A number of pilots claimed that the training from the old 737 to the 737Max consisted of 15minutes to an hour playing on an ipad.
All aircraft with underwing pod mounted engines do this. It's compensated by the pilot by feel.
As currently implemented MCAS is tied to the currently flying FCC, and uses it's on-side AOA. This will absolutely be changed in the software change.
That's how it should be done, yes.
No
Not really.
It absolutely would make sense - that's usually called a stick puller if it's own system, or could be done in the feel generator.
However, and here's the issue, it's quite likely that the existing feel generator (which is mostly mechanical) either couldn't be modified to do this, as it's only needed in one phase of flight, or, it couldn't be done without a recertification, and so a separate system was used. Why a stick puller wasn't added is also going to have to do with the certification rules.
The question I have is what "loophole" (not the right word, but close enough) was used to let MCAS exist, and work off one sensor. I's a guess on my part at this time, but seems extremely logical, that there was a breakdown in the logics and permissions of the regulations whereby a system such as this could be used as they originally did. That, along with what was obviously not the most bulletproof software has caused a lot of problems.
Again, once the fix is found, this is going to be all in the past. That I'm sure of.
That's what I had guessed and couldn't work out another way of calculating it from other data without some really complex stuff.
By inference can I therefore conclude that Boeing have a huge body of data on failures on these sensors and also a well tested sw method for dealing with these failures, even if that is 'sorry guys you're on your own here'? In which case I agree that there was a serious breakdown in logic.
I note on the Ethiopian flight the autopilot disengaged or was disengaged. We don't know which , but will be interesting when information on that comes out and possibly ask more awkward questions.
By inference can I therefore conclude that Boeing have a huge body of data on failures on these sensors and also a well tested sw method for dealing with these failures, even if that is 'sorry guys you're on your own here'? In which case I agree that there was a serious breakdown in logic.
I note on the Ethiopian flight the autopilot disengaged or was disengaged. We don't know which , but will be interesting when information on that comes out and possibly ask more awkward questions.
Before I moved to Ft. Lauderdale a commercial airline pilot put a loaded 727 down on the short runway at a small airport that usually served private planes and executive aircraft. No "heavies" ever landed there. After putting the 727 on the ground and stopping just short of the end of the runway there was a problem. How do you get a heavy off the ground with a short runway that ends abruptly at I-95. The first ruling by the FAA and NTSB (or whatever they were called then) was to scrap the plane and cut it up to remove it.
The airline refused and arranged for a test pilot from Boeing to come in and fly it out. First they had to remove all the excess weight from the plane, and even some of the seats, and provide just enough fuel for the flight. The fences were removed and the interstate was closed off and the plane was successfully flown out of the small airport and landed at FLL a few miles south. Note both airports have 90 / 270 runways and butt up against I-95, so one could see how the mistake was made. Newspaper link enclosed.
St. Joseph News-Press - Google News Archive Search
My favorite OOPS occurred late one Sunday night. At the time I lived near this site in a small duplex in a neighborhood of mostly elderly people. Everyone in the neighborhood was awakened by what many assumed was an earthquake, except we don't have earthquakes in south Florida.
I worked the night shift at the Motorola plant about 4 miles to the south, and discovered a new landmark on my way to work Monday afternoon. There was a Lockheed Constellation parked pretty much intact in a field on the north side of Commercial Blvd. It had lost power and crashed there. All occupants were unhurt, and the plane just missed the houses on three sides. The plane had come from the west and crashed about 3 miles short of the same small airport where the 727 had landed a few years earlier. The plane had come from the Bahamas which were east, yet it crashed from the west. The pilot must have seen the airport and turned around trying to reach it, but didn't get there. The plane remained on the site for nearly a year while salvage workers parted it out and cut it up. I drove past it every day on my way to work. A friend bought a pair of seats from it for his 70's shagged out van.
ASN Aircraft accident Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation N6202C Tamarac, FL
About 15 years later a rich kid who worked at Motorola with us for a short while and had a private pilots license, got high on drugs and stole a plane from that same airport and wound up crashing it at the same location where the Connie sat.....except that now there was a shopping center there. Somehow the kid lived, and "daddy" made it all go away. He never did come back to work. We found out about it from a friend who was a Tamarac cop and called to the crash site.
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I fly the Max (past tense at the moment) at a major airline.
We have over 41,000 cycles on the design, with over 91,000 hours on the airframes, more then any other carrier in the world.
We’ve collected over 700,000 pieces of data from our Max fleet, and we never saw a single MCAS anomaly.
There was an MCAS incident at a US carrier, the pilots handled it exactly as they should have and performed an air return without incident (they landed safely).
There’s is much that the public does not know about this problem; do not read news article, they are mostly erroneous.
MCAS was designed to provide a specific G loading in a stall situation to give the pilots a consistent pitch load at the yoke so that it would feel the same as other 737 family members. This was necessary for the size of the engine nacelles that we fly on the Max.
We have now flown this problem in the sim and recovered each time. Of course we were expecting it.
All I’ll say is that it is a very survivable scenario. I have dealt with worse in my career.
Cheers,
Greg
We have over 41,000 cycles on the design, with over 91,000 hours on the airframes, more then any other carrier in the world.
We’ve collected over 700,000 pieces of data from our Max fleet, and we never saw a single MCAS anomaly.
There was an MCAS incident at a US carrier, the pilots handled it exactly as they should have and performed an air return without incident (they landed safely).
There’s is much that the public does not know about this problem; do not read news article, they are mostly erroneous.
MCAS was designed to provide a specific G loading in a stall situation to give the pilots a consistent pitch load at the yoke so that it would feel the same as other 737 family members. This was necessary for the size of the engine nacelles that we fly on the Max.
We have now flown this problem in the sim and recovered each time. Of course we were expecting it.
All I’ll say is that it is a very survivable scenario. I have dealt with worse in my career.
Cheers,
Greg
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Try telling that to the relatives of 346 dead people, including experienced and trained pilots just like you.
All accidents are a chain of events. Very rarely does one thing make the situation unrecoverable. ET302 is going to to place a huge compounding factor on the fact the pilots never throttled back during any of their attempts to regain control of the aircraft.
Was MCAS misbehaving? Absolutely. Should that in and by itself have caused the crash? No. Is it horrible? Yes. Was it preventable by the cockpit crew? Most likely. Was it preventable by the manufacturer? Most likely.
Blame isn't what's needed, a solution to the problem is, so this never happens again. It's being worked on.
Was MCAS misbehaving? Absolutely. Should that in and by itself have caused the crash? No. Is it horrible? Yes. Was it preventable by the cockpit crew? Most likely. Was it preventable by the manufacturer? Most likely.
Blame isn't what's needed, a solution to the problem is, so this never happens again. It's being worked on.
To me, if the time needed to go through a troubleshooting checklist exceeds the time I have left on this earth, then something is wrong.
I recall back in the day...toyota required all of their design engineers to own and personally repair all of the cars they design.
That is incentive to do it right.
Perhaps boeing (and all manu's) need to require all their software engineers ride the planes they write software for?
Kinda like parachute folding quality assurance... Everyone who folds parachutes will jump out of a plane every week using a random chute from the beginning of the week. Not only will you fold it correctly, you will make sure everyone else does also.
There is nothing stronger than the employees owning the problem and the solution.
Jn
I recall back in the day...toyota required all of their design engineers to own and personally repair all of the cars they design.
That is incentive to do it right.
Perhaps boeing (and all manu's) need to require all their software engineers ride the planes they write software for?
Kinda like parachute folding quality assurance... Everyone who folds parachutes will jump out of a plane every week using a random chute from the beginning of the week. Not only will you fold it correctly, you will make sure everyone else does also.
There is nothing stronger than the employees owning the problem and the solution.
Jn
We're extremely fortunate to have Greg and Jim who are experienced airline pilots willing to share their insights and job related knowledge with us. Very few of the public have this sort of access to people who know the subject.
I would be very careful about jumping to any conclusions based on anything you read in the media. I am sure many of you are expert in some specific subject matter and have experienced the irritation of reading absolute rubbish and distortions on your area of expertise in the media.
We all want to know what went wrong and MCAS will likely turn out just to be one part of the equation.
I have little doubt that by the time this is resolved the 737 MAX will be one of the safest aircraft in the air.
I would be very careful about jumping to any conclusions based on anything you read in the media. I am sure many of you are expert in some specific subject matter and have experienced the irritation of reading absolute rubbish and distortions on your area of expertise in the media.
We all want to know what went wrong and MCAS will likely turn out just to be one part of the equation.
I have little doubt that by the time this is resolved the 737 MAX will be one of the safest aircraft in the air.
No, no, and no. That is not what it does. It's an auto-trim system that was done for FAA requirements. The airplane is stable as a design. The FAA wanted it to have the same feel in a stall as the other 737 models.
To reiterate, the design is good on it's own, MCAS was SUPPOSED to make it fell just like the other airplanes in a stall. That's it.
Cheers,
Greg
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