To Get Boeing 737 Max Flying, Global Consensus Will Be Hard | Hacker News Reader

To Get Boeing 737 Max Flying, Global Consensus Will Be Hard

nytimes.com

At least half of the public wont even know they are on a max. Boeing still makes the 777 which is the safest aircraft of all time. With only one real crash at london due to an engine problem (not Boeing) and an intentional crash Malaysia 370. MCAS is frequently confused with a flight augmentation system which isn’t true. It’s designed to counteract a confused pilot and if you look at the history of the 737 NG some of the few crashes not from the vertical stabilizer issue are from disorientation leading to a stall. Now granted Boeing made serious mistakes in the implementation of MCAS (1 AoA sensor and not checking for disagreement is a cardinal rule they broke) but I believe that the plane will go on to be quite successful because this was a serious learning moment.

I agree, this will fade with the news cycle. Boeing has made considerable errors but their customers want the plane as it saves them money for retraining. If they have solved the engineering issues (and with this hot spotlight one would hope that is the case) this should end up being a bump in their long history. With this said, I still thing the general outrage at their handling of this is well deserved and the second crash should not have happened if they were focused more on safety and less myopically on their bottom line.

If they have solved the engineering issues (and with this hot spotlight one would hope that is the case) this should end up being a bump in their long history.

A "bump" consisting of mass murder for corporate greed.

I would have given them the benefit of the doubt ater the Lion Air crash. Bad engineering, shortcuts, rottent decision making. But all those things happen.

But that they didn't volountarily grounded the fleet then and there despite the fact that they had to know what was going on and thus sending another ~150 people to their certain death makes their behaviour totally unexcusable.

Their lying, deflecting, obfuscating, smearing dead pilots and just about blaming everybody except themselves doesn't really help.

Some bump in their history, I dare say.

>MCAS is frequently confused with a flight augmentation system which isn’t true. This is demonstrably false. MCAS is a system in the same vein as the MD-11's LSAS. In other words, a hack to ensure the the "piloting experience" of the MAX stays as similar as possible to that of the 737 NG, despite the fact the NG doesn't suffer from directional pitch instability at high AoA.

>It’s designed to counteract a confused pilot and if you look at the history of the 737 NG some of the few crashes not from the vertical stabilizer issue are from disorientation leading to a stall.

If pilots are so prone to stalling in an aircraft with no pitch instability near critical AoA, it seems disingenuous to try to pitch the MAX with MCAS as being "more safe" when the possibility exists that MCAS may need to be disabled in flight; thereby resulting in the same pilot, in what is touted as "the same piloting experience" as the NG, yet with the spectre of pitch instability at high AoA, exacerbated by a tendency to pitch up even more if power is added on at landing speeds if a go-around is required; that wasn't there before. It is less-than-or-equal in terms of safety.

Will it be an effective plane? Yes. Will dealing with MCAS be seared into pilots' minds? Yes.

Let's not misrepresent the machine though. It has issues. Issues that are at the center of a regulatory and business clusterf*ck that never should have happened. The poor engineering and business decisions created a plane with potentially lethal failure modes, that were unsuccessfully communicated to customer (airline) and operator(pilot) alike.

The MAX may be able to operate for the rest of it's relevant operational lifetime, but it will never be a success. It'll be memorial to the height to which greed, and contempt for the law, and hubris were elevated in the process of designing this plane.

At the risk of waxing poetic:

The MAX will be as the Crow that caws at midnight. A somber reminder of the banal parts of human nature against which we must remain ever vigilant, lest they take the reins again in humanity's struggle to push ourselves passed the limits that bind us.

"MCAS is frequently confused with a flight augmentation system which isn’t true. This is demonstrably false. MCAS is a system in the same vein as the MD-11's LSAS. In other words, a hack to ensure the the "piloting experience" of the MAX stays as similar as possible to that of the 737 NG, despite the fact the NG doesn't suffer from directional pitch instability at high AoA."

- This is false because MCAS only activates during stall conditions and is the exact reason why this issue went undiscovered for so long. If it was the system that you say it is, then it would have been constantly making the 2.5-degree adjustments to the horizontal stabilizer all the time! The fact is that it requires an AoA sensor to report an attack angle greater than 25 degrees while airspeed drops below 200 knots. That Aircurrent article was the worst thing for Boeing because it made so many people misinformed. It somehow convinced people that the engine thrust is misaligned making it into some sort of harrier-jet hybrid that's "unstable". Completely false. Look at how many different engines and engine placements have been used throughout the history of flight that didn't require any augmentation system and then tell me that argument still has validity.

>This is false because MCAS only activates during stall conditions and is the exact reason why this issue went undiscovered for so long. If it was the system that you say it is, then it would have been constantly making the 2.5-degree adjustments to the horizontal stabilizer all the time!

"All the time" is a funny way of spelling "when the AoA sensor indicates an AoA near or greater than critical."

Also, the problem took so long to be discovered because Trim has become increasingly automated, relegating any system that modifies it to a second or third order concern for pilots generally. The system wasn't documented explicitly in training materials, and yes, what malfunctions did happen generally happened in less critical phases of flight, and we're quickly recovered from.

>The fact is that it requires an AoA sensor to report an attack angle greater than 25 degrees

...Okay, you didn't even look at the Flight Data Recorder of either crash did you? The same data that shows MCAS happily driving 300+ people into the lithosphere at 300+ knots?

MCAS activates regardless of speed. The key input is AoA, flap setting, and whether the autopilot is on, and altitude > 450 AGL if I recall correctly. Furthermore, it ramps up over sequential activations. I'm open to entertaining some possibility that you just didn't look it up, but your arguments are straying into areas if incorrectness that seem to indicate your sources may need to be reevaluated.

I implore you to do some more thorough research.

Search terms: ET302 FDR data ET302 prelim report Lion Air 610 FDR data MCAS Flight Control Systems.

I understand Aviation isn't the lightest topic of research, but that's also why it's so important to make sure you're reasoning from the right information. Flying is complicated. Not inaccessibly so, but definitely beyond normal intuition at times.

"Also, the problem took so long to be discovered because Trim has become increasingly automated, relegating any system that modifies it to a second or third order concern for pilots generally."

> "The problem with automated runaway trim is that trim is automated and pilots don't notice" - your argument in a nutshell

"The fact is that it requires an AoA sensor to REPORT an attack angle greater than 25 degrees"

> Who said the report needed to be accurate?

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