The question I have is: Would the plane have crashed if the plane was a non MAX 737?
I don't think so, but I'm open to being proved wrong. In that case the root cause of the two crashes is Boeing trying to save money.
I don't think so, but I'm open to being proved wrong. In that case the root cause of the two crashes is Boeing trying to save money.
I could also ask, would the plane have crashed if it WASNT a max and another stab trim system failed?
It's both. We need to look at everything otherwise we will end up solving only 1 part of the issue.
Edit: To address something you mentioned about root cause (in aviation it's almost never a single root cause and I will give an example that shows such cases here). Let's look at another situation: Assume P&W designs an engine model a plane uses. The plane they are used in has in-air engine fire procedures that must be performed in order to mitigate disaster regardless of the engine model used. Now imagine the new engine design causes more engine fires. If pilots don't manage the problem appropriately when it occurs, what is the root cause? The poor engine design? Improper training from the pilot? In my opinion it's, again, both. Poor training coupled with higher chance of system issues.
If an Automotive OEM released a vehicle with an adaptive cruise control system that refused to disable itself except by the human driver intervening through power cycling the vehicle, while driving, it's difficult to put much warranted blame on the driver. The OEM sold a potentially catastrophically faulty system, irrespective of that the fault can sometimes be managed into a fail-safe condition by the driver.
The reason people put the blame on Boeing is because the system implementation didn't fail, the design did.
In your example, if there were adaptive cruise control, I would turn off cruise control by hitting the button. Same options are present here. However it does mean that braking or acceleration would be overriden until that happens. But the real analogy is if all drivers had to be trained that you turn off cruise control in runaway. If you don't do that, well then you will crash and it's from system failure AND improper general procedure
The problem is in the design. Despite the fact that it's possible to defeat the failure in some instances (assuming it hopefully doesn't manifest itself too close to the disaster envelope to start with), the failure case 1) never should have happened and 2) shouldn't require unintuitive remediation.
It's bad design and bad functional-safety analysis. Neither of which fall to the fleet operator or system operator.
Edit: And remember at the end of the day, these airlines and pilots agreed to fly the plane. Even in the wake of the LionAir incident. At the end of the day, the pilots choose to fly and can say no if they aren't comfortable. And if the answer to this is that there is pressure from airlines to keep flying? We just found another major issue and danger in aviation
Edit2: should clarify actually that I agree it's a bad design. Not about the procedures being "unintuitive". If the pilots think the corrective procedures are unintuitive they shouldn't fly any 737 since stab trim systems exist on all 737s and require the same corrective procedure in runaway stab trim.
Have you read the ET302 preliminary report? In particular have you read page 25, section 2 "Initial findings" last bullet which I quote:
The crew performed runaway stabilizer checklist and put the stab trim cutout switch to cutout position and confirmed that the manual trim operation was not working.
How can you read that, and say multiple times in this thread "improper procedure"? On what basis?
You have no idea how much mental discipline it's taking me, as a pilot, to refrain from ad hominem attack. Your arguments are that bad, they are that willfully contrary to the available facts.
Do you know a power reduction causes a nose down moment and actually makes the problem worse?
What does "turning auto trim on and off" mean? Are you referring to the you're toggle it the stab trim switches flipped between normal and cutoff? If the latter you are wrong, zero evidence that happened a few times.
There was no -2 G vertical acceleration.
What you are doing is in my view a mental disturbance. You are using terms as if you know what you're talking about. You don't. You are a bullshitter.
Please stop.
As for less speed causing more nose down moment, yeah but at the same time they weren't in a descent for that portion either, nor were they nose down (this from page 26). The data shows they were oscillating though climbing slightly while they were overspeeding. In this case it could have helped to reduce the forces at play. I think it was more that they were just busy and left thrust settings where they were from takeoff.
The pilot's absolutely agreed to fly the plane. As far as they knew, it flew like a 737, and they knew everything they needed to know.
Boeing revealed as little as they did about MCAS to spare pilot's the "gory details" because the plane was allegedly "just another 737".
Information does not perfectly diffuse, and doesn't diffuse at all without effort. Half the outcry over this probably isn't from pilot's or aerodynamicist's at Boeing at all, but from people passionate and informed enough to get the word of the colossal fuck up out in as many ways as possible to the people who need to know it most.
I've been in these threads on Hacker News since the Lion Air incident, and held my tongue at many times. Cautioning more and more that new information will drive the development, but in all likelihood, given the facts we have access to, the problems will have occurred in X, Y, Z spots, all of which have origins within Boeing and the FAA as organizations.
The FAA delegated responsibility for vetting to Boeing. Boeing CHOSE to accept that mantle of trust, then discarded the integrity part as soon as the bottom line was threatened by a competitor.
Airlines fly planes. They don't make them. That was Boeing's job, and they cashed in on the better part of a century of goodwill, and torched the entire pile by delivering a complete failure in terms of their own responsibility to the public.
We get it. You think the pilots and airlines should shoulder the blame too. Understood. Many though, myself included, understand that the world runs on incomplete information transfer between designers and operators, and given that, an enormous responsibility is put on designers of industrial scale systems to take extra care to make sure that "unintuitive designs" are very clearly documented and made known to their operators who will have lives and property on the line.
Buying the planes from Boeing came with an implicit trust on the part of airlines that anything different to look out for would be clearly communicated. That didn't happen. They relied on Boeing doing that part. Boeing failed. The fact that armchair aeronautics engineers got to the root cause in such a short time, with so little information beyond the FDR means that it is not unreasonable for the professional engineers at Boeing whose raison d'être is to design safe planes to have caught it.
I don't think anyone here has such a severe grudge against Boeing's existence to just go after them for merely existing. Many, or at least I, am just awestruck at the magnitude of collective failure that occurred.
The data all points to them. Of everyone involved, they alone had both the means and onus to prevent what happened.
But it didn't. So here we are. Something needs to be done, we have very specific rules about how to do it, but nevertheless, something has to changed.
We owe at least that to the lost that their unwitting and tragic sacrifice shall not have been in vain.
The families that have been broken; the sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, and grandparents who will never arrive at their destination demand it. Our integrity, "Our" being those of the will, hubris, and capability to take the lives and fates of others in the embrace of our works, demands it.
Somewhere, at some point, complacency, and cultural degradation happened for whatever reason.
It must be exposed. The historical annals decorated once more in blood, that we never lose sight of the cost of any shirking of our responsibility again.
How else than this, and the penance/contrition of any directly involved, can justice truly be served?
In the case of LNI610, you are assuming MCAS upset and approach to mistrim looks anything like runaway trim. There's quite a lot of evidence that it doesn't look like that, but is rather insidious.