The fix may be as simple as a patch, but the customer confidence in the plan is damaged, maybe beyond repair.
I know I will look twice next time going on a trip which plane I end up on, I'm not sure I will go with a 737 Max anytime soon.
I know I will look twice next time going on a trip which plane I end up on, I'm not sure I will go with a 737 Max anytime soon.
"an a320 crashes every two years" sounds quite different than "a brand new 737MAX crashes during take off every 6 months because of the faulty sensor thingy".
Also a320 family of 8605 aircraft took the life of 1393 passengers in 30 years, 737MAX is at %30 of that in two years and 350 aircraft.
737MAX accidents look very brutal and specific. It doesn't look like "ironing out imperfections" but more like "this plane is broken, it falls off on take off" - regardless if that's the case, people see a pattern here.
Not really fair to blame the plane in that case.
Two crashes within six months is very abnormal. Abnormalities are evidence of problems. Airline regulators are tasked with keeping people from dying, not with protecting manufacturers' feelings.
You need more information than just a calendar and a model number to make determinations of flight safety.
You do realize they redesigned the plane after 9/11 to prevent that from happening again, right?
My (apparently very controversial) opinion is that we don’t know enough to predict that now, because we don’t know what caused the Ethiopian Air crash yet.
People are avoiding the 737 MAX because given the current information it definitely could be a problem with the plane, in fact the information we already have from the first crash makes it look like it's very likely to be a problem with the plane.
You option is not controversial, it's just wrong.
Again: the topic here is predicting long-term damage to consumer confidence. I understand what is happening right now.
The entire 787 fleet was grounded not more than a few years ago due to battery issue. How many people actively avoid 787s today? Long-term consumer trust depends not just the root cause of an accident, but also the perception of how it was addressed. As the GP correctly points out, the 767 (and all other planes, and security screening procedures) were redesigned to protect against the type of attack that succeeded on September 11.
These two crashes have one thing in common: brand new planes.
Unless you know of an islamist terror organization that has a grudge against Ethiopian desert wilderness, I don't think terrorism is a more likely common cause than the brand new airframe.
I'd say "unless you have some indication that it was the plane's fault". Otherwise, agreed: 2 crashes per se tell you nothing about the safety of the plane; it could've been a terrorist attack or a suicidal pilot or a missile.
It's two crashes under similar circumstances, with no indication of such an external event, that justify suspecting the plane.
Since we aren't talking about assigning criminal penalties to the plane (for one, because its fairly well destroyed, and for another because it wasn't the kind of thing subject to such penalties in the first place), the criminal standard of proof ("beyond a reasonable doubt" -- which still falls short of actually being sure) is inapplicable. In fact, given the minimal consequences of blaming the plane in the discussion in this thread, its probably fair to do so if there is any reasonable basis for belief that that the crash was the plane's fault. Its certainly to do so if the preponderance of the evidence as yet reviewed by the person doing the blaming suggests that, even if it is a fairly weak conclusion that a very small amount of additional evidence could reverse.
Edit: Max-8 had first flight in 2016 is in service since early 2017, so the crash rate over that period is roughly identical with the rate for the first 5 years of the A320. We just have a set of two closer together recently. Not enough data to form a statistical basis of course.
Time is not a very usefull thing here, as number of active aircraft and flights will be very variable.
If you cherry-pick the time interval, you can say that basically all planes crash once every hour.
Boeing used software to override and reinterpret pilot inputs so that the airplane behaves as if it were a 737, in order to cut costs on retraining. When that software fails, the pilots are suddenly flying a totally new airframe that would normally require additional certification with 0 experience.
This layer inbetween where the computer goes "actually what I think you REALLY meant to do is..." is novel in the 737 Max.
And all the various layers of protections in fly by wire airplanes do that - they second guess certain inputs to prevent edge cases. But in any case the input is going through software abstraction. Any apparent directness is part of that software behavior.
I'll be interested what the software update due at the end of April entails exactly. I think every airplane should get the angle of attack sensors disagree indication, standard.
That said, I prefer either the older boeings, with minimal computer interference when hand flying or the Airbus approach. Because Airbus at least appear to know what they are doing.
This Boeing-Airbus chimera isn't really working.
Lift from the nacelles is the issue.
There are a ton of planes with a better flight/crash ratio.
380 A340 where build since 1991 almost exactly as much as the number of 737 Max built (376). Not one fatal accident in almost 20 years for the A340 versus 2 fatal accident in 2 years for the 737.
The earliest reports said that pilots could avoid this runaway trim issue by knowing to disable the electric trim. Now it sounds like doing that may also eliminate all ability for pilots to trim the aircraft.
Inability to trim make airplanes extremely difficult to fly, the control (yolk) pressures required can quickly become too high to maintain control. Pilots would have to hold something like 1 lb of continuous backpressure for every 6 knots out of trim for the entire flight.
That’s partly true, but it’s not the whole story. MCAS and its use to make the MAX 8-9 fly “more like the 737” is part of a longer trend of manufacturers coddling pilots instead of expecting them to behave as competent professionals and treating them as such. They’re effectively opting for a more familiar normal aviating experience, with the tradeoff being longer emergency/exigency checklists and so much more to manage/remember/process when the system malfunctions. With the end-result being that even more experience is required to safely and reliably pilot modern aircraft.
Side note: Disabling trim should only be done as part of a problem remedy, not as part of normal flight.
(Disclaimer: I’m not a pilot. I’ve read for many hours on these issues.)
I can’t legally be the PIC (pilot in command) in a Citation 525 (“CitationJet” or CJ) despite it being nearly identical to the 550 (Citation II or Bravo) I can, in most ways that I can tell matters. I have copilot time in both and PIC in the 550 (and related models). The newer plane is even easier to fly, frankly, and has some nice safety features for engine failures. I have to get the training and certification (and recertification every two years) to legally be PIC in the newer Citation, though.
My limited understanding is that the aerodynamics and flight characteristics of the 737 MAX are quite different than the older 737-800 - let alone the even older second (or even first) generation 737s. The memory items may be different. That alone should have mandated a new type certificate in my non-regulatory expert perspective.
I'm certainly concerned whether MCAS is both working as intended, and also failing safe. But my more immediate concern is like yours: when MCAS is effectively disabled in the normal course of troubleshooting runway trim by setting stab trim to cutoff, now you have a plane that has different stall behavior than you're type rated for! Flip those switches, now you need a different type rating! Of course pilots can learn different stall behaviors and avoidance for a new type, we don't need abstraction to do that for us when we know about it and have trained for it. Stall avoidance is fundamental make+model knowledge, but it can be non-obvious and making it obvious and deliberate is what the type rating is about.
So yeah we might actually end up in the very curious case where either Boeing, or FAA or NTSB are all: this is going to require a type rating afterall. The very thing the airlines in particular want to avoid.
It seems to me the in-cockpit "aoa disagree" option needs to become standard by AD. MCAS only takes input from one of the two alpha vanes, so if it gets bogus data it has no backup source. Meanwhile the pilots have no indication the two vanes disagree unless they (apparently) bought that indication feature. Which I think is pretty fucked up if that turns out to be true and relevant as to either cause or solution in all of this.
Eh, I googled it for you people. It was air france 447: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447