SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
U.S. Grounds Boeing Planes, After Days of Pressure
After days of mounting pressure, the United States grounded Boeing's 737 Max aircraft on Wednesday, reversing an earlier decision in which American regulators said the planes could keep flying after a deadly crash in Ethiopia.
The decision, announced by President Trump, followed determinations by safety regulators in some 42 countries to ban flights by the jets, which are now grounded worldwide. Pilots, flight attendants, consumers and politicians from both major parties had been agitating for the planes to be grounded in the United States. Despite the clamor, the Federal Aviation Administration had been resolute, saying on Tuesday that it had seen "no systemic performance issues" that would prompt it to halt flights of the jet.
That changed Wednesday when, in relatively quick succession, Canadian and American aviation authorities said they were grounding the planes after newly available satellite-tracking data suggested similarities between Sunday's crash in Ethiopia and one involving a Boeing 737 Max 8 in Indonesia in October.
Previously: Second 737 MAX8 Airplane Crash Reinforces Speculation on Flying System Problems
Related: Boeing 737 MAX 8 Could Enable $69 Trans-Atlantic Flights
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @07:35AM (7 children)
The engines are much larger for efficiency (similar power) and far forward to make them fit on a plane is stuck with short landing gear for compatibility. At some angles, the outside of the engines generates a surprising amount of lift.
Airlines want to avoid pilot training. For legal reasons, this requires that the plane act just like the old 737. As a bonus, lots of stuff is grandfathered in from older standards.
That life throws everything off. Being so far forward, it can cause the nose to pitch up. This is particularly worrisome right near a stall because it means that pitching the aircraft upward becomes easier the more upward it goes. That is, there is positive feedback for the angle of attack.
Well, that won't do. It would prevent certification. Boeing decides to compensate with software. Teaching all the pilots about this isn't really an option, because if they need to know about the feature then the plane obviously isn't acting just like any old 737.
The system tips the stabilizer. That is the whole horizontal tail piece, not just the movable part that is normally used to fly the plane. (using a jackscrew, while the other part is done with cables)
The pilot can override this by adjusting a manual trim wheel, but that only lasts 5 seconds before the automatic system goes back to messing with things.
The automatic system is only hooked up to a single device (despite the aircraft having two) to measure the plane's angle of attack. If that is defective, as it very often does due to being an external moving part like a wind vane, the automatic system gets bad data and then makes bad adjustments.
Thus, people die.
Southwest deserves to keep flying. They had special training and they had some extra equipment installed to alert the pilots when the measurement equipment was malfunctioning.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @08:04AM (4 children)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @08:22AM (3 children)
With MCAS off, there isn't much extra chance of a stall. The positive feedback does mean that you have to be a little careful, perhaps, and that this is different from an old 737. As you pitch up (purposely) on an old 737, you'd need to apply more and more force. As you do likewise on the new 737, you find that it suddenly gets easier. Well, don't just shove the controls and expect resistance to not weaken. That isn't so hard to learn. Granted, it would be best to practice this in a simulator, but any pilot should be able to manage the oddity.
Flying manually without MCAS is not any more trouble than that. This isn't a B2 or F117. It's just a passenger jet with some positive feedback to catch you off guard if you aren't expecting it.
With or without MCAS, the whole problem is fixable with pilot education. Trouble is, that would mean the airplane doesn't count as a 737 for regulatory purposes. It wouldn't be grandfathered in, and airlines would not be able to toss a random ordinary 737 pilot in the cockpit. Boeing is going to try really hard to keep this aircraft as just another 737, using patched software and avoiding any extra training requirement.
Despite the certification as just another 737, Southwest decided to have special training and to add a warning for inconsistent sensor readings. Those pilots should still be able to fly those planes.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PocketSizeSUn on Thursday March 14 2019, @02:36PM (2 children)
Sounds like reckless disregard for customers, pilots and passengers.
That is good to know. When the training is mandatory and the pending 'fixes' are applied then maybe flying a MAX that isn't being flown by southwest pilots would be safe. As it is Boeing needs to be held accountable and perhaps the FAA and other regulatory bodies should be considering how to fix the hole in the regulations that allowed Boeing to pass off the (very bad) redesign as just the same 'ol plane.
The actions of Boeing have been reckless as the consequences had to have been understood, otherwise why would Southwest have decide to have special training for the MAX?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @03:08PM
The extra training that Southwest uses will not be mandatory. Boeing will really fight that because it would break certification. That would make airlines much less interested in buying the aircraft. Nearly the whole point of this awful design is to avoid needing to train pilots.
The other trouble is that the grandfathered certification would be lost. Extra requirements would then be added, such as triple-redundant sensors, jacking up the cost of the aircraft. If that happens, Boeing might as well just design a totally new aircraft.
(Score: 2) by mrchew1982 on Thursday March 14 2019, @11:47PM
Boeing is hurting bad right now... Lockheed got the contract for the next military airplane, SpaceX is murdering them in the rocket launch business, they almost lost the airtanker bid to BAE for bribery, Airbus is nipping at their heels for passenger jets, China really wants to start making their own passenger jets, etc.
At this point I think Boeing needs a major shake up at the top, maybe even splitting all of those different branches mentioned above into separate companies.
(Score: 2) by eravnrekaree on Thursday March 14 2019, @06:53PM (1 child)
Thanks for the insights. I dont want to set foot on one of these things now knowing the whole thing counts on one sensor. Why not have more redundancy with many different sensors and a voting system to go with the majority and also could generate warnings in the cockpit and possibly allow for a fast manual takeover.
I am also glad to hear about Southwest and the attention to such things such as treating their passengers like human beings is one reason people choose that airline. Definitely my favorite airline.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Thursday March 14 2019, @07:49PM
That alone should have Boeing execs in prison. I've never heard of anything as fucking crazy as that, in a multi-million dollar plane. Zero excuses here. NASA has been operating for over 50 years, and they sure as fuck learned the value of redundant systems, THE HARD WAY. This is cost cutting by Boeing so that execufucks can have more cocaine and hookers.
THREE sensors. THREE sensors are the minimum. I'm developing tech that administrates and monitors networks and our mantra is simple; No Single Point Of Failure. Our systems are not directly and intimately involved in the safety of human lives either. It's so that uptime can consistently be four 9's. The value of three data inputs is also the fact you can apply error correction codes. If there were three sensors, and two sensors agreed on one thing, and the last was faulty giving bad data, there would not have been a crash and lives would have been saved.
This is why we should rise up and kill every executive. They treat us like disposable cattle when they make the decision to have only one sensor. I'll bet you anything you want that the Boeing engineers were against a single sensor, but an executive overrode the decision.
Boeing no longer deserves our trust. This isn't the same company, or the same corporate culture, that existed in WW II. They clearly have a corporate culture infected by avarice and a complete disregard for the value of human life.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.