Financial Times:


Europe’s aviation safety regulator issued a continent-wide ban on flights of Boeing’s 737 Max on Tuesday, putting both the aircraft manufacturer
and US regulators on the defensive as they continued to insist the plane was airworthy.

The move by the EU Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) followed similar actions by China, Australia, Singapore and Malaysia to bar the aircraft
from their airspace; some individual airlines — including Norwegian Air, one of the Max 8’s biggest customers — had unilaterally grounded their fleet
even before authorities acted.

The groundings come despite Boeing and the US Federal Aviation Administration, the official certifying authority for the 737 Max, standing by
the aircraft, with both insisting there is insufficient evidence to link Sunday’s Ethiopian Airlines crash with another accident involving the Max 8
in Indonesia five months ago. Both were new planes that went down shortly after take-off.

“We have full confidence in the safety of the Max,” Boeing said in a statement. “[T]he Federal Aviation Administration is not mandating any
further action at this time, and based on the information currently available, we do not have any basis to issue new guidance to operators.”

The company is, however, rolling out a “flight control software enhancement” it had developed following the Lion Air crash, which it said on
Monday would be deployed across the fleet of aircraft “in the coming weeks”.

The Ethiopian plane crash, in which 157 were killed, came just five months after a 737 Max 8 owned by Indonesia’s Lion Air plunged into
the sea shortly after take-off, killing all 189 passengers and crew. A preliminary report on the Lion Air disaster found that pilots had been
bedevilled by a new stall-prevention feature on the 737 Max which erroneously kicked in during the flight.

American and Southwest both fly the Max8. Just read that their planes are still in the air.

There are some 350 such aircraft distributed amongst 54 current global operators of the 737-Max 8,
..I wonder how many will follow suite?

btw: Trump has chipped in with his personal Twitter aviation technical advice on the new 737, saying they are.. 'far too complex to fly' ...

A Boeing official replied to Trumps remarks:

UPDATE: A @Boeing official said that during the call with TRUMP this morning,
the @BoeingCEO “reiterated our position that the Max is a safe aircraft.”

I meant to post this here but what I said above is were not both Max8's flown by Muslim pilots?

LOL...Yeh , they both must have waited till the companies they fly for took delivery of the new B737 Max 8 before crashing them on purpose.
crashing older model jets loaded with passengers just doesn't have the same effect...

both B737s crashed soon after take-off, so the muslim pilots must have also 'conspired'...

currently 40 operators have already grounded the 737 Max 8
and a list of countries have closed-denied their Airspace to that specific aircraft.....All because of muslim pilots you think?

NOTHING gets past Starman!

Having a system that will automatically pitch the nose down at low speed and low altitude based on an AOA reading from ONE of two sensors even if the other disagrees, then pretty much failing to tell anyone about it is asking for trouble if you ask me.

They should not be allowed in planes. They could lose it at anytime.

The plane is safe. Boeing builds great airplanes. I do not believe it is a plane problem. This is not Airbus.

While I will not hypothesize about these two crashes, allow me to observe that a well-trained and competent crew will ALWAYS FLY THE FOOKING AIRPLANE regardless of what the magic boxes tell them. A crew that is more than seat warming button pushers will take manual control and override any "automatic" system that is trying to kill them.

Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.

Boeing CEO disputes claim:
https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-...entionally-withheld-from-airlines-jt610/

Boeing issued 737 Max fleet bulletin on AOA warning;

https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-...tin-on-aoa-warning-after-lion-air-crash/

What is MACS..?
https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-...eristics-augmentation-system-mcas-jt610/

https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-...eristics-augmentation-system-mcas-jt610/

Didn’t see your post Starman

Nothing wrong with the Max 8.

I have three friends that Fly the 737 MAX-9 They have no reservations flying that aircraft. But one of my buddies and I were discussing the (MACS) System and he text me this.


I personally think Boeing [bleep] up. Starting with the decision to build the Max vs a clean sheet design. Then further complicated it with changing a fundamental flight control law without telling anyone......

Nobody operates more 737s than Southwest and no airline is more tied to the 737 than Southwest. If Southwest says that Boeing didn’t tell them about it, I’m inclined to believe them.

I second that Rocky. Not a pilot, but I have watched video of too many Airbus planes lying themselves into the ground. I'll take Boeing anytime I have a choice.

Air Canada and WestJet fly these planes and they have no intention of grounding them. They say it is a good plane.

I look at where the crashes occurred. Ethiopia and Indonesia. How many crashes have occurred in Indonesia or planes from Indonesia in recent years? seems like 2 out of three? 1 out of 3? I've heard of so many types of problems of hunters flying from or through Ethiopia this year, it cannot be recommended as an airline to be used. Have to wonder what is going on there. Also they were heading to Kenya. Getting to be more and more Muslim terrorist activity in Kenya. Who knows?

The basics of the 737 has not changed, more efficient engines and longer fuselage, wing surfaces are the only changes of note?

Was explained right there in the Washington Post:



https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...-ethiopian-airlines-flights-have-common/

>>>>>>>
https://www.seattletimes.com/busine...systems-change-linked-to-lion-air-crash/
>>>>>>>



Pilots flying Boeing’s 737 MAX for American Airlines and Southwest Airlines were not informed during training about a key change to an automatic system
that’s been linked to the fatal crash of a Lion Air jet last month, according to pilot representatives at both airlines.

Jon Weaks, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, said Monday the airline and the pilots “were kept in the dark.”


“We do not like the fact that a new system was put on the aircraft and wasn’t disclosed to anyone or put in the manuals,” he said in an interview. What’s more,
he noted, Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration have now warned “that the system may not be performing as it should.”

“Is there anything else on the MAX Boeing has not told the operators?” he added. “If there is, we need to be informed.”

In order to protect against a possible stall on the MAX, Boeing made a change to a flight-control system so that it automatically pushes the nose of the aircraft
down when a bladelike sensor that sticks out of the fuselage indicates that the nose is pitched up and putting the plane in danger of a stall.

In the Lion Air crash that killed 189 people in Indonesia, investigators have determined that this sensor, the Angle of Attack (AOA) sensor, was feeding bad data
to the jet’s flight computer, activating the system and repeatedly pushing the nose of the plane down when in fact there was no danger of a stall.

Tracking data indicate that the Lion Air jet pitched up and down like a roller coaster during the 12-minute flight before the pilots apparently lost control and
nose-dived into the Java Sea.

A former Boeing executive, speaking on condition of anonymity because discussion of accident investigations is supposed to be closely held, said that
Boeing engineers didn’t introduce the change to the flight-control system arbitrarily.

He said it was done primarily because the much bigger engines on the MAX changed the aerodynamics of the jet and shifted the conditions under which
a stall could happen. That required further stall protection be implemented to certify the jet as safe.

Last Tuesday, Boeing sent out a warning bulletin to all airlines operating the plane worldwide informing pilots how to cut off the system if it malfunctions.
Next day, the FAA issued an emergency airworthiness directive mandating that all airlines make pilots aware of the procedure.

Early Saturday morning, Capt. Mike Michaelis, chairman of the safety committee of the Allied Pilots Association (APA) at American Airlines, sent out a message
to pilots informing them of details Boeing had shared with the airline about this new 737 MAX system — called MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System).

“This is the first description you, as 737 pilots, have seen,” the message from the pilots association at American reads;

“It is not in the American Airlines 737 Flight Manual
… nor is there a description in the Boeing FCOM (Flight Crew Operations Manual). It will be soon.”

The description of MCAS provided by Boeing states that the system is designed to activate only “during steep turns with elevated load factors and during flaps up flight
at airspeeds approaching stall” and that it is “commanded by the Flight Control computer using input data from sensors and other airplane systems.”

Michaelis’ message told American pilots to familiarize themselves with the procedure for cutting off that system. “At the present time, we have found no instances of AOA
anomalies with our 737 MAX8 aircraft. That is positive news, but it is no assurance that the system will not fail,” he wrote.


APA spokesman Dennis Tajer said Monday that the detail on the MCAS system “is new information for us.”


He said his training on moving from the old 737 NG model cockpit to the new 737 MAX consisted of little more than a one-hour session on an iPad. The airline doesn’t
have simulators specific to the MAX model.

Apart from that, the only MAX-specific training was practicing cross-wind landings, which are trickier in the MAX because the wingtips have large downward-pointing
strakes that might touch the ground in hard cross-winds.

But the cockpit displays and systems seemed identical, he said.

“We assumed they were mostly cosmetic differences,” said Tajer. “Why we weren’t informed of this, I don’t know. Pilots are calling us and asking.”

With the revelation that the MAX has a shift in the flight-control system not present on the earlier 737 models, he said, APA safety experts are in “aggressive exploratory mode”
to find out all the ramifications.

“We want to know everything about the airplane that we are accountable to fly safely,” Tajer said.


At the “Pilots of America” online chat forum, one American Airlines pilot posted the APA message and then added a personal reaction:

“We had NO idea that this MCAS even existed. It was not mentioned in our manuals anywhere (until today). Everyone on the 737 had to go through differences
training for the MAX and it was never mentioned there either,” the anonymous pilot posted. “I’ve been flying the MAX-8 a couple times per month for almost a year now,
and I’m sitting here thinking, what the hell else don’t I know about this thing?”

News that Boeing had not informed the airlines of the change was first reported Monday by Bloomberg News.

The fact that U.S. pilots were not informed about the change means that almost certainly the Lion Air pilots too were unaware.

Boeing, sticking to protocols that require any information relevant to the Lion Air crash to come from the Indonesian safety regulators, declined to provide any detail
Monday about the MCAS system and why airline pilots were not made aware of the shift in the system.

Instead Boeing offered a statement: “We are taking every measure to fully understand all aspects of this incident, working closely with the investigating team and all
regulatory authorities involved,” Boeing said. “We are confident in the safety of the 737 MAX. Safety remains our top priority.”

Updated November 17 explaining MCAS and electric trim override operation.

When Boeing set out to develop the 737 Max, engineers had to find a way to fit a much larger and more-fuel efficient engine under the wing of the single-aisle jet’s notoriously low-riding landing gear. By moving the engine slightly forward and higher up and extending the nose landing gear by eight inches, Boeing eked another 14% improvement in fuel consumption out of the continually tweaked airliner.

That changed, ever so slightly, how the jet handled in certain situations. The relocated engines and their refined nacelle shape1 caused an upward pitching moment — in essence, the Max’s nose was getting nudged skyward. Boeing quietly added a new system “to compensate for some unique aircraft handling characteristics during it’s (sic) Part 25 certification” and help pilots bring the nose down in the event the jet’s angle of attack drifted too high when flying manually, putting the aircraft at risk of stalling, according to a series of questions and answers provided to pilots at Southwest Airlines, the largest 737 Max operator reviewed by The Air Current.

The Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) was designed to address this, according to Boeing engineers and pilots briefed on the system, now at the center of the inquiry into the crash of Lion Air 610, a brand new Boeing 737 Max 8. MCAS is “activated without pilot input” and “commands nose down stabilizer to enhance pitch characteristics during step turns with elevated load factors and during flaps up flight at airspeeds approaching stall.”

“Its sole function is to trim the stabilizer nose down,” according to the system’s description to pilots, who were learning about it for the first time this week.

This was copied from The air current

This is pretty telling paragraph from one of those links above:

There is another explanation, according to a Tuesday report in The Wall Street Journal: “One high-ranking Boeing official said the company had decided against disclosing more details to cockpit crews due to concerns about inundating average pilots with too much information — and significantly more technical data — than they needed or could digest.”

Muslim can only handle just so much information.up

Since when can software completely override command inputs? I would consider such software inherently defective.

I only spent 24 years as a 737 Captain but NOT the Max but this is a solution looking for a problem to fix.
And if you are aware of this, it is a no brainer event...might take 1 second to fix. BUT if NOT well trained, you could I suppose, get in trouble....
On another point, from witness reports in Ethiopia, it does not sound like this system is the fault. Some reports, I know, who are they from, but some say it was trailing smoke from the aft end before it hit....if correct, this system could not cause the smoke.

And this is not the first time a manufacturer did not tell anyone about a system they installed....but that is not a tale for here and now. But I am still here despite it. Oh, and the engineer who put it in when questioned about it said " oh that, we thought that would be something neat........so we did..." yeah..........................................................................................................................

Kinda hard to install a software change without getting it certified.

Yes, Boeing does indeed build great airplanes. But in the case of the B-737., it was designed in the early 1960's (-100, -200 series), revised in the 1970's (-300, -400, -500, -600), revised again in the 1990's (-700, -800, -900) and then revised again in 2015 (-7, -8, -9, -10 the MAX series). just adding band-aids on top of band-aids just makes a complicated product more complicated. As a Boeing investor, I just feel that this is "a bridge too far".

What's never said by the manufacturer or the media, is that all these " safety " features are a direct result of third world pilots...Airbus wanted to make complex jet that someone could be trained to fly in a short amount of time...donkey cart to right seat in 2 years...so Boeing is adding on to a proven platform by making the Max " unstallable"...kind of like those fancy electric hold doors made the Titanic was unsinkable....yeah right...

Don't pitch up too far too fast and you won't stall dumass...but it takes time to train someone who may not even know how to drive a car...in say..Ethiopia. But we can't just have white guys flying planes around in third world crapholes....doesn't look Progressive enough.....our peoples can fly fancy airplane too...so this is what you end up with..the FO had 200 some hours, he didn't know if his cornhole was punched or drilled...he had no business in that jet. Period.

IDK what went wrong with this one, and we may never know...don't take the report from the NTSB as gospel...you would never believe how many rows of lawyers are between the facts and what's the official line.

Boeing screwed the pooch on this one, and it's going to cost them.

I'd like to think the Lion Air crash would have never happened to a US crew with the normal amount of experience required to get to that stage, but OTOH I've seen crews totally disregard the trim horn when they were busy trying to figure out what was going on, albeit a different aircraft. Distractions kill ya....

Conversely the 737 has a friggin knee busting, totally loud and annoying trim system, that can't be easily ignored.....I find it hard to believe they didn't realize it was running away on them and disconnect it..

Now think about that a minute...who oversees certification? The FAA...what are they?? hmmmm a gov't bureaucracy that doesn't know their ass from a hole in the ground, when it comes to actual flight system details.. all they know is paperwork shuffling..

This is how it works, Boeing tells them, hey we got a new safer system ,they tested it seven ways to Sunday and it's fine, the Inspector asked if they are sure, they say yes, he says show me in the Sim, they do, it works as advertised. He signs it off.

. Now it's a go, out on the line something comes up that the brainiac Boeing engineer never thought about, like maybe false data, signal interruption, bird strike, dragonfly crapping right on the AOA vane and changing the aerodynamics, etc....its a computer, crap in , crap out..

95% of what is new from Boeing is all self certified, no real meaningful oversight at all. The FAA just isn't capable of it.

I’m not a pilot but I can see how guys would schit their pants if they weren’t properly briefed and trained on the problem. They’re flying the plane manually within what they think is a normal flight envelope. Then suddenly the nose starts pitching down. They pull back and attempt to fight it but it continues. It probably seems like the autopilot was suddenly on and making control inputs, but of course, it wasn’t. And of course, they are low and slow and about the time they figure it out, they’re in the ground.

But of course, if the had gotten even one briefing on it, maybe one run on a sim, it would be no problem at all.

One of those articles an American pilot said that they were never advised that there were any significant differences in handling between the Max 8 and a regular 737, that their training for it consisted of about an hour on an IPad, and that the airline doesnt even have any simulators that are specific to the Max 8.

I believe that is the direction of commercial aviation. Computerize cockpits to the point where a plane can be flown by a button pusher. I read somewhere where they are toying with the idea of only having one pilot flying cargo aircraft with assistance from one pilot on the ground.

I believe it was Airbus that proposed ground control from chocks to chocks. Talk about your lead aircraft, er, balloon. I am a computer. Nothing can go wrong... go wrong...go wrong...

Gosh, I hate automatic stuff.

I think Boeing screwed the pooch a bit, but I still would have no qualms whatsoever flying in a Max 8 with an Americanncrew from one of the major airlines. They should all be sufficiently up to speed on this issue by now.

Time to buy some Boeing stock!

Yes, this production is an airborne 1960's makeover...

I find it hilarious that MSM is insinuating collusion between Boeing and Trump because the FAA didn't follow Lower Slobbovia's lead in grounding the fleet. (The EU's action is basically a GFY for not buying Airbus.)

WSJ states one of the selling points of the 737 MAX, [according to Boeing], was that pilots themselves wouldn’t need
any additional simulator time to learn the aircraft, and they go on to say (as JoBob posts earlier) that Boeing opted
- not to disclose additional technical information in the belief that doing so would inundate pilots with technical details
they neither needed nor could grasp.

If 737 captains could not grasp it, how would an FAA inspector grasp it when demonstrated by Boeing on a simulator?
For the record ,US airlines running the 737 Max8 ,have no such simulator in-house, while some foreign carriers
do have them. ..Boeing Training and Professional Services has commissioned 737 Max 8 full-flight simulators
to provide training to a long list of air carrier companies around the globe.

Apparently in the US they[pilots] are shown a crash course 1hr video about MACS...?






you reckon Boeing also had its lawyers very carefully construct the CEOs public release statement...?... :grin;

Let’s see, build an airplane that has a design characteristic, dare I say flaw, that allows it to get too steep on takeoff and potentially stall while being operated normally. Bill this airplane as being nearly identical in flight characteristics to its docile older brother and therefore, require no or very little transition training. Account for this design characteristic or flaw, by implanting a software solution whereby the plane automatically pitches nose down and KEEPS pitching nose down unless an affirmative step is taken by the pilots. Yet DON’T tell the pilots about this software feature because you feel like it is too much information. Make it so that this software activates upon input from one sensor even though there are at least two sensors giving this information and even if the other sensors disagree.

That about sum it up?

I don’t see that system causing an accident, but not including it in the manuals seems like a foul to me.

Ever see Dr. Strangelove? It’s a little like the Russians building the Doomsday device and not telling anyone that they had built it.

I'm going with Rock for now. I hope Boeing isn't going the Airbus route...

Runaway pitch trim (up OR down) is a common, well practiced emergency. That is why all airplanes, at least all the ones I flew in, had a pitch trim disconnect button right on the stick and all flight control circuit breakers were easily accessible in the cockpit.

Here is what a guy who flies the Max 8 said on another board.

This is all just my opinion. After the Lion Air incident, if any pilot flying the 737 isn't fully aware of that problem, and how to deal with it they probably shouldn't be sitting in the seat. Dealing with an unusual MCAS trim actuation isn't hard. The normal trim switches we use all the time, that sit right under our thumbs will stop the MCAS from trimming the stabilizer, and even trim opposite the MCAS trim commands. That will only stop the trim temporarily, there are two stabilizer trim cutout switches behind the throttles that will disable the trim all together (MCAS or otherwise), and then you can use the manual trim wheels.

The bigger problem is probably recognition. In a situation like lion air, with a bad AOA, there will be a bunch of other things going on, including a stall warning, and stick shaker. But if you apply the unreliable airspeed procedures we train in the simulator, every time we go for training, you can keep flying the airplane just fine. Pitch plus power equals performance. My airline also has an AOA indicator installed in our airplanes, but I don't believe the two airplanes in question had that option installed.

I'm not at all convinced the Ethiopian accident had anything to do with MCAS though. We will all see in due time.

It looks like the FAA is grounding the Max 8's and 9's now.

That was my thinking also. My FIL hated the airbus and refused to work anywhere that he might be forced to fly them. I’ve flown on an airbus a few times and much prefer anything Boeing over Eurotrash.

Whelp, the FAA just grounded them.

And Trump wimps out to the Lower Slobbovia aviation safety experts on the bases of MSM caterwauling. Hell, let's ground all US built heavies, they all go through the same certification process which is fraudulent. Buy Air Bus. Must be better, after all it is a consortium and Europeans, like most other people, are smarter than we are. .And the EU wouldn't fudge the certification process. Well as long as VW doesn't build aircraft anyway.

Why not an AD of a potential problem with required refresher training on how to overcome the problem while we actually find some facts? Oh yeah, that MSM caterwauling.

Not so fast. Actual US pilots have been voicing some concerns for the last several months. There might be some software glitches above and beyond what we are even talking about.

https://www.dallasnews.com/business...lained-feds-months-suspected-safety-flaw

And they all survived nicely. Flight software is extremely complex and hard to diagnose as you have to test every conceivable set of variables. And then some pilot finds a flight regime or there is some combination of failures engineers thought impossible. Best practices for writing and testing software come from aviation. They have a lot of bucks on the line. Software development is a never ending process (Microsoft updates your OS at least monthly). Ever so much more so aviation software.

One constant in airplane accident discussions is the jumping to conclusions that always happens before anyone knows the facts. Government investigators are always going to have access to more and newer information than the general public by nature of being first on the scene. I don't know, and neither does anyone here know, what caused this accident and we won't know until the investigations have been completed and the reports released, until then all we have is heresy. If there is a possible flight control problem with the 737 MAX then the prudent path is to ground them until it can be sorted out, that's just basic safety common sense.

This was in a Fox news report about Trump directing the FAA to ground them in the U.S. It appears that the FAA has some new information that could possibly indicate a similar problem to the Indonesia crash:

"The FAA said it decided to ground the jets after it found that the Ethiopian Airlines aircraft that crashed had a flight pattern very similar to the Lion Air flight.

“It became clear that the track of the Ethiopian flight behaved very similarly to the Lion Air flight," said Steven Gottlieb, deputy director of accident investigations for the FAA."

It's my understanding that the flight data recorders are on their way to Germany to be read, once that happens investigators will have a much better idea of what happened. In my opinion as an airline pilot and Boeing fan the precautionary grounding of the fleet is not premature. If it turns out the two accidents were not related then they'll know that after the data recorders have been read and the grounding orders can be lifted. Right now it's the reasonable and safe thing to do.

Is it? What is the nature of the problem? Can range from nuisance - requires a pilot to lift a finger, to dangerous requiring a fast acting pilot who knows the system intimately. Which you would hope all pilots do, not just which page of a checklist to punch up. So far reports and theories indicate it's more of the nuisance variety. Turn off the autopilot and fly the damned thing manually to get back into the proper flight regime.

That's where my suggested solution comes in. Put out an Airworthiness Directive alerting pilots they may encounter the problem and have them demonstrate they can recover control of the aircraft.

Meanwhile work to duplicate the event in a simulator or test aircraft to find the bug. May take a while since it appears to be a rare event in the real world. If you can't duplicate the problem you can't say it's systemic.

It would potentially be much easier for a 737 captain to take manual control of the aircraft,
if Boeing had included in the Operations Manual where the two (2) switches were
that turn oFF the MACS.

and one would reasonably think when one modifies a 737 to the point where the potential for Stall
requires the manufacturer to install MACS, the manufacturer would also show due diligence to properly
educate/inform the carrier companies and their pilots about such.

and to be honest MACS is not 'trying to kill them'...Id like to see anyone prove the 'murderous-killer motive'
of MACS in a courtroom...maybe the motives one should really question are those of the big brass at Boeing...

So, Boeing says that it didn’t tell anyone about it because it didn’t want to overwhelm monkey crews with too much info. But, how much info is it to tell monkey crew to “push this button” and turn off the automatic trim?

The real reason Boeing didn’t tell is because the airlines would have asked, “Why is this feature necessary? Is there something wrong with this airplane that causes it to stall? You said it was just like the other 737s only longer. That wasn’t a problem in the other 737s. Does Airbus have this problem?”

I don't know the nature of the problem and neither do you unless you're privy to the information the investigators have.

These are airliners we're talking about with live people in the back, not an F-16 with an ejection seat. They're flown by young guys with low time, third world pilots, good pilots, bad pilots, and old guys with coke bottle glasses & the reaction time of a slug. Saying "it's a training problem" doesn't cut it, you don't want an airliner that needs a Chuck Yeager to safely fly or even an average pilot having a good day to fly. You want an airplane that can be safely operated by a mediocre pilot that's having a chitty week while he's going through a divorce and trying to hold his eyelids open at 3 am in bad weather. If the plane is throwing curve balls at him when he's 200' above the ground then it needs to be modified so it doesn't do that. I don't know if that's the case with this airplane, but the FAA announcement I quoted seems to indicate that they see some similarities between the Lion Air flight and the Ethiopian crash so somebody with more info than us made the decision ground them until it's figured out, I don't see that as a bad thing.

An Airworthiness Directive? Those things get round filed unless they're backed up with regulatory enforcement. So you're going to make them do a simulator where they practice flipping the stabilizer trim cutout switches? You can flip them a million times in the simulator but it doesn't make any difference unless you do it at the right time before it gets away from you. Planes are certified to be able to be flown with the stab completely nose up/down on the trim but it's again a case not of whether they're capable of flying but can a mediocre pilot on a bad day fly it safely. You don't get Yeager every time you get on an airliner.

Ok, I know better, but I'll take a bite of this... What do you mean "This is not an Airbus?" I flew three models of the Airbus in my career... Flight time in the left seat of those aircraft is about 14,000 hrs. They are an excellent aircraft. Are they better than Boeing products? Nope, but they are a different animal and they are, in my opinion, very safe.

Issue date -November 6, 2018

“The FAA has issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive (AD) that addresses possible erroneous angle of attack (AOA) inputs on Boeing 737 Max aircraft.
These erroneous inputs can potentially make the horizontal stabilizers repeatedly pitch the nose of the airplane downward, making the aircraft difficult to control.
The AD orders operators to revise the airplane flight manual (AFM) to give the flight crew horizontal stabilizer trim procedures to follow under certain conditions.
The AD is effective immediately. Operators have three days to revise the AFM. The FAA continues to work closely with Boeing, and as a part of the investigative
team on the Indonesia Lion Air accident, may take further appropriate actions depending on the results of the investigation. The FAA has alerted foreign
airworthiness authorities who oversee operators that use the 737 MAX of the agency’s action. “.

Issued March 11, 2019

Continued emergency Airworthiness Notification.(AD) 2018-23-51 of November 2018
https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/media/CAN_2019_03.pdf

The end of this Atlantic Magazine Article has four individual NASA incident reports made by 737 Max pilots in the US about the airplane and their ability, or inability, to pilot it. Very interesting.

https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2...-about-problems-with-the-737-max/584791/

Boeing has gone from ardently saying the 737 MAX is safe to continue flying, ..to now recommend the grounding
of the entire global fleet of 370+ units....this follows the emergence of fresh evidence from the Ethiopian incident
and newly refined satellite tracking data.

interesting times for a company that has had until very recently orders totalling some 5000
for the 737 Max.

It’s a short but very factual analysis by an airline pilot. He does a good job without injecting his opinion

https://youtu.be/AgkmJ1U2M_Q

Good video.

One of Boeings primary selling/marketing points of the 737 MAX was that it could be sold to air carriers with low time
pilots specifically in the developing world market segment , because (according to Boeing and FAA ) it was deemed
not to require any additional certification above previous 737s ...or simulator time and/or with an appropriately
experienced captain (to fly a few legs under supervision) before letting pilots loose on the new modified aircraft.

....The cost of simulators and training programmes is a significant purchase, more responsible carriers invested in them, but many
carriers across the globe jumped at the chance to get a higher capacity, longer range , more fuel efficient 737 without the need for
further mandatory training of pilots.

It has brought into question (in the past and more recently) the type of relationship that exists between Boeing and the considerable
number of in-house FAA staff permanently stationed at Boeing plant locations.

Boeing does so much to help the stretched resources of the FAA, that it has been suggested that the FAA has morphed into a role
of appeasing Boeing , rather than the FAA taking a proper standback and independent regulatory approach.

You don't need a lot of time to open the book and learn the systems. You do need a modicum of intelligence to apply that knowledge to overcome a problem. What the hell good is a pilot if he can't do that? May as well go with a chock-to-chock automated aircraft and save the salary.

Were those Ethiopian Airlines pilots properly made aware of the Nov. 2018 AD changes to the AFM for the 737 MAX ..?

The emergency AD in November 2018 was sent by FAA to all known US owners and operators, but the FAA is not responsible for
directly notifying all known owners and operators abroad...The FAA did send such AD details to the relevant foreign airworthy authorities,
.....it is then the responsibility of those authorities to notify the owners and operators of the 737 MAX covered under their jurisdiction.

It just sounds like you are shooting off the hip and blaming the pilots, when it may well not be their fault that they were possibly unawares
of the emergency AD concerning MACS.

Don't know enough to blame the pilots.

But damn right it is THE PILOT'S responsibility to know the systems and be able to operate the systems to keep the damn thing in the air. Not sit around with their thumb up their butt until someone provides them with the Cliff's Notes version. If they find learning their aircraft too boring or too hard they need to make a career change to bus driver. Then they can pull over to the curb when their vehicle farts and not kill anyone.

You are still harping on about the pilots, you sound angry and somewhat potentially condemning of them.
The pilots can only competently know the new MACS system if the appropriate information had been passed on to them.

It was Not long ago Boeing and the FAA didn't expect or require 737 pilots to be given prior training experience with the 737 Max MACS.

In any case you seem a bit slow to the party yourself....I got a chuckle when you suggested an AD should have been issued,
without bothering to know an emergency AD was issued 6th Nov. 2018 and reiterated on 11th December 2018 and again on 11th march 2019...
thankfully, folks like me here can spoon feed you with such rudimentary information.

If you come back whining about the pilots again without any pertinent updates or substantiated contributory facts about them,
then it will be evident you just have an agenda or some sort of axe to grind.

Boeing and FAA Oversight of the 737 MAX 8 Was Flawed: Report

BY RITA DEVLIN MARIER / BLOOMBERG MARCH 17, 2019

http://time.com/5553275/boeing-faa-737-max-flawed/


(Bloomberg) — In one of the most detailed descriptions yet of the relationship between Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration during the 737 Max’s certification process, the Seattle Times reported Sunday that the U.S. regulator delegated much of the safety assessment to Boeing and that the analysis the planemaker in turn delivered to the authorities had crucial flaws.

The newspaper’s report was based on interviews with current and former engineers directly involved or familiar with the evaluations, all of whom asked not to be identified, and was under way even before the Ethiopia crash.

Boeing told the newspaper Saturday that the FAA had reviewed the company’s data on the plane and “concluded that it met all certification and regulatory requirements.” The company, which is based in Chicago but designs and builds commercial jets in the Seattle area, said there are “some significant mischaracterizations” in the engineers’ comments.

Boeing’s System Safety Analysis of the flight control software — suspected to have contributed to the Lion Air jetliner crash in October and also under the spotlight in the Ethiopia accident — understated the power of the system, the engineers told the Seattle Times. The newspaper said the analysis also failed to account how the system could reset itself each time a pilot responded — in essence, gradually ratcheting the horizontal stabilizer into a dive position.

FAA technical experts told the newspaper that as the agency’s certification of the 737 Max proceeded, managers prodded them to speed up the process as development of the MAX was nine months behind that of the rival Airbus’s A32neo.

The Seattle Times said the safety analysis ranked a potential failure of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentataion System, or MCAS, as “hazardous,” one step below “catastrophic.” But even that designation should have been enough to prod reliance on more than just one input sensor, the engineers told the newspaper.

http://time.com/5553275/boeing-faa-737-max-flawed/

Starman, see the video. Any pilot that doesn't know what the switches on the panel in front of him do should be grounded. You think he'd at least be curious. I hold pilots to the highest standard, there are hundreds of lives involved, sometimes including mine.

And yeah, I am pissed. As a mere private pilot SEL I required the best of myself not only in flight proficiency but in mechanical and aerodynamic knowledge of the aircraft. Commercial pilots, with innocent lives in the balance, should do at least s much.

BFaucett, Let's do the whole analysis: MCAS (or whatever) was flawed and could put the aircraft into an unsustainable flight regime. The automated system could be manually overridden to restore the aircraft to a sustainable flight regime. The pilots, whose purpose in life has become to monitor automated systems, failed to monitor and override the faulty automated system.

I'll rely on the video for the moment, unwise I know. The flight manual documented the horizontal stabilizer trim system including MCAS. Appears it didn't document exactly what to do if the MCAS spazes. But pretty easy to figure out if you understand the system (and don't panic) - turn the damn thing off and spin the trim wheel with your hand.

"Runaway Pitch (or roll) Trim"
* 1. Trim Disconnect- PRESS

Hey, let’s put this MCAS into the airplane because lots of pilots aren’t trained well enough to keep from stalling this airplane. But let’s not tell them about it and assume that they are well trained enough to recognize the problem if it ever malfunctions.

How plain do you have to make it?


Pitch trim is applied to the stabilizer. Trim can be applied by electric trim switches, autopilot or a manual trim wheel. Electric and autopilot trim may be disengaged by cutout switches on the control stand in the event of a runaway or other malfunction.

737 -8 /-9 Flight Crew Operations Manual

The aircraft is pitching down and the trim angle is changing. Hm. I wonder where the problem could be.

Part of our preflight/launch procedure was a ops check of all the flight controls. IIRC the first item on the checklist was to verify the stab trim had full range of travel and moved in the correct direction. The stab trim cut-out switch operation was also verified at that time. But then again we were professionals...

So the manual trim wheels were spinning while this new anti-stall system was doing its thing and you can go into manual mode merely by grabbing and turning the wheel if you don’t know what disconnect buttons to push?

Meanwhile these guys were fighting the automatic pitch control which successively cranked in a tad more pitch with each recovery?

I’m wondering when was the last time they had flown where they had to do everything by hand.

Whatever it was it must have been a friggin’ nightmare for the passengers

Boeing and FAA can issue all they want, fact remains you still don't know if the foreign based Pilots
were appropriately provided any AFM or FCOM notifications by the aircraft operators that employ them.
further , you also don't know if foreign aviation authorities did everything correctly with providing the
Aircraft operators under their jurisdiction concerning any AFM or FCOM EAD notifications received from
the FAA and Boeing.

The Aircraft are not registered to the pilots, hence they do not directly receive notification of changes to AFM and FCOM,
pilots rely on aircraft operators they are employed by to provide such current information for the aircraft in their operational fleet.
.ie; ..pilots have no mandatory procedural requirement to receive such directly from Boeing , FAA, or their own
respective aviation authority....nor do they haven any mandatory obligation to chase up such.

Instead of constantly raising conjecture or implying some unsubstantiated level of blame toward the pilots,
you may like to also consider [or potentially factor in] a number of other things that may have contributed to such a disaster,
that are beyond or outside the control, management, or deemed responsibility of the pilots.

you can start with Boeing and take it up/down the line from there...




modify an aircraft with a MACS system that will in effect direct the aircraft into the ground , market it to developing nation air carriers
as a substantial cost saving high point in the sale - to customers who are keen to legally avoid the high costs of valuable additional training
that would have assisted their pilots in dealing with such crisis ..

.. what could possibly go wrong?

I can see a few more asses that need potential kicking than just the pilots like some are hung up on.

Clarify:

Are you contesting

1) That before now the manual did not address the trim system as it does in the cited page

or 2) The pilots were happy to fly the aircraft without access to the manual

or 3) The airline intentionally hid flight critical information from its pilots?

Interesting read, I think you’ll enjoy.
https://www.avweb.com/eletter/archives/101/4287-full.html

how about you just show CF readers the actual version of FCOM that was in possession by Ethiopian Airlines
and confirm that such version was appropriately issued to their pilots before the crash?

that way we will have something concrete/reliable to go on, rather than waste time with more of your conjecture.




thanks BB , and for your other valuable post as well.



The Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation (MCAS) system at the center of investigations into two fatal crashes of the Boeing 737 MAX 8
was misunderstood and mischaracterized in a flawed certification process as Boeing and the FAA rushed to bring the new jet to market,
a Seattle Times investigation published Sunday alleges.

Citing named and unnamed sources, the Times’ Dominic Gates says the final certification of the system, which was intended to give pilots
a control feel on the aerodynamically different MAX similar to that of previous iterations of the 737, not only gave “unlimited authority” to
the stabilizer for nose-down trim, it literally fought the pilots’ attempts to correct the condition possibly to the point where they were physically
unable to fight the stabilizer down force any longer.

“It had full authority to move the stabilizer the full amount,” Peter Lemme, former Boeing flight controls engineer, told the Times. “There was no
need for that. Nobody should have agreed to giving it unlimited authority.”

The Times story said the profound ability of the system to take over a key flight control action should have resulted in close scrutiny
in the certification process.

But the original specifications of the system called for MCAS to limit its ability to move the horizontal stabilizer .6 degrees at a time.
By the time deliveries began, it could pitch the stabilizer 2.5 degrees, about half its total travel, in one movement, the result of flight testing
tweaks aimed at finessing the flight control feel.

The system would also pivot the stabilizer that much repeatedly as long as data inputs indicated the aircraft was about to stall, regardless
of the pilots’ strenuous efforts to overpower the system. In the October Lion Air crash, which killed 189 people, the flight data recorder
counted the captain countering the system 21 times with the first officer taking over for few tries before the captain’s final futile efforts
to arrest a 500-MPH dive. The data indicated the nose-down yoke forces peaked at a little more than 100 pounds.

The newspaper’s investigation said that engineers involved in the safety assessment of MCAS were not aware the system could move
the tail five times more than the original specs called for. The certification documents should have been amended to reflect the final
configuration but they apparently were not, according to the Times report. If they had been, the seriousness of a potential failure of the
system would have required it to receive data from at least two sources.

MCAS gets data from only one of two angle of attack indicators on the MAX and the flight data recorder on the Lion Air airplane showed
the AOA feeding MCAS was malfunctioning. “A hazardous failure mode depending on a single sensor, I don’t think passes muster,” said Lemme.

The newspaper is reporting that Boeing’s software fix will wire MCAS to both AOAs and only allow the system to move the tail feathers once,
instead of repeatedly battling manual control inputs. It will also require additional pilot training and operating manual changes, both of which
were called for by pilots unions following the Lion Air crash.

Boeing’s position, endorsed by the FAA, has been that because MCAS is only supposed to trigger in extreme circumstances—high angles
of attack and accelerated stalls—that additional pilot training was not necessary. The company has also said that it assumed that based on
their existing training on earlier models pilots would recognize the erroneous nose-down commands and hit cutoff switches that would disable
the system. This is a standard runaway trim scenario for all aircraft.

“The assumptions in here are incorrect. The human factors were not properly evaluated,” the Times quoted an unnamed FAA safety engineer as saying.

The story also suggests that due to budget cuts the FAA’s certification managers were under increasing pressure to delegate more and more
of the safety assessments to Boeing itself. The unprecedented levels of self-certification in the MAX were compounded by the urgency to get
the airplane into service because of competitive pressure from Airbus’s new A320neo series. “There wasn’t a complete and proper review of
the documents,” the former FAA engineer is quoted as saying. “Review was rushed to reach certain certification dates.”

Scroll down to view article after clicking the link.....

http://now.eloqua.com/es.asp?s=9669...8928&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=16128

I have a question that just occurred to me. So, to fix runaway trim you are supposed to use the button on your yoke then throw the switch that cuts electric power to the jack screw in the tail.

So what happens if you throw the switch cutting power without having corrected the trim with the button on the yoke and the trim is still in a position forcing the nose down? Does it automatically disengage back to a neutral position or have you just frozen the trim in a position forcing the nose down?

JoeBob, Bear with me, I am not a commercial pilot , I have friends that are and we have been discussing this situation.There is a runaway trim cutout switch, actually two next to each other, right by the engine start levers on the center console. The trim setting stays where it is. Then it's a matter of manually setting w/ the big trim wheel in both sides of the pedestal. Not particularly difficult to move. If I have not explain this properly please chime in with the appropriate answer, Thanks,Tom

You will never know how competent a pilot is till something goes wrong... that's what pilots are supposed to be good at. Not always, I guess..sad

Some interesting reading.

https://www.avweb.com/eletter/archives/101/4293-full.html

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media...n-concerned-about-foreign-pilot-training

More from my congressman on an old subject. I'll bet she doesn't interview Sam again!

https://video.foxbusiness.com/v/6018939329001/#sp=show-clips

As result of the combination of trim already set at the extreme/excessive angle due to MCAS and airspeed of the Ethiopian 737,
the manual [cable drive] trim wheels can be rather difficult to effectively operate.

Simply being a higher experienced pilot does not change or overcome the laws of physics.

Physics > Mechanics > Dynamic /Static > Kinetic/Kinematic.