Crashed Boeing Planes Lacked Safety Features That Company Sold Only As Extras (apnews.com) 486
The recent Boeing 737 MAX crashes involving an Ethiopian Airlines flight and a Lion Air flight may have been a result of two missing safety features that Boeing charged airlines extra for (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). The New York Times reports that many low-cost carriers like Indonesia's Lion Air opted not to buy them so they could save money, even though some of these systems are fundamental to the plane's operations. "Now, in the wake of the two deadly crashes involving the same jet model, Boeing will make one of those safety features standard as part of a fix to get the planes in the air again," the report says. From the report: It is not yet known what caused the crashes of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on March 10 and Lion Air Flight 610 five months earlier, both after erratic takeoffs. But investigators are looking at whether a new software system added to avoid stalls in Boeing's 737 Max series may have been partly to blame. Faulty data from sensors on the Lion Air plane may have caused the system, known as MCAS, to malfunction, authorities investigating that crash suspect.
The jet's software system takes readings from one of two vanelike devices called angle of attack sensors that determine how much the plane's nose is pointing up or down relative to oncoming air. When MCAS detects that the plane is pointing up at a dangerous angle, it can automatically push down the nose of the plane in an effort to prevent the plane from stalling. Boeing's optional safety features, in part, could have helped the pilots detect any erroneous readings. One of the optional upgrades, the angle of attack indicator, displays the readings of the two sensors. The other, called a disagree light, is activated if those sensors are at odds with one another. The angle of attack indicator will remain an option that airlines can buy. Neither feature was mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration. All 737 Max jets have been grounded. "Boeing will soon update the MCAS software, and will also make the disagree light standard on all new 737 Max planes," the report adds, citing a person familiar with the changes. "Boeing started moving on the software fix and the equipment change before the crash in Ethiopia."
Slashdot reader Futurepower(R) adds to the story: The FBI has joined the criminal investigation into the certification of the Boeing 737 MAX, lending its considerable resources to an inquiry already being conducted by U.S. Department of Transportation agents, according to people familiar with the matter. "The federal grand jury investigation, based in Washington, D.C., is looking into the certification process that approved the safety of the new Boeing plane, two of which have crashed since October.
The jet's software system takes readings from one of two vanelike devices called angle of attack sensors that determine how much the plane's nose is pointing up or down relative to oncoming air. When MCAS detects that the plane is pointing up at a dangerous angle, it can automatically push down the nose of the plane in an effort to prevent the plane from stalling. Boeing's optional safety features, in part, could have helped the pilots detect any erroneous readings. One of the optional upgrades, the angle of attack indicator, displays the readings of the two sensors. The other, called a disagree light, is activated if those sensors are at odds with one another. The angle of attack indicator will remain an option that airlines can buy. Neither feature was mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration. All 737 Max jets have been grounded. "Boeing will soon update the MCAS software, and will also make the disagree light standard on all new 737 Max planes," the report adds, citing a person familiar with the changes. "Boeing started moving on the software fix and the equipment change before the crash in Ethiopia."
Slashdot reader Futurepower(R) adds to the story: The FBI has joined the criminal investigation into the certification of the Boeing 737 MAX, lending its considerable resources to an inquiry already being conducted by U.S. Department of Transportation agents, according to people familiar with the matter. "The federal grand jury investigation, based in Washington, D.C., is looking into the certification process that approved the safety of the new Boeing plane, two of which have crashed since October.
A corporation cutting corners... (Score:5, Insightful)
... on plane manufacturing safety and design... say it isn't so.
Re:A corporation cutting corners... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's worse. The features were available, just turned off unless you coughed up more money for them.
They literally nickel and dimed hundreds of people to death.
Re:A corporation cutting corners... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's true that the indicator might have prevented the crash, but at this time it's not at all certain that including this feature - which the manufacturer, the regulators and a bunch of airlines deemed optional - is sufficient to address the issues. It does make for a very juicy sensationalist headline, though.
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It's unlikely to have prevented the accident due to there being no safe response here. A system designed specifically to prevent pilots from stalling when it doesn't know what is happening and is giving the pilots the same information you're stuck between: Computer maybe crashing into the ground, and pilot maybe stalling and falling out of the sky.
Preventing the accident involves one of the two faliable systems (the computer or the pilot) being right while at the same time taking control.
Re: A corporation cutting corners... (Score:2)
It's unlikely to have prevented the first accident because the pilots in that crash didn't even know about MCAS and would have had no reason to think that an AOA disagreement would cause the types of issues they were having.
It's unlikely to have prevented the second crash because those pilots reportedly were familiar with MCAS and should immediately have known what was going on regardless of AOA indication. Which means that either the second crash was caused by an even bigger problem which we don't know ab
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Problem is there are only two sensors that feed the MCAS. The indicator is to say there is a sensor disagreement. The indication is that this will be added to all new 737Max free of charge.
However the bigger issue is why are there only two sensors. where a single faulty sensor can cause an issue. There should have been three sensors so a single faulty sensor can be out voted by the remaining two good ones.
How the hell this passed for flight certification is the issue. Far to cosy a relationship between Boei
Re: A corporation cutting corners... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because there have always only been two sensors. It isn't an issue normally because if the autopilot senses a disagreement it will usually just kick itself off and tell the pilots to fly the plane. The issue here isn't that there are only two sensors; it's that this system was designed to function without actually knowing whether the data it was getting was any good.
Re: A corporation cutting corners... (Score:4, Informative)
The autopilot wouldn't be using the vane angle-of-attack sensor, they would be using air data and the inertial reference system. The only system that I would expect to be using the vane angle-of-attack reading in aircraft that is not fly-by-wire is the stall protection system. The stall protection system normally takes either of the angle-of-attack readings to flag a stall, whichever of the two systems is giving a higher reading. It uses an either-or logic because an aircraft in a banked turn may have differing angle-of-attack readings between the two vanes. An incorrect reading might trigger a premature stick shaker/pusher activation, but as this can be overriden by the pilot it wouldn't be considered safety critical, hence only 2 vane angle-of-attack sensors are needed.
Airbus aircraft, which have fly-by-wire, calculate angle-of-attack independently using the pressure readings from cross-coupled smart pitot tube sensors, which can then be verified against the vane angle-of-attack.
Re: A corporation cutting corners... (Score:3)
Sure, but there are literally hundreds if not thousands of sensors on a modern aircraft. Once you start down the road of "why not three?" how do you justify which of those should be triplicated?
This isn't even just an issue of adding another sensor for each system; you have to add wiring, you have to modify the boxes which read those sensors (and, hell, since the boxes are often duplicated, you'll probably want to triplicate them also), you have to add more circuit breakers ... it adds up fast. And the bi
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The mystery is: why does it have two sensors, when only one is used for the MCAS system? https://qz.com/1575509/what-we... [qz.com]
Re: A corporation cutting corners... (Score:2)
Because it's always had two sensors. They're used by the autopilot. They may also be used to trigger a stall warning (not sure about the 737 specifically, it might have other ways of detecting stalls).
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"However the bigger issue is why are there only two sensors. where a single faulty sensor can cause an issue. There should have been three sensors so a single faulty sensor can be out voted by the remaining two good ones."
No: the bigger problem was that a malfunction in this subsystem was catalogued as "hazardous" because that's how it was design to be and that's what it *should* have been.
Then, the shitty, greed-mediated, certification process failed to discover the failure-mode design changed overnight (u
Re:A corporation cutting corners... (Score:4, Insightful)
The AOA disagreement light should be standard. However, there should be a MCAS activation light. When ABS goes on, my car signals it to me. Then I know that the automatic system has kicked in. The aircraft should tell me when a safety feature is kicking in. Then I can remember to turn it off.
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Yes, a complete re-design of the new components. (Score:3)
The 2 comments above this one disagreed. I think you are correct. I've done electronic design and computer programming. The entire 737 MAX-8 new system components need re-consideration.
Others agree. For example: Boeing 737 MAX-8 Scandal Grows: Doomed Lion Air Flight Should Never Have Flown. [thedailybeast.com] (Yesterday, Mar. 21, 2019)
FBI joining criminal investigation into certification of Boeing 737 MAX
Pentagon to probe if Shanahan used office to help Boe [seattletimes.com]
Re:A corporation cutting corners... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is what happens the US government constantly protects Boeing from having to compete on the free market by trying to kill off competitors like Bombardier with illegal protectionism.
As soon as you take away the need to compete from a company, it can act in the most absurd of ways, exactly as Boeing has here.
It doesn't matter how important the US government thinks Boeing is as an aircraft manufacturer, it has to be forced to compete against Airbus et. al. on even terms otherwise more people will die because Boeing has been turned into another "too big to fail", and "too big to compete" and given a free ride. The fact people have now died due to safety failings is precisely why protectionism pushed by the current US (and still to a lesser degree, previous governments) is bad; it means that unless you have sufficient competition in your protected home market, all it will do is reduce quality.
Frankly I see it in cars too nowadays, every time I'm in the US as opposed to elsewhere, it's pretty clear that US cars are horribly behind the times, dated, and much poorer quality nowadays than thus coming out of the rest of the world like Asia and Europe. The more insular the US becomes, the more shit it's products become, and the less relevant it's products become on the world stage. As soon as you stop competing and start using protectionism it's an inevitable spiral towards game over. I agree that Huawei is a massive security risk, but simply banning them access to your market isn't suddenly going to make Cisco et. al. wake up and say "Okay, now let's figure out how they're getting ahead of us technologically and make better products", it's going to make Cisco go "lol, we don't even have to put any effort into competing now".
Re:A corporation cutting corners... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is what happens the US government constantly protects Boeing from having to compete on the free market by trying to kill off competitors like Bombardier with illegal protectionism.
This happened because of the competition from Airbus's A320neo.
Boeing originally intended to replace the 737 with a completely new design. But that would have taken too much time, and so they decided to make the 737 MAX instead.
Re:A corporation cutting corners... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:That's horse crap (Score:4, Informative)
Who modded that comment to 5? It is all crap
Yours is better? Where does this 50/50 come from?
Airbus is only 18.6% in the US [fi-aeroweb.com] (Boeing 43). And in the rest of the world, that you probably didn't visit much, it's not "Airbus, Airbus, and Airbus". It's roughly 50/50 [telegraph.co.uk].
Safety is optional? What about the security? (Score:3)
Really, if they want to make something optional, how about a low-security airline for people who are sick and tired of all that anti-terrorist BS? Only catch is your clothes travel separately.
I just can't get over the sheer gall of it. Boeing was worried about it to the point that they developed two safety mechanisms. And then didn't enable them? How about making the safety features mandatory with an option to pay more to turn them off? You know, for the pilots and passengers who want the extra thrills.
Who is worst? (Score:4, Interesting)
They literally nickel and dimed hundreds of people to death.
I agree this is appalling but I'm struggling with whom I should be most appalled by: Boeing for their willingness to sell planes without all the safety features or the airlines that refused to pay for the safety features.
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No, this is a corporate spin to blame the airlines for buying the planes without a feature. Unless the story has changed, the basic change in plane behaviour wasn't considered important enough to even mention to the pilots when training for this updated model, so i'd be surprised if anyone would splash out on new controls to show pilots things they don't even know exist on the plane.
OPTIONAL safety feature (Score:3)
ultimately only Boeing can know if a feature is essential or not. By
Re:Who is worst? (Score:5, Insightful)
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The surprise here, is that this hasn't happened sooner. Or it possibly has, just no one noticed, or it didn't make it to the public.
It did happened in different times and have been saved in federal database [nasa.gov]. Though, the database is not indexed by any search engine, so almost all people have no idea about it. Besides, the search is not an easy-to-use interface, so go figure.
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If the optional feature would have helped we do not know.
That the basic automatic 'safety' feature does behave in an erratic way should have been known to B. and they should have taken precaution. I can imagine a meeting of engineers being told to stop discussing this particular issue. VW was dragged into Billions of fines for smaller things that did not (in reality and contrary to hysteric claims) kill anybody. Some of VW managers spend time trying to not drop the soap under the shower now. I wonder if the
Re:A corporation cutting corners... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's worse than that, the airlines willingly keep buying into each new iteration of a dated design because it keeps their costs down -- less pilot training, less mechanic training, and so on.
Boeing makes those things optional not just because they can but because airlines want to fly the cheapest plane they can. Do you think the airlines don't have pilots, aerospace experts and so on involved in buying their planes? They absolutely go through these planes and their optional features and advise the airlines on how to drive down the price of new planes by keeping unnecessary stuff off them that's not necessary. Especially when its an extension of an existing design.
What's ironic about all this Boeing outrage is that consumers do this stuff themselves EVERY DAY -- they choose cheaper car models/trim lines that don't have the same safety features as the top trim lines. Why? It saves money. It's been like this for years -- ABS, stability control, airbags, front collision detection, lane departure warnings, blind spot warnings, directional headlamps, all of these were optional at one point and some still are on many cars.
Fuck, a former Delta executive just got nominated to run the FAA -- do you think the airlines aren't lobbying the FAA to make less safety shit mandatory so they can keep planes cheap?
Did Boeing make an engineering fuckup? Who knows? I'm not a 737 pilot and honestly I think you have to be one to truly understand this issue. But the public outrage directed at Boeing alone is ridiculous and lets the airlines totally off the hook.
Re:A corporation cutting corners... (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, Steve Dickson, who I used to work for, is exactly what the FAA needs. He's a safety first kind of guy and an excellent leader. He's also a pilot and knows his shit. He'll be a good thing for the FAA.
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>"Boeing makes those things optional not just because they can but because airlines want to fly the cheapest plane they can."
True, but in this case, we are talking about an single indicator lamp and an already-developed-but-disabled software patch. The latter having essentially no cost, and the former being pretty minimal. It doesn't seem like these should be optional, especially because we are talking about primary safety of operation and not just convenience, capacity, design flair, security theater,
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>"... but you're not talking about failure modes that patch created."
True, but the failure mode will exist anyway when the two sensors disagree (because one fails)... whether there is an indicator lamp or not, whether the software to handle it better is there or not. And the cost associated with a disaster due to the failure is very, very high. A simple cost/benefit analysis would have indicated how important it is. I am surprised that there aren't THREE sensors standard instead of just two.
Re:A corporation cutting corners... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a little different. Imagine a new model of an existing car. The engineers note that the new car has an odd tendency to turn to the left all on it's own. Rather than fix that or alert drivers to the oddity, they devise a system that will pull the steering wheel a bit to the right when it detects the surprise left steering. The warning light to tell you that the sensor for the steering correction system has failed is OPTIONAL. But since it's cheaper to build all of the cars with the indicator, the dealer is instructed to disable it with wire cutters unless you choose to pay for it.
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If you are going to pay millions of dollars for an Aircraft it would make sense that you as the customer do some research on what features you will need.
Really a company cannot win, if Boeing sold the plain at full cost with all the bells and whistles, there will be people angry because people paid money for features they do not want (For example read Slashdot comments about how Windows 10 automatic updates happen) and often will want it disabled. Because their government doesn't require it, and they figure
Re: A corporation cutting corners... (Score:5, Insightful)
Boeing, in life support devices safety is part of the product, not a feature, is like selling a car without airbags or charging extra for the brakes.
Re: A corporation cutting corners... (Score:3)
Re: A corporation cutting corners... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, actually it's like building a car that has a tendency to swerve, then installing a mandatory lane keeping assist system that frequently steers into other lanes against driver input, then telling people it's just a normal car instead of making sure that people know the system and how to turn it off, then charging extra for a warning light that tells people when the sensors malfunction and disagree whether the car is leaving its lane or not, causing the car to swerve.
On the right track (Score:2)
I doubt you'll get many upvotes, but that is a fairly accurate description.
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>"No, actually. It's like charging for Blind-Spot-Assist."
No, because that feature requires the addition of multiple radar systems and indicators and software. There is a significant/tangible cost for it, especially compared to the cost of the car. In the case of the plane, we are talking about an single indicator lamp and an already-developed-but-disabled software patch. The latter having essentially no cost, and the former being very minimal... almost zero compared to the overall cost of the plane.
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s/car/bus/
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This plane cost loads and loads of money but if you want it not to crash it's going to cost you a bit more.
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I suspect it's more like the base model is one that meets or exceeds every mandated safety feature required by every aviation authority they sell to. R&D also made a bunch of extra safety features that run up the cost considerably. Sales know that trying to sell an expensive safe plane to poorer airlines is a non-starter, they'd just try and get cheaper end-of-life models from other companies, so they ask that these non-mandated safety features become optional. And it's all good because these features a
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the base model is one that meets or exceeds every mandated safety feature required by every aviation authority
Except this new plane apparently needed a safety feature that wouldn't normally be needed. And aviation authorities are certainly going to add this to the list for planes like this one. And Boeing was aware of the need for it, but cut corners anyway. Aviation authorities base their standards on deadly crashes, while Boeing worked in the theoretical before even building the plane.
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How much do they charge for what amounts to a small extra LCD display and a light bulb?
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Re: A corporation cutting corners... (Score:5, Insightful)
It BECOMES safety critical when someone puts one on a plane and gives it the ability to silently override the autopilot and human pilots.
How fucking difficult is that?
Re: A corporation cutting corners... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll bite.
When the only input to a system that can override the pilot is an AoA sensor, I would consider it mandatory to have an indicator, say, some kind of light, to let me know when that sensor isn't working properly, so Yes, a light coming on when the sensor was in disagreement with the rest of the aircraft's sensors, would have most likely clued the flight crew in on what the issue was. In this case, the MCAS system.
Pilot: I wonder why the nose keeps pushing down on its own. Hmm, look, there's a light telling me that the AoA is in disagreement. Perhaps we should flip ahead in the QRH to the pages dealing with AoA issues.
Re: A corporation cutting corners... (Score:2)
The features. Plural. Redundant 2nd sensor, comparator, and indicator. It's a package deal.
Well, sure, if you're willing to just pull "facts" out of your ass, then may as well claim that the wings were also optional. Package deal and all that.
Over in the real world, the only bits that were optional out of all the shit you named is the indication; specifically an "AOA disagree" light and actual AOA indication on the display.
Re: A corporation cutting corners... (Score:2, Informative)
That's a worthy effort, but any pilot who was fighting against an out of control trim system and thought to himself "hem, let's look in the book to see what to do about my AOA indication" would be an utter retard. The correct way to deal with a malfunctioning trim system is to immediately disable electrical control of the trim system. Figuring out how to deal with faulty AOA indication wouldn't be anywhere near your top ten concerns at that point in time.
Imagine that you're driving down the highway, and s
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A redundant second sensor is not enough. How do you know which one is giving faulty readings? You need three sensors.
The problem with the MCAS is that it only had two sensors and a single faulty one can cause it think the plane is stalling when it's not. The indicator is to let the pilots know that there is a sensor disagreement.
Re: A corporation cutting corners... (Score:2)
First intelligent response. Thank you.
Re: A corporation cutting corners... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, and if you don't have any in your Cessna I don't give a fuck if you stall and crash.
In a commercial airliner I, as a customer, have to depend on the safety of the vehicle because I cannot audit it beforehand. Hell, 9 out of 10 times you don't even get to know for sure what kind of airplane, let alone what specific plane, you'll be flying on.
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Guess what, for the longest time we didn't know asbestos is bad to us. Still, we got rid of the stuff. Take a wild guess why. Hint: It wasn't the whining. More the coughing.
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Re: A corporation cutting corners... (Score:4, Insightful)
You, as the customer, are safer on aircraft than on any other form of transport available to you, and have likely been flying around on aircraft without this feature for most of your life.
I was waiting for this bit of irrelevancy to pop up.
It is kind of like odds of dying on the space shuttle seem a lot different if you look at them per passenger miles, or look at them per launch.
I'm not sure why you think that being a customer qualifies you to dictate how aircraft are designed.
If a company ignores the customer long enough, the customer stops bugging them, amirite? The customer controls matters with their wallet.
Had the media not started blowing this out of proportion you would have gladly carried on being a dumb and happy lump of self-loading cargo in the back of the plane.
Finally, you have identified the real source of the problem - the media! Seriously, we need to eliminate the media because y'all smart folks manage to show us how they are responsible for any and all problems.
But now that you've read some click-bait headlines, ohmahgawd it's the end of the fucking world.
While you seem to want everything suppressed, there are a lot of responsible people out there doing analysis. Unlike you, they don't just shrug off corpses and blame the press. They want the planes to fly safely. And when a new plane keeps dropping out of the sky, the plane fighting it's pilots all the way to the crash site, they want that to stop, not just write it of to "plane travel is the safest way to travel." Shit man - have you mixed purple drank with your Red Bull?
You seem a bit angry that news of these planes is being reported, angry at the cause of all problems is the media, and just plain frickin' angry.
Chillaxe homie, and keep the Red bull and drank use separate.
Re: A corporation cutting corners... (Score:2)
And you still don't know if lack of AOA indication "is bad to us". All you know is that the newspaper man told you that these airplanes didn't have it, and that sounded scary to you. You have absolutely no clue whether such indication would have made a difference in either of these accidents, or in any others. I've already presented an argument for why they would have made absolutely no difference in either of these crashes; I've yet to see anyone present anything resembling a well informed argument for
Re: A corporation cutting corners... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not the media, it's most aviation authorities that have grounded this specific model.
It's the media and uninformed laymen who are screaming about AOA indication being optional; the response from the experts/authorities is generally a shrug.
Yes, there's a reason these aircraft were grounded. The fact that two crashes which both seem to have been related to trim control happened within less than a year of each other is plenty of reason to ground them while we investigate. It is not, however, a good reason to think that AOA indication would have made any difference, or to start claiming that
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And you still don't know if lack of AOA indication "is bad to us". All you know is that the newspaper man told you that these airplanes didn't have it, and that sounded scary to you. You have absolutely no clue whether such indication would have made a difference in either of these accidents, or in any others. I've already presented an argument for why they would have made absolutely no difference in either of these crashes; I've yet to see anyone present anything resembling a well informed argument for the contrary position.
If these aircraft had had the AOA disagree indicator and said indicator had activated in flight(the previous Lion Air flight), then when they landed the pilots would have written up that the indicator triggered and the AOA sensors would have been examined and probably replaced by the AMT overnight, thus preventing the crash of the Lion Air flight the following morning. Right now, reports are that the two AOA sensors were off by 20 degrees. That is a big deal, and not something that would probably be caugh
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Finally, you have identified the real source of the problem - the media! Seriously, we need to eliminate the media because y'all smart folks manage to show us how they are responsible for any and all problems.
No, we need to take the media with the same grain of salt this crowd is perfectly content to take them with in any other tech-heavy situation: a group of generally ill-informed people who through some combination of ignorance, incompetence, and recklessness write articles primarily designed to inflame a group of readers who on balance are even more ill-informed of the actual issues.
And it all means what? The people who shit their pants blaming everything on the media are every bit as affected by the media as the people they are whining about. And you sound pretty inflamed yourself.
It isn't that hard to figure out what is bullshit and what isn't. And the calmer heads who work to look into these things are just going to do their job, unaffected by what some guy in the stockroom at Wal-Mart, or the reporter pulled off the food column to write a story about a plane being grounded think
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Re:A corporation cutting corners... (Score:5, Insightful)
Boeing certainly wasn't scrimping, they were being greedy by selling critical safety features for a few more bucks, and it's now backfired on and cost not only hundreds of lives but hundreds of millions and likely billions in lost sales and upcoming legal costs (Norwegian has already said they're suing for the costs that the grounding will cause them, others will surely follow).
The damage this kind of stuff will do to their brand is massive and it's already affected their sales, Garuda (an Indonesian airline) just cancelled their order of 48 planes. [theguardian.com] That alone will cost them over half a billion. And it gets worse: Only 381 planes have been delivered so far, less than 10 % of all existing orders. If more airlines start to follow suit as they probably will because the brand of the plane is now seriously damaged and people don't want to fly it (understandably) it might cause the entire plane to be unprofitable for them.
From both a business and product design standpoint they could not have made a more moronic decision, this is a godsend to their competitors, and I can bet you that the sales and marketing department of Airbus are currently ecstatic over this.
Re:A corporation cutting corners... (Score:5, Insightful)
some people will go to jail
This is corporate America, the only time people go to jail is when they steal from rich people. Killing plebs only gets you fined.
Could you tell me in advance when booking (Score:5, Interesting)
Could you tell me in advance when booking a flight if the plane in question is missing any optional safety features that should obviously be standard so I can choose a provider that does not save money on no-brainer stuff like like this?
I mean right now I have whole Boeing lineup set as "this plane may be missing obviously useful redundancies in safety systems that might mean it can crash, so I will not book a flight on this plane" and I know that is probably unfair to most of those planes. But without available information, that is the only option available to me.
Re:Could you tell me in advance when booking (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd not judge Lion Air or Ethiopian until it's clear whether the safety certification for the 737 Max was obtained WITH or WITHOUT the "optional" features on board. If it was WITH, then Boeing essentially sold an uncertified / incomplete product to those two airlines, probably without clearly telling them so.
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Can you? Or do you get told by the beancounters downstairs that this flight is cheaper and that you'll take it?
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I think there is space in the market for a website that lists, for each airline, what their safety status is: are they economizing on safety features? Is their training up to date? And then basically extort them into providing the information, i.e. clearly mark airlines unwilling to participate as "UNSAFE".
Basically, the goal would be to make safety a fundamental competitive feature, rather than merely a cost center.
Safety OPTIONAL? (Score:2)
That concept is a pile of brown goopy stinky material such as emanates from the South end of a North facing fertile male bovine!
{O.O}
sadly laughable on two levels: (Score:5, Interesting)
[1] We now know that the Lion Air 787 had the same issue on an earlier flight, but it was saved from disaster by the presence of a third pilot aboard who knew what to do, and then the airline chose not to fix the sensor before the fatal flight. Translation: the problem was avoidable if either of two things happened: the presence of a competent pilot, or the aircraft being properly maintained. People should prepare themselves for the very possible scenario that in perhaps a year when the NTSB finishes investigating (They're extremely diligent and objective) it will be determined that there's nothing wrong with the 787Max and that a combination of maintenance and pilot training and skill were the core issues (and I say that as a Boeing critic).
[2] The over-regulation of aviation in the US by the FAA makes the development and deployment of things like avionics and engines particularly expensive. [stay with me for a moment for the payoff...] It's not enough to develop a new flight instrument and get it approved - you must get a "Type Certificate" to allow the instrument to be installed into each make and model of plane. As a result, if you are only going to have a few customers for your new instrument in a particular sort of aircraft, then there's no way you'll ever recover the regulatory costs of getting a TypeCert for it, so you won't bother, and that means owners of that type of plane cannot get your new instrument for their plane. It's THIS aspect of FAA regulation that has made it so that most private planes in the US do not have (and indeed cannot get) an Angle-of-Attack instrument - the very thing this article complains about being optional on these 787s!!!!! Many private aviation incidents in the USA occur on departure, and on approach, and that's where an AOA indicator would save lives, but where many private pilots are only served by a squawking stall indicator.
Third pilot on JUMP SEAT, not flying. (Score:4, Informative)
Your translation of [1] is wrong.
That flight was saved by the third pilot (non-flying) who was in a jump seat and could afford the luxury of observation from the side. The two flying pilots were busy with instruments and plane systems. It has nothing to do with experience.
Re:Third pilot on JUMP SEAT, not flying. (Score:5, Informative)
The third pilot knew the checklist for the 737 Max. He instructed the other pilots to perform the manufacturer's specified procedure to resolve the problem, and it did resolve the problem. The pilots in the two planes which crashed apparently did not know the checklist, and did not reference the QRH. (Speculating here a bit since we don't know yet what happened - maybe they performed the proper reset procedure and the problem didn't go away.)
Contrary to the way most people here seem to be interpreting it, the third pilot's anecdote actually absolves Boeing and places blame for the crashes primarily upon the four pilots. This is looking like a pilot training problem. Boeing is still culpable for designing an automatic safety system which was prone to fail multiple times in just months of operation, and for making it so hard and non-obvious to override. But based on the third pilot's anecdote, primary culpability would be upon the pilots of the two other planes for not knowing the plane's checklists, and not bothering to crack open the QRH to double-check if they were addressing the problem properly.
Planes are incredibly complicated and it's unreasonable to expect a pilot to understand how all of its systems interact. The checklists in the QRH are made by the engineers who designed the plane. They do understand all of the plane's systems and how they interact. They come up with every possible problem they can think of which a pilot might encounter, and write checklists to resolve every possible cause they can think of for those problems. The checklist procedure for this problem fixed it in the third pilot's case. If the four pilots did not follow that procedure, then the crashes were their fault, not Boeing's.
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Re:Third pilot on JUMP SEAT, not flying. (Score:5, Interesting)
A friend of mine from college is a senior Delta pilot and has served as a flight instructor for many years, including the training of pilots from other countries. He has also flown the 737 MAX. His conclusion is the same as yours, and is an unfortunate reflection of the state of pilot training and aircraft maintenance in developing countries.
That Lion Air plane should have been grounded the day before, after the first incident. And as many new stories have reported, that particular aircraft had a backlog of maintenance issues that Lion Air failed to address.
His observation: "Everyone thinks that flying is "safe". It's not. It's difficult and dangerous. What makes it appear "safe" in the developed world is the constant routine of aircraft maintenance and pilot training that keeps the accident rate very, very low. But in other countries, that isn't the case."
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This is the first time I've heard that the third pilot simply walked through a checklist. Have a cite for that? It seems like Boeing would want that checklist plastered on the front page of every newspaper.
The Joker would be proud (Score:4, Informative)
The funny thing about this is that nobody responsible for this will actually suffer any real consequences.
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Nope -- if Congress gets ahold of this and points to the ] 'optional airplane safety features in software' smoking gun, how long do you think it will be before they start adding regulations requiring software audits in the future? It will only affect the responsible people who haven't yet retired from the software industry, but could start affecting everyone in the field from that point on.
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Have they ever in the aerospace industry? When was the last time you saw any airline C-Level fly sardine class?
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>"The funny thing about this is that nobody responsible for this will actually suffer any real consequences."
Actually, part of the blame does rest on the two sets of pilots. And they did pay the ultimate price. Still, it would have been far better if these two extremely inexpensive addons (a lamp and an already-developed-but-disabled software patch) had been included as a base safety feature.
And Boeing, as a company, will also pay a steep price on the market, because it will hurt their reputation and s
Three AOA vanes required (Score:3, Interesting)
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The thing is, if you have only two AOA detectors and they disagree, there is no way for the computer to know which one is wrong.
AoA sensors are typically used for systems like stall warning. That's the thing that shakes the control yoke (plus a few other lights and buzzers) when the angle of attack is too high for a particular flight mode. As part of a warning system, the consequences of a single sensor failure were not as dire. So the captain's stick shaker activates but the first officer's does not. The crew is in the loop to take appropriate action.
Triple redundancy is typically used when a sensor provides an input to a system t
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"The classic 737 didn't have the 'nose up' problem that the MAX has due to it's new engine placement."
It did actually. Pretty much any aircraft with engines mounted beneath low wings is going to have the issue. Mounting the engines low means you're going to have off-axis thrust which will generally have a positive pitch contribution. Where that can get dangerous is if you're in a low speed stall, a situation in which you have less aerodynamic control authority and your instinct is to add power. If you do th
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Money?
Capitalism (Score:2, Flamebait)
Well what do you expect. That is just pure capitalism at work.
Re:Capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
Take a step back and you might notice that they become indistinguishable.
Your Automobile (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you have a car? Is it safe? Would it be safer if you paid more? Are there safety features available on the premium or luxury version of your car?
This is the equivalent of putting a price on the value your family's safety. Safety costs extra. Pay up or die.
If any car brands can be found to have more safety for a premium price, there will be lawsuits now that this concept of corporate greed has been made apparent to us by Boeing.
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The difference is that I can opt to not drive at 250mph and hence not need those additional airbags and crash safety because at 55mph the security features my car offers are adequate to give me ample chances to survive even a head-on crash.
What you have here is the equivalent of not even having what's considered the standard level of security to survive a non-standard situation in everyday operation.
New Intercontinental Plane only $5 (Score:4, Informative)
Boeing: New Intercontinental Plane only $5 ...
Customer: There are no wings
B: They are extra, it is like with your fees for essentials, like luggage, meals and seating.
C: Oh [pause] And wheels?
B: Extra
C: Seats?
B: Extra
C: How much is it with all these extras?
B: $ 121.6 for the basic configuration
C: Huh?
B: There is also a do not crash feature and avoid mountains features
C: Too expensive. For that price we could by an Airbus
How about the truth??? (Score:2)
How about being honest? There wasn't a single 737 Max delivered with the additional angle of attack sensor, low cost or not.
Fucking media just lies lies lies.
So let me get this straight (Score:2)
When in doubt, fly the plane. (Score:2)
Failure of hazard Categorisation (Score:5, Informative)
The Seattle Times [seattletimes.com] has a good article on this although it should be taken as preliminary data subject to change.
To summarise
Due to airframe changes from previous models Boeing introduced MCAS which automatically lowers the nose when approaching a stall.
The MCAS was introduced to allow pilots with 737 experience to fly the 737 MAX with a minimal amount of conversion training thus saving airlines a lot of cost and making the MAX even more attractive to them.
As initially designed a failure of MCAS was classed as a "Major" hazard in that it could cause passenger discomfort but not death. This was because MCAS was limited to a very small change to the flight control surfaces. For this category the use of a single sensor is allowed assuming the sensor reliability is sufficient.
During the flight test phase the ability for MCAS was extended to unlimited repeat operations. These repeat operations have a cumulative effect on the flight control surfaces. The MCAS can now lead to a catastrophic failure.
At this point the category of hazard should have been changed. This should have lead to a design change but because the category remained at "Major" and not "Catastrophic" no further changes were made.
There could be any number of reasons why this categorisation change was missed, hopefully any future investigations will get to the root cause.
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While it's not explicitly stated...
Lion Air captain: probably Hindu [indianexpress.com]
Ethiopian Airlines captain: probably Christian [borkena.com]
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Could I get one that puts more emphasis on physics than metaphysics?
Re: Default behavior is to crash (Score:2, Informative)
It can be disabled by turning autopilot on, NOT off, and anyway the autopilot would disengage immediately because at least this subsystem checks for the consistency of the data coming from the AoA sensors.
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Beoing's CEO, the FAA chief, and others need to be fired.
That is far too friendly. A long prison term would be more like it and appropriate to the damage they have done.
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It is not. It is what the actual experts tell everybody. Please shut up.
Re: How is this a safety feature? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, in the situation how it was being sold, this is pretty much the truth.
Without the MCAS, the MAX handles fundamentally different in some pretty dangerous flight modes than the NG. This alone would require a new type rating. Type ratings for pilots are expensive and time consuming, Boeing wanted to avoid that, mostly as an economic argument. That's why they put in the MCAS. With a WORKING MCAS, the MAX handles sufficient close to the NG, that pilots with just the NG type rating can still fly "safely", until MCAS fails and potentially crashes the plane.
Boeing and/or the FAA could have skipped MCAS and made type ratings for NG pilots mandatory. Then, at least every pilot would know about the tendency to pull the nose further up than the NG when going to full throttle. Most pilots fly with some automation still enabled, even if they're flying "manual", so auto-trim could've easily have corrected for this.
This aspect of the MAX would have certainly not be one of its highlights, but if every pilot knew about those properties, it wouldn't be a safety problem, just part of normal procedures.
The alternative would obviously have been designing a different airframe, allowing for a higher, but more balanced placement of the engines. Maybe higher legs would've been sufficient though, since the MAX 9 does already feature higher legs.
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We have had enough of self proclaimed "experts" telling us blatant lies. We still like experts at the helm of stuff that actually affects us. Well, obviously not in politics, but at least where it actually matters.
Re:The angle of attack indicator missing? (Score:4, Interesting)
No matter how much one wants to jam it to Boeing entering a stall condition outside of wind sheer is pilot operating error. Now lowering the nose immediately and slowly increasing power is all 737 basics. However this went on into deep stall we will soon see but the lack of understanding of a checklist in their hands is a major factor.
I as a private pilot jump through 40 years of aviation history depending on what is ready to go at the place I rent from. It is my responsibility to be familiar and use all checklists. Every single plane I rent I stall and recover from at least 6 times, sometimes with a flight instructor. mostly without at altitude with huge safety margin. This is more than my 737 pilot friend has ever herd the stall horn during his 20 year commercial career. My three and only considerations on departure is clear ground obstacles, conflict with other aircraft and do not stall on departure. These 4 pilots had do not stall on departure task and all failed.
Stalling a large commercial aircraft during departure is a bad thing. From day one in a piper cub the stall regime and recovery is trained in. Deep Stalling a commercial aircraft during departure without a mile of air under you is typically fatal. Both flights something more than a computer driven recovery went wrong. MCAS making only one attempt at cleaning up the pilot mistakes seems to be the fix that was going on before the second crash. Adding both sensors to the MCAS, clear indications MCAS is doing something seems reasonable and prudent additional aid but letting poor pilot standards off the hook will be fatal in the future.
Re:The angle of attack indicator missing? (Score:4, Informative)
There was no stall. The MCAS system was engaged due to a malfunctioning angle of attack system.