Thanks, Art. I hadn’t realized that the extra weight associated with the extra seats would add up to such a significant difference.

The rest of the concepts you shared made sense as I read them, though I’m not sure I could repeat them back . But thanks for the education.

Didn’t it fall off somewhere over NYC when the pilots actually used said competition’s rudder? We lost 265 souls that day.

Didn’t it fall off somewhere over NYC when the pilots actually used said competition’s rudder?

I deal with the Seattle ACO -

All of us in the industry are beating our collective heads against the wall

I don't know what is going on - collaboration is gone - grey areas and agreements are gone

You would be astounded at what we are going through - expanded to Airliner level -

#$$$$Q*)# No - far far easier to find some new way to make money.

The FAA is killing the US industry at the moment - I have a front row seat

EASA approval Europe - Sacre Bleue - what a needed concept let us help you

FAA - you needed to test a statistically significant number of articles - US - that is a $1M dollars in additional certification costs - it won't amortize in GA to a viable commercial product - Tough, not our problem charge more

The only mistake Boeing made with the Max 8 was not inputting AoA data from BOTH AoA sensors to the MCAS system with a cutout for disagreement - certainly the type of idiocy that beancounters come up with not engineers.

Thats fixed.

Friends going through (the now 5 day) conversion from 737-800NG to Max 8 tell me the ONLY things being stressed are;

1/. Airspeed unreliable NNC memory items,
2/. Stab runaway NNC memory items.

In a wider aviation/airline sense decades of cost cutting to increase 'shareholder value' has now reached the point that the wheels are coming off.

Although the stab trim system is different from the legacy systems, runaway stab has been a memory item at most carriers for decades, with stab trim cutout switches prominently placed on the center pedestal accessible to both pilots. The immediate action item(s) are then followed by a QRH checklist.

The MCAS runaway trim may be more difficult to detect if in spurts but with the autopilot off an increasingly "heavy yoke" must be at least initially be attributed to runaway stab trim.

For the swept wing Boeings like the 747 , pitch forces can be relieved by independent operation of the inboard and outboard flaps, with nose up/nose down marked on the switches. I don't know if that's the case on newer models.

You're kidding, right?

What was the purpose of MCAS, to automatically trim the stab aircraft nose down in a high AoA situation? Pilots can't do that? Were they concerned that pilots were too dumb to break AoA in an impending stall scenario? How many people died in 737 stalls where the pilot couldn't/wouldn't break the AoA?

Not only did they design/build a system with only one AoA input, they did so without telling the pilots, and worst of all, they made it more powerful than the pilot. If the pilot pulled nose up elevator while the MCAS was trimming nose down, there was no interrupt; while the pilot pulled back on the relatively small elevator, the MCAS still teimmed the stab aircraft nose down at, what, 3x the rate the pilots could trim? The computer knew better than the pilot in Boeing's estimation, despite the one AoA input and who knows how many other potential anamoly paths that we don't know about. That's some Airbus level thinking, there.

Modern Boeing systems manuals have hardly any detail. Boeing QRH's are lacking of much information. For example, in the 767 L&C Hyd Fail checklist, it states that ALL autopilots are inop. That's false. The Right A/P works. It can't trim, but if the aircraft is trimmed manually then the A/P turned on, it works fine. But......Boeing assumes pilots are too dumb to handle that level of systems knowledge, so they just say they're all inop. The Airspeed Unreliable QRH is actually dangerous; instead of having pilots immediately set a known pitch/power setting, it has them set a pitch that's too high in most scenarios and power that's too low, meaning that by the time they get into the charts and set the proper pitch/power, they've deviated significantly from their formerly known parameters, making troubleshooting that much more difficult. Do they assume pilots are too dumb to just set a known pitch/power for the current phase of flight while they get into the QRH?

Boeing can't help but reinvent the wheel, either. The Dutch KDC-10 had a remote boom system for 30 years, the technology is pretty mature. But Boeing, with the KC-46, built a boom that is too stiff to refuel F-15s, has found new ways to damage itself and other aircraft, etc. We've been refueling since the '50's and it's like we're starting over again.

And, now, Boeing says the USAF T-7 will be delayed to 2024.

Brett I completely agree with you.

BUT - No I'm not kidding.

Every time I get a unreliable IAS in sim recurrent I just do what I have been doing in sims for 30+ years - set an appropriate pitch attitude and thrust. I have good ones memorised for climb, cruise, descent and terminal manoeuvring. They have given up 'debriefing' me on my 'intransigence' because they've been unable to kill me even when they took out ALL the ASIs and ALL the ALTs on climb out in a 767 some years ago and I had to go back and fly an ILS to minima.

The clever-dick had never seen a DME used to calculate Altitude and the stop watch used on descent.

The debrief was "well that killed that crew in Central America but it wouldn't have killed you - well done...where the hell did you learn that DME thing?

My latest crusade is against the Smoke, Fire or Fumes NNC. Ask an FO (or even some [younger] captains) what that checklist assumes first, then second, and they have clearly never thought about it.

When you finally drag out of them 'electrical' then 'aircon' smoke and then ask what checklist they will use if the smoke source is neither they sit there dumbfounded - there isn't one.

Then I ask them "Know where the overboard exhaust valve is and how to open it in flight'?

Nope.

Well how about you go into the FCOM System section and read all about it. It will tell you how to open it and specifically mentions aiding smoke removal.

As much as I think the NNC 80%/10deg, 75%/4deg are a bit brain dead had the Kenyan crew just applied that NNC as written they wouldn't have crashed....instead they pulled up the flaps (setting off the MCAS) and the thrust remained at TOGA all the way to impact. When they FINALLY turned the STAB TRIM CUTOUTS off they were so far through VMO the stab jack screw was jammed by air loads and they couldn't retrim manually - so they re-engaged the stab cutouts and died....the thrust levers NEVER came back from TOGA

The Indon crew reversed the abnormal stab trimming 27 odd times as they took turns thumbing through the QRH searching for what might be the issue - I mean PLEASE... FFS!!!

The Max 8s and passengers were killed by the aircrews.

Airlines all over the world are relying on automation to supplant experience, training, skills and standards. The odd accident is an acceptable risk - especially when they can blame Boeing/Airbus and the manufacturers meekly acquiesce because those airlines buy 70% of their product and they don't want to be labelled racist or xenophobic and lose business to the opposition.

That is why Boeing/Airbus bust a gut designing more and more idiot proof aircraft - and dumbing down SOPs/Checklists - only to have airlines finding a new grade of idiot.



Love that - I am gonna use that

The original single-channel MCAS by itself is an unforgivable engineering and bean counter sin, but it's one of many in those crashes. Lots of blame all around, important people up high and little people down low. A lot of links in the chain, some of which could have individually prevented the whole thing as well as many of which, when you put two or three of them together in a particular combination, could have prevented it too.

I might have missed it, but in the last four years I have never once seen—in any of the Boeing documentaries/exposés/editorials—an engineering whistleblower telling his/her boss that the system architecture was terrible to have such a single point of failure, certification minimums be damned. Engineering is supposed to be a profession in which ethics are a really big deal- it's a cliché but it's all about the proverbial bridge that might fall down or an airplane that could crash, if only somebody hadn't unnecessarily cut a corner, designed a safety margin that was too thin, or a component that could fail and cause a catastrophe. Ethics a big part of why engineers are licensed. When I say maybe I missed it, maybe there was someone or a group of technical people who got stonewalled by their bosses there. Where is their story and why isn't it a bigger part of the Max saga?

Anyway, they found enough time to do it correctly the second time around.

A lot of people at that company are doing a lot of things right too and let's keep it in perspective, running a global conglomerate like Boeing is an enormously complex thing to do. Anybody on the outside can take potshots (and many of those potshots are well deserved) but the place would have shrunk and disappeared a long time ago if there weren't a lot of good decisions all the time. I do hope they reverse their decline.



Anyway, none of that refutes or conflicts with anything anybody has posted above (and we've talked about all this stuff in the other Max thread a couple years back). I do like reading each person's points in this thread, especially with some of the more esoteric details, a lot of that stuff is insightful.

Charles,

I am instructor, so reference your IAS Disagree actions, etc, what I would do once I excercise Captain's authority and what I can teach when it comes to the QRH and various other abnormals may not be the same.

Regarding the MCAS, I will never fault the crews now that I know Boeing willingly withheld information from the pilots. There is a difference between dumbing down training and still providing information, vs purposefully withholding information. There are so many questions that I can never find the answer to because the source material provided by the manufacturers more resembles a automobile sales brochure than a proper systems manual/operating manual when it comes to depth of information.

As much as people like to say it is, MCAS was not equal to runaway trim. In MCAS, you WANT to leave the A/P on. Not so with runaway trim. Runaway trim wasn't going to be masked by spurious, conflicting, and potentially overwhelming warnings. Runaway trim wasn't going to be so fast that, unless you acted instantaneously, the manual trim would be so jammed by aerodynamic pressures, that it wouldn't be physically possible to move. If the manufacturer wants to put the responsiblity on the crews, give them the info. All of it. If they don't, that's on them. That was their risk decision. As pilots, I can not understand why we accept that the manufacturer can withhold systems info from us, especially when it's a new system that's invisible until it goes wrong, and we'll still blame our own when things go wrong. If they want me to hold crews responsible, give the crews all the tools they'll need to adapt.

Manufacturers, et al see you and me as the biggest weakness of the system. My previous RPA experience and dealing with manufacturers, FAA, DARPA, et al made that clear to me. We see ourselves as the buffer between technology gone wrong and disaster. Unless you and I insist that we be given all the details, we can't fulfill that role.



We don't know about the engineering side, but we absolutely know on the training/documentation side, the decision to withhold technical information from the crews and push for no additional training was a purposeful management decision. Training costs airlines money and if your airplane/program requires twice as much training as the competitor, those costs (training and non-productivity of crews getting trained) will get figured into the purchase decision. But, the manufacturer needs to determine how much they'll cut to satisfy that desire to minimize costs.

"Smoke, Fire, Fumes...checklist."

Cockpit Electrical Fire or Smoke was about the biggest goat rope problem in the simulator, usually good for at least 10 minutes of wrangling with checklists. Fortunately the most rare of problems in my experience, one stuck CB was it, easily handled . But that was with a 3-man crew.

We would burn some old wiring during initial training to demonstrate the smell, as well as burning some ducting material. Also the most common problem of smoke in the cabin was failed or over serviced PACS, so burning some oil was also done.

Boeing used to be run by engineers.

Now it is run by accountants.

Didn't research Washington state, but in general, engineers working for an OEM or similar and not offering services to the public, don't need to be licensed. I never was.

Brett after the first Max 8 crash in Indonesia Boeing put out a Bulletin discussing MCAS and re-enforcing to crews that Unreliable Airspeed and Stab Runaway were still the appropriate responses. We got it in the 800NG world too.

So I disagree that MCAS was THAT top secret. Boeing just figured (wrongly) that Unreliable Airspeed and Stab runaway NNCs were inculcated in every pilot flying their product - they should have known better.

The night before the Indonesian crash the SAME aircraft with a different crew suffered the VERY SAME NN (Unreliable Airspeed followed by MCAS activation) A jump-seating pilot told the crew to disconnect the stab trim which they did and they flew it to Jakarta manually trimming and using the FO flight instruments.

The crew wrote it up - not very well - and it seems like the engineers pencil whipped it.

The next crew didn't do so well. I mean really - if you've had to reverse the stab trim 27 times STAB CUTOUT wouldn't occur to you?

The Kenyan crew were already aware of MCAS via that Bulletin. The Kenyan FO eventually said words to the effect "Its MCAS shall I disable the Stab trims"?

But they were already well past VMO because the Captain (PF) never pulled the thrust levers back.

MCAS is not activated until flaps are UP.

The first NN both crews were presented with was Unreliable Airspeed on takeoff when the Captains AoA sensor failed - which I have never seen in 20 years on Boeings and 30+ on jets.

Had they simply done the Unreliable Airspeed memory items;

Disconnect AP
Disconnect AT
FDs off
Set 10 deg NU/80% N1 (flaps extended)

Get safely away from the ground - pulled out the QRH for the reference items and Perf Inflight Unreliable airspeed tables - Left the flaps the fck alone and manoeuvred for a return to land they never would have needed to worry about MCAS/ Stab Runaway because it never would have kicked in.

MCAS didn't kill them. Lack of basic airmanship/skills/checklist discipline did.

They were perfect poster children for 'Children of the Magenta'.

Boeing certainly deserves a swift kick in the nuts for a variety of reasons....but there is a reason why even now they have fixed the issue of MCAS input they still are re-enforcing the basic NNC memory items that were appropriate to both Max 8 crashes but were not actioned by either crew.

I'm a TRI on B737-800NG too and I spend a lot of effort trying to put an old head on young shoulders. Doesn't mean I teach outside the QRH - it does mean I teach the limitations of the QRH where appropriate.

One of the toughest things to get through (some) new Captain young skulls is use of Captains Discretion. You've seen the type - will happily CFIT as long as they're following a checklist to the letter.

The Flight Crew must be aware that checklists cannot be created for all conceivable situations and are not intended to replace good judgement. In some situations, at the Captains discretion, deviation from a checklist can be needed.

To too many pilots that is the most terrifying statement.

Yet the Boeing manual says to reduce power in a nose high UA, or it advises against adding thrust in a stall because it overemphasizes the effect of thrust in an under wing engine in a high AoA situation, etc.

These are the things instructors/check airmen point to when pilots try to be pilots, they insist on verbatim compliance with paragraphs in the FTM that aren't even procedures.

Again, the manufacturers are complicit when they take it upon themselves to legislate how to do things not specific to their aircraft because they want the bar for entry to be lower. They can write all these manuals such that pilots are clearly given latitude for everything except for those that require specific procedures, but they don't. It's almost encouraging operators to take away the lattitude for pilots to be pilots.