Empty promises. Will they fly 10 empty aircraft 24/7 for a year on realistic routes to demonstrate that they've resolved the problem? Will they integrate a third AoA sensor and retrofit it for no charge? Of course not.
They'll model the scenario and conclude that it is fixed.
Airbus planes, by contrast, have three AoA sensors. How can Boeing justify doing fewer given how critically important these sensors are for preventing crashes?
Money, as adding a third would likely require recertification as has been mentioned in some articles about the sensors in the past few months.
I see a political thunderstorm brewing in the not very far future.
As I now reread your comment, I’m no longer convinced you meant it in the contrary way I read it. I agree there’s a thuderstorm coming, and I hope all regulators involved can have the conviction to stand up to the pressures from both sides and rule based on the design merits of the plane (even if they are able to conclude differently from my armchair engineer opinion).
The fact that Boeing is able to skate by with two and a software off-switch if they disagree, while Airbus continues to be required to have triple redundancy says a lot about their respective regulators (EASA Vs FAA). I'm sure "cost" was discussed given the 350+ aircraft already produced and how impractical it is to add a third AoA sensor, but that's literally putting cost over safety.
[0] See "Inaccurate limit": https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/faile...
Remember the 737 MAX has both FAA and EASA type certificates, issued separately.
That was based on FAA's stellar reputation, they built up in decades.
And essentially fucked within three days. (That's a simplification, but essentially true).
I'm not sure that other certification agencies will rely on the FAA's rubber stamping in the future and see a political storm brewing here.
Which seems to be fully in line with Boeing's business model and their behavior after the Lion Air crash.
Even after the Ethiopian crash they did just about everything to deflect, blame and obfuscate until this behavior was just no more maintainable based on the known facts.
Switching then to a "We apologise if your dead" marketing shtick.
I find it hard to believe, based on all the evidence, that this company put lifes before profit.
Looking at this image here: https://qz.com/1461400/pilots-werent-informed-of-risks-of-bo...
My biggest doubt is regarding the symmetrical left-right placement of the AoA vanes. Isn't it realistic that they may freeze in the same position, thus not disagreeing, but still wrong?
I'm not in aviation, so I'm not sure about this, but without deeper knowledge this seems like a realistic reason to ask for a 3rd sensor with a different placement at least.
(Not a jet pilot myself but I teach instrument and charter pilots, and I’m in the clouds a lot!)
While Boeing should have to add a third AoA sensor, it's important that the system have some additional fail-safes, such as using gyroscopes to estimate AoA relative to the ground -- a poor estimate of actual AoA, but a decent sanity check.
Alarming and proper pilot training should be able to take care of the remaining risk. Indeed, alarming and proper pilot training would have been sufficient to avoid the two MAX crashes (I know, that's not a popular opinion around here).
Using disparate sensors for plausibility is of course also useful and would be possible with a software update.
There's actually a lot of reasons why AF447 crashed[0], so I won't attempt to [badly] summarize it here, but I will say it wasn't simply an equipment malfunction or computer problem. That's just what started the entire chain of events that ultimately lead to the crash.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Final_re...
If this isn't illegal and fineable, I hope the outcome of this makes misleading regulators in this way a criminal act.
Either somebody is mis-remembering, outright lying, or they didn't consider the software change a true configuration change.
I wonder if the 737 Max will ever be allowed to fly again in Europe, if they don't add a 3rd AoA sensor, that is.
Two sensors are enough to overcome that. If they disagree, ignore them both. The problem wasn’t that they only had two sensors, it was that they didn’t use them both simultaneously and ignore them when they disagreed.
1. Keep claiming the MAX has the same flight characteristics as previous 737 models, keep the type certification (=minimal pilot retraining) and classify MCAS as safety-critical and require a third AoA vane
2. Classify MCAS as not safety-critical, disengage it on a disagree between left and right, and require pilots take simulator training on MCAS failure modes and how to fly the plane without MCAS (in situations where it differs from previous 737 models)
My guess is they'll take the 2 tack. At this point 1 might not even be an option - regulators would probably require MCAS training no matter what.
You're so right. From the article:
Existing customers such as Westjet and Air Canada are being run through simulations of the changes to the 737 Max
Not exactly a phrase to inspire confidence. The scenario as we're seeing it give me a strong sense of deja vu as I recall the DC-10 disasters of the 1970's - many people refused to fly that aircraft ever again and I don't believe the brand ever fully recovered.
I'm just wondering what the artists are going to do to immortalize the MAX...
> Safety lapses at the North Charleston plant have drawn the scrutiny of airlines and regulators. Qatar Airways stopped accepting planes from the factory after manufacturing mishaps damaged jets and delayed deliveries. Workers have filed nearly a dozen whistle-blower claims and safety complaints with federal regulators, describing issues like defective manufacturing, debris left on planes and pressure to not report violations. Others have sued Boeing, saying they were retaliated against for flagging manufacturing mistakes.
> While Boeing has nurtured generations of aerospace professionals in the Seattle area, there was no comparable work force in South Carolina. Instead, managers had to recruit from technical colleges in Tulsa, Okla., and Atlanta. Managers were also urged to not hire unionized employees from the Boeing factory in Everett, where the Dreamliner is also made, according to two former employees.
That seems like a complete waste of time. If we were dealing with a situation where these planes randomly fell out of the sky and we had no data as to why they did so, so any proposed fixes were based on guesses as to what might have gone wrong, that might be a useful and even necessary way to see if they really found the problem.
But that is not the case here. They have the flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders from both crashes. They have radar and transponder data on both flights. There is no guessing involved as to what went wrong. They can easily force the same thing to go wrong on test flights, either in simulators or in actual flying aircraft, and test any fix.
So the question is: What would it take for them to regain my trust?
Maybe a decade of restructuring, including punishments of managers that are responsible for breaches of safety protocols. They took the risk. And if even in the worst case (people die) there is no consequence, they will loose trust even more. Heads have to roll!
And then we can talk about the systemic issues with time pressures on the production line and managers getting all the wrong incentives.
Those together should prevent more crashes. It doesn't fix the underlying problem that the MAX8 has fundamentally different handling properties during climbs that were papered over by a black box but they should prevent it from causing crashes with training.
Odds are, when looking at the avionics network traffic, signals from the trim switches and MCAS are indistinguishable. Running an extra wire to represent the input to the microcontroller would also be a hardware change, which likely means swapping out hardware boards, and running new cable/wire/etc, which will require new schemata, new boards to be sourced from the manufacturer, more paperwork and testing, more maintenance install/refurb procedures, so on and so forth.
From my understanding, Boeing is desperately trying to squeak by with just a software change to avoid all that.
Personally, I'd prefer they take the time to do it right and change the hardware. It's what should have been done in the first place.
Wild ass guess mind, to the point of being useless. I couldn't give any concrete insights without access to design docs and specs.
When a company says they will do “everything possible,” the statement is not wrong because you can find anything they theoretically could have done but didn’t. English language is not set theory.
The English language is highly contextual, ambiguous, and open to interpretation which is why there are subsets (lexicons? dialects?) of the language used by difference disciples with clearly defined terms to avoid these ambiguities.
I advise treating it as a shibboleth for people so callous they think trust is the most important thing as opposed to the problem which they deliberately avoid mentioning.