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Totally agree re your second point. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the two failures were down to insufficient training by the airlines in question. But I also wouldn't be surprised to find that Boeing made a selling point of the fact that their aircrews were already familiar with the aircraft. This is all guesswork as we don't have enough information yet.
What can't be disputed is that the FAA have become far too cosy with the manufacturers - if there had been due diligence this may not have happened and 300 people would still be alive.
I’ve flown all 3 in a simulator and I can confirm that.
At what point does a major re-design not become a 'new' plane?
Lets stretch an existing model, jack it up a bit, bolt on a couple far bigger engines with different aerodynamics, add an extra safety system while not really telling anybody anything about how it works, and as long as you can fly the older version, you can go fly this one after a few hours of training.
That’s the exact problem. Is it a new aircraft or not? If it is, it should have had far more oversight and should not have been certified without a more rigorous system of sensor error checking and pilot training.
Boeing have tried to spin it one way or the other depending on which suits them.
I really do think the fall-out from this needs to be a much more critical approach to grandfathering.
The irony is that the original 737 was given a head start for safety because it wasn’t a groundbreaking design even in 1967 - a lot of it was derived from the 727 which initially had a poor accident record.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Update on my previous comment. So, they are out of service until at least May. Well, if they are back on the fleet when I fly in August, I can honestly say, I will be a little twitchy for sure.
Mind you, I've flown on planes that have no doubt been less safe than the Max. Christ, I've even flown Garuda in the 90s when they still allowed smoking in the back few rows. Lovely. Plane stunk of piss too, which is always reassuring. 36 hours on that thing. Each way.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/business/boeing-737-software-update.html?
To qualify to fly the plane, the pilots at American were given a 56-minute iPad training and about a dozen white papers on the differences between the Max aircraft and previous 737 jets, union officials said. Mr. Weaks of Southwest said his members were trained with an e-learning module on a company-issued iPad that consisted of under three hours of video presentations.
Both Southwest and American now say they expect to have simulators including the 737 Max systems by the end of this year. American ordered the simulator after the Lion Air crash.
The meetings last year between Boeing officials and the unions were cordial but direct. The pilots from Southwest and American who met with Boeing were frustrated that they hadn’t been notified of the newly installed software system in the 737 Max planes before the crash in Indonesia. The so-called maneuvering characteristics augmentation system, or MCAS, is an automated system intended to prevent the plane from stalling.
“It was a very frank discussion,” said the American union’s safety chairman, Mr. Michaelis. “This is to our knowledge the first time pilots were not informed of a major system on an airplane that could affect flight controls.”
No. Over a 15 year period, a million flights is only 67,000 per year, or 183 per day.
Given that there were 704 Douglas DC6s built between 1946 and 1958, and that was just one model of plane, I think it's safe to assume that there were a lot more than 183 flights per day during that period.
The 737 Max measures wind angle in 2 ways, but only the sensor at the front feeds into the MCAS system.
Also, the MCAS system is materially different than the one the FAA signed off on. On paper it alters the angle of the plane by up to 0.6 degrees at a time (to prevent overcorrection or instability), while in practice it alters it by up 2.5 degrees at a time.
I'd imagine Boeing will be found liable for the crashes. The required safety factor for critical systems (those likely to cause an accident if they go wrong) is a less than 1 in 10 million chance of failure, and a single sensor without a backup seems unlikely to achieve that.
Read the two long threads on Airliners.net about it - it's going to be a watershed for both Boeing and the FAA I think. A clear case of 'regulatory capture' and complete lack of proper oversight and failure-mode analysis, driven by the need to avoid changes which would invalidate the 'grandfathering' allowances. There's even a possibility the Max will never fly again without substantial redesign - the handling characteristics that forced the introduction of MCAS are a contravention of the basic safety directives.
They even mis-classified the potential consequences of a failure to 'hazardous' from 'catastrophic', allowing a higher level of risk, when it's now quite clear that catastrophic applies.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Doesn't make it better tho...
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein