from the pulled-the-handbrake-as-hard-as-I-could dept.
A 2018 FAA (Federal Aviation Administration directive advised pilots to handle MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) failure by disabling electric control of stabilizer trim using a pair of cutout switches. Pilots would then need to use a hand crank to move the stabilizer back to the desired position. It's noted that previous 737 models had separate switches to disable autopilot and electric stabilizer control, but the 737 MAX lacked this distinction.
Avionics engineer Peter Lemme explains how aerodynamic forces acting on the stabilizer and elevator in a nose-down situation would oppose pilots' attempts to correct the trim using their manual control.
A 1982 Boeing 737-200 Pilot Training Manual acknowledges this possibility, describing a series of maneuvers which can be used to relieve force on the controls and allow incremental correction of trim. However, it's suggested that the Ethiopian Airline plane had already gained too much speed and lost too much altitude for such a maneuver to be possible.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/04/ethiopian-airline-crash-boeing-and-faa-advice-to-737-max-pilots-was-insufficient-and-flawed.html
https://www.satcom.guru/2019/04/stabilizer-trim-loads-and-range.html
Related Stories
https://www.npr.org/2019/12/17/788775642/boeing-will-temporarily-stop-making-its-737-max-jetliners
Production will stop in January. The jets were grounded after two crashes that killed nearly 350 people. Despite being grounded, Boeing continued cranking the planes out at its factory near Seattle.
(The interview had more good information, but at time of submission, the transcript wasn't available. There may be better articles out there.)
There are. Here's one:
Boeing will suspend 737 Max production in January at CNBC:
Boeing is planning to suspend production of its beleaguered 737 Max planes next month, the company said Monday, a drastic step after the Federal Aviation Administration said its review of the planes would continue into next year, dashing the manufacturer's forecast.
Boeing's decision to temporarily shut down production, made after months of a cash-draining global grounding of its best-selling aircraft, worsens one of the most severe crises in the history of the century-old manufacturer. It is ramping up pressure on CEO Dennis Muilenburg, whom the board stripped of his chairmanship in October as the crisis wore on.
The measure is set to ripple through the aerospace giant's supply chain and broader economy. It also presents further problems for airlines, which have lost hundreds of millions of dollars and canceled thousands of flights without the fuel-efficient planes in their fleets.
Boeing said it does not plan to lay off or furlough workers at the Renton, Washington, factory where the 737 Max is produced during the production pause. Some of the 12,000 workers there will be temporarily reassigned.
Previously:
Boeing's 737 Max Troubles Deepen, Taking Airlines, Suppliers With It
Review of 737 Max Certification Finds Fault With Boeing and F.A.A.
American Airlines Says It Will Resume Flights With Boeing’s 737 Max Jets in January
AP Sources: Boeing Changing 737 Max Software to Use 2 Computers
Boeing Falsified Records for 787 Jet Sold to Air Canada
Boeing Pledges $100M to Families of 737 Max Crash Victims
Capt. 'Sully' Sullenberger and Boeing 737 Max News
Boeing’s Own Test Pilots Lacked Key Details Of 737 Max Flight-Control System
Boeing CEO Defends 737 Max Flight Control System
Analysis: Why FAA-Approved Emergency Procedures Failed to Save ET302
Initial Findings Put Boeing's Software at Center of Ethiopian 737 Crash
Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 Max Flight Makes Emergency Landing (While Carrying No Passengers)
Airline Cancels $4.9 Billion Boeing 737 MAX Order; Doomed Planes Lacked Optional Safety Features
Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 Day Before Deadly Crash
DoJ Issues Subpoenas in 737 Max Investigation
Boeing 737 Max Aircraft Grounded in the U.S. and Dozens of Other Countries
Second 737 MAX8 Airplane Crash Reinforces Speculation on Flying System Problems
Boeing's promised 737 Max production halt begins:
The airline manufacturer had announced last month it would stop making the troubled craft at least until it was no longer grounded, but hadn't set a date. However the line has officially stopped producing planes while Boeing officials wait for regulators to give it the OK to fly again.
[...] The latest update estimated the grounding would last through at least mid-2020, Boeing said in a statement Tuesday.
Boeing will reassign 3,000 workers after 737 MAX production halt
Boeing Co said it will reassign 3,000 workers to other jobs as it halts production of the grounded best-selling 737 MAX jet in mid-January.
The announcement came after American Airlines Group Inc and Mexico's Aeromexico disclosed they were the latest carriers to reach settlements with Boeing over losses resulting from the grounding of the 737 MAX aircraft.
Neither airline disclosed the compensation. A number of airlines have struck confidential settlements with Boeing in recent weeks. Boeing said it does not comment on discussions with airlines.
Boeing's biggest supplier lays off 2,800 workers because of 737 Max production suspension:
Spirit AeroSystems (SPR), which makes fuselages for the Max as well as other items for Boeing, announced Friday that it is furloughing approximately 2,800 workers. Shares of the Wichita, Kansas-based company fell more than 1% in trading.
"The difficult decision announced today is a necessary step given the uncertainty related to both the timing for resuming 737 Max production and the overall production levels that can be expected following the production suspension," Spirit AeroSystems CEO Tom Gentile said in a press release.
Boeing wants to resume 737 Max production months before regulators sign off on the planes:
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday April 09 2019, @11:22AM (19 children)
NYTimes summarized it better:Boeing’s 737 Max: 1960s Design, 1990s Computing Power and Paper Manuals [nytimes.com].
The already known factors (larger engines not fit with a lower airframe, no redundancy in AoA sensors, unwillingness to go through a full recertification, pressure on "no extra pilot training") boil down to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Tuesday April 09 2019, @12:11PM (17 children)
This whole debacle should have never occurred, but I don't read it as the NYT summarizing the situation better than TFS, but to me it adds additional information to that offered in the summary.
It is a prime example of trying to save money by side-stepping the usual safety processes which are in place to protect lives. Just because an aircraft type is a 1980s design doesn't mean that it should not be tested against current safety requirements, especially if significant changes have been made to the original design. Unfortunately, in this case, it is precisely what has happened. Boeing are learning this lesson the hard way. Any savings that they might have hoped to make by avoiding additional crew training, or by assuming that the MCAS would behave exactly the way it was intended to do, has already been lost due to falling aircraft orders, the cost of the fix required to address the problem, and the loss of lives which cannot be quantified in any financial terms.
(Score: 3, Informative) by fustakrakich on Tuesday April 09 2019, @12:31PM (16 children)
the loss of lives which cannot be quantified in any financial terms.
The insurance companies have it down to the penny.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Insightful) by janrinok on Tuesday April 09 2019, @01:05PM (3 children)
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday April 09 2019, @01:57PM (1 child)
Sorry, but it did say "financial terms"
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Tuesday April 09 2019, @07:20PM
Let's find out how much Boeing's CxOs and board are willing to pay to not go to jail on a few hundred counts of murder and award that to the families.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday April 09 2019, @04:16PM
Also, the insurance premium cost and payout caps are based on risk analysis and Boeing's willingness to pay. As such, insurance companies get involved in design safety, testing, inspections, procedures, certifications, etc., so we can also blame them for not doing more studies, design reviews, etc. of the MAX planes.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 09 2019, @02:17PM (11 children)
The insurance industry is notorious for having it down to the penny, and then finding out their costs are double what they thought because they missed a big risk.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday April 09 2019, @02:55PM (10 children)
No biggie, extra costs are just tacked on to the premiums, and the temporary loss is a nice tax deduction written into the code just for them.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @03:27PM (2 children)
It's actually the largest "biggie" they have. If they calculate the risks wrong, like actuarial tables and they are providing life insurance, then they can get royally fucked as the payouts starts rolling while they collected much less in premiums. There is no retroactive premiums!
Ok, so I'm sure you never really run any business, *ever*. Having a loss is not exactly good for the business.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @04:19PM
There is no retroactive premiums!
The costs are spread around the customer base. That's how shit works
Ok, so I'm sure you never really run any business, *ever*.
Yeah, and I'm sure you're talking out yer ass. The occasional loss is to be expected, and can easily be covered elsewhere. You really are full of it...
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday April 09 2019, @05:11PM
> they can get royally fucked as the payouts starts rolling while they collected much less in premiums.
If only anyone had thought of that problem before ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinsurance [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1) by Coward, Anonymous on Tuesday April 09 2019, @04:00PM (1 child)
General Electric stock is in the toilet due to miscalculated insurance premiums.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday April 09 2019, @04:12PM
Normal ebb and flow. When the price drops to the right level, that will be the time to buy. And I really doubt that it was a "miscalculation". Very little is left to chance.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 09 2019, @04:56PM (4 children)
Unless, of course, they go bankrupt first!
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday April 09 2019, @05:14PM (2 children)
Never a fan of repeating myself, but you might have missed it right above:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinsurance [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 09 2019, @05:25PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday April 09 2019, @05:35PM
Far enough for hurricanes ... definitely far enough for planes crashes, unless they happen the day of The Big One in CA or Yellowstone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @05:42PM
Yeah, bankruptcy is a good thing, works for getting out of their obligations. So the bill just goes on to another company's premium, brothers in arms and all that. And golden parachutes galore for the board of the bankrupt company, which will miraculously *rise from the ashes* like it never happened. You can hardly find a more crooked business than insurance...
Anyway, fuck this shit. It's offtopic, other than that big business fucks up insurance, and it fucks up airplane design. And you, trolling away, are always standing up for it. Still think you're just a clown.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bussdriver on Tuesday April 09 2019, @01:17PM
They are appealing known biases to distract from the real issues. New is not always better; design is always a compromise of factors and revisions can go backwards.
The current problem didn't exist in the 1990s -- it was the changes made to the NEW jets that caused the problem. The answer is not to say it should have been completely re-engineered from the ground up. It takes time, testing, experience to refine something which is why most things are never truly NEW because we largely redesign around the previous knowledge. The so-called all-new products are usually 90% the old ones even where they re-evaluate everything, tweaking everything slightly is still mostly the same old design. They are just as likely to mess up on a newer model plane design, newer computer with a million more lines of code, if not more likely.
This is NOT a video game, extra computing power is not necessary-- it's EXTRA. Oh, there is a thriving market of retro games that do not require cutting edge processing power. My toaster works; it does not need a chip and certainly not one for nerds to hack into a webserver to show off (that's been done, BTW.)
If something works well or has been optimized it shouldn't require and will only marginally benefit from revision (odds are it goes backwards.)
REGULATORY CAPTURE and GREED that is the real problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @11:48AM
The failure here was a continues regulatory (capture) first and foremost. It doesn't matter what broke and how some 30 years manual suggested it might or might not happen. What matters is that Boeing got away with producing a shitty Frankenstein-of-a-plane that demanded too much of the pilots both compared to anything else including Boeing older models or iterations of the same model and even that was apparently not enough.
(Score: 3, Informative) by shortscreen on Tuesday April 09 2019, @12:31PM (3 children)
Looking at one of the charts later, I saw that they didn't actually start losing altitude until the very end. So instead of "losing too much altitude" perhaps "never having gained enough altitude in the first place."
(Score: 1) by Coward, Anonymous on Tuesday April 09 2019, @03:54PM
Supposedly, they were heading towards mountains where the minimum level for safe flight is 14000 feet. So their altitude above ground may well have been dropping.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday April 09 2019, @05:18PM
> So instead of "losing too much altitude" perhaps "never having gained enough altitude in the first place."
Well, unless you hit a tall or flying object, isn't any crash a matter of losing all your altitude without losing all your speed ?
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday April 11 2019, @04:54PM
Thank you so much for your submission. Your links confirm what I've understood and surmised, and filled in some big gaps, esp. re: stabilizer trim wheel force required. A lot more to read and digest. I've only flown (piloted) small planes, and only a little bit. Until reading the articles you linked, I didn't realize that big plane designs allowed conditions which required enormous human pilot effort to control them. From the beginning of this tragedy I've been bothered by the existence of MCAS being kept secret from the pilots, and that turning electric trim OFF is the only way to disable MCAS. If the pilots could have turned MCAS off, but kept electric trim on, they likely would have been able to control the plane.
Reading about the physical force required to overcome aerodynamic loads which were imparted to the control columns and trim wheels, and looking at the flight envelope from Lion Air https://static.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/LionAir-BlackBox-WEB-1020x680.jpg [seattletimes.com], I have to wonder if the pilots were just physically exhausted, couldn't fight anymore, and maybe even blacked out in the final moments.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday April 09 2019, @01:51PM (3 children)
Mentour Pilot (a commercial 737-NG pilot) discussed this at length last week on a live stream:
https://youtu.be/q17vykscK0w [youtu.be]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @06:06PM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @06:27PM
With the next safety directive Boeing should give them a broomstick. Then they can jam it between the control column and front panel while both pilots crank on the wheel.
(Score: 2) by pipedwho on Tuesday April 09 2019, @10:26PM
Who cares about the air conditioning when the plane is about to crash?