Boeing Systemic Problems Continue

[corethatthermal]

I would imagine Boeing still wants to retain the current type qualification with their other NG A/C ( Due to the already mounting costs to put this failure behind them ) . To do that with minimal training and a MCAS system that still does the same rate of fwd trimming may need more changes than a second AOA and computer code to pick the operating AOA ! The present design was soooo lacking foresight and redundancy, not even mentioning specific training that the world will DEMAND a bulletproof system to replace it!

[BMLtech]

The max is a bridge to far for the 737 classic architecture. Likely what it really needs is a completely new FBW empennage, something that would have required a new type designation.

[goingnowherefast]

Maybe they can stick a bunch if extra fins on it like the Beech 1900 C and D differences.

[Raymond Hall]

From today's New York Times: The heads begin to roll....

Boeing Ousts Top Executive as 737 Max Crisis Swells

Boeing ousted one of its top executives on Tuesday, the most significant management change the airplane maker has made as it struggles to contain the crisis following the crashes of two 737 Max jets that killed 346 people.

The executive, Kevin McAllister, was the head of Boeing’s commercial airplanes division. He had been at the center of the company’s response to the crashes and its troubled efforts to return the Max to service after regulators grounded it. This month, The New York Times reported that he was under scrutiny inside the company for his poor handling of relationships with airlines, and his management of the commercial division, which is Boeing’s largest business.

The ouster was Boeing’s most direct effort to hold someone in senior leadership accountable for the bungled handling of the Max crisis, which continues to spiral out of control. The company’s board stopped short of removing Boeing’s chief executive, Dennis A. Muilenburg, though it stripped him of his title of chairman just over a week ago.

The decision to remove Mr. McAllister was made while the Boeing board met in San Antonio on Monday. With directors and senior executives gathered for tense meetings at the plant where the company builds Air Force One, Boeing’s stock took a beating. Two analysts issued downgrades and shares plummeted to their lowest level in more than three months.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/busi ... e=Homepage

[boeingboy]

and a MCAS system that still does the same rate of fwd trimming

The fix includes a lower trimming speed genius.

I would imagine Boeing still wants to retain the current type qualification with their other NG A/C ( Due to the already mounting costs to put this failure behind them )

WRONG! I forgot your an expert on all this though. Please tell us more....

['97 Tercel]

angry dude

[BMLtech]

The latest info from Boeing is that the fix is primarily software, and I did not know that the Max already has dual AOA sensors fitted. MCAS will now require AOA to agree before activating, etc. Odd that they didn't set it up that way to begin with.

[corethatthermal]

Odd that they didn't set it up that way to begin with.

About 380 dead people would think the same way if they could think now!

[Raymond Hall]

The latest info from Boeing is that the fix is primarily software, and I did not know that the Max already has dual AOA sensors fitted. MCAS will now require AOA to agree before activating, etc. Odd that they didn't set it up that way to begin with.

Boeing required the airlines to PAY for the option that would have allowed to the comparison of the two AOAs. It shows just how much to believe them when they say that their highest priority is safety. Safety, for the right price.

Neither Lion Air nor Ethiopian Airlines elected to purchase the option—a decision that was undoubtedly based at least in part on its cost.

[BMLtech]

I had read that the AOA comparator warning system was an option, but I'm pretty sure the MCAS still relied on a single AOA data source, regardless if the comparator warning option was installed. The comparator warning would give an additional clue to the crew in the event of false MCAS stab trim activation, but of course this would add yet another warning into a task saturated situation, with all the other false and contradictory warnings going off.

[BTD]

BML

You are correct.

[Raymond Hall]

From today's New York Times:

Before Deadly Crashes, Boeing Pushed for Law That Undercut Oversight

With a few short paragraphs tucked into 463 pages of legislation last year, Boeing scored one of its biggest lobbying wins: a law that undercuts the government’s role in approving the design of new airplanes.

For years, the government had been handing over more responsibility to manufacturers as a way to reduce bureaucracy. But those paragraphs cemented the industry’s power, allowing manufacturers to challenge regulators over safety disputes and making it difficult for the government to usurp companies’ authority.

Although the law applies broadly to the industry, Boeing, the nation’s dominant aerospace manufacturer, is the biggest beneficiary. An examination by The New York Times, based on interviews with more than 50 regulators, industry executives, congressional staff members and lobbyists, as well as drafts of the bill and federal documents, found that Boeing and its allies helped craft the legislation to their liking, shaping the language of the law and overcoming criticism from regulators.

…

In a stark warning as the bill was being written, the Federal Aviation Administration said that it would “not be in the best interest of safety.”


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/busi ... e=Homepage

[Raymond Hall]

From today's Washington Post:

What Boeing learns from plane crashes —
Company’s reaction to 737 Max crash follows a familiar pattern of deflecting blame

One year after rescuers hoisted fragments of the wreckage of Lion Air Flight 610 out of Indonesia’s Java Sea, Boeing has apologized for the loss of life but has not detailed what mistakes it made in its design of the 737 Max. Indonesian authorities’ 320-page final report on the accident, released Friday, faults Boeing for developing a powerful flight-control system called MCAS that relied on a single problematic sensor, and for failing to adequately inform pilots and regulators how it works.

The report, which also cited problems with Lion Air’s maintenance and lapses on the part of a Florida sensor manufacturer, added to a growing body of evidence feeding public concerns about safety oversight at Boeing.

Boeing’s response to the public uproar over the 737 Max follows a historical pattern for the company, according to interviews with 11 former employees, government officials and aviation safety experts, all of whom worked on crash investigations involving Boeing. For decades, the aerospace giant has tried to carefully shape public perceptions around the causes of plane crashes — both to limit its legal liability and to maintain the confidence of customers, employees and investors in the integrity of its planes, those interviewed said.

The company has earned a reputation in the aviation community for withholding information, favoring theories of pilot errors over product flaws and being slow to make engineering changes to planes that could prevent future crashes, said Jim Hall, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, the federal agency that oversees investigations into all crashes that occur in the United States.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... e-crashes/

[Raymond Hall]

From today's (Tuesday's) Washington Post:

Boeing CEO to acknowledge mistakes in testimony on deadly 737 Max crashes

Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg plans to acknowledge that his company made mistakes when he faces lawmakers this week who are looking for answers about how flaws in the 737 Max led to a pair of deadly crashes just months apart.
“We know we made mistakes and got some things wrong,” Muilenburg said in prepared testimony to a Senate committee reviewed by The Washington Post on Monday. “We own that, and we are fixing them.”

Muilenburg is set to testify first on Tuesday, the anniversary of a crash in Indonesia that killed 189 people. A Max operated by Ethio-pian Airlines crashed in similar circumstances five months later, killing 157 people. The Max has been grounded worldwide since shortly after the second crash.

Tuesday’s hearing is the first of a pair on Capitol Hill this week, giving members of the Senate and House the chance to publicly question Muilenburg as well as experts who have investigated the crashes and the design of the Max. Democrats in the House are expected to confront Muilenburg with information from some of the hundreds of thousands of pages of evidence they have amassed as they conduct their own investigation into the crashes. …

But Muilenburg’s prepared remarks do not touch on a key topic: the company’s relationship with the FAA, which has come under scrutiny since the crashes. …

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/tr ... tory.html

[Raymond Hall]

Here is a link to my interview with Laura Lynch this morning on CBC's National radio program, "The Current."

Two aspects that I raised that to my knowledge have not been raised before.

1. The MCAS was developed by Boeing not for the 737 MAX but for the KC-46A Pegasus fuel tanker. Interestingly, that system employed comparators of the AOA Indicators, allowed only one pitch-down command, and didn't apply more pressure than the pilots could override. It was developed around 2004.

2. Legislation was signed into law 24 days before the Lion Air crash that precluded the FAA from certification oversight authority, transferring it to the manufacturers, except on an after-the-fact basis, following an "investigation" regarding alleged safety issues. Although the 737 MAX was certified under the prior system, the FAA no longer has the equivalent authority and is now precluded by law from intervening in certification on a preliminary, pre-certification basis.

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1- ... leadership

[plhought]

Can you share your source that the KC-46 was the genesis of the MCAS system?

[BMLtech]

Can you share your source that the KC-46 was the genesis of the MCAS system?

I haven't heard that before either, but the KC46 is basically a 767-300ER built on the 767-200 body, so it's certainly plausible that it suffers from some power/pitch anomaly that requires artificial stabilization...

[Raymond Hall]

Can you share your source that the KC-46 was the genesis of the MCAS system?

Here it is. Wall Street Journal, Sept. 29, 2019 3:31 pm ET:


Before 737 MAX, Boeing’s Flight-Control System Included Key Safeguards

Earlier military version of MCAS had features to prevent misfires implicated in two 737 MAX crashes

Boeing engineers working on a flight-control system for the 737 MAX omitted key safeguards that had been included in an earlier version of the same system used on a military tanker jet, people familiar with the matter said.

Accident investigators have implicated the system, known as MCAS, in two deadly crashes of the jetliner that killed a total of 346 people.

The engineers who created MCAS more than a decade ago for the military refueling plane designed the system to rely on inputs from multiple sensors and with limited power to move the tanker’s nose—which one person familiar with the design described as deliberate checks against the system acting erroneously or causing a pilot to lose control.

“It was a choice,” this person said. “You don’t want the solution to be worse than the initial problem.” ...

The MAX’s version of MCAS, however, relied on input from just one of the plane’s two sensors that measure the angle of the plane’s nose. The system also proved tougher for pilots to override. Investigators have implicated the system in the fatal nosedives of a Lion Air jet in October 2018 and of an Ethiopian Airlines MAX in March. Indonesia is expected to fault that MCAS design, in addition to U.S. oversight lapses and pilot missteps, in its final report on the Lion Air crash into the Java Sea, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

In a key difference from the subsequent version of the system used on the MAX, the system on the tanker moves the plane’s horizontal stabilizer—the control surface perpendicular to the airplane’s tail—once per activation and not repeatedly, the person familiar with the tanker project said.

The tanker engineers also gave the system only limited power to nudge the plane’s nose down to ensure that pilots would be able to recover if it accidentally pushed the plane into a dive, said the person familiar with the tanker’s MCAS design. That meant MCAS had little authority over the stabilizer, which made it much easier for pilots to counteract.


https://www.wsj.com/articles/before-737 ... ge=1&pos=2

[Raymond Hall]

I did several radio and television interviews this week. The most recent one was taped this afternoon and will be shown on the CBC National tonight at 10 PM (or slightly later, depending on sequencing of the news items) — a panel discussion regarding the probability of getting the aircraft back in service any time soon.

I was able to discuss the fact that Boeing's MCAS design is over a decade old, and that the original system

(1) was made aware to the pilots;

(2) provided for only a single intervention, not multiple interventions;

(3) had limited control input so that the pilots could still override the system if required; and most importantly,

(4) relied on a comparator of AOA Indicators,

the net effect of which was zero resulting incidents.

It is interesting to note that all four of these safeguards were deleted from the MCAS implementation on the Max 8.

Progress?

[photofly]

Did the certification for the military version have to pass the same 14CFR requirements? Or are military aircraft allowed to pass with less stringent “stability” limits?