It looks like Boeing made a bad judgement call in not notifying pilots of the MCAS system, but I doubt it was because of “arrogance.” They probably didn’t think it would be a problem, so decided it wasn’t worth telling pilots about.
Wondering if there is a relation…Southwest Airlines…
I’m flying to Ohio. I have always taken one of two flights very early in the morning 6:30 am or so. But definitely before 9.
The earliest flight to BWI from my airport is now at 9:45. There look to be 3 or 4 less flights per day in July than in April (when I am taking an early morning flight).
Wondering if they are anticipating a long grounding of these planes and are removing flights in future months…so they can shuffle aircraft.
I’m not sure what else you’d call it, if not arrogance. Overconfidence in their system? Stupidity? Caring more about selling the product as close enough to the base model that it only takes an hour to accomplish differences training (so that would be greed). They have been making airplanes for a long time, they should have known better.
Of course, it might not have been the engineers that made the decision not to include this in the manual. It could have been whomever was managing (or selling) the product, or the FAA oversight. Someone out there has their hands covered in blood, and they know it.
In Sully’s statement about the plane, he made some comment that pilots need to be masters of the planes they are flying, not just rely on autopilot, etc. They need to know their planes inside and out. Not providing them the tools amounts to arrogance in my book.
When or if they ever put this model out for flying, I won’t fly on it for years. I love SW, but I’d rather fly another airline then take the chance.
As far as my reference to every situation is different, here’s one major variable that just came out. The flight before the Lion Air disaster that had a similar problem had a critical variable…a jumpseating crewmember that was sitting in the cockpit. He saw what was going on, and told the crew what system to turn off. If he hadn’t have been on that flight, that likely would have been the one to crash.
When we go in the simulator and practice emergencies, we comment that as soon as you sit in the seat, you lose IQ points. It’s so much easier to figure out what is happening when you are watching, instead of flying. In both Lion Air’s situations, where they were getting stall warnings, stick shaker, nose being pushed down aggressively, trim running on and off, they would have had their hands completely full just trying to stay in the air. But someone sitting back and watching this (who flies the airplane), would have had a better picture of what was going on.
The following is from Vox, reporting on a Seattle Times article referencing the relationship between Boeing and the FAA:
“The Seattle Times’s investigation by Dominic Gates reveals how the FAA increasingly delegated inspections and other safety checks to the company itself and pushed inspectors to hand off even more of those tasks as the process continued, a practice that became more common because of FAA budget cuts and that has been formalized by Congress in the appropriations bills lawmakers have passed. As the New York Times reported recently, the agency created a program in 2005 that allowed manufacturers like Boeing to choose their own employees for critical work in certifying new planes were safe to fly.”
Re: #225
The Seattle Times article is linked in reply #217.
I’d call it overconfidence in their system. Describing Boeing engineers as arrogant, stupid, greedy and having blood on their hands shows a lack of understanding of how engineering works. Some people need to find a villain in everything bad that happens.
Except you have a little bit of creative writing going on there. This is what I said:
So you can see that I said it might not have been the fault of the engineers. But it is someone’s fault. There is a villain here. These accidents were the result of terrible choices, and someone’s mistake cost many lives. Many people would consider overconfidence to be the exact same thing as arrogance.
And by the way, both of my parents are retired Boeing engineers.
Here comes the FBI:
^^Besides getting to the bottom of this, I wonder, who at Boeing is going to admit what all the other Max system differences there are, that they didn’t put in the manual, in order to sell it as a quick and easy transition to a new airplane. Better to do it now, before another aircraft accident.
Boeing has sold or taken orders for 5,000 of these planes. It is unrealistic that every pilot should be a Sully, the design should be more tolerant than that.
I won’t be shocked if there is a whistleblower.
Also new today, certain safety features cost extra (the one directly implicated in the crashes), and neither Lion Air nor Ethiopian airlines bought the extras:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/business/boeing-safety-features-charge.html
summary, not behind firewall
Boeing has serious problems. Will the public ever trust this plane? Will you?
Well, sounds like the FBI doesn’t agree with you. I AM an engineer, and I’m starting to think Boeing is not lily white…
@yourmomma , I will not trust the Max planes until they’ve been flying for years.
I’m still trying to figire out why Southwest has no more flights leaving Hartford bound for Cleveland (connections in Chicago or BWI) earlier than 9:45 a.m.
There used to be several flights between 6:30 am and 9:45…I’m taking one in April. But it’s not on their schedule for July. Why? Anyone who is a work commuter needs to leave before 9:45.
It doesn’t help the look of things that our Sec. of Defense spent more than 30 years with Boeing and has been badmouthing rival Lockheed Martin for potential defense contracts. Was Boeing getting too many automatic green lights? Or even giving the greenlights to itself?
I remember that Sully mentioned that the tabs had been removed from the safety manual in the plane he was flying that he had to land in the Hudson river. In a moment of crisis, precious time could be gained by having those tabs there to help you find an answer that you need. US Airways had “streamlined” the safety manual and removed the tabs. Sully spoke about it on David Letterman’s show, I think, and it seemed such an obvious fix - have a good safety manual, make it easy to use, make sure everyone is familiar with it before they fly, etc.
Re: #233
Actually, the news about optional features like the angle-of-attack-disagree warning light and the angle-of-attack gauges is not new. See https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/southwest-airlines-is-adding-new-angle-of-attack-indicators-to-its-737-max-fleet/ for an article about that in 11/2018 after the earlier Lion Air crash.
Summary: Southwest 737 aircraft had the angle-of-attack-disagree warning light, but Southwest will be adding the angle-of-attack gauges to new orders and presumably retrofitting already-delivered aircraft. American had both indicators in its 737 aircraft already. Lion Air had neither indicator.