Boeing 737 Max Hit Trouble Right Away, Pilot’s Tense Radio Messages Show
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I had my first flight on the Max [to] ZZZ1. We found out we were scheduled to fly the aircraft on the way to the airport in the limo. We had a little time [to] review the essentials in the car. Otherwise we would have walked onto the plane cold.My post flight evaluation is that we lacked the knowledge to operate the aircraft in all weather and aircraft states safely. The instrumentation is completely different - My scan was degraded, slow and labored having had no experience w/ the new ND (Navigation Display) and ADI (Attitude Director Indicator) presentations/format or functions (manipulation between the screens and systems pages were not provided in training materials. If they were, I had no recollection of that material).We were unable to navigate to systems pages and lacked the knowledge of what systems information was available to us in the different phases of flight. Our weather radar competency was inadequate to safely navigate significant weather on that dark and stormy night. These are just a few issues that were not addressed in our training.I recommend the following to help crews w/ their introductory flight on the Max:Email notification the day before the flight (the email should include: Links - Training Video, PSOB and QRG and all relevant updates/FAQ's)SME (Subject Matter Expert) Observer - the role of the SME is to introduce systems navigation, display management, answer general questions and provide standardized best practices to the next generation aircraft.Additionally, the SME will collect de-identified data to provide to the training department for analysis and dissemination to the line pilots regarding FAQs and know systems differences as well best practices in fly the new model aircraft.
https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2019/03/heres-what-was-on-...
https://titan-server.arc.nasa.gov/ASRSPublicQueryWizard/Quer... put in ACN = 1555013.
This is why corporations cannot police themselves and it's where the FAA dropped the ball.
I don’t see why airlines should be given a pass on trusting the vendor on hundred million dollar products that both employees and customers are literally entrusting their lives with.
The software relied on input from sensors at least in the Lion Air crash and the fact is the sensors failed on new aircraft.
I would trust the NTSB as much as the European counterparts. I have read some of their reports and they are very dilligent and fair.
We should avoid placing blame now on anyone whether it is Boeing, pilots, national agencies, until the full reports are available. The grounding of the aircraft was perfectly justified with the available data from a security point of view. The air industry has been focused on avoiding a blame culture. Even I, as a passenger sometimes look for the lowest price, so the pressure for cost cutting may come from us as well.
Of course you do, and that is not your fault. This is why we have independent regulation organizations like FAA or EASA, to not have matters of security solely in the hand of the free market.
Thankfully the aviation industry nowadays out of self interest cares about safety.
That is, every one of these regulations exist because somebody died as a direct result of that regulation not existing.
1. Boeing's suggested process (including flipping the two trim switches and spinning a wheel) does not work for some reason.
-or-
2. The Ethiopian pilots did not follow this process.
I see #1 as putting a huge, huge amount of blame on Boeing and the FAA - especially given their months of "safe plane" reaction after Lion Air and their cavalier few days after Ethopian.
I see #2 as still keeping a good deal of blame on Boeing, but also adding a significant training+capability element to Ethiopian and the pilots. Since Lion Air, how much had Boeing done to specify that the 737-MAX and the 737-NG are not the same plane and require different things to be aware of? Could a 737-MAX pilot really not have run through in their head a thousand times what MCAS related issues look like and what they would do if they started having those issues?
I'm not sure where they got that from, but why would it be okay if the US pilots got training immediately, while others had to wait?
And ET pilots felt they had received adequate advice and information from Boeing.
> I'm not sure where they got that from, but why would it be okay if the US pilots got training immediately, while others had to wait?
Something like https://www.forbes.com/sites/tedreed/2019/03/13/who-says-the...
How that statement meshes with
https://www.philly.com/business/boeing-max-pilots-complained...
"Pilots repeatedly voiced safety concerns about the Boeing 737 Max 8 to federal authorities, with one captain calling the flight manual “inadequate and almost criminally insufficient”
And
"U.S. regulators are mandating that Boeing upgrade the plane’s software by April"
is unclear.
Back in 2016 it seems that the pilots union felt the MAX was a different plane:
> hhttps://www.geekwire.com/2016/boeings-737-max-southwest-airl...
A plausible explanation for (1) that I've seen discussed is that, after disabling the auto trim, it may be impossible to manually re-trim while the yoke's pulled back, without first relieving aerodynamic stress on the elevator -- in this case by pointing the nose even farther down temporarily, which no sane pilot is going to want to do close to the ground.
(I don't know whether it could actually happen this way.)
I don't find 1 particularly compelling, it would have been noted by now if it was impossible to trim the aircraft using the manual trim wheels. Unless this is very specific to the MAX.
That said, I think it's entirely possible there is something else wrong in the control of the MAX.
From another perspective, having one new sensor fail would seem to suggest that one should increase the prior probability for failure.
It has been noted:
737 Flight Crew Training Manual, chapter Non-Normal Operations/Flight Controls, sub heading Manual Stabilizer trim:
"Excessive air loads on the stabilizer may require effort by both pilots to correct mis-trim. In extreme cases it may be necessary to aerodynamically relieve the air loads to allow manual trimming. Accelerate or decelerate towards the in-trim speed while attempting to trim manually."
In this case the excessive air load would be caused by the yoke control pulling the elevator up while the trim controlled stabilizer is doing the opposite.
Like you say, it's hard to know whether this actually happened.
What would it have to say? It says you might have to do X before Y, where Y is a thing that you need to do quickly while at low altitude to avoid dying and X is a thing that gives you even less time to do it in and makes the problem worse.
I've never suggested having a trim runaway close to the ground is trivial. It's certainly going to result in brown trousers when it happens, but it should be within the abilities of a well trained crew to handle.
Following the outcry over Lion air I just don't believe a pilot on type wouldn't have known the procedures for getting the aircraft to a safe altitude and disabling the stab trim.
As a pilot your hands are on the controls. You notice pretty instantly that your having to pull the nose up. You instinctively reach for the trim control on the yoke. This disables the MCAS system for 5 seconds. You get the pitch forces under control. A few seconds later MCAS decides you've still got the nose too high because of a faulty sensor and tries to trim it back down once more.
How many times before you remember that fatal bug from that crash a few months ago. Maybe twice? Three times tops.
I am not saying this is likely to be what happened! But given that Boeing didn't even mention any of this in the manual before Lion Air, it seems plausible that they either didn't test it carefully, or tested it at high altitude and imagined that it would never happen at low altitude?
From your senario when the trim moves nose down. You apply nose up on the elevator which makes the trailing edge of the elevator go up which applies a downwards force on the trailing edge of the stabilizer. In order to move the trim back towards neural you need to lift the trailing edge against this force.
If the trim is extreme you may have to relax back pressure to reduce that force.
By in trim speed they mean the speed at which the aircraft would naturally settle at given the current trim setting.
Perhaps the phrase "aerodynamically relieve the air loads" means to minimize the aerodynamic force generated by the stabilizer? The stabilizer of a conventional airplane will invariably generate a downwards force when the aircraft is in pitch equilibrium at high speed, but it may be upwards at low speed, even with the C of G within limits. In such cases, the speed at which it has no load will be an intermediate one, and therefore could be either above or below the speed to which the airplane is currently (mis-)trimmed.
The quoted passage says it is referring to correcting what it calls a mis-trim, so if your interpretation is correct, then where it says "in-trim speed", it actually means "the speed to which the airplane is mis-trimmed", while the general usage of the term "in trim" means trimmed to fly at the intended speed, and I would take the phrase "in-trim speed" to refer to that speed - the speed that the pilots intend to fly at, or, in other words, the speed that this out-of-trim airplane would tend to fly at when put back in trim.
Furthermore, if things are as you describe, then the rule could have been more simply and clearly phrased as "reduce your pressure on the control yoke". Maybe your interpretation is correct, but if so, it seems to me to be an unnecessarily confusing way to describe it.
Frustrating to have a question that could be answered quickly by a 737 pilot! (Whether the trim wheel becomes much harder to turn after you set STAB TRIM CUTOUT to cutout, mistrim down, and pull up.)
In general pitch trim runaway incidents are easiest to control at low speeds. It gives you more aircraft configuration options available to try and reduces the aero loads general.
But perhaps they were just not ruling out either.
The bit about the 'effort by both pilots' raises the issue of the 200-hour first officer.
https://www.pilot18.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/B737NG_FC...
This happens in a critical time of flight, when pilots are busy with other tasks and are at a low altitude (less time to fix any problems).
So no, Boeing's process is not a good solution.
If you are referring to the documented procedure for recovering from a trim runaway, then all 737s would be dangerous, as this is the same procedure for trim runaway recovery as it is for the prior versions, and regardless of whether it is caused by an MCAS fault or for any other reason. The pilot is not expected to determine whether it is an MCAS fault before acting, because the recovery from runaway trim is the same, regardless of cause.
Option 3 happening at 40,000 feet has a very much better chance of a positive outcome than at 4,000 feet
> 1. Boeing's suggested process
so I just happened to see the dramatization of this crash yesterday, and here boeing suggestion for a thrust reversal engaging in flight was likewise simple: cut throttle and fuel to engines. that was based under specific assumption of limited testing, while in the crash the pilot had 6 seconds between the engagement and total irrecoverable loss of control.
> -or-
assuming that just because there's a process the plane is safe is somewhat disingenuous, as it is placing the blame as an 'either/or' preposition. it might be that training is insufficient, but pilots don't control the training material. and following a checklist is somewhat hard if the plane constantly pulls down.
Agreed. When users of my software fail to use the software properly some large part of the blame is still on me.
They should have reacted faster after the latest crash, but fortunately this delay has had no consequences.
One would hope that the question of MCAS not being triply redundant will be reassessed, but the argument that it could do no more harm than a fault in the existing trim mechanism is not an unreasonable one, again if considered without hindsight.
As a passenger I expect pilots to fully know the plane they are flying and to previously have flown this exact type and model of aircraft in training sessions without any passengers whatsoever. 737 MAXs seem to have significant differences compared to other 737 models and airlines appear criminally negligent in the use of these aircraft.
I used to be a mere bus driver as a college job and I _had_ to train on all models before transporting any sort of organism with a central nervous system.
But apparently, flying hundreds of people at hundreds of mph at several thousand feet above the ground doesn't require this sort of familiarity with the machine. Having flown other 737s and skimming a manual 20mins before departure was often deemed sufficient, resulting in flabbergasted and overwhelmed pilots.
Boeing, FAA, airlines... whoever is ultimately blamed in all of this, the crash has revealed some scary stories in regards to aviation - all for the sake of cutting costs because people demand to fly across continents for $100.
But the idea that they can learn the differences from the manual in a short car ride is ridiculous in the extreme.
As a daily driver of your own car, if you do own one, then it might be apparent how different they can be. I constantly switch between automatic Mercedes and BMWs.
Both have a near identical handle on the right side of the steering wheel. One turns on wipers (BMW), the other one shifts gears... (Benz). Imagine that on a plane with worse consequences than accidentally shifting into neutral when it rains.
They definitely did not do the proper training that was merited here, but the proper training is not and never was flying a large jetliner empty.
One would expect that X hours in a simulator help you adapt to a new aircraft type.
I didn't intend to demand economically stupid things like flying an large aircraft empty for training, just wanted to express that as a passenger I want my pilot to know their way around the machine that keeps me 10km above ground at 600km/h.
According to Boeing, the FAA, the EASA, and various other regulators around the world, the 737 MAX is not significantly different to earlier 737s.
Just to clarify: you can udpate a simulator and recertifie it. e.g. in regard to the motion or visual systems etc etc. But to transform a simulator into another aircraft would be beyond economically sane.
Nobody does that in a "live aircraft", that's what simulators are for (and the whole flight training curriculum, from the first lesson to being able to fly a commercial jet).
Then we read that the MAX was the "best selling model." It seems, based on the false advertising, that included not acknowledging the differences. Even the "less serious" ones:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19374386
"I had my first flight on the Max [to] ZZZ1. We found out we were scheduled to fly the aircraft on the way to the airport in the limo. We had a little time [to] review the essentials in the car. Otherwise we would have walked onto the plane cold. My post flight evaluation is that we lacked the knowledge to operate the aircraft in all weather and aircraft states safely.
The instrumentation is completely different - My scan was degraded, slow and labored having had no experience w/ the new ND (Navigation Display) and ADI (Attitude Director Indicator) presentations/format or functions (manipulation between the screens and systems pages were not provided in training materials. If they were, I had no recollection of that material)."
It just looks like they didn't even get proper simulator training in too many cases.
Never going to happen. Modern aircraft are far too complex for anyone to have this sort of complete knowledge, let alone be able to use it properly in a crisis. This one reason, of many, that pilots work from checklists created by the manufacturer.
> State Reference : US
> B737 MAX First Officer reported feeling unprepared for first flight in the MAX, citing inadequate training.
From another comment below (a simulator industry insider):
> However, since the 737ng and 737 MAX are common type (meaning that in the eyes of the authorities, if you're licensed for one, you're licensed for both) customers aren't REQUIRED to get a 737 MAX sim granted that they already have a 737ng sim.
This is where the FAA could have intervened. Pilots consider them different enough to warrant training so it should have been clear for the FAA too. But they accept this compromise to allow companies to cut costs.
And the scary thing is that a new pilot will also get to train on an old NG sim before flying a (different) MAX plane. Unlike experience pilots, a new one would have little flying experience to fall back on and the FAA allows them to fly a plane after being trained on what might as well be a sim for a different plane.
Is there another way to view the text?
Using cloudflares DNS 1.1.1.1. Seems that does not work since a while.
https://community.cloudflare.com/t/1-1-1-1-does-not-resolve-...
A lot of blame to and from who is responsible for the problem, still no solution apparently.
The .is domain has been occasionally problematic.
What they could do is allow everyone in, but reveal each paragraph progressively by viewing ads right there between the paragraphs. Or feeding the meter coins.
Time delayed progressively revealed articles. Pay the fee to unlock all paragraphs.
Or they need granular payment, yes I would pay 1 cent for the next 10 paragraphs. But I don't want to create an account with the publisher to do that. Kind of how I don't sign up to the parking block company to buy a spot for 5 hours in their car park.