has everything to do with lack of experience and training. Not being able to detect a runaway trim situation when you can see the trim wheel spinning is a lack of experience and training. The question at the moment is not "what is causing the aircraft to trim nose-down", it is "how do I stop the aircraft from trimming nose-down?" The cause can wait; stopping the problem from killing you takes first priority. The PNF should have been making it his instead of "flying" or being "busy with instruments". That kind of CRM leads to airplanes flying into the swamp while every pilot on board is looking at a landing gear light bulb.
Was it in the brochure that hundreds would automatically die at some point without these options?
This is just one more example of the dishonest debate taking place here about this issue. Hundreds did not automatically die because there was no "AOA disagree" light on the panel. Hundreds died because four pilots (two in each airplane) could not diagnose a runaway trim situation and take the book-specified action to prevent it. A light on the dash saying the AOA sensors don't agree would add nothing to their ability to diagnose the actual problem, which was not that the sensors didn't agree, but that the trim was being forced nose-down incorrectly.
The dead-heading pilot diagnosed the problem. He had the same training and saw the same things the other two pilots in his cockpit saw. The last two pilots even had the benefit of an FAA AD telling them what would cause that problem and how to solve it, and they still couldn't deal with it.
Boeing certainly wasn't scrimping, they were being greedy by selling critical safety features for a few more bucks,
"Critical safety features" that most planes don't have even one of kind of hints that maybe it isn't as critical as you pretend. If it were such a critical safety feature, wouldn't you imagine that the aircraft that people learn to fly in might have them? I mean, novice pilots are more likely to need "critical safety features", and yet they don't have them. Why is that?
It's because AOA is not critical. Knowing the AOA is not working is not critical. Knowing the AOA isn't working doesn't tell you how to prevent a runaway trim situation. You can't just reach out and tap on the sensor to see if you can unstick it. If it's broken, it's broken, and you wait until you land to get it replaced.
AOA sensor on the fritz. Plane keeps trying to nose dive. Something is trying to cause it because it thinks we're at the wrong angle. What causes wrong angle? Let's disable automated systems that control angle.
You are conveniently ignoring the fact that the nose-down trim is a better indicator that you need to disable "automated systems that control angle". You don't need a red light on the dash to tell you the nose has pitched down, and that every time you try to bring the trim back to normal it just starts running away again.
Your "AOA disagree" light is just that. It can light up when the plane isn't trying to pitch down, too. Since there are other things that can cause uncommanded nose-down trim, that light may never illuminate.
The fact that the airplane is pitching down is enough to know you need to fix something. At the end of the day, the way to stop the problem is the same no matter what causes the runaway trim. You don't need a light to tell you that.
And the MCAS is a new feature because the airplane is intrinsically unstable because of its oversized engines.
Bullshit. The aircraft pitches up when thrust is applied because of where the engines are located. Guess what? This happens in many other aircraft, too. And in some aircraft the plane pitches DOWN when thrust is applied. And the opposite happens when thrust is reduced. Sometimes a plane that pitches up will pitch down for the same change in thrust, depending on the current configuration.
Pilots learn these things. They have to deal with them. They are supposed to be paying attention when they are applying thrust because it means they are changing something, and their job is to supervise. MCAS is a crutch that shouldn't be necessary if the pilot is paying attention to the aircraft while flying. And stopping MCAS from actually doing anything is, indeed, documented in the POH and emergency procedures.
No, my response (being a nearly-licensed-to-fly-alone 'expert') is that you're a fucking moron,
I'm really glad that you think you're an expert on flying. I hope I never run across you as a pilot.
Does the airplane you are learning to fly in have an AOA sensor? None of the aircraft I've flown (long past "pre-solo") have had an AOA sensor, much less a display. Maybe the King Air did, but I don't recall. If your airplane doesn't have one in it, then you are a cheap-ass bastard who is going to kill someone because you're too cheap to buy a simple instrument. How's that sound? Goose, meet gander.
AOA isn't required to fly. Period. There are other stall warning systems. There are other instruments that can tell you that you're flying in a stall attitude. As a pre-solo student, your CFI should be teaching you about that before he lets you be a danger to yourself and others by flying alone. Otherwise, you're going to get into the pattern on your first solo and try to overcorrect a late turn to final, and corkscrew into the ground when you enter a stall/spin at 100ft AGL. Hint: look up what happens to stall speed in a steep turn. And then remember that one wing is going slower than the other and slower than the indicated airspeed.
If you have an "MCAS subsytem failure - contradictory measures from sensors" indicator, you damn sure go to the page of the manual that deals with that.
And what do you imagine that page might tell you do do? Who cares? It's irrelevant because the problem the pilots had to solve FIRST and FOREMOST was the repeated nose-down trim. THAT'S the critical issue. The fact that the two AOA sensors don't agree is nice to know, after you've solved the life-threatening issue first. Then you can complain that there isn't an "MCAS failure" page to help you diagnose the MCAS failure. Until you stop the runaway trim, you don't have the time to debug an MCAS system.
Solving that life-threatening issue was already included in the POH under its own topic. The pilots didn't implement the emergency procedure that has been in the book for decades and is part of their immediate action drill for any runaway trim situation. The same emergency procedure that the FAA AD outlined as the corrective action for the MCAS failure.
making sure that people know the system and how to turn it off
Pilots are quite aware of how to turn off a runaway electric trim system. It's in the POH. It's part of their training. It's part of their simulator time. It's not a mystery.
But Boeing DID tell people how to turn it off, and the FAA told people how to turn it off, in the messages and the AD send out last November. And yet, a crash happened in March. Apparently "nobody told us" isn't an excuse for failing to fly the airplane.
This would be like buying the detectors + sprinkler system
No, because the aircraft operators didn't BUY the AOA indicator or the AOA disagree light. Those are physical things that aren't installed if you don't buy them.
It's worse. The features were available, just turned off unless you coughed up more money for them.
They're optional. Optional things add cost, and thus cost money to the customer.
The summary claims: "even though some of these systems are fundamental to the plane's operations."
The lie here is that they are fundamental to the operation of the aircraft. They obviously are not -- airplanes fly fine without them, and the pilots can control the aircraft just fine without them. Many airplanes don't have a single AOA sensor, much less an indicator to show the reading, and then clearly they won't have a "disagree" light. For something to be "fundamental" it really needs to be necessary.
In the case of these flights that crashed, the disagree light would have been a distraction, and god knows they were not paying enough attention anyway. They would have seen a light that told them that the two AOA disagreed, but that would tell them nothing about how to stop the problem. They had all they needed: a direct observation that the trim system was repeatedly entering nose-down trim despite all attempts at returning it to normal. What do you do if the AOA disagree? Who knows. What do you do if your trim system is trying to kill you? DISABLE THE TRIM SYSTEM. Between a light telling you that two sensors disagree and a trim system trying to kill you, which is the most important problem to solve? How hard is that to grasp?
because that is defined as continuous uncommanded movement of the tail.
I really don't care how the Seattle Times defines things. A trim system that keeps moving without an obvious reason (which this was) and starts moving again after any temporary interruption is runaway. It's no longer under control.
But it doesn't matter. When the electric trim system fails FOR ANY REASON, the immediate corrective action is to disable the electric trim system. That just happens to be a major part of the emergency checklist for runaway stabilizer.
I would also point to the emergency AD from FAA from Nov 2018 that says explicitly that this is a problem that is handled by the runaway stabilizer checklist. Apparently the FAA can define "runaway" as referring to this problem.
the pilots were able to counter the nose-down movement multiple times.
Yeah, one of them "fixed" it 21 times before passing the problem off to the copilot to solve. I think about the second time you see the trim causing a problem is the time to shut off the trim system and stabilize the aircraft. And then, after that, you try to debug the system to see if it is fixable in flight or not.
Pulling back on the column normally interrupts any stabilizer nose-down movement, but with MCAS operating that control column function was disabled.
That's obviously untrue, since the pilot was able to correct the pitch 21 times using the control column. If it were true, then it is even more glaringly obvious that there is a runaway stabilizer problem, since pulling back on the yoke, according to you, doesn't bring the planes nose back up. The electrical trim is busy running the trim nose-down, pulling the yoke back doesn't stop it, so the only remaining course of action is pulling the breaker on the trim and retrimming manually. This is the runaway stabilizer emergency checklist in a nutshell.
These differences certainly could have confused the Lion Air pilots as to what was going on.
The CAUSE might be confusing, but the cause is irrelevant at that point in time. It makes absolutely no difference what is causing the trim to run nose-down, the solution is to pull the breaker to stop it.
The first apparent fault is the inconsistent sensor(s).
Inconsistent sensors is a fault that only appears in the software, and maybe lights up a light.
Runaway trim nose-down causes the aircraft to pitch nose-down, which is an obvious change in flight attitude that requires no lights or sirens to notice. You can see the horizon moving up, you can feel the attitude change, and it will show up on many other instruments.
The first apparent fault was nose-down runaway trim. The most critical fault was nose-down runaway trim. One report claimed the flying pilot tried 21 times to pull back and reset the trim to level flight, and then handed the problem to the co-pilot. Twenty one tries at level flight is not working an intermittent sensor problem, it's working the trim problem.
You has a wonderful way of saying irrelevant things. Of course it only acts in certain conditions. Like when it thinks there is an excessive angle of attack.
leading to what may appear to be an intermittant condition rather than an ongoing runaway trim.
When it is active and acting incorrectly, it will appear exactly like runaway trim, which is logical since it actually is a runaway trim situation. The emergency checklist for runaway trim says you pull the breaker on the electric trim system. That stops the problem. You don't go through 21 cycles of "I see nose-down trim, I will pull up and manually adjust the trim then let go." If the system is somehow repeatedly adjusting the trim nose-down, then it is broken and you follow the emergency checklist for that kind of failure.
When it is not acting, then there is no reason to shut down the electric trim system.
I fixed it. MCAS is a different system than an autopilot or other trim control system, but the end effect is the same. "Is the trim moving when it shouldn't?"
As I quoted in my other post, this specific problem was difficult to recognize as runaway trim
Except that this was exactly what runaway trim IS. How is it hard to recognize a problem where "the trim keeps running nose-down without any reason" as anything but "runaway trim"? That's pretty much by definition.
That's like saying that pilots could not recognize inverted flight because the autopilot was not on. Hey, look out the damn window, fellows. The ground is where the air ought to be and vice versa. It doesn't matter if the autopilot made it happen, MCAS made it happen, or anything else. Solve the problem of "inverted flight" first and then spend time diagnosing what caused it.
And then explain why the second crash happened. It was months after the emergency AD from FAA saying "this is runaway trim and you use the runaway stabilizer emergency checklist to stop it", which includes pulling the switch on the electric trim system.
They didn't tell pilots about this system, what it does, what happens if it fails and how to disable it.
The shouldn't have to spell out the first two things because "what happens if it fails" is identical to what happens if any other part of the electric trim system fails in the same mode, and how to disable it is identical to how you disable the system for any other electric trim system failure.
That information is well documented and the emergency checklist has been in the POH for decades.
Runaway trim can be caused by a defective trim control on the yoke. Do you really imagine that the correct way to document this failure mode in the POH is by having an entry for "defective trim control switch"? Maybe it's better to have an overarching entry for "runaway trim" -- which prevents the defective switch from causing the trim problem, as well as for any other cause. Maybe it's better, do you think, to have an emergency section of the manual that is identified not by specific failures of specific parts that may not be readily apparent but by obvious actions that the aircraft is making? You can trivially detect runaway trim ("is the trim going one way without stopping and without my command?"), but answering "is my trim control switch broken?" is a much harder question to answer. Most pilots, I dare say, will notice the result of a broken trim switch by seeing "the trim going one way without stopping and without my command". Better to deal with easily observed things in deciding what checklist to run, and this checklist has been around for decades and is a training item for every pilot.
It simply wasn't in the pilot's manual, didn't make it into the training process.
I'm sorry that your limited pilot experience has you making such silly statements. You might never have heard of how to deal with a runaway trim system, but anyone who moves into an airplane with one does. At least they should. Maybe it's the fault of your CFI for never pointing out George and the myriad of ways to disable him (even if you've never turned him on!) or scaring the shit out of you about how it can kill you so you actually bother to learn about that system. I can say that by the time you get to be an ATP and certified to fly a 737 you will have had training on the system and how to disable it.
AND Most damaging, Boeing didn't tell the certification authorities about this new feature so they could be sure all the interested parties, pilots, trainers, and maintenance where apprised of the system,
Both Boeing and FAA made sure that everyone was appraised of the system and how to react to failures way back in November. The operators of the second crash 'where' (sic) told about the system and what to do months before their crash happened. It appears that simply telling people about this new feature and how to react to failures didn't keep poorly-trained pilots from failing to follow the emergency procedures checklists and keeping their passengers from becoming dead. I don't think that's on Boeing or the FAA at all.
and they apparently didn't follow the new checklist
There was no "new checklist". Why should there be? Stopping a runaway stabilizer is the same for both aircraft. For all aircraft, actually, but the names of the buttons and their location may differ, requiring some familiarization training.
If you ask to borrow my car, am I supposed to do a complete round of training covering how to use the parking brake, the radio, the turn signals, the seat belts, etc? Or should I assume that you can operate things in a completely different model car that have the same function as in your own car?
That's what this was. "How do you stop a runaway stabilizer?" is answered the same way in pretty much every aircraft. "You disable the effectors that adjust the trim for the stabilizer." Then you can start answering the question "why did the stabilizer trim run away?" As the pilot, you might never figure out what went wrong, it might take ground maintenance people pouring over the aircraft to find the problem. I recall one NTSB report that found the cause of a crash was a single pin in a single connector was pushed back into the housing and not making contact. Not solvable while in flight. But as the pilot, you will have a flyable aircraft that you can get safely to a destination. Unless you get too involved in trying to solve the "why" that you never follow the "how to stop" procedure, which is what these pilots appear to have done. The dead-head pilot did the "how to stop" so his airplane didn't crash. The guy who tried 21 times to temporarily stop the problem and never proceeded to the emergency checklist was apparently too overcome with "why" to care about "how not to be dead".
Slashdot Mirror
Everybody on that list has the ability to have themselves removed if they want to,
Uhh, sure. There's a company whose name I shall not mention, but their business model is to keep spammers, I mean companies, in constant contact with their victims, I mean customers. They charge for this service, so have a vested interest in never removing anyone from any list. One of my suppliers decided I should get their regular newsletters and it was simply impossible to get off that list. It was one of the early entries in my procmail junk filter.
Just because an email has email management information doesn't mean there is anyone or anything paying attention to the unsub attempts. And even if it works once, there's nothing stopping the spammer from putting you right back on the list.
but there are ways of cleaning those addresses.
The only way I know of knowing whether your email to someone has been opened is if you send HTML email (strike one) which includes a one pixel image (strike two) linked from a special URL that is logged and monitored (strike three).
Social media was never a particularly great way of making a sale,
Spammers always knew that, and that's what makes this amazing discovery by the "technology writer" so utterly unamazing. He's a tech writer and suddenly figured out that email is a great way of dumping his message out onto others? Really?
you're counting on FB or whoever to do the right thing
I've found that FB more often does the right thing than the spammers running their email "newsletters".
The best you could hope for is shooting a hole through a window
No, the best you could hope for is just the threat of shooting a flight attendant gets the pilot to divert or open the door and your associate takes control of the aircraft.
Likely, you shoot someone, and your associate then covers the rest with his zip gun while you reload.
Worst is you kill someone and then get taken down. But you've still killed someone, you'll be headline news, and you'll scare people out of flying. This is a major goal of terrorists.
Which of those three results is "good" for the public? I think they all rate as "bad", and trying to prevent all of them is good.
This assumes that a person could A) assemble the parts of the zip gun B) handle and load the ammunition, and C) aim and fire the weapon--all without anyone else noticing.
They're called "lavatories", and someone can go inside and close the door. They'll be out of sight of everyone else for as long as they need. I can tell, you've never been on an airplane, have you?
And, lo and behold, if you deal with the sensors disagree light, there will be no runaway trim since you'll have turned it off.
If you deal with the fact that the trim is running away, you'll have stopped the problem without needing a "sensor disagree" light. The "sensor disagree" light doesn't mean you have to disable the electric trim system, it means the sensors disagree. It might have no effect on the MCAS at all.
In the pilot's mind, the sensors disagree light will become the turn off MCAS light,
Son, if "the trim is running away nose-down" doesn't mean "disable the electric trim system", then there is no hope that a more esoteric, less obviously dangerous "sensor disagree" light will result in any better outcome.
Why then did the pilots of two planes not do what you said they should know that they should do?
You can only lead the horse to water, you can't make him drink. Why they didn't diagnose a problem that they'd certainly seen in a lot of simulator rides is a mystery. Why do pilots fall asleep and fly past their destination? Why do pilots ignore approach minima and fly into the ground 100 feet short of the runway? Pilots make mistakes.
As for the usefulness, it would provide an unequivocal indication of the problem which should cause the pilot to take the appropriate action.
I've already covered this. An "AOA disagree" light doesn't tell you how to stop a runaway trim situation, nor does it even tell that you're going to experience one. It just means the sensors disagree. And then you'll waste time dealing with that instead of the real problem you need to stop.
Had they had a clear indication of exactly what was causing the plane to fight them for control, the pilots could have managed to shut off MCAS.
The thing that was causing them to fight for control was a runaway stabilizer trim. How to deal with this is well documented. What caused the runaway trim is a matter to be diagnosed after the plane is stable, not before.
Yeah, AFTER they solved the trim problem it would have been convenient for them to be able to see a light that says the AOA disagree, and then maybe realize it was the MCAS that created the physical problem. But even if they did that, what would they do? They can't fix the MCAS, they can't replace the AOA. All they can do is report it later. Which happened in previous flights. Even lacking their report, the flight computers would report the fault to maintenance, who would have to come fix it anyway.
No, they are physical things that are installed in all cases.
They are optional. Do you not know what that word means?
They are optional because they aren't critical. Or fundamental.
That flight was saved by the third pilot (non-flying) who was in a jump seat and could afford the luxury of observation from the side.
So now it is a luxury to look at the flight instruments and indicators?
The two flying pilots
There is only one flying pilot. The other is the PNF (pilot not flying) and he had plenty of time to look and feel and think, just like the dead-heading pilot did.
It has nothing to do with experience.
It has everything to do with lack of experience and training. Not being able to detect a runaway trim situation when you can see the trim wheel spinning is a lack of experience and training. The question at the moment is not "what is causing the aircraft to trim nose-down", it is "how do I stop the aircraft from trimming nose-down?" The cause can wait; stopping the problem from killing you takes first priority. The PNF should have been making it his instead of "flying" or being "busy with instruments". That kind of CRM leads to airplanes flying into the swamp while every pilot on board is looking at a landing gear light bulb.
Was it in the brochure that hundreds would automatically die at some point without these options?
This is just one more example of the dishonest debate taking place here about this issue. Hundreds did not automatically die because there was no "AOA disagree" light on the panel. Hundreds died because four pilots (two in each airplane) could not diagnose a runaway trim situation and take the book-specified action to prevent it. A light on the dash saying the AOA sensors don't agree would add nothing to their ability to diagnose the actual problem, which was not that the sensors didn't agree, but that the trim was being forced nose-down incorrectly.
The dead-heading pilot diagnosed the problem. He had the same training and saw the same things the other two pilots in his cockpit saw. The last two pilots even had the benefit of an FAA AD telling them what would cause that problem and how to solve it, and they still couldn't deal with it.
Boeing certainly wasn't scrimping, they were being greedy by selling critical safety features for a few more bucks,
"Critical safety features" that most planes don't have even one of kind of hints that maybe it isn't as critical as you pretend. If it were such a critical safety feature, wouldn't you imagine that the aircraft that people learn to fly in might have them? I mean, novice pilots are more likely to need "critical safety features", and yet they don't have them. Why is that?
It's because AOA is not critical. Knowing the AOA is not working is not critical. Knowing the AOA isn't working doesn't tell you how to prevent a runaway trim situation. You can't just reach out and tap on the sensor to see if you can unstick it. If it's broken, it's broken, and you wait until you land to get it replaced.
AOA sensor on the fritz. Plane keeps trying to nose dive. Something is trying to cause it because it thinks we're at the wrong angle. What causes wrong angle? Let's disable automated systems that control angle.
You are conveniently ignoring the fact that the nose-down trim is a better indicator that you need to disable "automated systems that control angle". You don't need a red light on the dash to tell you the nose has pitched down, and that every time you try to bring the trim back to normal it just starts running away again.
Your "AOA disagree" light is just that. It can light up when the plane isn't trying to pitch down, too. Since there are other things that can cause uncommanded nose-down trim, that light may never illuminate.
The fact that the airplane is pitching down is enough to know you need to fix something. At the end of the day, the way to stop the problem is the same no matter what causes the runaway trim. You don't need a light to tell you that.
And the MCAS is a new feature because the airplane is intrinsically unstable because of its oversized engines.
Bullshit. The aircraft pitches up when thrust is applied because of where the engines are located. Guess what? This happens in many other aircraft, too. And in some aircraft the plane pitches DOWN when thrust is applied. And the opposite happens when thrust is reduced. Sometimes a plane that pitches up will pitch down for the same change in thrust, depending on the current configuration.
Pilots learn these things. They have to deal with them. They are supposed to be paying attention when they are applying thrust because it means they are changing something, and their job is to supervise. MCAS is a crutch that shouldn't be necessary if the pilot is paying attention to the aircraft while flying. And stopping MCAS from actually doing anything is, indeed, documented in the POH and emergency procedures.
No, my response (being a nearly-licensed-to-fly-alone 'expert') is that you're a fucking moron,
I'm really glad that you think you're an expert on flying. I hope I never run across you as a pilot.
Does the airplane you are learning to fly in have an AOA sensor? None of the aircraft I've flown (long past "pre-solo") have had an AOA sensor, much less a display. Maybe the King Air did, but I don't recall. If your airplane doesn't have one in it, then you are a cheap-ass bastard who is going to kill someone because you're too cheap to buy a simple instrument. How's that sound? Goose, meet gander.
AOA isn't required to fly. Period. There are other stall warning systems. There are other instruments that can tell you that you're flying in a stall attitude. As a pre-solo student, your CFI should be teaching you about that before he lets you be a danger to yourself and others by flying alone. Otherwise, you're going to get into the pattern on your first solo and try to overcorrect a late turn to final, and corkscrew into the ground when you enter a stall/spin at 100ft AGL. Hint: look up what happens to stall speed in a steep turn. And then remember that one wing is going slower than the other and slower than the indicated airspeed.
If you have an "MCAS subsytem failure - contradictory measures from sensors" indicator, you damn sure go to the page of the manual that deals with that.
And what do you imagine that page might tell you do do? Who cares? It's irrelevant because the problem the pilots had to solve FIRST and FOREMOST was the repeated nose-down trim. THAT'S the critical issue. The fact that the two AOA sensors don't agree is nice to know, after you've solved the life-threatening issue first. Then you can complain that there isn't an "MCAS failure" page to help you diagnose the MCAS failure. Until you stop the runaway trim, you don't have the time to debug an MCAS system.
Solving that life-threatening issue was already included in the POH under its own topic. The pilots didn't implement the emergency procedure that has been in the book for decades and is part of their immediate action drill for any runaway trim situation. The same emergency procedure that the FAA AD outlined as the corrective action for the MCAS failure.
making sure that people know the system and how to turn it off
Pilots are quite aware of how to turn off a runaway electric trim system. It's in the POH. It's part of their training. It's part of their simulator time. It's not a mystery.
But Boeing DID tell people how to turn it off, and the FAA told people how to turn it off, in the messages and the AD send out last November. And yet, a crash happened in March. Apparently "nobody told us" isn't an excuse for failing to fly the airplane.
This would be like buying the detectors + sprinkler system
No, because the aircraft operators didn't BUY the AOA indicator or the AOA disagree light. Those are physical things that aren't installed if you don't buy them.
It's worse. The features were available, just turned off unless you coughed up more money for them.
They're optional. Optional things add cost, and thus cost money to the customer.
The summary claims: "even though some of these systems are fundamental to the plane's operations." The lie here is that they are fundamental to the operation of the aircraft. They obviously are not -- airplanes fly fine without them, and the pilots can control the aircraft just fine without them. Many airplanes don't have a single AOA sensor, much less an indicator to show the reading, and then clearly they won't have a "disagree" light. For something to be "fundamental" it really needs to be necessary.
In the case of these flights that crashed, the disagree light would have been a distraction, and god knows they were not paying enough attention anyway. They would have seen a light that told them that the two AOA disagreed, but that would tell them nothing about how to stop the problem. They had all they needed: a direct observation that the trim system was repeatedly entering nose-down trim despite all attempts at returning it to normal. What do you do if the AOA disagree? Who knows. What do you do if your trim system is trying to kill you? DISABLE THE TRIM SYSTEM. Between a light telling you that two sensors disagree and a trim system trying to kill you, which is the most important problem to solve? How hard is that to grasp?
because that is defined as continuous uncommanded movement of the tail.
I really don't care how the Seattle Times defines things. A trim system that keeps moving without an obvious reason (which this was) and starts moving again after any temporary interruption is runaway. It's no longer under control. But it doesn't matter. When the electric trim system fails FOR ANY REASON, the immediate corrective action is to disable the electric trim system. That just happens to be a major part of the emergency checklist for runaway stabilizer.
I would also point to the emergency AD from FAA from Nov 2018 that says explicitly that this is a problem that is handled by the runaway stabilizer checklist. Apparently the FAA can define "runaway" as referring to this problem.
the pilots were able to counter the nose-down movement multiple times.
Yeah, one of them "fixed" it 21 times before passing the problem off to the copilot to solve. I think about the second time you see the trim causing a problem is the time to shut off the trim system and stabilize the aircraft. And then, after that, you try to debug the system to see if it is fixable in flight or not.
Pulling back on the column normally interrupts any stabilizer nose-down movement, but with MCAS operating that control column function was disabled.
That's obviously untrue, since the pilot was able to correct the pitch 21 times using the control column. If it were true, then it is even more glaringly obvious that there is a runaway stabilizer problem, since pulling back on the yoke, according to you, doesn't bring the planes nose back up. The electrical trim is busy running the trim nose-down, pulling the yoke back doesn't stop it, so the only remaining course of action is pulling the breaker on the trim and retrimming manually. This is the runaway stabilizer emergency checklist in a nutshell.
These differences certainly could have confused the Lion Air pilots as to what was going on.
The CAUSE might be confusing, but the cause is irrelevant at that point in time. It makes absolutely no difference what is causing the trim to run nose-down, the solution is to pull the breaker to stop it.
The first apparent fault is the inconsistent sensor(s).
Inconsistent sensors is a fault that only appears in the software, and maybe lights up a light.
Runaway trim nose-down causes the aircraft to pitch nose-down, which is an obvious change in flight attitude that requires no lights or sirens to notice. You can see the horizon moving up, you can feel the attitude change, and it will show up on many other instruments.
The first apparent fault was nose-down runaway trim. The most critical fault was nose-down runaway trim. One report claimed the flying pilot tried 21 times to pull back and reset the trim to level flight, and then handed the problem to the co-pilot. Twenty one tries at level flight is not working an intermittent sensor problem, it's working the trim problem.
MCAS only operates under some conditions,
You has a wonderful way of saying irrelevant things. Of course it only acts in certain conditions. Like when it thinks there is an excessive angle of attack.
leading to what may appear to be an intermittant condition rather than an ongoing runaway trim.
When it is active and acting incorrectly, it will appear exactly like runaway trim, which is logical since it actually is a runaway trim situation. The emergency checklist for runaway trim says you pull the breaker on the electric trim system. That stops the problem. You don't go through 21 cycles of "I see nose-down trim, I will pull up and manually adjust the trim then let go." If the system is somehow repeatedly adjusting the trim nose-down, then it is broken and you follow the emergency checklist for that kind of failure.
When it is not acting, then there is no reason to shut down the electric trim system.
MCAS doesn't shut down with the autopilot.
Nobody said it did.
If the pilot manually adjusts the trim, it disengages for 5 seconds, then goes back into action.
Yes, that's right. Contradict something I said when you try arguing with me, ok?
You broke it. MCAS behaved a bit differently.
I fixed it. MCAS is a different system than an autopilot or other trim control system, but the end effect is the same. "Is the trim moving when it shouldn't?"
It's behavior looked exactly like runaway trim,
FTFY. And that's why FAA AD of November said that.
As I quoted in my other post, this specific problem was difficult to recognize as runaway trim
Except that this was exactly what runaway trim IS. How is it hard to recognize a problem where "the trim keeps running nose-down without any reason" as anything but "runaway trim"? That's pretty much by definition.
That's like saying that pilots could not recognize inverted flight because the autopilot was not on. Hey, look out the damn window, fellows. The ground is where the air ought to be and vice versa. It doesn't matter if the autopilot made it happen, MCAS made it happen, or anything else. Solve the problem of "inverted flight" first and then spend time diagnosing what caused it.
And then explain why the second crash happened. It was months after the emergency AD from FAA saying "this is runaway trim and you use the runaway stabilizer emergency checklist to stop it", which includes pulling the switch on the electric trim system.
They didn't tell pilots about this system, what it does, what happens if it fails and how to disable it.
The shouldn't have to spell out the first two things because "what happens if it fails" is identical to what happens if any other part of the electric trim system fails in the same mode, and how to disable it is identical to how you disable the system for any other electric trim system failure.
That information is well documented and the emergency checklist has been in the POH for decades.
Runaway trim can be caused by a defective trim control on the yoke. Do you really imagine that the correct way to document this failure mode in the POH is by having an entry for "defective trim control switch"? Maybe it's better to have an overarching entry for "runaway trim" -- which prevents the defective switch from causing the trim problem, as well as for any other cause. Maybe it's better, do you think, to have an emergency section of the manual that is identified not by specific failures of specific parts that may not be readily apparent but by obvious actions that the aircraft is making? You can trivially detect runaway trim ("is the trim going one way without stopping and without my command?"), but answering "is my trim control switch broken?" is a much harder question to answer. Most pilots, I dare say, will notice the result of a broken trim switch by seeing "the trim going one way without stopping and without my command". Better to deal with easily observed things in deciding what checklist to run, and this checklist has been around for decades and is a training item for every pilot.
It simply wasn't in the pilot's manual, didn't make it into the training process.
I'm sorry that your limited pilot experience has you making such silly statements. You might never have heard of how to deal with a runaway trim system, but anyone who moves into an airplane with one does. At least they should. Maybe it's the fault of your CFI for never pointing out George and the myriad of ways to disable him (even if you've never turned him on!) or scaring the shit out of you about how it can kill you so you actually bother to learn about that system. I can say that by the time you get to be an ATP and certified to fly a 737 you will have had training on the system and how to disable it.
AND Most damaging, Boeing didn't tell the certification authorities about this new feature so they could be sure all the interested parties, pilots, trainers, and maintenance where apprised of the system,
Both Boeing and FAA made sure that everyone was appraised of the system and how to react to failures way back in November. The operators of the second crash 'where' (sic) told about the system and what to do months before their crash happened. It appears that simply telling people about this new feature and how to react to failures didn't keep poorly-trained pilots from failing to follow the emergency procedures checklists and keeping their passengers from becoming dead. I don't think that's on Boeing or the FAA at all.
and they apparently didn't follow the new checklist
There was no "new checklist". Why should there be? Stopping a runaway stabilizer is the same for both aircraft. For all aircraft, actually, but the names of the buttons and their location may differ, requiring some familiarization training.
If you ask to borrow my car, am I supposed to do a complete round of training covering how to use the parking brake, the radio, the turn signals, the seat belts, etc? Or should I assume that you can operate things in a completely different model car that have the same function as in your own car?
That's what this was. "How do you stop a runaway stabilizer?" is answered the same way in pretty much every aircraft. "You disable the effectors that adjust the trim for the stabilizer." Then you can start answering the question "why did the stabilizer trim run away?" As the pilot, you might never figure out what went wrong, it might take ground maintenance people pouring over the aircraft to find the problem. I recall one NTSB report that found the cause of a crash was a single pin in a single connector was pushed back into the housing and not making contact. Not solvable while in flight. But as the pilot, you will have a flyable aircraft that you can get safely to a destination. Unless you get too involved in trying to solve the "why" that you never follow the "how to stop" procedure, which is what these pilots appear to have done. The dead-head pilot did the "how to stop" so his airplane didn't crash. The guy who tried 21 times to temporarily stop the problem and never proceeded to the emergency checklist was apparently too overcome with "why" to care about "how not to be dead".