It seems that Southwest did put in additional sensors into their 737 MAX fleet due to the first crash last October to hopefully prevent the system from nosediving the plane. Link: The Air Current
Almost all transatlantic flights are widebody (non 737s) so you were most likely never going to get close to this situation.
Probably a disorientation or sensory illusion issue.Yikes at the co-pilot putting the nose straight up AGAIN and stalling the plane. They were good..and would have recovered even without auto-pilot if he had simply raise the nose enough to start gaining altitude.
Imaginary rule number 1 is "Don't point your plane straight up."
No additional sensors, they just added the AoA readout to the screen. There's a light that indicates bad data currently.
Ohhhh ok. My apologies on that. Is that still a majorly helpful thing to potentially counteract these issues in the US?
The 737-MAX was designed to fly transatlantic Norwegian air fly them from London to New York
On Mar 11th 2019 at 19:42Z the FAA announced: "Today, the FAA will issue a Continued Airworthiness Notification to the International Community (CANIC) for Boeing 737 MAX Operators."
I hope they do ground them, I am supposed to hop on one in 3 weeks.
Unless there is another crash, they will keep them airborne.
search the flight number in google and a million other sites will tell youUh I have several flights coming up. How can you tell if you are on one of these planes on Southwest? I cannot find anything that shows what type of plane it actually is.
You can use a site like seatguru.com to check.Uh I have several flights coming up. How can you tell if you are on one of these planes on Southwest? I cannot find anything that shows what type of plane it actually is.
Brazilian airline Gol has announced that they're keeping all their 737 Max 8 on the ground indefinitely.
That's 7 aircrafts, with a total of more than 5 thousand flights to date on routes to South America, the US and the caribbean.
Probably worth viewing with some scepticism at this early stage, but it's being reported that some witnesses claim that the plane was smoking and shedding debris as it descended: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...e-debris-before-crash-witnesses-idUSKBN1QS1LJ
if mcas will still activate based on readings from a single alpha vane instead of both, that needs to be changed. it seems obvious and of course boeing engineers know 80 trillion times more than me but because it seems obvious I wonder why it's set up the way it is.
I think I read somewhere that only a single reading is required to trigger mcas though. Shouldn't it ideally require both (and not activate if there's a disagreement?)The plane has two pitot tubes that reads the aoa, one for each pilot. In the JT602 incident there was aoa disagreement between the tubes but according the MEL records it was replaced before the tragic flight.
As usual most airplane crashes are due to many errors lining up, like holes in a swiss cheese.
The runaway stabilizer checklist wasn't wrong. Again the previous flight that day ran the checklist and turned the system off as they should and fixed the issue.
After the crash, Boeing told airlines that when MCAS is activated, as it appeared to have been on the Lion Air flight, pulling back on the control column will not stop stabilizer runaway.
CVR will shed a lot of light on any technical issues the pilots were experiencing, but it's not looking good for Boeing, particularly if witnesses are implying very similar flight patterns and descent. Software issues interfering with pilot training on the 737 MAX's is inexcusable and if this is the cause Boeing rightfully deserve to be dragged through glass.
While a vast majority of 737 MAX's seem to be safely operating, a five month window of the exact same aircraft potentially crashing the exact same way for the exact same technical issues is extremely high risk and they should be grounded until the specific problem can be identified.
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If American's checklist was still wrong I doubt Lion Air's was correct. Especially given the pilot's last action...that would have worked on the previous model.
If the base data/sensor was good, would a checklist be needed?
So this billion dollar company that wanted to save money on pilot training and simulator's defense is that they should follow the checklist but actually the checklist is wrong and so is your previously learned method even though the planes are supposed to be the same and they should go to the next step in the checklist while the plane repeatedly tries to nose dive itself due to a undisclosed system.The next step in the checklist is to throw the cutout switch. It's always been there.
So this billion dollar company that wanted to save money on pilot training and simulator's defense is that they should follow the checklist but actually the checklist is wrong and so is your previously learned method even though the planes are supposed to be the same and they should go to the next step in the checklist while the plane repeatedly tries to nose dive itself due to a undisclosed system.
What's also been around is pulling back on control overrides uncommanded trim, which is the last step they tried, which is a step on a checklist, which is a step that doesn't even work anymore therefore the checklist is wrong.The checklist isn't wrong. Checklists work that way - you try each until the problem is fixed. Turning the systems off is the next step and has been forever. It's not new.
What's also been around is pulling back on control overrides uncommanded trim, which is the last step they tried, which is a step on a checklist, which is a step that doesn't even work anymore therefore the checklist is wrong.
Are you an aviation engineer or pilot by chance?The issue wasn't potential instability, but stick force (the pressure the pilot has to use to move the stick) was just outside of what the regulatory agencies considers acceptable. So MCAS adds a little trim to make it easier to control.
The impact isn't really "very" invasive - the system trims nose down at half its normal speed over the course of 10 seconds, every 5 seconds. This moves these big trim wheels that make a shit load of noise so no one is failing to notice. If the trim is running away - which is something all pilots train for - they grab the checklist and turn off the autopilot, if that doesn't work they hit the cutout switches then lastly just grab the wheel and physically stop it if all else fails. This, again, has been the procedure in the 737 for decades and decades and would have completely fixed the issue with the Lion Air crash (and did the flight before in the same aircraft!) and presumably with this flight if the reason for the crash is the same.
Not to mention fixing the sensor issue would have prevented the whole thing in the Lion Air crash. It's too early in this case to know if something like that occurred but maintenance usually plays some kind of factor when sensors fail.
damn...From the NYT comment section:
"From an engineering point of view it seems to me that the bean counters have prevailed over the real engineers at Boeing.
They kept on evolving a 1967 aircraft design for over 50 years, presumably to avoid the massive costs of a complete redesign, testing and certification.
The MAX 8 has pushed the 737 envelope so far that they had to mount the new, larger engines further out on the wings, otherwise they'd touch ground. However, moving the engines further out created a potential aerodynamic instability that could lead the aircraft into a stall.
Rather than redesigning the wings (and incurring all the costs) they decided to use a very invasive software to automatically correct a detected stall.
Then to save even more money they decided that this software would rely on the data from two sensors (instead of three) to determine the pitch of the aircraft - thus making it impossible to determine a safe pitch in case of sensor failure.
Then, to squeeze even the last dollars out of their budget, they decided not to include all these new software functions in the manuals, which would have required additional pilot training, and so on.
In summary, it seems to me that the MAX 8 is the result of the worst kind of "cost-saving engineering" that I would not accept out of a cheap plastic toy, let alone on a sophisticated aircraft that's supposed to carry millions of people safely around the world. Shame on Boeing. Their CEO and CFO should be sacked.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/11/world/boeing-737-max-air-crash-ethiopia.html
Thanks! So if these really are one off situations, what should the industry do to win back over its always (irrationally) fearful travelers? I'll be honest, I always tow the "flying as an irrational fear" trope, but this time the coincidence is unsettling and only further alarms already frightened travelers. I have a flight next month and my fiancé requested I confirm it's an older 737-800 model for her peace of mind.The former; avionics design specifically.
I'd recommend just doing a search on various commercial aviation forums and even youtube where you can watch training videos of runaway stabilizer procedures if you want to know more.
Here's the Boeing bulletin with info about the system and what checklist to follow specifically. Here's a training video showing how the trim wheels work and what to do in a runaway situation.
Oh yeah... From the Max's Wikipedia article, they specifically designed the 737 Max 8 to compete with something similar from Airbus.does boeing have any meaningful competitors within this class of aircraft?
Thanks! So if these really are one off situations, what should the industry do to win back over its always (irrationally) fearful travelers? I'll be honest, I always tow the "flying as an irrational fear" trope, but this time the coincidence is unsettling and only further alarms already frightened travelers. I have a flight next month and my fiancé requested I confirm it's an older 737-800 model for her peace of mind.
So in my opinion, it's going to take some honest open communication to get all of our collective feathers un-ruffled. Not just a hand waving and pointing to policy and procedures.... I mean it's an option but one with poor optics to the average fearful traveler.
Oh yeah... From the Max's Wikipedia article, they specifically designed the 737 Max 8 to compete with something similar from Airbus.
Well personally speaking, as a person with a QA/BA background, currently working for a large multinational corporation, I have seen first hand how often quality is comprised for the sake of meeting and completing an irresponsibly understaffed/underbudgeted project timeline. And I'm also quite aware of how limited the scope of testing in general often is. Now I assume the engineers are top notch professionals at Boeing, but you know how things are.... I would not be shocked to find some things are not always up to par, quality control wise.why are people taking a comment on the NYT so seriously? It's all conjecture that it was suits and cost-saving and not clever engineering and using the power of computer and computer modeling.
the vast majority of the 737 MAXs are still flying today because the airlines and pilots involved believe the aircraft to be safe.
Just keep in mind even if there is an issue. Just look up the DC-10 (Cargo door) -- it got fixed, the planes kept flying.
As a developer wouldn't you agree that a system that can cause a plane to repeatedly nose dive due to a single point of failure is pretty bad?why are people taking a comment on the NYT so seriously? It's all conjecture that it was suits and cost-saving and not clever engineering and using the power of computer and computer modeling.
the vast majority of the 737 MAXs are still flying today because the airlines and pilots involved believe the aircraft to be safe.
Just keep in mind even if there is an issue. Just look up the DC-10 (Cargo door) -- it got fixed, the planes kept flying.