NY times article on the 737 MAX, written by a pilot

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Paughco
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NY times article on the 737 MAX, written by a pilot

Post by Paughco »

Hope this isn't against the rules regarding discussing active investigations. All I'm doing here is passing on a link from the NY Times. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/wh ... ar-AAHtnDu.

No intent to start a discussion, just look at the link, maybe read the article, and think about it.

Meanwhile, today I rode my 1950 Harley Panhead. She ran OK, but I see a some carb work in the future. Just finished flying my A2A T-6 down to Bowerman Field in Hoquiam, WA (KHQM) for the MP formation practice flight tomorrow.

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Re: NY times article on the 737 MAX, written by a pilot

Post by MkIV Hvd »

Saw that last week and I thought about it. I will never fly on a third world airline for that exact reason (not that this is a new thought) ...complete erosion of pilotage and airmanship since the advent of the fully automatic digital age of flight. I cannot NOT comment... :wink:

Boeing obviously made a mistake in not advising of the MCAS in the first place. They were apparently correct in assuming any that anomolies in flight would be solved by a PILOT who would simply disconnect the runaway trim...an event that, as Mr. Langewiesche pointed out should have been a thirty second event at most...probably more like 10 for a competent pilot. They simply did not account for the fact that pilots are being put in their seats, having been vetted by this style of lousy in-house training ends up pretty much as a button pusher incapable of actually flying the airplane when that particular skill is required...hello Asiana @ KSFO... :roll:

BTW, that's about the best written and most complete dissemination of an ongoing accident investigation that I've ever read...
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Re: NY times article on the 737 MAX, written by a pilot

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I find the article just somewhat distasteful at very least in how it's titled. Like I do find the most of the discussion surrounding these unfortunate events, whether targeted against Boeing, the FAA or the pilots "lacking airmanship". Pointing out that something or someone failed to do something very obvious when you learn about it with the hindsight doesn't add much. People do what makes sense to them at the time. Something led them to make sense of things the way they did. What hopefully adds a lot are the lessons which will hopefully be learned from this unfortunate, gradual failure of the entire system, from the very design and certification, to flight training and so on.

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Re: NY times article on the 737 MAX, written by a pilot

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AKar wrote: 22 Sep 2019, 09:12 I find the article just somewhat distasteful at very least in how it's titled. Like I do find the most of the discussion surrounding these unfortunate events, whether targeted against Boeing, the FAA or the pilots "lacking airmanship". Pointing out that something or someone failed to do something very obvious when you learn about it with the hindsight doesn't add much. People do what makes sense to them at the time. Something led them to make sense of things the way they did. What hopefully adds a lot are the lessons which will hopefully be learned from this unfortunate, gradual failure of the entire system, from the very design and certification, to flight training and so on.

-Esa
I agree. Many experienced pilots have said that the idea that the MCAS would keep kicking in again and again, with the aircraft at an altitude where recovering from the steep dive was improbable, would surprise most pilots that were not forewarned. Let's face it, the 737 MAX was grounded for a damn good reason, and is still grounded months later. Always easy to blame the flight crew, saves the Manufacturer and the people that Oked the aircraft to fly in the first place, any embarrassment.
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Re: NY times article on the 737 MAX, written by a pilot

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As long as humans design, build and operate machines there will be accidents. Most accidents are a combination of events. In this case I am sure there is plenty of blame to go around. Until the investigation is completed being an apologist or critic of anyone involved is folly. There are many levels of pilot skill and equipment quality in the airline industry. When you fly commercial you pays your money and takes your chances as I see it.

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Re: NY times article on the 737 MAX, written by a pilot

Post by AKar »

dvm wrote: 22 Sep 2019, 11:09 As long as humans design, build and operate machines there will be accidents.
Someone, a long time pilot and mechanic himself, noted once to me (I was an engineering student back then) that he'd be first to vote the pilots to be removed from all the aircraft if it weren't those bloody engineers who designed them. :mrgreen:

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Re: NY times article on the 737 MAX, written by a pilot

Post by MkIV Hvd »

Sorry Paughco…this is not an actual discussion… :roll: :lol:
AKar wrote: 22 Sep 2019, 09:12 I find the article just somewhat distasteful at very least in how it's titled. Like I do find the most of the discussion surrounding these unfortunate events, whether targeted against Boeing, the FAA or the pilots "lacking airmanship". Pointing out that something or someone failed to do something very obvious when you learn about it with the hindsight doesn't add much. People do what makes sense to them at the time. Something led them to make sense of things the way they did. What hopefully adds a lot are the lessons which will hopefully be learned from this unfortunate, gradual failure of the entire system, from the very design and certification, to flight training and so on.
I clearly don’t have a problem with it at all on any level. It was not intended to provide a solution to the erosion of the system, but to explain in minute detail the circumstances surrounding the two accidents…and that it did. The problem was that three flight crews (don’t forget the inbound Lion Air crew that quite likely would have crashed the airplane before the crash crew even got to it, were it not for a deadheading Captain in the jump seat who was able to figure it out quite easily) could not make sense of anything on those particular days and were not able to diagnose and correct a simple problem. Remember that they all supposedly saw a runaway trim during the infamous “Session #3” in the sim…and all 737 MAX operators in the world had been notified of the potential for the MCAS to become an issue BEFORE the Ethiopian crash. Note that the MAX has been around for quite a while and there are hundreds of them now grounded, clearly none of which crashed. Every one of those particular six pilots was over his head almost immediately and none of them had any business being anywhere near the front office of a 737 unless they were on a tour……
bobsk8 wrote: 22 Sep 2019, 09:34 I agree. Many experienced pilots have said that the idea that the MCAS would keep kicking in again and again, with the aircraft at an altitude where recovering from the steep dive was improbable, would surprise most pilots that were not forewarned. Let's face it, the 737 MAX was grounded for a damn good reason, and is still grounded months later. Always easy to blame the flight crew, saves the Manufacturer and the people that Oked the aircraft to fly in the first place, any embarrassment.
I consider myself to be somewhat experienced as well, being a retired (from professional flying) ATP with 5000 hours total time, 3500 hours of which is in a crew environment in jet aircraft with endorsements on Jet Commander 1121, IAI Westwind 1123/1124, C500/550 Citation and Boeing 727. There is nobody but the flight crew to blame for these two accidents. There is no single system in that Boeing transport category airplane that could have created an unrecoverable situation for a trained and competent pilot.

First of all, these two accidents are up among the top ten worst (five probably…) examples of lack of pilotage/knowledge/airmanship and especially Crew Resource Management that I can remember…right along with the Air France crew that flew through a known area of violent convective activity (while all others were diverting…) so they could slam a perfectly good 777 into the Atlantic Ocean from 30,000+ feet.

Second, note that in both cases, they could have overpowered the MCAS with opposite trim had they stuck with it until of course, they gave up or had put the airplane into such an excessive overspeed that indeed no trim, electric or manual could recover the airplane. Also, note that the MCAS wouldn’t have been kicking in the trim again and again if the stuffed toys in the front seats had acted correctly and disconnected the trim during the first 10 second event. Reversion to the manual trim wheel in a Boeing is no big deal...

Almost every failure or abnormal situation in a transport category airplane is addressed through checklist procedures, as there is usually no rush and you can actually really screw yourself up if you jump into action from memory rather than sitting on your hands for a minute. There are, however, some obvious things that have to be memory items due to the urgency of the situation; engine failure before or after V1, engine fire, explosive decompression, etc. and trim runaway. That is a very, very basic Pilot Flying responsibility and I would gone on strike or quit before I’d fly with Captain or F/O that couldn’t identify and correct the situation these guys experienced within half the time of the first event.

The embarrassment is there regardless and will not be going away any time soon.
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Re: NY times article on the 737 MAX, written by a pilot

Post by AKar »

MkIV Hvd wrote: 22 Sep 2019, 11:41 Sorry Paughco…this is not an actual discussion… :roll: :lol:
I concur! :mrgreen:
MkIV Hvd wrote: 22 Sep 2019, 11:41
AKar wrote: 22 Sep 2019, 09:12 I find the article just somewhat distasteful at very least in how it's titled. Like I do find the most of the discussion surrounding these unfortunate events, whether targeted against Boeing, the FAA or the pilots "lacking airmanship". Pointing out that something or someone failed to do something very obvious when you learn about it with the hindsight doesn't add much. People do what makes sense to them at the time. Something led them to make sense of things the way they did. What hopefully adds a lot are the lessons which will hopefully be learned from this unfortunate, gradual failure of the entire system, from the very design and certification, to flight training and so on.
I clearly don’t have a problem with it at all on any level. It was not intended to provide a solution to the erosion of the system, but to explain in minute detail the circumstances surrounding the two accidents…and that it did. The problem was that three flight crews (don’t forget the inbound Lion Air crew that quite likely would have crashed the airplane before the crash crew even got to it, were it not for a deadheading Captain in the jump seat who was able to figure it out quite easily) could not make sense of anything on those particular days and were not able to diagnose and correct a simple problem. Remember that they all supposedly saw a runaway trim during the infamous “Session #3” in the sim…and all 737 MAX operators in the world had been notified of the potential for the MCAS to become an issue BEFORE the Ethiopian crash. Note that the MAX has been around for quite a while and there are hundreds of them now grounded, clearly none of which crashed. Every one of those particular six pilots was over his head almost immediately and none of them had any business being anywhere near the front office of a 737 unless they were on a tour……
I appreciate what you're saying; to me the issue is that this is an ongoing latent problem that remains unsolved and the situation not even improved unless the blame is taken off from the individuals. I can assure you that every day, hundreds of flights are successfully operated by crews who do lack the competence to deal with some issues that will some day make the news. It is not a third world problem, it is industry-wide problem. The problem are not the individuals who end up crashing (bluntly: their contribution to the problem is thereby solved) but the remaining ones having to deal with the new, yet unmanifested scenarios. And we lack time and imagination to train every possible scenario up into the spine.

One important point that came up during the investigation of the Ethiopian crash was that it was possible to end up into a situation where you can't muscle the manual trim against the aerodynamic forces. This is, to me, a very serious finding.

Very often this is dismissed by stating that they should have slowed down instead of basically overspeeding the jet like they did. In a hindsight, perhaps this sounds an easy option.

But how come almost nobody seems to note that 737 (and many other such jets) have fairly noticeable pitch down effect associated with thrust reduction (and vice versa). When you are fighting for your life trying to pull up a plane that already tries to dive into the ground and kill you, reducing the thrust may occur to you as a bad idea.

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Re: NY times article on the 737 MAX, written by a pilot

Post by bobsk8 »

And let's all not forget the "single point of failure" that was designed into the 737 Max and on top of that Boeing wanting to charge an extra $90,000 per aircraft for an option that would have warned the pilots of the failure.
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Re: NY times article on the 737 MAX, written by a pilot

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I've seen so many different versions of this same thread, where two camps always emerge: those that blame those incompetent "ferrin" pilots, and those that stick up for pilots at all costs. Here it is, again...

I'll toss my 2 cents into this one. For context, I'm a 13,000+ hour ATP who has been flying and acting as a check airman in the U.S. 121 world for 20 years, and I've been flying 737 NGs (and a few -400s) for the last 5.

First of all, there's a myth that the Max is "inherently unstable" and requires the MCAS system to be controllable, or at least to recover from a stall. This is false; the aircraft met certification standards without MCAS, it's just that stall recovery felt different enough from the NG that a common type cert wasn't possible. Since the only selling point of the Max over the Airbus NEO was a common type cert with the NG, this needed fixed and in a hurry. Hence the hastily designed MCAS.

Secondly, those accident pilots DID crash flyable airplanes. It is perhaps bad luck that these events occurred in cultures where "fly by rote" (as the author calls it) training is prevalent. This is the same type of culture that produced a full crew, including a check airman, who could not simply look out the window and land a 777 in San Francisco on a nice day (the Asiana crash). So, lack of airmanship is a genuine concern, and contrary to what some might think, not just in "those countries". Europe and the U.S. are starting to see it too, as an ever more expensive pilot training industry tries to find more ways to "streamline" the training pipeline and feed a growing shortage of qualified pilots. It's only gonna get worse. But...

... simply blaming pilots because they're trained to a different philosophy doesn't work here. Boeing absolutely screwed up here: badly, negligently, and probably criminally. Tying a system that can manipulate flight controls to a sole-source input violates international certification standards as well as Boeing's internal policies... and yet the Max got a pencil-whipped certification with MCAS activation tied to input from a single AoA sensor. I, personally, hope they hang whoever is responsible for that, because while it's impossible to find a single entity to lay blame on here, that guy is a prime candidate for much of it.

The modality of MCAS, as originally designed, is completely illogical as well. Intermittent, double-speed impulses of nose-down trim, with no limit on the number of activations and no cockpit indication it has activated? Who came up with this? (And yes, the trim wheel would have been running, but pilots would have been used to that while handflying; there's a system called speed trim on the NGs that automatically trims in certain scenarios, with the autopilot off. Also, remember the stick shaker and overspeed clacker alarms simultaneously sounding; those cockpits were chaotic in the final minutes.)

There's plenty of blame to spread around for the Max debacle. The plane will fly again eventually, and I'm sure when it does it'll be one of the most carefully vetted aircraft in history. I'm looking forward to flying it, after the necessary processes play out. But be careful trying to oversimplify the causes of this mess; there's a lot more here than can be blamed on pilot error alone.

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Re: NY times article on the 737 MAX, written by a pilot

Post by Stearmandriver »

Oh, regarding the manual trim being difficult to move in a severely mistrimmed / overspeed situation, the key there seems to be to unload the stab by relaxing elevator pressure. Pretty unintuitive, to stop hauling back in that situation, but it apparently renders the stab movable. This guidance also apparently used to be in Boeing manuals but was removed somewhere in the early models of the 737; no one seems to know why.

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Re: NY times article on the 737 MAX, written by a pilot

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I'm one of those who puts blame on both parties as well, but the issue I have is that so many, especially the European regulators, have a habit of trying to find ways to use automation to avoid problems instead of training. That's what happened after AF447 initially (which was an A340, not a 777 BTW) - change the control laws to prevent the problem... why not address the fact that the primary reason the accident occurred was poor decision making by the crew, the use of a "Cruise Only" pilot who had only been trained in passing to deal with the Pitot System icing problem. Why not GROUND the Airbus because of an obvious design flaw that's been ongoing and UNRESOLVED for nearly 20 years? You want to talk about MCAS and single source failure, the problem with the A340/330 pitot system has been a known failure since the type was introduced and it's never been addressed beyond "let's put a hotter heater on it". The Air France A340 that ran off the runway at Toronto had a pitot system freeze up as well, but it never gets reported because they blame the crew for landing fast and long (which was the result).

Where most people have problems I think is that it's EASA saying they don't "trust" the FAA, meanwhile they're felt by much of the aviation world to be in Airbus's pocket and let them get away with murder (literally). Don't forget that EASA is the one who blamed McDonnell Douglas for the Concorde crash despite the fact that the airport didn't follow its own procedures of doing a FOD sweep prior to the departure of the plane and EASA itself were the ones who declined to put out an AD forcing replacement of the tires of Concorde with a different design despite several earlier failures with serious damage done where FOD wasn't involved because it was "too heavy". Oh, and there's the issue ongoing with the A32xNEO right now - the fact that the airplane has a serious CG issue that apparently wasn't noticed and is forcing operators to remove/not use the last row of seats on the planes and yet EASA hasn't even hinted at issuing an AD. If it's that big of a safety issue that the airlines are willingly removing revenue from the planes, then shouldn't it need an AD?

All of the regulatory agencies have gotten complacent. We've been blessed with the safest skies for the last decade in Commercial Air Transportation. Now it's starting to catch them in the rear end and it's nasty. Maybe MAX was the final straw to wake the FAA and the US up, but I'm not convinced that Europe has woken up yet.
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Re: NY times article on the 737 MAX, written by a pilot

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It beats me what the ongoing issues Airbus (or any other manufacturer) is dealing with have to do with the topic. :shock: Also, I am mostly seriously critical against EASA myself due to poorly written and arguably stupid regulation they have released over the years (talk about, for instance, the circus they created by their application of Part M to GA several years back - history is history), but what is claimed here is, to me, nonsense.

CAPFlyer wrote: 22 Sep 2019, 16:11 You want to talk about MCAS and single source failure, the problem with the A340/330 pitot system has been a known failure since the type was introduced and it's never been addressed beyond "let's put a hotter heater on it". The Air France A340 that ran off the runway at Toronto had a pitot system freeze up as well, but it never gets reported because they blame the crew for landing fast and long (which was the result).
I seriously doubt that Canadian TSB would have not mentioned this should something like this been a factor in Toronto. It was 24 °C, for Pete's sake, and the issues that brought the airplane above the glide were encountered during last few hundred feet AGL, so in not much colder air. I see no signs of an event indicative of pitot icing on the FDR graph. Instead, I sense this distinct smell of bullshit. Note, that the investigation report in this case does very delicate job of not blaming the crew in the NTSB way (their classic statement being: "the flight crew failed to..."). Instead, as usual in excellent investigations conducted by Canadian TSB, they manage to find wider implications behind what essentially was a f#cked up landing for ones seeking solely someone to blame.

The issue with pitot icing itself that plagued certain p/n pitot probes manufactured by Thales was later resolved ("acceptably" it seems) by mandating an installation of probes less/not susceptible to the issue. I wonder if there are other ways to resolve such an issue, as you imply. Whether that should have been done on more aggressive schedule (that is, before the crash occurred), in hindsight, probably yes. On the system level, in switching to alternate law the airplane of flight AF447 functioned as designed and certified, and remained as controllable as any airliner in deeply stalled situation can remain.

Personally, I would consider mandating the AoA-based Back-Up Speed Scale, as the technology is available to further reduce chances of accidents like AF447 ever occurring again, but whether or not that would be in direction of "trying to find ways to use automation to avoid problems instead of training"... you'd be the judge.

One of the wider implications of the AF447 was the recognition that (emphasis mine): "In its current form, recognizing the stall warning, even associated with buffet, supposes that the crew accords a minimum level of “legitimacy” to it. This then supposes sufficient previous experience of stalls, a minimum of cognitive availability and understanding of the situation, knowledge of the aeroplane (and its protection modes) and its flight physics. An examination of the current training for airline pilots does not, in general, provide convincing indications of the building and maintenance of the associated skills.

More generally, the double failure of the planned procedural responses shows the limits of the current safety model. When crew action is expected, it is always supposed that they will be capable of initial control of the flight path and of a rapid diagnosis that will allow them to identify the correct entry in the dictionary of procedures. A crew can be faced with an unexpected situation leading to a momentary but profound loss of comprehension. If, in this case, the supposed capacity for initial mastery and then diagnosis is lost, the safety model is then in “common failure mode”.
"

This is something we see yet again in the MAX crashes.

CAPFlyer wrote: 22 Sep 2019, 16:11 Oh, and there's the issue ongoing with the A32xNEO right now - the fact that the airplane has a serious CG issue that apparently wasn't noticed and is forcing operators to remove/not use the last row of seats on the planes and yet EASA hasn't even hinted at issuing an AD. If it's that big of a safety issue that the airlines are willingly removing revenue from the planes, then shouldn't it need an AD?
Yes. And here you go:
https://ad.easa.europa.eu/ad/2019-0189
https://ad.easa.europa.eu/ad/2019-0171R1

When more permanent solution is available, I'd expect further AD action getting published, cancelling these ones.


Again, these issues have nothing to do with ongoing MAX investigations and resulting redesigns. If one absolutely wishes to bring some A in to balance the perceived blame on B, the so-called Bilbao incident is fair bit more interesting story. But I'd prefer taking facts with face value instead of distributing blame at all. Why do we always need to have some guilty ones, and even in equal numbers on the both sides of the pond?

I mean, even the ones who signed the design freeze of the original MCAS system probably acted based on facts and incentives which made sense to them at the time. Instead of finding people to be hanged, I'd be more interested in how the designing and certifying environment got muddy enough that the implications of those decisions made were evidently dwarfed by the reasons that compelled to push the pen against the paper. This is the potential latent problem affecting other designs flying or being on the drawing board (that is, CAD software) today.

-Esa
Last edited by AKar on 23 Sep 2019, 06:17, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: NY times article on the 737 MAX, written by a pilot

Post by alehead »

An interesting article indeed, thank you for posting the link. I probably would not have had the opportunity to read it otherwise...

@CAPFlyer: The AF447 incident was most definitely an Airbus 330, not the A340...

I will refrain from commenting on this, as there are people here FAR more competent to do so than I would ever be...

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Re: NY times article on the 737 MAX, written by a pilot

Post by Stearmandriver »

The point of my comment about hanging the person responsible for certifying the plane with MCAS in its original state was twofold: first, to remove that person from a position of authority so they can't do something like that again; but secondly because they bear a decent amount of responsibility for killing over 300 people. Perhaps you'd consider me vindictive, but I do think there oughta be consequences for that. Because here's the thing: that sort of thing isn't an error. It's likely that this person either pencil-whipped a cert while knowing it wasn't up to standards, or they simply chose not to do their job and verify the system was certifiable. Either way isn't great...

Here's a timely coincidence: I did my first day of our annual 3 day recurrent sim training tonight. Day one is always a LOFT scenario followed by a "maneuvers training" session, to prep for tomorrow night's maneuvers validation session. One of the training scenarios was a surprise trim runaway, which we handled in the standard manner. Once we were stable, checklists complete and heading back to the airport, the instructor said he wanted to show us what the Ethiopian crew was up against at the end. He zapped us up to 10,000ft and set us at an airspeed of 280kts, with a stab trim value of .5 units. These are the conditions the Ethiopian crew faced during their final loss of control. I was flying pilot, my captain was PM, and we knew what was coming. We had an opportunity to brief the rollercoaster maneuver that was going to be our only chance: me trying to fight the nose up with the yoke, then him calling for momentary relaxations of elevator deflection during which he'd try to manually crank the stab back towards a controllable position. We were briefed and ready when the sim came off flight freeze, AND we didn't have any other distractors like stick shakers going off the way they did.

As the nose bunted, I slapped the power to idle and wrapped my arms around the yoke and hauled it back to the stop. In I'd say less than 2 seconds, we were pitched down so steeply that I was literally standing on the back edge of the raised floorboards, to have enough leverage to keep the yoke back. We had time for two "rollercoaster" cycles, during which my captain managed to achieve only another .5 units of stab movement. The instructor froze us before we hit the water, 50 degrees nose down in a descent of over 8,000fpm.

This simply was not recoverable. The takeaway was clear: the only way to survive this kind of event is to rapidly recognize and stop the runaway, because once you reach a particular out-of-trim state, you're dead. Sobering.

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