In a Hierarchy Every Employee
Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.
Some have observed that individuals perform worse after being promoted.
The Peter Principle, which states that people are promoted to their
level of incompetence, suggests that something is fundamentally
misaligned in the promotion process. This view is unnecessary and
inconsistent with the data. Below, it is argued that ability appears
lower after promotion purely as a statistical matter. Being promoted
is evidence that a standard has been met. Regression to the mean
implies that future ability will be lower, on average. Firms optimally
account for the regression bias in making promotion decisions, but
the effect is never eliminated.
Rather than evidence of a mistake,
the Peter Principle is a necessary consequence of any promotion
rule. Furthermore, firms that take it into account appropriately
adopt an optimal strategy. Usually, firms inflate the promotion
criterion to offset the Peter Principle effect, and the more important
is the transitory component relative to total variation in ability,
the larger the amount that the standard is inflated.
The same logic
applies to other situations. For example, it explains why movie
sequels are worse than the original film on which they are based
and why second visits to restaurants are less rewarding than the
first.
Along with
Parkinson's Law by C. Northcote Parkinson this is a "satirical
sociology" masterpiece. And despite being written before programmers became
a mass profession it is perfectly applicable to programming. It's a rather
short and easy-to-read book that consists of fictional stories about
results of promotions in a typical administrative and business hierarchies.
Must read for any programmer or system administrator with more than two
year experience :-). Originally published in 1969 it coined the famous "The
Peter Principle"
In a Hierarchy Every Employee
Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.
The concept is pretty universal and is related to the regression to the
mean. As authors aptly states "Competence, like truth,
beauty and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder. " In reality
the performance always has a transitional (random) component.
The end result is that stable companies are more likely to have incompetent
managers at many levels of the organizational structure whereas younger and fast growing
companies may avert some implication of this principle at least temporary.
"Employees", as the author points out, "do not want to be incompetent",
but when management offers promotions that put the employees closer to their
level of incompetence, the employees have no way of knowing that ahead of
time. After all, if the offer is made. it is because management "knows" the
employee can do the job competently on his/her present level. But an interesting
side effect observable in large and old organizations is that such decision
might be made by managers who are already at their level of incompetence (Dilbert's PHBs). This effect can
be called large organization Catch 22.
The person on the top of the hierarchy, wishing to remain in power
forever, chooses his associates with the prime criterion of incompetence
- they must not be competent enough to remove him from power. The associates
do the same with those below them in the hierarchy, and the hierarchy
is progressively filled with more and more incompetent people.
If the dictator sees that he is threathened nonetheless, he will
remove those that threaten him from their positions - "purge" the hierarchy.
Emptied positions in the hierarchy are normally filled with people from
below - those who were less competent than their previous masters. So,
over the course of time, the hierarchy becomes less and less effective.
As this happens relatively often, once the dictator dies, or is removed
by some external influence, what remains is a grossly ineffective hierarchy.
The Politburo of CPSU of the USSR was the impressive example of negative
selection. If Khrushchev was just marginally incompetent, inaptness
of Gorbachyov was legendary and his inability to master Russian language
rivaled Bush II. Like Bushisms, "Gorbachvisms" make him a laughing
stock for most of the population.
Some of the short stories in the book are not only funny, they might well be based
on true events. Actually the message of some stories is dead serious: pyramid
climbing is a dangerous sport and that's is exactly true in computer programming.
Incompetent managers is too serious problem to ignore. This book also
served as a cornerstone for Dilbert series which became a cartoon classic (but generally overstayed its welcome: you can't milk the
same cow for decades and expect a stellar result).
The book might helps students, who just joined the large enterprise environment to withstand the pressure and the absurd of
the software development and large corporate IT in general.
Finally understand the roots of incompetence in higher ranks,
February 10, 2000
Reviewer: A reader from USA
The author hit the nail on the head when he discovered this principle!
After years of pondering whether it's just me or if there really is
such a thing as companies with huge percentages of incompetent managers,
I finally feel relieved to know that I was not 'just imagining' things.
The book made me take a hard look at myself and question whether I had
reached my own level of incompetence, and based on the case studies
in the book I started analyzing what WOULD make me reach my level. One
thing I would have like to read more about is how those of us who have
not yet reached their level of incompetence, can better manage the struggle
with those who have reached their level and make our work days miserable.
Understanding why we as a nation fail so much, January 22, 2000
Reviewer:
Jimmy P Ledbetter (see more about me)from Ridgecrest USA
I read the Peter Principle years ago and have read through it frequently
ever since. My first time was while still in the military and it explained
to me, a great deal of the things I saw go wrong. It left an impression
upon me that lasted throughout my career and which still helps me today.
It explained clearly why I was so frustrated with the way things had
begun to deteriorate so badly once I was into the second half of my
career. And it helped me to make certain career choices that I still
believe to day were the most beneficial decision I could have made at
the time, and I was glad I had that knowledge to consider.
Dr. Laurence and his associates hit the nail right
on the head in describing the failing principles, due to the Peter Principle
of our Political system, our Judicial System, and much more. On the
whole we do promote to incompetence and it is our number one failing.
From the military point of view there are quite a
few additional contributing factors, all Peter Principle related, which
resulted in a decline in the American Military. Which include the radical
feminist movement, promoting for gender rather than merit, the radical
quota promotions, promoting by race, rather than merit, and our leader's
failure to stand firm for core values.
The up or out policy is the epitome of the Peter Principle,
as is the guaranteed promotion policy, and the reenlistment bonus program
which has been a great failure. Of course this book applies to all walks
of life and even applies to our Present White House occupant and many
of our congressional members. And will apply to many of those running
for political office today.
The Peter Principle is a must read for the student
of our American social, political and judicial decline and what horror
is in store for us in the twenty first century if we do not recognize
the beast and kill it before it becomes unstoppable, which it may already
be. A great read.
This
basic fact pattern has been revealed to be worse than it first appeared by virtue of Boeing not
having been explicit that the angle of attack sensor alerts had been disabled on the 737 Max.
Why should Boeing have cleared its throat and said something? Recall that the sales pitch for
the 737 Max was that it was so much like existing 737s that it didn't require FAA
recertification or pilot simulator training. But the angle of attack sensor alert had been a
standard feature in all previous 737s, meaning buyers would assume it was part of the plane
unless they were told otherwise. And on top of that, the non-upgraded 737 Max did have lights
in the pilots' controls for this alert. But they didn't work unless the buyer had purchased the
package of safety extras.
And the proof that Boeing was playing way too cute with its pointed silence about its
deactivation of what had been a standard feature? The biggest customer for the 737 Max,
Southwest Airlines, had inaccurate information in its pilots' manual because the airline had
mistakenly assumed the angle of attack sensor alerts worked as they had on earlier 737s.
From the Wall Street Journal:
Boeing Co. didn't tell Southwest Airlines Co. and other carriers when they began flying
its 737 MAX jets that a safety feature found on earlier models that warns pilots about
malfunctioning sensors had been deactivated, according to government and industry
officials.
Federal Aviation Administration safety inspectors and supervisors responsible for
monitoring Southwest, the largest 737 MAX customer, also were unaware of the change, the
officials said.
The alerts inform pilots whether a sensor known as an "angle-of-attack vane" is
transmitting errant data about the pitch of a plane's nose .
Southwest's management and cockpit crews didn't know about the lack of the warning system
for more than a year after the planes went into service in 2017, industry and government
officials said. They and most other airlines operating the MAX learned about it only after
the Lion Air crash in October led to scrutiny of the plane's revised design.
"Southwest's own manuals were wrong" about the availability of the alerts, said the
Southwest pilots union president, Jon Weaks.
Boeing reduced the production rate on the 737 line in mid-April from 52/mo to 42/mo in
response to the grounding of the airplane by regulators worldwide.
The company and others said they didn't know how long the airplane would be
grounded.
But Boeing told suppliers to keep producing parts, components and the fuselage at rate
52.
Boeing already had a ramp-up plan in place;
According to the information LNA learned at the, this is the schedule for ramping back
up:
• Rate 42/mo, April and May;
• Rate 47, June;
• Rate 51.5, July and August; and
• Rate 57, September.
Boeing originally planned to go to 57/mo in June or July.
Good luck with that. The upside is that this corporate controlled flight into terrain
will someday make a great B-school case study.
Edit: If you Captcha-train an autonomous vehicle not to run into bicycles, and it gets
into an accident,
are you legally liable? Asking for a friend.
Oh man, this is bad. Really bad. This story just gets worse and worse over time. It's like
one of those Russian Matryoshka dolls – just when you think that you have a handle on
what happened, you find that there is a whole new layer of ugliness underneath. When the hell
did safety become an optional extra on Boeing aircraft? After reading this, I think that it
was a minor miracle that there were no 737 MAX crashes in the continental United States. By
the sounds of this article, it would have likely been a Southwest airliner if it had
happened. I am wondering what else will come out of this saga that we don't know about
yet.
I would say that Boeing easily falls into the 'Too big to fail.' category.
So no matter what happened they will be either made whole (more defense contracts,
taxpayer bailout if necessary, whatever is needed) or protected in some way tbd. They are a
100 billion a year company with 150,000+ employees and untold numbers of other contractors
and jobs depending on their existence. Going away is just not going to happen.
Okay, Boeing screwed the pooch again, and they should have been more clear in their
communications to the airlines. However, let me add some perspective as a 737 operator.
Given the AOA malfunction in either the Lion Air or Ethiopian accidents, an "AOA Disagree"
warning annunciation would have possibly been helpful, but not really crucial to the safe
recovery of the aircraft. There were plenty of other indications that the AOA's were
disagreeing – namely that only one of the stick shakers was activated. Once you get
over the initial surprise, it shouldn't have been that hard to determine this fact. The lack
of the AOA display and disagree annunciator is not what doomed these crews.
I've never had a flight emergency as a pilot, but had a few as a diver. I suspect that for
both of those, when they hit, you need to resolve things quickly and efficiently, with panic
being the worst enemy.
Panic in my experience stems from a number of things here, but two crucial ones are:
– input overload
– not knowing what to do, or learned actions not having any effect
Both of them can be, to a very large extent, overcome with training, training, and more
training (of actually practising the emergency situation, not just reading about it and
filling questionairres).
So, if the crews were expecting to see AoA disagree but it wasn't there, they could have
easily be misled and confused. The crews weren't (from what I've seen) hugely experienced. So
any confusion would have made a bad situation even worse. How big an impact it made is hard
to judge w/o any other materials.
Well it is rarely just one thing that causes an "accident". There are multiple
contributors here. But the one basic overarching cause was Boeing's insistence that
there-will-not-be-any-additional-training.
Without that management decree, the Max could be flown without the hack of MCAS, just that
the pilots be trained on the new pitchup characteristics.
And releasing MCAS into the wild without even alerting pilots to its existence, well, that
is manslaughter, if not outright murder.
My takeaway from the IEEE article was that the AOA sensor is almost a red herring. The dog
that didn't bark was a pitch sensor, and the cardinal sin (from a software perspective) was
that the MCAS algo did not consider pitch sensor values when deciding whether or not to angle
the plane towards ground.
I suggest reading some of the other pieces on the 737 debacle on NC. There's been
extensive discussion of the details, and yes the pilots may be partially to blame, but are
the least culpable out of all parties involved.
Given that story states that Boeing was more or less silent on the disabling of the sensor
alerts, it's is reasonable to posit that any 737 pilot stepping into a 737 MAX would expect
the sensor to be active.
I can understand the position that a pilot still needs to be skilled enough to not be 100%
reliant on sensors, warning lights etc. to fly the plane. However, if I already assume that a
sensor is active and it's not providing a signal that I would be potentially anticipating,
it's going to seed doubt in my mind in a scenario where you don't have much time at all to
think things through.
On the other hand: a safety light that is deactivated without telling the airlines and
pilots gives false negatives to pilots at a critical juncture. They assume it's active, check
it, and see a false negative they don't realize is false.
Imagine having a 'check engine' or 'oil' light on your car's dashboard that's been
deactivated. They never come on. But they're still there. The driver assumes they'll light if
there's engine trouble that needs attention.
Boeing's actions don't pass the 'reasonable man' test.
Yeah, normally if a mechanical gauge "knows" that it isn't working there will be a little
flag that pops up across the display. Leaving the light there but inoperative instead of
either removing the light or covering it up with an "inoperative" cover is a really bad idea.
It is EVEN WORSE than making safety features optional, and that is bad enough.
Let's see
First, they didn't know MCAS existed, so had no idea or training in what to do when it was
erroneously engaged by system.
Then, they think both Aos sensors are working properly.
And, Boeing tells everybody plane is just like previous versions, no need for
simulations.
I'm glad I'm not one of the dead pilots you're blaming.
By the way, it's apparently just chance that the bad sensors affected foreign and not
domestic flights, no public reports that superior domestic pilots had no problem when it hit
the fan on their watch although some domestic airlines were told (warned) that bad sensor
light was optional extra so possibly a domestic plane cancelled flight on account of bad
sensor.
But imagine a really experienced pilot would have saved the day so Boeing should say only
really experienced pilots should fly the plane? Maybe simulators help you get really
experienced, especially with unexpected emergencies?
Personally, I'll avoid the plane for a few years if simulators aren't required hate to have a
pilot not experienced with what we now know is not such a rare event.
We seem to be forgetting that, in the Lion Air case, a really experienced pilot did
save the day the previous day on the same aircraft . The issue was reported, the
airline neglected to repair the issue and nobody seems to have told the new aircrew about the
issue. This seems to support 737 Pilot's position. It is also another egregious failure, this
time on the part of the airline.
That pilot was a third set of eyes. Since he didn't have to fly the plane, he was free to
observe and fortunately his attention eventually focused on the repeating trim wheel
movements. A standard two-person crew doesn't have this luxury. Worth keeping in mind.
That lion crew also seems to have written up the problem incompletely. They didn't
mention, for example, that they had the stick shaker going for the entire flight.
Your point is legitimate but without the benefit of a CVR recording I think you may be
affording too much credit to the jumpseating pilot who is rumored to have provided the flight
crew with the excellent advice of disabling the electric stabilizer trim motor. Even if the
story is entirely true it's not like turning off the Stab trim motor was esoteric knowledge,
maybe 737 pilot can correct me on this but I thought that procedure was a memory item for
trim runaway emergencies, meaning the pilots were supposed to have that bit of knowledge
firmly committed to memory and they were supposed to execute that procedure without any
checklists or undue delay as soon as the condition was recognized. If not a memory item it
was in the 737 QRC or QRH emergency procedures guide that is always present for immediate
reference on the flight deck. The most important thing the crew of Lion Air 43(?) did (the
flight previous to 610 that managed not to crash) was to simply not let themselves become so
frazzled they forgot to pull the thrust levers out of the take-off detent after they reached
a safe altitude, and not overspeeding an out of trim airplane making a bad situation worse.
Maybe the jumpseating pilot had to scream at the crew to reduce thrust and maybe he had to
slap the Captain and reduce the thrust levers himself, but absent a CVR recording to verify
this slightly far-fetched scenario I would say the previous crew deserves the Lion's share
(sorry couldn't resist) of the credit for landing safely.
You are absolutely 100% correct when you point out the non-crashing Captain was far from
exemplary. He laid an absolutely vicious trap for the ill-fated crew of flight 610 by failing
to mention a great number of things he experienced, especially the uncommanded and unwanted
nose down trimming that necessitated turning off the stab trim motor which he also failed to
communicate. Not a shining moment for Lion Air pilots, mechanics or Boeing. Despite the
obvious and multiple shortcomings and blunders of the Captain/crew of Lion Air 43, I believe
that flight proves what the airline pilot commenters here have been saying all along, which
is the 737 Max flaws were serious but survivable with a competent crew. That's not the same
thing as calling the airplane safe or airworthy and it's certainly not excusing Boeing. They
delivered a death trap. Perhaps a bad analogy, but a professional body guard should be able
to easily disarm a five year with a knife, but that doesn't mean a murderous five year with a
knife isn't dangerous or isn't capable of killing you. Airplanes are machines which
inevitably fail and mechanics are humans who make mistakes which is why pilots need to know
how to hand fly airplanes absent automation. Reducing thrust during an emergency to avoid
overspeeding your airplane really isn't a tall ask for a professional pilot. Pilots get this,
non-pilots don't, and it's a point I've grown quite weary of making.
There's been interesting points made back and forth on NC – what do you make of this
from Karl Denninger: basically, "You can't fix the problems the 737Max has with software
alone"? https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=235578
I made the exact same argument here a couple of days ago, but I will say IF the system was
engineered in a way it could have given the Ethiopians a warning prior to eighty knots or V1
(depending on training and pilot judgement) on takeoff, maybe they could have aborted and
kept the plane on the ground avoiding the disaster. Having that disagree light or indication
immediately after rotation on climbout could have soothed the nerves of the pilots and made
them feel more confident trusting the perfectly normal instrumentation on the FO's side of
the airplane. But if the high speed clacker, the airspeed tape and the thrust settings aren't
enough information to convince a overwhelmed, elevator control fixated pilot that he/she has
more than adequate speed to avoid stalling, and they should slow down, then it stands to
reason a secondary warning indication would also not break through the mental logjam of two
very overwhelmed pilots bombarded by warnings and data. In the case of Lion Air 610 the
malfunctioning AOA vane had already caused multiple instrument malfunctions and improper nose
down MCAS trimming on three other flights, so it seems like those guys were hellbent on
flying that plane no matter what. Even if Lion Air would have had the optional warning system
onboard the mechanics most likely would have deferred the warning system as broken. "Ops
checks good". They probably would have removed the bulb or stuck a placard on top of it.
And before anyone feels the need to point it out, yes, I'm engaging in speculation, but so
is everyone claiming this optional safety system would have made a difference in the two
aforementioned tragedies. I'm engaging in speculation as a guy who has reviewed thousands of
logbooks and had hundreds, possibly thousands of interactions with airline maintenance
technicians. Some of those interactions include contentious debates over what is safe to
defer or what can actually legally be deferred so I do have a bit of experience in this
department.
Boeing screwed up. They were hasty, they were greedy, they were cavalier, the MCAS trim
system with a single point of failure was a terrible design that was most likely criminal.
I'm just weighing in on 737 pilot's contention. With a system as poorly designed as the MCAS
stall protection trimming, every safety feature available should have come standard from
Boeing, but sadly additional fault indications don't always matter in emergency situations.
Proper fault diagnosis is only part of any successful emergency outcome. Pilots still have to
possess the knowledge and skill required to follow procedures and fly the airplane.
The only planes I ever flew you'd fly w/o pretty much any instrumentation (WW2 trainers,
hoping to fly a Spitfire or Mustang one day.. ).
But in a modern plane, I'd think that _any_ instrument that is doubled or more (which
implies some sort of criticality) should have an automatic "inputs disagree" indicator, which
would not be possible to turn off.
Not that you'll have to buy it as a special feature.
I have been thinking about the modern 737. My completely uninformed guess is that the
original model, while less "safe" was more informative in a real way than the current
one.
In modern cars, especially something like a hybrid, there is not much "feel" to it. In an
older old fashion gasoline engine car, there is. I could use the Volkswagen as an example,
because it only had some colored lights and the speedometer, and none of the safety features
of a modern car. However, I could sense, smell, see just about everything, often
subconsciously, even before something went kablowie because there was nothing isolating me
from the vehicle and the road. Today, I have to depend on my car's sensors because it has
been designed to be quiet and isolating as possible.
The downward slide of corrupt predatory capitalism is not a pretty picture. These cases
will continue as long as the responsible executives know they have nothing to lose.
Just more proof that self regulation works, just look to our favorite sporting events!
There's no need to have refs on the field because everyone involved is a professional and
would never cheat, disrespect the sport or do something against the rules because the fans
would punish them!
If our sports don't need refs, then surely our markets don't need regulators! Checkmate, big
government stooges!
I suppose I am naive, but I am shocked that the behavior of Boeing's management and the
FAA are not being treated as a criminal matter. What happened was not a business mistake, it
was a crime in which a number of persons deliberately and knowingly decided to risk other
people's lives in order to increase profits, as a result of which hundreds of people were
killed. I believe the term is 'negligent homicide', upon conviction of which lesser beings
than high management and bureaucrats go to jail. In some countries their next of kin would
already have received a bill for bullets and services rendered.
The term used to be criminally negligent homicide, but this no longer applies to those
wearing white collars.
Otherwise we would see charges against bankers, opioid pushers, and others.
But Boeing, as part of a duopoly, recognizes that its customers have nowhere to go .at
least for the next few years, which might as well be eternity as far as MBAs are
concerned.
Even if it meant drastically reducing flights why would any airline buy airplanes that are
not guaranteed to be safe? Losing money through fewer paying customers because you are
choosing to have fewer flights is better than being boycotted or bankrupted by lawsuits, or
arrested and criminally charged.
It is inexplicable that Boeing shut off an indicator system for the Max that had been
standard on earlier versions of the 737, when that AoA sensor disagreement indicator was even
more important for safe flight.
Turning it on in the Max version was possible but was made part of an extra-cost safety
package. How would a purchaser know to buy it when Boeing downplayed its importance so as not
to suggest how different the Max was from supposedly similar earlier versions of the 737?
The more that comes out about the conduct of Boeing and its senior management's decisions,
the more they look criminally reckless.
The FAA is mostly responsible for this fiasco because they have a misguided mission.
Safety should be their only concern, but over the years that's eroded into a "sort of safety"
attitude but mostly being a cheerleader for the aviation industry.
And you can't trust bastards like Boeing to "self-certify" anything, apparently!
"..It took months before Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg issued a video in which, among other
things, he said, "We own it." He was referring to safety of the MAX.
This was widely interpreted as Boeing stepping up and taking responsibility for at least
some of the causes of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes.
Last Wednesday, he took it all back.
On the first quarter earnings call, Muilenburg denied there was any "technical slip or
gap" in designing the now famous MCAS system. He said "actions not taken" contributed to the
crash, a thinly veiled reference once again to pilot error.."
Boeing and FAA are criminally negligent especially for the Ethiopian Airline crash. The
recovered horizontal stabilizer screw jack from the Lion Air crash was found in the full nose
down position that forced the plane to dive into the sea. It should have never be in this is
flight critical position. Grounding the fleet should have been immediate until the cause and
fix were found. On top of all this, it is simply criminal for Boeing to charge Southwest
Airlines for additional safety features and then turn them off not telling the airline.
It is tragic that it appears that Americans will have to rely on China to force Boeing to
actually fix MCAS and along with Canada to shame the FAA into requiring pilot training on
Flight Simulators before flying passengers on the Max.
A Boeing C-Suite executive has to go to jail. If not, there is no chance for the United
States of America to survive. With government run by and for profiteers, long term planning
is dead. Profit over people. A plague, an economic crash, a world war, a middle-class revolt,
flooded coasts, or an autocratic Caesar become inevitable.
[Nader's] niece, 24-year-old Samya Stumo, was among the 157 victims of an Ethiopian
Airlines flight crash last month, less than six months after a flight on the same aircraft,
the Boeing 737 Max 8, crashed in Indonesia.
"She was compassionate from the get-go. She'd be 8 years old and she'd get a pail of hot
water and go to her great-grandmother and soak her feet and rub her feet and dry them. She
was always that way."
Clifford Law has brought suit on behalf of the Stumo family in the United States District
Court for the Northern District of Illinois. From the
complaint :
Blinded by its greed, BOEING haphazardly rushed the 737 MAX 8 to market, with the
knowledge and tacit approval of the United States Federal Aviation Administration ("FAA"),
while BOEING actively concealed the nature of the automated system defects. Numerous
decisions by BOEING's leadership substantially contributed to the subject crash and
demonstrate BOEING's conscious disregard for the lives of others, including but not limited
to BOEING's role in: designing an aircraft with a powerful automated flight control system
[the MCAS] susceptible to catastrophic failure in the event a single defective sensor;
failing to properly inform pilots of the existence of the new flight control system and
educate and train them in all aspects of its operation; failing to properly address the new
system in the aircraft's flight manual; refusing to include key safety features as standard
in the aircraft rather than optional upgrades; delivering 737 MAX aircraft with a version of
the flight control system that was materially different from the version presented to the FAA
during certification; and failing to take appropriate action after BOEING learned that the
737 MAX aircraft was not performing as intended or safety, as was made tragically clear with
the crash of Lion Air Flight JT 610.
BOEING's decision to put profits over safety is further evident in BOEING's repeated
claims that the 737 MAX 8 is so similar to its earlier models that it does not require
significant retraining for those pilots familiar with the older generation of 737s.
All pretty much conventional wisdom at this point! The suit also calls for exemplary (punitive)
damages ; I've embedded the complaint at the end of the post, in case any readers care to
dig into it. I'm not going to examine the case in this post; rather, I'm going to focus on
three items from Naders letter that I think advance the story: His framing for 737 MAX
airworthiness; his highlighting of Boeing's stock buybacks; and his call for Boeing CEO
Muilenburg's defenestration.
(Stalling, in Nader's telling, being the condition the defective MCAS system was meant to
correct.) Because aircraft that are aerodynamicallly unstable, llke fighter jets, have ejection
seats! Now, a pedant would point out that Nader means commercial aircraft , but as
readers know, I eschew pedantry in all contexts. That said, Nader manages to encapsulate the
problem in a single sentence (using antithesis , isocolon , andanaphora ). Now, we have pilots in
the commentariat who will surely say whether Nader's formulation is correct, but to this
layperson it seems to be. From 737 MAX, a fan/geek site, on the business and technical logic of the MCAS system :
The LEAP engine nacelles are larger and had to be mounted slightly higher and further
forward from the previous NG CFM56-7 engines to give the necessary ground clearance. This new
location and larger size of nacelle cause the vortex flow off the nacelle body to produce
lift at high AoA [Angle of Attack]. As the nacelle is ahead of the C of G, this lift causes a
slight pitch-up effect (ie a reducing stick force) which could lead the pilot to
inadvertently pull the yoke further aft than intended bringing the aircraft closer towards
the stall. This abnormal nose-up pitching is not allowable under 14CFR §25.203(a) "Stall
characteristics". Several aerodynamic solutions were introduced such as revising the leading
edge stall strip and modifying the leading edge vortilons but they were insufficient to pass
regulation. MCAS was therefore introduced to give an automatic nose down stabilizer input
during elevated AoA when flaps are up.
Nader on Stock Buybacks
From Nader's
letter , where he is addressing Muilenberg ("you") directly:
Boeing management's behavior must be seen in the context of Boeing's use of its earned
capital. Did you use the $30 billion surplus from 2009 to 2017 to reinvest in
R&D, in new narrow-body passenger aircraft? Or did you, instead, essentially burn this
surplus with self-serving stock buybacks of $30 billion in that period? Boeing is one of the
companies that MarketWatch labelled as "Five companies that spent lavishly on stock buybacks
while pension funding lagged."
Incredibly, your buybacks of $9.24 billion in 2017 comprised 109% of annual
earnings . As you well know, stock buybacks do not create any jobs. They improve the
metrics for the executive compensation packages of top Boeing bosses [ka-ching]. Undeterred,
in 2018, buybacks of $9 billion constituted 86% of annual earnings .
To make your management recklessly worse, in December 2018, you arranged for your
rubberstamp Board of Directors to approve $20 billion more in buybacks. Apparently, you
had amortized the cost of the Indonesian Lion Air crash victims as not providing any
significant impact on your future guidance to the investor world.
Holy moley, that's real money! Nader's detail on the stock buybacks (see NC here
,
here , and here )
interested me, because it bears on Boeing's 2011 decision not to build a new narrow-body
aircraft in 2011. I
summarized the decision-making back in March:
(2) Choice of Airframe : The
Air Current describes the competitive environment that led Boeing to upgrade the 737 to
the 737 MAX, instead of building a new plane:
Boeing wanted to replace the 737. The plan had even earned the endorsement of its
now-retired chief executive. "We're gonna do a new airplane," Jim McNerney
said in February of that same year. "We're not done evaluating this whole situation
yet, but our current bias is to not re-engine, is to move to an all-new airplane at the end
of the decade." History went in a different direction. Airbus, riding its
same decades-long incremental strategy and chipping away at Boeing's market supremacy,
had made no secret of its plans to put new engines on the A320. But its own re-engined jet
somehow managed to take Boeing by surprise. Airbus and American forced Boeing's hand.
It had to put new engines on the 737 to stay even with its rival .
Why? The earlier butchered launch of the 787:
Boeing justified the decision thusly: There were huge and excruciatingly painful
near-term obstacles on its way to a new single-aisle airplane. In the summer of 2011, the
787 Dreamliner wasn't yet done after billions invested and years of delays. More than 800
airplanes later here in 2019, each 787 costs less to build than sell, but it's still
running a $23 billion production cost deficit. . The 737 Max was Boeing's ticket to
holding the line on its position -- both market and financial -- in the near term.
Abandoning the 737 would've meant walking away from its golden goose that helped finance
the astronomical costs of the 787 and the development of the 777X.
So, we might think of Boeing as a runner who's tripped and fallen: The initial stumble,
followed by loss of balance, was the 787; with the 737 MAX, Boeing hit the surface of the
track.
So, Dennis. How's that workin' out for ya? How does the decision not to build a new
plane look in retrospect? Ygeslias writes in
Vox, in April:
Looking back, Boeing probably wishes it had just stuck with the "build a new plane" plan
and toughed out a few years of rough sales, rather than ending up in the current situation.
Right now the company is, in effect, trying to patch things up piecemeal -- a software update
here, a new warning light there, etc. -- in hopes of persuading global regulatory agencies to
let its planes fly again.
What Nader's focus on stock buybacks shows, is that Boeing had the capital to invest in
developing a new plane .
From Bloomberg in 2019 :
For Boeing and Airbus, committing to an all-new aircraft is a once-in-a-decade event.
Costs are prohibitive, delays are the norm and payoff can take years to materialize. Boeing
could easily spend more than $15 billion on the NMA, according to Ken Herbert,
analyst with Canaccord Genuity, and Airbus may be forced into a clean-sheet design if sales
take off.
The sales force has been fine-tuning the design with airlines for at least five years,
creating a "will it or won't it?" drama around the decision on whether to make the plane,
known internally at Boeing as the NMA, for new, middle-of-market airplane.
Now, it is true that the "huge and excruciatingly painful near-term obstacles" referred to
by the Air Current are sales losses that Boeing would incur from putting a bullet into it's
cash cow, the 737, before it turned into a dog (like now?). Nevertheless, Beoing was clearly
capable, as Yglesias points put, of "tough[ing]out a few years of rough sales." So what
else was "excruciatingly painful"? Losing the stock buybacks (and that sweet, sweet
executive compensation). Readers, I wasn't cynical enough. I should have given consideration to
the possibility that Muilenburg and his merry men were looting the company!
Consider, in addition, the statement of two Harvard scholars -- Leonard J. Marcus and Eric
J. McNulty, authors of the forthcoming book, You're It: Crisis, Change, and How to Lead When
it Matters Most. These gentlemen did not achieve their positions by using strong language.
That is why, the concluding statement in their CNN article on March 27, 2019, merits your
closer attention:
"Of course, if Boeing did not act in good faith in deploying the 737 Max and the Justice
Department's investigation discovers Boeing cut corners or attempted to avoid proper
regulatory reviews of the modifications to the aircraft, Muilenburg and any other executives
involved should resign immediately. Too many families, indeed communities, depend on the
continued viability of Boeing."
These preconditions have already been disclosed and are evidentially based. Your
mismanagement is replete with documentation, including your obsession with shareholder value
and executive compensation. There is no need to wait for some long-drawn out, redundant
inquiry. Management was criminally negligent, 346 lives of passengers and crew were lost. You
and your team should forfeit your compensation and should resign forthwith.
All concerned with aviation safety should have your public response.
I can't find anything to disagree with here. However, I'll quote from commenter Guido at
Leeham News,
March 29, 2019 :
What I don't understand: Muilenburg was the CEO when the MCAS code was implemented.
Muilenburg was the CEO when Boeing "tweaked" the certification of the B737Max. It was the
Boeing management that decided, that the B737Max must under no circumstances trigger
simulator training for pilots.
Muilenburg has for sure not written the code for MCAS by himself, but as the CEO he is
responsible for the mess. He is responsible, that the first version of MCAS was cheap and
fast to implement, but not safe. It was basically Muilenburg, who allowed a strategy, that
was basically: Profits and Quickness before safety. Muilenburg has the responsibility for 346
dead people. You can't kill 346 people with your new product and still be the highly paid CEO
of the company. There have to be consequences.
Why are there no calls, that Muilenburg must step down?
However, a search of court documents and news reports shows the company is facing at least
34 claims from victims' families and one claim seeking class certification on behalf of
shareholders. The claims allege Boeing is responsible for losses after installing an unsafe
anti-stall system, called "MCAS" (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System), on its
737 Max 8 planes, suspected to have played a role in both crashes. Boeing CEO Dennis
Muilenburg said it was "apparent" the system had been activated in both crashes.
Added to the uncertainty of potential expenses for Boeing are pending regulator
probes. The U.S. Justice Department initiated a criminal investigation into Boeing's Federal
Aviation Administration certification, as well as how it marketed its 737 Max 8 planes. The
U.S. Department of Transportation's Office of Inspector General is also conducting an
inquiry.
On April 9, the lawsuit seeking class certification was brought on behalf of shareholders who purchased Boeing stock
between January 8, 2019 and March 21, 2019. The proposed class period covers a time frame
beginning after the Lion Air crash, and extending beyond the Ethiopian Airlines crash, when
Boeing's stock experienced a steep decline.
But then again, Muilenberg may know -- or think -- that Boeing, as a national champion, is
too big to fail. So, if Boeing gracefully exits from the commercial aviation business, it may
find the warm embrace of government contracting more comfortable. Perhaps that's why propaganda
like this suddenly started showing up in my Twitter feed:
I suppose it's too much to ask that the CEO of a too-big-to-fail company be asked to resign,
even if he did kill a lot of people. But if Nader can do with the 737 MAX, at the end of his
career, what he did with
the Corvair ("a one-car accident") , when he was coming up, everybody except for a cabal of
looters and liars in Boeing's Chicago C-suite will be a lot better off. So we can hope.
I keep going back to the DC-10 fiasco in the 1970s.
In 1974, in one of the most horrific air disasters of all time, a THY (Turkish Airlines)
DC-10 crashed after takeoff from Orly Airport outside Paris, killing 346 people. The accident
was traced to a faulty cargo door design. (The same door had nearly caused the crash of an
American Airlines DC-10 two years earlier.) McDonnell Douglas had hurriedly designed a plane
with a door that it knew was defective, then, in the aftermath of Paris, tried to cover the
whole thing up. It was reckless, even criminal. Then, in 1979, American flight 191, also a
DC-10, went down at Chicago-O'Hare, killing 273 -- to this day the deadliest air crash ever
on U.S. soil -- after an engine detached on takeoff. Investigators blamed improper
maintenance procedures (including use of a forklift to raise the engine and its pylon), and
then found pylon cracks in at least six other DC-10s, causing the entire fleet to be grounded
for 37 days. The NTSB cited "deficiencies in the surveillance and reporting procedures of the
FAA," as well as production and quality control problems at McDonnell Douglas.
That's two of history's ten deadliest air crashes, complete with design defects, a
cover-up, and 619 dead people. And don't forget the 737 itself has a checkered past, going
back to the rudder problems that caused the crash of USAir flight 427 in 1994 (and likely the
crash of United flight 585 in 1991). Yet the DC-10, the 737, and America's aviation prestige
along with them, have persevered. If we survived the those scandals we can probably manage
this. I have a feeling that a year from now this saga will be mostly forgotten. Boeing and
its stock price will recover, the MAX will be up and flying again, and on and on we go.
This is how it happens.
Maybe. But in 1974, the United States was commercial aviation. Airbus had launched
its first plane, the A300 , only in 1972. We were also an
imperial hegemon in a way we are not now. For myself, I can't help noticing that it was
Boeing's takeover of a wretched, corrupt McDonnell Douglas -- the
famous reverse takeover -- that ultimately turned Boeing from an engineering company into a
company driven by finance. With resulits that we see.
The fact that the CEO and the Board have not resigned just shows everyone that they lack
all the essential characteristics of human beings.
Stock buybacks should be illegal. Profits should only be distributed via dividends or
reinvested. The fact that companies can do this shows how corrupted our governments are.
The rest of the world may forget this one. I won't and there are millions like me who will
never step aboard a boeing plane again.
The only thing that will save this company now is the US govt, which is likely.
Boeing's management is not going to jail and likely will keep their jobs. The deaths of
over three hundred people means nothing. They are not even American and probably only middle
class so they don't have connections to use. The "American" company Boeing has both money and
connections.
Money gives you rights and if you don't have it, you are not even a human being.
Just look at 2008. The Vampiric Octopus called Wall Street was saved by the Feds with
almost no one going to jail, or even criminally prosecuted. The exceptions of an innocent
small community bank in NYC and some low level employees of a very few loan companies. The
entire planetary economy came to with in hours of freezing and then collapsing. Millions of
Americans lost homes, often through questionably legal foreclosures, with many millions more
losing their jobs.
Nothing going to change and I wish I could believe otherwise.
So I should just fire up my own money press then as should everyone else Money was
invented as a limiter by the ancient church then adopted by governments.. Money isnt
necessary to live and it will b thrown overboard soon enough.
I think money as a concept arose in Sumer about 6-7 thousand years ago with the clay
receipts given by the temple of the local city's patron god for livestock and grain stored
there.
But my knowledge of money's history is limited. If anyone wants to correct or clarify,
please do.
Might be wrong but think (if my memory of Gerber serves) you refer to credit/debt. Actual
money (coin) I think arose along side the use of large scale Armies (armies are both highly
mobile & inherently amorphous -- ie people come & go, die, are wounded, loot must be
traded etc, all of which is difficult in the absence of currency)
Stock buybacks were once illegal because they are a type of stock market manipulation. But
then Reagan got in and wanted to do his banker buddies a favour-
To think that Boeing has Ralph Nader of all people on their case. With apologies to Liam
Neeson, Nader might be saying to Muilenberg right now: "If you are looking for (forgiveness),
I can tell you I don't have (forgiveness). But what I do have are a very particular set of
skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for
people like you. If you go now, that'll be the end of it."
That sounds like good advice that.
Re-outlawing the "Stock Buyback" would be one useful reNew The Deal reform. Outlawing
compensation in stocks, options, or etc. of any kind except money would be another useful
Newer Deal reform. Both together would force-multiply each other's effect.
I hope the four Old Real Democrats have people reading these threads and taking any
possibly-good ideas back to headquarters. I hope the New Catfood Democrats and their people
aren't spying or eavesdropping on these threads.
I love how Nader brings stock buy-backs into his letter and basically connects the dots
from a recklessly designed aircraft system full circle to an indictment of our current
shareholder value system of capitalism and its perverse incentive structure which includes
safety shortcuts and runaway executive compensation. Such a perfect case study for this
site!
I think Nader really should beat the drum heavily on the perverse incentive structure at
Boeing and how executives shortchanged safety to grab more money for themselves because
that's an easy story for a jury to understand. I see where Nader is going with the inherently
"stall prone" aerodynamic design stuff, and he's not wrong, but I think he may be treading on
dangerous ground. Automatic stabilizer trimming systems designed to overcome the negative
aerodynamic attributes of the new 737 Max wing/engine design is a confusing rabbit hole for
the lay person. Boeing attorneys and expert witnesses may be able to twist the jury's head
into a pretzel on this issue. The debate and discussion here concerning process, decision
making, design philosophy etc at Boeing has generally been of very high quality, but has a
tendency to go off the rails when the discussion dives too deeply into the subject matter of
aerodynamics and aircraft systems. I could see the same dynamic playing out in the courtroom.
Nader is the master class-action consumer advocacy attorney not me, but I think he should go
heavy buybacks and whistle blower warnings while avoiding unforced errors arguing over the
not-so-important point of whether or not the 737 Max crashed because it was stall prone or
because it was too stall adverse. Two brand new Boeings crashed, people died, Boeing was
greedy, Boeing was hasty, the MCAS trim system was garbage and probably criminal. He's got a
slam dunk case arguing the MCAS trim system with a single point of failure was poorly
designed and recklessly conceived, I think he should just stick to that and the greed angle
and avoid the stall prone vs. stall adverse debate. I wish him luck.
They screwed up the plane design then thought an extra layer of software would ameliorate
the problem enough. It sucks but it's probably just good enough. Seems pretty simple.
As JerryDenim touched on, a good defense lawyer would probably be able to defeat this
argument in front of a jury. There are too many examples of successful and safe commercial
aircraft with aerodynamic compromises (the hardware, as you call it) that use software fixes
to overcome these limitations. The focus in this case would need to be on the implementation
of that software and how criminal neglect occurred there.
Boeing's attorneys are going to try and make any lawsuits a question of why the airplanes
ultimately crashed. I hate to spoil it for anyone, but I can tell you Boeing's attorneys are
going to blame it all on the pilots. Airlines and airplane manufactures always do. Nothing
new. Dead pilots can't defend themselves, their families don't have millions in the bank and
they aren't going to be placing any billion dollar aircraft orders in the future. If anyone
has read my frequently maligned comments, you already know the line of attack. Not following
the runaway trim procedures and overspeeding the aircraft with takeoff thrust set. That's why
Nader or anyone else pursuing Boeing would do well to sidestep the "why did two Boeing 737
Max Jets crash" question and stick to the details surrounding the horribly flawed MCAS trim
system and the Boeing corporate greed story. Steer clear of the pilots' actions and the
potentially confusing aerodynamics of modern jetliners, keep the focus squarely on the MCAS
trim system design process and executive greed.
Anyone prosecuting Boeing will have to deal with Boeing's defence, which as noted, will
play up the commoness of such technical compromises. I do wonder whether Boeing will go after
the pilots, though.
Any pilots argument naturally raises Boeing's negligence re : training, flight manuals &
communication. The prosecution case will naturally play up the greed aspect as
cause/motivation/
context for the crashes & Boeing's direct responsibility /negligence.
The defense would likely also pull in the airlines and FAA as targets for liability, as
both have some responsibility for these matters. Attacking the FAA would be fodder for the
de-regulators (Privatize it! Government is incompetent!). The airlines would complain that
competition forces them to cut costs, and that they meet all of the (gutted) legal
requirements.
I agree with focusing on the greed aspect. Nader's letter has some technical errors such
as stating the engines were tilted (they were moved horizontally and vertically, not rotated)
that show he hasn't fully understood the details. It doesn't help that many of the changes
made to the 737 MAX from previous generations are actually quite subtle, and can't really be
discussed individually for this context. It is the sum of these changes that made it an
extremely deadly aircraft.
The other failure/business feature is the concept of modularity. The software designed to
fix the aerodynamic complexities is broken down into modular components, and then sold off as
"options". Once again greed sabotages the system. Modularity is a great way to gouge
customers and lock in higher profits. The level of technical competence needed to properly
evaluate what modules are essential complicates the outcome. But then again, this can be
rationalized as a feature not a bug. Blame for failure can be passed around- the customer
should have purchased the entire package.
The runaway externalities emanating from the current form of capitalism as practiced in
the US must be reigned in. Voluntary compliance to some sort of moral code is useless- worse
than useless in that corrupt operators can hide behind lame excuses for failure.
The bigger problem is that Government regulations could solve these problems quickly, as
in throwing people in jail and confiscating their property. A strong argument can be made for
ill-gotten gains. I surely would vote for that if given the chance. Deal drugs and you can
loose your home. What about conscious business decisions
leading to harm?
You need a strong force external to these business concerns for this to happen. The
separation of government and business. Business should operate at the will of the government.
When the government is run with the wellbeing of the people foremost, then issues like
crashing planes can be rectified.
When the interests of business and government merge, then what you have is fascism.
American fascism will have a happy face. These unfortunate problems of crashing planes and
polluted environments will trundle along into the future. Billionaires will continue to
accumulate their billions while the rest of us will trundle along.
But one day, trundling along won't be an option. Maybe only outsiders to the US system can
see this clearly.
You ask: "So when the original 737 was designed, did the engineers have the option of
using these larger engines? Did they decline to do so because it was a flawed design?"
The larger engines currently in use on the 737 Max 8 were not designed until recently.
They did not decline because the current engine wasn't even invented.
I guess what I am wondering is if the original designers of the 737 had the option of
designing a more powerful engine similar to that used in the 737 MAX but declined to do so.
No doubt engine technology has advanced during the 50 years since the first 737's were built.
Could the engineers 50 years ago have designed engines like those on the 737 MAX? If so, what
were there reasons for not doing so?
I also have a second question. I have been told that stalling can be prevented by placing
small wings at the front of an airplane. Would such a design have resolved the problems with
the 737 MAX?
Fifty years of technological improvement, yes. The new engines aren't more powerful,
they're more fuel efficient. Airbus had put more fuel efficient engines on its planes, so
Boeing rushed new engines of its own into service to compete.
But they're really too large to
be mounted on the 737; they mess up the center of gravity. MCAS was a janky software fix to
solve a fundamental hardware problem, because Boeing didn't want to design a new plane.
And
it didn't want to lose money by requiring airlines to retrain pilots, it sold the plane with
the new engines as being exactly the same as the old, a painless upgrade.
Canards, as the small wings at the front of aircraft are sometimes called, would likely
not have been a fix in this case. There are some light aircraft that use these for stall
prevention by utilizing the aerodynamic properties of the wing. Since a stall (absence of
lift) is often caused by the nose of aircraft being too high, you can design the canard so
that it stalls before the main wing. Thus it's difficult for the whole plane to stall, since
the nose will sink when the canard loses lift first and returns the plane to a more
appropriate attitude. An example here:
In high performance aircraft canards are used to increase maneuverability by providing
another control surface.
We generally don't see them in commercial aircraft for a few reasons:
-Aircraft layout would not be conducive to carrying passengers – jetways would be
awkward, doors would be less accessible, visibility out of the cockpit might be
compromised.
-Control surfaces at the tail of the aircraft are more effective, as the lever distance
they act over is often longer. Tail surfaces are easier to place out of the airflow of the
main wing than to place main wing out of the airflow of canards.
-Added complexity for not much added benefit (if we were to add canards to a plane with
tail surfaces as well).
These are of course all very coarse generalizations – engineering is all about
making technical and economic trade-offs.
A radical example of what can be accomplished by a combination of aerodynamics and
software is the B-2 bomber – only one main wing, no tail or canards. I know, it has
ejection seats but I sincerely doubt any aeronautical engineer has ever sat down and thought,
"Hm, well, that's a sketchy design, but screw it, they can just eject if I messed up".
So would Boeing have to design a new plane to use canards? It would probably require the
737 MAX pilots to have new training. Boeing also seemed to want to hide the instability
problem and the canards would be visual evidence for the problem.
The 737 Was designed in the '60. High bypass turbo fan engines had yet to be developed
then. Upgrading the 737 is like adding a plug in hybrid engine to a Ford F100.
The original 737 was designed to be quite low to the ground, to allow for easier boarding
in an era before widespread jetway use (models have even been offered with integrated pull
out boarding stairs), and to allow for more accessible servicing.
This worked well with the
engines of the time, which were often low bypass turbofans, and thus smaller in diameter.
This combination of height and engines made sense for the market it was designed.
Most modern commercial engines are high bypass turbofans, and therefore larger in
diameter. The move to larger fan diameters has been enabled by advances in materials,
manufacturing technology, and simulation software, with the goal of increasing engine power
and efficiency.
Another factor influencing the engine size that can be used without extensive redesign is
the landing gear operation. Because it folds towards the centerline of the plane, and into
pockets in the bottom of the fuselage, there is a limit on how long it can be before it
becomes too long and each side would collide with the other. And one would need to redesign
the wing box structure to accommodate the moved wheels.
Exactly. This is a textbook case of the looting of America.
The $30 billion dollars made
by cutting costs including quality inspection, using an existing airframe, tax cuts and
ignoring safety went directly to stock buybacks that benefited stockholders and C-suite
compensation.
Just like 2008 Boeing is "too big to fail and jailing the executives would
cause it to collapse". Unless Americans demand an end to the corruption and the restoration
of the rule of law; the plundering will continue until there is nothing left to live on.
Boeing could have designed two brand new safe airliners with that cash that would have
provided jobs and efficient transportation into the future but instead the money went into
the pockets of the connected rich and killed 346 people.
What really gets me is that ultimately that would have given the fools more money because
the orders would have kept on coming and probably increase, which would mean more profit and
more compensation for everyone. Of course that would have taken a few years instead of
immediately. So now the compensation is going to crash. Oh wait! They will just sell again to
themselves, strip the company, and sell the nameplate still affixed to some ruin.
I am starting to understand why the Goths had no resistance when in Italy and during the
sack the city of Rome. Centuries earlier the Republic and then the Empire routinely raised
multiple armies and dealt with catastrophes both natural and man made. At the end, not only
could they not readily create an another army, they could not repair the aqueducts. Like we
are becoming, Rome became a hollow shell.
And probably the only stockholders who even benefited would be the individual or
family-dynasty rich stockholders who own many thousands to millions of shares of a particular
stock at a time. It takes ownership of that many shares for a tiny benefit-per-share to add
up to thousands or millions of tiny little benefits-per-share.
People with pensions or 401ks or whatever may well involuntarily "own" 2 or 3 or maybe 10
shares "apiece" of Boeing. But they derived no benefit from the tiny little benefit per share
this maneuver gained for the shares.
Re: appendix 3, over-steer is counter-intuitive as hell. Once it's underway you have to
steer left during a right turn and vice versa. I have watched race drivers do it (very
skillfully) at the track, but there is no way I would want to be in a car that did that in a
pressure or potential accident situation without a lot of training beforehand.
"your obsession with shareholder value": shareholder value is not being attended to if the
company is driven into the ground by virtue of its planes being driven into the ground.
Clearly the definition of "shareholder value" that these bozos use is as defective as
their engineering decision-making.
Hang a few of them pour encourager les autres . And hang a few of the regulators
who thought it would be a dandy idea to let the firm regulate itself.
And hang a few of the lawmakers and lawbuyers who legislatively de-budgeted and
money-starved FAA into this " turn it over to the plane-makers" corner as well.
There is another case of air disaster often referred to in what is known as *Human
Factors* training a L-1011 which *descended* into the glades; while the crew tried to sort
out a problem with a light bulb. I suggest familiarizing with it for perspective. (not to
exonerate Boeing; just to encourage keeping an open mind)
Ahhh, the infamous Captain Buddy. Immortal tyrant of early CRM training fame
Lambert's mention of the DC-10 and it's fatally flawed, explosive decompressing cargo door
sent me down a hole of DC-10 disasters and accident reports. Some of those DC-10 incidents
like America Airlines flight 96 could have been major tragedies but were saved by level heads
and airmanship that by today's standards would be considered exceptional. The AA 96 crew
landed safely with no fatalities after an explosive decompression, a partially collapsed
floor and severely compromised flight controls. The crew had to work together and use
non-standard asymmetrical thrust and control inputs to overcome the effects of a stuck, fully
deflected rudder and a crippled elevator. The pilots of the ill fated United flight 232,
another DC-10, are celebrated exemplars of the early CRM case studies, both crew members and
a United DC-10 instructor pilot who happened to be occupying the jumpseat all worked together
to heroically crash land their horribly stricken craft in Sioux City Iowa with only partial
aileron control and assymetrical thrust to control the airplane. No elevator, no rudder
control. A good number of passengers perished but most lived. Those pilots in the two
instances I mentioned were exceptional, and they had to resort to exceptional means to
control their aircraft, but in light of airmanship of that caliber from just a few decades
ago, it blows my mind that in 2019 the mere suggestion that professional airline pilots
should probably still be capable of moving the thrust levers during a trim emergency is
somehow controversial enough to expose oneself to charges of racism and bias?! Different
times indeed.
Boeing 737 Max aside, airplanes seem to be a lot safer these days than they were in the
1970's and 80's. Widespread acceptance and adoption of CRM/TEM has made personalities like
Captain Buddy and many bad cockpit automation practices relics from the past, but automation
itself still looks to be increasingly guilty of deskilling professional pilot ranks. In light
of that trend, it's a really good thing passenger jets in 2019 are more reliable than the
DC-10 and easier to land than the MD-11.
Deteriorating pilot skills. Yep. Now you're getting it. Problem is, more automation equals
more pilot skill degradation. Everything is just peachy with highly automated "idiot proof"
airplanes until something breaks, then who is supposed to fly the plane if the pilots can't?
The flight attendants? Whoever is sitting in 1A? Airbus airplanes malfunction too, as
documented in a number of well publicized disasters and not-so-well publicized near
disasters, so while this may be an effective marketing pitch to an airline executive not able
or not willing to pay for highly skilled, experienced pilots, it's not a solution to a pilot
skill crisis. Long term, it makes the situation worse.
Personally I believe in training the hell out of pilots because if I get into a plane, I
want a pilot at the controls and not an airplane-driver. I would bet that even I could be
trained to fly an aircraft where most of the functions are automated but when things go
south, that is when you want a pilot in control. Training is expensive but having an
ill-trained pilot in the cockpit is even more expensive.
A thought . A completely fresh plane design is not necessarily safer. There is aways a
trade off between innovation and proven reliability. It is surprisingly rare for an entirely
new aircraft family to be introduced without at least one problem that threatens (but does
not always take) lives.
787 and 737 MAX are not the only problems Boeing have had.
The 737 NG (Next Generation) airplane using composite materials for the aircraft body, was
also outsourced, The idea was that the Body parts would be built to exacting specifications,
so they could be connected at the stage of final assembly. However, the sub-contractor
couldn't live up to the specifications, so Boeing had to manually re-drill holes to connect
the fuselage parts.
Not long after we had a series of crashes, where the fuselage broke up into its parts,
something almost never seen before in airplanes.
There are other Human Factors at play; regarding pilot ability Measuring ability by simply
looking at *hours flown* (often referred to as *experience*) is misleading. Relevant details
might include just what types of experience. It is possible to get airline positions *ab
initio*, or in-house, if you will (with 500 hours, (IIRC) OR:
Prospective pilots from private sector, or military, may be more likely to have diverse
backgrounds; including Flight Instructor background, Upset Recovery training; Aerobatic
flying; and Glider or sailplane background. These are not necessarily prerequisites for
airline hires. Do they make a difference? in emergencies???
The change in Part 135 minimums for non ab-initio applicants has done little or nothing to
improve safety. It did financially squeeze some very competent and capable career minded
pilots out of the pipeline to the left front seat. (thanks chuck.)(f.u.) His feel-good
legislation:*We're doing something about it!*
It isn't just Boeing that is using share buybacks to goose CEO pay. Shareholders of
American Express have an opportunity to vote to Deduct Impact of BuyBacks on Pay. See
American
Express 2019 Proxy Vote Recommendations
But, but Nader made Al Gore lose in 2000. Good to see him out of the shadows (he has a
podcst BTW).
While Boeing deserves every form of condemnation and Muilenberg should resign I do think
the facts that were all laid out in that should-be-Pulitzer-winning Seattle Times series are
being stretched a bit. The problem seems to be, not that the plane is prone to fall out of
the sky, but that its handling characteristics differ from the earlier, ubiquitous, 737
models. MCAS is the defective part, and Boeing will pay plenty
Florida's presidential election in 2000 was expected to be close and likely to be decisive
in the electoral college vote. Nader was a fairly popular third-party candidate for president
in that election. Many supporters of Gore over Bush pleaded for Nader to exit that race and
ask his supporters to vote for Gore. He did neither. In the end the margin of Bush's win in
Florida was tiny, if it existed at all, so there was reason to be angry at Nader, as I was at
the time, since if he had quit the race in that state, Gore would very likely have become
president instead of Bush.
If you're into counterfactual teleology then you might say Nader's stubborn vanity
therefore led to the Iraq and Afghan wars. I don't but it's worth being aware that some
people do.
I can't find the link right now; but, it stated that after close study, most of the voters
who voted for Nadar would not have voted for Gore and would have just sat out the election
resulting in an even more pronounced victory for Bush. Gore's defeat came from his inability
to win his home state of TN.
The claim ignores other factors. Gore's lackadaisical campaign, for one, and its poor
response to the BushCheney campaign's misuse of the legal system to stop the Florida
recount.
It's not Gore's fault the Supreme Court's conservative majority chose to not let the FL
supreme court determine what FL law means, and chose to decide the election itself. But his
response to the Florida debacle was weak, like his campaign. That might be one reason so many
people voted for Nader. That's on Al and on BushCheney.
Some additional information and clarification about the Corvair.
The Corvair had a rear mounted engine and rear wheel drive. This is a poor design from a
handling perspective as the rear weight bias produces a pendulum effect making the Corvair
prone to oversteer. This tendency was exacerbated by the Corvair's swing axle independent
rear suspension with its inherent camber changes as the wheel moved up and down. These
characteristics of the Corvair were deadly in that while cornering if you let off the
accelerator, the engine brakes the rear wheels creating a condition called "throttle lift
oversteer". Under this situation the counterintutive reaction should be to put your foot on
the accelerator and not the brakes. Some of you may recall that comedian Ernie Kovacs was
killed when his Corvair spun off the road in wet weather and hit a utility pole.
A paradox here is that the Porsche 911 has a design very similar to the Corvair, rear
wheel drive, rear mounted engine and rear weight bias and is praised for its handling. The
Corvair was sometimes referred to as a poor man's 911. It too was prone to severe and violent
oversteer if the throttle was lifted while cornering but in the case of the 911 it was
expected that the driver know that while cornering your foot stayed on the accelerator. As
the horsepower of 911s increased over the years the tendency to oversteer was tamed by
fitting larger tires on the rear wheels. With the advent of technologies like antilock
braking systems ,traction control and advanced computers employing torque vectoring to
control vehicle stablity, cars today do have their versions of MCAS and the Porsche can be
referred to as a triumph of engineering over design.
The 911 had pivots at both ends of the stub axles. It would lift throttle oversteer (boy
would it lift throttle oversteer -lots of fun if you knew what you were doing), but it would
not do the jacking rear-end lift that the corvair (pivots only at the differential end of the
half shaft) would do.
Oddly, the VW bug had the exact same layout but Ralph never went after it.
Nader is right to point out the design flaws, which seem to have the potential to cascade
into failure.
The new engine nacelles create unusual lift. Being placed forward of the center of lift,
that causes the nose of the aircraft to rotate vertically upward. If uncorrected, that would
cause the aircraft inappropriately to rise in altitude and/or to approach a stall.
The nacelle-induced lift increases with an increase in engine thrust. That increases speed
and/or reduces the time the pilot has to react and to correct an inappropriate nose-up
attitude.
Boeing seemed unable to correct that design problem through changes in the aircraft's
shape or control surfaces. It corrected it, instead, by having the computer step in to fly
the aircraft back into the appropriate attitude. Works when it works.
But Boeing seems to have forgotten a CompSci 101 problem: shit in, shit out. If the
sensors feeding the computer report bad data, the computer will generate a bad solution.
Boeing also seems to have designed the s/w to reset after manual attitude correction by the
pilot, forcing a correction loop the pilots would not always win.
Boeing elected not to inform aircraft purchasers or their flight crews of their automated
fix to their new aircraft's inherent instability problem. Murphy's Law being what it is
– if something can go wrong, it will – the pilots should have been made aware of
the recommended fix so that when something went wrong it, they would have a chance of fixing
it with a routine response.
Boeing elected not to do that. In the short run, it avoided the need for expensive
additional pilot training. In the long run, Boeing would have hoped to increase sales. When
hoping for the best, it is normal practice to plan for the worst. Boeing seems not to have
done that either.
All this talk of CEO and top managment resignation . honestly they probably don't care.
They have made millions, if not tens of millions of dollars on bonuses; they can retire once
they walk out the door. To change the behaviour of the C-suite you must affect the C-suite
directly, charge convict them with at least criminal negligence or worse.. A drunk driver who
causes the accident will most likley go to jail if someone dies in the accident, how come a
CEO and his mgmt team, can wilfully go against decades of engineering and aviation best
practices that are codified, and still only have to resign??
"... The article also discusses how some frontline FAA safety inspectors wanted to ground the MAXes until the "AoA Disagree" indicators were re-enabled, but were overridden by higher-ups who insisted that it was not a primary safety feature. ..."
Yes, the very last country to pull the 737-MAX out of use is going to be the first to
put it back. There is some serious money being lost by Boeing and the Airlines, and they
want to put a stop to it. This is all about millions and millions of Benjamins, for "they"
are taking a shortct to save even more money.
Simulators are EXPENSIVE, so the plan is to give the pilots a joystick and a computer,
and maybe throw in some lectures and videos of other pilots using a real flight simulator.
Are you ready to rush to reserve a flight?
This isn't a bad deal just for the flight crews and passengers, but the pure stench of
it is contaminating other arenas. A Denier site I'm not going to link has managed to
leverage the lack of regulator oversight by the FAA to lots of other places.
Planes, Automobiles, Bicycles, Homes, Hospitals, Schools, and Sidewalks Can All Be Made
Unsafe by Mad Science, Rush to Market, and Corrupt Regulators
They don't include "vaccines" in that list because their readers understand perfectly
well that if the FAA is a crap agency, why not the FDA as well? Much as I hate to admit it,
the Deniers didn't have to break a sweat to score these perfectly valid points.
Does anyone imagine Volkswagen could have gotten away with all those years of cheating
on their emissions if the regulators had been doing their jobs?
How did China get away with shipping that cancer-causing blood pressure medicine to the
US for so many years? It's safe to assume some bored "regulator" was just waving the stuff
on past without doing a single test.
This is going to cost us. I'm out of links, but here is a headline to consider.
Russia's Irkut aircraft manufacturer has posted the first video of a direct flight by
its MS-21-300 airliner from Irkutsk to Ulyanovsk-Vostochny Airfield.
The brand-new Russian passenger craft is designed to transport up to 211 people over
a distance of 6,400 kilometres.
There are competitors out there, and they can't be fended off by "sanctions" forever.
Allowing unwatched & unregulated companies to run amok is going to hurt us all in the
long term.
Boeing management's behavior must be seen in the context of Boeing's use of its earned
capital. Did you use the $30 billion surplus from 2009 to 2017 to reinvest in R&D, in
new narrow-body passenger aircraft? Or did you, instead, essentially burn this surplus
with self-serving stock buybacks of $30 billion in that period? Boeing is one of the
companies that MarketWatch labelled as "Five companies that spent lavishly on stock
buybacks while pension funding lagged. "
Feathering the Corporate Nest while stiffing the workers. Just what Wall Street loves.
"Ugly" at Boeing isn't a 'skin deep' issue - it's that way clear to the bone!
The article also discusses how some frontline FAA safety inspectors wanted to ground the
MAXes until the "AoA Disagree" indicators were re-enabled, but were overridden by
higher-ups who insisted that it was not a primary safety feature.
A pilot with 30 years of flying
experience and 40 years of design experience rips decisions made by Boeing and the FAA.
Gregory Travis, a software developer and pilot for 30 years wrote a scathing report on the
limitations of the 737, and the arrogance of software developers unfit to write airplane code.
Travis provides easy to understand explanations including a test you can do by sticking your
hand out the window of a car to demonstrate stall speed.
Design shortcuts meant to make a new plane seem like an old, familiar one are to blame.
This was all about saving money. Boeing and the FAA pretend the 737-Max is the same aircraft as
the original 737 that flew in 1967, over 50 years ago.
Travis was 3 years old at the time. Back then, the 737 was a smallish aircraft with smallish
engines and relatively simple systems. The new 737 is large and complicated.
Boeing cut corners to save money. Cutting corners works until it fails spectacularly.
The original 737 had (by today's standards) tiny little engines, which easily cleared the
ground beneath the wings. As the 737 grew and was fitted with bigger engines, the clearance
between the engines and the ground started to get a little um, tight.
With the 737 Max, the situation became critical. The engines on the original 737 had a fan
diameter (that of the intake blades on the engine) of just 100 centimeters (40 inches); those
planned for the 737 Max have 176 cm. That's a centerline difference of well over 30 cm (a foot),
and you couldn't "ovalize" the intake enough to hang the new engines beneath the wing without
scraping the ground.
The solution was to extend the engine up and well in front of the wing. However, doing so
also meant that the centerline of the engine's thrust changed. Now, when the pilots applied
power to the engine, the aircraft would have a significant propensity to "pitch up," or raise
its nose. This propensity to pitch up with power application thereby increased the risk that the
airplane could stall when the pilots "punched it"
Worse still, because the engine nacelles were so far in front of the wing and so large, a
power increase will cause them to actually produce lift, particularly at high angles of attack.
So the nacelles make a bad problem worse.
I'll say it again: In the 737 Max, the engine nacelles themselves can, at high angles of
attack, work as a wing and produce lift. And the lift they produce is well ahead of the wing's
center of lift, meaning the nacelles will cause the 737 Max at a high angle of attack to go to a
higher angle of attack. This is
aerodynamic malpractice
of the worst kind.
It violated that most ancient of aviation canons and probably violated the certification
criteria of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. But instead of going back to the drawing
board and getting the airframe hardware right, Boeing relied on something called the
"Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System," or MCAS.
It all comes down to money
, and in this case, MCAS was the way for both Boeing and
its customers to keep the money flowing in the right direction. The necessity to insist that the
737 Max was no different in flying characteristics, no different in systems, from any other 737
was the key to the 737 Max's fleet fungibility. That's probably also the reason why the
documentation about the MCAS system was kept on the down-low.
Put in a change with too much visibility, particularly a change to the aircraft's operating
handbook or to pilot training, and someone -- probably a pilot -- would have piped up and said, "Hey.
This doesn't look like a 737 anymore." And then the money would flow the wrong way.
When the flight computer trims the airplane to descend, because the MCAS system thinks it's
about to stall, a set of motors and jacks push the pilot's control columns forward. It turns out
that
the Elevator Feel Computer can put a lot of force into that column -- indeed, so much
force that a human pilot can quickly become exhausted trying to pull the column back, trying to
tell the computer that this really, really should not be happening
.
MCAS is implemented in the flight management computer, even at times when the autopilot is
turned off, when the pilots think they are flying the plane. I
n a fight between the flight
management computer and human pilots over who is in charge, the computer will bite humans until
they give up and (literally) die
. Finally, there's the need to keep the very existence of
the MCAS system on the hush-hush lest someone say, "Hey, this isn't your father's 737," and bank
accounts start to suffer.
Those lines of code were no doubt created by people at the direction of managers.
In a pinch, a human pilot could just look out the windshield to confirm visually and directly
that, no, the aircraft is not pitched up dangerously. That's the ultimate check and should go
directly to the pilot's ultimate sovereignty. Unfortunately, the current implementation of MCAS
denies that sovereignty. It denies the pilots the ability to respond to what's before their own
eyes.
In the MCAS system, the flight management computer is blind to any other evidence that it is
wrong, including what the pilot sees with his own eyes and what he does when he desperately
tries to pull back on the robotic control columns that are biting him, and his passengers, to
death.
The people who wrote the code for the original MCAS system were obviously terribly far
out of their league and did not know it. How can they can implement a software fix, much less
give us any comfort that the rest of the flight management software is reliable?
So Boeing produced a dynamically unstable airframe, the 737 Max. That is big strike No.
1. Boeing then tried to mask the 737's dynamic instability with a software system. Big strike
No. 2. Finally, the software relied on systems known for their propensity to fail
(angle-of-attack indicators) and did not appear to include even rudimentary provisions to
cross-check the outputs of the angle-of-attack sensor against other sensors, or even the other
angle-of-attack sensor. Big strike No. 3.
None of the above should have passed muster. It is likely that MCAS, originally added in
the spirit of increasing safety, has now killed more people than it could have ever saved. It
doesn't need to be "fixed" with more complexity, more software. It needs to be removed
altogether
.
Numerous Bad Decisions at Every Stage
Ultimately 346 people are dead because of really bad decisions, software engineer arrogance, and
Boeing's pretense that the 737 Max is the same aircraft as 50 years ago.
It is incredible that the plane has two sensors but the system only uses one. A look out the
window was enough to confirm the sensor was wrong.
Boeing also offered "cheap" versions of the aircraft without some controls. The two crashed
flights were with the cheaper aircraft.
An experienced pilot with adequate training could have disengaged MACS but in one of the crashed
flights, the pilot was desperately reading a manual trying to figure out how to do that.
Flight Stall Test
If you stick you hand out the window of a car and your hand is level to the ground. You have a
low angle of attack. There is no lift. Tilt your hand a bit and you have lift. Your arm will rise.
When the angle of attack on the wing of an aircraft is too great the aircraft enters aerodynamic
stall. The same thing happens with your hand out a car window.
At a steep enough angle your arm wants to flop down on the car door.
The MACS software overrides what a pilot can see by looking out the window.
Useless Manuals
If you need a manual to stop a plane from crashing mid-flight, the manual is useless.
It's already too late.
The pilot had seconds in which to react. Yet, instead of requiring
additional training, and alerting pilots of the dangers, Boeing put this stuff in a manual.
This was necessary as part of the pretense that a 737 is a 737 is a 737.
In my day Pilot's were repeatedly cautioned not to fly the
aircraft to the scene of an accident since nobody survives a high
speed crash or a stall. Non-pilots can vote me down but the
proper action at the second the pilot lost control of his aircraft
that close to the ground should have been to pull power, drop
flaps, and make a soft field landing that some passengers would
have survived.
Sure it's a flying turd, but it will be back in the air soon. The
CEO can spew buzzwords at the speed of sound. The FAA will approve
any fix Boeing pukes forth cause nobody has the moral courage to
stand in the way of making the big money.
I saw that article in Spectrum and while it makes some points
about software development he mixes it up with generic claims way
beyond his expertise. Editors at Spectrum should be fired.
Cirrus Jet got grounded due to this MACS problem.. This CODE is
all over the place and probably in AIRBUS also [(.. I'm
betting that it was stolen from AIRBUS] Computer controlled fly
by wire is death-in-a-box as it can always be hacked.
Boeing thinks it will fix the problem with its "MCAS" software.
While it may do so on paper, there remains the problem of the
weight distribution of engines, cargo and fuel which is placing
the center of gravity behind the center of pressure for this
modified aircraft during flight near the stall point. That problem
is faulty aerodynamics. Any aircraft that is inherently
aerodynamically unstable should never be flown in a commercial
setting. Ground them all. Fire the stupid fools who allowed this
beast to fly, including those at the FAA. And finally, sell your
Boeing stock.
"... "One of the problems we have with the system is, why put a system like that on an airplane in the first place?" said Slack, who doesn't represent any survivors of either the Lion Air or Ethiopia Airlines crashes. "I think what we're going to find is that because of changes from the (Boeing 737) 800 series to the MAX series, there are dramatic changes in which they put in controls without native pitch stability. It goes to the basic DNA of the airplane. It may not be fixable." ..."
"... But it's also important that the pilots get physical feedback about what is going on. In the old days, when cables connected the pilot's controls to the flying surfaces, you had to pull up, hard, if the airplane was trimmed to descend. You had to push, hard, if the airplane was trimmed to ascend. With computer oversight there is a loss of natural sense in the controls. There is only an artificial feel, a feeling that the computer wants the pilots to feel. And sometimes, it doesn't feel so great. ..."
"... An airplane approaching an aerodynamic stall cannot, under any circumstances, have a tendency to go further into the stall. This is called "dynamic instability," and the only airplanes that exhibit that characteristic -- fighter jets -- are also fitted with ejection seats. ..."
"... The airframe, the hardware, should get it right the first time and not need a lot of added bells and whistles to fly predictably. This has been an aviation canon from the day the Wright brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk. ..."
"... When the flight computer trims the airplane to descend, because the MCAS system thinks it's about to stall, a set of motors and jacks push the pilot's control columns forward. It turns out that the flight management computer can put a lot of force into that column -- indeed, so much force that a human pilot can quickly become exhausted trying to pull the column back, trying to tell the computer that this really, really should not be happening. ..."
"... MCAS is implemented in the flight management computer, even at times when the autopilot is turned off, when the pilots think they are flying the plane. In a fight between the flight management computer and human pilots over who is in charge, the computer will bite humans until they give up and (literally) die ..."
"... Like someone with narcissistic personality disorder, MCAS gaslights the pilots. And it turns out badly for everyone. "Raise the nose, HAL." "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that." ..."
"... Travis also describes the bad business incentives that led Boeing to conceptualize and present the 737 Max as just a tweak of an existing design, as opposed to being so areodynamically different as to be a new plane .and require time-consuming and costly recertification. To succeed in that obfuscation, Boeing had to underplay the existence and role of the MCAS system: ..."
"... Travis also explains why the FAA allows for what amounts to self-certification. This practice didn't result from the usual deregulation pressures, but from the FAA being unable to keep technical experts from being bid away by private sector players. Moreover, the industry has such a strong safety culture (airplanes falling out of the sky are bad for business) that the accommodation didn't seem risky. ..."
"... The 737 Max saga teaches us not only about the limits of technology and the risks of complexity, it teaches us about our real priorities. Today, safety doesn't come first -- money comes first, and safety's only utility in that regard is in helping to keep the money coming. The problem is getting worse because our devices are increasingly dominated by something that's all too easy to manipulate: software ..."
Even though Boeing is scrambling to fix the software meant to counter the 737 Max's increased propensity to stall as a result
of the placement of larger, more fuel=efficient engines in a way that reduced the stability of the plane in flight, it's not clear
that this will be adequate in terms of flight safety or the public perception of the plane. And even though the FAA is almost certain
to sign off on Boeing's patch, foreign regulators may not be so forgiving. The divergence we've seen between the FAA and other national
authorities is likely to intensify. Recall that China grounded the 737 Max before the FAA. In another vote of no confidence, even
as Boeing was touting that its changes to its now infamous MCAS software, designed to compensate for safety risks introduced by the
placement of the engines on the 737 Max, the Canadian air regulator said he wanted 737 Max pilots to have flight simulator training,
contrary to the manufacturer's assertion that it isn't necessary. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that
American Airlines is developing 737 Max flight simulator training .
But a fundamental question remains: can improved software compensate for hardware shortcomings? Some experts harbor doubts. For
instance, from the Spokane
Spokesman-Review
:
"One of the problems we have with the system is, why put a system like that on an airplane in the first place?" said Slack,
who doesn't represent any survivors of either the Lion Air or Ethiopia Airlines crashes. "I think what we're going to find is
that because of changes from the (Boeing 737) 800 series to the MAX series, there are dramatic changes in which they put in controls
without native pitch stability. It goes to the basic DNA of the airplane. It may not be fixable."
"It is within the realm of possibility that, if much of the basic pitch stability performance of the plane cannot be addressed
by a software fix, a redesign may be required and the MAX might not ever fly," [aviation attorney and former NASA aerospace engineer
Mike] Slack said.
An even more damming take comes in
How the Boeing 737 Max Disaster Looks to a Software Developer in IEEE Spectrum (hat tip Marshall Auerback). Author Greg Travis
has been a software developer for 40 years and a pilot. He does a terrific job of explaining the engineering and business considerations
that drove the 737 Max design. He describes why the plane's design is unsound and why the software patch in the form of MCAS was
inadequate, and an improved version is unlikely to be able to compensate for the plane's deficiencies.
Even for those who have been following the 737 Max story, this article has background that is likely to be new. For instance,
to a large degree, pilots do not fly commercial aircraft. Pilots send instructions to computer systems that fly these planes. Travis
explains early on that the As Travis explains:
In the 737 Max, like most modern airliners and most modern cars, everything is monitored by computer, if not directly controlled
by computer. In many cases, there are no actual mechanical connections (cables, push tubes, hydraulic lines) between the pilot's
controls and the things on the wings, rudder, and so forth that actually make the plane move ..
But it's also important that the pilots get physical feedback about what is going on. In the old days, when cables connected
the pilot's controls to the flying surfaces, you had to pull up, hard, if the airplane was trimmed to descend. You had to push,
hard, if the airplane was trimmed to ascend. With computer oversight there is a loss of natural sense in the controls. There is
only an artificial feel, a feeling that the computer wants the pilots to feel. And sometimes, it doesn't feel so great.
Travis also explains why the 737 Max's engine location made the plane dangerously unstable:
Pitch changes with power changes are common in aircraft. Even my little Cessna pitches up a bit when power is applied. Pilots
train for this problem and are used to it. Nevertheless, there are limits to what safety regulators will allow and to what pilots
will put up with.
Pitch changes with increasing angle of attack, however, are quite another thing. An airplane approaching an aerodynamic stall
cannot, under any circumstances, have a tendency to go further into the stall. This is called "dynamic instability," and the only
airplanes that exhibit that characteristic -- fighter jets -- are also fitted with ejection seats.
Everyone in the aviation community wants an airplane that flies as simply and as naturally as possible. That means that conditions
should not change markedly, there should be no significant roll, no significant pitch change, no nothing when the pilot is adding
power, lowering the flaps, or extending the landing gear.
The airframe, the hardware, should get it right the first time and not need a lot of added bells and whistles to fly predictably.
This has been an aviation canon from the day the Wright brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk.
Travis explains in detail why the MCAS approach to monitoring the angle of attack was greatly inferior to older methods .including
having the pilots look out the window. And here's what happens when MCAS goes wrong:
When the flight computer trims the airplane to descend, because the MCAS system thinks it's about to stall, a set of motors
and jacks push the pilot's control columns forward. It turns out that the flight management computer can put a lot of force into
that column -- indeed, so much force that a human pilot can quickly become exhausted trying to pull the column back, trying to
tell the computer that this really, really should not be happening.
Indeed, not letting the pilot regain control by pulling back on the column was an explicit design decision. Because if the
pilots could pull up the nose when MCAS said it should go down, why have MCAS at all?
MCAS is implemented in the flight management computer, even at times when the autopilot is turned off, when the pilots think
they are flying the plane. In a fight between the flight management computer and human pilots over who is in charge, the computer
will bite humans until they give up and (literally) die
Like someone with narcissistic personality disorder, MCAS gaslights the pilots. And it turns out badly for everyone. "Raise
the nose, HAL." "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
Travis also describes the bad business incentives that led Boeing to conceptualize and present the 737 Max as just a tweak of
an existing design, as opposed to being so areodynamically different as to be a new plane .and require time-consuming and costly
recertification. To succeed in that obfuscation, Boeing had to underplay the existence and role of the MCAS system:
The necessity to insist that the 737 Max was no different in flying characteristics, no different in systems, from any other
737 was the key to the 737 Max's fleet fungibility. That's probably also the reason why the documentation about the MCAS system
was kept on the down-low.
Put in a change with too much visibility, particularly a change to the aircraft's operating handbook or to pilot training,
and someone -- probably a pilot -- would have piped up and said, "Hey. This doesn't look like a 737 anymore."
To drive the point home, Travis contrasts the documentation related to MCAS with documentation Cessna provided with an upgrade
to its digital autopilot, particularly warnings. The difference is dramatic and it shouldn't be. He concludes:
In my Cessna, humans still win a battle of the wills every time. That used to be a design philosophy of every Boeing aircraft,
as well, and one they used against their archrival Airbus, which had a different philosophy. But it seems that with the 737 Max,
Boeing has changed philosophies about human/machine interaction as quietly as they've changed their aircraft operating manuals.
Travis also explains why the FAA allows for what amounts to self-certification. This practice didn't result from the usual deregulation
pressures, but from the FAA being unable to keep technical experts from being bid away by private sector players. Moreover, the industry
has such a strong safety culture (airplanes falling out of the sky are bad for business) that the accommodation didn't seem risky.
But it is now:
So Boeing produced a dynamically unstable airframe, the 737 Max. That is big strike No. 1. Boeing then tried to mask the 737's
dynamic instability with a software system. Big strike No. 2. Finally, the software relied on systems known for their propensity
to fail (angle-of-attack indicators) and did not appear to include even rudimentary provisions to cross-check the outputs of the
angle-of-attack sensor against other sensors, or even the other angle-of-attack sensor. Big strike No. 3.
None of the above should have passed muster. None of the above should have passed the "OK" pencil of the most junior engineering
staff, much less a DER [FAA Designated Engineering Representative].
That's not a big strike. That's a political, social, economic, and technical sin .
The 737 Max saga teaches us not only about the limits of technology and the risks of complexity, it teaches us about our real
priorities. Today, safety doesn't come first -- money comes first, and safety's only utility in that regard is in helping to keep
the money coming. The problem is getting worse because our devices are increasingly dominated by something that's all too easy
to manipulate: software
I believe the relative ease -- not to mention the lack of tangible cost -- of software updates has created a cultural laziness
within the software engineering community. Moreover, because more and more of the hardware that we create is monitored and controlled
by software, that cultural laziness is now creeping into hardware engineering -- like building airliners. Less thought is now
given to getting a design correct and simple up front because it's so easy to fix what you didn't get right later .
It is likely that MCAS, originally added in the spirit of increasing safety, has now killed more people than it could have
ever saved. It doesn't need to be "fixed" with more complexity, more software. It needs to be removed altogether.
There's a lot more in
this meaty piece . Be sure to read it in full.
And if crapification by software has undermined the once-vanuted airline safety culture, why should we hold out hope for any better
with self-driving cars?
Automation is not the issue. Boeing cutting corners and putting only one or two angle of attack sensors is. Just like a man
with two clocks can't tell the time, if one of the sensors malfunctions, the computer has no way of knowing which one is wrong.
That's why Airbus puts three sensors in its aircraft, and why Boeing's Dreamliner has three computers with CPUs from three different
manufacturers to get the necessary triple redundancy.
Thus this is really about Boeing's shocking negligence in putting profits above safety, and the FAA's total capture to the
point Boeing employees did most of the certification work. I would add the corrosion of Boeing's ethical standards was completely
predictable once it acquired McDonnell-Douglas and became a major defense contractor.
I beg to differ since it looks like you didn't read the article in full, as a strongly recommended. The article has a section on the cost of fixing hardware problems versus software problems. Hardware problems are enormously
costly to fix.
The plane has a hardware problem resulting from Boeing not being willing to risk having to recertify a fuel efficient 737.
So rather than making the plane higher off the ground (new landing gear, which other articles indicate was a non-starter since
it would lead to enough other changes so as to necessitate recertification) and trying to fix a hardware problem with software.
That has two knock-on problems: it's not clear this will ever be adequate (not just Travis' opinion) and second, it's risky given
the software industry's propensity to ship and patch later. Boeing created an additional problem, as Travis stresses, by greatly
underplaying the existence of MCAS (it was mentioned after page 700 in the documentation!) and maintaining the fiction that pilots
didn't need simulator training, which some regulators expect will be the case even after the patch.
You also miss the point the article makes: the author argues (unlike in banking), the FAA coming to rely on the airlines for
certification wasn't a decision they made, but an adaptation to the fact that they could no longer hire and retain the engineers
they needed to do the work at the FAA on government pay scales. By contrast, at (say) the SEC, you see a revolving door of lawyers
from plenty fancy firms. You have plenty of "talent" willing to work at the SEC, but with bad incentives.
Thank you for reviewing this. 700+ pages! I thought it was paywalled bec. so slow to download. The resistance to achieving
fuel efficiency is front and center these days. One thing I relate it to is the Macron attitude of punishing the fuel consumer
to change the market. Cart before horse. When the FAA sent down fuel efficiency requirements it might have been similarly preemptive,
now in hindsight. There should have been legislation and regulation which adjusted the profitability of the airline industry via
better tax breaks or regulations against aggressive competition. The safety of airlines would have been upheld if the viability
of the company were protected. So even domestic protectionism when it comes to safety. And in so doing, the FAA/congress could
also have controlled and limited airline use which tries to make up in volume for all the new costs it incurs. It's a serious
problem when you are so carefree as a legislator that you let the free market do it. What a mess. Quality is the first thing to
go.
reminds me of what was said about risk departments inside banks -- deliberately lowly paid, so that anyone with skills would
move on or easily be hired away. Was it you? Bill Black? Luyendijk? I don't remember. Either way..
I did read the article completely and I was an aircraft commander of a C-141A during the Viet Nam war and I am a degreed electrical
engineer.
Having flown the C-141A for several thousand hours I am very familiar with the aircraft pitching up almost uncontrollably.
A favorite trick that C -141 flight instructors pulled on pilots new to aircraft was to tell the student pilot to "go around"
(for the first time during his training) on an approach. The student pilot followed the flight manual procedure and started to
raise the nose while advancing the throttles to full power. However, what wasn't covered in the flight manual was the fact that
a HUGE trim change occurred when the engines went from near idle to full power. To regain control, it took both hands (arms) to
move the yoke away from your chest while running nose down trim. While you were doing this the airplane was trying to stand on
its tail. On the other hand none of us ever forgot the lesson.
The C-141 was not fly by wire; however all control surfaces were equipped with hydraulic assist and "feel springs" to mimic
control feel without the hydraulics. The feel springs for the elevators must have been selected using a human subject like Arnold
Schwarzenegger because (in my opinion) they were much stronger than necessary. The intent was to prevent the pilots from getting
into excessive angles of pitch, which absolutely would occur if you weren't prepared for it on a "go around".
What Fazal & V have said is basically correct. The max has four angle of attack vanes. The MAIN problem was that Boeing decided
to go cheap and only connect one of the vanes to the MCAS. If they had connected two, the MCAS would be able to determine that
one of them was wrong and disconnect itself. That would have eliminated the pitch down problem that caused the two crashes.
Connecting that second AOA vane would not have created any certification issues and would have made Boeing's claim about the
"Max" being the "same" as previous versions much closer to the truth. Had they done that we wouldn't be talking about this.
Another solution would have been to disable the MCAS if there was significant counter force on the yoke applied by the pilot.
This has been used on autopilot systems since the 1960's. But not consistently. The proper programming protocol for the MCAS exists
and should have been used.
I agree that using only one AOA vane and the programming weren't the only really stupid things that Boeing did in this matter.
Insufficient information and training given to the pilots was another.
Yes. second, it's risky given the software industry's propensity to ship and patch later.
-this is one of the main themes in the Dilbert cartoon strip.
the author argues (unlike in banking), the FAA coming to rely on the airlines for certification wasn't a decision they made,
but an adaptation to the fact that they could no longer hire and retain the engineers they needed to do the work at the FAA on
government pay scales.
-That's what happens when you make 'government small enough to drown in a bathtub' , i.e. starve of the funds necessary to
do a good job.
My 2¢ . Boeing's decision to cut manufacturing corners AND give the autopilot MCAS system absolute control might have been
done (just a guess here, based on the all current the 'self-driving' fantasies in technology ) to push more AI 'self-drivingness'
into the airplane. (The 'We don't need expensive pilots, we can use inexpensive pilots, and one day we won't need pilots at all'
fantasy.) Imo, this makes the MCAS system, along with the auto AI self-driving systems now on the road no better than beta
test platforms And early beta test platforms, at that.
It's one thing when MS or Apple push out a not quite ready for prime time OS "upgrade", then wait for all the user feedback
to know where it the OS needs more patches. No one dies in those situations (hopefully). But putting not-ready for prime time
airplanes and cars on the road in beta test condition to get feedback? yikes . my opinion.
It is interesting that a software bug that appears in the field costs very roughly ten times as much as one caught in QA before
being released, yet most managements continue to slight QA in favor of glitzy features. I suppose that preference follows supposed
customer demand.
Boeing, the FAA, and the airlines seriously screwed up the introduction of this aircraft so badly it cost lives. The article
by Travis is however written by someone out of his depth, even though he has more familiarity with aircraft and software than
the average person. There are numerous factual errors and misrepresentations, which many commenters (with more detailed knowledge
of the subjects) on the article point out. One of the principles of aviation safety is to identify and fix failures without finger
pointing, in order to encourage a culture of openness and cooperation. The tone of the article takes the opposite approach while
trying to argue from (undeserved) authority. I agree with his critique that these incidents are a result capitalism run amok –
that should, in my opinion, be separate from a discussion of the technical problems and how to fix them.
If Boeing had adhered to that cardinal principle of openness, there might be no failure to fix via "a culture of openness and
cooperation". These catastrophic failures were a result of Boeing not being open with its customers about the safety implications
of its redesign of the 737 Max and instead choosing the path of obfuscation to sell the idea of seamless fleet fungibility to
airlines.
Looking through the comments the complaints about the article seemed to be in one of three areas-
– Questioning the author's credentials (you're just a Cessna pilot!)
– Parroting the Boeing line that this was all really pilot error
– Focusing on some narrow technical element to discredit the article
The majority of comments were in agreement with the general tenor of the piece, and the author engaged politely and constructively
with some of the points that were brought up. I thought the article was very insightful, and sometimes it does take an outsider
to point out that the emperor has no clothes.
I'd like to see a reference for your assertion that the "principles of aviation safety" preclude finger pointing. Unless I'm
very much mistaken the whole purpose of an FAA accident investigation is to determine the root cause, identify the responsible
party, and, yes, point fingers if necessary.
The general point I was trying to make, perhaps poorly worded, is that the only goal is to identify the problem and fix it,
and not to focus primarily on assigning blame as vigorously as possible. Mistakes occur for many reasons – some of them nefarious,
some not. Excessive finger pointing, especially before a full picture of what went wrong has been developed, fosters a tendency
to coverups and fear, in my opinion.
Regarding your other points, the technical details are vital to understand clearly in almost any aviation incident, as there
is never one cause, and the chain of events is always incredibly complex. Travis' analysis makes the answers too easy.
From what I understand the light touch approach was more about getting people to honestly divulge information during the investigation
period, of which, assisted in determining cause.
This "light touch" approach is used throughout the aviation industry, all the way from initial design to aircraft maintenance,
as the purpose is to make sure that anyone, no matter the rank or experience, can bring up safety concerns before incidents occur
without fear of repercussions for challenging authority. It's likely that this cornerstone of aviation culture was ignored at
too many points along the way here.
I am not defending Boeing, the FAA, or the airlines. Serious, likely criminal, mistakes were made by all.
I however take issue with Travis' approach of assigning blame this early and vigorously while making errors in explaining what
happened. He especially attacks the the development process at Boeing, since software is his speciality, although he makes no
claims as to having worked with real time or avionics software, aside from using products incorporating it. These are quite different
types of software from normal code running a website or a bank. He does not, and can not, know what occurred when the code was
written, yet makes significant declarations as to the incompetence of the engineers and coders involved.
If he were leading the investigation, I believe the most likely outcome would be pushback and coverup by those involved.
It's likely that this cornerstone of aviation culture was ignored at too many points along the way here.
I am not defending Boeing, the FAA, or the airlines. Serious, likely criminal, mistakes were made by all.
I however take issue with Travis' approach of assigning blame this early
I don't disagree with your description of how it used to be. However, since the FAA has reduced its regulatory role, and by
extension given aircraft manufactures more leash to run with ideas that shouldn't be followed, we're left with the situation that
large, potentially crippling tort lawsuits are one of the only checks left on manufacturer stupidity or malfeasance. Think of
the Ford Pinto bolt-too-long-causing-gas-tank-explosions case. If the FCC won't make manufacturers think twice when internal engineers
say 'this isn't a good idea, isn't a good design', maybe the potential of a massive lawsuit will make them think twice.
And this is where we get into pointing the finger, assigning blame, etc. I'm assuming there are good engineers at Boeing who
warned against these multiple design failure and were ignored, the FCC was see-no-evil here-no-evil, and the MCAS went forward.
Now come the law suits. It's the only thing left to 'get Boeing's attention'. I don't know if Travis' is too early. It's likely
there's been plenty of chatter among the Boeing and industry engineers already. imo.
Training a pilot is building a very complicated automation system : what kind of thought process do you expect within the short
timeframe (few minutes) of a crisis in a cockpit ? Kant's critique of pure reason ?Somehow people seem more comfortable from death
coming from human error (I.e. a bad human automation system) that death coming from a design fault, but a death is a death
The problem is not automation vs no automation, it is bad corner-cutting automation vs good systematic and expensive automation.
It is also bad integration between pilot brain based automation and system automation, which also boils out to corner cutting,
because sharing too much information about the real behaviour of the system (if only it is known accurately ) increases the complexity
and the cost of pilot training.
Real safety comes from proven design (as in mathematical proof). It is only achievable on simple systems because proofing is
conceptually very hard. A human is inevitably a very complex system that is impossible to proof, therefore, beyond a certain standard
of reliability, getting the human factor out of the equation is the only way to improve things further. we are probably close
to that threshold with civil aviation.
Similarly, regarding cars, the considerable improvement in death per km travelled in the last 30 years cannot be attributed
only to better drivers, a large part comes from ESP and ABS becoming standard (see
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/811182
). If this is not automation, what is ?
It looks as if you didn't read the piece. The problem, which the author makes explicit, is the "ship now, patch later" philosophy
that is endemic in software design.
And it would be better to look at flight safety stats within markets. You have great swathes of the emerging world starting
to fly on airplanes during this period. I'm not saying the general trend isn't correct, but I would anticipate it's to a significant
degree attributable to the maturation of emerging economy air systems. For instance, I flew on Indonesia's Garuda in the early
1990s and was told I was taking a safety risk; I'm now informed that it's a good airline. Similarly, in the early 1980s I was
doing business in Mexico, and the McKinsey partner I was traveling with (who as a hobby read black box transcripts from plane
crashes) was very edgy on the legs of our travels when we had to use AeroMexico (as in he'd natter on in a way that was very out
of character for a typical older WASP-y guy, he was close to white knuckle nervous).
Garuda's transition from "safety risk" to "good airline" was an actual occurrence. At one point Garuda and all other Indonesian
air lines were prohibited from flying in the EU because of numerous crashes that were the result of management issues, that forced
the airline(s) to change their ways.
ABS is an enhancement. MCAS is a kludge to patch up massive weaknesses introduced into the hardware by a chain of bad decisions
going back almost 20 years.
Boeing should have started designing a new narrow-body when they cancelled the 757 in 2004. Instead, they chose to keep relying
on the 737. The end result is MCAS and 300+ deaths.
"There are numerous factual errors and misrepresentations, which many commenters (with more detailed knowledge of the subjects)
on the article point out."
Not sure why anyone would mis-characterise comments. The first comment points out a deficiency, and explains it. There was only
one other commenter, who alleged errors – but without explaining what those could be. He was later identified by another person
as a troll. Almost all other comments were complimentary of the article. So why make the above assertion?
We have a noteworthy number of newbie comments making poorly-substantiated digs at the Spectrum IEEE piece. We've also seen
this sort of non-organic-looking response when we've put up pro-union pieces when political fights were in play, like Wisconsin's
Scott Walker going after unions.
Travis does indeed play fast and loose with a number of things. For example, his 0-360 engine does *not* have pistons the size
of dinner plates (at a 130mm bore it isn't even the diameter of a particularly large saucer). MCAS is a stability augmentation
system not stall prevention system and the 737 MAX wasn't "unstable" it was insufficiently stable. The 737 trim system acts on
the stabilizer not the elevator (which is a completely different control surface). etc.
For the most part, it doesn't affect the thrust of his arguments which are at a higher level. However it does get distracting.
Thank you – I was beginning to wonder what the difference was between unstable and insufficiently stable. Not that this is
a subject to make jokes about.
Yeah, but sometimes the choice is to laugh or cry, and after constantly going WTF!?! every time I read about this horror, even
mordantly grim humor is nice.
Investigators pipe up, but my understanding of a proper investigation is: a. find out what happened; b. find out why the incident
occurred; c. what can be done to prevent.
The public opinion has already sailed I think, against the company. If negligent, adverse-safety decisions were made, the head
people should be prosecuted accordingly.
Yet, I feel this isn't going to happen despite the reality that billions of humans never want to fly a boeing jet again. Why
would you risk it? Toast and deservedly imho
"Agile" "use-case driven" software development: very dangerous, takes the disruptive, crappification approach (under some hands)
of trying to identify the minimum investment to hit the minimal requirements, particularly focusing on an 80/20 Pareto rule distribution
of efforts.
Which may be good enough for video delivery or cell-phone function, but not for life-critical or scientifically-critical equipment
Many people here are assuming Boeing uses modern software-development methodology in spite of flaws that make such an approach
iffy in this field. Why assume that?
When I worked, many years ago now, as a Boeing software engineer, their software-development practices were 15 years behind
the rest of the world. Part of that was sheer caution and conservatism re new things, precisely because of the safety culture,
and part of it was because they did not have many of the best software people. They could rarely hire the best in part because
cautious, super-conservative code is boring. Their management approach was optimized to get solid systems out of ordinary engineers
with a near incomprehensible number of review and testing steps.
Anyone in this audience worked there in software recently? If not, fewer words about how they develop code might be called
for. Yes, the MCAS system was seriously flawed. But we do not have the information to actually know why.
> Anyone in this audience worked there in software recently? If not, fewer words about how they develop code might be called
for.
4/16 Links included a lengthy spiel from Reddit via Hacker News by a
software engineer who worked at Boeing 10 years ago (far more recently than you) which detailed the horrors of Boeing's dysfunctional
corporate culture at length. This is in addition to many other posts covering the story from multiple angles.
NC has covered this topic extensively. Maybe try familiarizing yourself with their content before telling others to shut up.
Excuse me? Are ad hominem attacks fine now? I didn't tell anyone to "shut up" or contradict the great amount of good reporting
on Boeing's management dysfunction.
I just pointed out that at one time, yes way back there, there was a logic to it and that the current criticism here of its
software-development culture in particular seems founded on a combination of speculation and general disgust with the software
industry.
Whatever else I am or however wrong I may sometimes be, I am an engineer, and real engineers look for evidence.
Moving the engines in itself didn't introduce safety risks, this tendency to nose up was always there. The primary problem
is Boeing wanted to pretend MAX is the same plane as NG (the previous version) for certification and pilot training purposes.
Which is why the MCAS is black box deeply hardwired into the control systems and they didn't tell pilots about it. It was supposed
to be invisible, just sort of translating layer between the new airframe and pilots commanding it as the old one.
And this yearning for pre-automation age, for directly controlling the surfaces by cables and all, is misguided. People didn't
evolve for flying, it's all learned the hard way, there is no natural way to feel the plane. In fact in school they will drill
into you to trust the instruments and not your pedestrian instincts. Instruments and computers may fail, but your instincts will
fail far more often.
After all 737 actually is old design, not fly by wire. And one theory of what happened in the Ethiopian case is that when they
disengaged the automatic thing, they were not able to physically overcome the aerodynamic forces pushing on the plane. So there
you have your cables & strings operated machine.
I don't see basis for your assertion about safety risks given the counter-evidence in the form of the very existence of the
MCAS software. Every article written on it points out it was to prevent the possibility of the plane stalling out when "punching
up". And as the article describes, there were two design factors, the placement of the engines and the nacelles, which led to
it generating too much lift in certain scenarios.
And your argument regarding what happened when the pilot turned off the autopilot is yet another indictment of Boeing's design.
This is not "Oh bad pilots," this is "OMG, evidence of another Boeing fuckup." This is what occurred when the pilots disabled
MCAS per instructions.
Have you not heard of purely mechanical systems that allow for the multiplication of force? It's another Boeing design defect
that the pilots couldn't operate the flight stabilizer when the plane was under takeoff stresses. That's a typical use case!
And it was what Boeing told pilots to do and it didn't work!
From Reuters (apparently
written before the black box detail revealed that the pilots could not control the stabilizers):
Boeing pointed to long-established procedures that pilots could have used to handle a malfunction of the anti-stall system,
regardless of whether the pilots knew MCAS existed.
That checklist tells pilots to switch off the two stabilizer trim cutout switches on the central console, and then to adjust
the aircraft's stabilizers manually using trim wheels.
And that's one of they should worry about most, since that's one of highest risk times for flight, and the plane should have
been engineered with that scenario in mind. This raises the possibility that the inability of the pilots to handle the plane manually
in takeoff also somehow resulted from the changes to the aerodynamics resulting from the placement of the bigger engines.
This is his argument about how the reliance on software has led to undue relaxation of good hardware design principles:
The original FAA Eisenhower-era certification requirement was a testament to simplicity: Planes should not exhibit significant
pitch changes with changes in engine power. That requirement was written when there was a direct connection between the controls
in the pilot's hands and the flying surfaces on the airplane. Because of that, the requirement -- when written -- rightly imposed
a discipline of simplicity on the design of the airframe itself. Now software stands between man and machine, and no one seems
to know exactly what is going on. Things have become too complex to understand.
Pitch changes with power changes are common in aircraft. Even my little Cessna pitches up a bit when power is applied. Pilots
train for this problem and are used to it.
Again, the plane already had the habit of picthing up and the changes didn't add that. The question isn't if, but how much
and what to do about it. Nowhere did I read MAX exceeds some safety limits in this regard. If Boeing made the plane to physically
break regulations and tried to fix it with software then indeed that would be bad. However, I'm not aware of that.
As for the Ethiopian scenario, I was talking about
this article . It says when they tried manual, it very well could be beyond their physical ability to turn the wheels and
so they were forced to switch electrical motors back on, but that also turned up MCAS again. In fact it also says this seizing
up thing was present in the old 737 design and pilots were trained to deal with it, but somehow the plane become more reliable
and training for this failure mode was dropped. This to me doesn't look like good old days of aviation design ruined by computers.
You should read the Ethiopian Government's crash preliminary crash report. Very short and easy to read. Contains a wealth of
information. Regarding the pilot's attempt to use the manual trim wheel, according to the crash report, the aircraft was already
traveling at 340 knots indicated airspeed, well past Vmo or the aircraft's certified airspeed when they first attempted to manually
trim the nose up. It didn't work because of the excessive control forces generated by high airspeeds well beyond the aircraft's
certification. I'm not excusing Boeing, the automated MCAS nose down trim system was an engineering abomination, but the pilots
could have made their lives much easier by setting a more normal thrust setting for straight and level flight, slowing their aircraft
to a speed within the normal operating envelope, then working their runaway nose-down pitch emergency.
I didn't like the IEEE Spectrum piece very much since the author seemed to miss or exaggerate some issues, and also seemed
to confuse flying a Cessna with being expert about large airliners or aerospace engineering. The title says "software engineer"
but at the end he says "software executive". Executive doesn't always mean non-engineer but it does mean someone who is full of
themselves, and that shows through the whole article. The stuff I'm seeing from actual engineers (mostly on Hacker News) is a
little more careful. I'm still getting the sense that the 737 MAX is fundamentally a reasonable plane though Boeing fucked up
badly presenting it as a no-retraining-needed tweak to the older 737's.
There's some conventional wisdom that Boeing's crapification stems from the McDonnell merger in 1997. Boeing, then successful,
took over the failing and badly managed McDonnell. The crappy McDonnell managers then spent the next years pushing out the Boeing
managers, and subsequently have been running Boeing into the ground. I don't know how accurate that is, but it's a narrative that
rings true.
You are misrepresenting the Hacker News criticisms, and IMHO they misrepresent the piece. They don't question his software
chops. And if you really knew the software biz, "software executive" often = developer who built a company (and that includes
smallish ones). The guy OWNS a Cessna, which means he's spent as much on a plane as a lot of people spend on a house. If he was
a senior manager as you posit, that means at large company, and no large company would let an employee write something like this.
He's either between gigs or one of the top guys in a smallish private company where mouthing off like this won't hurt the business.
Notice also his contempt for managers in the article).
He's also done flight simulator time on a 757, and one commentor pointed out that depending on the simulator, it could be tantamount
to serious training, as in count towards qualifying hours to be certified to fly a 757.
They do argue, straw manning his piece, that he claims the big failure is with the software. That in fact is not what the article
says. It says that the design changes in the 737 Max made it dynamically unstable, which is an unacceptable characteristic in
any plane, no matter what size. He also describes at length the problem of relying on only one sensor as an input to the MCAS
and how that undermined having the pilots be able to act as a backup .by looking at each other's instrumentation results.
The idea that he's generalizing from a Cessna is absurd. He describes how Cessnas have the pilot having greater mechanical
control than jets like the 737. He describes how the pilots read the instrument results from each side of the plane, something
which cannot occur in a Cessna, a single pilot plane. He refers to the Cessna documentation to make the point that the norm is
to over-inform pilots as to how changes in the software affect how they operate the plane, not radically under-inform them as
Boeing did with the 737 Max.
As to the reasonableness of Travis' concerns, did you miss that a former NASA engineer has the same reservations? Are you trying
to say he doesn't understand how aircraft hardware works?
He owns a 1978 Cessna 172 , goes for about $70K,
so not quite house prices, more like a nice Tesla, whose drive by wire systems he seems to trust far more for some reason.
In regard to "dynamic instability" being unacceptable, this is a red herring. Most modern airliners rely on flight characteristic
augmentation systems in normal operation, trim systems being the most common. Additionally, there are aircraft designed
to be unstable (fighters) but rely on computers to fly them stably, to greatly increase manoeuvrability.
In regard to Cessnas being single pilot planes, the presence of flight controls on both sides of the cockpit would somewhat
bring into question this assertion .? Most 172s do however have only one set of instrumentation. When operating with two pilots
(as with let's say a student pilot and instructor) you would still have the issue of two pilots trying to agree on possibly faulty
readings from one set of non-redundant instruments.
No, it's a 1979 Cessna, and you don't know when he bought it and how much use it had, since price is significantly dependent
on flight hours. The listings I show it costs over $100K. A quick Google search says a plane with a new feel is closer to $300K.
Even $100K in equity is more than most people put down when buying a house
He also glides, and gliders often own or co-own their gliders.
The author acknowledges your point re fighters. Did you miss that he also says they are the only planes where pilots can eject
themselves from the aircraft? Arguing from what is acceptable for a fighter, where you compromise a lot on other factors to get
maneuverability, to a commercial jet is dodgy.
Regarding fighters and instability, I'm not the one that stated it's "an unacceptable characteristic in any plane, no matter
the size".
I am completely on Travis' side when it comes to the issues with culture and business that brought on these incidents. Seeing
however that these affected and overrode good engineering, I believe it's vitally important that the engineering is discussed
as accurately as possible. Hence my criticism of the piece.
Had you looked at prices as you claimed to, Cessnsa 172s specify the year in the headline description. 1977 v. 1978 v 1979
on a page I got Googling for 1979.
You are now well into the terrain of continuing to argue for argument sake.
I agree with you that the article is good and the criticisms I've read seem largely unmerited (quite a few of those btl on
that article are clearly bad faith arguments), but just to clarify:
That in fact is not what the article says. It says that the design changes in the 737 Max made it dynamically unstable,
which is an unacceptable characteristic in any plane, no matter what size.
My understanding (non-engineer, but long time aviation nerd) is that many aircraft, including all Airbus's are dynamically
unstable and use software to maintain stability. The key point I think that the article makes is that there is a fundamental difference
between designing hardware and software in synchronicity to make a safe aircraft (i.e Airbus), and using software as a fudge to
avoid making hard decisions when the hardware engineers find they can't overcome a problem without spending a fortune in redesigns.
Hard engineering 'fudges' are actually really common in aircraft design – little bumps or features added to address stability
problems encountered during testing – an example being the little fore planes on the
Tupolev 144 supersonic airliner. But it seems Boeing
took a short cut with its approach and a lot of people paid for this with their lives. Only time will tell if it was a deep institutional
failure within Boeing or just a flaw caused by a rushed roll-out.
I've personal experience of a catastrophic design flaw (not one that could kill people, just one that could cost hundreds of
millions to fix) which was entirely down to the personal hang-ups of one particular project manager who was in a position to silence
internal misgivings. Of course, in aircraft design this is not supposed to happen.
I'm reminded of the famous "software is eating the world" quote by uber VC Marc Andreessen. He posits that in an era where
Silicon valley style, software led disruption stalks every established industry, even companies that "make things" (hardware)
need a radical rethink in terms of how they see themselves. A company like Boeing, under this worldview, needs to think of itself
as a software company with a hardware arm attached, otherwise it might have its lunch eaten by a plucky upstart (to say nothing
of Apple or Google) punching above its weight.
It's not farfetched to imagine an army of consultants selling this "inoculate yourself from disruption" thinking to companies
like Boeing and being taken seriously. With Silicon valley's obsession with taking humans out of the loop (think driverless cars/trucks,
operator-less forklifts etc) one wonders whether these accidents will highlight the limitations of technology and halt the seemingly
inexorable march towards complex automation reducing pilots to cockpit observers coming along for the ride.
Ad homimem and therefore logically invalid. Plus reading comprehension problem. The "native pitch stability" comment was from
Mike Slack, a former NASA engineer, and not Travis, the Cessna owner.
I think that the point is that there are aircraft that don't take over the controls and dive into the ground. It's possible
to have these kinds of aircraft. These kinds of aircraft are good to have. It's like an existence proof.
No, not dangerously pro-automation. More like dangerously stuck in the past, putting bandaids on a dinosaur to keep false profits
rolling in. AF447 could be argued against excessive automation, but not the Max.
i think they are real profits. And the automation that crashed two planes over a short time span and it wasn't excessive? Band
aids on what was one of the safest planes ever made (how many 737's crashed pre 737 max? the hardware problem was higher landing
gear along with engines that were larger and added lift to the plane. MCAS was intended to fix that. It made it worse. I won't
be flying on a MAX.
Thanks for the article but re the above comments–perhaps that 737 pilot commenter should weigh in because some expert commentary
on this article is badly needed. My impression from the Seattle Times coverage is that the MCAS was not implemented to keep the
plane from falling out of the sky but rather to finesse the retraining issue. In other words a competent pilot could handle the
pitch up tendency with no MCAS assist at all if trained or even informed that such a tendency existed. And if that's the case
then the notion that the plane will be grounded forever is dubious indeed.
This isn't quite correct, and I suggest you read the article in full.
The issue isn't MCAS. It is that MCAS was to compensate for changes in the planes aerodynamics that were so significant that
it should arguably have been recerttified as being a different plane. That was what Boeing was trying to avoid above all Former
NASA engineer Mike Slack makes that point as well. Travis argues that burying the existence of MCAS in the documentation was to
keep pilots from questioning whether this was a different plane:
It all comes down to money, and in this case, MCAS was the way for both Boeing and its customers to keep the money flowing
in the right direction. The necessity to insist that the 737 Max was no different in flying characteristics, no different in
systems, from any other 737 was the key to the 737 Max's fleet fungibility. That's probably also the reason why the documentation
about the MCAS system was kept on the down-low.
Put in a change with too much visibility, particularly a change to the aircraft's operating handbook or to pilot training,
and someone -- probably a pilot -- would have piped up and said, "Hey. This doesn't look like a 737 anymore." And then the
money would flow the wrong way.
I think you just said what I said. My contention is that the only reason the plane could ever be withdrawn is that the design
is so inherently unstable that this extra gizmo–the MCAS–was necessary for it to fly. Whereas it appears the MCAS was for marketing
purposes and if it had never been added to the plane the two accidents quite likely may never have happened–even if Boeing didn't
tell pilots about the pitch up tendency.
But I'm no expert obviously. This is just my understanding of the issue.
From what I've read at related links in the last week, a significant element is common type rating. Manufacturers don't have
to go through expensive recertification if their modifications are minor enough, earning a common type rating. Thus, the successive
incarnations of the 737 over the decades.
I'm only a layman, but a citizen who tries to stay informed and devours material on this topic. The common type rating merry
go round needs to stop. It seems at least that a new engine with a different position that alters the basic physics of the plane
shouldn't qualify for common type rating, which should be reserved only for the most minor of modifications.
As one who has followed the entirety of the MAX stories as detailed by the Seattle Times aviation reporters, it all comes back
to "first principles": a substantive change in aerodynamics by introduction of an entirely new pair of engines should have required
complete re-engineering of the airframe. We know that Boeing eschewed that approach, largely for competitive and cost considerations,
and subsequently tried to mate the LEAP engines to the existing 737 airframe by installing the MCAS, amongst other design "tweaks",
i.e., "kludging" a fix. Boeing management recognized that this wouldn't be the "perfect" aircraft, but with the help of a compliant
FAA and a huge amount of "self-assessment", got the beast certified and airborne -- -- until the two crashes, that is. Whether
the airlines and/or the flying public will ever accept the redo of MCAS and other ancillary fixes is highly problematic, as the
entire concept was flawed from the kick-off.
Also, it should be mentioned in passing that even the LEAP engines are having some material-wear issues:
https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/cfm-reviews-fleet-after-finding-leap-1a-durability-i-442669/
Th IEEE Spectrum piece is somewhat reasonable but the author obvious lacks technical knowledge of the 737. He also does not
understand why MCAS was installed in the first place.
For example:
– "However, doing so also meant that the centerline of the engine's thrust changed. Now, when the pilots applied power to the
engine, the aircraft would have a significant propensity to "pitch up," or raise its nose.
– The MAX nose up tendency is a purely aerodynamic effect. The centerline of the thrust did not change much.
– "MCAS is implemented in the flight management computer, "
– No. It is implemented in the Flight Control Computer of which there are two. (There is only on FMC unit.)
-" It turns out that the Elevator Feel Computer can put a lot of force into that column -- "
– The Elevator Feel unit is not a computer but a deterministic hydraulic-mechanical system.
– "Neither such [software] coders nor their managers are as in touch with the particular culture and mores of the aviation
world as much as the people who are down on the factory floor, "
– The coders who make the Boeing and Airbus systems work are specialized in such coding. Software development for aircrafts It
is a rigid formularized process which requires a deep understanding of the aviation world. The coders appropriately implement
what the design engineers require after the design review confirmed it. Nothing less, nothing more.
and more than a dozen other technical misunderstandings and mistakes.
If the author would have read some of the PPRUNE threads on the issue or asked an 737 pilot he would have known all this.
Given what has happened with Boeing manufacture (787s being delivered with tools and bottles rattling around in them), you
have no basis for asserting how Boeing does software in practice these days.
And you have incontrovertible evidence of a coding fail: relying on only one sensor input when the plane had more than one
sensor. I'm sorry, I don't see how you can blather on about safety and coders supposedly understanding airplanes with that coded
in.
JeffC who actually worked at Boeing years ago and said the coding was conservative (lots of people checked it) because they
were safety oriented but also didn't get very good software engineers, since writing software at Boeing was boring.
I still have some trouble blaming the 737 losses, ipso facto, on using automation to extend an old design. There are
considerably more complex aircraft systems than MCAS that have been reliably automated, and building on a thoroughly proven framework
usually causes less trouble than suffering the teething problems of an all new design.
At the risk of repeating the obvious, a basic principle of critical systems, systems which must be reliable, is that they can
not suffer from single point failures. You want to require at least two independent failures to disturb a system, whose combined
probability is so low that other, unavoidable failure sources predominate, for example, weather or overwhelming, human error.
This principle extends to the system's development. The design and programming of a (reliable) critical system can not suffer
from single point failures. This requires a good many, skilled people, paying careful attention to different, specific stages
of the process. Consider a little thing I once worked on: the indicator that confirms a cargo door is closed, or arguably, that
is neither open nor unlatched. I count at least five levels of engineers and programmers, between Boeing and the FAA, that used
to validate, implement and verify the work of their colleagues, one or more levels above and/or below: to insure the result was
safe.
I bet what will ultimately come out is that multiple levels of the validation and verification chain have been grievously degraded
("crapified") to cut costs and increase profits. The first and last levels for a start. I am curious and will ask around.
The MAX isn't a proven framework. Boeing fundamentally altered the 737 design by shifting the position of the engines. The
MCAS fudge doesn't fix that.
My own impression is that there seems to be a clash between three separate philosophies at work here. The first is the business
culture of Boeing which had supplanted Boeing's historical aviation-centric ways of doing things in aircraft design. The bean-counters
& marketing droids took over, outsourced aircraft construction to such places as non-union workshops & other countries, and thought
that cutting corners in aircraft manufacture would have no long-term ill effects. The second philosophy is that of software design
that failed to understand that the software had to be good to go as it was shipped and had little understanding of what happens
when you ship beta-standard software to an operational aircraft in service. This was to have fatal consequences. The third culture
is that of the pilots themselves which seek to keep their skills going in an aviation world that wants to turn them into airplane-drivers.
If there is any move afoot to have self flying aircraft introduced down the track, I hope that this helps kill it.
Boeing is going to take a massive financial hit and so it should. Heads should literally roll over this debacle and it did not
help their case when they went to Trump to keep this plane flying in the US without thought as to what could have happened if
a US or Canadian 737 MAX had augured in. The biggest loser I believe is going to be the US's reputation with aviation. The rest
of the aviation world will no longer trust what the FAA says or advise without checking it themselves. The trust of decades of
work has just been thrown out the door needlessly. Even in the critical field of aircraft crash investigation, the US took a hit
as Ethiopia refused the demands that the black boxes be sent to the US but sent them instead to France. That is something that
has flown under the radar. This is going to have knock-on effects for decades to come.
Beginning to look like a trade war with the EU. airbus, boeing, vw, US cars; but haven't seen Japan drawn into this yet. Mercedes
Benz is saying EV cars are nonsense, they actually create more pollution than diesel engines and they are recommending methane
gasoline (that sounds totally suicidal), and hydrogen power. Hydrogen has always sounded like a good choice, so why no acclaim?
It can only be the resistance of vested interests. The auto industry, like the airline industry, is frantically trying to externalize
its costs. Maybe we should all just settle down and do a big financial mutual insurance company that covers catastrophic loss
by paying the cost of switching over to responsible manufacturing and fuel efficiency. Those corporations cooperate with shared
subsidiaries that manufacture software to patch their bad engineering – why not a truce while they look for solutions?
The whole 737 development reminds me of a story a GM engineer told me. Similarly to the aviation industry, when GM makes modifications
to an existing part on a vehicle, if the change is small enough the part does not need to be recertified for mechanical strength,
etc. One of the vehicles he was working on had a part failure in testing, so they looked at the design history of the part. It
turns out that, similarly to 737, this was a legacy part carried over numerous generations of the vehicle.
Each redesign of the vehicle introduced some changes, they needed to reroute some cabling, so they would punch a new hole through
the part. But because the change was small enough the engineering team had the option of just signing off on the change without
additional testing. So this went on for years, where additional holes or slits were made in the original part and each change
was deemed to be small enough that no recertification was necessary. The cumulative change from the original certification was
that this was now a completely different part and, not surprisingly, eventually it failed.
The interesting part of the story was the institutional inertia. As all these incremental changes were applied to the part,
nobody bothered to check when was the last time part was actually tested and what was the part design as that time. Every step
of the way everybody assumed their change is small enough not to cause any issue and did not do any diligence until a failure
occured.
Which brings me back to the 737, if I am not mistaken, 737 MAX is, for certification purposes, considered an iteration of the
original 737. The aircraft though is very different than the original, increased wingspan (117′ vs 93′), length (140′ vs. 100′).
737 NG is similarly different.
So for me the big issue with the MAX is the institutional question that allowed a plane so different from the original 737
certification to be allowed as a variant of the original, without additional pilot training or plane certification. Upcoming 777X
has the same issue, it's a materially different aircraft (larger wingspan, etc.) that has a kludge (folding wingtips) to allow
it to pass as a variant of the original 777. It will be interesting to see, in the wake of the MAX fiasco, what treatment does
the 777X get when it comes to certification.
The FAA needs to be able to follow these tweaks. Maybe we citizens need a literal social contract that itemizes what we expect
our government to actually do.
BTW, I do not believe that the problems are insoluble, or as a result of a design philosophy, but rather it is a result of
placing sales over engineering.
There are a number of aerodynamic tweaks that could have dealt with this issue (larger horizontal tail comes to mind, but my
background is manufacturing not aerodynamics), but this would require that pilots requalify for a transition between the NG and
the MAX, which would likely mean that many airlines would take a second look at Airbus.
We should avoid blaming "software" or "automation" for this accident. The B737 MAX seems to be a case of "Money first, safety
second" culture, combined with insufficent regulatory control.
The root of the B737 MAX accidents was an erroneous safety hazard assessment: The safety asessment (and the FAA) believed the
MCAS had a 0.6 authority limit. This 0.6 limit meant that an erroneous MCAS function would only have limited consequences. In
the safety jargon, its severity was classifed as "Major", instead of "Catastrophic".
After the "Major" classification was assigned, the subsequente design decions (like using a single sensor, or perhaps insufficient
testing) are acceptable and in line with the civil aviation standards.
The problem is that the safety engineer(s) failed to understand that the 0.6 limit was self-imposed by the MCAS software, not
enforced by any external aircraft element. Therefore, the MCAS software could fail in such a way that it ignored the limit. In
consequence, MCAS should have been classifed "Catastrophic".
Everybody can make mistakes. We know this. That is why these safety assessments should be reviewed and challenged inside the
company and by the FAA. The need to launch the MAX fast and the lack of FAA oversight resources surely played a greater role than
the usage of software and automation.
Yves: Thanks for this post; it has (IMO) a level-headed perspective. It is not about assigning *blame*, it is about *What,
Why, and How to Prevent* what happened from re-occurring. Blame is for courts and juries. Good luck finding jurors who are not
predisposed; due to relentless bombardment with parroted misinformation and factoids.
I wonder how often MCAS kicked in on a typical 737MAX flight, in situation where the weather vane advising of angle attack
was working as per normal. Since we are excluding the time when auto-pilot is working and also the time when the flaps are down,
there is only a very small time window immediately after take off. I would venture to guess that the MCAS would almost always
adjust the plane at least once. This is once too many, if one is to believe that the notion of design improvement includes improvement
in aerodynamic behavior. The fact that MCAS could only be overridden by disabling the entire motor control of the trim suggests
that the MCAS feature is absolutely necessary for the thing to fly without surprise stalls. There is no excuse in a series of
a product for handling associated with basic safety becoming worse with a new model. Fuel efficiency is laudable and a marketable
thing, but not when packaged together with the bad compromise of bad flight behavior. If the fix is only by lines of code, they
really have not fixed it completely. We know they are not going to be able to move the engines or the thrust line or increase
the ground clearance of the plane so the software fix will be sold as the solution. While it probably does not mean that there
will be more planes being trimmed to crash into the ground, it does make for some anxiety for future passengers. Loss of sales
would not be a surprise but more of a surprise will be the deliveries that will be completed regardless.
MCAS was intended to rarely if ever activate. It is supposed to nudge the aircraft to a lower angle of attack if AoA is getting
high to cause instability in certain parts of the flight envelope. An overly aggressive takeoff climb would be an example. Part
of the problem is that a faulty AoA sensor resulted in the system thinking it was at this extreme case, repeatedly, and in a way
that was difficult for the pilots to identify since they had not been properly trained and the UX was badly implemented.
Yes I've heard that. But do not believe it, given how it is implemented. So I really would like to know how it behaves in non-catastrophic
situations. If so benign, why not allow it to turn off without turning off trim controls? Did not the earlier 737's not need this
feature?
In a non-catastrophic situation, and if functioning correctly, it's my understanding it would felt by the flight crew as mild
lowering of the nose by the system. This is is to keep the plane from increasing angle of attack, which could lead to a stall
or other instability.
It's my understanding MCAS should be treated as a separate system from the trim controls, although they both control the pitch
of the stabilator. Trim controls are generally not "highly dynamic", in that the system (or pilot) sets the trim value only occasionally
based primarily on things like the aircraft weight distribution (this could however change during a flight as fuel is burned,
for example). MCAS on the other hand, while monitoring AoA continuously in flight modes where it is activated only kicks in to
correct excessive inputs from the pilots, or as a result of atmospheric disturbances (wind shear would be one possible cause of
excessive AoA readings).
Neither trim nor MCAS are required to manually fly the plane safely if under direct pilot control and the the pilot is fully
situationally aware.
Earlier 737s did not need this feature due to different aerodynamic properties of the plane. They however still have assistive
features such as stick shakers to help prevent leaving the normal flight envelope.
I've read a bit more in regard to allowing MCAS to turn off without turning off trim, I have no idea why it was implemented
as it was, since previous 737s allow separate control of trim and MCAS. More here:
This however still doesn't change the fact that neither is required to fly the plane, given proper training and communication,
both of which were criminally lacking.
IBG, YBG corporate decisions by people who will probably never fly in these planes, complete regulatory capture and distract
with the little people squabbling over technical details. In China there would probably already have been a short trial, a trip
to the river bank, a bullet through the head, organ harvesting for the corporate jocks responsible. Team Amrika on the way down.
On the subject of software, the underlying issue of ship and patch later is because the process of software is full of bad
practice.
Two examples, "if" and "new".
If is a poor use of a stronger mechanism, FSMs, or Finite State Machines.
'new' is a mechanism that leads to memory leaks, and crashes.
I developed some middleware to bridge data between maineframs and Unix systems that ran 7×24 for 7 years continuously without
a failure, because of FSMs and static memory use.
In an email to me (and presumably to all AAdvantage program members) transmitted at 03:00 April 17 UTC ( i.e. , 11 PM
April 16 US EDT), American Airlines states that it is canceling 737 MAX flights through August 19 (instead of June 5 as stated
by the earlier newspaper story cited in this post).
Eliminating introductory and concluding paragraphs that are marketing eyewash (re. passenger safety and convenience), the two
payload paragraphs state in their entirety:
To avoid last-minute changes and to accommodate customers on other flights with as much notice as possible before their
travel date, we have made the decision to extend our cancellations for the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft through August 19, 2019,
while we await recertification of the MAX.
While these changes impact only a small portion of our more than 7,000 departures each day this summer, we can plan more
reliably for the peak travel season by adjusting our schedule now. Customers whose upcoming travel has been impacted as a result
of the schedule change are being contacted by our teams.
I'm surprised this has not already appeared in earlier comments. Anybody else get this?
Now do Tesla & their bs Tesla Autonomy Investor Day please.
It appears to have it all from beta testing several ton vehicles on public roads, (like BA's beta testing of the MAX) to regulatory
capture( of NTSB, & NTHSA as examples) and a currently powerful PR team.
Apparently they're going to show off their "plan" how one will be able to use their Tesla in full autonomous mode while every
other OEM sez it can't be done by the end of this year let alone within a couple decades as the average person perceives autonomous
driving.
First of all, I didn't read the article, so I'm not going to critique it. There were some comments in the excerpt that Yves
provided that I think require some clarification and/or correction.
The 737 is not a fly-by-wire (FBW) aircraft. There are multiple twisted steel control cables that connect the flight control
in the cockpit to the various control surfaces. The flight controls are hydraulically assisted, but in case of hydraulic (or electric)
failure, the cable system is sufficient to control the aircraft.
In both the 737NG and the MAX, there are automation functions that can put in control inputs under various conditions. Every
one of these inputs can be overridden by the pilot.
In the case of the recent MAX accidents, the MCAS system put in an unexpected and large input by moving the stabilizer. The
crews attempted to oppose this input, but they did so mostly by using elevator input (pulling back on the control column). This
required a great deal of arm strength which they eventually could not overcome. However, if either pilot had merely used the strength
of their thumb to depress the stabilizer trim switch on the yoke, they could have easily opposed and cancelled out whatever input
MCAS was trying to put in. Why neither pilot took this fairly basic measure should be one of the key areas of investigation.
These comments are not intended in any way to exonerate Boeing, the FAA, and the compromises that went into the MAX design.
There is a lot there to be concerned about. However, we are not dealing with a case of an automation system that was so powerful
and autonomous that pilots could not override what it was trying to do.
Bjorn over at Leeham had this analysis:
"the Flight Crew followed the procedures prescribed by FAA and Boeing in AD 2018-23-51. And as predicted the Flight Crew could
not trim manually, the trim wheel can't be moved at the speeds ET302 flew."
In other words, the pilots followed the Boeing recommended procedure to turn off the automatic trim, but at the speeds they
were flying and the large angle that MCAS has moved the stabilizer to, the trim wheels were bound up and could not be moved by
human effort.
They then turned electric trim on to try to help their effort, and MCAS put the nose down again.
Also: Did no one ever test the humans factors of this in a simulator? At HP, when we put out a new printer, we had human factors
bring in average users to see if using our documentation, they could install the printer.
It is mind-blowing to me that Boeing and the FAA can release an Air Worthiness Directive (The fix after the Lion crash) that
was apparently never simulator tested to see if actual humans could do it.
None of the above should have passed muster. None of the above should have passed the "OK" pencil of the most junior engineering
staff, much less a DER [FAA Designated Engineering Representative].
That's not a big strike. That's a political, social, economic, and technical sin .
This is the thing that has been nagging me all along about this story. The "most junior engineering staff" thing is not an
exaggeration – engineers get this drilled into them until it's part of their DNA. I read this and immediately thought that it
points to a problem of culture and values (a point I was pleased to see the author make in the next paragraph). Bluntly, it tells
us that the engineers are not the ones running the show at Boeing, and that extends even to safety critical situations where their
assessment should trump everything.
One of two things needs to happen as a result of this. Either Boeing needs to return to the old safety first culture, or it
needs to go out of business. If neither happens, we are going to see a lot more planes falling out of the sky.
I want to reemphasize that all airplane crashes are a chain of events; if one event does not occur there are no causalities.
Lion Air flight should never have flow with a faulty sensor. But afterwards when the elevator jackscrew was found in the full
nose down position that forced the plane to dive into the Java Sea, Boeing and FAA should have grounded the fleet until a fix
was found. The deaths in Ethiopia are on them. The November 2018 737-8 and -9 Airworthiness Directive was criminally negligent.
Without adequate training the Ethiopian Airline pilots were overwhelmed and not could trim the elevator after turning off the
jackscrew electric motor with the manual trim control due to going too fast with takeoff thrust from start to finish. With deregulation
and the end of government oversight, the terrible design of the 737 Max is solely on Boeing and politicians who deregulated certification.
Profit clearly drove corporate decisions with no consideration of the consequences. This is popping up consistently now from VW
to Quantitative Easing, or the restart of the Cold War. Unless the FAA requires pilot and copilot simulator training on how to
manually trim the 737 Max with all hell breaking loose in the cockpit, the only recourse for customers is to boycott flying Boeing.
Ultimately the current economic system that puts profit above all else must end if humans are to survive.
Before last month's crash of a flight that began in Ethiopia, Boeing Co. said in a legal
document that large, upgraded 737s "cannot be used at what are referred to as 'high/hot'
airports."
At an elevation of 7,657 feet -- or more than a mile high -- Addis Ababa's Bole
International Airport falls into that category. High elevations require longer runways and
faster speeds for takeoff.
remove Share link Copy Trump would have been better off Tweeting something like...
"The safety of the flying public worldwide is of the utmost importance to all of us. I have
been in constant contact with Boeings CEO and have complete confidence that the improvements
they are making will make the 737MAX one of the safest planes ever built. No 737 MAX will take
to the skies that I would not put my own family member on".
See the problem with the max is it will never be safe. What boeing did was try and put a
square peg in a round hole. To save costs both in certification and pilot training boeing
decided to just take the 737 airframe and put bigger more fuel efficient engines on it so
they wouldn't loose market share to airbus. That was a stupid mistake. The bigger engines
hung so low they had to mount them higher and more forward thus creating aerodynamic issues.
The new engine mounting causes air flow disruption over the inner wing during climb out. That
is why they messed with the mcas. You cannot break the laws of physics and then fix them with
software. Sorry that will never work.
Boeing is still delivering the 73NG and should make an offer to the airlines to replace
each MAX order 1 for 1 with a 737-800 or -900 at cost. The traveling public will have
immediate confidence, the airlines can fill schedules, and Boeing can clean house on the MAX
"leadership" team.
"... Boeing "effectively put profitability and growth ahead of airplane safety and honesty" by rushing the 737 MAX to market without "extra" or "optional" safety features - a practice that has outraged the company's critics - as it feared ceding market share to Airbus SE. Moreover, Boeing failed to disclose a conflict of interest surrounding its 'regulatory capture' of the FAA, which was revealed to have outsourced much of the approval process for the 737 MAX to Boeing itself. ..."
"... Of course, this shareholder lawsuit is only the tip of the legal iceberg for Boeing. The company will likely face a blizzard of lawsuits filed by family members of those killed during the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes, the first of which has already been filed. ..."
Boeing shareholders who lost money selling their stock after the Ethiopian Airlines crash are suing
the company
for concealing unflattering material information from the public, defrauding
shareholders in the process,
Reuters
reports.
The class-action lawsuit, filed in Chicago, is seeking damages after the
March 10 crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 wiped $34 billion off Boeing's market cap within
two weeks. But if true, the crux of the lawsuit might have broader repercussions for the company as
it tries to convince regulators to lift a grounding order that has kept the Boeing 737 MAX 8
grounded since mid-March.
In essence, the suit alleges that
the company concealed safety concerns about the 737
MAX and its anti-stall software
following the Lion Air crash in October that killed 189
people,
but did nothing to alert the public or correct the issue.
Boeing "effectively put profitability and growth ahead of airplane safety and honesty" by
rushing the 737 MAX to market without "extra" or "optional" safety features - a practice that
has outraged the company's critics - as it feared ceding market share to Airbus SE. Moreover,
Boeing failed to disclose a conflict of interest surrounding its 'regulatory capture' of the
FAA, which was revealed to have outsourced much of the approval process for the 737 MAX to
Boeing itself.
Lead plaintiff Richard Seeks bought 300 Boeing shares in early March and sold them at a loss
after the shares dumped more than 12% in the weeks after the second crash, which would have left
him with a loss between $15,000 and $20,000. The lawsuit seeks damages for Boeing investors who
bought the company's shares from Jan. 8 to March 21. Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg and CFO Gregory
Smith have also been named as defendants.
Of course, this shareholder lawsuit is only the tip of the legal iceberg for Boeing. The company
will likely face a blizzard of lawsuits filed by family members of those killed during the Lion
Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes, the
first of which
has already been filed.
Though its shares have recovered from their post-grounding lows, they have hit another bout of
turbulence this week after the company announced that it would slash production of the 737 MAX by
20%, before announcing that its aircraft orders in Q1 fell to 95 from 180 a year earlier.
Having grown up in Seattle within 15 miles of Plant 2 on Boeing
Field, I know a lot about The Boeing Company. I went to private
high school with Bill Boeing III and during college had a great
summer job at Troy Laundry delivering shop towels and uniforms to
all of the Boeing plants in the region.
I used to laugh because,
when I drove the laundries 20ft UPS style box van through those
enormous sliding doors into Everett's 747 Plant to deliver fresh
laundry and pickup soiled's, I would spend the next 4-hours
driving around 'inside' the building. I got to know dozens of
workers by name, who 'worked the line'.
After college, more than 20% of my graduating class went to
work at 'the lazy B' as it was commonly known. Not me. I went into
sales and started selling computers.....to Boeing and the FAA.
As the size my computer sales territory was increased to
include the entire West Coast I began to fly Boeing aircraft
almost everyday for 10-years. and on-board those aircraft I met
and flew with many Boeing executives.
One day I happened to sit next the 'current' Boeing HR
director, and after getting to know him confided that I
frequently smoked marijuana after work. To which he replied, "I
would gladly have the 15% of our work force that are alcoholics,
or into hard drugs smoke pot because it's effects are short-term
but when people come to work 'hung-over or jacked-up' that is when
bad **** happens and mistakes are made".
Even though, I had been 'on the line' and met many Boeing
employees I had not realized until that moment the seriousness of
what he was saying. The HR guy went on to say, that they 'had to
have redundancy at every step in the construction process to
ensure bad workmanship didn't make it into the final product'.
Fast forward 20-years; and Boeing airplanes are falling from
the sky......and it's not a surprise to me.
The legacy 737 "NG" is a solid aircraft, and its still being
produced down the same build lines as the MAX. Just the
previous generation. That plane drove the vast majority of
Boeings sales. It woulndt be hard to scale down MAX production
and just go back to producing the NG, but they wont do that.
They'll fix the MAX and move on, and as long as no more crashes
occur, eventually the public will forget.
The FED can't let the stock price fall on a company of that
size, so the FED trading desk will lend assistance. There is a
certain evil in this, because the stock
deserves
to
fall, and when it doesn't, it has the effect of vindicating the
company for the events that occurred. This is why free markets
should never be meddled with. It's actually immoral.
This is utterly predictable and something I've already said
repeatedly: Boeing did not tell pilots or its customers about the
mechanism. Boeing is criminally liable for the MURDER of 300+
people. Families will sue and cancellations will follow.
Then
this:
"In essence, the suit alleges that
the company concealed
safety concerns about the 737 MAX and its anti-stall software
following
the Lion Air crash in October that killed 189 people,
but did
nothing to alert the public or correct the issue.
Boeing
"effectively put profitability and growth ahead of
airplane safety and honesty"
Pilots complained about the problem and were IGNORED.
This is good to see. Boeing needs to be held accountable for
MURDER. But instead Trump slaps tariffs on the competitor, AIRBUS,
to pay for Boeing's criminality.
This will not stop companies choosing AIRBUS and its good
safety record over a bunch of psychopathic murderers. If Boeing
had put safety first, it's competitor would not be picking up
business..ironic...
I still don't understand the point of the MCAS. Clearly it causes
the plane to do a face plant into the ground. However, like in
that one situation where the jump seat pilot knew to turn it off,
the plane flew fine. Boeing says the MCAS is to prevent the plane
from stalling at steep angles of attack, but the plane seems to
stay in the air better without it. So which is it? The fact is the
Boeing neglected to put it in the manual suggests it was done on
purpose. The fact that they sold a version with no redundancy to
the AOC sensor seems to be have done on purpose. Since Boeing is
basically an arm of the DOD, the question should be who was on the
flights that crashed? That's the missing link in this debacle.
Check out "
moonofalabama.org
",
very good explanation, plus some further links to pilot forums.
From what I understand, the pilots get into some sort of "catch
22"....even if they switch of the MACS, they are doomed.
I'm not I anyway in the flying biz, but work in power
generating control systems, and funny enough, use quite a lot
of Rosemount sensors in ex areas. They are good sensors, but
always use two in mission critical operations.
Why Boeing opted for just one, really blows my mind.
What would an extra sensor cost, 10.000USD?, altogether with
new software..bla-bla.
Now look what this is costing them.
Well, this is what happens when MBA bean counters take over
a former proud engineering company.
From what I understand, the pilots get into some sort
of "catch 22"....even if they switch of the MACS, they
are doomed.
Sort of like that. The flight surface is controlled by a
big screw. Normally an electric motor spins the nut that
drives the screw up and down. The switch cuts out the motor,
and they have hand cranks to move the screw. But in this
last crash, the too-clever-by-half software system had
already run the screw all the way to the 'nose down' end,
and it would have taken them several minutes of hand
cranking to get it back to the center position. They didn't
have several minutes, and the motor is capable of driving
the screw the other way. Since the problem was intermittent
(software kicks in on a time interval), they were hoping it
would behave for a few seconds, and switched the motor back
on. It didn't.
On a side note, the Airbus does not have these hand-crank
controls. Everything is run by the computer -- so if
anything goes wrong, the pilot must 'reason' with the
computer to correct it. . . "Sorry Dave, I can't do that".
Well, this is what happens when MBA bean counters take
over a former proud engineering company.
This reminds me of Feynman's analysis of what went wrong
with the Space Shuttle Challenger. The engineers said the
O-rings would be too stiff and brittle, and the launch
should wait until it warmed up a bit. But a delay was
costing the shuttle program a million dollars a minute, or
whatever.
Feynman explained that the early space program was run by
the pocket-protector guys with slide rules. And it worked.
But over time the management had been replaced by people
whose careers depended on influencing other people and not
on matter, energy, and materials.
Another thing, the pilots had commanded full throttle and
never throttled back during the whole ordeal. So when
they killed the trim motor, they couldn't overcome the
aerodynamic force on the stab to move the trim screw back
into position.
Apparently they could have got the trim
corrected ENOUGH to make a difference if they could have
moved it more easily, but at the speeds they were going,
the airspeed over the stab was too high to manually move
the screw fast enough to make a difference.
Sort of. When you kill the electric trim motor, you have to
use a manual wheel to adjust trim. The issue came that their
airspeed was so high that the load on the stab made it
nearly impossible to move without the electric motor.
They
had been at full throttle from rotation until they hit the
dirt. The pilot had told the copilot to throttle back but it
got lost in the chaos somewhere and never happened.
So when they killed the trim motor and tried to move it
manually, they had to overcome all the aerodynamic force on
the stab, and they just couldnt do it at those airspeeds
without the electric motor to overcome the force.
The bigger the fuselage the bigger the engines needed. The
bigger the engines needed the more forward on the wing they
go to keep from scraping on the ground. The more forward on the
wing the more unbalanced then plane became. They've stretch a
frame which was developed in the 60's beyond its original
design.
The executives who oversaw the fiasco that is now Boeing, long ago
parachuted out with multi million dollar pensions and stock
options while their Seattle workers had their pensions slashed.
They're now assembling Dreamliners in NC with off the street non
unionized labor, former TacoBell and Subway workers. They moved
their Corp headquarters to Chicago away from where the actual work
was being performed to pursue the "work" of stock buy backs and
cozying up to the FAA. All the above a recipe for disaster. A
perfect mirror of how the 1/10th of 1% operate in the Oligarchy we
call America.
Boeing is in full on crisis mode because of the 737 Max fiasco.
Anything else they say or do is pure show and fraud.
The are not to far from losing the entire narrowbody airline
market, pretty much the meat and bones of Airline production.
Today Airbus still has the A-320 neo, and Russia and China are
chomping at the bit with the MC21 and C919, all far more advanced
and superior than a 1960's designed stretched pulled and too late
737 .
If Boeing loses market share and the narrow body airline
market, shame on the USA.
This will become a text book expample of the fall of a nation
and empire.
How can a Company like Boeing have technology like the B2 and
everything the DOD gives them and lose the international market
for narrowbody airliners..
To call this a national disgrace is a compliment to Boeing and
the US aerospace industies complete disregard and hubris in such
an important component of worldwide aviation.
This in not a sad chapter for Boeing, its sad for the USA
BeanCounters, Parasitoids, and Bells-WhistlesMktg Types Running
an Aerospace/Aviation Engineering and Defense Tech Conglomerate
into the Ground - Literally.
Civil Aviation Div "Jumped the
Shark" the moment they passed on a redesigned Successor to the
737 Base Model in the mid 2000s and decided to strap on Larger
Engines and GunDeck the Revision and Certifications.
Failure to disclose regulatory capture is a tough one. Do you
issue an 8K on that one? Maybe bury it in the 10K in risk
statements
"We maintain several regulatory relationships that
will rubber stamp approvals for our aircraft. In the event of a
major safety violation, those cozy relationships could be exposed
and we be found to not only be negligent, but also nefariously so
through regulatory capture."
You bought an airline manufacturer that had a malfunction.
There's plenty of people to blame, but it's part of the business
you own.
The 737 Max is a legacy of its past, built on
decades-old systems, many that date back to the original version. The strategy, to keep
updating the plane rather than starting from scratch, offered competitive advantages.
Pilots were comfortable flying it, while airlines didn't have to invest in costly new
training for their pilots and mechanics. For Boeing, it was also faster and cheaper to
redesign and recertify than starting anew.
But the strategy has now left the company in crisis, following two deadly crashes in less
than five months. The Max stretched the 737 design, creating a patchwork plane that left
pilots without some safety features that could be important in a crisis -- ones that have
been offered for years on other planes. It is the only modern Boeing jet without an
electronic alert system that explains what is malfunctioning and how to resolve it.
Instead pilots have to check a manual.
The Max also required makeshift solutions to keep the plane flying like its ancestors,
workarounds that may have compromised safety. While the findings aren't final,
investigators suspect that one workaround, an anti-stall system designed to compensate for
the larger engines, was central to the crash last month in Ethiopia and an earlier one in
Indonesia.
"They wanted to A, save money and B, to
minimize the certification and flight-test costs," said Mike Renzelmann, an engineer who
worked on the Max's flight controls. "Any changes are going to require recertification."
Mr. Renzelmann was not involved in discussions about the sensors.
... ... ...
On 737s, a light typically indicates the
problem and pilots have to flip through their paper manuals to find next
steps. In the doomed Indonesia flight, as the Lion Air pilots struggled
with MCAS for control, the pilots consulted the manual moments before
the jet plummeted into the Java Sea, killing all 189 people aboard.
"Meanwhile, I'm flying the jet," said
Mr. Tajer, the American Airlines 737 captain. "Versus, pop, it's on your
screen. It tells you, This is the problem and here's the checklist
that's recommended."
Boeing decided against adding it to the
Max because it could have prompted regulators to require new pilot
training, according to two former Boeing employees involved in the
decision.
The Max also runs on a complex web of
cables and pulleys that, when pilots pull back on the controls, transfer
that movement to the tail. By comparison, Airbus jets and Boeing's more
modern aircraft, such as the 777 and 787, are "fly-by-wire," meaning
pilots' movement of the flight controls is fed to a computer that
directs the plane. The design allows for far more automation, including
systems that prevent the jet from entering dangerous situations, such as
flying too fast or too low. Some 737 pilots said they preferred the
cable-and-pulley system to fly-by-wire because they believed it gave
them more control.
In the recent crashes, investigators
believe the MCAS malfunctioned and moved a tail flap called the
stabilizer, tilting the plane toward the ground. On the doomed Ethiopian
Airlines flight, the pilots tried to combat the system by cutting power
to the stabilizer's motor, according to the preliminary crash report.
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Once the power was cut, the pilots tried
to regain control manually by turning a wheel next to their seat. The
737 is the last modern Boeing jet that uses a manual wheel as its backup
system. But Boeing has long known that turning the wheel is difficult at
high speeds, and may have required two pilots to work together.
In the final moments of the Ethiopian
Airlines flight, the first officer said the method wasn't working,
according to the preliminary crash report. About 1 minute and 49 seconds
later, the plane crashed, killing 157 people.
The Seattle Times published what I consider a
devastating article a few Sundays ago. It highlighted the depth to which Boeing and the FAA cut
corners on the certification of the Max, more specifically the characterization of the impact of
a failure of the new MCAS system. This allowed them to utilize the cheaper single sensor AOA
vane instead of 2 or 3. The aircraft also got delivered with the MCAS system applying many more
nose down units of trim than what was published in the certification process. Topping it off was
the failure of Boeing to disclose to its customers that the MCAS system was installed or what
abnormal or emergency procedures would accompany the system.
True, there are two kinds of pilots, and some are
better. BUT no pilot should be put in a critical situation by bad and rushed design. What was
Boeing thinking? `Yes, there is slight chance that things can go wrong... but if the pilot is
experienced, if the weather is fine, if the FO is focused (and so on...) they will surely make
it.' Why taking that risk? They should design a plane that even a drunk pilot can handle.
The MCAS moves the entire horizontal tail (aka
horizontal stabilizer) not just "a tail flap called the stabilizer". Normal stabilizer trim also
moves the whole horizontal stabilizer. Presumably the "flap" being referred to here,
incorrectly, is the elevator, a flight control surface on the trailing edge of the horizontal
tail, which is control by pulling and pushing the flight control column. Both horizontal
stabilizer trim and elevator affect the pitch (nose up, nose down) of the aircraft. Typically,
horizontal stabilizer trim is used to maintain a particular attitude (e.g. level flight in
cruise) without requiring the pilot to continously apply significant forces to the control
column, which is tiring. When MCAS engages it effectively is attempting to "cancel out" the
pilot's elevator command (pulling back on the control column to bring the nose up by ) by moving
the horizontal stabilizer to counteract the pilots action (rotating the the horizontal
stabilizer so that it's leading edge points down).
Boeing should have gone with a clean sheet of
paper design. Look at the Airbus A220, previously known as Bombardier C Series. It has nearly
similar seating, yet it carries less fuel, but has a longer range than the MAX8. Modern wing
design. Heck, Boeing should have just bought Bombardier 10 years ago. Now they are in the arms
of Airbus.
Why doesn't BA just trash the entire max8 program
and become a subcontractor for A320s instead? After all there is a demand for 5000 aircraft that
now will not be fulfilled. Boeing management should be put on trial for criminal negligence.
Finally, a comprehensive report that doesn't go on
and on about software. The problem was a mechanical and training one, and instead of fixing the
problems, the Bean Counters took over and went on the cheap.
Pilots start some new Boeing planes by turning a knob and flipping two
switches.
The Boeing 737 Max, the newest passenger jet on the market, works differently.
Pilots follow roughly the same seven steps used on the first 737 nearly 52 years ago: Shut off the cabin's
air-conditioning, redirect the air flow, switch on the engine, start the flow of fuel, revert the air flow,
turn back on the air conditioning, and turn on a generator.
The 737 Max is a legacy of its past, built on decades-old systems, many that
date back to the original version. The strategy, to keep updating the plane rather than starting from scratch,
offered competitive advantages. Pilots were comfortable flying it, while airlines didn't have to invest in
costly new training for their pilots and mechanics. For Boeing, it was also faster and cheaper to redesign and
recertify than starting anew.
But the strategy has now left the company in crisis, following
two deadly crashes in less than five months
. The Max stretched the 737 design, creating a patchwork plane
that left pilots without some safety features that could be important in a crisis -- ones that have been offered
for years on other planes. It is the only modern Boeing jet without an electronic alert system that explains
what is malfunctioning and how to resolve it. Instead pilots have to check a manual.
The Max also required makeshift solutions to keep the plane flying like its
ancestors, workarounds that may have compromised safety. While the findings aren't final, investigators suspect
that one workaround, an anti-stall system designed to compensate for the larger engines, was central to the
crash last month in Ethiopia and an earlier one in Indonesia.
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The Max "ain't your father's Buick," said Dennis Tajer, a spokesman for the
American Airlines pilots' union who has flown the 737 for a decade. He added that "it's not lost on us that the
foundation of this aircraft is from the '60s."
Dean Thornton, the president of Boeing, with an engine on the first
737-400 in 1988 in Seattle. The larger engines for Boeing's new Max line of jets prompted a number of
design issues.
Credit
Benjamin
Benschneider/The Seattle Times, via Associated Press
Image
Dean Thornton, the president of Boeing, with an engine on the first 737-400 in 1988 in Seattle. The larger
engines for Boeing's new Max line of jets prompted a number of design issues.
Credit
Benjamin
Benschneider/The Seattle Times, via Associated Press
The Max, Boeing's best-selling model, with more than 5,000 orders, is suddenly
a reputational hazard. It could be weeks or months before regulators around the world lift their ban on the
plane, after Boeing's expected
software fix was delayed
. Southwest Airlines and American Airlines have canceled some flights through May
because of the Max grounding.
The company has
slowed production
of the plane, putting pressure on its profits, and some buyers are reconsidering their
orders. Shares of the company fell over 4 percent on Monday, and are down 11 percent since the Ethiopia crash.
"It was state of the art at the time, but that was 50 years ago," said Rick
Ludtke, a former Boeing engineer who helped design the Max's cockpit. "It's not a good airplane for the current
environment."
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The 737 has long been a reliable aircraft, flying for decades with relatively
few issues. Gordon Johndroe, a Boeing spokesman, defended the development of the Max, saying that airlines
wanted an updated 737 over a new single-aisle plane and that pilots were involved in its design.
"Listening to pilots is an important aspect of our work. Their experienced
input is front-and-center in our mind when we develop airplanes," he said in a statement. "We share a common
priority -- safety -- and we listen carefully to their feedback." He added that American regulators approved the
plane under the same standards they used with previous aircraft.
Video
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Boeing introduced the 737 Max as a reliable fuel- and cost-efficient solution to air travel in the 21st century.
After two fatal Max crashes, all of the Max aircraft in the world are believed to have been grounded.
Credit
Credit
Chang
W. Lee/The New York Times
Boeing's chief executive, Dennis Muilenburg, said in a statement on Friday that
the crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia appeared to have been caused by the Max's new anti-stall system. "We have
the responsibility to eliminate this risk, and we know how to do it," he said.
At a factory near Seattle on Jan. 17, 1967, flight attendants christened the
first Boeing 737, smashing champagne bottles over its wing. Boeing pitched the plane as a smaller alternative
to its larger jets, earning it the nickname the "Baby Boeing."
Early on, sales lagged Boeing's biggest competitor, McDonnell Douglas. In 1972,
Boeing had delivered just 14 of the jets, and it considered selling the program to a Japanese manufacturer,
said Peter Morton, the 737 marketing manager in the early 1970s. "We had to decide if we were going to end it,
or invest in it," Mr. Morton said.
Ultimately, Boeing invested. The 737 eventually began to sell, bolstered by
airline deregulation in 1978. Six years later, Boeing updated the 737 with its "classic" series, followed by
the "next generation" in 1997, and the Max in 2017. Now nearly one in every three domestic flights in the
United States is on a 737, more than any other line of aircraft.
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Each of the three redesigns came with a new engine, updates to the cabin and
other changes. But Boeing avoided overhauling the jet in order to appease airlines, according to current and
former Boeing executives, pilots and engineers, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the
open investigations. Airlines wanted new 737s to match their predecessors so pilots could skip expensive
training in flight simulators and easily transition to new jets.
Boeing 737 Max: What's Happened After Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air Crashes
Boeing's strategy worked. The Federal Aviation Administration never required
simulator training for pilots switching from one 737 to the next.
"Airlines don't want Boeing to give them a fancy new product if it requires
them to retrain their pilots," said Matthew Menza, a former 737 Max test pilot for Boeing. "So you iterate off
a design that's 50 years old. The old adage is: If it's not broke, don't fix it."
It did require engineering ingenuity, to ensure a decades-old jet handled
mostly the same. In doing so, some of the jet's one-time selling points became challenges.
For instance, in the early years of the 737, jet travel was rapidly expanding
across the world. The plane's low-slung frame was a benefit for airlines and airports in developing countries.
Workers there could load bags by hand without a conveyor belt and maintain the engines without a lift, Mr.
Morton said. In the decades that followed, the low frame repeatedly complicated efforts to fit bigger engines
under the wing.
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By 2011, Boeing executives were starting to question whether the 737 design had
run its course. The company wanted to create an entirely new single-aisle jet. Then Boeing's rival Airbus added
a new fuel-efficient engine to its line of single-aisle planes, the A320, and Boeing quickly decided to update
the jet again.
The 737 Max 8 at Boeing's plant in Renton, Wash. Nearly one in every
three domestic flights in the United States is on a 737, more than any other line of aircraft.
Credit
Ruth
Fremson/The New York Times
Image
The
737 Max 8 at Boeing's plant in Renton, Wash. Nearly one in every three domestic flights in the United States is
on a 737, more than any other line of aircraft.
Credit
Ruth
Fremson/The New York Times
"We all rolled our eyes. The idea that, 'Here we go. The 737 again,'" said Mr.
Ludtke, the former 737 Max cockpit designer who spent 19 years at Boeing.
"Nobody was quite perhaps willing to say it was unsafe, but we really felt like
the limits were being bumped up against," he added.
Some engineers were frustrated they would have to again spend years updating
the same jet, taking care to limit any changes, instead of starting fresh and incorporating significant
technological advances, the current and former engineers and pilots said. The Max still has roughly the
original layout of the cockpit and the hydraulic system of cables and pulleys to control the plane, which
aren't used in modern designs. The flight-control computers have roughly the processing power of 1990s home
computers. A Boeing spokesman said the aircraft was designed with an appropriate level of technology to ensure
safety.
When engineers did make changes, it sometimes created knock-on effects for how
the plane handled, forcing Boeing to get creative. The company added a new system that moves plates on the wing
in part to reduce stress on the plane from its added weight. Boeing recreated the decades-old physical gauges
on digital screens.
As Boeing pushed its engineers to figure out how to accommodate bigger, more
fuel-efficient engines, height was again an issue. Simply lengthening the landing gear to make the plane taller
could have violated rules for exiting the plane in an emergency.
Boeing 737 engines at the company's factory in 2012. By 2011, Boeing
executives were starting to question whether the 737 design had run its course.
Credit
Stephen
Brashear/Associated Press
Image
Boeing 737 engines at the company's factory in 2012. By 2011, Boeing executives were starting to question
whether the 737 design had run its course.
Credit
Stephen
Brashear/Associated Press
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Instead, engineers were able to add just a few inches to the front landing gear
and shift the engines farther forward on the wing. The engines fit, but the Max sat at a slightly uneven angle
when parked.
While that design solved one problem, it created another. The larger size and
new location of the engines gave the Max the tendency to tilt up during certain flight maneuvers, potentially
to a dangerous angle.
To compensate, Boeing engineers created the automated anti-stall system, called
MCAS, that pushed the jet's nose down if it was lifting too high. The software was intended to operate in the
background so that the Max flew just like its predecessor. Boeing didn't mention the system in its training
materials for the Max.
Boeing also designed the system to rely on a single sensor -- a rarity in
aviation, where redundancy is common. Several former Boeing engineers who were not directly involved in the
system's design said their colleagues most likely opted for such an approach since relying on two sensors could
still create issues. If one of two sensors malfunctioned, the system could struggle to know which was right.
Airbus addressed this potential problem on some of its planes by installing
three or more such sensors. Former Max engineers, including one who worked on the sensors, said adding a third
sensor to the Max was a nonstarter. Previous 737s, they said, had used two and managers wanted to limit
changes.
The angle of attack sensor, bottom, on a Boeing 737 Max 8.
Credit
Ruth
Fremson/The New York Times
Image
The
angle of attack sensor, bottom, on a Boeing 737 Max 8.
Credit
Ruth
Fremson/The New York Times
"They wanted to A, save money and B, to minimize the certification and
flight-test costs," said Mike Renzelmann, an engineer who worked on the Max's flight controls. "Any changes are
going to require recertification." Mr. Renzelmann was not involved in discussions about the sensors.
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The Max also lacked more modern safety features.
Most new Boeing jets have electronic systems that take pilots through their
preflight checklists, ensuring they don't skip a step and potentially miss a malfunctioning part. On the Max,
pilots still complete those checklists manually in a book.
A second electronic system found on other Boeing jets also alerts pilots to
unusual or hazardous situations during flight and lays out recommended steps to resolve them.
On 737s, a light typically indicates the problem and pilots have to flip
through their paper manuals to find next steps. In the doomed Indonesia flight, as the Lion Air pilots
struggled with MCAS for control, the pilots consulted the manual moments before the jet plummeted into the Java
Sea, killing all 189 people aboard.
"Meanwhile, I'm flying the jet," said Mr. Tajer, the American Airlines 737
captain. "Versus, pop, it's on your screen. It tells you, This is the problem and here's the checklist that's
recommended."
Boeing decided against adding it to the Max because it could have prompted
regulators to require new pilot training, according to two former Boeing employees involved in the decision.
The Max also runs on a complex web of cables and pulleys that, when pilots pull
back on the controls, transfer that movement to the tail. By comparison, Airbus jets and Boeing's more modern
aircraft, such as the 777 and 787, are "fly-by-wire," meaning pilots' movement of the flight controls is fed to
a computer that directs the plane. The design allows for far more automation, including systems that prevent
the jet from entering dangerous situations, such as flying too fast or too low. Some 737 pilots said they
preferred the cable-and-pulley system to fly-by-wire because they believed it gave them more control.
In the recent crashes, investigators believe the MCAS malfunctioned and moved a
tail flap called the stabilizer, tilting the plane toward the ground. On the doomed Ethiopian Airlines flight,
the pilots tried to combat the system by cutting power to the stabilizer's motor, according to the preliminary
crash report.
Advertisement
Once the power was cut, the pilots tried to regain control manually by turning
a wheel next to their seat. The 737 is the last modern Boeing jet that uses a manual wheel as its backup
system. But Boeing has long known that turning the wheel is difficult at high speeds, and may have required two
pilots to work together.
In the final moments of the Ethiopian Airlines flight, the first officer said
the method wasn't working, according to the preliminary crash report. About 1 minute and 49 seconds later, the
plane crashed, killing 157 people.
Correction :
April
8, 2019
An earlier version of this article transposed the death tolls
in two crashes involving Boeing's 737 Max jets. In the Lion Air crash in Indonesia last year, 189 people
died, not 157; 157 people were killed in the Ethiopian Airlines crash last month, not 189.
Rebecca R. Ruiz and Stephen Grocer contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
A version of this article appears in print on
April 9, 2019
, on Page A 1 of the New York edition with the headline:
Boeing's 737 Max: '60s Design Meets '90s Computing Power.
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Donald Trump Is Trying to Kill You:
Trust the pork producers; fear the wind turbines.
By Paul Krugman
There's a lot we don't know about the legacy Donald Trump will leave behind. And it is, of
course, hugely important what happens in the 2020 election. But one thing seems sure: Even if
he's a one-term president, Trump will have caused, directly or indirectly, the premature
deaths of a large number of Americans.
Some of those deaths will come at the hands of right-wing, white nationalist extremists,
who are a rapidly growing threat, partly because they feel empowered by a president who calls
them "very fine people."
Some will come from failures of governance, like the inadequate response to Hurricane
Maria, which surely contributed to the high death toll in Puerto Rico. (Reminder: Puerto
Ricans are U.S. citizens.)
Some will come from the administration's continuing efforts to sabotage Obamacare, which
have failed to kill health reform but have stalled the decline in the number of uninsured,
meaning that many people still aren't getting the health care they need. Of course, if Trump
gets his way and eliminates Obamacare altogether, things on this front will get much, much
worse.
But the biggest death toll is likely to come from Trump's agenda of deregulation -- or
maybe we should call it "deregulation," because his administration is curiously selective
about which industries it wants to leave alone.
Consider two recent events that help capture the deadly strangeness of what's going
on.
One is the administration's plan for hog plants to take over much of the federal
responsibility for food safety inspections. And why not? It's not as if we've seen safety
problems arise from self-regulation in, say, the aircraft industry, have we? Or as if we ever
experience major outbreaks of food-borne illness? Or as if there was a reason the U.S.
government stepped in to regulate meatpacking in the first place?
Now, you could see the Trump administration's willingness to trust the meat industry to
keep our meat safe as part of an overall attack on government regulation, a willingness to
trust profit-making businesses to do the right thing and let the market rule. And there's
something to that, but it's not the whole story, as illustrated by another event: Trump's
declaration the other day that wind turbines cause cancer.
Now, you could put this down to personal derangement: Trump has had an irrational hatred
for wind power ever since he failed to prevent construction of a wind farm near his Scottish
golf course. And Trump seems deranged and irrational on so many issues that one more bizarre
claim hardly seems to matter.
But there's more to this than just another Trumpism. After all, we normally think of
Republicans in general, and Trump in particular, as people who minimize or deny the "negative
externalities" imposed by some business activities -- the uncompensated costs they impose on
other people or businesses.
For example, the Trump administration wants to roll back rules that limit emissions of
mercury from power plants. And in pursuit of that goal, it wants to prevent the Environmental
Protection Agency from taking account of many of the benefits from reduced mercury emissions,
such as an associated reduction in nitrogen oxide.
But when it comes to renewable energy, Trump and company are suddenly very worried about
supposed negative side effects, which generally exist only in their imagination. Last year
the administration floated a proposal that would have forced the operators of electricity
grids to subsidize coal and nuclear energy. The supposed rationale was that new sources were
threatening to destabilize those grids -- but the grid operators themselves denied that this
was the case.
So it's deregulation for some, but dire warnings about imaginary threats for others.
What's going on?
Part of the answer is, follow the money. Political contributions from the meat-processing
industry overwhelmingly favor Republicans. Coal mining supports the G.O.P. almost
exclusively. Alternative energy, on the other hand, generally favors Democrats.
There are probably other things, too. If you're a party that wishes we could go back to
the 1950s (but without the 91 percent top tax rate), you're going to have a hard time
accepting the reality that hippie-dippy, unmanly things like wind and solar power are
becoming ever more cost-competitive.
Whatever the drivers of Trump policy, the fact, as I said, is that it will kill people.
Wind turbines don't cause cancer, but coal-burning power plants do -- along with many other
ailments. The Trump administration's own estimates indicate that its relaxation of coal
pollution rules will kill more than 1,000 Americans every year. If the administration gets to
implement its full agenda -- not just deregulation of many industries, but discrimination
against industries it doesn't like, such as renewable energy -- the toll will be much
higher.
So if you eat meat -- or, for that matter, drink water or breathe air -- there's a real
sense in which Donald Trump is trying to kill you. And even if he's turned out of office next
year, for many Americans it will be too late.
Trump does not want to go back to the 50s when government policy was to greatly increase
costs by paying more workers more, while driving down prices, and elinimating rents and
scarcity profits.
Trump wants to kill jobs that are paid, but force work that is unpaid.
Well, if you means 1850, by the 50s, that's when Trump would have excelled by raping his
slaves to create more workers he would force to work, probably Brazil style, worked to death
to cut costs, based on continued enslavement of slaves, ie, no ban on slave imports after
1808.
Trump may be trying to kill us...but do Democrats have a plan to save us? So far, I can
discern no coherent message or plan from corrupt, comatose Democrats other than 'Trump is
guilty [of something or other.]
You are simply rejecting Democrats calls to reverse policies since 1970 to MAGA as failed
liberal policies because its not new, never tried before, and not free.
The growth of the 50s and 60s was too costly, requiring people to work, save, and pay ever
rising prices, taxes, and living costs.
You want economics where you can buy a million dollar home for $50,000 and have schools
funded by modest property taxes on million dollar homes, but with low tax rates on houses
assessed at $40,000.
TANSTAAFL
The only way working class families get better off is by paying higher costs.
Meet the democratic socialist who sent Rahm's floor leader packing
By Mark Brown
There's never been a Chicago politician who quite fits the profile of Andre Vasquez, the
former battle rapper and current democratic socialist who just took down veteran 40th Ward
Ald. Patrick O'Connor, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's city council floor leader.
That probably scares some people.
But those folks might want to nod to the wisdom of the 54 percent of voters in the North
Side ward who waded through an onslaught of attack ads and concluded they have nothing to
fear from the 39-year-old AT&T account manager, his music or his politics.
I stopped by Vasquez's campaign office to satisfy my own curiosity about this new breed of
aldermen. Vasquez will be part of a Chicago City Council bloc of at least five, probably six
democratic socialists who, if nothing else, will alter the debate on a range of issues.
Vazquez said he understands democratic socialism as "just injecting a healthy dose of
democracy in a system we already have.
"Where we see the influence of big money and corporations in our government, where we see
the corruption in the council, where we see elected officials as bought and paid for, to me,
democratic socialism is providing a counterbalance," he said.
Vasquez also reminded me that generalizing about democratic socialists is as foolish as
generalizing about Democrats.
"I think even within democratic socialism there's such a spectrum of different folks,
right? I tend to be a counterbalance to some of the louder stuff, the louder hardcore, what
some would view as extreme," said Vasquez, noting that he sometimes takes flak within
democratic socialist circles because he's never read Marx and doesn't "bleed rose red."
"Everyone's got their part to play," he said. "Somebody's going to be the loud one in the
room because you need that kind of impetus to move things forward. And someone's got to be
the one who's making deals on legislation. You can't have ideological fights and think you're
going to come up with solutions."
Though Vasquez prefers the dealmaker role, his background suggests he also could get loud
if the occasion demanded.
Until he decided it was time to do something else with his life around 2010, Vasquez was a
battle rapper who performed under the stage name Prime. He had enough success to pay the
bills for a while, touring nationally and appearing on MTV's "Direct Effect" and HBO's "Blaze
Battle."
For old people like me who are unclear on the concept (begging the pardon of the rest of
you), battle rapping involves performers trading insults in rhyme put to music.
"Then, imagine you have a crowd around you," Vasquez explained. "And now people are
cheering you on, and the insults are getting more vicious and intricate, and it becomes a
sporting match. Right? So, in that arena, you're getting heralded for how well you can insult
the person in front of you while rhyming and improvising all as this stream of consciousness
is coming out."
I suggested a battle rap might occasionally be just the antidote to the drudgery of a
council meeting, but Vasquez wasn't amused.
The problem with battle rapping, as 40th Ward voters were reminded ad nauseam during the
runoff campaign, is that the genre relies heavily on crude insults invoking disrespectful
terms for women and LGBTQ individuals.
"The issue is toxic masculinity plagues everything," said Vasquez, who obliquely fronted
an apology for his past verbal misdeeds early in the campaign -- and more directly when hit
with a barrage of negative mailers detailing a greatest hits of his transgressions.
A lesser candidate would have been toast at that point, but Vasquez had girded himself in
advance through his door-to-door organizing.
By then, enough 40th Ward residents knew who Vasquez really was -- the son of Guatemalan
immigrants, a city kid from the neighborhoods who had become a family guy with two young kids
and a late-discovered talent for politics -- that they couldn't be scared off.
Vasquez, who lives in Edgewater, was introduced to politics when he felt the Bern in 2014
and volunteered for Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. A left-leaning community group,
Reclaim Chicago, then recruited Vasquez to expand upon his organizing talents -- and taught
him how to build a classic grassroots campaign.
The result is a new Latino alderman in a ward where fewer than one-fifth of the voters are
Latino. And a Democratic Socialist representing a ward previously ruled by Emanuel's floor
leader.
"I'm not trying to plant a flag," Vasquez said. "I'm trying to make sure that people can
live here and not be forced out."
"Vasquez, who lives in Edgewater, was introduced to politics when he felt the Bern in 2014
and volunteered for Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. A left-leaning community group,
Reclaim Chicago, then recruited Vasquez to expand upon his organizing talents -- and taught
him how to build a classic grassroots campaign."
I like the centrists like Krugman and liberals here like EMike who dismiss Bernie as a
cult of personality. No he's spurring local organizing which doesn't revolve around him.
Will Bernie as president build walls around big cities like Chicago, build iron Curtains, to
keep the rich inside these cities where all their wealth is taxed away every year, and they
are prevented from moving to the towns outside Chicago city limits?
"... In fact Airbus 320 series never had the same issue as it was properly designed from scratch and not like Max 8 retrofitted to carry bigger engines by that changing distribution of balance of the Aircraft and hence requiring steeper ascending angle and faster speed (for the same wing design) and hence by design more prone to stalling while in takeoff phase. ..."
"... So what is the same in B737 Max and A320 was response of AI software to sensor failures and specific external conditions of flight. In both cases such scenarios were never trained in simulators. ..."
Thanks for the report but I may add that AI auto pilot systems on Airbus are not same or
similar to MCAS as they are all integrated in autopilot on A320 series while on B737 Max 8
they are completely separate from one another not communicating at all.
In fact Airbus 320 series never had the same issue as it was properly designed from
scratch and not like Max 8 retrofitted to carry bigger engines by that changing distribution
of balance of the Aircraft and hence requiring steeper ascending angle and faster speed (for
the same wing design) and hence by design more prone to stalling while in takeoff phase.
The problem with A320 crash over Atlantic was failure of one or two of two sensors and
while in cruise phase of flight autopilot AI software response was just inappropriate in fact
detrimental as pilots were blinded disoriented during night over the ocean trying to figure
out where they are as conflicting data was coming in.
It seems by some accounts they trusted
autopilot decisions and suggestions and simply descended, hit into ocean almost
horizontally.
So what is the same in B737 Max and A320 was response of AI software to sensor failures
and specific external conditions of flight. In both cases such scenarios were never trained
in simulators.
"... Evidence has mounted implicating in both crashes an automated anti-stall system, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which was installed by Boeing in response to the new plane's tendency to pitch upward and go into a potentially fatal stall. On a whole number of fronts -- design, marketing, certification and pilot training -- information from the black boxes of the two planes points to a lack of concern for the safety of passengers and crew on the part of both Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration, reaching the level of criminality. ..."
"... Despite the presence on the plane of two angle-of-attack sensors, which signal a potential stall and trigger the automated downward pitch of the plane's nose, MCAS relied on data from only one of the sensors. This means the standard redundancy feature built into commercial jets to avert disasters resulting from a faulty sensor was lacking. Boeing's main rival to the 737 Max, the European-built Airbus A320neo, for example, uses data from three sensors to manage a system similar to MCAS. ..."
"... Pilot certification for a commercial plane typically requires hundreds of hours of training, both in simulators and in actual flights. Boeing itself is now mandating at least 21 days of training on new Max planes. ..."
"... There is no innocent explanation for these obvious safety issues. They point to reckless and arguably criminally negligent behavior on the part of Boeing executives, who rushed the new plane into service and marketed it against the Airbus A320neo on the basis of its cost-saving features. ..."
"... This is highlighted by a press release the day of the Ethiopian Airlines crash in which Boeing stated that "for the past several months and in aftermath of Lion Air Flight 610," the company "has been developing a flight control software enhancement for the 737 MAX." ..."
"... In other words, both Boeing and the FAA were aware, possibly even before the October 2018 Lion Air crash and certainly afterward, that a system critical to the safe operation of the aircraft needed to be fixed, and still allowed the plane to continue flying. The wording also suggests that the plane shouldn't have been certified for flight in the first place. ..."
"... This was aided and abetted by the Trump administration, which shielded Boeing as long as it could by not ordering the FAA to ground the plane immediately after the Ethiopian Airlines crash. There were no doubt immense concerns that such a move would cut into Boeing's multibillion-dollar profits and affect its stock price, which has nearly tripled since the election of Trump in November 2016, accounting for more than 30 percent of the increase in the Dow Jones index since then. ..."
"... The relationship between Trump and Muilenburg is only a symptom of the much broader collusion between the airline industry and the US government. Starting in 2005 and expanded during the Obama administration, the FAA introduced the Organization Designation Authorization (ODA) program, which allows the agency to appoint as "designees" airplane manufacturers' employees to certify their own company's aircraft on behalf of the government. ..."
"... This is the logical end of the deregulation of the airline industry as a whole that was spearheaded by the Democratic Carter administration, which passed the Airline Deregulation Act in 1978. With the help of liberal icon Edward Kennedy, the legislation disbanded the Civil Aeronautics Board, which up to that point treated interstate airlines as a regulated public utility, setting routes, schedules and fares. ..."
It is nearly a month since the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which slammed into
the ground only six minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa airport, killing all 157 people on
board. That disaster came less than five months after the fatal crash of Lion Air Flight 610
only 13 minutes after takeoff from Jakarta airport, killing all 189 passengers and crew
members.
Both crashes involved the same airplane, the Boeing 737 Max 8, and both followed wild
up-and-down oscillations which the pilots were unable to control.
In the weeks since these disasters, there have been no calls within the media or political
establishment for Boeing executives to be criminally prosecuted for what were evidently
entirely avoidable tragedies that killed a total of 346 people. This speaks to the corrupt
relationship between the US government and the aerospace giant -- the biggest US exporter and
second-largest defense contractor -- as well as the company's critical role in the stock market
surge and the ever-expanding fortunes of major Wall Street investors.
Black box recordings and simulations show that in the 60 seconds the pilots had to respond
to the emergency, faulty software forced the Lion Air flight into a nose dive 24 separate
times, as the pilots fought to regain control of the aircraft before plunging into the ocean at
more than 500 miles per hour.
Evidence has mounted implicating in both crashes an automated anti-stall system, the
Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which was installed by Boeing in
response to the new plane's tendency to pitch upward and go into a potentially fatal stall. On
a whole number of fronts -- design, marketing, certification and pilot training -- information
from the black boxes of the two planes points to a lack of concern for the safety of passengers
and crew on the part of both Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration, reaching the level
of criminality.
The most recent revelations concerning the March 10 Ethiopian Airlines crash, based on
preliminary findings from the official investigation, show that the pilots correctly followed
the emergency procedures outlined by Boeing and disengaged the automated flight control system.
Nevertheless, the nose of the plane continued to point downward. This strongly suggests a
fundamental and perhaps fatal flaw in the design of the aircraft. Numerous questions have been
raised about the design and certification process of the 737 Max 8 and MCAS,
including:
Despite the presence on the plane of two angle-of-attack sensors, which signal a
potential stall and trigger the automated downward pitch of the plane's nose, MCAS relied on
data from only one of the sensors. This means the standard redundancy feature built into
commercial jets to avert disasters resulting from a faulty sensor was lacking. Boeing's main
rival to the 737 Max, the European-built Airbus A320neo, for example, uses data from three
sensors to manage a system similar to MCAS.
Boeing Vice President Mike Sinnett admitted last
November that cockpit warning lights alerting pilots of a faulty angle-of-attack sensor were
only optional features on the Max 8. The MCAS system was absent from pilot manuals and flight
simulators, including for the well-known flight training program X-Plane 11, which came out in
2018, one year after the first commercial flight of the 737 Max 8. Pilot training for the 737
Max 8, which has different hardware and software than earlier 737s, was a single one-hour
computer course.
Pilot certification for a commercial plane typically requires hundreds of
hours of training, both in simulators and in actual flights. Boeing itself is now mandating at
least 21 days of training on new Max planes.
There is no innocent explanation for these obvious safety issues. They point to reckless and
arguably criminally negligent behavior on the part of Boeing executives, who rushed the new
plane into service and marketed it against the Airbus A320neo on the basis of its cost-saving
features.
Threatened with a loss of market share and profits to its chief competitor, Boeing
reduced costs by claiming that no significant training on the new Max 8 model, with the money
and time that entails, was necessary for pilots with previous 737 experience.
Such imperatives of the capitalist market inevitably downgrade safety considerations. This
is highlighted by a press release the day of the Ethiopian Airlines crash in which Boeing
stated that "for the past several months and in aftermath of Lion Air Flight 610," the company
"has been developing a flight control software enhancement for the 737 MAX."
In other words, both Boeing and the FAA were aware, possibly even before the October 2018
Lion Air crash and certainly afterward, that a system critical to the safe operation of the
aircraft needed to be fixed, and still allowed the plane to continue flying. The wording also
suggests that the plane shouldn't have been certified for flight in the first place.
This was aided and abetted by the Trump administration, which shielded Boeing as long as it
could by not ordering the FAA to ground the plane immediately after the Ethiopian Airlines
crash. There were no doubt immense concerns that such a move would cut into Boeing's
multibillion-dollar profits and affect its stock price, which has nearly tripled since the
election of Trump in November 2016, accounting for more than 30 percent of the increase in the
Dow Jones index since then.
Trump himself received a call from Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg two days after the Ethiopian
Airlines crash, during which Muilenburg reportedly continued to uphold the Max 8's safety. The
FAA finally grounded the plane on March 13, after every other country in the world had done
so.
The relationship between Trump and Muilenburg is only a symptom of the much broader
collusion between the airline industry and the US government. Starting in 2005 and expanded
during the Obama administration, the FAA introduced the Organization Designation Authorization
(ODA) program, which allows the agency to appoint as "designees" airplane manufacturers'
employees to certify their own company's aircraft on behalf of the government.
As a result, there was virtually no federal oversight on the development of the 737 Max 8.
FAA Acting Administrator Dan Elwell told Congress, "As a result of regular meetings between the
FAA and Boeing teams, the FAA determined in February 2012 that the [Max 8] project qualified
[a] project eligible for management by the Boeing ODA." This extended to the MCAS system as
well.
This is the logical end of the deregulation of the airline industry as a whole that was
spearheaded by the Democratic Carter administration, which passed the Airline Deregulation Act
in 1978. With the help of liberal icon Edward Kennedy, the legislation disbanded the Civil
Aeronautics Board, which up to that point treated interstate airlines as a regulated public
utility, setting routes, schedules and fares.
In a rational world, the ongoing Senate hearings and Department of Justice investigations
would have already brought criminal charges against Muilenburg, Sinnett, Elwell and all those
involved in overseeing the production, certification and sale of the 737 Max 8. This would
include the executives at Boeing and all those who have helped to deregulate the industry at
the expense of human lives.
Under capitalism, however, Boeing will get little more than a slap on the wrist. Experts
estimate the company will likely be fined at most $800 million, less than one percent of the
$90 billion Boeing expects in sales from the Max 8 in the coming years. As in Hurricane
Katrina, the Wall Street crash in 2008, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 and Hurricanes
Harvey and Maria in 2017, the brunt of this disaster will be borne by the working class.
The Boeing 737 Max 8 disasters point to the inherent incompatibility between safe,
comfortable and affordable air transport and private ownership of the airline industry, as well
as the division of the world economy between rival nation-states. These catastrophes were
driven by both the greed of Boeing executives and big investors and the intensifying trade
conflict between the United States and Europe.
The technological advances that make it possible for travelers to move between any two
points in the world in a single day must be freed from the constraints of giant corporations
and the capitalist system as a whole. Major airlines and aerospace companies must be
expropriated on an international scale and transformed into publicly owned and democratically
controlled utilities, as part of the establishment of a planned economy based on social need,
not private profit.
Too many hooray, we are the USSA, America is the best cheerleaders, have no idea of the
gravity of the situation they will face, when the dollar and by extension the Petrodollar
implodes.
The rejection of the USSA has already started, but the average Yank hasn't noticed. When
Ethiopia, can reject a direct request from Uncle Scam and send the Black-Boxes to Europe,
because the USSA cannot be trusted, says it all. It is the little things we miss, things that
seem small and insignificant, that actually reveals a lot and the Ethiopian rejection was
one.
The world has simply had enough of USSA diktats and subsidising them. The USSA is merely
4% of the worlds population, that consumes 24.8% of the worlds resources and this situation
is totally untenable. A nation of exceptionalists. 5%? Yes. The rest? lol
A technical issue that Boeing flagged in a safety warning after the deadly 737 MAX 8 crash
in Indonesia could happen to any other aircraft, and it's "not unlikely" that the manufacturer
knew about it, aviation experts told RT. Earlier this week, Boeing issued a safety update
to pilots flying its newest 737 MAX airliner, warning of a possible fault in a sensor that
could send the aircraft into a violent nosedive.
That sensor measures air flow over a plane's wings, but its failure can lead to an
aerodynamic stall.
International aviation experts told RT that a problem of this kind could doom aircraft of
any type. The tragedy that happened to Lion Air's Boeing 737 MAX is not the first of its kind
to involve a faulty
"Pitot tube" – a critical air-speed sensor that measures the flow velocity
– explained Elmar Giemulla, a leading German expert in air and traffic law.
"This is not unusual in the way it happened before," he noted, mentioning incidents
similar to the Lion Air crash. Back in 1996, a Boeing 757 operated by Turkey's Birgenair
stalled and crashed in the Caribbean because of a blocked pitot tube. Likewise, erroneous
air-speed indications, coupled with pilot errors, led to the crash of an Air France Airbus A330
over the Atlantic in 2009.
While the problem is not entirely new, it is unclear how Boeing had tackled it, according to
Giemulla. "It is not very unlikely" that Boeing knew about the problem, he said, warning
that "more than 200 planes are concerned and this could happen tomorrow again."
There is so much experience with [using Pitot tubes] that it surprises me very much
that this could happen to a newly developed plane.
However, the expert doubted that there has been any cover-up of the issue, instead
suggesting that "obviously gross negligence" had been involved.
A 737 MAX 8 servicing Lion Air flight 610 last week ploughed into the waters of the Java Sea
shortly after take-off from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board. Investigators say there
is a possibility that inaccurate readings fed into the MAX's computer could have sent the plane
into a sudden descent.
If markets were truly free and there was real capitalism then airlines would be looking at
the new and excellent Russian MC-21 which does what Boeing was trying to do with the 737 Max.
The MC-21 will safely handle passengers in the 140 to 160 passengers and is a mid range plane
that can go as far as 4,000 miles.
Instead – Boeing lobbies the corrupt U.S. AIPAC Congress to keep a Boeing
monopoly of death traps like the 737 Max allowing some Airbus sales. They also blocked a nice
Bombardier mid range jet from Canada.
I've flown in the Bombardier in South America– it is a fine aircraft.
"... "Sadly, these two entirely preventable airline crashes demonstrate that the FAA is ill-equipped to oversee the aerospace industry and will downplay serious hazards and safety risks to the public rather than sound the alarm about safety concerns, problems, issues and hazards that pose substantial, probable, and/or foreseeable risks to human life," attorneys for Stumo said in the lawsuit. ..."
"... "Boeing, and the regulators that enabled it, must be held accountable for their reckless actions." The chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee said this week that whistleblowers have come forward to report that FAA safety inspectors, including those involved with approvals for the 737 Max, lacked proper training and certifications. ..."
"... But legal experts have said the second disaster could prove even more damaging for the company. That's because plaintiffs will argue the manufacturer was put on notice by the earlier tragedy that there was something dangerously wrong with its planes that should have been fixed. ..."
The parents of Samya Stumo, 24, alleged Boeing was "blinded by its greed" and rushed the 737
Max 8 to market with the "knowledge and tacit approval" of the FAA, while hiding defects in its
automated flight-control system. The suit also cites a similar flaw in the
Lion Air flight of a 737 Max 8 jet that crashed into the Java Sea on October 29 , killing
189.
The complaint alleges that decisions by Boeing leaders contributed to the crash and
"demonstrate Boeing's conscious disregard for the lives of others," including designing an
aircraft with a flight-control system that is "susceptible to catastrophic failure" in the
event of a single defective sensor made by Rosemount Aerospace.
'Ill-equipped'
"Sadly, these two entirely preventable airline crashes demonstrate that the FAA is
ill-equipped to oversee the aerospace industry and will downplay serious hazards and safety
risks to the public rather than sound the alarm about safety concerns, problems, issues and
hazards that pose substantial, probable, and/or foreseeable risks to human life," attorneys for
Stumo said in the lawsuit.
"Boeing, and the regulators that enabled it, must be held
accountable for their reckless actions." The chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee said
this week that whistleblowers have come forward to report that FAA safety inspectors, including
those involved with approvals for the 737 Max, lacked proper training and certifications.
Senator Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, said those claims prompted him to investigate
potential connections between training and certification shortcomings and the FAA's evaluation
of the airliner.
The Senate panel's probe is the latest in a string of investigations by US
officials and lawmakers into how the FAA cleared the 737 Max as safe to fly. The Transportation
Department's inspector general is reviewing the FAA's process for approving the airworthiness
of new jets and aiding a Justice Department criminal probe.
Criminal probe
A grand jury convened by US prosecutors last month subpoenaed a former Boeing engineer
demanding he provide testimony and documents related to the 737 Max.
FAA Acting Administrator Dan Elwell has said the agency "welcomes external review of our
systems, processes and recommendations." Boeing faces the prospect of substantial payouts to
the families of passengers if it's found responsible for both the Ethiopia Air and Lion Air
crashes.
But legal experts have said the second disaster could prove even more damaging for the
company. That's because plaintiffs will argue the manufacturer was put on notice by the earlier
tragedy that there was something dangerously wrong with its planes that should have been
fixed.
The company failed itself by replacing engineers with Wall Street accountants.... typical
US corporation destroyed from withing by asset strippers, chiselers, deregulators... the
complete gamut of "free enterprise" vampires leaving the US economy in shambles.
Agree with that, theres been a serious drive to focus on bean-counting and bringing in
"mainstream" business leadership from companies like GE/Toyota/3m (think outsourcing/stock
buybacks/automate/layoff type)
Its one of the few companies that has a real hard time getting rid of skilled labor,
because building an aircraft is an incredibly huge undertaking, with lots of hand fitting and
a wide array of technical skills, so getting rid of the labor hasnt worked to this point.
But they're trying hard to get inline with the typical "modern" business model, and it
hasnt been great for morale.
Boeing has been working on a fix to the anti-stall software for some time now. However,
Reuters today reported that regulators including EASA knew that the MAX's trim control was
confusing.
"... No. Possibly Boeing & the FAA will solve the immediate issue, but they have destroyed Trust. ..."
"... It has emerged on the 737MAX that larger LEAP-1B engines were unsuited to the airframe and there is no way now to alter the airframe to balance the aircraft. ..."
"... Boeing failed to provide training or training material to pilots or even advise them the existence of MCAS. There was a complex two step process required of pilots in ET302 and JT610 crashes and their QRH handbook did not explain this: ..."
No. Possibly
Boeing & the FAA will solve the immediate issue, but they have
destroyed Trust.
Other brands of
aircraft like Airbus with AF447 established trust after their A330
aircraft plunged into the Atlantic in a mysterious accident.
With Airbus
everyone saw transparency & integrity in how their accidents were
investigated. How Boeing & FAA approached accident investigation
destroyed public Trust.
By direct
contrast in the mysterious disappearance of MH370, Boeing
contributed nothing to the search effort and tried to blame the
pilot or hijackers.
With the 737MAX
in Lion Air and Ethiopian crashes Boeing again tried to blame
pilots, poor training, poor maintenance and then when mechanical
defect was proven, Boeing tried to downplay how serious the issue
was and gave false assurances after Lion Air that the plane was
still safe. ET302 proved otherwise.
It is no longer
possible to trust the aircraft's certification. It is no longer
possible to trust that safety was the overriding principle in
design of the Boeing 737 MAX nor several other Boeing designs for
that matter.
The Public have
yet to realize that the Boeing 777 is an all electric design where
in certain scenarios like electrical fire in the avionics bay, an
MEC override vent opens allowing cabin air pressure to push out
smoke. This silences the cabin depressurization alarms.
As an
electrical failure worsens, in that scenario another system called
ELMS turns off electrical power to the Air Cycle Machine which
pumps pressurized air into the cabin. The result of ELMS cutting
power means the override vent fails to close again and no new
pressurized air maintains pressure in the cabin. Pilots get no
warning.
An incident in
2007 is cited as AD 2007–07–05 by the FAA in which part but not
all of this scenario played out in a B777 at altitude.
MH370 may have
been the incident in which the full scenario played out, but of
course Boeing is not keen for MH370 to be found and unlike Airbus
which funded the search for AF447, Boeing contributed nothing to
finding MH370.
It has emerged
on the 737MAX that larger LEAP-1B engines were unsuited to the
airframe and there is no way now to alter the airframe to balance
the aircraft.
It also emerged
that the choice to fit engines to this airframe have origins in a
commercial decision to please Southwest Airlines and cancel the
Boeing 757.
Boeing failed
to provide training or training material to pilots or even advise
them the existence of MCAS. There was a complex two step process
required of pilots in ET302 and JT610 crashes and their QRH
handbook did not explain this:
The MAX is
an aerodynamically unbalanced aircraft vulnerable to any sort of
disruption, ranging from electrical failure, out of phase
generator, faulty AOA sensor, faulty PCU failure alert, digital
encoding error in the DFDAU.
Jason Eaton
Former Service Manager
Studied at University of
Life
Lives in Sydney,
Australia
564k answer views
50.7k
this month
Answered Mar 24, 2019
·
No I wouldn't.
I'm not a pilot or an aerospace technician but I am a mechanical
engineer, so I know a little bit about physics and stuff.
The 737–8
is carrying engines it was never designed for, that cause it to
become inherently unstable. So unstable in fact, that it can't be
controlled by humans and instead relies on computer aided control
to maintain the correct attitude, particularly during ascent and
descent.
The MCAS system
is, effectively, a band aid to fix a problem brought about by poor
design philosophy. Boeing should have designed a new airframe that
complements the new engines, instead of ruining a perfectly good
aircraft by bolting on power units it's not designed to carry, and
then trying to solve the resulting instability with software. And
if that isn't bad enough, the system relies on data from just the
one sensor which if it doesn't agree with, it'll force the
aircraft nose down regardless of the pilots' better judgement.
That might be
ok for the Eurofighter Typhoon but it's definitely not ok for fare
paying passengers on a commercial jetliner.
So, no. I won't
be flying on a 737–8 until it's been redesigned to fly safely. You
know, like a properly designed aeroplane should.
4.8k
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"... Under the circumstances, Boeing's best option was to just take the hit for a few years and accept that it was going to have to start selling 737s at a discount price while it designed a whole new airplane. That would, of course, be time-consuming and expensive, and during the interim, it would probably lose a bunch of narrow-body sales to Airbus. ..."
"... As late as February 2011, Boeing chair and CEO James McNerney was sticking to the plan to design a totally new aircraft. ..."
"... Committing to putting a new engine that didn't fit on the plane was the corporate version of the Fyre Festival's "let's just do it and be legends, man" moment, and it unsurprisingly wound up leading to a slew of engineering and regulatory problems. ..."
"... The problem is that an airplane is a big, complicated network of interconnected parts. To get the engine under the 737 wing, engineers had to mount the engine nacelle higher and more forward on the plane. But moving the engine nacelle (and a related change to the nose of the plane) changed the aerodynamics of the plane, such that the plane did not handle properly at a high angle of attack ..."
"... But note that the underlying problem isn't really software; it's with the effort to use software to get around a whole host of other problems. ..."
"... Looking back, Boeing probably wishes it had just stuck with the "build a new plane" plan and toughed out a few years of rough sales, rather than ending up in the current situation. Right now the company is, in effect, trying to patch things up piecemeal -- a software update here, a new warning light there, etc. -- in hopes of persuading global regulatory agencies to let its planes fly again. ..."
"... That said, on March 27, FAA officials faced the Senate Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Aviation and Space at a hearing called by subcommittee Chair Ted Cruz (R-TX). Regulators committed at the hearing to revamp the way they certify new planes , in light of the flaws that were revealed in the previous certification process. ..."
"... a central element of this story is the credibility of the FAA's process ..."
Claiming responsibility was part of an attempt to get the planes approved to fly again.
Boeing was trying to say that it now understands why the planes crashes -- flawed software --
and has a plan in place to replace it with new software that will eliminate the problem and
persuade regulators to get the planes off the ground. But then Friday morning, the company
announced that it had found a second,
unrelated software flaw that it also needs to fix and will somewhat delay the process of
getting the planes cleared to fly again.
All of which, of course, raises the question of why such flawed systems were allowed to fly
in the first place.
And that story begins nine years ago when Boeing was faced with a major threat to its bottom
line, spurring the airline to rush a series of kludges through the certification process --
with an underresourced Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) seemingly all too eager to help an
American company threatened by a foreign competitor, rather than to ask tough questions about
the project.
The specifics of what happened in the regulatory system are still emerging (and despite
executives' assurances, we don't even really know what happened on the flights yet). But the
big picture is coming into view: A major employer faced a major financial threat, and
short-term politics and greed won out over the integrity of the regulatory system. It's a
scandal. The A320neo was trouble for Boeing
Jet fuel is a major cost for airlines. With labor costs largely driven by collective
bargaining agreements and regulations that require minimum ratios of flight attendants per
passenger, fuel is the cost center airlines have the most capacity to do something about.
Consequently, improving fuel efficiency has emerged as one of the major bases of competition
between airline manufacturers.
If you roll back to 2010, it began to look like Boeing had a real problem in this
regard.
Airbus was coming out with an updated version of the
A320 family that it called the A320neo , with "neo" meaning "new engine option." The new
engines were going to be more fuel-efficient, with a larger diameter than previous A320
engines, that could nonetheless be mounted on what was basically the same airframe. This was a
nontrivial engineering undertaking both in designing the new engines and in figuring out how to
make them work with the old airframe, but even though it cost a bunch of money, it basically
worked. And it raised the question of whether Boeing would respond.
Initial word was that it wouldn't. As CBS Moneywatch's Brett
Snyder wrote in December 2010 , the basic problem was that you couldn't slap the new
generation of more efficient, larger-diameter engines onto the 737:
One of the issues for Boeing is that it takes more work to put new engines on the 737 than
on the A320. The 737 is lower to the ground than the A320, and the new engines have a
larger diameter . So while both manufacturers would have to do work, the Boeing guys
would have more work to do to jack the airplane up. That will cost more while reducing
commonality with the current fleet. As we know from last week, reduced commonality means
higher costs for the airlines as well.
Under the circumstances, Boeing's best option was to just take the hit for a few years and
accept that it was going to have to start selling 737s at a discount price while it designed a
whole new airplane. That would, of course, be time-consuming and expensive, and during the
interim, it would probably lose a bunch of narrow-body sales to Airbus.
The original version of the 737 first flew in 1967, and a decades-old decision about how
much height to leave between the wing and the runway left them boxed out of 21st-century engine
technology -- and there was simply nothing to be done about it.
Unless there was.
Boeing decided to put on the too-big engines anyway
As late as February 2011, Boeing chair and CEO James McNerney was sticking to the plan to
design a totally new aircraft.
"We're not done evaluating this whole situation yet," he
said on an analyst call , "but our current bias is to move to a newer airplane, an all-new
airplane, at the end of the decade, beginning of the next decade. It's our judgment that our
customers will wait for us."
It's not entirely clear what happened, but, reading between the lines, it seems that in
talking to its customers Boeing reached the conclusion that airlines would not wait for them.
Some critical mass of carriers (American Airlines seems to have been particularly influential)
was credible enough in its threat to switch to Airbus equipment that Boeing decided it needed
to offer 737 buyers a Boeing solution sooner rather than later.
Committing to putting a new engine that didn't fit on the plane was the corporate version of
the Fyre Festival's "let's
just do it and be legends, man" moment, and it unsurprisingly wound up leading to a slew of
engineering and regulatory problems.
New engines on an old plane
As the industry trade publication Leeham News and Analysis explained earlier in March,
Boeing engineers had been
working on the concept that became the 737 Max even back when the company's plan was still
not to build it. In a March 2011 interview with Aircraft Technology, Mike Bair, then the head of 737 product
development, said that reengineering was possible. "There's been fairly extensive engineering work on it," he said. "We figured out a way to
get a big enough engine under the wing."
The problem is that an airplane is a big, complicated network of interconnected parts. To
get the engine under the 737 wing, engineers had to mount the engine nacelle higher and more
forward on the plane. But moving the engine nacelle (and a related change to the nose of the
plane) changed the aerodynamics of the plane, such that the plane did not handle properly at a
high angle of attack.
That, in turn, led to the creation of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System
(MCAS). It fixed the angle-of-attack problem in most situations, but it created new problems in
other situations when it made it difficult for pilots to directly control the plane without
being overridden by the MCAS.
On Wednesday, Boeing rolled out a software patch that it says corrects the problem, and it
hopes to persuade the FAA to agree.
But note that the underlying problem isn't really software; it's with the effort to use
software to get around a whole host of other problems.
1of x: BEST analysis of what really is happening on the #Boeing737Max
issue from my brother in law @davekammeyer , who's a pilot,
software engineer & deep thinker. Bottom line don't blame software that's the band aid
for many other engineering and economic forces in effect.
Recall, after all, that the whole point of the 737 Max project was to be able to say that
the new plane was the same as the old plane. From an engineering perspective, the preferred
solution was to actually build a new plane. But for business reasons, Boeing didn't want a "new
plane" that would require a lengthy certification process and extensive (and expensive) new
pilot training for its customers. The demand was for a plane that was simultaneously new and
not new.
But because the new engines wouldn't fit under the old wings, the new plane wound up having
different aerodynamic properties than the old plane. And because the aerodynamics were
different, the flight control systems were also different. But treating the whole thing as a
fundamentally different plane would have undermined the whole point. So the FAA and Boeing
agreed to sort of fudge it.
The new planes are pretty different
As far as we can tell, the 737 Max is a perfectly airworthy plane in the sense that
error-free piloting allows it to be operated safely.
But pilots of planes that didn't crash kept noticing the same basic pattern of behavior that
is suspected to have been behind the two crashes, according to a Dallas Morning News review of
voluntary aircraft incident reports to a NASA database:
The disclosures found by the News reference problems with an autopilot system, and they
all occurred during the ascent after takeoff. Many mentioned the plane suddenly nosing down.
While records show these flights occurred in October and November, the airlines the pilots
were flying for is redacted from the database.
These pilots all safely disabled the MCAS and kept their planes in the air. But one of the
pilots reported to the
database that it was "unconscionable that a manufacturer, the FAA, and the airlines would
have pilots flying an airplane without adequately training, or even providing available
resources and sufficient documentation to understand the highly complex systems that
differentiate this aircraft from prior models."
The training piece is important because a key selling feature of the 737 Max was the idea
that since it wasn't really a new plane, pilots didn't really need to be retrained for the new
equipment. As the New York Times reported, "For many new airplane models, pilots train for
hours on giant, multimillion-dollar machines, on-the-ground versions of cockpits that mimic the
flying experience and teach them new features" while the experienced 737 Max pilots were
allowed light refresher courses that you could do on an iPad.
That let Boeing get the planes into customers' hands quickly and cheaply, but evidently at
the cost of increasing the possibility of pilots not really knowing how to handle the planes,
with dire consequences for everyone involved.
The FAA put a lot of faith in Boeing
In a blockbuster March 17 report for the Seattle Times, the newspaper's aerospace reporter
Dominic Gates details the extent to which
the FAA delegated crucial evaluations of the 737's safety to Boeing itself . The
delegation, Gates explains, is in part a story of a years-long process during which the FAA,
"citing lack of funding and resources, has over the years delegated increasing authority to
Boeing to take on more of the work of certifying the safety of its own airplanes."
But there are indications of failures that were specific to the 737 Max timeline. In
particular, Gates reports that "as certification proceeded, managers prodded them to speed the
process" and that "when time was too short for FAA technical staff to complete a review,
sometimes managers either signed off on the documents themselves or delegated their review back
to Boeing."
Most of all, decisions about what could and could not be delegated were being made by
managers concerned about the timeline, rather than by the agency's technical experts.
It's not entirely clear at this point why the FAA was so determined to get the 737 cleared
quickly (there will be more investigations), but if you recall the political circumstances of
this period in Barack Obama's presidency, you can quickly get a general sense of the issue.
Boeing is not just a big company with a significant lobbying presence in Washington; it's a
major manufacturing company with a strong global export presence and a source of many
good-paying union jobs. In short, it was exactly the kind of company the powers that be were
eager to promote -- with the Obama White House, for example, proudly going to bat for the
Export-Import Bank as a key way to sustain America's aerospace industry.
A story about overweening regulators delaying an iconic American company's product launch
and costing good jobs compared to the European competition would have looked very bad. And the
fact that the whole purpose of the plane was to be more fuel-efficient only made getting it off
the ground a bigger priority. But the incentives really were reasonably aligned, and Boeing has
only caused problems for itself by cutting corners.
Boeing is now in a bad situation
One emblem of the whole situation is that as the 737 Max engineering team piled kludge on
top of kludge, they came up with a cockpit
warning light that would alert the pilots if the plane's two angle-of-attack sensors
disagreed.
But then, as
Jon Ostrower reported for the Air Current , Boeing's team decided to make the warning light
an optional add-on, like how car companies will upcharge you for a moon roof.
The
light cost $80,000 extra per plane and neither Lion Air nor Ethiopian chose to buy it,
perhaps figuring that Boeing would not sell a plane (nor would the FAA allow it to) that was
not basically safe to fly. In the wake of the crashes, Boeing has decided to revisit this
decision and make the light standard on all aircraft.
This, fundamentally, is one reason the FAA has become comfortable working so closely with
Boeing on safety regulations: The nature of the airline industry is such that there's no real
money to be made selling airplanes that have a poor safety track record. One could even imagine
sketching out a utopian libertarian argument to the effect that there's no real need for a
government role in certifying new airplanes at all, precisely because there's no reason to
think it's profitable to make unsafe ones.
The real world, of course, is quite a bit different from that, and different individuals and
institutions face particular pressures that can lead them to take actions that don't
collectively make sense. Looking back, Boeing probably wishes it had just stuck with the
"build a new plane" plan and toughed out a few years of rough sales, rather than ending up in
the current situation. Right now the company is, in effect, trying to patch things up piecemeal
-- a software update here, a new warning light there, etc. -- in hopes of persuading global
regulatory agencies to let its planes fly again.
But even once that's done, Boeing faces the task of convincing airlines to actually buy its
planes. An
informative David Ljunggren article for Reuters reminds us that a somewhat comparable
situation arose in 1965 when three then-new Boeing 727 jetliners crashed.
There wasn't really anything unsound about the 727 planes, but many pilots didn't fully
understand how to operate the new flaps -- arguably a parallel to the MCAS situation with the
737 Max -- which spurred some additional training and changes to the operation manual.
Passengers avoided the planes for months, but eventually came back as there were no more
crashes, and the 727 went on to fly safely for decades. Boeing hopes to have a similar happy
ending to this saga, but so far it seems to be a long way from that point. And the immediate
future likely involves more tough questions.
A political scandal on slow burn
The 737 Max was briefly a topic of political controversy in the United States as foreign
regulators grounded the planes, but President Donald Trump -- after speaking personally to
Boeing's CEO -- declined to follow. Many members of Congress (from both parties) called on him
to reconsider, which he rather quickly did, pushing the whole topic off Washington's front
burner.
But Trump is generally friendly to Boeing (he even has a former Boeing executive, Patrick
Shanahan, serving as acting
defense secretary, despite an ongoing ethics inquiry into charges that Shanahan unfairly
favors his former employer), and Republicans are generally averse to harsh regulatory
crackdowns. The most important decisions in the mix appear to have been made back during the
Obama administration, so it's also difficult for Democrats to go after this issue. Meanwhile,
Washington has been embroiled in wrangling over special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation,
and a new health care battlefield opened up as well.
That said, on March 27, FAA officials faced the Senate Commerce Committee's Subcommittee
on Aviation and Space at a hearing called by subcommittee Chair Ted Cruz (R-TX). Regulators
committed at the hearing to revamp the way they certify new
planes , in light of the flaws that were revealed in the previous certification
process.
The questions at stake, however, are now much bigger than one subcommittee. Billions of
dollars are on the line for Boeing, the airlines that fly 737s, and the workers who build the
planes. And since a central element of this story is the credibility of the FAA's
process -- in the eyes of the American people and of foreign regulatory agencies -- it
almost certainly won't get sorted out without more involvement from the actual decision-makers
in the US government.
Ralph Nader, the noted consumer rights advocate, called for a recall and consumer boycott of the
Boeing
jet grounded by regulators across the globe after two deadly crashes.
His niece, 24-year-old Samya
Stumo, was among the 157 victims of an Ethiopian Airlines flight crash last month, less than six months after a
flight on the same aircraft, the Boeing 737 Max 8, crashed in Indonesia.
"Those planes should never fly again," said Nader, speaking by phone at a news conference after Stumo's family
filed a lawsuit against Chicago-based Boeing, one of its suppliers and Ethiopian Airlines. The family also filed a
claim against the
Federal Aviation Administration
.
Stumo's family's lawsuit is one of several filed by relatives of passengers killed in the Ethiopian Airlines and
Lion Air crashes. All those families have "such huge holes" because of the aircraft's problems, said Nadia Milleron,
Stumo's mother, who said she had met others who lost loved ones in Ethiopia.
"As someone who's lost the dearest person in my life, I want her death not to be in vain. I don't want anybody
else to die," she said at the news conference in Chicago.
"Those in charge of creating and selling this plane did not treat Samya as they would their own daughters," said
Milleron, who was visibly emotional as she spoke about her daughter.
"This could have been prevented, and that's what makes me cry," she said.
Nader's book "Unsafe at Any Speed"
helped bring about a series of auto safety laws
, including the creation the federal agency that became the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which oversees the auto industry. He later turned his attention to
various consumer protection efforts related to food, drug and workplace safety and clean air and water.
On Thursday, he took aim at Boeing, blaming the crashes on design problems that he argued were the result of the
company's focus on getting the plane on the market quickly to compete with its rival manufacturer Airbus.
He also criticized the relationship between Boeing and the federal agency tasked with overseeing aviation industry
safety.
"If we don't end the cozy relationship between the patsy FAA and the Boeing company, 5,000 of these fatally flawed
planes will be in the air all over the world with millions of passengers," Nader said.
Boeing said Thursday it is reviewing a preliminary report on last month's crash from Ethiopian authorities that
said the same anti-stall system that came under scrutiny in the Lion Air crash was activated on the Ethiopian
Airlines flight.
Most accidents are the result of a chain of events, but when that system is activated in error, it adds to "what
is already a high-workload environment," Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg
said in
a video
released by the company on Thursday.
"It's our responsibility to eliminate this risk. We own it, and we know how to do it," he said.
Boeing said it is still working with the FAA and regulatory agencies to develop and certify a software update
designed to keep the system from being activated unintentionally, along with additional training for pilots.
Nader said he doesn't think the software fix is enough to make the plane safe since it can't predict all potential
problems with a plane that is "prone to stall."
While Boeing has worked to show it is taking steps to address safety concerns, the FAA is planning changes to its
oversight of airplane development, which delegates some authority for certifying new aircraft to their manufacturers,
the Associated
Press reported
.
"... [We] can now reveal how it's possible the aircraft can crash despite using the Cut-Out switches. To verify, we ran it all in a simulator together with MentourPilot Youtube channel over the last days. ..."
"... Nowhere is it described the trim could be impossible to move if the Cut-Out switches were cut at the slightest miss-trim at the speeds flown. And there is no warning on when to move the Cut-Out switches, the checklist says "Cut, then trim manually." This is not the whole truth . ..."
"... The high speed of 340kts indicated airspeed and the trim at 2.3 units causes the Stabilator manual trim to jam, one can't move it by hand. The crew is busy trying to hand trim the next two minutes but no trim change is achieved. ..."
"... It's easy to say "Why didn't they trim then?". Because they are going down at 20 degrees nose down (which is a lot, a normal landing approach is 3°) and at 400kts. Then you just pull for all you have. And the aircraft is not reacting to the largest Control Column displacement since takeoff. This makes them pull even harder, the aircraft is unresponsive and they are fighting for theirs and all the passenger lives. ..."
"... Moreover their description of the MCAS was incomplete . It is only now known that the MCAS trims the stabilizer at a speeed of 0.27 units (degrees) per second while the pilots electric trim moves the stabilizer at only 0.18 units per second: ..."
"... If MCAS keeps tripping, and if pilots do not shut off electric trim entirely, the result is what Tajer describes as a two-steps-back, one-step-forward scenario, with MCAS maintaining an edge. ..."
"... "The MCAS knows but one speed, which is 0.27, which is the most-aggressive speed," Tajer says. "If you look at the balance sheet on it, MCAS is winning, and you are losing." ..."
"... That additional problem pertains to software affecting flaps and other flight-control hardware and is therefore classified as critical to flight safety, said two officials with knowledge of the investigation. ..."
"... This is not about sensor failure. It is about the profit of cheap parts and greed. The insiders at Boeing tipped off the Big Boys that they needed more than the gizmos installed on export versions if they were going to survive. ..."
"... Engineering Manufacturing company with a sales division works alright. But a Sales Company with a manufacturing subsidiary does not, as we see. Boeing is typical for end-stage Imperial Corporations - all show, no go, and get the money quick... ..."
"... A mistake is one or two errors. This was one horrible string of deliberate corner cutting, about 7-8 totally disastrous decisions by the management, that could have only led to deaths of people uninformed enough to purchase the travel risk from this plane supplier. ..."
< to include the new system into training material for the pilots which Boeing, for
commercial reasons, did not do.>
After the Lion Air crash the Federal Aviation Administration
issued an Airworthiness
Directive 2018-23-51 which adviced 737 MAX pilots how to handle an MCAS failure.
The FAA told 737 MAX pilots to use the Stabilizer Trim Cutoff switches to interupt the
power supply for the system's actuator, a motor driven jackscrew in the back of the airplane.
The pilots should then use the manual trim wheels in the cockpit, which move the jackscrew
and stabilizer via steel cables, to righten the aircraft.
On March 10 a 737 MAX flown by Ethiopian Airline crashed shortly after take off. 157
people died. Radar data and debris found showed that the cause was likely a similar MCAS
failure as had happened on the Indonesian Lion Air flight.
All 737 MAX planes were grounded with the U.S. being the last country to order it.
Some U.S. pilots, as well as some commentators here, publicly blamed the darker skin
pilots for not using the simple procedure the FAA had put out: "Why didn't they just flip the
switches? Stupid undertrained third-world dudes."
The preliminary report clearly showed that the Ethiopian Airlines pilots who were
commanding Flight ET 302/10 March have followed the Boeing recommended and FAA approved
emergency procedures to handle the most difficult emergency situation created on the
airplane. Despite their hard work and full compliance with the emergency procedures, it was
very unfortunate that they could not recover the airplane from the persistence of nose
diving.
The procedure Boeing and the FAA advised to use was insufficient to bring the aircraft
back under control. It was in fact impossible to recover the plane. The possibility of this
to happen was discussed in pilot fora and on specialized websites for some time.
The MCAS system moves the front of the stablizer up to turn the nose of the airplane down.
The plane then decends very fast. The aerodynamic forces (the "wind") pushing against the
stabilizer gets so strong that a manual counter-trim becomes impossible.
With the 737MAX cutout switches, MCAS runaway is stopped by throwing both switches, losing
electric trim altogether. In this case, the flight crew must rely on manual trim via
turning the trim wheel/crank. As discussed above, the manual crank can bind up , making
flying much more difficult.
Bjorn Fehrm, a senior engineeer and pilot now writing at Leeham News , came to a
similar
conclusion :
[We] can now reveal how it's possible the aircraft can crash despite using the Cut-Out
switches. To verify, we ran it all in a simulator together with MentourPilot Youtube
channel over the last days.
...
At a miss-trimmed Stabilator, you either have to re-engage Electric trim or off-load the
Stabilator jackscrew by stick forward, creating a nose-down bunt maneuver, followed by
trim.
Stick forward to trim was not an option for ET302, they were at 1,000ft above ground.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the ET302 crew re-engaged electrical trim to save the
situation, to get the nose up. It was their only chance. But too late. The aggressive MCAS
kicked in and worsened the situation before they could counter it.
On the FAA's Airworthiness Directive Fehrm writes:
Nowhere is it described the trim could be impossible to move if the Cut-Out switches were
cut at the slightest miss-trim at the speeds flown. And there is no warning on when to move
the Cut-Out switches, the checklist says "Cut, then trim manually." This is not the whole
truth .
An detailed analysis of the flight recorder data as documented in the preliminary crash
report confirms
the conclusions :
The high speed of 340kts indicated airspeed and the trim at 2.3 units causes the Stabilator
manual trim to jam, one can't move it by hand. The crew is busy trying to hand trim the
next two minutes but no trim change is achieved.
The pilots then do the only thing possible. They reengage the electric stabilizer trim to
righten the aircraft.
But the aggressive MCAS, trimming with a speed 50% higher than the pilot and for a full
nine seconds, kicks in at 8 with a force they didn't expect. Speed is now at 375kts and
MCAS was never designed to trim at these Speed/Altitude combinations. Dynamic pressures,
which governs how the aircraft reacts to control surface movements, is now almost double it
was when last MCAS trimmed (Dynamic pressure increases with Speed squared).
The Pilots are thrown off their seats, hitting the cockpit roof. Look at the Pitch
Attitude Disp trace and the Accel Vert trace. These are on the way to Zero G and we can see
how PF loses stick pull in the process (Ctrl Column Pos L). He can barely hold on to the
Yoke, let alone pull or trim against.
His reduced pull increases the pitch down further, which increases the speed even more.
At 05.45.30 the Pilots have hit the seats again (Accel Vert trace and Ctrl Columns force
trace) and can start pulling in a desperate last move. But it's too late. Despite them
creating the largest Control Column movement ever, pitch down attitude is only marginally
affected.
The pilots and their passengers lose the fight:
It's easy to say "Why didn't they trim then?". Because they are going down at 20 degrees
nose down (which is a lot, a normal landing approach is 3°) and at 400kts. Then you
just pull for all you have. And the aircraft is not reacting to the largest Control Column
displacement since takeoff. This makes them pull even harder, the aircraft is unresponsive
and they are fighting for theirs and all the passenger lives.
A diligent safety anlysis would have predicted this outcome. Neither Boeing nor the FAA
seems to have done such after the first 737 MAX crashed. They provided an Airworthiness
Directive with procedures that were insufficiant to correct the system induce
misbehavior.
Moreover their description of the MCAS
was incomplete . It is only now known that the MCAS trims the stabilizer at a speeed of
0.27 units (degrees) per second while the pilots electric trim moves the stabilizer at only
0.18 units per second:
"It's like a Tasmanian devil in there," says Dennis Tajer, a 737 pilot and communications
chair for Allied Pilots Association, which represents American Airlines' pilots.
... If MCAS keeps tripping, and if pilots do not shut off electric trim entirely, the result is
what Tajer describes as a two-steps-back, one-step-forward scenario, with MCAS maintaining
an edge.
"The MCAS knows but one speed, which is 0.27, which is the most-aggressive speed," Tajer
says. "If you look at the balance sheet on it, MCAS is winning, and you are losing."
The insufficient advice to pilots given after the first crash only adds to the long list
of criminal mistakes Boeing made and which the FAA allowed to pass.
Boeing confirmed to The Washington Post that it had found a second software problem that
the Federal Aviation Administration has ordered fixed -- separate from the anti-stall
system that is under investigation in the two crashes and is involved in the worldwide
grounding of the aircraft.
That additional problem pertains to software affecting flaps and other flight-control
hardware and is therefore classified as critical to flight safety, said two officials with
knowledge of the investigation.
The criminals at Boeing again offer no explanation and play down the issue:
In a statement, Boeing called the additional problem "relatively minor" but did not offer
details of how it affects the plane's flight-control system. "We are taking steps to
thoroughly address this relatively minor issue and already have the solution in work to do
that," it said.
What other 'features' were secretly implemented into the 737 MAX without sufficiant
analysis about their side effects and consequences?
---
Previous Moon of Alabama posts on the 737 MAX crashes:
"... The Pilots are thrown off their seats, hitting the cockpit roof
..."
I should think that at that point in the narrative, one of the flight crew must either
have fallen unconscious or ended up too injured to be able to do anything, let alone fight a
rogue MCAS system.
I presume the pilots would still have their seatbelts on, unless the forces generated by
the constant battle to stabilise the aircraft while fighting the MCAS system were too strong
and broke the seatbelts or dislocated the seats themselves.
As for other "features" that were secretly placed into the 737 MAX jets that Boeing
"neglected" to tell FAA or its clients about, what about the "features" that should have been
made compulsory but which Boeing decided were optional at the clients' own expense?
As a layman, my main question at this stage is: "Who is going to prison and for how long?" Everyone involved in the decision to sell those flying death traps should be tried for
manslaughter at the least. The guilty ones should serve prison sentences appropriate for
criminals who caused hundreds of people to die for their own profit.
How long a sentence does a poor man get, who kills a well-off tourist for the money in his
wallet - or even for his shoes?
Now multiply that by several hundred - adding on, of course, extra years to allow for the
Boeing executives' privileged lives, top-flight education, and (above all) the generous
sufficiency they already enjoy.
In China such people are routinely shot, which seems the right course. In the USA, while
poor people are executed all the time, apparently the wealthy and privileged get a free
pass.
Is a direct result of Boing monopoly - they are division of the military.
And why did european agency roll-over?
Will this warrant cancellation of orders?
Oh, and the people at the FAA need to be tried in a criminal court too. Not only were they
criminally negligent - they did it while being generously remunerated by the taxpayer. Perhaps a few years as galley slaves would be appropriate punishment - to teach them not
to be lazy.
This cheap seat Boeing export death trap was doomed from the beginning. Once these
planes nose 'up' it is heading to a crash. Any engineer with a basic understanding of aero
dynamic/physics knows this. This is not about sensor failure. It is about the profit of cheap
parts and greed. The insiders at Boeing tipped off the Big Boys that they needed more than
the gizmos installed on export versions if they were going to survive.
Tom @3 makes note the Chinese have a great quality control program. Boeing execs will up
their kickback slop to US politicians and the final report will say, 'well accidents will
happen'.
You can be sure that if this was Airbus, and two were crashed in the USA, that there would be
hearings, threats, congressional investigations, lawsuits, calls for criminal investigations,
Wall Street shorting the company, ...and on and on until the company would be disbanded.
Criminal, well yes but so what! Peons do not matter, right.
Engineering Manufacturing company with a sales division works alright. But a Sales Company
with a manufacturing subsidiary does not, as we see.
Boeing is typical for end-stage Imperial Corporations - all show, no go, and get the money
quick...
Sorta like GE's BWR's and Fukushima, fake it on the cheap and run with the money to
retirement.
The Pilots are thrown off their seats, hitting the cockpit roof ..."
Posted by: Jen | Apr 5, 2019 6:27:26 AM | 1
My interpretation is the same as yours. It's an incident report which is supposed to be
bland statements of fact - neither overstated nor understated. If the report says the pilots
hit the roof then that's what happened (airliner cockpits don't have cathedral ceilings so
only inches clearance when standing erect).
OTOH I find it hard to believe that the pilots would unbuckle before they had achieved cruise
status and given passengers the OK to do the same.
Seat belts can break but not under the relatively mild stresses generated by violent flight
maneuvers of an intact aircraft.
When I purchase an airline ticket I purchase the risk profile of the airline and the risk
profile of the plane manufacturer, because either can kill me.
A mistake is one or two errors. This was one horrible string of deliberate corner cutting,
about 7-8 totally disastrous decisions by the management, that could have only led to deaths
of people uninformed enough to purchase the travel risk from this plane supplier.
Uninformed just like I was before I recently saw some old investigative footage about
Boeing's disregard for elementary quality in the earlier 737 hull manufacturing and the
company's treatment of the whistleblowers trying to help the company by exposing such wrong
doing: "Just put a coat of paint on it".
Intentionally (spin) or unintentionally, there is too much talk about detail such as
software, pilot capability and decisions, training and the lack of it and so on. This only
hides the big picture of an utter disregard for the value of human life, traded off for
management bonuses and stock holder dividends. It is a complete reversal of the original
engineering-focused Boeing which made Boeing an icon that it used to be. Perhaps, somewhere
in the Washington lobbying swamp the dividing line between the engineering for killing people
and the engineering for transporting people became too blurred. As the profit strategy, on
MIC business overcharge, on airliner business underdeliver, and ruthlessly so on both:
rip-off money from the tax-payers and lives from the travellers.
Please convince me that this is not a symptom of the rot of the whole society, when an
icon such as Boeing sinks deep into nastiest morally debased profiteering. I posit that the
society which so easily kills people using bombs, rockets and drones cannot make good quality
products any more. This is because killing and destroying is just too easy compared with
creating something good . Without the good will of the people in a society to morally
rebalance, the societal endeavours for creation can never compete against the endeavours for
destruction. In other words, US had become too much about destruction to be still capable of
creation.
Finally, there would be one way to get back on the right track - life-in-jail for both
Boeing and FAA involved. It is ultimately ironic that in the highly criticised China the
shitbags would probably be put in front of a firing squad for corruption. In US, they will
receive bonuses and continue on to the next killing enterprise. Until they finally launch
nuclear tipped missiles against the creation oriented foreign competitors. Do they still know
of any other way to win?
Touching and informative press conference with the Stumo family (Ralph Nader's grandniece,
Samyo Stumo, was killed on the 737 MAX crash in Ethiopia) and two law firms that filed a
lawsuit against Boeing and others. At @ 28 min one lawyer displays an anonymous email from a
737 MAX pilot detailing how the MCAS system can thwart a pilot's ability to recover control
of the jet. This email was posted to a pilots' forum/aviation network after the Lion Air
crash in Indonesia last October.
@Steve...if you say it, then it's true. Of course, if you knew more about it, then you would
say something else.
But real expert Gundersen says differently. I worked with some of the GE engineers, and I
know what they said.
You are 100% incorrect about the diesels, the problem included primary, ultimate heat sink
loss due to the elevation of the pumps, and the pressure vessels we know to be unsafe.
GE BWR's designed in the US by US GE engineers, some of whom quit rather than sign off on
the design..."fuze was lit for Fukushima in 1965" >see fairewinds, amigo.
@SteveK9 12
As far as I understand, the main Fukushima problem was the concrete reactor encasing design
which did not cater for the possibility of excessive hydrogen release from the reactor. It
worked well when not in trouble, but in an accident situation (who would have expected an
accident) the concrete encasing without a release valve became a pressure cooker filled with
flammable hydrogen. What a surprise that it went boom!?
What you write here about the water cooling system generators you probably believe in but
it resembles the pilot blaming spin of Boeing. The truth has a nasty tendency to end up owned
by those with most money.
I always remember how our old friend pharaoh Ramses paid hundreds of stone masons to go
around Egypt and chisel out the achievements of all the previous pharaohs and chisel in his.
Then even several thousands of years later, when the archeologists finally learned to read
hieroglyphs, they only had propaganda and spin left to read. Thus nothing less than the son
of the supreme Egyptian deity the sun god Ra, the propaganda paying Ramses became the
greatest pharaoh of all time.
"As a layman, my main question at this stage is: 'Who is going to prison and for how
long?'"
The first to go should obviously be the individuals in charge of the FAA. These people, I
imagine, were appointed by Obama. When we look at the regulatory system in the US bear in
mind that the current irresponsibility arose in a long descent-since the days of Nixon I
suspect-into neo-liberal corporate capture.
Just recently the deceits practised in the fake science which allowed the licensing of Round
Up were revealed. The entire system is rotten and nowhere is it more corrupt than in the
United States.
" They reengage the electric stabilizer trim to righten the aircraft"
That's the problem. While the plane may have remained unstable due to the lack of rapid
response of the manual trim control and difficulties turning.the wheel at high speed low
altitude flight,the planes altitude was still increasing. They should have either returned to
the airport or continued ascent in the hope they could restore trim at high altitude and low
air pressure.
Altitude immediately plummeted when they rengaged the MCAS and the plane was not
recoverable at that point.
Such mistakes should be made in flight simulators . Hence it's lack of training at fault
here, and the blame for that is still on Boeing.
Not sure even the flight simulator training will solve this mess
TBH
This whole business is sickening and infuriating. What is especially infuriating is that the
FAA is extremely onerous in enforcement of ancient regulations with respect to general
aviation. The owner of a small plane is actually prohibited from casually upgrading any of
the antiquated instruments, even radios, on his Made in 1975 private plane, and must stick
with what was originally certified by the manufacturer as originally constructed--unless he
is willing to expend huge amounts of money to find an updated, certified (e.g., "safe")
upgraded component from someone willing to go the lengthy and expensive process of having the
FAA certify that product, then have a certified mechanic install the certified part and
certify it was done according to the precise procedures established. In effect, the FAA
actively discourages safety improvements of the general aviation fleet by unthinking
resistance to technological change.
Unless you're Boeing.
Having experience with the "other" FAA, this is what's especially dumbfounding to me.
While there may be some justification in permitting a trusted manufacturer to establish and
certify as safe minor details, anything involving the actual flight characteristics of the
plane should NEVER be delegated, and doubly so with respect to commercial airliners. And how
could any regulator be anything but incredulous if a manufacturer says "Well, we've decided
to make this commercial airliner INHERENTLY UNSTABLE, but we have a whole box of bandaids
which should do a bang-up job of keeping it in the air!" WTF!! "Fail-safe" isn't actually a
fix or a mechanism, the term is supposed to describe a design philosophy, in which if there
is a failure, the resulting condition is still safe (well, at least not less safe). Ditto
redundancy, which is why it is unheard-of that such an apparently vital bandaid relied on
only one sensor.
It's one thing to build a fighter that is inherently unstable (although even that is
perhaps questionable), but an airliner filled with passengers? Ludicrous. And the FAA and
Boeing both know it, and knew it from the start. In a just world heads would literally roll,
but sadly, nothing real is likely to happen.
I already thought that the whole setup had faulty logic. If the plane could be adequately
controlled by pilots, "manually", then extra training would be cheaper than introducing an
automatic system. If the plane could not be adequately controlled by the pilots, "switching
to manual" is futile.
I have a minor experience with "automatic control" when the chip of my car went wrong. In
old, old times one has to add a bit of extra gas to start the car engine, and as a result one
could flood the engine, then wait a few minutes for the gasoline to evaporate and try again.
In contemporary cars you do not press gas at all when you start, and the chip regulates how
much gasoline should be injected to the engine based on its temperature. Then after 10 years
of happy use the chip "noticed" that the engine is cold when it is actually hot. So I am
driving on a windy narrow road and the car accelerates going 40 mph without pressing the gas
(65 kmh), 15 mhp above the legal speed limit, and did I mention that the road had curves?
Frankly, it happened few times before that, but on a straight road you just get the feel of
cruise control. Anyway, brakes remedied the situation, luckily, they could overcome the
engine and the chip was replaced for mere 800 dollars.
Here it seems that Boeing designers entered the kludge road and kept compensating for this
or that and lost the total picture. Isn't it suspicious that the automatic trim was so
aggressive? I also do not understand at all what "manual" means, seem impossible that actual
muscle force of the pilot was applied to the tail? Should there be an emergence procedure in
which a cabin steward under voice control of the captain adjusts the tail with a crank, or
perhaps something like a capstan that could be moved by the entire cabin crew? That would be
a true manual system.
My conclusion is that once you rely on automatic solutions because the crew cannot do it
in some situations, you must crank up the reliability to something "average million years
without failure or more". It is not a ship that can drop anchors, giving a few days to figure
out the problem etc. (although this is something that should be avoided too). Boeing setup
was something that should flunk students in Industrial Engineering (they have courses on
control systems). For example, an internal device with a gyroscope could track the speed and
its three-dimensional angle, so if one of external sensors malfunction the system can
automatically decide which reading makes more sense. External sensor measure speed in respect
to air which is important too, but if the plane approaches the ground, that should be noted
to,. With few gismos you could get sufficient redundancy with some "voting scheme" or a
"decision tree".
Just use logic for a moment. Boeing: We're presenting this new (redesigned) plane for
certification, and it comes with it's very own MCRASH system. FAA: MCRASH system...what's
that? Boeing: Well, the plane has a pronounced tendency to go into stalls and fall out of the
sky. FAA: That's an interesting feature. Are pilots going to be able to handle these
aggravated power-on stalls (the worst kind, incidentally)? Boeing: Oh, no. There's no way
pilots would be able to detect the condition and react quickly enough to save the plane, so
we've devised an automated system that is faster than a human can react to save the day. We
present MCRASH.
From annals of idiocy in design. Some time in the 1st decade of this century the Polish state
rail road decided to embrace modernity and introduced automatic ticketing system. It would
fabulously till the end of that year when it shut down. Apparently, there was a "sanity
check" disallowing tickets to have arrival before the departure, someone forgot about the
pesky case of arrival after New Year following departure in December, and the system could
not cope with a wave of "illegal requests". Luckily, because the system did not operate that
long prior to collapse, there were still people who could manually write the tickets until
the bug was removed.
would -> work, I must say that the setup not allowing to correct the post after it is made
is also an example of a "suboptimal" design, many sites give you 10-15 minutes with a
permission to edit or delete.
would -> work, I must say that the setup not allowing to correct the post after it is
made is also an example of a "suboptimal" design, many sites give you 10-15 minutes with a
permission to edit or delete.
B hosts Moon of Alabama on Typepad. Typepad costs $15/month, including hosting and support
(best value in web hosting for a busy weblog). Typepad apparently doesn't have a post-comment
grace period editing option or B would have added it.
I used to be an advocate of MoA moving over to WordPress (I'm a full time software
architect/designer who builds WordPress driven web application and a pro video player).
There's lots of nice bells and whistles which could be added including comment editing and a
much more attractive and innovative design.
Having seen the endless security issues and silly site breaking updates which Matt
Mullenweg and Automattic have pushed out over the last four years, B would be wise to stay
put on Typepad. Typepad is clunky, it's a bit ugly but it works reliably and is inexpensive.
Maintaining and updating a WordPress site costs either lots of man hours or lots of money
(good IT help is not cheap).
terrorist lieberal , Apr 5, 2019 11:37:47 AM |
link
Tom @ 5,
Obviously you know no one will ever be prosecuted or lose anything. This country is in the
hands of the rich and powerful, just note how the great Obama couldn't jail one crooked
banker and they all got to keep everything they stole at the expense of millions and millions
of people, lives ruined, and they live the high life as some exceptional people, yeah right,
God Bless America, home of the biggest terrorist organization the world has known.
terrorist lieberal , Apr 5, 2019 11:39:09 AM |
link
thank you b! who is going to be held accountable? i say no one...
@13 donkeytale.. that sounds about right... i imagine it's happening in any industry where
money is involved in the usa - which is basically every industry.. get rid of the mechanisms
for protecting people and just make sure to protect the moneyed interests..
capitalism devoid of morals and ethics is just peachy..
Thanks for the comprehensive account of what happened. I really hope this will result in a
hefty judicial price tag for the cynicals and greedies at Boeing.
You can be sure that if this was Airbus, and two were crashed in the USA, that there
would be hearings, threats, congressional investigations, lawsuits, calls for criminal
investigations, Wall Street shorting the company, ...and on and on until the company would be
disbanded.
There were two Boeing MAX crashes outside of the U.S. and there ARE now hearings, threats,
congressional investigations, lawsuits and even a criminal investigation. Boeing's stock
price fell by some 10% since the second crash.
-
@Hoarsewhisperer @14
It's an incident report which is supposed to be bland statements of fact - neither
overstated nor understated. If the report says the pilots hit the roof then that's what
happened (airliner cockpits don't have cathedral ceilings so only inches clearance when
standing erect).
The phrase "the Pilots are thrown off their seats, hitting the cockpit roof" is not from
the incident report but from an interpretation at the Leeham News site. It is not meant
literally.
It is based on a suddden change on g-force in the plane which goes from around 1g to 0g
when MCAS again kicks in. This has the effect that the pilots are suddenly weightless and no
longer have power to pull the yoke back.
Source and effect of this are visible in the diagram.
-
Do airline pilots wear seatbelts on take off. I take it there would be some rules and
regulations on this. I have always taken it for granted the pilots would be wearing seatbelt
on take off and landing, also if expecting turbulence during a flight.
Impossible to control anything if you're getting tossed around.
Unless the EU and other governing bodies divorce themselves from our seemingly privatized
FAA, expect more of this. Unless, of course, ALL flight safety orgs, globally, are equally
corrupted.
I have no idea if global corruption is the case/or worse, but there is now pretty strong
evidence that the US FAA is not the unassailable leader in certification protocols that the
whole planet has depended upon - up to now.
Hmmm.... Proper retribution. Load Boeing's Board of Directors, senior engineers that signed
off on the entire MAX project, senior accountants, any others tied to the entire boondoggle,
all FAA "regulators" who approved boondoggle, and all others who helped cause the fatalities
into several MAX airplanes designed to fail just as the ill-fated jets did manned by the
Boeing pilots who approved the faulty design and force them to takeoff with flight paths over
water. Yes, proper retribution for the crime. Cruel and unusual objections? No. Proper
retribution.
The entire Neoliberal philosophy must suffer a similar fate along with its promoters and
their Neocon allies. The Class War has always been deadly. It's high time elites began taking
casualties. Too radical? Take a good look at the world and the circumstances of those
besieged by Neoliberals and Neocons and try to argue against.
That is a true statement, but with so many things going wrong – you need to
understand that it is a basic instinct of pilots to keep engine power up so you can climb and
get out of trouble.
Very basic: Power = Good and No-Power = Bad.
So they should have reduced power and done a slight nose down to unload the jack screw and
re-trimmed manually. The problem was they had no altitude to work with, just 1000 ft or
so.
So the end story is that not only did the pilot do well, but the low-hour co-pilot was
also surprising competent. It was team work all the way.
So the bottom line is that our Western system has become so corrupt that it is no longer
even safe to fly. And this is just the beginning. It is all downhill from now on. More gender
studies and who needs engineers anyway?
Boeing Max 8 was a flying design mistake.
Boeing, You Ain't no Airbus!
You can' t just slap some heavier bulkiet engines on a tinny single body crap that barely
flew straight at the first time and expect everything to be right, slapping some hiden
software autocorrections on just in case.. and sell this crap all over the world. Enjoy the
torrent of lawsuits now!
You ain't no European aircraft maker. They tend to think 2 to 3 design steps ahead in to the
future.
You guys at the US cant even barrely ellect a pres. who is right in the head.
Apologies to everyone for the thread hijack, but nuclear power nonsense annoys me.
@Walter 18
Gundersen is a very well-known anti-nuke fanatic and a liar. His qualifications are BS. At
this point I think you and I can leave it and either of us can read more if we are so
inclined.
@Kiza 20
Hydrogen release was an effect from the overheating and meltdown, caused by the lack of
emergency cooling. There were no hydrogen recombiners present in these reactors, although
they had been installed in every BWR in the US long before.
As I mentioned the reactor nearest the quake suffered no damage, because its emergency
generators continued to operate, as they were not flooded. I forgot the plant name ... you
could look it up ... it actually served as a shelter during the flood. As a consequence there
was no release of hydrogen there (this happens when the zirconium cladding on the fuel reacts
with water at high temperature to release hydrogen).
I'm not an expert in reactor design (although I have a PhD in Chemical Physics). I reached
my own conclusions a very long time ago, and am not really interested in digging up evidence
or providing explanations. There is a mountain of information out there if one wants to look
... and I don't mean Greenpeace (although the founder, Patrick Moore is currently a supporter
of nuclear power).
Oh and btw, about United States aviation related products leading the race in global
aviation...
Struggling to produce an effective design for an airframe for the Martian atmosphere
(planet Mars) back in the earlier decade, using the top of the line comercial aviation
simulation products with aircraft design options bundled in, as a way of researching a NASA
info web campaign about flying vehicles on Mars, managed after much trying to produce a
somehow reliable generic airframe for that very thin atmosphere and low gravity environments,
which it would generaly resemble a mix of U2's and Predator drones frames (twice large than a
U2 wing span) but with major tail wings modifications and you would get adequate performance
if you flew it inside the enormous Martian cannyons which have a higher atmosphere pessure
than rest of Martian surface. Mil air force drones were generally non existant as information
back then. The software was the only product FAA approved a license for actual comercial
aviation simulation training hours for training of real pilots...End of story, this design
came third ...and the actual algorithms in the software decided that an actual UFO shaped
craft would be behaving much better in Martian wind/atmosphere... We incorporated the
solution of small rockets for generating initial lift for take off and emergency
altitude.
FAA and the leading edge researchers decided that the ALIENS WOULD WIN!
I was almost sure that even Nasa people (which names was on the program approval credits)
used same software without noticing anything strange before the Aliens stole the win...
So the jack screw that manually controls the stabilizer did not work due to high speed. Isn't
that what hydraulics are for?
After all, Slim Pickens managed to kick that bombay door open in Strangelove
Hoarse, I also was confused by the reasoning in the Seattle paper. But then again, I
learned all I know about the affect of air flowing over a surface in flight by sticking my
hand out the car window as a kid.
To avoid such crashes, training is needed more professionally and, in addition, the worn-out
parts of the planes should be removed and replaced with new ones. In the vast majority of
aircraft, due to high costs, little importance is given to worn parts, which causes people to
fall and get dead.
Scotch Bingeington , Apr 5, 2019 4:44:34 PM |
link
@ Meshpal | 38
More gender studies and who needs engineers anyway?
I think you're barking up the wrong tree there. I wholeheartedly agree with the second
(sarcastic) bit, no doubt about that. But the guy who had overall responsibility for the 737
MAX desaster holds a "degree" in "Business Administration". James McNerney, B.A. from Yale,
MBA from Harvard, member of Delta Kappa Epsilon - Chairman, President and CEO of The Boeing
Company 2005-2016. I have a strong feeling that gender studies wouldn't exactly be his cup of
tea. Just an ordinary, boring, utterly predictable, Pavlovian, run-of-the-mill business
tosser. He thought he could do it all, and so off he went, again and again. From British
United Provident Association (healthcare) to G.D. Searle (pharmaceuticals) to Procter &
Gamble to McKinsey to General Electric to 3M. And what the heck, let's add Boeing into the
mix with a pay of 30 million USD in 2014 alone. What a spec-taaaa-cular career!
Easy to anticipate a consumer boycott of this plane. I wouldn't buy a ticket on a Max 8
flight, and began double-checking the airliner after the crash last October.
In horizontal flight the stabilizer exerts a moderate amount of downward force to keep the
tail level (so as to balance the torques on the airplane). When the infographic says "a small
downward force pushes the nose down" it is merely saying the downward force on the tail was
now less than that required to keep the plane level, so the tail rose and the nose fell.
With respect for your PhD in Chemistry Physics, you are obviously not an engineer. In most
societies, it is around the third year of study that engineers learn about redundancy and
contingency planning. Therefore, not thinking trough all the possible disaster scenarios when
designing life-critical contraptions is simply criminal: Fukushima nuclear power plants.
Perhaps Boeing should have hired a couple of engineering interns to tell them that they
must not:
1) slap unsuitable new engines on an obsolete old air frame,
2) try to fix a serious hardware problem using software,
3) override pilots with their lives on the line by the decisions of some software cretin paid
by the hour with no skin in the game,
4) hang lives of 180 people on a single sensor unavailable for replacement on an airport in
Timbuktu,
5) play the no-training-needed tune when the structure of the product was substantially
changed and operator training was essential and so on.
The engineers are blue collar workers, the more so the closer they are to the assembly
floor. They have no decision power, they do what they are told. Yet, it is a society in deep
moral crisis when the engineers keep silent whilst virtually all basic tenants of the proper
design are broken by the profiteers managing them. Doing all the wrong things and expecting
the right result? No, not really, just grab the money and run. Après nous le
déluge.
BTW, I heard from a Lockheed lobbyist that Lockheed would never do something like this.
They only rip off the US tax payers for godzillion of dollars whilst making the best killing
machines that money can buy.
God,,, What humans will do to save little pieces of paper loosely called money. This is
criminal. The entire board should be charged with murder or at least manslaughter. But it
won't happen. Corpgov will step in to save them as they're to big to jail.
It is my understanding, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that the only thing the pilots
could have done was to realize -- by a pure miracle -- that the captain's AoA sensor has
failed and switch to the first officer's flight computer, which was connected to another,
working AoA sensor. Of course, if Boeing had installed their "mismatching AoA data" indicator
as a standard feature, the pilots wouldn't really need a miracle.
Boeing is slowing the production rate of 737 Max by 20%. Another chicken has come home to
roost. To safely fly the aircraft with passengers, a new flight control system is required
with multiple sensors including gyroscopes plus triple redundant electronics. Not just two
position sensors as proposed by Boeing which is the pilot flipping a coin in the chaotic 40
seconds to do the right thing while the plane is trying to kill you. Pilot and co-pilot
training on flight simulators is also required. If the FAA approves anything less, sooner or
later, another 737 Max will crash. Similarly, the Trump Administration is turning over pork
inspection to the slaughter houses. A million Chinese pigs were culled to attempt to stop the
spread of African Swine Fever but the deadly pig disease continues to spread through Asia.
One day soon the contagion will be fatal to humans. Climate change is here. The forever wars
continue. The bottom line is that public safety which is the basic function of government is
collapsing. Oligarchs are getting rich on the bodies of the dead.
@38 Meshpal "Zerohedge has an article that says the pilots should have reduced engine power."
From the report: "At 05:39:42, Level Change mode was engaged. The selected altitude was
32000 ft. Shortly after the mode change, the selected airspeed was set to 238 kt."
Then a minute later: "From 05:40:42 to 05:43:11 (about two and a half minutes), the
stabilizer position gradually moved in the AND direction from 2.3 units to 2.1 units. During
this time, aft force was applied to the control columns which remained aft of neutral
position. The left indicated airspeed increased from approximately 305 kt to approximately
340 kt (VMO). The right indicated airspeed was approximately 20-25 kt higher than the
left."
Note that the pilots were getting conflicting airspeed readings (the difference would
eventually grow to around 50 kt).
There is nothing in the report that suggests that either of the pilots opened the
throttles, and by the time the "overspeed clacker" started its warning the pilots had rather
more pressing problems to deal with.
I don't quite understand why this isn't addressed in the report: the pilots set the speed
to 238 kt, and if they then opened the throttles the report should have said so (it doesn't).
But if they didn't touch the throttle then what accounts for the speed being at 305 kt
(rather than 238 kt) when the plane started its first dive?
There is a mountain of information out there if one wants to look ... and I don't mean
Greenpeace (although the founder, Patrick Moore is currently a supporter of nuclear power).
Patrick Moore Did Not Found Greenpeace
Patrick Moore frequently portrays himself as a founder or co-founder of Greenpeace, and
many news outlets have repeated this characterization. Although Mr. Moore played a
significant role in Greenpeace Canada for several years, he did not found Greenpeace. Phil
Cote, Irving Stowe, and Jim Bohlen founded Greenpeace in 1970. Patrick Moore applied for a
berth on the Phyllis Cormack in March, 1971 after the organization had already been in
existence for a year.
Thanks for confirming that the retribution I prescribe @36 is right and proper as is what
must follow. Only one quibble with your comment, the death trap MAXs should never, ever
again be certified as airworthy as they clearly are not .
> I forgot the plant name ... you could look it up
@SteveK9 | Apr 5, 2019 3:26:36 PM | 40
It was all the same. Fukushima Dai-Ichi (Number One) was the Nuclear Power Plant
consisting of 6 "Reactor Buildings"
#1 was relatively small, US-designed US-built one. It had passive residual cooling -
gravity-powered water flow from the tank.
#2 was larger reactor in the same Mark-1 containment, US-designed and US-buit. The
residual cooling though could not be gravity-driven. It required the pump (or maybe there was
a way to set temperature-driven convection, if valves could be put right - i heard it but did
not dig into it)
Obviously, USA does not care about tsunami-driven floods: USA has enough soil to build
NPPs away from sea shores.
#3 and #4 were those larger reactors in more modern containment, US-designed but build by
Japanese companies. Japanese did know what tsunami is, but they dared not to deviate from USA
designs until they make succesfulyl working verbatim coopies.
#5 and #6 were Japanese-built after they got experience with #3 and #4 and proived they
can do verbatim copies. Those latter blocks were altered: for #1 to #4 shore ground was
removed to almost ocean sea levelm as close to the shorelines earth was considered wet and
unreliable, but #5 and #6 were instead moved away from the sea enough to earth be stable even
on elevation.
When the wave came, blocks #1 to $4 were flooded (with their electric circuits probably
located in basements a la Americana, thus immediately got short-circuited with salted sea
water), and diesels were located immediately at water edge with all the consequences for the
communications. Blocks #5 and #6, located away from the sea shopre and on elevated grounds,
and their diesels located near them, were not reached by the tsunami.
P.S. but people still repeat old propaganda about Chernobyl being sabotaged by suicidal
operating crew, what do you want... When people read MSM they do not care much what exactly
happened, so they just swallow it without labour of critical acclaim. If much later they
suddenly grow interested in some issues - their "point of view" is already long internalized,
so they do search relentlessly now - but for ideas supporting their pre-formed cognitive
bias.
P.P.S. I agree though that hi-jacking Boeing-related thread for in-depth discussion of NP
issues would be not proper to do.
"THE BOEING 737 MAX MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO FLY AGAIN." {Emphasis original]
The discussion here resembles that being conducted by Boeing to exonerate itself. The MAX
was purposely designed to be unsafe. Nader puts it thusly:
" The overriding problem is the basic unstable design of the 737 Max. An aircraft
has to be stall proof not stall prone . An aircraft manufacturer like Boeing,
notwithstanding its past safety record, is not entitled to more aircraft disasters that are
preventable by following long-established aeronautical engineering practices and
standards." [My Emphasis]
Trying to fix something so fundamentally broken that people with priceless lives are
jeopardized if the fix(es) fail is so utterly immoral words fail to detail just how deep that
immorality is. It's not just Righteous Indignation or even Righteous Indignation on
Steroids--it goes well beyond that to the utterly dysfunctional immorality of placing profit
over the safety of something money cannot buy or replace-- PEOPLE'S LIVES .
You know that I and others agree as well with your strong sentiments.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out as a telltale of empire's demise or
resilience.
It is not just the 737 Max that I would stay off. Think about the profit mentality that
built/allowed the Max to go forward and extrapolate that to the replacement parts for all the
other Boeing planes. Do people not understand that the same mentality of profit over safety
that brought down the 737 Max is putting other, considered more reliable, Boeing planes at
risk....for a few pennies more
Americans are brainwashed into believing that profit belongs between them and good health
care so it could be described as a slippery slope to write of 99% of humans not valuing their
lives very highly......because brainwashed by TV is my observation
There are people in Boeing that need to see the inside of a prison cell forever.
I remember in 2008 during the recession depression seeing an idiot at the beach wearing a
Goldman Sachs t shirt. I looked at the idiot in disbelief saying nothing. The next time I see
an idiot in SC/Georgia I will not be holding my tongue. "Relentlessly focused on safety" my
ass. The crapification continues.
And the "AoA Disagree" indicator is not even a physical light indicator, as I initially
thought, but a purely software
feature for the primary flight display ! Unbelievable! 346 people had to die because
someone decided to charge an exorbitant fee for a few lines of code that basically consist of
two conditionals, a timer variable, and a bitmap blit call.
'It looks like the 55 year old 737 air-frame design, which is very low to the ground when
compared to more modern designs, is incompatible with the bigger engines required for fuel
efficiency.
Being very low to the ground, Boeing was forced to put the engines out in front, which
upset the airplane's balance, making the plane essentially unstable. To counter the
instability they added the 'MCAS?' control system.
This solution violates a fundamental tenant of design for safety-critical systems. The
tenant of 'fail-safe'. If something goes wrong the system is supposed to fail in a manner
that preserves safety. For the 737 Max, when the this stability control system fails, the
plane is fundamentally unstable. For this system it is not 'fail-safe'. It is
'fail-crash'.'
This is pretty much in agreement with (Posted by: karlof1 | Apr 5, 2019 8:39:49 PM |
58).
I fully agree with the sentiment that this plane should never fly again. I can't imagine
any thinking person volunteering to get on to such a fundamentally flawed aircraft.
That is a true statement, but with so many things going wrong – you need to
understand that it is a basic instinct of pilots to keep engine power up so you can climb
and get out of trouble.
Very basic: Power = Good and No-Power = Bad.
This is what I've heard for as long as I've been reading about airplanes. A search turned
up some "sayings" popular with pilots.
It's best to keep the pointed end going forward as much as possible.
The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.
Speed is life, altitude is life insurance. No one has ever collided with the sky.
If you're gonna fly low, do not fly slow! ASW pilots know this only too well.
I've just visited a West Australian newspaper - the one where the brand spanking new
Aviation Editor spoke of stupid pilots and unbearably wonderful Boeing. They have a new essay
about the Report, but 1) the jackass troll for Boeing has been given a minder in the form of
a co-author, and 2) the article plays it straight this time.
Boeing admits 737 software was factor in crashes
The Ethiopian crew performed all of the procedures provided by Boeing but was unable
to control the aircraft.
The problems of the B737 Max are not a disaster for Boeing, but for the over 300
fatalities.
They lost no shareholder value or return, they lost their lives.
They are also certainly not represented by expensive top lawyers like Boeing itself, who can
then mitigate, delay or even completely avert the consequences of Boeing's decisions.
They, the people (who had confidence in American technology/products), crashed on the ground,
burned or plunged into the sea without ever having had the slightest chance of averting the
disaster.
Interesting story you linked on the Boeing KC-46. The Air Force pilots won't fly it
because the loose tools and debris they found in the planes raised doubts about the planes
manufacturing integrity. The crisis was/is one degree (of four graduated degrees of
seriousness) away from shutting down the production line completely.
What's key is how Boeing proceeded to address the problem: by taking employee time away
from production in order to perform final inspection, i.e. quality control. Which makes it
clear where the original quality control was lost, by being absorbed into production, to make
more product per employee hour.
And this is just one, visible part of the process, where we can observe concrete examples
of inadequate QC.
Commenters here who point to these plane crashes as a failure in the integrity of Boeing
itself are exactly correct. The flawed plane built by the flawed company was an inevitable
fruit of the poisoned tree.
And I agree that one would be mad to trust anything bearing Boeing's name ever again. One
would be wise also to look for similar poisoned trees in all fields, and thread one's way
cautiously though this perilous, neoliberalized world.
So the jack screw that manually controls the stabilizer did not work due to high speed.
Isn't that what hydraulics are for?
By design.
The screw is designed to work within certain criteria.
1.Load,caused by thick or thin air pressure depending on altitude, on the moving part.
2. Speed, which again increases the load depending on the planes speed through the air, on
the moving part.
The speed and altitude are known from the panes onboard sensors.
Great load will possibly damage or break away the moving part, leading to an
uncontrollable crash.
Hence use of the jack screw adjustment, by the hydraulic system, will only be available
within its design envelope of load and speed.
We had already been told that in the
Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 crash which killed all 157 people on board, the 4-month old 737 MAX
8's anti-stall software reengaged itself four times in 6 minutes as the pilots struggled to
straighten the plane post-takeoff. In the end, the anti-stall software won and pushed the plane
nose-down towards the earth. Now, Ethiopia -finally?!- released its report in the March 10 crash:
Minister of Transport Dagmawit Moges said that the crew of the Ethiopian Airlines flight
from Addis Ababa to Nairobi on 10 March "performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the
manufacturer but were not able to control the aircraft." As result, investigations have
concluded that Boeing should be required to review the so-called manoeuvring characteristics
augmentation system on its 737 Max aircraft before the jets are permitted to fly again, she
said.
The results of the preliminary investigation led by Ethiopia's Accident Investigation
Bureau and supported by European investigators were presented by Ms Moges at a press conference
in Addis Ababa on Thursday morning.
Ethiopia is being kind to Boeing. However, though the anti-stall software played a big role in
what happened, Boeing's assertion (hope?!) that a software fix is all that is needed to get the
737MAX's back in the air around the globe rests on very shaky ground (no pun intended whatsoever).
737 MAX 8. The angle-of- attack (AOA) sensor is the lower device below the cockpit
windshield on both sides of the fuselage. (Mike Siegel/The Seattle Times)
The Seattle Times did an article on March 26 that explains a lot more than all other articles on
the topic combined. The paper of course resides in Boeing's backyard, but can that be the reason we
haven't seen the article quoted all over?
If the assertions in the article are correct, it would appear that
a software fix is the
least of Boeing's problems. For one thing, it needs to address serious hardware, not software,
issues with its planes. For another, the company better hire a thousand of the world's best lawyers
for all the lawsuits that will be filed against it.
Its cost-cutting endeavors may well be responsible for killing a combined 346 people in the
October 29 Lion Air crash and the Ethiopian Airlines one. Get a class-action suit filed in the US
and Boeing could be fighting for survival.
Boeing has long embraced the power of redundancy to protect its jets and their passengers
from a range of potential disruptions, from electrical faults to lightning strikes. The company
typically uses two or even three separate components as fail-safes for crucial tasks to reduce
the possibility of a disastrous failure. Its most advanced planes, for instance, have
three
flight computers that function independently, with each computer containing three different
processors manufactured by different companies
. So even some of the people who have
worked on Boeing's new 737 MAX airplane were baffled to learn that the company had designed
an
automated safety system that abandoned the principles of component redundancy, ultimately
entrusting the automated decision-making to just one sensor -- a type of sensor that was known to
fail.
That one paragraph alone is so potentially damaging it's hard to fathom why everyone's still
discussing a software glitch.
Boeing's rival, Airbus, has typically depended on three such sensors.
"A single
point of failure is an absolute no-no,"
said one former Boeing engineer who worked on
the MAX, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about the program in an interview with The
Seattle Times. "That is just a huge system engineering oversight. To just have missed it, I
can't imagine how." Boeing's design made the flight crew the fail-safe backup to the safety
system known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS. The Times has
interviewed eight people in recent days who were involved in developing the MAX, which remains
grounded around the globe in the wake of two crashes that killed a total of 346 people.
The Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) was already a late addition
that Boeing had not planned for initially.
They wanted a plane that was so like older ones
that no training would be needed, but did put a much heavier engine in it, which was why MCAS was
needed. As I wrote earlier today,
they cut corners until there was no corner left.
On hardware, on software, on pilot training (simulator), everything was done to be cheaper than
Airbus.
The angle-of-attack (AOA) sensor of the 737 MAX is the bottom piece of equipment below just
below the cockpit windshield. (Mike Siegel / The Seattle Times)
A faulty reading from an angle-of-attack sensor (AOA) -- used to assess whether the plane
is angled up so much that it is at risk of stalling -- is now suspected in the October crash of a
737 MAX in Indonesia, with data suggesting that MCAS pushed the aircraft's nose toward Earth to
avoid a stall that wasn't happening. Investigators have said another crash in Ethiopia this
month has parallels to the first.
Boeing has been working to rejigger its MAX software in recent months, and that includes
a plan to have MCAS consider input from both of the plane's angle-of-attack sensors, according
to officials familiar with the new design. "Our proposed software update incorporates additional
limits and safeguards to the system and reduces crew workload," Boeing said in a statement. But
one
problem with two-point redundancies is that if one sensor goes haywire, the plane may not be
able to automatically determine which of the two readings is correct
, so Boeing has
indicated that the MCAS safety system will not function when the sensors record substantial
disagreement.
The underlying idea is so basic and simple it hurts: safety come in groups of three:
three
flight computers that function independently, with each computer containing three different
processors manufactured by different companies
, and three sensors. The logic behind this
is so overwhelming it's hard to see how anyone but a sociopathic accountant can even ponder
ditching it.
And then here come the clinchers:
Some observers, including the former Boeing engineer, think the safest option would be
for Boeing to have
a third sensor to help ferret out an erroneous reading, much like the
three-sensor systems on the airplanes at rival Airbus. Adding that option, however, could
require a physical retrofit of the MAX.
See? It's not a software issue. It's hardware, and in all likelihood not just computer hardware
either.
Clincher no. 2:
Andrew Kornecki, a former professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University who has
studied redundancy systems in Airbus and Boeing planes, said operating
the automated
system with one or two sensors would be fine if all the pilots were sufficiently trained in how
to assess and handle the plane in the event of a problem.
But, he said, if he were
designing the system from scratch, he would emphasize the training while also building the plane
with three sensors.
The professor is not 100% honest, I would think. There is zero reason to opt for a two-sensor
system, and 1001 reasons not to. It's all just about cost being more important than people. That
last bit explains why Boeing went there against better judgment:
[..] Boeing had been exploring the construction of an all-new airplane earlier this
decade. But
after American Airlines began discussing orders for a new plane from Airbus
in 2011, Boeing abruptly changed course
, settling on the faster alternative of
modifying its popular 737 into a new MAX model. Rick Ludtke, a former Boeing engineer who worked
on designing the interfaces on the MAX's flight deck, said managers mandated that any
differences from the previous 737 had to be small enough that they wouldn't trigger the need for
pilots to undergo new simulator training.
That left the team working on an old architecture and layers of different design
philosophies that had piled on over the years, all to serve an international pilot community
that was increasingly expecting automation. "It's become such a kludge, that we started to
speculate and wonder whether it was safe to do the MAX," Ludtke said. Ludtke didn't work
directly on the MCAS, but he worked with those who did. He said that
if the group had
built the MCAS in a way that would depend on two sensors, and would shut the system off if one
fails, he thinks the company would have needed to install an alert in the cockpit to make the
pilots aware that the safety system was off.
There you go: A two-sensor system is fundamentally unsound, and it's therefore bonkers to even
discuss, let alone contemplate it.
And if that happens, Ludtke said, the pilots would potentially need training on the new
alert and the underlying system. That could mean simulator time, which was off the table. "The
decision path they made with MCAS is probably the wrong one," Ludtke said. "It shows how the
airplane is a bridge too far."
Kudos to the Seattle Times for their research. And yeah, we get it, at over 5000 orders
for the plane, which costs $121 million each, there's big money involved. Here's hoping that Boeing
will find out in the courts just how much.
The preliminary report contains flight data recorder information indicating the airplane had an
erroneous angle of attack sensor input that activated the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation
System (MCAS) function during the flight, as it had during the Lion Air 610 flight.
To
ensure unintended MCAS activation will not occur again, Boeing has developed and is planning to
release a software update to MCAS and an associated comprehensive pilot training and supplementary
education program for the 737 MAX.
As previously announced, the update adds additional layers of protection and will prevent
erroneous data from causing MCAS activation. Flight crews will always have the ability to override
MCAS and manually control the airplane.
Boeing continues to work with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and other
regulatory agencies worldwide on the development and certification of the software update and
training program.
Boeing also is continuing to work closely with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board
(NTSB) as technical advisors in support of the AIB investigation. As a party providing technical
assistance under the direction of investigating authorities, Boeing is prevented by international
protocol and NTSB regulations from disclosing any information relating to the investigation. In
accordance with international protocol, information about the investigation is provided only by
investigating authorities in charge.
* * *
Update (1100ET)
: Ethiopian investigators have called on Boeing to carry
out a full review of the anti-stall system on its 737 Max aircraft after finding pilots of a plane
that crashed near Addis Ababa last month had followed the stipulated emergency procedures but were
unable to save the aircraft.
Key highlights from the report make it very clear this is Boeing's problem...
*ALTITUDE, AIRSPEED READINGS FROM 737 WERE ERRONEOUS ON ONE SIDE
*ETHIOPIAN ANGLE OF ATTACK SENSORS DIFFERED BY 59.2 DEGREES
*AUTOMATIC NOSE-DOWN COMMANDS SHOW ANTI-STALL SYSTEM ACTIVATED
*ETHIOPIAN REPORT: NOSE DOWN PITCH EVENTUALLY REACHED 40 DEGREES
*CAPTAIN REQUESTED COPILOT `PITCH UP WITH HIM': REPORT
As The FT reports,
Ethiopian minister of transport Dagmawit Moges called on the
embattled aircraft manufacturer to
carry out a full review of the anti-stall system on its
737 Max aircraft before they are allowed to fly again
, after finding that the
pilots were not to blame
for the crash last month.
Boeing stock is higher somehow on the back of all this??
A lawsuit against Boeing Co was filed in U.S. federal court on Thursday in what appeared to
be the first suit over a March 10 Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX crash that killed 157
people.
The lawsuit was filed in Chicago federal court by the family of Jackson Musoni, a
citizen of Rwanda, and alleges that Boeing, which manufactures the 737 MAX, had defectively
designed the automated flight control system.
Boeing said it could not comment on the lawsuit.
"Boeing ... is working with the authorities to evaluate new information as it becomes
available," it said, adding all inquiries about the ongoing accident investigation must be
directed to the investigating authorities.
The 737 MAX planes were grounded worldwide following the Ethiopian Airlines disaster, which
came five months after a Lion Air crash in Indonesia that killed 189 people.
Boeing said on Wednesday it had reprogrammed software on its 737 MAX to prevent erroneous
data from triggering an anti-stall system that is facing mounting scrutiny in the wake of two
deadly nose-down crashes in the past five months.
The planemaker said the anti-stall system, which is believed to have repeatedly forced the
nose lower in at least one of the accidents, in Indonesia last October, would only do so once
per event after sensing a problem, giving pilots more control.
The crash of Boeing's passenger jet in Ethiopia raised the chances that families of the
victims, even non-U.S. residents, will be able to sue in U.S. courts, where payouts are much
larger than in other countries, some legal experts have said.
Wednesday's complaint was filed by Musoni's three minor children, who are Dutch citizens
residing in Belgium.
The lawsuit says Boeing failed to warn the public, airlines and pilots of the airplane's
allegedly erroneous sensors, causing the aircraft to dive automatically and uncontrollably.
Ethiopian officials and some analysts have said the Ethiopian Airlines jet behaved in a
similar pattern as the 737 MAX involved in October's Lion Air disaster. The investigation into
the March crash, which is being led by the Ethiopian Transport Ministry, is still at an early
stage.
Thought it hasn't been publicly released yet, a preliminary report on the circumstances that caused
flight ET302 to plunge out of the sky just minutes after takeoff was completed earlier this week,
and some of the details have leaked to Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. And for Boeing
shareholders, the findings aren't pretty.
Appearing to contradict Boeing's insistence that
procedures for deactivating its MCAS anti-stall software were widely disseminated, and that pilots
at airlines around the world had been trained on these procedures,
WSJ
reported that the pilots of ET302 successfully switched off MCAS as they struggled to right
the plane after the software had automatically tipped its nose down. As they struggled to right the
plane, the pilots ended up reactivating the software, while trying a few other steps from their
training, before the plane began its final plunge toward a field outside Addis Ababa, where the
ensuing crash killed all 157 people on board.
Though the pilots deviated from Boeing's emergency checklist as they tried to right the plane,
investigators surmised that they gave up on the procedures after they failed to right the plane.
But when MCAS reengaged, whether intentionally, or on accident, it pushed the nose of the plane
lower once again.
The pilots on Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 initially reacted to the emergency by shutting
off power to electric motors driven by the automated system, these people said, but then appear
to have re-engaged the system to cope with a persistent steep nose-down angle.
It wasn't
immediately clear why the pilots turned the automated system back on
instead of
continuing to follow Boeing's standard emergency checklist,
but government and industry
officials said the likely reason would have been because manual controls to raise the nose
didn't achieve the desired results.
After first cranking a manual wheel in the cockpit that controls the same movable surfaces on
the plane's tail that MCAS had affected, the pilots turned electric power back on, one of these
people said. They began to use electric switches to try to raise the plane's nose, according to
these people. But the electric power also reactivated MCAS, allowing it to continue its strong
downward commands, the people said.
Reuters
, which was also the recipient of leaks from investigators, offered a slightly different
version of events. It reported that MCAS was reengaged four times as pilots scrambled to right the
plane,
and that investigators were looking into the possibility that the software might
have reengaged without prompting from the pilots.
After the Lion Air crash that killed 189 people back in October, Boeing and the FAA published a
bulletin reminding pilots to follow the emergency procedures to deactivate the software if a faulty
sensor - like the one that is believed to have contributed to the Lion Air crash - feeds erroneous
data to the system.
The data show the pilots maneuvered the plane back upward twice before deactivating the
software. But between the two reports, one detail is made abundantly clear.
The software's
reengagement is what doomed everybody aboard. That is an unequivocally bad look for Boeing, which
has been deflecting questions about the software's bugs, and gaps in the dissemination of its
training materials, while working on an update that the company says will make the software less
reliant on automated systems.
The aviation industry has been trying to make the human pilots
obsolete, just as in so many industries. But they all do their,
these days, their R & D on the job. Recall the Amazon Robot that
went berserk recently. The idea is to rid all industry of people
progressively so that they can end up not needing people at all.
They'll end up with nothing. Some how they think that if they take
people out then profits will be assured, which is actually
psychotic. They have had remote auto pilot for 7 decades now. They
can bring down any aircraft at will, and do so regularly. They can
shut down or affect engines remotely, or alter the actions as is
imbedded into just about all new machinery, other than knives,
forks and spoons. Yet they still need consumers and workers to
create hedged exchange to profit from. That is the dilemma
industry owners are facing, that without pesky people they are
doomed as much as the doom they are creating for even their own
off spring = psychosis.
The 757 and 767 are a more obvious airframe to build upon, as a response to the Airbus the
new 737MAX design was very poorly thought out, it's airframe vs. engine placement and thrust.
Having trained on Boeing 767-300ERs myself a pilot becomes very in tune with it's quirks and
it does have them, speed bugs and so on.
When you watch certain aircraft taking off in routine operations, unreasonable angles of
attack V-speed, now many pilots will engage 1 autopilots minutes after take off while flaps
are partially extended still(it stabalizes a positive rate of climb), this is so that the
aircraft is more efficient, cost effective and reaches it's crusie altitude and destination
on time.
The 767 has 3 autopilot computers, 2 of them receive data as to angle of attack and speed
when the stall warning activates as the stick shakes, the autopilots are off, period, no more
input from the computers other than warnings - these too can often lead to confusion and
sometimes with fatal results.
Sometimes you will re-engage one after you've corrected the airspeed (nose down) and stall
to regain and maintain a efficient airflow lift. Although in some cases the pitot tubes
malfunction to due ice, so trusting what the machine was telling the pilots can be fatal.
[In 737MAX] The pilot simply cannot take full control the aircraft when he needs to do so.
Hence the pilots in the 737MAX cases scrambling to work through the problem by checklist, if
you're doing this something is going wrong and will be wrong.
Ever notice the difference between a soft smooth landing and a 'rough one' that shakes
passengers - note these are totally normal landings, the computer assisted ones in clear blue
skies and calm winds are not.
That's the pilots on a VFR or visual landing which the computer usually tries to interfere
with, if a hybrid semi-assisted landing, especially on an ILS glideslope in bad weather.
A pilot should know these skills but many now do not. They have to rely on the input from
the computers and Boeing tried unsuccessfully to introduce this new MCAS system seamlessly,
when you've got 3 autopilots why is only 1 receiving the flight data of angle of attack and
v-speed?!
There was a prominent no-show among the 200 regulators, pilots and airline managers that
Boeing Co.
invited to preview a crucial software update for the 737 Max this week, said people familiar with
the matter: European safety officials.
The planemaker is sending a team across the Atlantic to brief the European Union Aviation Safety Agency on the
proposed changes after two of the jetliners plunged to the ground within five months, said one of the people, who
asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. Representatives of EASA didn't return requests for
comment.
Intentional or not, EASA's snub points to the delicate politics Boeing faces in convincing regulators the Max
is safe as the company seeks to restore confidence in its best-selling jet, which has been grounded for more than
two weeks. The reputation of U.S. regulators has taken a hit in the scrutiny of the 737 Max's approval process,
and foreign agencies are less likely to rubber-stamp aircraft certifications simply because they have been cleared
by the Federal Aviation Administration.
EASA is expected to play an influential role in determining how long and complicated the review of the Max will
be, while safety officials from China to Canada have vowed to conduct their own rigorous analysis.
"EASA's determination should be important for the rest of the world, given its sophistication and perceived
independence," Seth Seifman, analyst with JPMorgan Chase & Co., said in a note to clients.
A spokesman for the FAA declined to comment.
'Productive' Sessions
"We had productive information sessions this week and continue to work closely with our customers and
regulators on software and training updates for the 737 Max," Boeing spokesman Paul Bergman said by email.
As of late Friday, the Chicago-based planemaker was still finishing up paperwork needed to certify a software
upgrade and revised pilot training for the 737 Max. One prominent pilots union criticized the proposed training as
insufficient.
The software changes, intended to prevent stall-prevention software from engaging in normal flight, have been
in the works since the system pointed a Lion Air jet's nose downward about two dozen times before pilots lost
control Oct. 29. That accident killed 189 people, while 157 died when an Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max 8 crashed
March 10.
While certifying the software upgrade is the first step toward returning the Max to flight, it doesn't assure
the grounding will be speedily lifted by the FAA or its counterparts around the world. The EU, China and Canada
all grounded the 737 Max more quickly than the FAA in the wake of the Ethiopian crash.
Software Changes
The break between FAA and overseas authorities on the initial decision to ground the plane, combined with
worldwide public furor and a U.S. criminal probe of the Max certification, "all make it hard for us to see how
foreign regulators can avoid coming back with their own questions and doing some of their own due diligence,"
Seifman said in his report.
Crash investigators suspect that a damaged or malfunctioning sensor triggered anti-stall technology in the
Ethiopian Airlines plane, Bloomberg
reported
Friday. Investigators think that caused the plane's nose to point downward, and the pilots struggled
to counteract the software-based system, according to people familiar with the crash probe. That scenario would be
similar to the crash that brought down the Lion Air flight last year in Indonesia.
Boeing is planning software revisions that restrict the number of times the Maneuvering Characteristics
Augmentation System, or MCAS, kicks in to a single interaction. The update is also designed so that MCAS can't
command the horizontal stabilizer to push a plane's nose down with more force than what pilots can counter by
pulling back on the steering column.
The enhancements appeared to work as billed, said pilots who viewed demonstrations of the upgrades by company
test pilots in flight simulators at the event March 27 in Renton, Washington.
"We were confident flying the aircraft in its present state," said Roddy Guthrie,
American Airlines Group Inc.
's 737 fleet captain, who was at the Boeing briefings. The improvements "were
needed. They've put some checks and balances in the system now that will make the system much better."
Simulator Demonstrations
Still, Boeing representatives faced caustic comments from some at the Wednesday session, said one of the people
familiar with the discussions. As Boeing test pilots demonstrated old and new versions of MCAS, attendees were
especially interested in re-enacting the sequence of events leading to the Lion Air crash, the person said. Pilots
also demonstrated how the 737 Max would behave if an angle-of-attack vane was sheared off by, say, a bird strike.
One pilot group walked away from the event feeling that Boeing needs to do more work on a new 30-minute iPad
course, followed by a test, that is intended to help pilots of the older generation of 737 planes prepare for the
Max. The newest version of Boeing's workhorse single-aisle jet debuted less than two years ago.
Pilots who saw the preliminary version of the training "characterized it as nice for an elementary level of
understanding, but pilots will definitely need a more textured and layered instructional piece," said Dennis Tajer,
spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association, which represents pilots at American. "That was the hands-down
consensus."
"... Boeing compromised on sound engineering with the 737 Max . Recall the origins of the problem: Boeing was at risk of losing big orders to a more fuel-efficient Airbus model. Rather than sacrifice market share, Boeing put more fuel-efficient, larger engines on the existing 737 frames. The placement of the engine created a new safety risk, that under some circumstances, the plane could "nose up" at such a steep angle as to put it in a stall. The solution was to install software called MCAS which would force the nose down if the "angle of attack" became too acute. ..."
"... Merriam-Webster defines kludge -- sometimes spelled kluge -- as "a haphazard or makeshift solution to a problem and especially to a computer or programming problem." Oxford defines it as, in computing, "A machine, system, or program that has been badly put together, especially a clumsy but temporarily effective solution to a particular fault or problem." ..."
"... In the case of the 737 Max, it's the combination of how two separate problems interacted -- a plane whose design introduced aerodynamics issues and what now appears to have been a poorly designed anti-stall system -- that seems to be drawing many to turn to Granholm's term. The problems were compounded in many ways, including by the fact that pilots were not told of or trained for the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) before the Lion Air crash, which killed all 189 on board. ..."
"... "My concern is that Boeing may have developed the MCAS software as a profit-driven kludge to mitigate the Max 8's degraded flight characteristics due to the engine relocation required to maintain ground clearance," commented Philip Wheelock on a New York Times story about the plane's certification process this week. "Not convinced that software is an acceptable solution for an older design that has been pushed to its inherent aeronautical design limits." ..."
"... "Indeed, it seems the 737 MAX was a kludge to an existing design, and that MCAS was a kludge on top of that," said a commenter on Hackaday . ..."
"... Boeing has long embraced the power of redundancy to protect its jets and their passengers from a range of potential disruptions, from electrical faults to lightning strikes. The company typically uses two or even three separate components as fail-safes for crucial tasks to reduce the possibility of a disastrous failure. So even some of the people who have worked on Boeing's new 737 MAX airplane were baffled to learn that the company had designed an automated safety system that abandoned the principles of component redundancy, ultimately entrusting the automated decision-making to just one sensor -- a type of sensor that was known to fail. ..."
"... That no one who wrote the MCAS software for the 737 MAX seems to have even raised the issue of using multiple inputs, including the opposite angle of attack sensor, in the computer's determination of an impending stall is mind-blowing. ..."
"... As a lifetime member of the software development fraternity, I don't know what toxic combination of inexperience, hubris, or lack of cultural understanding led to this. But I do know that it's indicative of a much deeper and much more troubling problem. The people who wrote the code for the original MCAS system were obviously terribly far out of their league and did not know it. How can we possibly think they can implement a software fix, much less give us any comfort whatsoever that the rest of the flight management software, which is ultimately in ultimate control of the aircraft, has any fidelity at all? ..."
"... And we're giving short shrift to how Boeing compounded the problem, for instance, by making it an upcharge to have the 737 Max have a light showing that its angle of attack sensors disagreed (the planes did have two, but bizarrely, only one would be giving data to the MCAS system on any day), or hiding the fact that there was a new safety automated safety system in two paragraphs after page 700 in the flight manual. ..."
"... It's about an airplane manufacturer that put engines on an airframe they weren't designed for, having to add a flight control override to guard against said airplane's new tendency to nose up, and then adding insult to injury by driving that system with a single sensor when two are available. Oh – and charging airlines extra for the privilege of their pilots being told when one of those sensors is providing bad data. ..."
"... Officials investigating the fatal crash of a Boeing Co. BA 0.06% 737 MAX in Ethiopia have reached a preliminary conclusion that a suspect flight-control feature automatically activated before the plane nose-dived into the ground, according to people briefed on the matter, the first findings based on data retrieved from the flight's black boxes. ..."
"... Boeing is doubling down on its mistakes . The lesson of the Tylenol poisoning is that if a company has a safety problem, even if it isn't its fault, it needs to do everything it can to rectify the defects and protect customers. If there is any doubt, the company needs to err of the side of safety. ..."
"... Here, unlike with Johnson & Johnson, the failings that led to 737 Max groundings all originated with Boeing. Yet rather than own the problems and go overboard on fixing them to restore confidence in the plane and in Boeing, Boeing is acting as if all it has to put in place are merely adequate measures. ..."
"... [Former Boeing engineer Mr. [Rick] Ludtke [who worked on 737 MAX cockpit features] recalled midlevel managers telling subordinates that Boeing had committed to pay the airline $1 million per plane if its design ended up requiring pilots to spend additional simulator time. "We had never, ever seen commitments like that before," he said. ..."
"... I hope the pilots in our readership speak up, but as a mere mortal, I've very uncomfortable with pilots being put in a position of overriding a system in emergency conditions when they haven't even test driven it. When I learn software, reading a manual is useless save for learning what the program's capabilities are. In order to be able to use it, I have to spend time with it, hands on. Computer professionals tell me the same thing. It doesn't seem likely that pilots are all that different. ..."
"... Boeing does not seem to comprehend that it is gambling with its future. What if international flight regulators use the Max 737 as a bloody flag and refuse to accept FAA certifications of Boeing planes, or US origin equipment generally? Do you think for a nanosecond that the European and Chinese regulators wouldn't use disregarding the FAA as a way to advance their interests? Europe would clearly give preference to Airbus, and the Chinese could use Boeing to punish the US for going after Huawei. ..."
"... And yet we do not see anyone suggesting the obvious solution to this problem; eliminating the 737 MAX type of aircraft altogether. ..."
"... I don't think that Boeing can afford to drop the 737 MAX. This aircraft was in response to the Airbus as they did not have any new aircraft designs on the boards to take it on. So they modified a 1970s design as a profitable stopgap solution. ..."
"... Boeing were designing a follow-on to the 737, but panicked when the A320Neo came and went for the MAX instead as they could deliver it much quicker and cheaper than a new aircraft. ..."
"... If its true that they are another example of a once great engineering company enslaved to the quarterly results, then it may well be that all work on the replacement stopped when they put their engineers to work on the MAX line. If that's the case, then they really are screwed. Ten years is an absolute minimum to get a brand new aircraft delivered to customers from a standing start. ..."
"... The newer versions of the 737 have nearly twice the max takeoff weight of the original, but with the same landing gear and nearly the same wing area. ..."
"... Airbus probably can't produce enough Neo to make up for the shortfall, but they essentially own the Bombardier C-Series now (ironically, made in Mobile, Alabama and relabelled the Airbus 220) which could prove an excellent investment by Airbus. ..."
"... Regarding the FAA I have read in Spanish press that Daniel Elwell declared in the congress (translated from Spanish) that "I can't believe that airline companies tried to save a few thousand dollars on a feature that increases safety". This is a bad try to shift blame from Boeing to airline companies and if anything will reduce (eliminate) the international confidence on FAA regulations. ..."
"... Managers telling this to engineers before a plane is designed is one thing. Telling it to them after the plane been designed but while its user interface is being designed is outrageous. ..."
"... And I think the plane actually has two (one on each side) , but for some reason, their inputs weren't combined. There's a slight subtlety that the air flow is 3 dimensional, so when the plane is turning, and particularly turning+climbing, the readings of the two might vary slightly – but that's for the software to sort out. They reportedly didn't hook both of them up to both flight computers – why is an interesting question. There's probably a practical reason, but ..."
"... What the folks at Boeing may not realise is that the more they double-down on this bizarre tactic of using spin-doctoring as a crisis management tool aimed at an audience that is rapidly losing trust in the company ( and frankly may no longer believe anything coming out of the corporate communications department at Boeing), the harder it's going to be to reverse course by coming out and saying "we screwed up and will do whatever it takes to fix this". This debacle has all the makings of a large scale cover up and the continued mala fide attempts to deflect focus away from taking ownership of and accountability for this crisis will only result in continued assault on an already battered reputation. ..."
"... As an aside, the malaise at the FAA has been much documented on these pages and elsewhere recently, from the egregious abdication of its regulatory responsibilities to Boeing to having a top position go unfilled for over a year, my question to US readers is whether a comparable level of capture by corporate interests has similarly defanged the FDA? ..."
Boeing compromised on sound engineering with the 737 Max . Recall the origins of the problem: Boeing was at risk of losing
big orders to a more fuel-efficient Airbus model. Rather than sacrifice market share, Boeing put more fuel-efficient, larger engines
on the existing 737 frames. The placement of the engine created a new safety risk, that under some circumstances, the plane could
"nose up" at such a steep angle as to put it in a stall. The solution was to install software called MCAS which would force the nose
down if the "angle of attack" became too acute.
Merriam-Webster defines kludge -- sometimes
spelled
kluge -- as "a haphazard or makeshift solution to a problem and especially to a computer or
programming problem." Oxford defines it as,
in computing, "A machine, system, or program that has been badly put together, especially a clumsy but temporarily effective solution
to a particular fault or problem."
In the case of the 737 Max, it's the combination of how two separate problems interacted -- a plane whose design introduced
aerodynamics issues and what now appears to have been a poorly designed anti-stall system -- that seems to be drawing many to
turn to Granholm's term. The problems
were compounded in many ways,
including by the fact that pilots were not told of or trained for the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) before
the Lion Air crash, which killed all 189 on board.
"My concern is that Boeing may have developed the MCAS software as a profit-driven kludge to mitigate the Max 8's degraded
flight characteristics due to the engine relocation required to maintain ground clearance,"
commented Philip Wheelock on
a New York Times
story about the plane's certification process this week. "Not convinced that software is an acceptable solution for an older
design that has been pushed to its inherent aeronautical design limits."
"Indeed, it seems the 737 MAX was a kludge to an existing design, and that MCAS was a kludge on top of that," said
a commenter
on Hackaday .
Lambert found more damning takes, which he featured in Water Cooler yesterday. First
from the Seattle Times :
Boeing has long embraced the power of redundancy to protect its jets and their passengers from a range of potential disruptions,
from electrical faults to lightning strikes. The company typically uses two or even three separate components as fail-safes for
crucial tasks to reduce the possibility of a disastrous failure. So even some of the people who have worked on Boeing's new 737
MAX airplane were baffled to learn that the company had designed an automated safety system that abandoned the principles of component
redundancy, ultimately entrusting the automated decision-making to just one sensor -- a type of sensor that was known to fail.
Boeing's rival, Airbus, has typically depended on three such sensors. "A single point of failure is an absolute no-no," said one
former Boeing engineer who worked on the MAX, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about the program in an interview with
The Seattle Times. "That is just a huge system engineering oversight. To just have missed it, I can't imagine how."
And the second, from software developer Greg Travis who happens also to be a pilot and aircraft owner:
That no one who wrote the MCAS software for the 737 MAX seems to have even raised the issue of using multiple inputs, including
the opposite angle of attack sensor, in the computer's determination of an impending stall is mind-blowing.
As a lifetime member of the software development fraternity, I don't know what toxic combination of inexperience, hubris,
or lack of cultural understanding led to this. But I do know that it's indicative of a much deeper and much more troubling problem.
The people who wrote the code for the original MCAS system were obviously terribly far out of their league and did not know it.
How can we possibly think they can implement a software fix, much less give us any comfort whatsoever that the rest of the flight
management software, which is ultimately in ultimate control of the aircraft, has any fidelity at all?
Ouch.
And we're giving short shrift to how Boeing compounded the problem, for instance, by making it an upcharge to have the 737
Max have a light showing that its angle of attack sensors disagreed (the planes did have two, but bizarrely, only one would be giving
data to the MCAS system on any day), or hiding the fact that there was a new safety automated safety system in two paragraphs after
page 700 in the flight manual. As Wall Street Journal reader Erich Greenbaum said in comments on an older article,
How Boeing's 737 MAX Failed :
No – this isn't about "planes that fly by themselves." It's about an airplane manufacturer that put engines on an airframe
they weren't designed for, having to add a flight control override to guard against said airplane's new tendency to nose up, and
then adding insult to injury by driving that system with a single sensor when two are available. Oh – and charging airlines extra
for the privilege of their pilots being told when one of those sensors is providing bad data.
The 737 Max has gotten a bad name not just for itself but also for the airlines that were big buyers. Southwest had taken the
most 737 Max deliveries, and American was second. I happened to be looking at American for flights last night. This is what I got
when I went to aa.com:
I came back to the page later to make sure I hadn't hit the 737 Max message randomly, by loading the page just when that image came
up in a cycle .and that doesn't appear to be the case. I landed on the 737 Max splash a second time.
This result suggests that American has gotten so many customer queries about the 737 Max that it felt it had to make providing
information about it a priority. If you click through, the next page explains how all 737 Max planes have been grounded, that American
is using other equipment to fly on routes previously scheduled for those planes, but it has still had to cancel 90 flights a day.
Officials investigating the fatal crash of a Boeing Co. BA 0.06% 737 MAX in Ethiopia have reached a preliminary conclusion
that a suspect flight-control feature automatically activated before the plane nose-dived into the ground, according to people
briefed on the matter, the first findings based on data retrieved from the flight's black boxes.
The emerging consensus among investigators, one of these people said, was relayed during a high-level briefing at the Federal
Aviation Administration on Thursday, and is the strongest indication yet that the same automated system, called MCAS, misfired
in both the Ethiopian Airlines flight earlier this month and a Lion Air flight in Indonesia, which crashed less than five months
earlier. The two crashes claimed 346 lives.
Boeing is doubling down on its mistakes . The lesson of the Tylenol poisoning is that if a company has a safety problem, even
if it isn't its fault, it needs to do everything it can to rectify the defects and protect customers. If there is any doubt, the
company needs to err of the side of safety.
Here, unlike with Johnson & Johnson, the failings that led to 737 Max groundings all originated with Boeing. Yet rather than
own the problems and go overboard on fixing them to restore confidence in the plane and in Boeing, Boeing is acting as if all it
has to put in place are merely adequate measures.
Reuters, which has a bias towards understatement, has an atypically pointed farming Boeing's refusal to recommend pilot simulator
training for the MCAS:
Boeing Co said it will submit by the end of this week a training package that 737 MAX pilots are required to take before a
worldwide ban can be lifted, proposing as it did before two deadly crashes that those pilots do not need time on flight simulators
to safely operate the aircraft.
In making that assessment, the world's largest planemaker is doubling down on a strategy it promoted to American Airlines Group
Inc and other customers years ago. Boeing told airlines their pilots could switch from the older 737NG to the new MAX without
costly flight simulator training and without compromising on safety, three former Boeing employees said.
The company had promised Southwest Airlines Co. , the plane's biggest customer, to keep pilot training to a minimum so the
new jet could seamlessly slot into the carrier's fleet of older 737s, according to regulators and industry officials.
[Former Boeing engineer Mr. [Rick] Ludtke [who worked on 737 MAX cockpit features] recalled midlevel managers telling subordinates
that Boeing had committed to pay the airline $1 million per plane if its design ended up requiring pilots to spend additional
simulator time. "We had never, ever seen commitments like that before," he said.
I've never flown Southwest and now I will make sure never to use them.
I hope the pilots in our readership speak up, but as a mere mortal, I've very uncomfortable with pilots being put in a position
of overriding a system in emergency conditions when they haven't even test driven it. When I learn software, reading a manual is
useless save for learning what the program's capabilities are. In order to be able to use it, I have to spend time with it, hands
on. Computer professionals tell me the same thing. It doesn't seem likely that pilots are all that different.
In other words, Boeing's refusal to recommend simulator training looks to be influenced by avoiding triggering a $31 million penalty
payment to Southwest. This is an insane back-assward sense of priorities. Boeing had over $10 billion in profits in 2018. A $31 million
payment isn't material and would almost certainly be lower after tax.
Boeing does not seem to comprehend that it is gambling with its future. What if international flight regulators use the Max
737 as a bloody flag and refuse to accept FAA certifications of Boeing planes, or US origin equipment generally? Do you think for
a nanosecond that the European and Chinese regulators wouldn't use disregarding the FAA as a way to advance their interests? Europe
would clearly give preference to Airbus, and the Chinese could use Boeing to punish the US for going after Huawei.
Boeing's comeuppance is long overdue. The company's decision to break its union, outsource, and move to Chicago as a device for
shedding seasoned employees was a clear statement of its plan to compromise engineering in the name of profit. Something like the
Max 737 train wreck was bound to happen.
And yet we do not see anyone suggesting the obvious solution to this problem; eliminating the 737 MAX type of aircraft
altogether.
The crashes of the early de Havilland Comet commercial jet aircraft all but destroyed English commercial jet production. Boeing
should suffer a similar fate as de Havilland. Indeed, since the Comet crashes were the result of a previously unsuspected design
flaw, and Boeing's problems are self inflicted, Boeing should suffer a more drastic punishment.
I don't think that Boeing can afford to drop the 737 MAX. This aircraft was in response to the Airbus as they did not have
any new aircraft designs on the boards to take it on. So they modified a 1970s design as a profitable stopgap solution.
If they dump the 737 MAX then they have nothing good to go for years. In that space of time Airbus would move in and take over
many of Boeing's markets and there would be new aircraft from Russia and China coming online as well.
I do not think that it would destroy Boeing as the US government would bail it out first, but it would be a colossal setback.
I doubt that they would end up on this list-
I understand that it can take up to ten years to develop a new aircraft, but the basic design of the 737 has been around since
the Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" (!). Given that Airbus, like Avis, was going to be trying harder for more market share,
was it totally beyond Boeing's capacity to develop a follow-on for the 737 over the past, say, 20 years?
Boeing were designing a follow-on to the 737, but panicked when the A320Neo came and went for the MAX instead as they could
deliver it much quicker and cheaper than a new aircraft. What I don't know is if they are still working on a replacement
or if they shelved the plans entirely.
If its true that they are another example of a once great engineering company enslaved to the quarterly results, then it
may well be that all work on the replacement stopped when they put their engineers to work on the MAX line. If that's the case,
then they really are screwed. Ten years is an absolute minimum to get a brand new aircraft delivered to customers from a standing
start.
The 737 was designed to be low to the ground because it was to serve small airports where the passengers had to climb stairs
to enter (which I remember doing at Burbank and Ontario years ago) The 737 Max is what you would get if the 757 and 737 had a
child. The newer versions of the 737 have nearly twice the max takeoff weight of the original, but with the same landing gear
and nearly the same wing area.
Perhaps a shorter version of the 757 would have been the correct move, but Southwest would have screamed bloody murder.
The problem for airlines is the need to have more energy efficient aircraft for both cost and environment pressure reasons.
The 737 max is a response to the airbus 321neo, but as I understand it, Airbus does not have the capacity to takeover cancelled
orders for the 737 max.
Do airlines stick with older 737 or brazen it out with Boeing that the max problems have been resolved? And passengers. I imagine
they will fall into the brackets I will never fly on a 737 max, or I trust Boeing/airline, or a fatalistic if my number is up,
my number is up'.
I regularly fly with Norwegian in Europe. However I for one will never fly a max and will now prefer SAS with the 321neo. As
for Ryanair, that has max on order, if they take delivery, bye bye them.
Maybe the new Russian and Chinese versions can be an option? Or will Trump sanction any airline brave enough to order them
instead of Boeing?
Airbus probably can't produce enough Neo to make up for the shortfall, but they essentially own the
Bombardier C-Series now (ironically, made in Mobile, Alabama
and relabelled the Airbus 220) which could prove an excellent investment by Airbus.
There are four other potential competitors –
the Sukhoi Superjet (which is a little
smaller so may not be a direct replacement),
The French have a significant input to the Sukhoi, while Bombardier were involved with the Comac. None of those are direct
replacements (they are generally smaller and shorter range), but they might suit many airlines who need aircraft quickly but won't
touch the Max.
None of the above can match the Boeing or Airbus for state of the art engineering, but they are cheaper to buy, so they may
well now be more attractive to budget airlines and third world airlines. The big one to look out for is Ryanair – they've long
been Boeings biggest customer outside the US and have stuck with 737's consistently.
They will do their usual tactic of demanding huge discounts every time Boeing look weak, and no doubt they will do the same
now. But they may decide to look elsewhere (especially as they don't really need the longer range as they operate exclusively
in Europe). If they opt for something like the A220 or the Irkut, then that will be an enormous blow to Boeing, because others
will follow Ryanairs lead.
PK, you said that the Sukhoi Superjet had significant French input. Does that mean physical components as well? If so, I would
be surprised after the Mistral amphibious assault ships fiasco. On this topic, I saw this week how the French were taking out
German components out of joint French-German weapons systems and replacing them with French ones as the Germans are wary about
arming countries like Saudi Arabia and so have a say in these joint systems much to the disgust of the French, hence the swap-out
so the French can continue to sell these systems.
I was thinking of the engines , which are a joint
project between a French and Russian company. Ironically, the core of the engine for the Sukhoi is the M88, the engine the French
developed for the Rafaele fighter. The French are exceptionally good at using military research to help their commercial companies,
and vice versa.
The French are also very ruthless (i.e. immoral) when it comes to export sales. This is why they usually only partner with
the British, as they know the British share their rather loose definition of ethical policy in weapons sales. And they insist
on Frenchifying their systems as much as they can so there is nobody to interfere with sales.
Kludge translates in spanish into "chapuza" and in my view expresses very well the "solution" that Boeing brougth to the 737
Max.
Regarding the FAA I have read in Spanish press that Daniel Elwell declared in the congress (translated from Spanish) that
"I can't believe that airline companies tried to save a few thousand dollars on a feature that increases safety". This is a bad
try to shift blame from Boeing to airline companies and if anything will reduce (eliminate) the international confidence on FAA
regulations.
Boeing is doubling down on its mistakes. The lesson of the Tylenol poisoning is that if a company has a safety problem,
even if it isn't its fault , it needs to do everything it can to rectify the defects and protect customers. If there is any
doubt, the company needs to err of the side of safety.
And that might, precisely the difference between the Tylenol and the 737 MAX affairs. Boeing knows it is their fault and the
blame feeling prevents them to act as rationally as Johnson&Johnson did.
The Reuters article also says the following, which seems incredibly damning:
At Boeing's factory in Renton, Washington, managers told engineers working on the MAX, including its anti-stall system known
as MCAS, their designs could not trigger Level C or D training designations from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration,
the three former Boeing employees and a senior industry executive with knowledge of MAX development told Reuters. Otherwise,
pilots would have to spend time in simulators before flying the new planes.
Managers telling this to engineers before a plane is designed is one thing. Telling it to them after the plane been designed
but while its user interface is being designed is outrageous.
Certainly a relatively delicate sensor with external moving parts is a super obvious point of failure that any engineer would
flag down instantly.
And I think the plane actually has two (one on each side) , but for some reason, their inputs weren't combined. There's
a slight subtlety that the air flow is 3 dimensional, so when the plane is turning, and particularly turning+climbing, the readings
of the two might vary slightly – but that's for the software to sort out. They reportedly didn't hook both of them up to both
flight computers – why is an interesting question. There's probably a practical reason, but
Sometimes in industry what happens is you are updating a system or product, you don't want to re-certify your electronics (to
make schedule or cost) , but you used all the input capacity on your logic systems/comms/wiring and still need more. So you have
to "get creative" squeezing functionality into your legacy electronics. I really hope it wasn't something like that.
ISTR that there was a crash in South America a few years back because both artificial horizons were getting info from a single
pitot tube that had been taped over when the plane was being washed. The thing is, there was a switch in the cockpit to select
whether the dual instruments were both using the left pitot, both the right one, or one on each. Using two sensors is not a new
idea.
As a business owner who also happens to be a pilot and aircraft owner, I've been following this fiasco with great care. While
not widely reported, Boeing submitted a software update to the FAA back in January. They're still dragging their feet and as a
consequence, folks needlessly died the EA crash. To those who would say, "Nope, this is all on Boeing and the FAA for letting
them run roughshod over the regulations!", let me share a bit of news with you to help you grok what dealing with the FAA is like.
Did you know AVGAS (aviation gasoline, e.g. the fuel used in the entire piston-powered fleet) still has lead in it? This, decades
after MOGAS (motor vehicle gasoline, e.g. what we buy for our automobiles) was banned from using tetraethyl lead (TEL) as an antiknock
compound!
Yet there's a drop in replacement available. Drop in meaning, refiners like Shell, Mobile, et al can begin mixing and distributing
it using existing pipelines and trucks without so much as having to first clean the equipment or change anything whatsoever. So
why isn't it used? It's because the FAA has been dragging their feet on approval. Put another way, the FAA would rather people
continue being adversely affected by lead in the environment than fast tracking this.
Source? I know the owner of the company, and stand up guy if ever there was on, plus I've got friends who have flown with this
fuel – extensively to help with testing. Bottom line? It works!
And while there's speculation this has to do with big oil not wanting to pay the patent holder and thus lobbying the FAA to
obstruct permission, I'm not going down that rabbit hole. Suffice to say this stuff has been available for years and the patent
clock is running down so you figure it out. Me? I do believe it's all about the Benjamins and am greatly saddened we're still
damaging the environment when a replacement fuel is available we could begin using by next week! I kid you not.
Just to confirm, my town is on the Colonial pipeline that runs up the east coast and one of the local terminal's operators
told me that they do add the lead for avgas here at the distribution facility. Switching to a different octane booster would be
quite possible.
On the other hand I'm not sure the limited amount of leaded gas used by prop planes should be considered that big an environmental
hazard (perhaps as someone who hangs around airports you feel differently).
–I'm guessing that sort of safety practice wasn't inculcated into the software engineers in the same way that it was for old
school aerospace engineers. Software is often a poorly documented, partially tested black box.
Trim systems have been a part of airplanes from the earliest experiments with powered flight. They can be as simple as a bungee
cord pulling on a stick, or as complex as multiple computers interacting in a *fly-by-wire* scenario. Pilots have to demonstrate
more than awareness of these systems; they must demonstrate competency in their operation and oversight.They have been trained
in how to identify, override, and compensate for malfunctions in any misbehaving flight control system in the aircraft for which
they receive authorization. One big unknown here (in my mind) is whether a malfunctioning trim system would (or should) have been
obvious to the flight crew. Another other big question is whether means of deactivation (not speaking of *override*) of the system
was the same as in the previous 737 variants. Typically; this might involve pulling a labeled circuit breaker to remove power,
and then manually adjusting a trim wheel on the console; or near the flight controls.
"an aircraft is a mechanical device; any component of which can fail" which I remember but increasingly; a COMPLEX electrical-mechanical
device .with input from multiple people's minds and hands
The history of aircraft design and flight testing is full of unanticipated complications; frequently addressed by tweaks to
details of structure and/or operational limits. The goal is to cover all possible permutations of problematic interactions of
aircraft; environment, and human beings. There is a great deal of precedence in this topic.
What the folks at Boeing may not realise is that the more they double-down on this bizarre tactic of using spin-doctoring
as a crisis management tool aimed at an audience that is rapidly losing trust in the company ( and frankly may no longer believe
anything coming out of the corporate communications department at Boeing), the harder it's going to be to reverse course by coming
out and saying "we screwed up and will do whatever it takes to fix this". This debacle has all the makings of a large scale cover
up and the continued mala fide attempts to deflect focus away from taking ownership of and accountability for this crisis will
only result in continued assault on an already battered reputation.
As an aside, the malaise at the FAA has been much documented on these pages and elsewhere recently, from the egregious
abdication of its regulatory responsibilities to Boeing to having a top position go unfilled for over a year, my question to US
readers is whether a comparable level of capture by corporate interests has similarly defanged the FDA? I only ask because
I see a lot of supplements and other medicinal products sold here in South Africa with the "Approved by the US FDA" seal of approval
and wonder whether deferring to US regulators by international regulatory bodies is still a good idea under the current climate.
The following statistical categories might generate interesting numbers.
#1: Total flight operations of all 737 types since introduction. (wheels up to wheels down)
#2: Same for Max variant in question.
#3: Difficulty reports filed for all 737 (flight related)
#4: Difficulty reports filed for Max (flight related)
Flight simulators are expensive and scheduling will likely be backed up, given the large number of existing and planned 737
Max aircraft. It's an important problem to fix, but not with the current workaround, which seems to be to use a tablet computer
instead.
One would think a tablet computer would be a poor platform for a computer game, let alone to simulate flying a commercial aircraft
with new s/w or h/w, the flight conditions under which they fail, and how to respond to them. All a tablet computer could simulate
is turning the pages in the flight manual.
Your note should be a useful reminder to the current generation of executives at Johnson & Johnson.
They and their peers at other companies seem to have discarded the crisis management gold standard established by J & J during
the Tylenol scare. It is cheaper, it seems, and provides fewer avenues of attack for the tort bar, to substitute scripts provided
by the apology industry, which can trace its origins to that same Tylenol scare.
"... All this is ignoring the real issue with complex aircraft today. To save money airlines pushed to eliminate the Flight Engineer. ..."
"... As the MCAS system has such authority to cause the plane to crash, a system like this should be quadruple-redundant to prevent a single source of bad data from causing a catastrophic loss of life. ..."
All this is ignoring the real issue with complex aircraft today. To save money airlines
pushed to eliminate the Flight Engineer.
The one time this scenario was avoided was when a jump seat pilot saw what was going on.
Both the captain and the co pilot had tunnel vision just trying to fly the damn plane. It's a
myth modern aircraft are less complex the older generation aircraft that required a Flight
Engineer. The computers work fine when everything is ok or the issue is straight forward but
when complexity enters during an emergency its far more complex than any old piston or early
jet aircraft.
None of these crashes would have occurred if a flight engineer was onboard. They have the
big picture on the air-frame and train to know that air frame backwards an forwards. The
pilots fly the aircraft while the flight engineer operates the systems.
Ask any qualified pilot these questions. You will get the same answer as above.
As the MCAS system has such authority to cause the plane to crash, a system like this
should be quadruple-redundant to prevent a single source of bad data from causing a
catastrophic loss of life.
This is compounded by the fact the pilots were unable to easily override the system and
unable to know _why_ they could not control the plane when MCAS malfunctioned.
There should be outrage that this was allowed to go into production.
These aircraft would be impossible to fly without automation. You would need at least 3 or
4 pilots and 15 engineers to keep on top of everything. There are hundreds of systems running
in the background. Airbus A series for example have anywhere between 80 to 120 million lines
of code depending on the type and configuration. Pilot's these days are computer terminal
operators. Errors are unavoidable in software until they fail.
The trick is simulation ,
clearly Boeing did not simulate any of this , this aircraft should not have been
certified.
The solution is less reliance on automation, at least not until AI is actually able to
intervene when sensors and software malfunction, and ESPECIALLY not with aircraft, for God's
sake.
One H1b to anotherH1b, "I thought you were supposed to fix those 297 stubbed out error
conditions on the MCAS stall sensor?" "No, I fixed the stubbed out error conditions on the
SQUALL sensor!"
"It's right there on the assignment schedule."
"What's the matter can't you read English?"
( The H-1B is a visa in the United States under the Immigration and Nationality Act,
section 101(a)(15)(H) that allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in
specialty occupations. )
I got out of the coding business when they started putting these MFturkeys in charge!
This tragedy is as much about government corruption (FAA approvals) as it is about a POS
company, it's shitbag execs, or third world pilots for that matter.
Without cross limiting; where 2 or more inputs cross reference each other and limit output
if the variation exceeds a predetermined setpoint; Boeing employed a control system with a
single point failure.
Analogous to a cars cruise control speeding up if the speedometer failed and registered
zero mph.
I read that the Operator's Manual for this aircraft is 1400 pages. Is that possible? And
if so, is this MCAS system info just hidden on page 419 like in a financial document? 1400
pages is almost as long as the cautions in a new drug advertisement. And I'm sure the
technical translations for Indonesian and Ethiopian pilots are perfectly done and readily
understood.
That is why commercial pilots get paid high wages to do their jobs and know the aircraft
they are flying. They just don't walk into a new aircraft cold turkey. This issue is covered
in the manual and it is an issue that any pilot would note as a big deal. In 1965/66 the
well-loved 727 had 4 crashes because pilots didn't know the aircraft. This is the same
thing.
As the MCAS system has such authority to cause the plane to crash, a system like this
should be quadruple-redundant to prevent a single source of bad data from causing a
catastrophic loss of life.
This is compounded by the fact the pilots were unable to easily override the system and
unable to know _why_ they could not control the plane when MCAS malfunctioned.
There should be outrage that this was allowed to go into production.
The FAA had the final call on this and they failed to do their job. The MCAS was never
designed to mask the airflow issues created by hanging over sized engines on an airframe
designed for smaller nacelles. These bigger engines had to be mounted higher and more forward
creating airflow disruption over the wing during critical climb out conditions. This bird
should never have flown! It was flawed from the get go and the FAA let it slide. Now hundreds
of people are dead!
If the US government doesn't intervene, all would be very easy lawsuits to win. But I
suspect there will be political pressure placed to limit the liability of Boeing or a deal
struck to have US taxpayers bail them out.
I do not believe this story or any other story of how the Boeing 737 crashed. On a private
jet the engines are set in the tail. If the angle of attack is high, little to no air will
flow into the engines as the wings block sufficient air movement thus stalling. Hondajet has
improved this by placing the engines on the wing. The engines of a Boeing 737 are placed in
front of the wing, thus there should be very little effect to the airflow, unless of course
the angle of attack is approaching a very large attack angle of over 70 degrees.
With power settings reduced to lower fuel consumption aka costs, it doesn't really make a
damn where the engines are mounted.
Fed-up with being Sick and Tired , 33 minutes ago
link
The question is thus begged: did this NEW Anti-Stall System replace one that had caused
issues in the past? WAS THIS NEW SYSTEM needed? Are pilots not trained to invoke changes to
NOSE ATTITUDE when stall indicators, in the past, were alarmed?
The "let's assassinate some peps" system, through which remote control access and false
data injection into a so called "closed" system exists. The public are done being played as
fools, Boeing. How much did you sell the encryption keys for access into that closed system
to 3rd parties? Why did that northern Scandinavian country spend millions removing this very
system from their purchased Boeing planes? Was it because they knew? The CEO of Lion Air
knows also.
This makes a big assumption, that being the AOA was faulty and MCAS came on for no reason.
That's a big assumption and probably very wrong. MCAS comes on in stalls or high bank turns
which we know the ethiopian pilot executed a high bank turn. The likely scenario is that the
inexperienced third world pilot with his 0 hours of training on the Max miscalculated the
weight of the plane on takeoff and stalled it in a turn right after he put the gear up and
took the flaps off. MCAS came on as it was supposed to do, and would be the right thing to do
to save the plane. If he had taken his hands off the yoke and gone to have a pee, all those
people would still be alive as the computer, which is much smarter than the third world
pilot, would have flown the plane. Not understanding his plane, the 28 year old pilot fought
the MCAS at 1000 feet and bought the farm. The next shoe to drop will be the more interesting
one. They have already released the innuendo, next to come will be the hard facts. Let's
see.
The only winners in this will be the lawyers. My Dad frequently told me that lawyers were
bleached souls in tan suits. I didn't understand at the time but I do now.
We know that's not exactly what happened because Trump called them out with his double
meaning "737 killers" talking about CA death penalty and this obvious deep state distraction
murder.
Surely this will mean the plane has to be 're-certified' after maybe modifications like
additional sensors, software updates and extra pilot training have been factored in.
Increasingly looking like there will be no 'quick fix', and admitting MCAS was at fault is
going to open Boeing up to tons of lawsuits, not to mention cancelled orders. They'll need to
drop the 737 MAX name too I would guess, it's too tarnished now.
I'm very surprised that a responsible company like Boeing would put out such a bad system.
The program should have used readings from both sensors to ensure accuracy, and the cockpit
warning mechanism should not have been optional equipment given the critical nature of the
system.
"... The stall-prevention system on the Boeing Co. 737 Max jet automatically switched on before the crash in Ethiopia this month, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing preliminary findings from data on the aircraft's black boxes. ..."
The stall-prevention system on the Boeing Co. 737 Max jet automatically switched on before
the crash in Ethiopia this month, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing preliminary findings
from data on the aircraft's black boxes.
The conclusion was relayed at a briefing at the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on
Thursday and is the strongest indication yet that the same system malfunctioned in both the
Ethiopian Airlines flight and the
Lion Air disaster in Indonesia in October, the newspaper said.
"... The MCAS system is poorly engineered and the design should never have been certified in the first place. But the issue is even worse. The certification that was given relied on false data. ..."
"... The first MCAS design, on which the safety analysis and certification was based, allowed for a maximum trim movement by MCAS of 0.6 degree of a maximum of 5 degree. Flight tests proved that to be too little to achieve the desired effects and the maximum movement was changed to 2.5 degree. ..."
"... No safety analysis for the much greater movement was conducted. The FAA and foreign regulators were not informed of it. Their certification of the 737 MAX was based on misleading data. ..."
"... But even those certifications were only conditional. They required from Boeing to include relevant training material that explained the MCAS trim system and its potential problems to the pilots. ..."
"... The original certification for the 737 MAX was issued by the U.S. regulator FAA. The European regulator EASA based its certification on the one the FAA provided but it added several of its own requirements. There is now documentary evidence that Boeing neglected to fulfill at least one of those requirements. ..."
"... The FAA is as regulator far too cozy with lobbyists and aircraft manufacturers. It outsources too much of the certification testing to the manufacturers. It should not have allowed Boeing to install a MCAS that depended on a sole sensor. ..."
"... "It's become such a kludge, that we started to speculate and wonder whether it was safe to do the MAX," Ludtke said. ..."
"... MCAS was not the only change that made the 737 MAX a 'kludge'. The design errors were inexcusable . Boeing did not inform the regulators when it quadrupled the maximum effect the MCAS system could have. These changes had side effects that were not properly analyzed. Failure of the system was hazardous and extremely difficult to handle . Indicators lights showing that the system may have failed, a safety feature, were sold as extras . ..."
"... It will take quite long to certify the changes Boeing announced for the 737 MAX. Lawsuits were filed against the company. Orders were canceled . The company is under criminal investigation. The commercial damage to Boeing will likely be larger than currently estimated. It comes on top of a recent WTO ruling that Boeing illegally received billions of dollars in subsidies and will need to compensate its competition. ..."
"... The development and production of the 787 Dreamliner, announced in 2003, was outsourced all over the world. That led to years of delays and billions in development cost overruns. In 2010 Airbus announced the A-320 NEO as a better alternative to the 737 NG. Boeing was still busy to get the 787 into the air. It had neither the engineering capacity nor the money to counter the NEO with a brand new plane. It hastily revamped the 737, a design from the 1960s, into the 737 MAX. It promised to airlines that the new plane would not require to retrain their pilots. MCAS was specifically designed to allow for that. It was a huge mistake. ..."
"... Boeing once was an engineering company with an attached sales department. It 2001, when it moved its headquarter to Chicago , it became a dealership with an attached engineering wing. The philosophical difference is profound. It is time for the company to find back to its roots. ..."
For commercial reasons Boeing wanted the new 737 version to handle like the old ones. But
changes in the new version required an additional system to handle certain flight situations.
The development of that system and the safety analysis of its implications were rushed
through. Pilots were not informed of it and not trained to counter its failure.
The added 'maneuver characteristics augmentation system' (MCAS) depended on only one sensor.
When the sensor provided false data MCAS engaged and pointed the planes towards the ground.
Manual trim using the plane's trim wheel was required to regain flight stability. The pilots
were not aware of that. The regulators who certified the plane as safe
were unaware of the extend of the problem:
The MCAS system is poorly engineered and the design should never have been certified in the
first place. But the issue is even worse. The certification that was given relied on false
data.
The first MCAS design, on which the safety analysis and certification was based, allowed
for a maximum trim movement by MCAS of 0.6 degree of a maximum of 5 degree. Flight tests
proved that to be too little to achieve the desired effects and the maximum movement was
changed to 2.5 degree.
No safety analysis for the much greater movement was conducted. The FAA and foreign
regulators were not informed of it. Their certification of the 737 MAX was based on misleading
data.
But even those certifications were only conditional. They required from Boeing to include
relevant training material that explained the MCAS trim system and its potential problems to
the pilots.
The original certification for the 737 MAX was issued by the U.S. regulator FAA. The
European regulator EASA based its certification on the one the FAA provided but it added
several of its own requirements. There is now documentary evidence that Boeing neglected to
fulfill at least one of those requirements.
Page 15 of the Explanatory Note discusses "Longitudinal trim at Vmo". Vmo is the maximum
operational speed. The trim sets the nose of the plane up or down, independent of other pilot
input. Too high up and the plane with lose lift and stall, too low down and the plane will hit
terrain.
A failure of the MCAS system could trim the nose down. As a countermeasure the pilots would
have to switch the trim system off. They would then manually trim the plane back into a level
flight. This was a concern. The EASA note says:
Subsequent to flight testing, the FAA-TAD expressed concern with compliance to the reference
regulation based on an interpretation of the intent behind "trim". The main issue being that
longitudinal trim cannot be achieved throughout the flight envelope using thumb switch trim
only.
EASA considered the need to use manual trim "unusual". But it allowed it to pass because the
required training material would "clearly explain" the issue:
The need to use the trim wheel is considered unusual, as it is only required for manual
flight in those corners of the envelope.
The increased safety provided by the Boeing design limits on the thumb switches (for
out-of-trim dive characteristics) provides a compensating factor for the inability to use the
thumb switches throughout the entire flight envelope. Furthermore, the additional crew
procedures and training material will clearly explain to pilots the situations where use of
the trim wheel may be needed due to lack of trim authority with the wheel mounted
switches.
While the EASA was convinced (by Boeing?) that those situations would be discussed in
"additional crew procedures and training material", Boeing did not include it in the training
materials for the airlines that bought the planes:
Those situations, however, were not listed in the flight manual, according to a copy from
American Airlines seen by Reuters.
Without the additional procedures and training material the 737 MAX would not have been
certified. By providing the plane without the required training material Boeing essentially
handed incomplete planes to its customers.
The FAA is as regulator
far too cozy with lobbyists and aircraft manufacturers. It outsources too much of the
certification testing to the manufacturers. It should not have allowed Boeing to install a MCAS
that depended on a sole sensor.
But the bigger culprit here is clearly Boeing. The plane was developed in a rush
. Even its own engineers
doubted that it was safe:
Rick Ludtke, a former Boeing engineer who worked on designing the interfaces on the MAX's
flight deck, said managers mandated that any differences from the previous 737 had to be
small enough that they wouldn't trigger the need for pilots to undergo new simulator
training.
That left the team working on an old architecture and layers of different design
philosophies that had piled on over the years, all to serve an international pilot community
that was increasingly expecting automation.
"It's become such a kludge, that we started to speculate and wonder whether it was safe to
do the MAX," Ludtke said.
MCAS was
not the only change that made the 737 MAX a 'kludge'. The design errors were
inexcusable . Boeing did not inform the regulators when it quadrupled the maximum effect
the MCAS system could have. These changes
had side effects that were not properly analyzed. Failure of the system was hazardous and
extremely difficult
to handle . Indicators lights showing that the system may have failed, a safety feature,
were sold as
extras .
And today we learned that Boeing did not even provide its customers with the "clear
explanations" the certifications required it to deliver.
These were not 'mistakes' by some lowly technicians. These were breaches of legal
requirements and of trust.
It will take quite long to certify the
changes Boeing announced for the 737 MAX. Lawsuits
were filed against the company. Orders were
canceled . The company is under criminal investigation. The commercial damage to Boeing
will likely be larger than currently estimated. It comes on top of
a recent WTO ruling that Boeing illegally received billions of dollars in subsidies and
will need to compensate its competition.
All these are consequences of bad management decisions.
The development and production of the 787 Dreamliner, announced in 2003, was outsourced all
over the world. That led to years of delays and
billions in development cost overruns. In 2010 Airbus announced the A-320 NEO as a better
alternative to the 737 NG. Boeing was still busy to get the 787 into the air. It had neither
the engineering capacity nor the money to counter the NEO with a brand new plane. It hastily
revamped the 737, a design from the 1960s, into the 737 MAX. It promised to airlines that the
new plane would not require to retrain their pilots. MCAS was specifically designed to allow
for that. It was a huge mistake.
Boeing once was an engineering company with an attached sales department. It 2001, when it
moved its headquarter
to Chicago , it became a dealership with an attached engineering wing. The philosophical
difference is profound. It is time for the company to find back to its roots.
Posted by b on March 29, 2019 at 09:29 AM |
Permalink
The recent Ethiopian Airlines crash led to the grounding of Boeing's 737 MAX planes across
much of the globe. But as new details emerge about the cause of the model's second crash within
five months, questions are being raised about how the plane's safety was approved in the first
place. John Yang talks to Jeff Wise, a pilot and author of a book about MH370, the flight that
vanished in 2014.
$80,000 for a safety warning light! It should have been standard. How could they justify
charging $80,000 for a warning light? It's like Ford charging $800 for Brake Fluid warning
light, they would never have gotten away with that!
With the 737 Max still grounded after last week's deadly Ethiopian Airlines crash, the focus
turns to Boeing. The company offered a warning system that -- for a price -- might have helped
prevent the crashes. Kris Van Cleave reports.
$80 thousand for a warning light??? Unbelievable.... How much money can an indicator light
cost? Software for detecting sensor malfunction should've been there in the first place....
For such a critical sensor, those safety systems should've been built into the systems in a
$120 million dollar plane in the first place.
Why charge more for safety? It should be included by default. Then they kept saying it was
safe for flight but excluded a crucial piece. It's all for profit... smh. 🧐 they are
trying to deflect blame on the airline. Those planes should have never been sold in the first
place.
Actually they should be charged with manslaughter for both plans ! Enough playing games
with just a public court hearing then a fine ! Some Big People need to be held accountable by
full law ! Jail time !
I would bet that the actual labor and materials are less than $2000. The engineering had
already been completed as it is an option. Why then would safety be optional? Criminal greed,
or a low value placed on human lives. Whomever is responsible has no moral or social compass
and should be punished. Not with a fine but a lengthy prison term in Leavenworth.
if we can have recalls for cars, why cant we have the same for aircraft and force those
chaps to install foolproof sensors in triplicate, complete with warning inidicators at no
additional cost to the airlines!
"... Profit before people. Computer says no! Failsafe failed. No manual over ride. Sorry folks. Say Your prayers. The problem maybe rebranded. Best case scenario. Impeccable flying from technical progress made. ..."
"... Totally unnecessary crash that was caused by cutting corners and greed. ..."
Ethiopian Airlines is one of the best known safe reputation. Of course Indonesian Airlines
is the best too. The crash was very similar after take off and dive into the ground. Boing is
just protecting itself for its market.
Boeing needs to be sued for $2 billion for each victim of the Lion Air and Ethiopian
Airlines plus $300 billion in punitive damages, and jail time for some executives ~ they
knowingly put up unsafe planes. In its early days, the 737 also had several
cashes.
Obviously Boeing knew about the shortcomings of their design in earlier stages and instead
of fixing their design they chose to use a software to fix it without informing the airlines
or giving pilots adequate training in order to save costs.
Profit before people. Computer says no! Failsafe failed. No manual over ride. Sorry folks.
Say Your prayers. The problem maybe rebranded. Best case scenario. Impeccable flying from
technical progress made.
Boeing must be lobbying really hard and it's a shame that a respectable entity like
Washington Post is helping the narrative to shift the blame to pilots who are now dead. If
it's a Boeing, I'll have second thoughts.
1. Boeing wanted a new plane with larger enginers but without spending money on a new
fuselage. 2. Sold their planes to customers saying that Max type is same as the NG and that
no cost is involved for retraining pilots. 3. Make the MCAS system so that the new and plane
and old plane feel theoretically same to the pilot. 4. Not tell pilots about MCAS or hide
critical details about the system. 5. 300+ people dead. I hope the Boeing management can
sleep well knowing they have blood on their hands.
Sounds like they created a dangerously unstable craft that requires a computer system to
keep from stalling. Even if pilot turns off plane may have already got in situation hard to
recover from manually especially near ground. Two planes found this out.
At the root of almost every problem today is 'cost cutting' for short term profits to
satisfy roaming vulture capitalist greed. Why is the FAA 'under funded'? Why is it 'too
expensive' to give pilots the sim time they need even after hundeds of people are
dead??
Engines too far forward wings too swept back computer and pilot can't find center of
balance and it piledrives into earth, its not a mystery. If I wanted to take a perfectly good
737 and turn it into an unflyable plane, well they did it.
Just fix the auto pilot issue. Also, what in all of God's green earth? Pilots only learned
about flying this new model with just textual information? No simulation? No wounder pilots
of both airlines were confound by the conflicting warnings blaring at them in the
cockpit.
Ha ha ha there is no money for the faa, but the government had enough money to go on a
bombing run around the world. So now who is responsible ? Boeing faa or other aviation
authorities like the icao or others ? Who is going to be jailed for this mass murdering?
Since they have accepted it so the faa chief should be put behind bars for lying about the
inspection and the certificate !!!!!!
FAA rep is a clown! It is not FAA fault and Boeing was under pressure. If one of your family
was in one of those crashes, you would never shill for those corporate murders.
He is a clown! It is not FAA fault and Boeing was under pressure. If one of your family
was in one of those crashes, you would never shill for those corporate murders.
Ex FAA employees have come out and say FAA doesn't have the expertise and have to rely on
Boeing for aspects of the certifications, why? because dumb Americans buy politicians ever
selling lower taxes. Hey dudes, u gotta spend money to hire good people duh! something gotta
give. Cheap government, cheap results. U deserve what u paid for America.
The MCAS system was not revealed to the first receivers of the Max 8's, nor was it in the
Manuals. Boeing thought it would quietly do it's job in the background, but they were wrong.
After the first accident from Lion Air, out of Indonesia, then all airliners were informed of
this. The pilots in Ethiopia may or may not have been aware of this, and if they were they
lacked insufficient training on how to deal with this problem. The MCAS system works to bring
the nose of the plane down so it can fly at a level flight. MCAS get's it's information from
AOA sensors that send info to the plane as to what angle the plane is flying at. Pilots have
reported that the AOA sensors are faulty and sending "wrong information" and "activating" the
MCAS system when it shouldn't have, causing the planes nose to point downward, and causing
the plane to go into a nose dive, and this is what happened. Basically the MCAS was needed
because Boeing redesigned the engines, that were bigger, and were mounted differently -- more
forward and up on the wing, throwing off the center of gravity of the new 737 Max 8.The old
737 does not have this problem. AOA sensors, stands for Angle of Attack, to make sure air
flow is right both over and under the wings, to make the plane aerodynamic. According to
reports from pilots, you can "disengage" the MCAS SYSTEM, buy pulling back on the yoke, and
this will do it. At the same time there are wheels by the throttle that you turn manually, to
trim the planes stabilizer manually by yourself. This was done many times by well trained
American pilots, who averted crashes with this jet. So, proper training and awareness could
have saved a lot of lives. Let's not forget these MAX 8 jets have been flying for a couple
years, with thousands of flights in North America and developed countries with "no"
accidents, and pilots say the plane flies beautifully. They say it's a very smooth flying
aircraft, and a pleasure to pilot. So, who's responsible for this -- well it's Boeing, for
non disclosure of the MCAS system, and what to do, if it functions in error, and how to
manually disengage the system. In my opinion, all pilots should know how to manually take a
plane from takeoff, and land it smoothly with no automation, or computers to help them --
just like in the old days. Over the last 20 years, there have been so very few major aircraft
go down. I'm all for automation, but I fully support proper pilot training should some of
this automation fail -- like faulty sensors. It's completely crazy to rely on robots or
Artificial Intelligence ( AI ) to fly planes, if you don't understand how the computers work,
and how they fly the plane, and in the event of a failure of the computer, you can then shut
it off, and have "no problem" , and take control of the aircraft yourself,- "manually" with a
lot of confidence. I SHOULD ADD - this MCAS system and it's AOA sensors, should all be
mandatory on a plane, and not be sold as extras, same as brakes on a car. You don't play
around with peoples lives, to make a few extra dollars, selling "options." These features
"must be standard equipment", on all these aircraft sold, PERIOD. This is why I'm "very
against" self driving cars'. Can you imagine all the accidents that will happen from "faulty
sensors." WOW , it will be a nightmare. Faulty sensors could be caused by snow, ice, extreme
heat or cold. Are we getting so lazy that we need to have Artificial Intelligence driving our
cars. No thanks for me, I'll drive my own car, and hope that people will rebel against this
idea, and the makers of these cars, won't sell any of them, and thus, taking them off the
market.This Boeing Max 8 should send a good example, of things to come if we allow driverless
cars. Not for me, and I hope the general public will agree with this.
Terrorists aren't needed to bring down airliners and frighten the public. Boeing and a
failed Trump policy, that won't staff FAA department with a permanent and qualified leader,
are managing the same thing through their fashionable neglect and arrogance.
Just look at the investigation of sinking and tilting Mellilium Tower in sanfransico.
Building concrete Foundation and glasses are cracking and investigators are still studying
what caused the two glass windows to crack. Similar investigation is going on how these two
Boeing max crashed.
Deadly strategie from Boeing for quick profits and market shares . Airliners are built to
be operated for at least a couple of decades Boeing was providing worldwidely flying coffins
made by mixing new technologies (leap engine ) with cheap and old technologies (1/2 century
old airframe).A new well designed aircraft is stable, well-balanced without extra software's
help.
Trump nominated his personal pilot to head up the FAA. After 2 years, they still have an
"acting" director. Tim Boeing shows up at Mar-a-lago every weekend. What could possibly go
wrong?
This been a long time coming. Who cut the FAA? BOTH PARTIES DID! The system is gonna fall
apart because too much damage has been done. Just keep paying people peanuts and have them
try to do a skilled job. My cousin quit the airline industry because they don't want people
to be able to pay for the education needed for these jobs. Like who program these
systems.
Looks like I'll be getting that 🚲 sooner than later. I won't be traveling by plane
for a few Give it time for all the smoke to clear and heads to roll😳
"... "It's a very, very serious investigation into basically, was there fraud by Boeing in the certification of the 737 MAX 8 ?" Arthur Rosenberg, an aviation attorney who is representing six families whose relatives died in the Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air crashes, explained. ..."
"... Rosenberg expects the criminal probe to question whether Boeing fully disclosed to the FAA the engineering of the 737 Max 8's MCAS flight control system, called MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System), during the plane's certification process. The flight control system was designed to prevent the plane from stalling. ..."
"... Unfortunately for Boeing and the passengers its crashed aircraft were carrying, the MCAS system was very poorly implemented. ..."
"... The single sensor was the result of regulatory capture, not to say gaming; see below. ..."
"... Black box data retrieved after the Lion Air crash indicates that a single faulty sensor -- a vane on the outside of the fuselage that measures the plane's "angle of attack," the angle between the airflow and the wing -- triggered MCAS multiple times during the deadly flight, initiating a tug of war as the system repeatedly pushed the nose of the plane down and the pilots wrestled with the controls to pull it back up, before the final crash. ..."
"... Regulatory Capture : Commercial aircraft need to be certified by the FAA before launch. The Washington Post labels today's process "self-certification": ..."
"... In practice, one Boeing engineer would conduct a test of a particular system on the Max 8, while another Boeing engineer would act as the FAA's representative , signing on behalf of the U.S. government that the technology complied with federal safety regulations, people familiar with the process said. ..."
"... (Note that a 10-year-old process would have begun in the Obama administration, so the regulatory process is bipartisan.) I understand that " safety culture " is real and strong, but imagine the same role-playing concept applied to finance: One bankers plays the banker, and the other banker plays Bill Black, and after a time they switch roles . Clearly a system that will work until it doesn't. More: ..."
"... The process was occurring during a period when the Transportation Department's Office of Inspector General was warning the FAA that its oversight of manufacturers' work was insufficient. ..."
"... The FAA, citing lack of funding and resources, has over the years delegated increasing authority to Boeing to take on more of the work of certifying the safety of its own airplanes. ..."
"... Alert readers will note the similarity to the Neoliberal Playbook , where government systems are sabotaged in order to privatize them, but in this case regulatory capture seems to have happened "by littles," rather than out of open, ideological conviction (as with the UKs's NHS, or our Post Office, our Veteran's Administration, etc.). ..."
"... Several FAA technical experts said in interviews that as certification proceeded, managers prodded them to speed the process. Development of the MAX was lagging nine months behind the rival Airbus A320neo. Time was of the essence for Boeing . ..."
"... In this atmosphere, the System Safety Analysis on MCAS, just one piece of the mountain of documents needed for certification, was delegated to Boeing . ..."
"... It should be clear at this point that the central claims of Muilenburg's letter are false. ..."
"... The self-certification debacle that allowed MCAS to be released happened on Muilenburg's watch and is already causing Boeing immense reputational damage, and a criminal case, not to mention the civil cases that are surely coming, will only increase that damage. Mr. Market, the Beltway, and even Trump, if his trade deals are affected, will all soon be bellowing for a sacrificial victim. Muilenburg should recognize the inevitable and gracefully resign. Given his letter, it looks unlikely that he will do the right thing. ..."
"... Beyond that ultimate problem is the ultimate regulatory problem: regulatory capture of the FAA by the airline companies. As a result, the FAA represents "its customers" the airplane makers, not the public users and customers. This is like the banks capturing the Fed, the Justice Dept. and Treasury to promote their own interests by claiming that "self-regulation" works. Self-regulation is the polite word for fraudulent self-indulgence. ..."
"... I would be surprised if the European Airbus competitors do not mount a campaign to block the 737-Max's from landing, and insisting that Boeing buy them back. This gives Airbus a few years to grab the market for these planes. ..."
"... This probably will throw Trump's China trade fight into turmoil, as China was the first country to ground the 737-Max's and is unlikely to permit their recovery without a "real" federal safety oversight program. Maybe Europe, China and other countries henceforth will each demand that their own public agencies certify the plane, so as to represent users and stakeholders, not only stockholders. ..."
"... The moral: Neoliberalism Kills. ..."
"... Rule #2 of Neoliberalism: Go die. ..."
"... > "Maybe Europe, China and other countries henceforth will each demand that their own public agencies certify the plane." ..."
"... As if the 737 MAX were the chlorinated chicken of aircraft. ..."
"... "This gives Airbus a few years to grab the market for these planes." ..."
"... Regulatory capture is rampant throughout the economy. Boeing self-certification being delegated by the FAA is not unlike the situation with electric transmission utilities. ..."
"... that is subject to both FERC and NERC regulation. ..."
"... In hindsight Boeing would have perhaps been better off to leave off the MCAS altogether and depend on pilot retraining to cover the altered handling. ..."
"... Reports I've read indicates that Boeing ignored even the clearly inadequate certification. "Documentation provided to the FAA claims that the MCAS system can only adjust the horizontal tail on the plane by 0.6 degrees out of a maximum of five-degrees of nose-down movement. But that limit was later increased to 2.5-degrees of nose-down movement. Boeing didn't communicate the change from 0.6-degrees to 2.5-degrees until after Lion Air." ..."
"... Boeing could also be liable for damages due to 737 groundings and due to delays in delivery of contracted planes. ..."
"... The analogy has been made between this the 737 MAX story and the Tylenol story. J&J got out in front of the problem and saved the product (and their company). Boeing's problem is of that order, and Muilenberg -- that letter! -- seems incapable of understanding that; insular, arrogant. One more reason to fire the dude toot sweet. If he comes out of his next review with a raise -- Everything Is Like CalPERS™ -- consider shorting Boeing ..."
"... Allowing this to happen seems the ultimate in short term thinking by Boeing. US manufacturers have always had an advantage over competitors because the FAA was held in such high regard worldwide that it was the de facto world safety regulatory body – every country followed its lead. But this chipping away of its authority has led to a near fatal loss of faith, and will no doubt lead to European and Asian regulatory authorities being strengthened. And no doubt commercial realities will mean they will look much more closely at US manufactured aircraft if there is some benefit to their own manufacturers. ..."
"... The Times thinks Boeing is too big to fail. Without a blockbuster Max, I don't see how Boeing maintains its current status in the industry. ..."
"... I also think they have been completely afflicted by the defense contractor mentality. ..."
"... Yes, the famous McDonnell-Douglas reverse takeover , where financial engineers inserted their sucking mandibles into an actual ..."
"... Note that Muilenberg came up through the defense side of the company not the commercial aircraft side. He may simply not have been equipped to understand FAA regulation at any deep level, hence the rot that finally surfaced. ..."
"... The tragedy is that corporate media in pursuit of profits will keep us up to date but will never mention the 6 or 8 minutes of terror for the 346 souls aboard the two flights. They will cover the criminal negligence trial if there are ever indictments. But, the news reports never will say that neoliberalism, deregulation, and privatization are the root causes of the deaths. ..."
"... Boeing also clearly did not know its customers . It should be engineering for the sort of pilots who are going to be hired by Lion Air, or any rapidly expanding airline in what we used to all the Third World. Hegemony, it seems, makes you insular and provincial. ..."
"... "The FAA, citing lack of funding and resource": I don't suppose I'll survive to see any arm of government not blame lack of funds for its boneheaded or corrupt incompetence. ..."
"... That's how I feel. The tech doc department at Boeing sounds like a horrible place to work; MBAs or their goons telling you all the time to do stuff you know is wrong. It's not surprising people were willing to talk to the Seattle Times; I bet there are more people. (Hey, Seattle Times! How about people testing the 737 MAX in simulators (assuming this is done)). ..."
"... Interestingly, and maybe relevant to the problem of confusion for the pilots, is that Boeing has had another automatic trim-modifier operating on its 737s for some time, the speed-trim system (STS): ..."
"... This system also modifies the stabilizer position during manual flight. Like MCAS, it was brought in to improve stability under certain flight conditions (the reasons for which are far beyond my knowledge). There is an indication that the pilots on the flight before the Lion Air crash misinterpreted MCAS actions for STS behavior. ..."
"... authority would revert to the pilot ..."
"... How many years ago did Wall Street take over the fortunes of the company? Why did they move their headquarters from their birthplace of Seattle to Chicago? Why did they start assembling planes in South Carolina and China? Was it to improve aviation safety? Or, to allow the profiteering parasites to feed off the carcass of the company? ..."
"... President Trump, here's a reelection tip: "Today I am declaring that all American registered aircraft flying in American airspace must be maintained in the U.S." ..."
"... Amazingly, Trump seems to have done OK on this. First, he didn't cave to Muilenberg's (insane, goofy, tone-deaf) request to keep the 737 flying; then he frames the issue as complexity (correct, IMNSHO), and then he manages to nominate a Delta CEO as head of the FAA . ..."
"... we're seeing signs that a crapification process has begun on the safety side in this industry. (It has been proceeding for years on the service/amenities side.) ..."
"... Considering the fact that all these 737s are grounded as no airline trust them to not kill a plane load of passengers and crew, this is a really big deal. Putting aside the technical and regulatory issues, the fact is that the rest of the world no longer trusts the US in modern aviation so what we have here is a trust issue which is an even bigger deal. ..."
"... Loss or at least wobbliness of imperial hegemony, like. It's not just the aircraft, it's US standards-setting bodies, methods, "safety culture," even -- dare we say it -- English as the language of aviation. French is no longer the language of diplomacy, after all, though it had a good run. ..."
"... Because markets. Neoliberalism puts everything up for sale. Including regulation. Oversimplifying absurdly: And so you end up with the profit-driven manufacturer buying the regulator, its produce killing people, and the manufacturer canceling its future profits. That's what the Bearded One would call a contradiction.* ..."
"... know your customer ..."
"... Like you, I am a retired software engineer, so I have followed an aviation blog discussion of this issue quite closely since it emerged as a probable software and system design failure. As the blog is open to all, its signal-to-noise ratio is pretty low, but it seems not too difficult for any technically-minded person to separate the wheat from the chaff. My current understanding, which I believe others here are in a position to correct, if necessary: ..."
"... this story is really fascinating and seems to be true a sign of the times. ..."
"... The Post's article on the FAA and Regulatory Capture is incomplete. The process for the FAA (and probably MANY government agencies) started under Reagan, did not revert to safety under Clinton (make government smaller and all that), and then accelerated under Bush II in 2005 (not a bi-partisan time). In particular, big changes to the FAA were made in 2005 that were executive in nature and did not require Congressional approval. CF: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/delegating-aircraft-safety-assessments-to-boeing-is-nothing-new-for-the-faa/ ..."
At some point in the future, I'd like to do failure matrix for the pathways to misfortune (
example of such a matrix here ) that precipitated
two deadly Boeing 737 MAX crashes on take-off in five months , but I don't feel that I have enough information yet. (I'm not
unsympathathetic to the view
that the wholesale 737 MAX grounding was premature on technical grounds , but then trade and even geopolitical factors enter
in, given that Boeing is a "national champion.") We do not yet have results from the cockpit voice and flight data recorders of either
aircraft, for example. But what we do know is sufficiently disturbing -- a criminal investigation into Boeing had already been initiated
after the Lion Air crash, but before the Ethiopian Airlines crash -- that I think it's worthwhile doing a play-by-play on the causes
of the crashes, so far as we can know them.
About that criminal investigation
:
According to the Wall Street Journal, a Washington D.C. grand jury issued a March 11 subpoena requesting emails, correspondence,
and other messages from at least one person involved in the development of the aircraft.
"It's a very, very serious investigation into basically, was there fraud by Boeing in the certification of the 737
MAX 8 ?" Arthur Rosenberg, an aviation attorney who is representing six families whose relatives died in the Ethiopian Airlines
and Lion Air crashes, explained.
"Nobody knows the answer to that yet," Rosenberg cautioned, adding that he had not yet seen the Justice Department's subpoena
and therefore could not know its full scope.
Rosenberg expects the criminal probe to question whether Boeing fully disclosed to the FAA the engineering of the 737 Max
8's MCAS flight control system, called MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System), during the plane's certification
process. The flight control system was designed to prevent the plane from stalling.
A possible criminal investigation during an aircraft accident investigation is highly unusual . While airline accidents
have at times raised criminal issues, such as after the 1996 crash of a ValuJet plane in the Florida Everglades, such cases are
the exception.
Safety is at the core of who we are at Boeing, and ensuring safe and reliable travel on our airplanes is an enduring value
and our absolute commitment to everyone. This overarching focus on safety spans and binds together our entire global aerospace
industry and communities. We're united with our airline customers, international regulators and government authorities in our
efforts to support the most recent investigation, understand the facts of what happened and help prevent future tragedies. Based
on facts from the Lion Air Flight 610 accident and emerging data as it becomes available from the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302
accident, we're taking actions to fully ensure the safety of the 737 MAX. We also understand and regret the challenges for our
customers and the flying public caused by the fleet's grounding.
Boeing has been in the business of aviation safety for more than 100 years, and we'll continue providing the best products,
training and support to our global airline customers and pilots. This is an ongoing and relentless commitment to make safe
airplanes even safer .
Soon we'll release a software update and related pilot training for the 737 MAX that will address concerns discovered in the
aftermath of the Lion Air Flight 610 accident.
Fine words. Are they true? Can Boeing's "commitment to everyone to ensure " safe and reliable travel" really be said to be "absolute"?
That's a high bar. Let's see!
I've taken the structure that follows from
a tweetstorm by Trevor Sumner (apparently derived from
a Facebook post by his brother-law,
Dave Kammeyer ). However, I've added topic headings, changed others,
and helpfully numbered them all, so you can correct, enhance, or rearrange topics easily in comments (or even suggest new topics).
Let me also caveat that this is an enormous amount of material, and time presses, so this will not be as rich in links as I would
normally like it to be. Also note that the level of abstraction for each topic varies significantly: From "The Biosphere" all the
way to "Pilot Training." A proper failure matrix would sort that out.
* * *
(1) The Biosphere : The 737 MAX story beings with a customer requirement for increased fuel efficiency. This is, at bottom,
a carbon issue (and hence a greenhouse gas issue , especially as the demand for air travel increases, especially in Asia). New
biosphere-driven customer demands will continue to emerge as climate change increases and intensifies, and hence the continued 737
MAX-like debacles should be expected, all else being equal. From
CAPA – Centre for Aviation :
The main expected impacts of climate change on aviation result from changes in temperature, precipitation (rain and snow),
storm patterns, sea level and wind patterns. In addition, climate change is expected to lead to increased drought, impacts on
the supply of water and energy, and changes in wildlife patterns and biodiversity. Consequences for aviation include reduced aircraft
performance, changing demand patterns, potential damage to infrastructure, loss of capacity and schedule disruption.
All of these factors will affect aircraft design, manufacturing, maintenance, and use, stressing the system.
(2) Choice of Airframe :
The Air Current
describes the competitive environment that led Boeing to upgrade the 737 to the 737 MAX, instead of building a new plane:
Boeing wanted to replace the 737. The plan had even earned the endorsement of its now-retired chief executive. We're gonna
do a new airplane," Jim McNerney
said in February of that same year. "We're not done evaluating this whole situation yet, but our current bias is to not re-engine,
is to move to an all-new airplane at the end of the decade." History went in a different direction. Airbus, riding its
same decades-long incremental strategy and chipping away at Boeing's market supremacy, had made no secret of its plans to
put new engines on the A320. But its own re-engineered jet somehow managed to take Boeing by surprise. Airbus and American forced
Boeing's hand. It had to put new engines on the 737 to stay even with its rival .
Why? The earlier butchered launch of the 787:
Boeing justified the decision thusly: There were huge and excruciatingly painful near-term obstacles on its way to a new single-aisle
airplane. In the summer of 2011, the 787 Dreamliner wasn't yet done after billions invested and years of delays. More than 800
airplanes later here in 2019, each 787 costs less to build than sell, but it's
still running a $23 billion production
cost deficit. .
The 737 Max was Boeing's ticket to holding the line on its position "both market and financial" in the near term. Abandoning
the 737 would've meant walking away from its golden goose that helped finance the astronomical costs of the 787 and the development
of the 777X.
So, we might think of Boeing as a runner who's tripped and fallen: The initial stumble, followed by loss of balance, was the 787;
with the 737 MAX, Boeing hit the surface of the track.
(3) Aerodynamic Issues : The
Air Current
also describes the aerodynamic issues created by the decision to re-engine the 737:
Every airplane development is a series of compromises, but to deliver the 737 Max with its promised fuel efficiency, Boeing
had to fit 12 gallons into a 10 gallon jug. Its bigger engines made for creative solutions as it found a way to mount the larger
CFM International turbines under the notoriously low-slung jetliner. It lengthened the nose landing gear by eight inches, cleaned
up the aerodynamics of the tail cone, added new winglets, fly-by-wire spoilers and big displays for the next generation of pilots.
It pushed technology, as it had done time and time again with ever-increasing costs, to deliver a product that made its jets more-efficient
and less-costly to fly.
In the case of the 737 Max, with its nose pointed high in the air, the larger engines "generating their own lift" nudged it
even higher. The risk Boeing found through analysis and later flight testing was that under certain high-speed conditions both
in wind-up turns and wings-level flight, that upward nudge created a greater risk of stalling.
Its solution was MCAS , the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System control law that would allow for both generations
of 737 to behave the same way. MCAS would automatically trim the horizontal stabilizer to bring the nose down, activated with
Angle of Attack data. It's now at the center of the Lion Air investigation and stalking the periphery of the Ethiopian crash.
(4) Systems Engineering : Amazingly, there is what in a less buttoned-down world that commercial aviation would be called a Boeing
737 fan site, which describes the MCAS system in more technical terms
:
MCAS was introduced to counteract the pitch up effect of the LEAP-1B engines at high AoA [Angle of Attack]. The engines were
both larger and relocated slightly up and forward from the previous NG CFM56-7 engines to accomodate their larger diameter. This
new location and size of the nacelle causes it to produce lift at high AoA; as the nacelle is ahead of the CofG [Center of Gravity]
this causes a pitch-up effect which could in turn further increase the AoA and send the aircraft closer towards the stall. MCAS
was therefore introduced to give an automatic nose down stabilizer input during steep turns with elevated load factors (high AoA)
and during flaps up flight at airspeeds approaching stall.
Unfortunately for Boeing and the passengers its crashed aircraft were carrying, the MCAS system was very poorly implemented.Reading between the lines (I've helpfully labeled the pain points):
Boeing have been working on a software modification to MCAS since the Lion Air accident. Unfortunately although originally
due for release in January it has still not been released due to both engineering challenges and differences of opinion among
some federal and company safety experts over how extensive the changes should be.
Apparently there have been discussions about potentially adding [A] enhanced pilot training and possibly mandatory [B] cockpit
alerts to the package. There also has been consideration of more-sweeping design changes that would prevent [C] faulty signals
from a single sensor from touching off the automated stall-prevention system.
[A] Pilot training was originally not considered necessary, because MCAS was supposed to give 737 MAX the same flight
characteristics as earlier 737s; that's why pilots weren't told about it. (This also kept the price low.) [B] Such alerts exist now,
as part of an optional package, which Lion did not buy. [C] The single sensor was the result of regulatory capture, not to say
gaming; see below.
(The MCAS system is currently the system fingered as the cause of both the Lion Air and Ethiopian crashes; we won't know for sure
until the forensics are complete. Here, however, is
the scenario for an MCAS-induced crash :
Black box data retrieved after the Lion Air crash indicates that a single faulty sensor -- a vane on the outside of the
fuselage that measures the plane's "angle of attack," the angle between the airflow and the wing -- triggered MCAS multiple times
during the deadly flight, initiating a tug of war as the system repeatedly pushed the nose of the plane down and the pilots wrestled
with the controls to pull it back up, before the final crash.
(5) Regulatory Capture : Commercial aircraft need to be certified by the FAA before launch. The
Washington Post labels today's process "self-certification":
The FAA's publication of pilot training requirements for the Max 8 in the fall of 2017 was among the final steps in a multiyear
approval process carried out under the agency's now 10-year-old policy of entrusting Boeing and other aviation manufacturers to
certify that their own systems comply with U.S. air safety regulations.
In practice, one Boeing engineer would conduct a test of a particular system on the Max 8, while another Boeing engineer
would act as the FAA's representative , signing on behalf of the U.S. government that the technology complied with federal safety
regulations, people familiar with the process said.
(Note that a 10-year-old process would have begun in the Obama administration, so the regulatory process is bipartisan.) I
understand that " safety culture " is real and strong, but imagine the same
role-playing concept applied to finance: One bankers plays the banker, and the other banker plays Bill Black, and after a time they
switch roles . Clearly a system that will work until it doesn't. More:
The process was occurring during a period when the Transportation Department's Office of Inspector General was warning
the FAA that its oversight of manufacturers' work was insufficient.
Four years after self-certification began, fires aboard Boeing's 787 Dreamliner jets led to the grounding of the fleet and
a wave of questions about whether self-certification had affected the FAA's oversight.
Why "self-certification"? Investigative reporting from
the Seattle Times -- the article is worth reading in full -- explains:
The FAA, citing lack of funding and resources, has over the years delegated increasing authority to Boeing to take on more
of the work of certifying the safety of its own airplanes.
Alert readers will note the similarity to
the Neoliberal Playbook , where government systems are sabotaged in order to privatize them, but in this case regulatory capture
seems to have happened "by littles," rather than out of open, ideological conviction (as with the UKs's NHS, or our Post Office,
our Veteran's Administration, etc.).
(6) Transfer of Authority to Boeing : In the case of the 737 Max, regulatory capture was so great that certification authority
was transferred to Boeing. In order to be certified, a "System Safety Analysis" for MCAS had to be performed.
The Seattle Times :
The safety analysis:
Understated the power of the new flight control system, which was designed to swivel the horizontal tail to push the nose of the
plane down to avert a stall. When the planes later entered service, MCAS was capable of moving the tail more than four times farther
than was stated in the initial safety analysis document.
Failed to account for how the system could reset itself each time a pilot responded, thereby missing the potential impact of
the system repeatedly pushing the airplane's nose downward. Assessed a failure of the system as one level below "catastrophic."
But even that "hazardous" danger level should have precluded activation of the system based on input from a single sensor --
and yet that's how it was designed.
So who certified MCAS? Boeing self-certified it. Once again
The Seattle Times :
Several FAA technical experts said in interviews that as certification proceeded, managers prodded them to speed the process.
Development of the MAX was lagging nine months behind the rival Airbus A320neo. Time was of the essence for Boeing .
"There wasn't a complete and proper review of the documents," the former engineer added. "Review was rushed to reach certain
certification dates."
In this atmosphere, the System Safety Analysis on MCAS, just one piece of the mountain of documents needed for certification,
was delegated to Boeing .
(I'm skipping a lengthy discussion of even more technical detail for MCAS, which includes discrepancies between what Boeing self-certified,
and what the FAA thought that it had certified, along with the MCAS system acting like a ratchet, so it didn't reset itself, meaning
that each time it kicked in, the nose was pitched down even lower. Yikes. Again, the article is worth reading in full; if you've
ever done tech doc, you'll want to scream and run.)
(7) Political Economy : This tweet is especially interesting, because even I know that
Muddy Waters Research is a famous short seller:
What's the
result? Two $BA planes have been grounded:
787 and Max. Last FAA grounding of a type of plane was 1979. In the case of the Max, FAA outsourced more than planned bc BA was
9 months behind Airbus 320neo 3/4 2 replies 4 retweets 19 likes
This is a great example of real short-termism by a corporate. It's clearly in
$BA LT interest to have robust cert system,
but those chickens come home to roost years later, allowing mgmt to meet ST expectations. BTW, semi-annual reporting would do
NOTHING to fix this mentality. 4
And here we are! There are a myriad of other details, but many of them will only prove out once the black boxes are examined and
the forensics are complete.
* * *
It should be clear at this point that the central claims of Muilenburg's letter are false. I understand that commercial
aviation is a business, but if that is so, then Muilenburg's claim that Boeing's commitment to safety is "absolute" cannot possibly
be true; indeed, the choice to re-engine the 737 had nothing to do with safety. Self-certification makes Boeing "a judge in its own
cause," and that clearly contradicts Muilenburg's absurd claim that "safety" -- as opposed to profit -- "is at the core of who we
are."
The self-certification debacle that allowed MCAS to be released happened on Muilenburg's watch and is already causing Boeing
immense reputational damage, and a criminal case, not to mention the civil cases that are surely coming, will only increase that
damage. Mr. Market, the Beltway, and even Trump, if his trade deals are affected, will all soon be bellowing for a sacrificial victim.
Muilenburg should recognize the inevitable and gracefully resign. Given his letter, it looks unlikely that he will do the right thing.
IIRC, one of the big constraints that was leveled was the need to keep the 737, regardless of version, into the same height
relative to all other generations of the 737, whereas Airbus kept their height a lot higher than the 737.
If you look at many 737's over the years, some of the engine's nacelles were flat at the bottom to accommodate larger engine.
Why? Boeing kept the height the same in order to maintain built-in stairs that, with virtually all airports having adjustable
jetways, was basically redundant.
When you compare an A320xeo against a B737, you'll find that the Airbus rides higher when it comes to the jetways.
It seems to me that the Boeing 737-Max with the heavier, larger fuel-saving engines is so unbalanced (tilting over and then
crashing if not "overridden" by a computer compensation) that it never should have been authorized in the first place.
When Boeing decided to add a much larger engine, it should have kept the airplane in balance by (1) shifting it forward or
backward so that the weight did not tip the plane, and (2) created a larger landing-gear base so that the large engines wouldn't
scrape the ground.
The problem was that Boeing tried to keep using the old chassis with the larger engines under the wings – rather than changing
the wings, moving them forward or aft, and expanding the plane to permit a more appropriate landing gear.
The computer system has been blamed for not being a "smart enough" workaround to tell the plane not to plunge down when it
already is quite close to the ground – with no perception of altitude, not to mention double-checking on the wind speed from both
sensors.
Beyond that ultimate problem is the ultimate regulatory problem: regulatory capture of the FAA by the airline companies.
As a result, the FAA represents "its customers" the airplane makers, not the public users and customers. This is like the banks
capturing the Fed, the Justice Dept. and Treasury to promote their own interests by claiming that "self-regulation" works. Self-regulation
is the polite word for fraudulent self-indulgence.
I would be surprised if the European Airbus competitors do not mount a campaign to block the 737-Max's from landing, and
insisting that Boeing buy them back. This gives Airbus a few years to grab the market for these planes.
This probably will throw Trump's China trade fight into turmoil, as China was the first country to ground the 737-Max's
and is unlikely to permit their recovery without a "real" federal safety oversight program. Maybe Europe, China and other countries
henceforth will each demand that their own public agencies certify the plane, so as to represent users and stakeholders, not only
stockholders.
> "Maybe Europe, China and other countries henceforth will each demand that their own public agencies certify the plane."
As if the 737 MAX were the chlorinated chicken of aircraft.
* * *
I'm not sure about redesigning the wing and the landing gear. That might be tantamount to designing a new plane. (I do know
that the landing gear is so low because the first 737s needed to accommodate airports without jetways, and so there may be other
facets of the design that also depend on those original requirements that might have to be changed.)
Regulatory capture is rampant throughout the economy. Boeing self-certification being delegated by the FAA is not unlike
the situation with electric transmission utilities.
After the 2003 northeast & Canada blackout, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. It directed FERC to create an "electric
reliability organization". Previously there were voluntary organizations set up after the 1966 blackout to establish operating
standards in the industry. One of them was the North American Electric Reliability Council which morphed into the North
American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) in 2006.
NERC is headquartered in Atlanta and employs hundreds of people. The standards setting generally takes place in NERC Committees
and Subcommittees and sometimes from FERC itself. These are typically packed with industry people, with a patina of diversity
that includes some governmental types and large industrial consumers. Let it suffice to say the electric transmission industry
itself largely sets the rules how it operates.
Now consider the article in yesterday's NYT "
How PG&E Ignored
California Fire Risks in Favor of Profits ". The transmission circuit featured in the article (the Caribou-Palermo line) that
caused the destruction of Paradise is a transmission line that is subject to both FERC and NERC regulation. As described
in the article the circuit had many previous failures and was well beyond its design life.
However, both FERC and NERC have a laser focus on "market players" (think Enron or JP Morgan) and system operations (e.g.,
prevent collapses like the blackout of 2003). AFIK, neither FERC or NERC have prescriptive standards for routine maintenance or
inspection and replacement (i.e., very expensive capital replacement that was not done on the Caribou-Palermo line), these are
left to the discretion of the transmission owner. While substantive information about electric reliability is maintained by industry
trade groups and submitted to FERC, what is available to the public is generally useless and subjected to scrubbing and polishing
(often under the guise of Critical Energy Infrastructure Information).
We can see how self-policing work, can't we??? Rent-seeking market players can arbitrage markets, inflating prices consumers
pay and make billions in profits, while California burns.
The neglectful rot in California is endemic in the industry as a whole.
That Seattle Times investigative story is indeed very good and a rare instance of newspaper writers troubling to carefully
and cogently explain a technical issue.
In hindsight Boeing would have perhaps been better off to leave off the MCAS altogether and depend on pilot retraining
to cover the altered handling.
One reason they may not have was that crash several years ago of a commuter plane in upstate NY where the plane started to
stall and the confused pilot pulled up on the controls rather than making the airplane dive to regain speed. Still one has to
believe that no automation is better than badly designed or malfunctioning automation.
"depend on pilot retraining to cover the altered handling"
IANAP, but maybe the problem is that "nose up" situations can go south very quickly. For those with the stomach for it, there
are videos on youtube of the 747 freighter that went nose up at Bagram a few years ago (perhaps due to loose cargo shifting backwards
on takeoff). It was over very quickly.
Yes, I was impressed with it. Unfortunately the investigation precludes Boeing from responding as they did indicate they would
have had something to say about it otherwise. But the analysis looks pretty cut and dried:
Boeing underestimated the risk rating for the sensor, excluding the possibility of a catastrophic failure as occurred in
the two incidents to date;
Boeing also failed to implement the redundancy that would have been required even for their lower risk rating;
Manual correction by the pilot as a possible risk mitigation was constrained by the fact that pilots weren't trained on
the new system due to commercial factors.
Fixing any one of those three issues would have averted the disasters, although #3 is pretty precarious as you're relying on
manual pilot actions to correct what is a clear systems defect at that point.
It sounds like #1 was partly because they failed to account for all the scenarios, like repeat activation raising the risk
profile in certain circumstances. This is very easy to do and a robust review process is your best defense. So we could add the
tight timelines and rushed process as a contributing factor for #1, and probably the others as well.
People who work on accident investigation would probably agree on 2 things:
(o) Accidents are invariably a confluence of a myriad of factors that all happened to line up on one day. There is never
a single cause of an accident.
(o) A minor change to some part of the system would have prevented the accident.
So while there is much to be profitably learned by investigating everything here, an effective "fix" may be surprisingly (or
suspiciously) small in scope. There will be much clamoring for the whole plane to be resigned or scrapped, for better or worse.
The Colgan crash, whose pilot, Renfrew, was chatting with the co-pilot below the allowed altitude? And who had apparently lied
about his background, and had a pay-to-play pilot's license?
I think the Air France Airbus 447 also had a high-altitude stall (due to a faulty air speed sensor) and needed its nose pushed
down, not up (which the copilots didn't realize).
Also, very informative article / OP, thanks for posting.
MCAS was added to change the behavior of the plane from to tend to stall as speed increases. That is stall and crash, because
such a high speed stall makes polit recovery very, very difficult.
In addition the MCAS driven amount of elevator change was initially 0.6 to 2.5, which indicates the 0.6 increment was found
to be too low.
According to a detailed FAA briefing to legislators, Boeing will change the MCAS software to give the system input from
both angle-of-attack sensors.
It will also limit how much MCAS can move the horizontal tail in response to an erroneous signal. And when activated, the
system will kick in only for one cycle, rather than multiple times.
Boeing also plans to update pilot training requirements and flight crew manuals to include MCAS.
–Seattle Times
So apparently the greater elevator setting is not so necessary that they are not willing to reduce it. Also the max power setting
would normally be on take off when the pilots are required to manually fly the plane.
Yes, that was an excellent Seattle times piece. Surprising to see that kind of truth-telling and, especially, *clarity* in
an MSM piece these days. So what's the angle?
Reports I've read indicates that Boeing ignored even the clearly inadequate certification. "Documentation provided to the
FAA claims that the MCAS system can only adjust the horizontal tail on the plane by 0.6 degrees out of a maximum of five-degrees
of nose-down movement. But that limit was later increased to 2.5-degrees of nose-down movement. Boeing didn't communicate the
change from 0.6-degrees to 2.5-degrees until after Lion Air."
Apparently this was done after simulations showed that 0.6 degrees was inadequate and the new 2.5 degree setting was not extensively
tested before the planes were rolled out. IANAL, but this may be a serious problem for Boeing. Boeing could also be liable
for damages due to 737 groundings and due to delays in delivery of contracted planes.
Big question is how 737 issues will affect 777X rollout, due at the end of the year. If 777X certification is called into question,
this may cause further delays and put it at a further disadvantage against A350.
The 777 has been a great plane. Let's all pray the MBAs didn't fuck it up, too.
If I were Boeing, I'd have a team looking into the 777 certification process right now. And I'd set up a whistleblower line
(so the Seattle Times doesn't get to the story first).
The analogy has been made between this the 737 MAX story and the Tylenol story. J&J got out in front of the problem and
saved the product (and their company). Boeing's problem is of that order, and Muilenberg -- that letter! -- seems incapable of
understanding that; insular, arrogant. One more reason to fire the dude toot sweet. If he comes out of his next review with a
raise -- Everything Is Like CalPERS™ -- consider shorting Boeing
Thanks, Lambert, for post and comments. I don't know if this angle has been covered or explored: the relatively new way that
Boeing now "manufactures" "tests" and "assembles" parts of its planes. I had dinner with new acquaintance, Boeing engineer for
decades (I live near a plant in WA state). For the last few years, this engineer is stationed half year in Russia annually to
oversee assembly there. In this newish, more profitable manufacturing system for Boeing, the parts come in from around the world
with sketchy quality control, are then assembled by Russian workers this engineer (and other Boeing employees sent from States)
supposedly oversees. But the engineer doesn't speak Russian and has too little access to translators .Needless to say, this engineer
is planning an exit as soon as possible. Having grown up in WA state for 60 years with neighbors/friends who were Boeing engineers,
assemblers, line workers, etc it makes me heart sick to see the current decimation of talent, rigor and wages with additional
far-flung assembly factories (Russia with few translators?! who knew?). Might these manufacturing/assemblying "improvements" also
be a contributing factor in these terrifying woes for Boeing?
Thanks for this Lambert, fantastically informative and interesting post.
Self regulation only works when liability is transferred with it – over example, in construction whereby certification by the
engineers or architects designing the building are also taking on liability in the event something goes wrong. It seems unlikely
that this is the situation with Boeing.
Allowing this to happen seems the ultimate in short term thinking by Boeing. US manufacturers have always had an advantage
over competitors because the FAA was held in such high regard worldwide that it was the de facto world safety regulatory
body – every country followed its lead. But this chipping away of its authority has led to a near fatal loss of faith, and will
no doubt lead to European and Asian regulatory authorities being strengthened. And no doubt commercial realities will mean they
will look much more closely at US manufactured aircraft if there is some benefit to their own manufacturers.
Airbus will no doubt try to take advantage – just as Boeing (with some justification) tried to focus attention on the Air France
Airbus loss which was attributed at least in part to excessive automation. China is pushing hard with its new Comac aircraft,
but they seem to be poorly regarded worldwide (only Chinese airlines are buying). The Canadians have missed their chance with
the Bombadier C-series.
The more I read of this the more baffling it is. What was there stopping Boeing from just highlighting the changes and installing
an easy manual override instead of this hidden change with effectively no way to permanently do so? Especially when in crisis
mode? One could make a case of no extra training needed so long as the pilot knows about it and can easily turn it off.
I didn't see this before I posted my response. A more concise statement of my thoughts. This plus more robust redundant sensors.
Penny wise and pound foolish.
The Times thinks Boeing is too big to fail. Without a blockbuster Max, I don't see how Boeing maintains its current status
in the industry.
I am leaning towards thinking the kludgy design of the 727 Max could have been rolled out with no major problems if Boeing
had been up front about design changes, made a robust and conservative MCAS, fully at the command of the pilot, and provided ample
training for the new aircraft.
They still could have saved billions on the airframe. They would have had to acknowledge the significant modifications to the
airlines with the attendant training and other costs and delays. They would have lost some sales. They still would have been far
ahead of Airbus and light years ahead of where they are now.
I also think they have been completely afflicted by the defense contractor mentality.
Note that Muilenberg came up through the defense side of the company not the commercial aircraft side. He may simply not
have been equipped to understand FAA regulation at any deep level, hence the rot that finally surfaced.
The 737 Max crashes and Brexit are the chickens coming home to roost. NC is a treasure for your coverage of both.
Clearly upper management in Chicago only knows short term finance. Boeing stuck with old fashion hydraulic controls in the
737 but faced with an unacceptable flight characteristics of the larger more efficient engines added a fly-by-wire system to compensate
for it.
The criminal charges are that besides being a faulty design (it relies on one fragile exposed sensor that if out of position
keeps triggering dives until switched off) but Boeing hid it and self-certified that it was safe. Adding a discrepancy warning
and position indicator for the two independent flight sensors to the cockpit video display is an extra cost feature.
Neither of the planes that crashed had the added safety display. All are cost saving measures. Finally, if a faulty sensor
triggers dives, the pilot at the controls is busy with both hands on the yoke forcing the airplane to stay in the air with stall
and proximity warnings are sounding. The second pilot also must realize what's going on, immediately turn off the electricity
to the screw jack motor and manually turn the stabilizer trim wheel to neutral.
You can't learn this on an iPad. Both pilots should practice it together in a Flight Simulator. If the co-pilot was experienced,
unlike the one in the Ethiopian crash; just maybe, they could have survived the repeated attempts by the airplane to dive into
the ground on takeoff.
The tragedy is that corporate media in pursuit of profits will keep us up to date but will never mention the 6 or 8 minutes
of terror for the 346 souls aboard the two flights. They will cover the criminal negligence trial if there are ever indictments.
But, the news reports never will say that neoliberalism, deregulation, and privatization are the root causes of the deaths.
> if a faulty sensor triggers dives, the pilot at the controls is busy with both hands on the yoke forcing the airplane
to stay in the air with stall and proximity warnings are sounding. The second pilot also must realize what's going on, immediately
turn off the electricity to the screw jack motor and manually turn the stabilizer trim wheel to neutral. You can't learn this
on an iPad. Both pilots should practice it together in a Flight Simulator. If the co-pilot was experienced, unlike the one
in the Ethiopian crash; just maybe, they could have survived the repeated attempts by the airplane to dive into the ground
on takeoff.
That's what I mean by horrid UI/UX. Might as well as both pilots to pat their heads and rub their tummies in synch. And since
the two pilots have to both understand what's going on, we've multiplied the chances for failure.
Boeing also clearly did not know its customers . It should be engineering for the sort of pilots who are going to be hired
by Lion Air, or any rapidly expanding airline in what we used to all the Third World. Hegemony, it seems, makes you insular and
provincial.
Added cost, "mandatory" safety feature. Does not seem to square with the [soon to be former?] CEO's apology-industry written
claim to be committed to absolute safety.
"The FAA, citing lack of funding and resource": I don't suppose I'll survive to see any arm of government not blame
lack of funds for its boneheaded or corrupt incompetence.
But the bigger picture: suppose the FAA is to do its job properly. From where is it going to recruit its staff?
Smaller picture: it doesn't really matter whether the cocked-up MCAS killed all those people or not. Even if it's innocent
of the charge, the account of its development and application is a horror story.
Bigger picture: what other horrors have been hidden by Boeing?
> the account of its development and application is a horror story.
That's how I feel. The tech doc department at Boeing sounds like a horrible place to work; MBAs or their goons telling
you all the time to do stuff you know is wrong. It's not surprising people were willing to talk to the Seattle Times; I bet there
are more people. (Hey, Seattle Times! How about people testing the 737 MAX in simulators (assuming this is done)).
Sounds like the MBAs in Chicago have been busy planting land mines everywhere. Somebody stepped on this one; there are others.
The unfortunate pilots were made test pilots; the unsuspecting passengers: Guinea pigs. Lab rats. And paid for the privilege.
Some others may share this opinion. Change one little thing? Chaos Theory Rules. Same with weather/climate; folks. That rant is
for later.
Boeing stuck with old fashion hydraulic controls in the 737 but faced with an unacceptable flight characteristics of the
larger more efficient engines added a fly-by-wire system to compensate for it.
Interestingly, and maybe relevant to the problem of confusion for the pilots, is that Boeing has had another automatic
trim-modifier operating on its 737s for some time, the speed-trim system (STS):
This system also modifies the stabilizer position during manual flight. Like MCAS, it was brought in to improve stability
under certain flight conditions (the reasons for which are far beyond my knowledge). There is an indication that the pilots on
the flight before the Lion Air crash misinterpreted MCAS actions for STS behavior.
At what point does "crapification" become insufficient to describe Boeing's product and process here? At what point do we have
to speak of " ford-pintofication"?
OK, I'm told to resubmit my crib re: "Boeing options" from the ZeroHedge "tweetstorm" by Trevot Sumner, and include a link
got it:
Economic problem. Boeing sells an option package that includes an extra AoA vane, and an AoA disagree light, which lets
pilots know that this problem was happening. Both 737MAXes that crashed were delivered without this option. No 737MAX with
this option has ever crashed
Ooops! "Options package"? Wait, a "package" that in the interim corrects a potentially catastrophic mfg. defect and airlines
have to pay for it? Whoa, here's your late capitalism in play.
> Boeing sells an option package that includes an extra AoA vane, and an AoA disagree light
This is one of the details I could not get to (and we don't 100% know this is an issue until the forensics are done. Right
now, we have narrative. Truly excellent narrative to be sure -- if only we thought of government the same way as pilots think
of their aircraft! -- but narrative nonetheless).
Let me see if I have this right. Pilots, chime in!
"Authority" is one of the big words in this discussion; MCAS takes authority away from the pilot (and can do in such a drastic
fashion as to crash the plane). Worse, the default case is that it can do so on the basis of a single sensor reading. In a design
appropriate to the consequences for failure (i.e., a different design from that described in the "System Safety Analysis" that
Boeing self-certified) MCAS would take readings from two sensors, and if they disagreed, authority would revert to the pilot
. That's a general principle at Boeing, and so it's reasonable for pilots to assume that they retain authority of MCAS has not
told them they don't have it any more.
Hence, the disagree light, which tells the pilots to take back authority because the sensors are confused. However, I think
there are UI/UX issues with that, given that the 737 cockpit is extremely noisy and pilots have a lot to do on take-off. So a
light might not be the answer. (The light also strikes me as a kludge; first, MCAS feels to me like a kludge, in that we're making
the aircraft flyable only through software.* Fine for fighter jets, which can be inherently unstable, but perhaps not so fine
for commercial aircraft? Then we have a second kludge, a light to tell us that the first kludge has kicked in. I dunno.)
NOTE * However, it's also true that automation affects flight characteristics all the time. So I'm not sure how savage to make
this indictment.
The AOA indication is Service Bulletin 737-31-1650 (there may be others) and is on the both Pilot Flight Displays (PFDs). Pilots
would likely abort a takeoff if they saw the indication come on before getting airborne.
"Boeing has been in the business of aviation safety for more than 100 years, "
How many years ago did Wall Street take over the fortunes of the company? Why did they move their headquarters from their
birthplace of Seattle to Chicago? Why did they start assembling planes in South Carolina and China? Was it to improve aviation
safety? Or, to allow the profiteering parasites to feed off the carcass of the company?
I want to fly on Boeing planes put together by well paid members of the Seattle Machinists Union, not low wage peons. Let's
not even mention the maintenance of American aircraft in China and El Salvador.
President Trump, here's a reelection tip: "Today I am declaring that all American registered aircraft flying in American
airspace must be maintained in the U.S."
> "Today I am declaring that all American registered aircraft flying in American airspace must be maintained in the U.S."
Amazingly, Trump seems to have done OK on this. First, he didn't cave to Muilenberg's (insane, goofy, tone-deaf) request
to keep the 737 flying; then he frames the issue as complexity (correct, IMNSHO), and then he manages to
nominate a Delta CEO as head of the FAA .
And your suggestion is very good one. I wonder if he could do that by executive order? And I wonder how many grey-beards would
come off the golf courses to help out? I bet a lot.
The aircraft is NOT CRAP!!! However. It should have been flown A WHOLE LOT MORE before receiving certification.
*Real* test pilots should have their a–es on the line ; operating for a lot more hours at *the edge of the envelope*, as it
is known. Stability should be by design; not software*patch*. Patch this!
What portion of its' MCAS system flight testing was in computer simulation? Like the so-called Doppler Radar; which *magically*
predicts what the future will bring; while the experts pitch it as fact? And make life-or-death decisions on the theoretical data???
Rush to market; markets rule. We can die.
Agreed, but I think we're seeing signs that a crapification process has begun on the safety side in this industry. (It
has been proceeding for years on the service/amenities side.)
Didn't say it was. The headline reads "Boeing Crapification," not "737 Crapification."
That said, the 737 clearly has issues, as Boeing itself knew, since if they'd had their druthers, they would have launched
a new plane to replace it. See point #2.
> What portion of its' MCAS system flight testing was in computer simulation?
That is a very good question. If I understand the aerodynamics issues aright, MCAS would be most likely to kick in at takeoff,
which raises a host of UI/UX issues because the pilots are very busy at that time. So was MCAS not tested in the simulators? If
so, how on earth was a scenario that included sensor failure not included? It may be that there are more issues with Boeing's
engineering process than the documentation issues raised by the Seattle Times, though those are bad enough.
I say the 737-whatever is a flying Turd, and always has been. It has a bad wing design which means it has to fly nose up compared
to other models( I always remember that when going to the restroom while going somewhere on one). And because of its poor design
it has to takeoff and land at higher speeds. So when flying into someplace like Mexico City it can be quite a harrowing experience,
and the smell of cooking brakes is relatively normal.
Boeing never should have let go of the 757. Now that was a good plane that was simply ahead of its time.
Considering the fact that all these 737s are grounded as no airline trust them to not kill a plane load of passengers and
crew, this is a really big deal. Putting aside the technical and regulatory issues, the fact is that the rest of the world no
longer trusts the US in modern aviation so what we have here is a trust issue which is an even bigger deal.
We now know that the FAA does not audit the work done for these aircraft but the airlines themselves do it. It cannot be just
Boeing but the other aircraft manufacturers as well. Other countries are going to be asking some very hard questions before forking
over their billions to a US aircraft manufacturer in future. Worse is when Ethiopia refused to hand over the black boxes to the
US but gave them instead to a third party.
That was saying that based on how you treated the whole crash, we do not trust you to do the job right and not to change some
of the results. It has been done before, ironically enough by France who the Ethiopians gave the black boxes to. And when you
lose trust, it takes a very long time to gain it back again – if ever. But will the changes be made to do so? I would guess no.
But if the discount foreign airlines had just trained their pilots and paid for the non-crashintothegroundat500mph upgrade,
all of this could have been avoided.
> we have here is a trust issue which is an even bigger deal
Loss or at least wobbliness of imperial hegemony, like. It's not just the aircraft, it's US standards-setting bodies, methods,
"safety culture," even -- dare we say it -- English as the language of aviation. French is no longer the language of diplomacy,
after all, though it had a good run.
Because markets. Neoliberalism puts everything up for sale. Including regulation. Oversimplifying absurdly: And so you
end up with the profit-driven manufacturer buying the regulator, its produce killing people, and the manufacturer canceling its
future profits. That's what the Bearded One would call a contradiction.*
NOTE * There ought to be a way to reframe contradiction in terms of Net Present Value which would not be what we think it is,
under that model.
I wish it were as complete as it should be! There are a ton of horrid details about sensors, the UI/UX for the MCAS system,
737 cockpit design, decisions by the marketing department, and training and maintenance for Asian airlines that I just couldn't
get to. (Although most of those presume that the forensics have already been done.) But I felt that dollying back for the big
picture was important to. Point #1 is important, in that all the factors that drove the 737 decision making are not only still
in place, they're intensifying, so we had better adjust our systems (assuming Boeing remains a going concern -- defenestrating
Muilenberg would be an excellent way to show we accept the seriousness of customer and international concern).
Bloomberg is reporting that : "The Indonesia safety committee report said the plane had had multiple failures on previous flights
and hadn't been properly repaired."
And the day before when the same plane had the problem that killed everyone the next day: "The so-called dead-head pilot on
the earlier flight from Bali to Jakarta told the crew to cut power to the motor driving the nose down, according to the people
familiar, part of a checklist that all pilots are required to memorize."
There's an enormous expansion of air travel in Asia. The lower end -- not flag -- carriers like Lion Air and also Air Asia
are in that business to be cheap ; they're driven by expansion and known to be run by cowboys.
That said, know your customer . I would translate this into an opportunity for Boeing to sell these airlines a service
package for training their ground operations. But it seems that cutting costs is the only thing the MBAs in Chicago understand.
Pilots, pipe up!
Pilot training and requirements are in the hands of the country, not Boeing. If the story that the copilot of the Ethiopian
Airlines plane had only 200 hours of experience that is astounding.
In the US that requirement is 1500 hours. In addition most US airlines would require more than that. And then they slot 'beginning'
pilots for flights in good (better) weather as high minimums pilot.
"sell these airlines a service package" That won't help an airline that is in the business to be cheap. The Indonesia airplane
was repeatedly reported for problems in prior days/flights that was never fixed.
and this quote makes an interesting follow-on to the thread yesterday with 737 Pilot (which Lambert linked to in the first
paragraph here):
"The combination of factors required to bring down a plane in these circumstances suggests other issues may also have occurred
in the Ethiopia crash, said Jeffrey Guzzetti, who also directed accident investigations at FAA and is now a consultant.
"It's simply implausible that this MCAS deficiency by itself can down a modern jetliner with a trained crew," Guzzetti said."
Setting aside Mr Guzzetti's background (dismissing his claim here as tendentious right off the bat would strike me as uncharitable),
and without wishing to exculpate anyone, it does lend some credence to the idea that Ethiopia Airlines may have some contributory
negligence here, staffing the flight with such an inexperienced first officer.
Setting aside Mr Guzzetti's background (dismissing his claim here as tendentious right off the bat would strike me as uncharitable),
and without wishing to exculpate anyone, it does lend some credence to the idea that Ethiopia Airlines may have some contributory
negligence here, staffing the flight with such an inexperienced first officer.
One can often point to inexperience, incompetence, stupidity, incompetence or just bad luck when some disaster happens, but
Boeing counted on perfect performance from flight crews to successfully work with a workaround needed for other workarounds that
needed perfect performance to not catastrophically fail. I know enough about complexity that you cannot depend on perfection because
something will always fail.
Your excellent summary lacks some MCAS details that are not widely reported by the general-audience press.
Like you, I am a retired software engineer, so I have followed an aviation blog discussion of this issue quite closely
since it emerged as a probable software and system design failure. As the blog is open to all, its signal-to-noise ratio is pretty
low, but it seems not too difficult for any technically-minded person to separate the wheat from the chaff. My current understanding,
which I believe others here are in a position to correct, if necessary:
A. The requirement for MCAS apparently emerged very late in the MAX's development, when it became clear that the upper cowling
around the larger engines, being moved up and forward with respect to earlier 737 versions, adds nose-up force as the angle of
attack (AoA) approaches the upper limits of the MAX's operating envelope because at such angles, the cowling itself generates
lift beyond that of the wing.
B. As perceived by a pilot flying manually (not on autopilot), this added nose-up force makes it easier to pull back on the
control column ("stick"), increasing the AoA further. This is like a car running off the asphalt onto a muddy shoulder: the steering
wheel wants to turn the wrong way (toward the ditch) rather than the right way (back on the road).
C. An FAA regulation prohibits certification of an aircraft that presents the pilot with changing stick forces near stall that
nudge the pilot toward the wrong reaction, 14 CFR 25.203(a)
, IIRC (unfortunately, I can't find the original blog citation).
D. MCAS was put in place to satisfy this certification requirement -- not to automagically correct stalls without pilot action.
E. Other means of meeting this requirement exist, ranging from an airframe redesign that avoids the extra nose-up effect of
the larger repositioned engines down to a "stick pusher" that increases the force a pilot would need to pull the stick back further
in this situation.
F. Any of the other options would negate one or both of the MAX's chief selling points: little cost or schedule impact to Boeing
(in a rush to meet the Airbus 320 NEO challenge) and to its customers ("No new flight crew training necessary, because to the
pilot, the MAX feels just like its 737 predecessors.") That is, all the other options introduce new hardware to a completed design
and the more fundamental changes could require new type certification.
G. The easiest fix was pure software: at high indicated AoA, under manual control, and with flaps up, automatically rotate
the horizontal stabilizer a little bit nose-down, which increases the pressure needed to pull the stick back (nose-up). No need
to tell the pilot about this in training or real time, since it's just to make MAX feel like any other 737.
H. The design presented for certification described a single small rotation. Testing showed this was insufficient to provide
the tactile feedback necessary for certification in all cases, so the software fix was obvious: if the trigger conditions still
hold after a 5 sec. pause, do it again.
I. Apparently nobody asked at that point, "What if the AoA indication is stuck high?" We're under schedule and cost pressure,
so who wants to complexify things by (1) adding additional sanity-checking to the aircraft's AoA computations or (2) limiting
how many times we add a little bit of nose-down.
J. When these details combine with a consistently erroneous AoA reading, MCAS can -- if not repeatedly countermanded or disabled
and manually reversed -- eventually rotate the horizontal stabilizer to its maximum nose-down position, where it was found in
both recent incidents, IIRC.
Even if the pilots figure out that's what's happening amid a cacophony of seemingly contradictory instrument readings and warnings
(stick-shaker, trim wheel clacking, alarm chimes, and synthesized voices), the pilots still have to (1) cut power to the electrical
trim systems and (2) restore the required trim, which may then require as many as 50 manual turns of a trim wheel. If you're near
the ground, time is short
A minority of commenting pilots assert that any competently trained cockpit crew should be able to identify MCAS misbehavior
quickly and power off automatic trim per the same checklist that was prescribed for "runaway automatic trim" on every 737 variant,
MAX included. Most seem to agree that with aircraft control difficulties, multiple alarms, and disagreement among the pilot's
and first officer's airspeed and AoA readings almost from the moment of takeoff (not yet officially confirmed), an MCAS-commanded
runaway trim event may feel very different from the runaway trim flavors for which pilots have had simulator training, making
problem identification difficult even given knowledge of the earlier Lion Air incident.
I imagine most software developers and engineers have seen cost/schedule pressures lead to short cuts. If their life was at
stake, I doubt that many would think self-certification that such a project complies with all relevant safety requirements is
a good idea.
Thank you for that. And just 'wow'. I don't really know anything about aircraft/flying but this story is really fascinating
and seems to be true a sign of the times. I guess we'll know what the current 'temperature' is out there when the fallout
(civil liability, criminal liability, plane orders cancelled/ returned, etc) manifests. If Boeing skates, we'll know we've got
a long way to go.
The Post's article on the FAA and Regulatory Capture is incomplete. The process for the FAA (and probably MANY government
agencies) started under Reagan, did not revert to safety under Clinton (make government smaller and all that), and then accelerated
under Bush II in 2005 (not a bi-partisan time). In particular, big changes to the FAA were made in 2005 that were executive in
nature and did not require Congressional approval. CF:
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/delegating-aircraft-safety-assessments-to-boeing-is-nothing-new-for-the-faa/
Yes, but. Part of what we are seeing in this case is a rush to judgement based on less than full evidence and analysis, and
so prejudices and ideological positions (which I share actually) are plainly to be seen (and perhaps worth analyzing). "Crapification,"
says the headline.
Yet, I cannot say that I disagree with BA's business decisions as such in a highly competitive environment as regards the tradeoffs
in the development of the MAX and there is a certain absurdity in the idea that Boeing would knowingly take a high reputational
risk, in an industry where failure is front page news (contrast banking or pharma failures).
I have no reason to believe that an FAA fully in charge of all aspects of certification would have prevented these crashes,
as banking and drug regulators have not kept us safe either. What seems worthy of note is that neither the airlines that buy the
product nor the foreign aviation regulators nor pilots' associations do their own testing and certification, in an area where
more redundancy would be good. Nor is there any kind of private third party watchdog testing, like a Moody's or S&P, evaluating
potentially toxic products and services for a price.
Finally, I suppose we have to ask ourselves why the price of the stock is holding up fairly well even as the news flow on these
tragedies is helping the short sellers. Lest we forget that Boeing is the 5th largest defense contractor in the US.
Is engine throttle automated in the flight regime where these accidents occurred? Or are the pilots controlling power? Is the
lag in thrust response interacting with the MCAS in an unanticipated way? Aerodynamic lift of nacelles is mentioned several times;
there is another lift factor relating to the thrust angle; which is not necessarily aligned with the fuselage axis in flight.
Departure procedures often require speed limits and altitude changes; so it is likely multiple power demand levels get set through
takeoff and climb until cruise altitude is reached. Does Autopilot/Flight Director integrate with MCAS; or are they independent
systems? Even without touching flight controls; power changes affect pitch forces. I am wondering if consequences of manual power
changes on an otherwise automated departure were adequately investigated in the certification of the MCAS. Please excuse my ignorance
of these details.
Regulatory elements that have been getting attention include the use of *standard* weights for passengers; IIRC, 170 lbs for
US (and possibly ICAO) passengers comes to mind . Many aircraft accidents have an element of disregard for proper weight distribution,
either accidental, or negligent. For instance: Tail-heavy bad! Intentional loading outside of subsequently approved C.G. and/or
max weight limits is a common, if not ubiquitous part of determining certification limits.There is a safety factor in the certificated
limits; but banking on this; using estimates; is proven risky or disastrous when actual weights, and distribution thereof, is
uncertain. Cargo with false weight values could also occur. One might find incentive to claim lower weights than actual to save
on freight charges. How many 170 lb passengers do you know? I am not familiar with scales being used to check aircraft weight
and balance before takeoff; only calculations; based on formulas and charts.
Scales ARE USED during certain maintenance procedures; for airworthiness certificates; and following certain modifications.
Here is an interesting article by a professional pilot blogger Patrick Smith. He calls the 737, "the Frankenplane", and traces
its history all the way back to the 707 in 1959. According to Smith, "We wonder if the 737 MAX even needed to exist in the first
place. Somewhere deep down, maybe the heart of this whole fiasco is Boeing's determination to keep the 737 line going, variant
after variant, seemingly forever. I'm not saying this is the reason for what happened in Indonesia or Ethiopia, but the whole
737 program just seems misguided and unnecessary. Instead of starting from scratch with a new airframe, they took what was essentially
conceived as a regional jet in the mid-1960s, and have pushed and pushed and pushed the thing -- bigger and bigger engines, fancier
avionics and more seats -- into roles it was never intended for. The "Frankenplane," I call it.
See the article here .
As a pilot myslef, I feel the airlines have a lot to answer for as well. Their constant "dumbing down" of pilots, which comes
from making pilots work long hours for low pay, results in pilots not being the best of the best. And training is a cost to airlines.
Training doesn't result in revenue. Better to have the pilots actually flying, hence Boeing selling this new version of the 737
as not requiring further training. But, training and practice is everything in flying. Flying a plane is actually a relatively
easy skill to acquire. Most people can learn to fly a trainer in 5 hours or so. Most people solo (fly the plane without an instructor)
with only 10-20 hours of instruction. It takes a lot longer to learn how to drive a car for most people (45 hours is the average).
So it really isn't that difficult .until something goes WRONG. That is when the training kicks in. An often quoted flying truism,
is that flying is "99% boredom and 1% stark terror". What happened with these two crashes is that you had some inexperienced pilots
who were not fully trained on the systems (a lot of that blame goes to Boeing). When things start going wrong, information overload
can easily occur if you have not been properly trained, even with two pilots.
Thanks for that correction. We can expect a deluge of blame-the-other-guy PR from the aircraft manufacturer and certification
agencies. Billions are on the line for Boeing if a cascade of judgments it made materially contributed to these crashes. The usual
strategic corporate bankruptcy might follow. I presume Boeing is considered much TBTF by the USG.
Great job summarizing and connecting dots Lambert. I might add one more bullet point though. Items #5 and #6 were aided, abetted
and perhaps somewhat necessitated by 'ye ole NeoLiberal playbook' you spoke of, but more specifically, the current regulatory
FAA/Boeing milieu is attributable to years of budget cuts and strategically applied austerity. The old Grover Norquist, ' not
destroyed, but small and weak enough to be drowned in a shallow bath' saw. Exact same thing we've witnessed with other formally
effective regulators like the EPA, the SEC or the IRS.
I remember having a conversation with an FAA maintenance inspector, an old timer, about ten years ago. He looked to be upwards
of seventy, and he told me he was eight years beyond eligibility for a full retirement. He informed me that a few years back he
was supervising a team of ten people that was now down to two. Their positions had been cut outright or eliminated after they
resigned or transferred when the remaining positions were made miserable by the increased workload and bureaucratic headaches.
The inspector said he had not retired yet because he knew he would not be replaced and he felt the work was important. I asked
him if his department was atypical and he said it was not. Same thing, across the board, with the exception of the executive level
desk jobs in DC and Oklahoma City. Readers can draw their own conclusions but when it comes to funding Federal regulators, I believe
you should never attribute anything to incompetence that you could attribute to malice.
No doubt Neo-Liberal ideologues in high places pushing the corrosive "customer/client" model of regulating along with the requisite
deference and obsequious to industry played a large role as well.
I understand the published materials to boil down to this possible scenario:
To remain competitive and profitable, Boeing needed to improve the fuel efficiency and flight characteristics of a mainstay
medium-haul aircraft. Instead of designing a new aircraft, it modified an existing airframe. Among other changes, it added more
powerful engines, new lift and control surfaces, and enhanced computerized controls.
The modified Max aircraft **did not** fly like the earlier version. That meant Boeing would have to disclose information about
those changes. It would need to train pilots in them, in how to integrate new protocols into existing ones, and in what to do
if the enhanced computer controls malfunctioned, requiring the pilot to regain manual control.
These steps could have increased cost and time to market, might have involved new certifications, and might have reduced sales.
Boeing appears to have relied on enhanced computer flight controls to avoid them.
The newly enhanced computerized controls meant that the computer would do more of the actual flying – the part that was different
from the pre-Max version – and the pilot less. It gave the pilot the virtual – but not real – experience of flying the older aircraft,
obviating the need, in Boeing's judgment, for additional disclosures and training. That worked except when it didn't. (See, driverless
car development.)
One possible failure mode derives from the Max's reliance on a single sensor to detect its angle of attack, the aircraft's
nose-up or nose-down deviation from level flight. Reliance on a single sensor would make it harder to detect and correct a fault.
(Boeing's version of commitment to "absolute" safety.)
In these two crashes, the sensor may have given a faulty reading, indicating that the aircraft's nose was higher than it should
have been for that stage of flight, an attitude that risked a stall. The programmed response was to drop the nose and increase
power. A normal reaction to a real stall, this response can become catastrophic when unexpected or when the pilot cannot correct
it.
In both crashes, it appears that the pilot did attempt to correct the computer's error. Doing so, however, reset the automated
control, leading the computer to reread the faulty sensor to mean "stall." It again dropped the nose and increased speed. The
pilot recorrected the error in what would become a deadly loop, a tug of war that ended in a powered dive into the ground.
What is interesting is what comes next. The FAA was drowned in the bath tub along with the EPA, FDA, SEC, etc. It doesn't have
the money or staff to recertify the 737 Max. An incompetent Administration that is interested only in extracting resources is
in charge. It is clear that Boeing hid the changes to save money and time. Adding a warning indicator that the flight sensors
are not in the correct position to the pilot's display, including it in the preflight checklist, plus flight training would have
prevented the Indonesian crash. But these changes would have raised questions on the adequacy of the new flight critical system
and may have delayed certification overseas. It is easy to overlook problems if your paycheck is at risk. The Boeing managers
who pushed this through deserve jail time for manslaughter.
Canada said it will recertify the 737 Max before it flies in their airspace. China won't recertify the Max until the Trump
Trade War is over. Also, a delay boosts their replacement airliner. If Chicago and DC paper this over like the 2008 Great Recession;
the final nails will have been hammered into the coffin of the hegemon. Trust is gone
The Other Recent Deadly Boeing Crash No One Is Talking About
(nymag.com)
65 Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday March 23, 2019 @01:34PM from the
searching-for-answers dept. New York magazine's Intelligencer remembers last month's
crash of a Boeing 767 carrying cargo for Amazon and the U.S. Postal Service -- and shares a
new theory that its cause wasn't a suicidal pilot or an autopilot malfunction:
In online pilot discussion forums, a third idea has been gaining adherents: that the
pilots succumbed to a phenomenon called somatogravic illusion, in which lateral acceleration
due to engine thrust
creates the sensation that one is tipping backward in one's seat .
The effect is particularly strong when a plane is lightly loaded, as it would be at the
end of a long flight when the fuel tanks are mostly empty, and in conditions of poor
visibility, as Atlas Air 3591 was as it worked its way through bands of bad weather. The idea
is that perhaps one of the pilots accidentally or in response to wind shear set the engines
to full power, and then believed that the plane had become dangerously nose-high and so
pushed forward on the controls.
This would cause a low-g sensation that might have been so disorienting that by the
time the plane came barreling out of the bottom of the clouds there wasn't enough time to
pull out of the dive.
It has been speculated that this might have been the cause of another bizarre and
officially unsolved accident from three years ago: Flydubai Flight 981, which crashed 2016 in
Rostov-on-Don, Russia....
While it's still too early to draw any kind of conclusions about Atlas Air 3591, the
possibility exists that a firm conclusion will never be drawn -- and if it is, the cause
could turn out not to be a design flaw or software malfunction that can be rectified, but a
basic shortcoming in human perception and psychology that cannot be fixed as long as humans
are entrusted with the control of airplanes.
Yes, commercial pilots are taught to "fly their instruments". General aviation pilots may
enjoy more "seat-of-the-pants" flying, but even they are taught to trust instruments over
human perceptions, which are easily fooled, as even simple demos will show.
I used to work for an aircraft instrument maker, and our user interfaces, everything the
pilot interacts with, got more care and attention than the rest of the instrument. Of course
we had to display nothing but totally accurate data, and do so promptly, but we also had to
do so in ways that were obvious and clear, so the pilot can take in the most important
information with a quick glance.
The pilot's standard "scan" is perhaps the most-trained skill. To look at everything on
the instrument panels and outside the windows often enough to not miss anything, yet slow
enough to take in all vital information.
When things get hectic, the pilot still does this scan, interrupting it as needed to
deal with situations, but still doing it. Because, as the saying goes, "trouble often comes
in threes": Stopping everything to handle an initial situation may mask what's really going
on, and lead to a cascade of failures.
With ever more data being aimed at the pilot, there is a distinct risk of information
overload, especially when tired, or during tense but otherwise normal situations, such as
take-off, landing, or flying through turbulence. This overload often encourages the pilot to
rely more on signals from the body, which need less conscious processing, rather than focus
on all that data.
Here, again, is where commercial pilots receive extra training, but perhaps not often
enough. This is one of the factors that keep commercial pilot mandatory retirement ages so
low: The risk of overload increases with age, even when all other factors match those of a
younger person.
Plus, staying in peak training for decades is fatiguing, and relatively few can do so
"naturally". Which is one of the reasons we're running out of commercial aircraft
pilots.
It may seem counter-intuitive, but this overload risk is often handled by adding more
automation, more automatic systems to "help" the pilot. So much so that actually manually
"driving" a commercial aircraft, with hands on the controls, is an increasingly rare part of
a normal flight.
Our instruments also tried to take pilot fatigue into account, saving our brightest and
loudest alarms only for the most desperate situations, to punch-through that overload to help
ensure prompt and correct reactions.
One product I worked on was a TAWS (Terrain Awareness and Warning System) instrument,
which basically stayed quiet unless there was a risk of the pilot flying into the ground, to
help prevent "CFIT" accidents (Controlled Flight Into the Ground). It has special modes for
take-off and landing, though our instrument was designed to actually *avoid* making the pilot
depend on it's display: Useful for information as part of the scan, but not to be used to
navigate the aircraft. Our main function was to provide visual and audible alerts only when
needed.
I believe 100% of US commercial aircraft (and perhaps now even biz-jets) are required to
have TAWS on-board and active. Any TAWS-equipped plane approaching the ground outside of an
approved approach path for a know airport will give the pilot "Terrain ahead. Pull up! Pull
up!" alerts until the hazard no longer exists.
Unfortunately, if a stall is also immanent, the pilot will simultaneously receive an alert
to push the nose down. And increase power. And other things as well. An overload of alerts,
which a skilled and calm pilot will respond to with the most correct action. But which can
overload a stressed or tired pilot, or one with the beginnings of a cold or flu.
The thing is, every alert can be silenced, to reduce the confusion and distractions.
But an overloaded pilot can forget even this simple aid to keeping full awareness and
control.
This is a big part of why pilots are so often blamed for crashes: Because, for whatever
reason, they failed to take the appropriate action demanded by the situation.
As a former aircraft instrument developer, I was always well aware of my instruments'
contribution to the pilot's mental load. Our teams agonized over tiny changes to font
selection and sizes and colors and contrast. And how many button presses were needed to
accomplish a function. And how easy it was to switch modes or silence an alert. Which is why
we had a massive alpha test system that got even the earliest versions of our instruments in
front of pilots with experimental aircraft and ratings. (Experimental aircraft and the pilots
who fly them are rare and precious things to instrument developers, even when we owned and
operated our own corporate test aircraft.)
Fortunately, our efforts paid off, and pilots (and the FAA) loved our instruments. Some of
our design innovations were adopted into instrument regulations by the FAA, so all
manufacturers had to build to our standard. But always hovering over our success was the fear
of news of the crash of a plane flying our instruments. And the fear that information
overload from our instruments would be shown to be a contributing factor.
Which is why part of our required reading was any and all reports (mainly NTSB and NASA)
that even mention pilot overload. Even a decade after leaving that industry, I still read
these reports.
``...the cause could turn out not to be a design flaw or software malfunction that can
be rectified, but a basic shortcoming in human perception and psychology that cannot be
fixed as long as humans are entrusted with the control of airplanes.''
On the other hand, we have two recent examples of what can happen when a flight computer
is given control of the plane and it is unable to avoid doing something stupid like -- as the
old euphemism goes -- `make inadvertent contact with the terrain'.
Until we know more about how this was supposed work and exactly why it
didn't , I think I'll trust the human with his hands on the controls more than the flight
computer.
(Thankfully, the occasions for my needing to fly are few and far between.)
If you look at it and you are headed down (and you have good airspeed), you don't need to
keep trying to nose down - regardless of what your senses are telling you.
What about looking at how the altimeter is changing?
The artificial horizon gives you a lot of information when your sense of direction is
playing tricks on you (in the clouds and feeling like you are going up,down, rolling,
etc.)
The people who died in last Sunday's plane crash were not just killed by Boeing. Their deaths stemmed from an ideology that puts
business interests above human life.
... ... ...
Boeing is not just a lobbying juggernaut that donates prodigiously to politicians all over the country; it's also a company in
which numerous
members
of Congress
are personally invested, and it cultivates
mutually
beneficial
financial relationships with
top
officials
. Meanwhile, as William McGee of Consumer Reports
told
Amy Goodman
, these issues are rooted in the FAA's lax, business-friendly oversight of the very industry it's meant to
regulate, a case of
regulatory
capture
that stretches back long before this administration.
Whatever the black box from the Ethiopian Airlines flight reveals, the lives put at risk by
lax
regulations
are not apolitical tragedies; they are caused by an administration that time and again has shown itself to be
callous and indifferent to the lives of the people it claims to fight for, whether Puerto Ricans left to
fend
for themselves
in the wake of natural disaster, or federal workers used as
bargaining
chips
in a game of political brinkmanship.
But more than that, they are victims of an ideology that tells us the greatest insult to human life is not the death and misery
that comes from unchecked greed, but efforts to democratically control it through public institutions. The real problems aren't
unsafe products, pollution, dangerous chemicals, and the like, we're told, but "red tape" and the taxes used to fund the bodies
regulating them. Meanwhile, activists like Nader have long been
painted
as
"
wacky
"
extremists in the pursuit of some quixotic ideological crusade simply for trying to do things like prevent people from
dying
in cars without seat belts
.
When social-democratic policies are enacted, wealthy people take less home after taxes, and businesses are inconvenienced by
regulations meant to secure the common good. But when neoliberal policies are put in place, people and their families go hungry,
they lose their homes, they get injured on the job, they get sick, and, sometimes, they die. The public should be enraged by the
actions of governments like Trump's and Trudeau's; but we should also be angry at a political narrative that tells us trying to
stop such tragedies is "ideological" instead of common sense. We owe it to the crash victims to create no more of them.
On May 12, 2010, the New York Times ran an article by economics editor Catherine Rampell
titled "The New Poor: In Job Market Shift, Some Workers Are Left Behind"that focused on the
largely middle-aged unemployed who will probably never work again. For example, 52 year old
administrative assistant Cynthia Norton has been working part-time at Walmart while sending
resumes everywhere but nobody gets back to her. She is part of a much bigger picture:
Ms. Norton is one of 1.7 million Americans who were employed in clerical and
administrative positions when the recession began, but were no longer working in that
occupation by the end of last year. There have also been outsize job losses in other
occupation categories that seem unlikely to be revived during the economic recovery. The
number of printing machine operators, for example, was nearly halved from the fourth quarter
of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2009. The number of people employed as travel agents fell by
40 percent.
But Ms. Rampell finds the silver lining in this dark cloud:
This "creative destruction" in the job market can benefit the economy.
Pruning relatively less-efficient employees like clerks and travel agents, whose work can be
done more cheaply by computers or workers abroad, makes American businesses more efficient.
Year over year, productivity growth was at its highest level in over 50 years last quarter,
pushing corporate profits to record highs and helping the economy grow.
The term "creative destruction" might ring a bell. It was coined by Werner Sombart in his
1913 book "War and Capitalism". When he was young, Sombart considered himself a Marxist. His
notion of creative destruction was obviously drawn from Karl Marx, who, according to some, saw
capitalism in terms of the business cycle. With busts following booms, like night follows day,
a new round of capital accumulation can begin. This interpretation is particularly associated
with Volume Two of Capital that examines this process in great detail. Looking at this
material, some Marxists like Eduard Bernstein drew the conclusion that capitalism is an
infinitely self-sustaining system.
By 1913, Sombart had dumped the Marxist commitment to social revolution but still retained
the idea that there was a basis in Karl Marx for upholding the need for "creative destruction",
a view buttressed by an overly positive interpretation of this passage in the Communist
Manifesto:
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of
production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of
society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary,
the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing
of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty
and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
By the 1930s, Sombart had adapted himself fairly well to the Nazi system although he was not
gung-ho like Martin Heidegger or Carl Schmitt. The wiki on Sombart notes:
In 1934 he published Deutscher Sozialismus where he claimed a "new spirit" was beginning
to "rule mankind". The age of capitalism and proletarian socialism was over and with "German
socialism" (National-Socialism) taking over.
But despite this, he remained critical. In 1938 he wrote an anthropology text that found
fault with the Nazi system and many of his Jewish students remained fond of him.
I suspect, however, that Rampell is familiar with Joseph Schumpeter's use of the term rather
than Sombart since Schumpeter was an economist, her chosen discipline. In 1942, he wrote a book
titled Capitalism, Socialism and
Democracy that, like Sombart, retained much of Karl Marx's methodology but without the
political imperative to destroy the system that utilized "creative destruction". He wrote:
The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development
from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of
industrial mutation–if I may use that biological term–that incessantly
revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one,
incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact
about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got
to live in. . . .
The wiki on Schumpeter claims that this theory is wedded to Nikolai Kondratiev's "long wave"
hypothesis that rests on the idea that there are 50 year cycles in which capitalism grows,
decays and enters a crisis until a new round of capital accumulation opens up. Not only was the
idea attractive to Schumpeter, it was a key part of Ernest Mandel's economic theories. Unlike
Schumpeter, Mandel was on the lookout for social agencies that could break the cycle and put
development on a new footing, one based on human need rather than private profit.
Returning to Rampell's article, there is one dimension entirely missing. She assumes that
"creative destruction" will operate once again in order to foster a new upswing in the
capitalist business cycle. But how exactly will that manifest itself? All the signs point to a
general decline in business activity unless there is some kind of technological breakthrough
equivalent to the computer revolution that fueled growth for decades. Does anybody believe that
"green manufacturing" will play the same role? I don't myself.
One thing does occur to me. Sombart's book was written in 1913, one year before WWI and was
even titled eerily enough "War and Capitalism". One wonders if the Great War would be seen as
part and parcel of "creative destruction". War, after all, does have a knack for clearing the
playing field with even more finality than layoffs. Schumpeter wrote his in 1942, one year into
WWII. My guess is that he did not theorize war as the ultimate (and necessary?) instrument of
creative destruction but history will record that WWII did introduce a whole rafter of new
technology, including aluminum, radar, nuclear power, etc., while bombing old modes of
production into oblivion. What a great opportunity it was for capitalism to rebuild Japan,
especially after firebombing and atomic bombs did their lovely work.
In my view, there's something disgusting about this "creative destruction" business
especially when it is articulated by a young, pro-capitalist Princeton graduate like Catherine
Rampell who wrote for Slate, the Village Voice and other such b-list publications before
crawling her way up into an editorial job at the NYT. She clearly has learned how to cater her
reporting to the ideological needs of the newspaper of record, growing more and more
reactionary as the crisis of capitalism deepens.
hen United Airlines flight 1462 made an unexpected landing in Chicago last month, it was not due to mechanical issues, weather
conditions, or flight logistics, but a battle over legroom in the aisles. As one passenger
tried
to
recline her seat and another used a $20 device called a
Knee
Defender
to prevent the occupant ahead of him from leaning back, the battle over personal space descended into a scuffle. The
pilot opted to make an additional stop to remove the unruly passengers.
Flight 1462 hasn't been alone. Not just the random dispute of irate travelers, similar flights have been diverted because of the
airlines' frenzied drive to wring as much money out of customers as possible. Airlines are increasingly cramming more passengers
onto each flight, termed "densification," and regularly overbooking flights. Any aspect of a flight that was once provided free
of charge -- from a checked bag to a complementary drink to using a credit card to pay for a ticket -- can now be charged à la
carte.
So relentless has this nickel and diming been that when
news
reports
claimed the discount airline Ryan Air was about to start charging for in-flight bathroom use, many people took them
seriously. But the story wasn't true -- it was all a ploy for free press from a company unwilling to pay for advertising,
help
disabled
passengers, or
provide
ice
for drinks.
Such frugality is only one of the problems wrought by airline deregulation. If the greatest benefit of deregulation has been that
more people can afford to fly, it has come at the cost of increased tumult within the industry and
reduced
pay
for workers.
Before the airlines were deregulated under President Jimmy Carter, the Civil Aeronautics Bureau (CAB) maintained flight pricing
structures, airport gate access, and flight paths. There were rules that stipulated which airlines could compete in which market
and what prices they could charge. Loosening restrictions meant abandoning the CAB and its pricing structures, and allowing an
unmediated flow of competition.
With fewer restrictions, upstart fly-by-night airlines could compete against major airlines like American/US Airways, United,
Delta, Alaskan, and Hawaiian Airways. Such competition, conservative and
liberal
advocates
claimed, would bring down flight costs, providing more savings and convenience to the customer.
But allowing this level of competition also unleashed chaos. While the discount airlines would win over passengers for a time by
offering flights half as expensive, the major airlines would respond by slashing their prices in an attempt to drive the upstarts
out of business.
By drastically reducing ticket costs, the major airlines would take on an unsustainable amount of debt that, combined with the
loss of business to the new entrants, would lead to layoffs or bankruptcy. Pension funds were then raided and labor contracts
voided to pay for the price wars. With each airline company collapse, thousands of employees were laid off, decimating union
membership.
To compete, the legacy airlines also
drove down
the
salaries of their pilots, and cut benefits and vacation time. Besides a reduction in compensation, a two-tiered pay system has
been set up with decent pay for incumbent pilots and markedly low wages for new entrants.
Starting
salaries
for pilots are now as low as $15,000 a year, even as CEO pay rises inexorably.
Remarking
on
a career in which he had seen his pay cut in half and his pension eliminated, captain Sully Sullenberger told the BBC in 2009
that he did not know "a single professional pilot who wants his or her children to follow in their footsteps."
While unions were still strong in the industry, they were constantly embroiled in bitter labor disputes. Between the voided
contracts and the hemorrhaging membership caused by regular bankruptcy, they were left fighting to maintain wage standards in an
unnecessarily competitive industry.
The only way discount airlines could offer such low prices was by paying their workers less, using less experienced pilots and
sometimes non-unionized labor, offering fewer frills, and running spartan operations that only serviced a handful of routes with
a single type of jet liner (thus simplifying pilot and mechanic training). Instead of a single union representing
employees across the industry -- typified by the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), which represented a majority of pilots --
some discount airlines maintained relationships with offshoot unions with smaller membership rolls and less leverage.
The discount airlines also depended on secondary, class-B airports that charged less in landing fees. But those discounts
eventually disappeared when the secondary airports no longer needed to cut their fees to attract business.
To maintain their dominance over the market, the major airlines shifted from a direct city-to-city flight standard to the
hub-and-spoke system of today. The hub-and-spoke setup allowed large centralized airports like Dallas-Ft. Worth and Atlanta to be
ruled by a single company that determines which flights can use which terminals and at what cost.
While the hub-and-spoke system has some benefits, it's largely inefficient, dependent as it is on multi-stage connecting flights.
Combined with the need to cut costs, it would also cause longer airport delays as planes were left waiting on the tarmac to make
sure all passengers from connecting flights made it aboard. A single delay in a connecting flight could throw passengers'
itineraries askew, leaving them stuck in a random airport overnight.
The major airlines used other tricks to keep out nascent airlines. They paid off travel agents and travel reservation sites to
give preference to their particular airline. They introduced frequent flier miles to maintain brand allegiance.
Upstart discount airlines like
Southwest
were
able to survive the vicious price wars by leaning on quality of service and direct flights, but most did not. The list of
companies that were liquidated, temporarily or permanently, as a result is impressively long considering what it takes to start
an airline: America West, PanAm, TransWorld, Western, Piedmont, Frontier, Northwest, National, Texas International, People
Express, ValuJet, Air Florida, Eastern, Braniff, Skytrain, Pacific Southwest, Western Pacific, and many more.
Once bankrupt, the major airlines then bought the upstarts, creating an effective oligopoly. So much for competition.
Already on a spending spree during the heady years of the 1990s dot-com boom, buying up failed companies only saddled major
airlines with more debt. While most people assume that the airlines had to be bailed out in 2001 because of the decrease in
traffic after the September 11 attacks, it was also because the airlines
were
insolvent
from previous financial problems, largely as a result of the price wars.
The actions of the major airlines may seem ruthless, but they were largely protecting their position in a deregulated industry
that allowed the discount airlines to undercut labor standards just to offer cheaper prices to customers. They were defending
themselves from disruption.
Considering the skill, education, and investment needed to maintain a safe and reliable airline, it is not exactly a business
that needs to be disrupted. Running an airline is labor intensive, and it only turns a profit at random intervals. There's little
money to be skimmed off.
With profit margins so thin, tickets on a half-empty flight have to cost twice as much as a fully booked one. Which is why, for a
time, smaller cities that weren't necessarily travel hubs bore the brunt of deregulation. Routes that weren't fully booked
experienced skyrocketing flight costs, which, for small-town travelers, was a huge disincentive to fly.
The bilking of transportation costs to and from smaller cities after a run of chaotic competition is eerily similar to what
happened during the railway mania of the 1800s. Investors rushed to build rail lines everywhere and anywhere while money was
flush. But once cash became tight, the rail industry used their monopoly power to charge exorbitant prices for anybody trying to
ship in and out of smaller towns like Cincinnati. Such predatory pricing is what led to transportation regulation in the first
place.
Since the 2001 airline bailout, things have calmed down a bit. It no longer costs $600 to fly from New York to Pittsburgh. Fewer
discount airlines are entering the market, and the handful that are still in operation work with the major airlines on various
routes (e.g. "flight provided by Frontier"). The price wars have settled to a quiet struggle played out on online travel
registration websites like Kayak.com and Hipmunk.com, which have wholly replaced the job of travel agents.
But for airlines, the lower revenue from cheaper tickets has to be made up somewhere, and convenience may be the easiest element
to remove. Airlines are pushing petty indignities on passengers and flight attendants by way of a million miscellaneous charges.
Half the time, the discounts saved by cheaper tickets from deregulation are recouped in add-on fees. Eventually airlines may just
offer extra-saver flights devoid of the most basic accommodations and simply force passengers who can't afford first-class seats
to be stacked in the cargo hold like cord wood.
So what's the alternative? The airline industry is close to being a natural monopoly, there's little reason to foster
competition. Indeed, the industry would benefit from nationalization or a well-regulated public option. At the very least, more
regulation is necessary.
Without subsidization and some rules about flight costs, there is little incentive for the airline industry to provide affordable
flights to locations that aren't fully booked. The irony is that we already subsidize airline travel. It just occurs through
bailouts and bankruptcies after each airline has fought tooth and nail for market dominance. Public funds wind up paying for a
wasteful, inefficient system characterized by irrational, destructive competition.
Through regulation or more aggressive means, it's quite possible to ensure good wages and working conditions and safe,
affordable, reliable service -- all without blackout dates, three layovers, or all-out battles for legroom.
He has long been a vocal critic of the Federal Aviation Administration, saying the agency
lacks the resources and willpower to aggressively police airlines and manufacturers.
Mr. Nader said Boeing may be exposed to civil and possibly criminal liability. After the
first fatal crash in October -- a Lion Air flight that crashed into the Java Sea minutes after
takeoff -- company officials "were put on notice about the problem" with an automated
stall-prevention system that can misfire and override pilot commands by repeatedly pushing down
an aircraft's nose, he said.
The Justice and Transportation Departments are
scrutinizing Boeing's dealings with the FAA over safety certifications, people familiar
with the matter have said.
... ... ...
Mr. Nader has expressed his concerns to lawmakers and former regulators, and called for
congressional hearings. Before
the U.S. grounded the planes last week, he championed the idea of a sweeping boycott of all
versions of 737 MAX aircraft. He also has stressed the importance of having Mr. Muilenburg,
Boeing's CEO, testify on Capitol Hill about safety issues with the fleet.
Criticizing Boeing's original design of the automated flight-control feature, dubbed MCAS,
Mr. Nader said it reflected a misguided view driven by engineering overconfidence and called it
"the arrogance of the algorithms."
RALPH NADER : Boeing is used to getting its way with the patsy FAA . And this time, however,
it's in really hot water. If it continues to dig its heels in, it's going to expose itself and
its executives to potential criminal prosecution, because they are now on notice, with two
crashes -- Indonesia and Ethiopia. There's probably a lot more to come out in terms of the
technical dissent, in the, what was called, "heated discussions" about the plane software
between the FAA , the pilots' union, Boeing. And you can't suppress technical dissent forever.
And Senators Markey and Blumenthal are calling for the release of all the relevant information.
And while that happens, the planes must be grounded. You see, they're on notice now. This is
the future of passenger business for Boeing. They've got orders for over 3,000 planes from all
over the world. They've produced and delivered about 350. Southwest is the leading owner and
operator of these planes. It's digging its heels in, and so is American Airlines, I believe,
and Air Canada. And Boeing is not going to get away with this, because this is not some old
DC-9 about to be phased out. This is their future strategic plan. And they better own up. 2013,
they grounded the 787 because of battery fires, and they had about 50 or 60 of those planes.
So, there's plenty of precedent.
And the most important thing that people can do is: Do not fly this plane, the 737 MAX 8 and
9. Ask the airline, when you book the flight, whether it's that plane. The airline should not
dare charge you for reservation changes. And I'm calling for a boycott of that plane. If
several hundred thousand air passengers boycott that plane and there are more and more empty
seats, that will do more to bring Boeing around than the patsy FAA and a rather serene
Congress, which, by the way, gets all kinds of freebies from the airlines that ordinary people
don't get. We've sent a survey last year, twice, to every member of Congress, asking them to
disclose all these freebies. We didn't get one answer. And that helps account for, over the
years, the total reluctance of members of Congress even to do such things as deal with seat
size, restroom space and other conveniences, never mind just the safety of the aircraft. So,
this is important for consumers. Just don't fly 737 MAX 8 or 9. Make sure that you're informed
about it. And for up-to-date information, you can go to FlyersRights.org . That's run by Paul Hudson, who lost his
daughter in the Pan Am 103, 30 years ago, and has been a stalwart member of the FAA Advisory
Committee. And that's where you get up-to-date information, FlyersRights.org .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, we're also joined by William McGee, who's the aviation adviser
for Consumer Reports . Could you give us your perspective on what's happened here? And
also, could you expand on what Ralph Nader was talking about, about the use of artificial
intelligence in these new planes?
WILLIAM McGEE: Sure, absolutely, Juan. You know, there are so many unanswered questions
here, but many of them are focused on the time period between the first crash in late October
with Lion Air and the crash on Sunday with Ethiopian. Again, for perspective here, as Ralph
noted, we're not talking about old aircraft. This is an airplane that's only been in service
since 2017. This is the Boeing 737 MAX 8, a recent derivative of the 737. Now, in that time
period, the aircraft that crashed in October was 2 months old; the one that crashed on Sunday
was 4 months old. This is really unprecedented in all the years that I've been in this
industry. We don't see brand-new airplanes crash on takeoff like this under similar
circumstances.
... ... ...
WILLIAM McGEE: Absolutely. And, you know, this goes back many years. Ralph mentioned that
the FAA is known throughout the industry, even among some of its own employees and to airline
employees, as the "tombstone agency." And that phrase comes from the fact that the FAA has
shown time and time again that it is reluctant to act unless there's a tragedy and,
unfortunately, unless there are fatalities. Now, we have seen this as recently as last year,
when, you may recall, over Philadelphia, a Southwest 737 had a major engine malfunction that
punctured a hole in the fuselage and killed a woman who was nearly sucked out of the aircraft.
Well, what wasn't as well reported was that two years prior, that same engine type and that
same airline, Southwest, same aircraft type, 737, also had an uncontained engine failure. But
in 2016, there were no injuries, and there were no fatalities. Instead of the FAA stepping in
and saying, "We need to, you know, have all of these engine blades inspected on this engine
type, on all the carriers that are operating it," the FAA asked the industry, "What would you
like to do? How long would you like to take to look at this?" And the industry dragged its
heels, not surprisingly, and said, "We need more time." Two years later, in 2018, there was a
fatality. And then, two days after that, last April 2018, two days after that woman was killed,
the FAA issued what's called an AD, an airworthiness directive. That's what should have been
issued in 2016, where that death wouldn't have happened. So, we have seen this time and
again.
And you mentioned Attention All Passengers , my book. Much of the book, about a third
of it, is devoted to the issue of the FAA oversight of airline maintenance. We could easily
talk about it for two or three more days. But the bottom line is that the entire model of how
the airline industry works in the United States has been changed dramatically in the last 15
years or so. All airlines in the United States -- without question, all of them -- in 2019,
outsource some or most or just about all of their maintenance, what they call heavy
maintenance. Much of it is done outside of the United States -- El Salvador, Mexico, Brazil,
China, Singapore. Again, we're talking about U.S. airlines. And although the FAA , on paper,
says there is one standard for maintenance of U.S. airlines, the reality is there isn't. There
are waivers given all the time, so that when work is done outside the United States, there are
waivers so that there are no security background checks, there are no alcohol and drug
screening programs put in place. And, in fact, many -- in some cases, most -- of the
technicians cannot even be called mechanics, because they're not licensed. They're not licensed
as they're required to be in the U.S. So, basically, you have two sets of rules. You have one
that's for in-house airline employees and another for the outsourced facilities. And this all
leads back to the FAA . I have sat in a room with FAA senior officials and asked them about
this, and they say that they don't think it's a problem. It is a problem.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what impact --
WILLIAM McGEE: I've spoken to --
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: What impact have the mergers, of the constant mergers of airlines,
had, so we basically have a handful of U.S. airlines now, on all of this?
WILLIAM McGEE: Oh, no question. We have an oligopoly now. And, you know, even just going
back as far as 2001, you know, there were four or five major carriers that we don't have
anymore: America West, Continental, US Airways, TWA . You know, so what we have now is
effectively an oligopoly. And this is unprecedented in the history of the aviation industry
here in the United States. And so, you know, even when -- Ralph was talking about boycotts,
and, you know, it's an excellent idea. But it's more challenging now than it would have been a
few years ago. You know, there might have been more pressure on Southwest and American 10 or 15
years ago, when consumers had more choices. Now it's getting harder and harder for consumers to
express their displeasure. We saw this after the Dr. Dao incident, where that passenger was
dragged off United. In the long term, it didn't really affect United's bookings. It would have
in another time, but so many people are locked in, particularly outside New York, Washington,
Los Angeles. They're locked in, where they don't have a lot of choice on carriers.
AMY GOODMAN : Ralph Nader, I wanted to get your response both to this news that they were
working on a fix -- they know there's a software glitch, that somehow, when on automatic pilot,
when the plane is taking off, it takes this precipitous dive, and the way to deal with it is to
take it off automatic and put it on manual. Now, AP has been doing a deep dive into the
database of pilots complaining over and over again about this problem and saying they have to
quickly switch to manual to prevent the plane from nosediving into the ground. And this latest
news from The Wall Street Journal that while they're talking about this glitch being
fixed in the next five weeks or so, that five weeks were lost in January because of the
government shutdown.
RALPH NADER : Well, that's what Paul Hudson wrote in his press release at Flyers
Rights. The focus has got to be on inaccurate or nonexisting information in Boeing's training
manuals and inadequate flight training requirements. They sold this plane on the basis, among
other things, of having larger engines. It's supposed to be 10 percent more fuel-efficient. But
they sold it on the grounds that "You don't have to really train your pilots, airlines. This is
really just a small modification of the reliable 737 that's all over the world." The question
really comes down to cost cutting. They tantalize the airlines by saying, "This isn't really a
new plane. It's very easy to fly, if you can fly a 737." And that turned out to be quite
false...
The Pentagon's inspector general has formally opened an investigation into a watchdog
group's allegations that acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has used his office to
promote his former employer, Boeing Co.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed an ethics complaint with the
Pentagon's inspector general a week ago, alleging that Shanahan has appeared to make statements
promoting Boeing and disparaging competitors, such as Lockheed Martin.
Shanahan, who was traveling with President Donald Trump to Ohio on Wednesday, spent more
than 30 years at Boeing, leading programs for commercial planes and missile defense systems. He
has been serving as acting Pentagon chief since the beginning of the year, after James Mattis
stepped down.
The probe comes as Boeing struggles to deal with a public firestorm over two deadly crashes
of the Boeing 737 Max 8 jetliner within the last five months. And it focuses attention on
whether Trump will nominate Shanahan as his formal pick for defense chief, rather than letting
him languish as an acting leader of a major federal agency.
Dwrena Allen, spokeswoman for the inspector general, said Shanahan has been informed of the
investigation. And, in a statement, Pentagon spokesman Tom Crosson said Shanahan welcomes the
review.
"Acting Secretary Shanahan has at all times remained committed to upholding his ethics
agreement filed with the DoD," said Crosson. "This agreement ensures any matters pertaining to
Boeing are handled by appropriate officials within the Pentagon to eliminate any perceived or
actual conflict of interest issue(s) with Boeing."
During a Senate hearing last week, Shanahan was asked by U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal,
D-Conn., about the 737 Max issue. Shanahan said he had not spoken to anyone in the
administration about it and had not been briefed on it. Asked whether he favored an
investigation into the matter, Shanahan said it was for regulators to investigate.
On Wednesday, Blumenthal said that scrutiny of Shanahan's Boeing ties is necessary. "In
fact, it's overdue. Boeing is a behemoth 800-pound gorilla -- raising possible questions of
undue influence at DOD, FAA and elsewhere," said Blumenthal.
Shanahan signed an ethics agreement in June 2017, when he was being nominated for the job of
deputy defense secretary, a job he held during Mattis' tenure. It outlined the steps he would
take to avoid "any actual or apparent conflict of interest," and said he would not participate
in any matter involving Boeing.
The CREW ethics complaint, based to a large part on published reports, including one by
Politico in January, said Shanahan has made comments praising Boeing in meetings about
government contracts, raising concerns about "whether Shanahan, intentionally or not, is
putting his finger on the scale when it comes to Pentagon priorities."
One example raised by the complaint is the Pentagon's decision to request funding for
Boeing 15EX fighter jets in the 2020 proposed budget. The Pentagon is requesting about $1
billion to buy eight of the aircraft.
Shanahan, 56, joined Boeing in 1986, rose through its ranks and is credited with rescuing
a troubled Dreamliner 787 program. He also led the company's missile defense and military
helicopter programs.
Trump has seemed attracted to Shanahan partially for his work on one of the president's
pet projects -- creating a Space Force. He also has publicly lauded Shanahan's former employer,
Boeing, builder of many of the military's most prominent aircraft, including the Apache and
Chinook helicopters, the C-17 cargo plane and the B-52 bomber, as well as the iconic
presidential aircraft, Air Force One.
This is only the third time in history that the Pentagon has been led by an acting chief,
and Shanahan has served in that capacity for longer than any of the others.
Presidents typically take pains to ensure the Pentagon is being run by a Senate-confirmed
official, given the grave responsibilities that include sending young Americans into battle,
ensuring the military is ready for extreme emergencies like nuclear war and managing overseas
alliances that are central to U.S. security.
3 hours ago Why did Trump
appoint a former Boeing executive and industry lobbyist to the the Secretary of Defense to
replace General Mattis? What in Shananhan's background makes him qualified to lead our nation's
military forces? 3 hours ago WITHOUT A DOUBT HE DID., ALSO INVESTIGATE NIKKI HALEY'S APPOINTED
ON BOEING'S BOARD TO REPLACE SHANAHAN. FOLLOW THE HOEING KICKBACKS(MONEY), TO DONALD TRUMP'S
FAMILY. 3 hours ago
Shanahan probably helped Boeing on the promise of a later payback just like Ms. Nikki Haley did
while Gov of SC where Boeing built a new plant on her watch. She helped big time to keep the
Unions out of the new Boeing plant and now Boeing is going to put her on their board of
directors. Nothing like a bit of an obvious payoff. 2 hours ago Reminds me of the Bush Jr days in
the White House. During the Gulf War (#2) Vice President #$%$ Cheney awarded oil company
Halliburton (Cheney was CEO before accepting the VP job) to deliver meals for the troops. The
contract was ?No Bid.? Why was an oil company delivering food to troops with a no bid contract?
After Cheney?s Job was over being VP he went back to being CEO at Halliburton and moved
Halliburton?s headquarters to Dubai. What an American! 2 hours ago Now we understand why Boeing
& the FAA hesitated to ground those planes for few days despite many countries who did
grounded those plane which is a precedent for a country to ground & NOT wait for the
manufacturer. ONLY after Canada grounded those planes Boeing & the FAA & that's because
Canada IS a the #1 flight partner of the US ! 4 hours ago Years ago there was a Boeing
procurement scandal and Trump does love the swamp he claims to hate.
he crash of the Ethiopian Max-8 Flight 409 on March 10, 2019, resulted in the grounding of
all the Boeing 737 Max series aircraft – even the last hold-out, the United States,
belatedly grounded them when President Trump acted and overruled the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) that opposed any halt to flights.
In the United States, the FAA certifies aircraft as airworthy, puts out bulletins and
advisories on problems and fixes and often is the "go to" agency for many aviation flight
authorities around the world.
The 737 Max series is a new version of the venerable 737, equipped with new engines and
other modifications that have impacted the aircraft's performance in good ways and bad.
Almost every expert today puts the blame for both flight disasters on faulty software that
took over running the plane's flight control system. Many have pointed to Boeing's alleged lack
of transparency in telling pilots what to do if the software malfunctioned. In addition, there
had been at least eight pilot-reported flight control incidents prior to the first Lion Air
crash.
Experienced pilots
Three of the pilots on the two doomed planes each had more than 8,000 hours flying
experience – quite a lot – and the pilots of the Ethiopian airlines had additional
information on the plane's flight characteristics and what to do in an emergency.
While we are still awaiting a final report on last year's Lion Air crash, we do have a quite
informative initial report, although it lacks hard findings. In the Ethiopian case, we only
have flight track information from ground radar and some incomplete reporting on what the
pilots were saying to ground control. More will become available as the flight recorders are
analyzed.
Yet despite this, we can understand some of what happened and clearly it is more than a
single software glitch. This may help explain why Boeing did not meet its proposed deadline of
January for installing updated software. Now in March Boeing says the replacement software will
be available in April. But even if it is, there are more issues involving both hardware and
software.
The software which so far has received virtually all the attention is called MCAS, for
Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System. MCAS was added to the Max-8 series because
new, heavier and larger engines replaced the old engines and as a result, the updated Max
planes had a strong tendency to pitch nose up.
The new engine, CFM Leap-1B, was selected by Boeing because it was much more fuel efficient
than the older models, one of the big reasons customers want the 737 Max.
The new engines forced re-engineering of parts of the 737.
Fitting the new engines meant moving them forward and lengthening the front landing gear to
keep the engines from scraping on the ground. In turn, this changed the plane's center of
gravity and also altered the air flow on the wings.
MCAS was a band-aid to fix the pitch up problem caused by the relocated and heavier new
engines. MCAS is designed to push the nose down and prevent the aircraft from going into a
stall. MCAS was intended to deal only with a specific flight risk.
1. MCAS operates by receiving information from a special sensor that measures the flying
angle of the plane and takes over the flight controls if the angle is too great – meaning
the aircraft could stall. A stall happens when a plane has too low an airspeed and not enough
lift and the plane will literally fall out of the air.
There are two sensors that measure the angle of attack or nose-up condition of the Boeing
737 Max, one that provides data to the pilot and another that provides data to the copilot. The
sensors are known as Angle of Attack Sensors, or AoA.
In the Lion Air aircraft, the pilot's AoA sensor had been found to be faulty on an earlier
flight as reported by the pilot. That AoA sensor was replaced and tested by aircraft
maintenance before the fatal flight.
The pilot gets no console or other warnings that his AoA sensor might be faulty. The pilot
can ask his copilot what reading he is getting and see if there is a difference. That is
exactly what happened on the Lion Air flight.
It would appear that the MCAS software is driven by information from the pilot's sensor. If
the sensor itself is not at fault, there could still be wiring and connection problems that
could feed bad information to MCAS. These conditions cannot be determined in flight.
If it is true that MCAS relies on information from only one sensor, that could be a design
error. Modern aircraft are famous for built-in flight system redundancy, but apparently not in
the case of MCAS. In addition, the pilot cannot manually change the MCAS choice of sensor.
2. No one has yet explained why the pilot's stick shaker was running on from the start of
the flight and never stopped. The stick shaker is a motor with an unbalanced flywheel that is
attached to the pilot's control stick, and another is attached to the co-pilot's stick. The
stick shaker is supposed to warn the pilot of a potential stall. But why was it on nearly the
whole time? And why was the co-pilot's stick shaker not on?
3. The pilots are supposed to be able to shut down MCAS, which only operates when the
aircraft is manually operated, by switching the electronic trim control to off. The trim
control is what MCAS uses to change the nose pitch of the 737 Max. But in the Lion Air case, we
know the pilots turned off the electronic trim control. But MCAS kept adjusting the trim nose
down, against the pilots' wishes. Or possibly something else was driving the trim control nose
down, such as a shorted circuit or bad wiring.
4. The pilots also tried turning the aircraft's autopilot on, according to the report. MCAS
is only supposed to work when the autopilot is off, that is only when the plane is operated
under manual pilot control. The autopilot should have disabled MCAS but apparently it did not
– in fact, the Lion Air autopilot would not turn on. There is no explanation for this.
Was the autopilot locked out by MCAS? Or was there some other software or hardware foul up?
5. Pilots also had a very difficult time handling the aircraft stick, meaning that the
flight control stick required a great deal of force to operate, especially when the pilots
were, repeatedly, trying to recover the plane that was headed nose down, gaining speed and
losing altitude. Stick force "feel" in 737s is artificial and is controlled by a couple of
pitot tube sensors at the rear of the aircraft above the horizontal stabilizer.
There have been repeated
problems on older 737s with the planes forward and rear pitot tubes, due partly to icing
conditions and to pitot tube heater problems which are supposed to remove ice. Some pitot tubes
have failed because of fouling. Pitot tubes detect aircraft speed and they do this by comparing
the force of incoming air on the pitot tubes to what are called static ports located elsewhere
on the plane. Accidents have been attributed to faulty or fouled pitot tubes.
It is not clear how the flight speed information from the pitot tubes is integrated into the
MCAS if it is. But speed information is fed into the flight computer and if it is faulty it
could create ambiguities in the MCAS and the flight computer.
6. Would better pilot training have helped pilots avoid disaster? Boeing has been criticized
for not initially providing information about MCAS to Max pilots, and only later issuing a
bulletin on how to deal with some MCAS anomalies. Boeing also apparently did not offer any
additional pilot training, leaving pilots to find their way through a morass of complex
problems made worse by possible hardware and software faults.
As it is, it appears the Lion Air pilots acted in the best way they could but were unable to
overcome the instability of the aircraft as it headed nose down to disintegrate in the ocean.
We don't yet know how the Ethiopian Airline pilots performed, but they had the advantage of
advisories from Boeing and the FAA. Still, the same final result.
What is clear is that there is more than one single cause for the two aircraft crashes. And
we know that other planes experienced control problems but recovered. These disasters suggest
there was a complex of problems that caused the two disasters.
Boeing's engineers need to assess the entire flight control system, the electronics and
mechanics, before a satisfactory solution is at hand.
"... The United States held out to the last. Trump personally requested to ground the flagship aircraft of the American company only late evening yesterday, when Canada joined the interdiction. ..."
Today, Russia, following Europe and America, banned the flights of Boeing 737 MAX. Dozens of
countries have stopped using this aircraft after the Sunday crash in Ethiopia.
The United States held out to the last. Trump personally requested to ground the flagship
aircraft of the American company only late evening yesterday, when Canada joined the
interdiction.
737 is out of date considering the modern bigger fuel efficient engines don't fit
it.They're just applying band aid to fix it's short coming. Airbus A320 has no problems with
these new engines as it sits higher.
40 countries banned these aircraft from their airspace..... Comparable to the vicious,
aggressive, malign, thoughtless, selfish and self aggrandising SANCTIONS the US regime and
its vassals slap on innocent countries in attempts to impoverish or/and change their
governments!!!!!!!!!
But this is self inflicted!!!!!! I hope the US regime can see the irony in this!!!!
Boeing should thank China for being the first to ground it's entire fleet, if one of the
96 planes that China operated, god forbid, had gone down, Boeing is done, 3-strikes you're
out
Something is wrong with these planes and it is a good thing that they're being grounded
world-wide until the problem is fixed. It is prudent both from the side of Rosaviatsiya and
the FAA to not permit these planes to fly in the meanwhile to prevent further potential
tragedies. However this is no reason to simply write off the huge fleet of Boeing 737 MAX
planes in service world-wide. Right now engineers at Boeing are working on the problem and
then those planes will be retrofitted asap. Personally I have no particular concerns flying
in a Boeing 737 MAX once the problem is fixed.
The Boeing Company BA recently won a $250 million contract to offer weapon system
integration for the Long Range Stand-Off (LRSO) Cruise Missile. Work related to the deal is
scheduled to be completed by Dec 31, 2024.
The contract was awarded by the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, Eglin Air Force Base,
Florida. Per the terms of the deal, this aerospace giant will provide aircraft and missile
carriage equipment development and modification, engineering, testing, software development,
training, facilities and support necessary to fully integrate the LRSO Cruise Missile on the
B-52H bomber platform.
Attributes of LRSO
The LRSO is a nuclear-armed air-launched cruise missile, under development. It is set to
replace the current AGM-86 air launched cruise missile (ALCM). LRSO, might be up to about 50%
longer than Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range (JASSM-ER) and still be
suitable for internal carriage by the B-2 and B-52.
Our View
AGM-86 ALCM has been serving the U.S. Air Force quite efficiently. However, with
increasingly sophisticated air defense systems developed by America's nemeses, especially
Russia, demand for a new stealth nuclear-armed cruise missile capable of either destroying
these defenses or penetrating them has been increasing consistently. In this scenario, the LRSO
comes as the most credible stealthy and low-yield option available to the United States
(according to Strategic Studies Quarterly Report).
Boeing's B-52, which has been the U.S. Air Force's one of the most preferred bombers, is
completely dependent on long-range cruise missiles and cannot continue in the nuclear mission
beyond 2030 without LRSO. As B-52 is expected to play a primary role in the U.S. nuclear
mission for at least next decade and ALCM is already well beyond its originally planned end of
life, we may expect more contracts similar to the latest one to usher in from the Pentagon in
the coming days. This, in turn, should prove conducive to Boeing.
Price Performance
In a year's time, shares of Boeing have gained about 16.5% against the industry's 2.2%
decline.
Tom Enders just couldn't resist the swipe at the competition. It was June 2011, and the chief executive officer of
Airbus SE was on a stage at the Paris air show after the planemaker
won in a matter of days an unprecedented 600 orders for its upgraded A320neo airliner, while
Boeing Co. stood on the sidelines.
"If our colleagues in Seattle still maintain we're only catching up with their 737, I must ask myself what these guys are smoking,"
Enders blurted out, to the general amusement of the audience, while Boeing representatives at the back of the room looked on.
Boeing had wavered on its decision whether to follow Airbus's lead and re-engine the 737 or go with an all-new aircraft. Customers
were willing to wait for "something more revolutionary," as Jim Albaugh, at the time Boeing's head of commercial aircraft, said then.
But the European manufacturer's blow-out success with the A320neo, essentially a re-engined version of its popular narrow-body
family, would soon force Boeing's hand.
As the A320neo became the fastest-selling plane in civil aviation history as Airbus picked off loyal Boeing customers like
American Airlines Group Inc. , the U.S. company ditched the
pursuit of an all-new jet and responded in July 2011 with its own redesign, the 737 Max.
"The program was launched in a panic," said Sash Tusa, an analyst at
Agency Partners , an equity research firm in London. "What
frightened Boeing most of all was losing their biggest and most important customer. American Airlines was the catalyst."
It turned out that Chicago-based Boeing wasn't too late to the party in the end: While the Max didn't quite replicate the neo's
order book, it did become the company's fastest seller as airlines scrambled to cut their fuel bills with new engines that promised
savings of 20 percent or more. All told, the Max raked in about 5,000 orders, keeping the playing field fairly level in the global
duopoly between Airbus and Boeing.
Close Scrutiny
Now the 737 Max is grounded globally, after two almost factory-fresh jets crashed in rapid succession. As a result, the repercussions
of Boeing's response to Airbus's incursion are under the microscope. Getting particular scrutiny are the use of more powerful, fuel-saving
engines and automated tools to help pilots control the aircraft.
After the grounding, Boeing said that it "continues to have full confidence in the safety of the 737 Max, and that it was supporting
the decision to idle the jets "out of an abundance of caution." The company declined to comment beyond its public statements.
In late October, a plane operated by Lion Air went down
minutes after taking off in Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board. Then on March 10, another 737 Max crashed, this time in Ethiopia
en route to Kenya. Again, none of the 157 people on board survived the impact.
There are other similarities that alarmed airlines and regulators and stirred public opinion, leading to the grounding of the
737 Max fleet of more than 350 planes. According to the Federal
Aviation Administration , "the track of the Ethiopian Airlines
flight was very close and behaved very similar to the Lion Air flight."
After decades of steadily declining aircraft accidents, the question of how two identical new planes could simply fall out of
the sky minutes after takeoff has led to intense scrutiny of the 737 Max's systems. Adding to the chorus in the wake of the crash
was President Donald Trump, who lamented the complexities of modern aviation, suggesting that people in the cockpit needed to be
more like nuclear physicists than pilots to command a jet packed with automated systems.
"Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT," the president
said in the first of a pair of tweets on March 12, darkly warning that "complexity creates danger."
Analog Machine
Automation plays a limited role in the 737 Max. That's because the aircraft still has essential analog design and layout features
dating back to the 1960s, when it was conceived. It's a far older concept than the A320, which came to market at the end of the 1980s
and boasted innovations like fly-by-wire controls, which manipulate surfaces such as flaps and horizontal tail stabilizers with electrical
impulses and transducers rather than heavier hydraulic links.
Upgrading the 737 to create the Max came with its own set of issues. For example, the 737 sits considerably lower to the ground,
so fitting the bigger new engines under the wings was a structural challenge (even with the squished underbelly of the engine casing).
In response, Boeing raised the front landing gear by a few inches, but this and the size of the engines can change the plane's center
of gravity and its lift in certain maneuvers.
Boeing's technical wizardry for the 138- to 230-seat Max was a piece of software known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation
System, or MCAS. It intervenes automatically when a single sensor indicates the aircraft may be approaching a stall. Some pilots
complained, though, that training on the new system wasn't sufficient and properly documented.
"The benefits of automation are great, but it requires a different level of discipline and training,'' said Thomas Anthony, director
of the Aviation Safety and Security Program at the University of Southern California. Pilots must make a conscious effort to monitor
the plane's behavior. And reliance on automation means they will take back control only in the worst situations, he said.
Errant Sensor
With the Lion Air crash, data from the recovered flight recorders points to a battle in the cockpit between the software and the
pilots who struggled in vain to keep control. The data showed that an errant sensor signaled the plane was in danger of stalling
and prompted the MCAS to compensate by repeatedly initiating a dive. The pilots counteracted by flipping a switch several times to
raise the nose manually, which temporarily disabled MCAS. The cycle repeated itself more than two dozen times before the plane entered
its final deadly dive, according to the flight data.
With the flight and cockpit voice recorders of the Ethiopian plane now in France for analysis, the interaction between the MCAS
system and the pilots will again be under close scrutiny, probably rekindling the broader debate about who or what is in control
of the cockpit.
That man-versus-machine conundrum has been central to civil aviation for years. Automation has without doubt made commercial flying
much safer, as planemakers added systems to help pilots set engine thrust, navigate with greater precision and even override human
error in the cockpit.
For example, automation on modern aircraft keeps pilots within a so-called flight envelope to avoid erratic maneuvers that might
destabilize the aircraft. Analyses of flight data show that planes have more stable landings in stormy, low-visibility conditions
when automation is in charge than on clear days when they land by sight.
Sully's Miracle Landing
The most daring descent in recent memory, Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger's landing of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River
in early 2009, is Exhibit A of how an interconnected cockpit worked hand-in-hand with an experienced pilot. Automatic pitch trim
and rudder coordination assisted manual inputs and kept the Airbus A320 steady on its smooth glide into the icy water. The drama
showed that automation can play a crucial support function, provided a pilot is fully trained and the aircraft properly maintained.
"Some people are saying modern aircraft such as the 737 Max are too complex," said Dave Wallsworth, a
British Airways captain on the Airbus A380 double-decker.
"I disagree. The A380 is a far more complex aircraft and we fly it very safely every day. Pilots are capable of understanding aircraft
systems so long as the manuals contain the information we need."
Airbus traditionally has pushed the envelope on automation and a more modern cockpit layout, with larger screens and steering
by joystick rather than a central yoke, turning pilots into something akin to systems operators. Boeing's philosophy, on the other
hand, has been to leave more authority in the hands of pilots, though newer designs also include some computerized limits. Like Airbus
planes, the latest aircraft from Seattle -- where Boeing makes most of its jetliners -- are equipped with sophisticated autopilots,
fly-by-wire controls or systems to set speed during landings.
"The big automation steps came in the 1980s with the entry into service of the A320 and the whole fly-by-wire ethos," said John
Strickland, an independent aviation analyst. "I don't think automation per se is a problem, we see it in wide-scale use in the industry,
and as long as it is designed to work hand-in-hand with pilots and pilots understand how to use it, it shouldn't be an issue."
Erratic Movements
But the counter-argument is that increasingly complex systems have led computers to take over, and that many pilots may have forgotten
how to manually command a jet -- particularly in a moment of crisis. That criticism was leveled at Airbus, for example, after the
mid-Atlantic crash of Air France Flight 447 in 2009 that killed all 228 people on board. Analysis of the flight recorders showed
the crew was confused by stall warnings and unreliable speed readings, leading to erratic maneuvers that ended in catastrophe.
>
"I grew up on steam gauges and analog, and the modern generation on digital and automation," said Jon Weaks, president of the
Southwest Airlines Pilots Association and a Boeing 737
captain for the Dallas-based airline. "No matter what you grew up on, you have to fly the plane. If the automation is doing something
you don't want it to do or that you don't understand, you have to disconnect it and fly the plane."
A 2013 report by the FAA found more than 60 percent of 26 accidents over a decade involved pilots making errors after automated
systems abruptly shut down or behaved in unexpected ways. And the 2016 inspector general's report at the FAA noted that as the use
of automation increases, "pilots have fewer opportunities to use manual flying skills."
"As a result, the opportunities air carrier pilots have during live operations to maintain proficiency in manual flight are limited
and are likely to diminish," the report found.
The grounding of the 737 Max fleet has left Boeing in crisis. The company couldn't get through with its message that the plane
was safe to fly, as the group of regulators and airlines idling the jet kept expanding. The 737 program is Boeing's cash cow, accounting
for a third of its profit, and Boeing's stock dropped sharply in the days after the disaster.
Get in Line
The Max gave Boeing a relatively cheap path back into the narrow-body game that it was at risk of losing to the Airbus neo. At
the time, Boeing had to make a quick decision, as it was still burdened financially by the 787 Dreamliner wide-body that was over
budget and behind schedule.
Both manufacturers have said they won't come out with an all-new single-aisle model until well into the next decade, preferring
to wait for further technological advancements before committing to massive spending. The success of both the neo and the Max bought
the companies that extra time, with orders books stretching years into the future.
Half a century after it was launched almost as an afterthought, the 737 program has become the lifeblood of Boeing that helps
finance the rest of the corporation -- the biggest U.S. exporter. It's the one aircraft that Boeing cannot afford to give up.
"The Max was the right decision for the time," said Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst with the consultancy
Teal Group . "Yes, there may be an issue with MCAS needing
a software patch. Yes, there may need to be some additional training. But these are not issues that cause people to change to the
other guys' jet. The other guys have a waiting line, and when you get to the back of that line, you burn more fuel."
-- With assistance by Alan Levin, Benjamin D Katz, Margaret Newkirk, Michael Sasso, and Mary Schlangenstein
Conventional wisdom is that it is too early to speculate why in the past six months two
Boeing 737 Max 8 planes have gone down shortly after take off, so if all that follows is wrong
you will know it very quickly. Last night I predicted that the first withdrawals of the plane
would happen within two days, and this morning China withdrew it. So far, so good. (Indonesia
followed a few hours ago).
Why should I stick my neck out with further predictions? First, because we must speculate
the moment something goes wrong. It is natural, right and proper to note errors and try to
correct them.(The authorities are always against "wild" speculation, and I would be in
agreement with that if they had an a prior definition of wildness). Second, because putting
forward hypotheses may help others test them (if they are not already doing so). Third, because
if the hypotheses turn out to be wrong, it will indicate an error in reasoning, and will be an
example worth studying in psychology, so often dourly drawn to human fallibility. Charmingly,
an error in my reasoning might even illuminate an error that a pilot might make, if poorly
trained, sleep-deprived and inattentive.
I think the problem is that the Boeing anti-stall patch MCAS is poorly configured for pilot
use: it is not intuitive, and opaque in its consequences.
By the way of full disclosure, I have held my opinion since the first Lion Air crash in
October, and ran it past a test pilot who, while not responsible for a single word here, did
not argue against it. He suggested that MCAS characteristics should have been in a special
directive and drawn to the attention of pilots.
I am normally a fan of Boeing. I have flown Boeing more than any other plane, and that might
make me loyal to the brand. Even more powerfully, I thought they were correct to carry on with
the joystick yoke, and that AirBus was wrong to drop it, simply because the position of the
joystick is something visible to pilot and co-pilot, whereas the Airbus side stick does not
show you at a glance how high the nose of the plane is pointing.
Pilots are bright people, but they must never be set a badly configured test item with tight
time limits and potentially fatal outcomes.
The Air France 447 crash had several ingredients, but one was that the pilots of the Airbus
A330-203 took too long to work out they were in a stall. In fact, that realization only hit
them very shortly before they hit the ocean. Whatever the limitations of the crew (sleep
deprived captain, uncertain co-pilot) they were blinded by a frozen Pitot air speed indicator,
and an inability to set the right angle of attack for their airspeed.
For the industry, the first step was to fit better air speed indicators which were less
likely to ice up. However, it was clear that better stall warning and protection was
required.
Boeing had a problem with fitting larger and heavier engines to their tried and trusted 737
configuration, meaning that the engines had to be higher on the wing and a little forwards, and
that made the 737 Max have different performance characteristics, which in turn led to the need
for an anti-stall patch to be put into the control systems.
It is said that generals always fight the last war. Safety officials correct the last
problem, as they must. However, sometimes a safety system has unintended consequences.
The key of the matter is that pilots fly normal 737s every day, and have internalized a
mental model of how that plane operates. Pilots probably actually read manuals, and safety
directives, and practice for rare events. However, I bet that what they know best is how a
plane actually operates most of the time. (I am adjusting to a new car, same manufacturer and
model as the last one, but the 9 years of habit are still often stronger than the manual-led
actions required by the new configuration). When they fly a 737 Max there is a bit of software
in the system which detects stall conditions and corrects them automatically. The pilots should
know that, they should adjust to that, they should know that they must switch off that system
if it seems to be getting in the way, but all that may be steps too far, when something so
important is so opaque.
What is interesting is that in emergencies people rely on their most validated mental
models: residents fleeing a burning building tend to go out their usual exits, not even the
nearest or safest exit. Pilots are used to pulling the nose up and pushing it down, to adding
power and to easing back on it, and when a system takes over some of those decisions, they need
to know about it.
After Lion Air I believed that pilots had been warned about the system, but had not paid
sufficient attention to its admittedly complicated characteristics, but now it is claimed that
the system was not in the training manual anyway. It was deemed a safety system that pilots did
not need to know about.
This farrago has an unintended consequence, in that it may be a warning about artificial
intelligence. Boeing may have rated the correction factor as too simple to merit human
attention, something required mainly to correct a small difference in pitch characteristics
unlikely to be encountered in most commercial flying, which is kept as smooth as possible for
passenger comfort.
It would be terrible if an apparently small change in automated safety systems designed to
avoid a stall turned out have given us a rogue plane, killing us to make us safe.
Pilots are used to pulling the nose up and pushing it down, to adding power and to
easing back on it, and when a system takes over some of those decisions, they need to know
about it.
I have read that Boeing kept MCAS out of the limelight as otherwise the 737 MAX would need
to be certified as a new plane and airlines would need to do $$$ pilot retraining, making
their product less competitive.
Interesting response from a "by-stander", who compares a sophisticated aircraft with a new
model car !!!
As an experienced captain on 737s (not the MAX) I say, let the investigation begin; and
let us not have by-standers giving their penny worth. A normal 737 . is there also an
abnormal 747 or 777 or 787, or a 737 ??
Pilots carry the can . but, are the most respected profession in the world. What ever
happened, let the investigation decide the outcome, and not the "un-trained" (is there such a
term !!!!).
If one takes a look at the (released to date) information about the Lion Air crash –
"unreliable airspeeds" (the airspeed indicator is providing erroneous information during a
critical phase of flight (like climb out after take-off)) could have been the cause of that
aircraft crash – not AI.
A simple explanation – the airspeed indicator is "unreliable", as one moment the
indication is under-speed, then overspeed, followed by under-speed, and so it goes; like a
yoyo going up and down; the indicated speed is erroneous and the pilots cannot rely on what
is presented on the airspeed indicator. Pilots, according to the Boeing Training Manual, are
trained to handle unreliable airspeeds – the key is to fly the plane based solely on
pitch attitude and thrust (there are memory items for unreliable airspeed occurrences, along
with the reference items in aircraft's Quick Reference Handbook – the QRH (Boeing term)
is the pilots "bible" for any issues and problems when the aircraft is in the air !! ).
The point of the above paragraph is to enlighten the 'un-trained' as to not speculate too
soon with ideas and a "hypothesis" of what may have happened, until the knowledgeable ones
– the aircraft manufacturer (probably being the most knowledgable), the country's
aviation authority, the engine manufacturer, and (dear I say) the FAA (the Yanks just cannot
help themselves delving into other countries' affairs; when for 9/11 not one minutes was
spent by anyone (FAA, Boeing, no one) investigating the so-called crashes of four aircraft
– on one day, within one and a half hours of each other, and in the most protected
airspace in the world (got the hint !!) – I have digressed, though for reason .. have
completed their investigations.
I can assure you that no pilot wants to crash a plane we (pilots) all want to live to 100,
and beyond.
Humans make mistakes, but technology needs humans to correct technology's mistakes. Boeing
build reliable and trustworthy aircraft; pilots undertake their duties in a safe and
controlled manner (according to training and aircraft manufacturer stipulated standards); but
errors happen – and the investigator is there to establish what happened, so that these
do not happen again. Unfortunately, it is just possible that the cause of the first MAX
accident is the same as the second. But, let the knowledgable ones determine that fact
– and let me, and us, not speculate.
AI in the MAX hhmmmmm – let Boeing release that information, before we start
speculating again (on AI – is an auto pilot AI; the B737 I fly has two auto pilots; is
that double AI ??).
To the rest of the travelling public – airline travel remains, and has been, the
safest form of transport for decades. I am confident that the status quo will remain.
Time will reveal the answers to these two accidents, when the time is right – when
the investigators (for both) have concluded their deliberations.
My guess is, the majority of people will have forgotten these two MAX events (but, for
those who have lost loved ones), as some other crisis/event will have occurred in their lives
and/or in the world.
@Captain 737 I respect your analysis especially coming from a seasoned 737 captain. I
have over 5,000 flying hours in single and twin-engine, conventional and jet, all military. I
have not flown since 1974 so the advances in auto-pilot technology are beyond my
comprehension. My question to you is simple–I think. If the aircraft took off in VFR
conditions I assume the pilots knew the pitch attitude all during the takeoff phase. Is there
no way to manually overpower the auto-pilot once the pilots knew the pitch attitude was
dangerously high or low?
If this is a made in china airplane, the empire would mobilize the whole world to ground the
entire fleet. The diatribes, lies, cruel sick jokes, lawsuits, etc, etc, would fly to the
heavens.
But NO, this is an empire plane. Designed, built and (tested?) in the heart of the empire.
And despite the fact that more than 300 people had died, IT IS STILL SAFE to fly!
Quite a short and to-the-point article, although the link to "artificial intelligence" is
tenuous at best.
What is sold as Artificial Intelligence nowadays is massive statistical processing in a
black box (aka as "Neural Network Processing"), it's not intelligent.
The most surprising fact is that it works so well.
Neural Networks won't be in high-assurance software soon. No-one knows what they really do
once configured (although there are efforts underway to
attack that problem ). They are impossible to really test or design to specification.
Will someone underwrite that a system incorporating them does work? Hardly. You may find them
in consumer electronics, research, "self driving cars" that never really self-drive without
surprises and possibly
bleeding edge military gear looking for customers or meant to explode messily anyway.
But not in cockpits. (At least I hope).
Check out this slideshow about the ACAS-X
Next Generation Collision Airborne Collision Avoidance System. It has no neural network in
sight, in fact if I understand correctly it doesn't even have complex decision software
in-cockpit: it's all decision tables precomputed from a high-level, understandable
description (aka. code, apparently in Julia) to assure safe outcome in a fully testable and
simulatable approach.
In this accident, we may have a problem with the system, as opposed to with the software.
While the software may work correctly and to specification (and completely unintelligently)
the system composed of software + human + physical machinery will interact in interesting,
unforeseen, untested ways, leading to disaster. In fact the (unintelligent software + human)
part may disturbingly behave like those Neural Networks that are being sold as AI.
@Anatoly Karlin I'm guessing that it would require a change in the TCDS and possibly a
different type rating, which would be anathema for sales.
I'm a little airplane person, not a big airplane person (and the 737 is a Big Airplane
even in its smallest configuration) but I know there have been several instances where
aircraft had changes that required that pilots of the type have a whole different type
rating, even though the changes seemed minor. I'm guessing airlines are training averse and
don't want to take crews off revenue service beyond what is statutorily required. The margins
in airline flying are apparently much leaner now than in the glory days.
I never approved of allowing fly by wire in commercial airliners, I never even really
liked the idea of FADEC engine control (supervisory DEC was fine) because a classical
advantage of gas turbines (and diesels) was that they could run in an absolutely electrically
dead environment once lit. Indeed, the J-58 (JT11-D in P&W parlance) had no electrical
system to speak of beyond the instrumentation: it started by mechanical shaft drive and
ignited by triethyl borane chemical injection. The Sled could make it home on needle-ball and
alcohol compass, and at least once it did. Total electrical failure in any FBW aircraft means
losing the airplane. Is the slight gain in efficiency worth it? I'm told the cables, pulleys,
fairleads and turnbuckles add 200 pounds to a medium size airliner, the FBW stuff weighs 80
or so.
The jet transports we studied in A&P school had a pitot head and static port on either
side of the flight deck and the captain and F/O had inputs from different ones, though IIRC
the altimeter and airspeed were electrically driven from sensors at the pitot head or inboard
of it. I have a 727 drum-pointer (why are three pointer altimeters even legal anymore??)
altimeter and it has no aneroids, just a couple of PCBs full of TTL logic and op amps and a
DB style connector on the back. Do crews not cross check airspeed and altitude or is there no
indicator to flag them when the two show something different?
Also, not being a jet pilot myself, my understanding is that anyone with T-38 experience
is forever after thinking in terms of AOA and not airspeed per se, because that airplane has
to be flown by AOA in the pattern, and classically a lot of airline pilots had flown Talons.
Is there no AOA indicator in the 737? Flying in the pattern/ILS would make airspeed pretty
dependent on aircraft weight, and on a transport that can change a lot with fuel burn, do
they precisely calculate current weight from a totalizer and notate speeds needed? (I presume
airliners don't vary weight other than fuel burn, not being customarily in the business of
throwing stuff out of the airplane, although they used to fly jumpers out of a chartered 727
at the parachute meet in Quincy)
Many problems in the world arise because many computing people reckon themselves very clever
when they are merely rather clever. And often they combine what cleverness they have with a
blindness about humans and their ways. I shouldn't be at all surprised if programmers at
Boeing decided that they always knew better than pilots and doomed the planes accordingly.
I saw recently an expression that made me grin: "midwits". It describes rather well many
IT types of my acquaintance.
@fish And that's the problem, as Mr. Kief also points out. The individuals at the
decision making level (let's call them "executives") don't or can't think that far ahead, at
least when the corporation they run is concerneed.
@dearieme One corollary is that the Midwits take such joy in their cleverness that they
assume their wit has value in and of itself. This is most evident when they design clever
solutions to invented problems. Billions of dollars of venture capital have been set on fire
in that way, when technical and financial midwittery combine.
@Andrei Martyanov It's almost nitpicking. But – James Thompson says it above: The
MCAS in this Boing model 737 MAX 8 is used to cover up a basic construction flaw. This has
undoubtedly worked for quite some time – but it came with a risk. And this risk might
turn out to have caused numerous deaths. In this case, if it will turn out, that the MACS
system didn't do what it was supposed to do and thus caused numerous deaths – will this
then be looked upon as a problem of the application of artificial intelligence? Yes, but
not only . It was a combination of a poorly built (constructed) airliner and software,
which might not have been able to compensate for this flawed construction under all
conditions.
It's cheaper to compensate via software – and this might (might) turn out to be a
rather irresponsible way to save money. But as I said: Even in this case, the technical
problem would have to be looked upon as twofold: Poor construction plus insufficient
software compensation. I'd even tend to say, that poor construction would then be the main
(=basic) fault. With the zeitgeisty (and cheap!) software-"solution" for this poor
construction a close second.
@Captain 737 Curiously, this is "Captain 737″'s first and only comment here.
It's almost as if Boeing hired a high-priced PR firm whose offerings include pseudonymous
online "messaging" to "shape opposition perceptions" etc. Note the over-obvious handle. (Just
like globalist shills like to pretend to be regular blue-collar guys in small fly-over
towns.)
By their words shalt ye know them.
PREDICTION: In 3-4 years, we will "discover" a long paper trail of engineers warning early
on about the risk of hastily kludging a half-assed anti-stall patch MCAS onto a system that
had undergone years of testing and refinement WITHOUT the patch.
Only somebody PAID not to see the problem could fail to perceive that this means that as
so altered, the ENTIRE SYSTEM goes back to being technically immature.
@Dieter Kief What "basic construction flaw" are we discussing here? The 737 airframe is
pretty well established and has a good record-there have been incidents but most have been
well dealt with.
@Anonymous I've read today, that in the aviation world there is a consensus, that what
James Thompson says in his article is right:
"Boeing had a problem with fitting larger and heavier engines to their tried and trusted 737
configuration, meaning that the engines had to be higher on the wing and a little forwards,
and that made the 737 Max have different performance characteristics, which in turn led to
the need for an anti-stall patch to be put into the control systems."
– A German engineer wrote in a comment in the Berlin daily Die weLT, this
construction flaw makes the 737 MAX 8 something like a flying traktor . He concluded,
that Boing proved, that you can make a tractor fly, alright. But proper engineering would
have looked otherwise – and would for sure had come at a higher cost.
(The different performance charactersitics mentioned by James Thompson is an
extraordinarily nice way to express, that the 737 MAX 8 is a tad more likely to stall, just
because of the very design-changes, the bigger turbines made necessary. And this is a rather
nasty thing to say about an airplane, that a new design made it more likely to stall!
).
The 737 family is the best selling commercial airliner series in history with more than
10,000 units produced. However, this airplane in its various configurations has had many
crashes since it first entered service in 1968.
"... To implement a security relevant automatism that depends on only one sensor is extremely bad design. To have a flight control automatism engaged even when the pilot flies manually is also a bad choice. But the real criminality was that Boeing hid the feature. ..."
"... The Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed went down in a similar flight profile as the Indonesian plane. It is highly likely that MCAS is the cause of both incidents. While the pilots of the Ethiopian plane were aware of the MCAS system they might have had too little time to turn it off. The flight recorders have been recovered and will tell the full story. ..."
"... The FAA certifies all new planes and their documentation. I was for some time marginally involved in Airbus certification issues. It is an extremely detailed process that has to be followed by the letter. Hundreds of people are full time engaged for years to certify a modern jet. Every tiny screw and even the smallest design details of the hardware and software have to be documented and certified. ..."
"... How or why did the FAA agree to accept the 737 MAX with the badly designed MCAS? How could the FAA allow that MCAS was left out of the documentation? What steps were taken after the Indonesian flight crashed into the sea? ..."
"... That the marketing department has more say than the engineers who design and test the hardware and the software in passenger jets tells us a great deal about the Potemkin-style workplace culture that prevails in Boeing and similar large US corporations. The surface sheen is more important than the substance. The marketing brochures and manuals are no different from mainstream news media in the level of BS they spew. ..."
"... The Indonesian pilots did not have the time to figure out and realise that something else was controlling the plane's flight, much less deactivate what is effectively a second autopiloting system. ..."
"... B is right. This is a criminal act of deception and fraud thats cost hundreds their lives. Boeing executives responsible should be prosecuted and then jailed. ..."
"... while all the technical discussion around how to fly a plane is truly interesting, what's really at issue here is corporate and institutional betrayal of trust. ..."
"... The corporate aspect is Boeing, obviously. The institutional aspect is FAA, which used to lead the world in trust when it came to life and death matters. ..."
"... But now, in what Bloomberg, even while trying to support FAA, has no choice but to report as a "stunning rebuff" to FAA's integrity, countries around the world are grounding this flawed plane. Germany, among others, has closed its airspace to the 737. ..."
"... "Should anyone be flying 737MAXes before the black box data has been evaluated?" ..."
"... Before, the civilian airliners were falling out of the sky because of an immature technology, that is because of the learning curve. Now that the technology involved is fully mature the airliners are falling out of the sky for profit taking. ..."
"... Is it really so hard to connect the secrecy about MCAS and why it was needed in the first place? The lawyers will have a ball of the decade with this: the defendant created a secret software solution to turn a Lego airplane into a real airplane, made the software dependent on a single sensor, and made it difficult to switch the software off. ..."
"... I cannot believe that Boeing shares dropped only 7.5%, this is a statement of how untouchable Boeing is and how protected it will be by the Corrupt. ..."
Boeing, The FAA, And Why Two 737 MAX Planes Crashedpsychohistorian , Mar 12, 2019 4:55:32 PM |
link
On Sunday an Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed, killing all on board. Five month earlier
an Indonesian Lion Air jet crashed near Jakarta. All crew and passengers died. Both airplanes
were Boeing 737-8 MAX. Both incidents happened shortly after take off.
Boeing 737 MAX aircraft are now grounded
about everywhere except in the United States. That this move follows only now is sad.
After the first crash it was already obvious that the plane is not safe to fly.
The Boeing 737 and the Airbus 320 types are single aisle planes with some 150 seats. Both
are bread and butter planes sold by the hundreds with a good profit. In 2010 Airbus decided
to offer its A-320 with a New Engine Option (NEO) which uses less fuel. To counter the Airbus
move Boeing had to follow up. The 737 would also get new engines for a more efficient flight
and longer range. The new engines on the 737 MAX are bigger and needed to be placed a bit
different than on the older version. That again changed the flight characteristics of the
plane by giving it a nose up attitude.
The new flight characteristic of the 737 MAX would have require a retraining of the
pilots. But Boeing's marketing people had told
their customers all along that the 737 MAX would not require extensive new training. Instead
of expensive simulator training for the new type experienced 737 pilots would only have to
read some documentation about the changes between the old and the new versions.
To make that viable Boeing's engineers had to use a little trick. They added a 'maneuver
characteristics augmentation system' (MCAS) that pitches the nose of the plane down if a
sensor detects a too high angle of attack (AoA) that might lead to a stall. That made the
flight characteristic of the new 737 version similar to the old one.
But the engineers screwed up.
The 737 MAX has two flight control computers. Each is connected to only one of the two
angle of attack sensors. During a flight only one of two computer runs the MCAS control. If
it detects a too high angle of attack it trims the horizontal stabilizer down for some 10
seconds. It then waits for 5 seconds and reads the sensor again. If the sensor continues to
show a too high angle of attack it again trims the stabilizer to pitch the plane's nose
done.
MCSA is independent of the autopilot. It is even active in manual flight. There is a
procedure to deactivate it but it takes some time.
One of the angle of attack sensors on the Indonesian flight was faulty. Unfortunately it
was the one connected to the computer that ran the MCAS on that flight. Shortly after take
off the sensor signaled a too high angle of attack even as the plane was flying in a normal
climb. The MCAS engaged and put the planes nose down. The pilots reacted by disabling the
autopilot and pulling the control stick back. The MCAS engaged again pitching the plane
further down. The pilots again pulled the stick. This happened some 12 times in a row before
the plane crashed into the sea.
To implement a security relevant automatism that depends on only one sensor is
extremely bad design. To have a flight control automatism engaged even when the pilot flies
manually is also a bad choice. But the real criminality was that Boeing hid the
feature.
Neither the airlines that bought the planes nor the pilots who flew it were told about
MCAS. They did not know that it exists. They were not aware of an automatic system that
controlled the stabilizer even when the autopilot was off. They had no idea how it could be
deactivated.
Nine days after the Indonesian Lion Air Flight 610 ended in a deadly crash, the Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA)
issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive.
The 737 MAX pilots were aghast. The APA pilot union
sent a letter to its members:
"This is the first description you, as 737 pilots, have seen. It is not in the AA 737
Flight Manual Part 2, nor is there a description in the Boeing FCOM (flight crew operations
manual)," says the letter from the pilots' union safety committee. "Awareness is the key
with all safety issues."
The Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed went down in a similar flight profile as the
Indonesian plane. It is highly likely that MCAS is the cause of both incidents. While the
pilots of the Ethiopian plane were aware of the MCAS system they might have had too little
time to turn it off. The flight recorders have been recovered and will tell the full
story.
Boeing has sold nearly 5,000 of the 737 MAX. So far some 380 have been delivered. Most of
these are now grounded. Some family members of people who died on the Indonesian flight are
suing Boeing. Others will follow. But Boeing is not the only one who is at fault.
The FAA certifies all new planes and their documentation. I was for some time
marginally involved in Airbus certification issues. It is an extremely detailed process that
has to be followed by the letter. Hundreds of people are full time engaged for years to
certify a modern jet. Every tiny screw and even the smallest design details of the hardware
and software have to be documented and certified.
How or why did the FAA agree to accept the 737 MAX with the badly designed MCAS? How
could the FAA allow that MCAS was left out of the documentation? What steps were taken after
the Indonesian flight crashed into the sea?
Up to now the FAA was a highly regarded certification agency. Other countries followed its
judgment and accepted the certifications the FAA issued. That most of the world now grounded
the 737 MAX while it still flies in the States is a sign that this view is changing. The
FAA's certifications of Boeing airplanes are now in doubt.
Today Boeing's share price dropped some 7.5%. I doubt that it is enough to reflect the
liability issues at hand. Every airline that now had to ground its planes will ask for
compensation. More than 330 people died and their families deserve redress. Orders for 737
MAX will be canceled as passengers will avoid that type.
Boeing will fix the MCAS problem by using more sensors or by otherwise changing the
procedures. But the bigger issue for the U.S. aircraft industry might be the damage done to
the FAA's reputation. If the FAA is internationally seen as a lobbying agency for the U.S.
airline industry it will no longer be trusted and the industry will suffer from it. It will
have to run future certification processes through a jungle of foreign agencies.
Congress should take up the FAA issue and ask why it failed.
Posted by b on March 12, 2019 at 04:39 PM |
Permalink
Comments
next page " @ b who wrote
"
But the engineers screwed up.
"
I call BS on this pointing of fingers at the wrong folk
Engineers get paid to build things that accountants influence. The West is a world in
which the accountants have more sway than engineers.
It is all about the money b and to lead folks in some other direction is not like what I
think of you.
The elite that own global private finance and everything else killed those people in the
planes because they set the standards that the accountants follow and then force the
engineers to operate within
"Congress should take up the FAA issue and ask why it failed."
If there had been any chance of that happening, the planes would probably still be flying and
dead passengers alive.
This, if you are right and I suspect that you are, is symptomatic of an empire dying of
corruption. It is no accident that both the new secretary of defence and the neo-con cult
itself were born of Boeing. A fact memorialised in the UK where the Blairites rally in the
Henry Jackson society.
Last night I wrote on a previous thread:
Over the space of a few months 2 almost new Boeing 737 MAX aircraft have crashed. Rather than
going to the expense of designing an entirely new fuselage and normal length landing gear for
its larger and much more powerful 737 MAX engines Boeing stuck with the now ancient 737
fuselage design that sits only 17 inches from the ground – necessitating changes to the
positioning of the engines on the wing, which together with the vast increase in power,
created aerodynamic instability in the design that Boeing tried to correct with software,
while not alerting pilots to the changes.
Through the 1980s and early 1990s Boeing executives had largely resisted pressure from Wall
Street to cut staff numbers, move plant to non-union states and outsource. The 777 was the
last real Boeing, though significant outsourcing did take place – but under the strict
control and guidance of Boeing engineers. After the "reverse" takeover of MacDonnell Douglas
in 1997 the MDD neoliberal culture swamped Boeing and its HQ was moved from the firm's home
near Seattle to Chicago so executives could hobnob with speculators. Wall Street had taken
down another giant.
The story I have most interest in, at the moment, is the state of the power blackout in
Venezuela and whether this was a cyber attack by the United States. If it was, it is, in my
opinion, a weapon of mass destruction and a very major war crime. The story seems to be
fading from the news so I'm hoping b. will be able to gather more information about it.
I don't know if this is true by my sister who was an engineer working on military jets said
that she'd heard that because of various design requirements, the 737-MAX was inherently
unstable but stability was provided by the fly-by-wire system. In military jets, this feature
provides greater maneuverability and survivability but has no place on civilian aircraft as
the outcome of a system failure would be catastrophic with the pilots being unable to do
anything about it. Anyone heard anything similar?
b - thanks for addressing this.. subservient canada is also flying them
still..) canada is going the same way as the usa-faa - into a ditch long term... it is
really sad for the people who have died and for the fact that as @1 psychohistorian notes -
the decisions are being put in the hands of the wrong people...
Gotta agree with psychohistorian @1, that the engineers aren't totally responsible.
Deregulation pukes at FAA, bean counters at Boeing and their managers who approved it all are
morally culpable. Airline executives aren't immune either, although many will likely plead
ignorance.
If the US were a sane country, a Congressional investigation would follow, but it's not, and
Congress is going to be more concerned with Boeing's bottom line than in public safety or the
integrity of the FAA. That's probably why the planes haven't been grounded in the US.
Congress is much more likely to impede investigation and accountability.
You omit important facts: the pilots know by heart how to quickly cut off electronic control
of the stabilizers and fly manually. The pilots on the preceding lion air flight had had the
same problem, and immediately solved it. The defective sensor should have been immediately
replaced, and would have in the United States. On the next flight, the pilots (the copilot
being quite unexperienced) spent 10 minutes not doing what they were trained to do in an
emergency where the stabilizers are out of control: disable them.
When some flight crews get it right, but others don't, it's not a design flaw but a
problem with the flight crews.
Through the history of Boeing senior executives lived in modest middle-class houses. They
traveled on Boeing aircraft to get pilot's responses. But when Phil Condit (Wall Street's
man) took over he immediately bought private jets and started living the lifestyle. The
difference between productive capitalism and financial capitalism.
the broken dreams documentary above spells it out very clearly the documentary is from
2014.
it even has undercover folks in the boeing factory saying they would not fly on one.
if you fly you should watch that old al jazeera investigation.
the company does not pay tax and
the head of boeing paid himself 100s of millions of dollars
But the bigger issue for the U.S. aircraft industry might be the damage done to the FAA's
reputation.
I'd counter this by asking "what reputation?"
I've known for years how it took take a "smoking hole" for the FAA to get off the can and
actually do something about a problem with an airplane or airline. But things evolve, and
here we have TWO such smoking holes and the FAA still allows it to fly. I'm not trying to
pick on the current FAA leader, for the man is utterly typical of the people who are allowed
to gain his position. From his wiki:
But the bigger issue for the U.S. aircraft industry might be the damage done to the FAA's
reputation.
Elwell joined Airlines for America (A4A) in 2013[3] where he was the Senior Vice
President for Safety, Security, and Operations. Elwell left this role in 2015.
(Skipping to the A4A wiki:) Airlines for America
Officially, the A4A has announced five "core elements" of a national airline policy include
reducing taxes on the industry, reducing regulation , increased access to foreign
markets, making the industry more attractive for investors , and improving the air
traffic control system.
I suspect that grounding the 737-MAX would contradict the goal of "making the industry
more attractive for investors".
About an hour ago I sent out an all-points email suggesting my family members avoid
boarding a 737 MAX until the facts are better known and solutions are in place. The FAA may
not care about them taking risks, but I sure do.
"Boeing is among the largest global aircraft manufacturers; it is the fifth-largest
defense contractor in the world based on 2017 revenue, and is the largest exporter in the
United States by dollar value".
I agree with Psychohistorian @ 1 in less forthright terms: the engineers did not "screw up".
On the contrary they most likely did what they could with the money and the time deadline
they were given to carry out what essentially was a patch-up job that would make Boeing look
good, save money and maintain its stock in sharemarkets.
Probably the entire process, in which the engineers played a small part - and that part in
which they had no input into whoever was making the decisions - was a disaster from start to
finish. The engineers should have been consulted at an early stage in the re-design of the
aircraft's flight and safety features. Only when the appropriate re-design has been tested,
changed where necessary and given the thumbs-up by relevant pilots' unions and other
organisations with regard to passenger safety can the marketing department go ahead and
advise airlines who buy the redesigned planes what training their pilots need.
That the marketing department has more say than the engineers who design and test the
hardware and the software in passenger jets tells us a great deal about the Potemkin-style
workplace culture that prevails in Boeing and similar large US corporations. The surface
sheen is more important than the substance. The marketing brochures and manuals are no
different from mainstream news media in the level of BS they spew.
One can think of other organisations where the administration has more power in the
corporate decision-making process and eats up more of the corporate budget while the people
who do the actual work are increasingly ignored in boardrooms and their share of the budget
correspondingly decreases. Hospitals and schools come to mind.
Boeing got taken over Wall Street, which means cheapest solution to anything. Engineers
are stuck with what they are given. What part of that do you still not understand.
A mitigating factor to the flightcrew is the take-off to 10,000ft is the busiest time. There
is enough going on without having to deal with runaway stab. This is especially true for new
crew to a new aircraft. Rode in many cockpits before 9.11.01 when company employees were
allowed and the standing rule was no conversations below 10,000 and keep you eyes open for
traffic. I also include my Maintenance brethren in that equation. Spent 30 years as a
Avionics Tech. on both military and commercial aircraft so I am not really fond of giving flightcrew a break but I
might this time.
Why is Boeing suffering from this design problem and not A320neo is that 737's wings are
much lower to the ground than the A320. Unfortunately, more fuel-efficient engines require a
larger air inlet, so the newer generation engines are much larger than the previously
installed V2500 or CFM56 (anyone can verify that - the older engines are much, much smaller
than the newer ones).
When Airbus introduced the Pratt & Whitney GTF on its A320s
(calling it the neo - new engine option), it led to an increase (high single digits %)
increase in fuel efficiency. Boeing had to respond to that. If they wanted to increase the
height of the wings of the 737 from the ground, they would have had to redesign the fuselage
which would have cost billions (and which they should have done, in hindsight). Instead, they
listened to the investors and the bean counters as you have called them here and they jiggled
the position of the wings a bit and introduced the new automatic stabiliser.
The people at Boeing are good or at least the engineers are. Imagine how many times this
problem would have been brought up by someone for him/her to be shut down. It's not like they
were not aware of the issue, but they were unwilling to let their bottom line suffer.
Instead, they were okay with carrying the risk of killing hundreds of people.
Agree with both of your comments. It looks like the 55 year old 737 air-frame design,
which is very low to the ground when compared to more modern designs, is incompatible with
the bigger engines required for fuel efficiency.
Being very low to the ground, Boeing was forced to put the engines out in front, which
upset the airplane's balance, making the plane essentially unstable. To counter the
instability they added the 'MCAS?' control system.
This solution violates a fundamental tenant of design for safety-critical systems. The
tenant of 'fail-safe'. If something goes wrong the system is supposed to fail in a manner
that preserves safety. For the 737 Max, when the this stability control system fails, the
plane is fundamentally unstable. For this system it is not 'fail-safe'. It is
'fail-crash'.
Why would Boeing do this? Because Bombardier was building a clean sheet design, that would
eat the 737's lunch. Boeing (and Airbus) were desperate to do something quick to minimize the
20% fuel burn advantage of the C-series. The more modern Airbus 320 air frame allowed it to
re-engine their plane. Boeing's did not. But Boeing went ahead anyway and built an
fundamentally unstable airplane, because the alternative was to walk away from their most
important market.
To me, this looks like it could be catastrophic for Boeing. It reminds me of G.M.'s
'Corvair' moment (Unsafe at any speed), from the 1960s.
Steven @ 13: The Indonesian Lion Air jet still crashed with all onboard dying, even after the
pilots did as you said. B's post explains why: the MCAS system has to be deactivated
separately as it is still active when autopilot is off and the pilots are flying
manually. The Indonesian pilots did not have the time to figure out and realise that
something else was controlling the plane's flight, much less deactivate what is effectively a
second autopiloting system.
how is this for reassuring? press release from boeing today... this info is from someone
else, and i haven't verified it..
"For the past several months and in the aftermath of Lion Air Flight 610, Boeing has been
developing a flight control software enhancement for the 737 MAX, designed to make an already
safe aircraft even safer."
"Boeing got taken over Wall Street, which means cheapest solution to anything. Engineers are
stuck with what they are given. What part of that do you still not understand."
Why they colluded with and indeed implemented what they knew to be - and now proven to be
- a mass killing system. What do you not understand here?
There is much more behind the covering up of this "design flaw" from the start. The
concept that, in this day and age, sensors used in the aviation field and close to brand new
are defective is a stretch of the imagination. The current effort by Boeing to do a software
upgrade, I suspect, is cover for something more damaging.
How easy is it these days to access the MAX's operation and flight control computers? Can
it be done via WI-fi or Bluetooth from the airfield? We are well aware that in the newer
heavies Seattle can take basic control via satellite.
You clowns don't understand what you're telling me I'm "getting wrong." MCAS ISN'T part of
the autopilot, and I never said it was.
737 pilots have to be able to do about 10 procedures in their sleep. One is when the
electrical control of the horizontal stabilizers doesn't work; Aa few steps but basically
pull a breaker and revert to manual control only, no power assist.
The crew on the previous flight did this and flew on with zero problem.
It's outrageous that lionair didn't find out why emergency procedures had had to be used
and fix them before they let the airplane fly again.
If airlines do not adhere to Minimal safety standards, it's not Boeing's fault if it's
planes crash.
"This is the first description you, as 737 pilots, have seen. It is not in the AA 737
Flight Manual Part 2, nor is there a description in the Boeing FCOM (flight crew operations
manual)," says the letter from the pilots' union safety committee. "Awareness is the key
with all safety issues."
Well it's good to know that Canada is still allowing this death trap to fly, I couldn't bare
the thought that Boeing might lose more stock value merely because of a defective product
that kills! Seriously though, the silence from the Canadian media on this subject is
deafening. CBC news didn't even cover the banning of these planes in the rest of the world
until an hour ago and even then they seemed more concerned about the impact on Boeing then
the you know 300 people killed because of this flawed plane. Eventually (before Friday) I
think Canada will be forced to ground it's fleet of 737-8s. With the current corruption
scandal, Trudeau is too weak right now to stand up in Question period and claim the 737-8s
are safe to fly. Even Trump is getting in on the action and blaming Boeing for the accidents.
FAA may end up being the biggest loser from this situations with a huge hit to its'
trustworthiness, I remember when the FAA would issue emergency maintenance/inspection orders
after any crash suspected to be caused by maintenance issues and ground entire fleets of
aircraft if two planes crashed within 2 years. You know, the FAAs behaviour now reminds me of
the old Soviet joke, "our planes never crash, their just indefinitely delayed"
These people did not die they were murdered. Long ago, I had worked with Boeing on a computer
project and I had the highest respect for the company and engineers. Facts and reality were
paramount for Boeing. Things started a slow downhill slope when that TWA flight that was
accidentally shot down by a missile. I noticed how uncomfortable the engineers were to talk
about it – just a short comment that the fuel tank was not the cause. When politics and
management go away from reality and facts, it is just a matter of time. But for the life of
me I do not understand how Boeing can come to this:
Fault 1: As B says, it should never have been designed like this.
Fault 2: Don't tell the pilots about MCSA.
Fault 3: Real time flight tracking altitude data show wild swings – red light ignored.
No need to wait for a plane to crash.
Fault 4: Lion Air Flight 610 crash showed that this MCSA system is at fault and nothing much
was done. The murder of 189 people.
Fault 5: Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409 murdering an additional 157 people.
Fault 6: FAA says everything is ok.
Especially the Ethiopian Flight 409 crash should never have happened. This issue became
well known to engineers and flight crews world wide after Lion Air. A good question is: was
the disable MCSA switch now a memory item or a check list item for the flight crew? Or did
Boeing want to wait for the final report of Lion Air?
I noticed that the Ethiopian pilot was not western, but looks like from Indian decent. I
would not doubt his abilities, but rather say that he would follow the rules more than a
western pilot. Western pilots would network and study this thing on their own and would not
wait for Boeing. They would have penciled this into their flight deck routine - just to be
safe.
One can always find a benefit in the sanctions, albeit coincidental.
Iran avoided a lot of damage from Boeing. They had ordered 140 of 737's. All got canceled.
Congratulations.
@40 Alpi57
Iran always has the option of buying the Irkut MC-21 which in my opinion is the best
narrowbody plane that anyone can buy now. Fully redesigned body with significantly higher
composite percentage and comes with the best engine in the world for narrowbodies - the
P&W GTF. And Russia will be happy.
Before you guys and gals bash b, hop over to Zerohedge citing Dallas Morning News revealing
FAA database Pilots on Boeing 737Max complained for months...Manual inadequate ...criminally
insufficient .just for starters.
I was a big fan of the 6-part BBC doco series Black Box from the 1990s. The main conclusion
drawn was that the industry is way too fond of blaming as many mishaps as possible on Pilot
Error, and way too slow to react to telltale signs that a particular aircraft model might
have a fatal flaw. There was a tendency to ignore FAA edicts for inspection of a suspected
design weakness. Two cases that come to mind were incorrectly locked DC 9 cargo doors ripping
off with a big chunk of the plane plus half a dozen occupied seats, and a tendency of 727s to
nose-dive into the "surface" at Mach 0.99.
I'll be very surprised if any part of b's analysis, conclusions and predictions turns out
to incorrect.
Lights in Venezuela on.
US Boeing stocks down.
More evidence for the Lockheed f-16 downing. Reports it was a dogfight between an old MiG-21
(with modernised radar and missiles) that brought the modern US Lockheed f-16 down and maybe
not from a launch of MiGs modern bvr missile.
The problem with a "new" airplane is the Western Content. Over a certain percentage, the
US basically controls the situation. Another issue is servicing the things. If an airplane is
sitting in Podunk Airport with a broken widget, the airline wants it fixed right now! Some
planes like the 737 have been around for decades and there are probably parts for it - even
at Podunk. A new plane will probably be grounded until a new part is transported in - a
process which will take many hours even in the best of circumstances. Advantage to the 737
and other 'legacy' airplanes.
Just saw an interesting headline at Reuters - I'd suppose it is some friendly advice from
Wall Street disguised as "news".
Change "watchdog" to "lapdog" and that would be about right. It seems to me a sensible
proposal, for if Boeing must take a beating out of this, the company ought to at least adopt
a pose of "really caring" and "doing the right thing". Try for the brownie points.
@ Zachary Smith who wrote
"
It seems to me a sensible proposal, for if Boeing must take a beating out of this, the
company ought to at least adopt a pose of "really caring" and "doing the right thing".
"
China is coming to teach the West morals which are currently ranked below profit and
ongoing private control of global finance
The Ethiopian airlines flight was an international flight, so the pilots will have been
certified to international standards. I don't know the details of international standards for
type training, but you are basically saying that the fault is not with Boeing, it is with the
type training of international pilot crews. Can you elaborate and does this mean that we are
equally in danger regardless of the aircraft model and that it is just coincidence that both
these crew failures were on 737 Max models?
The evidences and recognizably legitimate information (there is always a lot of
through-the-hat blather-yap from internet-"engineers") suggests thrust angle, not structure
or CG destabilization. "larger" engines are not necessarily significantly heavier, but,
today, and if more efficient, will be larger diameter for more fan, for more thrust (which in
jet and fan engines is more power). Larger diameter nacelles will require modification of
placement, higher, lower, larger weight will require modification of placement, forward,
backward. Clearance restrictions may require modification of engine thrust-line angle,
relative to fuselage, and fuselage-fit control surface lines (which include flight surfaces).
Thrust changes with thrust changes, which means thrust-angle change will change thrust-effect
at differing thrust amounts: Take-off and climb thrusts are near maximums, wherefore angular
component will be near max then (cruise maximums are less, or less effective, or radical, for
altitude air thinning).
What this means is that if larger engines on a 737 MAX, for larger bulk are slightly
angled for clearance,the angling may have little effect except in specific instances and
attitudes, such as take-off and climb. It sounds as if Boeing angled thrust slightly for
engine fitting, and assumed a computer control fix could handle the off-line thrust component
effect during the short duration times it was sufficient to effect flight characteristics,
which, if the thrust-angling was up, would add a nose-up tail-down thrust rotation component,
greater at greater power. to compensate which the software would add nose-down control
surface counteraction, as incident described.
What it sounds like the pilot in the first, non-crash, case most likely did, that saved
the aircraft, was not 'disable' an automatic system he had no information about, for it being
not intended for disablement, but was reduce power, reducing the off-line thrust effect, so
the auto system backed off. In the other incidents, especially if the airports were
get-em-high-fast airports (to 'leave' the noise at the airport) the pilots would incline to
not reduce power, and would be more likely to get into a war with the too automated
auto-system, the way Tesla drivers can do with their over-automated systems.
All auto-control "AI" systems need human-override options built in, so that human-robot
stand-offs to impact cannot occur. The real culprits in stand-off accident situations are the
techie-guppies who think robotic control can always do everything better, and fail to think
of the situation where the "right" response is wrong.
Lion Air's engineers had previously identified and tried to fix issues with the jet that
crashed in October 2018.
The day before the jet took off from Jakarta airport and crashed, killing all 189 onboard,
one of its Angle of Attack sensors had been replaced by engineers in Denpasar. Unfortunately
the source I checked (see link below) doesn't say if this replacement AoA sensor was the one
linked to the computer running the MCAS on the flight.
Delta once initiated a fuel saving measure whereby aircraft were insufficiently topped off
with fuel to prevent pilots from wasting fuel. Once this information began to leak, the
measure was ended.
Thanks for Bean Counters! I so much wanted to use Bean Counters in my rant but thought I
should stick to their standard appellation....
Bean Counters need to be taken seriously because they are not going to go away in any form
of social organization and represent where the rubber meets the road when it comes to social
decision making/risk management
Bean Counters (along with their bosses) need to be required to place morals as a higher
value than profit and forced to operate with maximum public transparency and input; then, all
will be good.
Thank you for the accurate information. The basic problem seems to be that the
low-consumption engines protrude too far. A well-designed, reliable aircraft becomes a faulty
design. To try to solve this using software is a precarious approach. The FAA should have
rejected this in principle. But because to design an aircraft completely from scratch
naturally takes longer and would have given the competitor Airbus time to take over the to
much market share, this 'solution' was accepted. This type of corruption will cost the u.s. a
lot.
But first let's wait for Tronald's tweet, which will certainly be aired by tomorrow at the
latest, in which he states that the 737 Max is a great, great aircraft - if not the best
ever...
There is no doubt that both Boeing and FAA are to blame, but we pay the Government to ensure
safety. Businesses have always chased profit, some more ruthlessly than others. But when
the real corruption sets in then the Government regulator works for the businesses at the
expense of the public . Regarding FAA reputation, there was a time when US was the leader
in aviation, military as well as commercial. This means that the best experts were in US and
thus FAA had the best and the most knowledgeable people. It is similar with FDA, all
countries in the World used to follow the touchstone drug approvals by FDA. Now the
"Federal" in any US acronym has become a synonym for "Corruption" (FBI
anyone?).
The expertise does not matter any more, only greasing of the hands does. In the old times,
anyone from FAA whose signature was on this planes approval to fly would get a life sentence
in jail. But 330 people dead is less than a days worth of US global victims - business as
usual for US. It is just that these victims are getting much more publicity than the silent
victims. We will be lucky if anyone influential from FAA even resigns let alone goes to jail.
There will be many more dead before the World understands this new reality.
Would you fly on any Boeing plane designed or delivered after the company was taken over
by the Wall Street wizards in the 90s?
Re the engineers - they agreed to build an out of balance aircraft (thrust vs weight and
drag) and to try and rectify this with software. What we will do for money. Both the bean
counters and engineers are at fault, perhaps the beancounters and shiney butts more so as
they did not inform buyers and pilots of the faults.
Posted by: fast freddy | Mar 12, 2019 8:26:15 PM | 52
(Fuel 'economy')
QANTAS once decreed that pilots rely on brakes and treat reverse thrust as emergency-only
procedure, until a 747 skidded off the end of a runway with the nose-wheel inside the cabin
and bruised engines = lots of down-time + very large repair bill.
Not just Delta; Ryanair did the same, at least until there was a major storm in Spain
(Valencia, I think) and all flights had to be rerouted to other airports. That was fine, with
dozens of planes flying around waiting for a window to land, until the handful of Ryanair
planes that had been rerouted to Madrid and other places called for emergency landings,
because they didn't have enough fuel to fly for even 30 minutes longer than planned
flights.
I'm still amazed that the EU regulators and EU fucking commission didn't downright dismantle
such a bloody greedy and downright criminal company. That they basically did nothing is proof
enough, imho, of the insane level of capitalism-worship and of corruption going on in
Brussels (of course it's even worse in Washington DC, but that's basically a given).
the toronto star is carrying this story
Headline:
"Ottawa exempts Boeing 737 Max jets from standards meant to minimize passenger injuries"
"Air Canada and WestJet are flying the Boeing 737 Max aircraft exempt from regulatory
standards meant to limit passenger injuries in the event of an accident, the Star has
learned."
B is right. This is a criminal act of deception and fraud thats cost hundreds their lives.
Boeing executives responsible should be prosecuted and then jailed.
Instead the safety agency regulating them will cover it up, backed by the criminal
congress.
We see similar crimes against humanity being committed in many other areas. FDA, CDC, EPA,
FCC , USDA, etc covering up for Big Agra, Big Pharma, Big Telecom with dangerous products
like vaccines, glyphosate,4G/5G, GMO foods, gene edited livestock, etc. Safety standards are
lax and inadequate, safety testing is minimal and in some cases fraudulent or completely
lacking. Defects and adverse effects are covered up. A revolving door between these agencies
and the industry they cover presents significant conflict of interest. These industries
finance congressional members campaigns. Public safety is sacrificed for the greater good
(profits and personal gain). Whistleblowers are muzzled, attacked or ridiculed as the MSM are
their lap dogs.
That said, the airline industry has had a remarkable safety record over the last 30 years if
you can overlook their failure to have adequate locks on cockpit doors in 2001. However, the
lack of competition and increasing corruption and continuing moral decay we see in society ,
government and industry has obviously taken its toll on the industry. This is inexcusable.
Heads should roll (dont hold your breath).
Congress flies on these aircraft to and fro from Washington to their districts. It is to
their interests to have these Boeing 737 permanently grounded.
Re: 59 Bevin, "Ottawa exempts Boeing 737 Max jets from standards meant to minimize passenger
injuries"
- what this means is that Washington called Ottawa and ordered little Justin that he had
to allow the 737 8's to fly and Justin said yes sir! However, someone at the Transportation
Safety Board of Canada, told Justin that the threat these plane pose to travellers was so
obvious that they couldn't just ignore it and that they would instead have to issue a waiver
to show that they have done due diligence - apparently this person or someone else within the
department then called the Star in order to leak the information and embarrass Justin into
reversing his decision. I imagine tomorrow at 4:00pm during the question hour, Justin will
get raked through the coals over his - Justin's whole defense of his actions during the Lavin
scandal has been "I needed to protect Canadian jobs", I imagine the NDP or Conservatives will
then retort something along the lines of "you'll break the law to protect Jobs, why won't you
obey the law to protect Canadian lives!", I should point out that 8 Canadians were killed in
the most recent crash in Ethiopia
Steven is correct. Totally correct. I suspect that he is an airline pilot, as am I. Everybody
else is wrong at least in part and most between 50% and 100%(The description of the cause of
the QANTAS hull loss).
Pilots MUST know all about aircraft systems operation. It is crazy for Boeing to have
functions not in the AFM.
The system in question is not operative with autopilot engaged. In manual flight if at any
time one gets an uncommanded stab trim movement one should immediately disable electrical
trim(One switch, half a second, no "procedure" required. In manual flight if the trim wheel
moves and you hadn't touched the trim switches you have uncommanded trim. Immediately disable
electrical trim.
There is procedure for reestablishment of electrical trim, that does take time. The defeat
of the runaway trim does not take time. B737 has provision for manual trim(but it's very
slow.
I grew up reading Boeing's weekly employee newspaper. Times have changed too much since then.
Moving the headquarters from Seattle to Chicago and a second 787 assembly line in South
Carolina to bust their unions are proof that Boeing is a multinational corporation superior
to national governments. The company is the Empire's armorer for profit. It is criminal to
design an unstable passenger airplane that must be controlled by fly by wire sensors and
computers to stay in the air. The problem is the aircraft industry duopoly and deregulation.
Airbus has lost at least three aircraft to problems with the pilot computer interface. I was
shocked when NBC put this first last night. I though it would be silenced. I blame Trump
Derangement Syndrome. His trade wars and dissing have ticked off the world. When China
grounded the 737 Max 8 everybody followed to show what they really think about the North
American Empire. This could be devastating to the last manufacturing industry left in the
USA.
Boeing in my view took a cynical decision. That is, there would only be a few crashes within
a set period. Thus the insurance companies would pick up the tab for their profits. However
the loss of two planes so close together could destroy the company. The aforesaid insurance
companies will not pay a single dime if they can stick corporate murder charges onto Boeing.
This smells of the Ford Pinto scandal where Ford knew that there was a problem with the
fuel system if the car was rear-ended ( the vehicle burst into flames ) but it was cheaper to
pay the compensation than fix the problem.
B is missing the point that fitting new engines caused airplane to take off close to stalling
horizontal speeds and angles at very low altitude and more steeply ascending to flight
altitude and that has left little time for pilots to react. That is very dangerous as much
weaker tail wind may confuse pilots and sensors. To remedy that without recertification AI
software was installed to react faster and overriding actions of pilot who was assumed not be
aware of situation at the moment he had to immediately react at the latest.
Lack of sensor redundancy is also criminal as determination of sensor malfunction is
critical for pilot. That is AI application correcting "human" physical mental deficiencies and that is deadly
trap.
If it goes to court, interesting case will be, whose error was that as MCAS system acted
correctly against pilot based on faulty sensor causing pilot to make mistake recovering from
correct but suicidal software actions.
People must be warned of cultish trust in technology and AI which is ultimate guilty party
together with greed that killed those people.
There are unlimited dollars for any intervention they choose, publicly allocated or not.
There is a reason 21 trillion in pentagon spending is unaccounted for. This does not count
dark money from illicit means used to fund covert operations.
The fact its public just means Trump wants congress to sanction it, which they will.
Seized Venezuela assets will serve as collateral for future reimbursement.
@65 acementhead - "It is crazy for Boeing to have functions not in the AFM"
No, it's criminal. And while all the technical discussion around how to fly a plane is truly interesting,
what's really at issue here is corporate and institutional betrayal of trust.
The corporate aspect is Boeing, obviously. The institutional aspect is FAA, which used to
lead the world in trust when it came to life and death matters.
But now, in what Bloomberg, even while trying to support FAA, has no choice but to report
as a "stunning rebuff" to FAA's integrity, countries around the world are grounding this
flawed plane. Germany, among others, has closed its airspace to the 737.
This situation has only a little to do with how to fly a plane. It has vastly more to do
with the face of capitalism we see leering at us as our families live their last few moments,
on the way to the ground. It has to do with how the corporate spin departments will attempt
to cover up and evade responsibility for these crimes.
And it has to do with how the global consumer market will start to book its flights based
not on price or time or seat location but on make of plane.
And despite your claim that "Everybody else is wrong at least in part..." , I doubt
very much that most of the commenters here are wrong in their appreciation of the
situation.
I don't think Boeing made a decision, they had little choice (stockholders were first, the
jobs were essential to the politicians, and market share would become competitive if Boeing
dropped out), it was the pressure of the system that charted their course.
Capitalism is
about competition in a just, fairly well managed government regulated environment. In order
for capitalism not to over step the bounds of competitive capitalism; government must remain
present, to prevent foul play and to deny all hints of monopoly power...
Capitalism without
an honest government becomes organized crime or, worse, it degenerates to allow private
enterprise and special interest to dictate how the rule making and military arms of
government should be used, against domestic and foreign competition. . Economic Zionism is
what I call this last degenerative stage.
Defensively EZ teaches the winner to completely and totally destroy the
infrastructure, the resources and the people (including competitive personnel with the brains
to develop competition) of those who refuse to conform or those who insist on competing;
offensively , EZ teaches the winner to take all and to take-over, own and keep the
goodies taken from those destroyed, and in the matter of profit making and wealth
keeping EZ teaches only winners are allowed to produce-and -profit everyone else is to be
made to feed the monopoly that eliminated competition produced. The residual of eliminated,
decimated competitive opposition = monopoly power
It is the king of the mountain monopoly that produces the wealth and power and feeds the
corruption that makes the rich richer.
I think this case makes clear, privatization of government responsibility nearly always
turns sour . The Government should take over and keep the operation of all of the
Airlines strictly in government hands (privatization is proven to be problematic). When I
grew up all of the airlines were so tightly regulated they were part of the government; the
airlines were investors and operators following government rules and regulations. pricing was
based on point to point fixed in price and terms (and the same for all airlines) and that was
a time when aircraft design was not so accurate, meals were served and jets were nearly not
existent but still there were very few accidents. Same for the Trucking Industry and the
railroad.. Why should roads be government obligations, but rail, trucks and planes be
privately owned?
I am not a communist or a socialist, I just know that private influence will always find a
way to wrongly influence public sector employees when private interest wants something from
government.
For a number issues/reasons, I quit flying in 2007, vowing never to set foot in an aircraft
again. Trains or ships, okay.
So far so good; the 737 Max just firms my rsolve...
The aircraft did not undergo piece by piece certification or type certification . It
underwent supplemental type certification that shortens the investigative process.
This is a potential disaster for Boeing. The stock is falling and it'll go into free fall
if decision is made to ground this aircraft. FAA will also face a legal tsunami. If this is
the reason they didn't ground the planes yet; it's going to look really damning when the find
themselves in court later.
This is shaping up to be unnecessarily messy for the industry.
Yesterday's Oz edition of PBS Newshour went over most of the topics touched on in b's posting
but stopped short of finger-pointing although it insinuated that Boeing had blundered.
Today's edition posed a question I was going to pose here...
"Should anyone be flying 737MAXes before the black box data has been evaluated?"
The answer, delivered by a female ex-Inspector General (of precisely what I didn't hear) is
"No. Absolutely not!"
@35 steven... i will take that as a compliment, referring to me as a clown.. i have high
regard for clowns, although i don't think there is anything funny about the topic at hand..
innocent people dying and it being based on a corporation that might be negligent in it's
responsibility to it's passengers, is something we will have to wait and find out about.. i
am definitely not thinking it is pilot error here, as you suggest.. i saw what the canadian
airpilot association said - essentially they don't believe Canada should be flying them
either, as i read it..
@43 karlof1.. as i pointed out in the link @7 - the fact canada allows them to continue to
be flown makes no sense to me..poor judgment call is what it looks like to me.. the canuck
gov't and etc are living in the shadows of what b has described about the FAA.. a lot of
credibility is on the line here as i see it..
i apologize for not reading all the comments, as i was out most of the day and just got
back..
"...fitting new engines caused airplane to take off close to stalling horizontal speeds
and angles at very low altitude and more steeply ascending to flight altitude and that has
left little time for pilots to react. That is very dangerous as much weaker tail wind may
confuse pilots and sensors. ..."
This is absolute garbage. Nothing but a "word salad" it has nothing to do with
reality.
The Ethiopian crash is due to a useless pilot. A different crew, on the same plane, the
day before had the same problem. They handled it correctly, which is EASY, and completed the
day's flying without problem. Third world airlines have HUGE numbers of absolutely
incompetent pilots.
Anyone interested in the operational aspects of this should go to an aviation site. PPRUNE
has some good discussion of this event. There are a few idiots posting but very few. Most
people there are very knowledgeable. I had a look at Airliners.net mostly rubbish.
Kalen 69
Installing the new engines changed the angle of thrust.
In a balanced aircraft, engine thrust is pushing centrally on wight and drag.
If the thrust is below center of weight, it will nose up while accelerating. If thrust is
below center of drag, the aircraft will be trying to nose up while cruising.
The original aircraft was most likely balanced, with thrust centered to weight and drag.
Mounting new engines lower means the aircraft will tend to nose up when accelerating, and
nose up during cruise. Relying on sensors and software to keep an unstable aircraft stable is
not a good thing. To not notify pilots of this problem is worse than not a good thing.
@ acementhead with insistence that the pilot was at error.
Without the black box data you are sticking your **ck out a long way. I find it interesting that in both your comments you are insistent that the pilot was the
problem. You wrote in your first comment
"
Pilots MUST know all about aircraft systems operation. It is crazy for Boeing to have
functions not in the AFM.
"
The 2nd sentence is your only criticism of Boeing but then you spend the rest of the comment
describing what the pilot should have done.....before black box data says what
happened.
When a relative asked me recently why did the new Ethiopian plane crash, I generated a
sound-bite like explanation. Before, the civilian airliners were falling out of the sky
because of an immature technology, that is because of the learning curve. Now that the
technology involved is fully mature the airliners are falling out of the sky for profit
taking.
The scariest thing is that 737MAX model was a botched Boeing reaction to the market change
towards budget flight. If the plane manufacturer and the approval authority were prepared to
cut corners so badly to remain "market competitive", one can only imagine the compromises
that budget airlines are making to sell cheap whilst increasing profits. Some airlines must
be treating planes worst than buses are treated by the bus companies.
US citizens entrust their wallets to the private bank, The Federal=Corrupt Reserve, which
prints money and gives it to the most exceptional among the exceptional (did you think that
there was no hierarchy within the exceptionality?). We entrust our heads to the
Federal=Corrupt Aviation Administration whose bureaucrats work for the porky revolving door
consulting jobs that come after a stint in the Corrupt.
As Aussies would say: using software to solve a hardware problem is like putting lipstick on
a pig. More than 300 people dead are a terrible testament to this wisdom.
Yet, it is fascinating that you are blaming the engineers and some others are asking in
the comments for whistleblowers in Boeing and FAA.
Well, if I were an engineer at Boeing I would probably have resigned if asked to do this
design monstrosity of putting unfitting engines on a differently designed plane - creating a
Lego airplane, but I never had a home mortgage over my head. Regarding whistleblowing, we all
know how suicidal it is, why do supposedly intelligent people expect other to be so dumb to
commit one? Before you expect others to self-sacrifice ask yourself if you would do so in
their shoes.
It seems that the U.S. now wants to manipulate the investigation of the Ethiopian Airlines
crash. WSJ
U.S., Ethiopia Maneuver Over Crashed Plane's Black BoxesWashington wants NTSB to download data from recorders, while African nation's officials
prefer U.K. experts.
U.S. air-safety investigators on Tuesday engaged in intense behind-the-scenes discussions
with their Ethiopian counterparts regarding where the black-box recorders found amid the
wreckage of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 will be downloaded, according to people familiar
with the matter.
Kiza 85 "Before you expect others to self-sacrifice ask yourself if you would do so in their
shoes."
"Self sacrifice" ... Most of my life I have been self employed, but for a few years when I
was young and then as I got older and ill health slowed me down, I have worked for
others.
If told to do a job that I believed was destined to fail, I would pull out. What you call
self sacrifice simply comes down to money, and as I put in an earlier comment "what we do for
money" Engineers that put this schumozzel together were simply putting in the hours to
received their pay check at the end of the week with no thought as to the people hurt or
killed when this bodge job failed. The fault is equally with engineers who sell their souls
for money and the bean counters who did not inform purchasers or pilots.
What you wrote is asinine garbage, my friend. Everybody except for bribed FAA dumped B737 Max
8 until notice. It is simply too dangerous to fly.
It is you who are trolling for Boeing, the problem was discovered five months ago never
fixed, blamed pilots despite previous complaints. Now FAA admitted that fact by demanding
software fix in April or they will ground the fleet. PILOT ERROR????? Of course not and they
know it.
Not only worldwide airlines dumped this model so far but also they closed the airspace for
them in EU, China, HK etc.,because the plane is dangerous and may require recertification of
plane and pilots since Boeing lied about it and its flight parameters,p the trust was broken,
they were cheating with deadly consequences was revealed. Expect hundreds of lawsuits, as
American were also onboard.
Interestingly that anti-stalling software cannot be disabled on the ground only in flight
in manual mode only after it was engaged exactly for reasons I mentioned about near-stalling
dangerous flight parameters.
US Boeing are very much competing with France airbus and also the coming Chinese Russian
airliner.
The US is very much batting for the home team (as the mad monk told the Australian
Broadcasting Commission to do so).
Is it really so hard to connect the secrecy about MCAS and why it was needed in the first
place? The lawyers will have a ball of the decade with this: the defendant created a secret
software solution to turn a Lego airplane into a real airplane, made the software dependent
on a single sensor, and made it difficult to switch the software off.
The networked Western pilots learned how to compensate for the faulty design, but
non-networked foreign pilots never got in on the flying tricks needed for this new plane
because it was never been in their training. Also, the critical sensor may not be available
on an airport in Ethiopia or Indonesia or .....
I cannot believe that Boeing shares dropped only 7.5%, this is a statement of how
untouchable Boeing is and how protected it will be by the Corrupt.
From the semi-serious to the confusingly
ironic, the business world is not short of pseudo-scientific principles, laws and management theories
concerning how organisations and their leaders should and should not behave.
CIO UK
takes a look at
some sincere, irreverent and leftfield management concepts that are relevant to CIOs and all business leaders.
The Peter Principle
A concept formulated by Laurence J Peter in 1969, the
Peter Principle
runs that in a
hierarchical structure, employees are promoted to their highest level of incompetence at which point they are
no longer able to fulfil an effective role for their organisation.
In the
Peter Principle
people are promoted when they excel, but this process falls down
when they are unlikely to gain further promotion or be demoted with the logical end point, according to Peter,
where "every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties" and that
"work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence".
To counter the
Peter Principle
leaders could seek the advice of Spanish liberal philosopher
José Ortega y Gasset.
While he died 14 years before the
Peter Principle
was
published, Ortega had been in exile in Argentina during the Spanish Civil War and prompted by his observations
in South America had quipped: "All public employees should be demoted to their immediately lower level, as they
have been promoted until turning incompetent."
Parkinson's Law
Cyril Northcote Parkinson's eponymous law, derived from his extensive experience in the British Civil
Service, states that:
"Works expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."
The first sentence of a humorous essay published in
The Economist
in 1955,
Parkinson's Law
is familiar with CIOs, IT teams, journalists, students, and every other occupation that can learn from
Parkinson's mocking of pubic administration in the UK. The corollary law most applicable to CIOs runs that
"data expands to fill the space available for storage", while Parkinson's broader work about the
self-satisfying uncontrolled growth of bureaucratic apparatus is as relevant for the scaling startup as it is
to the large corporate.
Flirting with the ground between flippancy and seriousness, Parkinson argued that boards and members of an
organisation give disproportional weight to trivial issues and those that are easiest to grasp for non-experts.
In his words:
"The time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum of money
involved."
Parkinson's anecdote is of a fictional finance committee's three-item agenda to cover a £10 million contract
discussing the components of a new nuclear reactor, a proposal to build a new £350 bicycle shed, and finally
which coffee and biscuits should be supplied at future committee meetings. While the first item on the agenda
is far too complex and ironed out in two and a half minutes, 45 minutes is spent discussing bike sheds, and
debates about the £21 refreshment provisions are so drawn out that the committee runs over its two-hour time
allocation with a note to provide further information about coffee and biscuits to be continued at the next
meeting.
The Dilbert Principle
Referring to a 1990s theory by popular Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, the
Dilbert Principle
runs that companies tend to promote their least competent employees to management roles to curb the amount of
damage they are capable of doing to the organisation.
Unlike the
Peter Principle
, which is positive in its aims by rewarding competence, the
Dilbert Principle
assumes people are moved to quasi-senior supervisory positions in a
structure where they are less likely to have an effect on productive output of the company which is performed
by those lower down the ladder.
Hofstadter's Law
Coined by Douglas Hofstadter in his 1979 book
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid,
Hofstadter's Law
states:
"It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account
Hofstadter's Law."
Particularly relevant to CIOs and business leaders overseeing large projects and transformation programmes,
Hofstadter's Law
suggests that even appreciating your own subjective pessimism in your
projected timelines, they are still worth re-evaluating.
An old adage and without basis in any scientific laws or management principles,
Murphy's Law
is always worth bearing in mind for CIOs or when undertaking thorough scenario planning for adverse situations.
It's also perhaps worth bearing in mind the corollary principle
Finagle's Law
, which states:
"Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong - at the worst possible moment."
Lindy Effect
Concerning the life expectancy of non-perishable things, the
Lindy Effect
is as relevant to
CIOs procuring new technologies or maintaining legacy infrastructure as it is to the those buying homes, used
cars, a fountain pen or mobile phone.
Harder to define than other principles and laws, the
Lindy Effect
suggests that mortality
rate decreases with time, unlike in nature and in human beings where - after childhood - mortality rate
increases with time. Ergo, every day of server uptime implies a longer remaining life expectancy.
A corollary effect related to the
Lindy Effect
which is a good explanation is the
Copernican Principle
, which states that the future life expectancy is equal to the current age, i.e.
that barring any addition evidence on the contrary, something must be halfway through its life span.
The
Lindy Effect
and the idea that older things are more robust has specific relevance to
CIOs beyond servers and IT infrastructure with its association with source code, where newer code will in
general have lower probability of remaining within a year and an increased likelihood of causing problems
compared to code written a long time ago, and in project management where the lifecycle of a project grows and
its scope changes, an Agile methodology can be used to mitigate project risks and fix mistakes.
The Jevons Paradox
Wikipedia offers the best economic
description of the
Jevons Paradox
or Jevons effect, in which a technological progress increases efficiency
with which a resource is used, but the rate of consumption of that resource subsequently rises because of
increasing demand.
Think email, think Slack, instant messaging, printing, how easy it is to create Excel reports,
coffee-making, conference calls, network and internet speeds, the list is endless. If you suspect demand in
these has increased along with technological advancement negating the positive impact of said efficiency gains
in the first instance, sounds like the paradox first described by William Stanley Jevons in 1865 when observing
coal consumption following the introduction of the Watt steam engine.
Ninety-Ninety Rule
A light-hearted quip bespoke to computer programming and software development, the
Ninety-Ninety
Rule
states that: "The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The
remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time." See also,
Hofstadter's
Law
.
Related to this is the
Pareto Principle
, or the 80-20 Rule, and how it relates to software,
with supporting anecdotes that "20% of the code has 80% of the errors" or in load testing that it is common
practice to estimate that 80% of the traffic occurs during 20% of the time.
Pygmalion Effect and Golem Effect
Named after the Greek myth of Pygmalion, a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he carved, and relevant
to managers across industry and seniority, the
Pygmalion Effect
runs that higher expectations
lead to an increased performance.
Counter to the Pygmalion Effect is the
Golem effect
, whereby low expectations result in a
decrease in performance.
Dunning-Kruger Effect
The
Dunning-Kruger Effect
, named after two psychologists from Cornell University, states
that incompetent people are significantly less able to recognise their own lack of skill, the extent of their
inadequacy, and even to gauge the skill of others. Furthermore, they are only able to acknowledge their own
incompetence after they have been exposed to training in that skill.
At a loss to find a better visual representation of the
Dunning-Kruger Effect
, here is
Simon Wardley's graph with
Knowledge
and
Expertise
axes - a warning as to why self-professed
experts are the worst people to listen to on a given subject.
Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not
manage and those who manage what they do not understand. --Putt's Law
If
you are in IT and are not familiar with Archibald Putt, I suggest you stop reading this blog
post, RIGHT NOW, and go buy the book
Putt's Law and the Successful Technocrat. How to Win in the Information Age . Putt's
Law , for short, is a combination of Dilbert and
The Mythical Man-Month . It shows you exactly how managers of technologists think, how they
got to where they are, and how they stay there. Just like Dilbert, you'll initially laugh, then
you'll cry, because you'll realize just how true Putt's Law really is. But, unlike Dilbert,
whose technologist-fans tend to have a revulsion for management, Putt tries to show the
technologist how to become one of the despised. Now granted, not all of us technologists have a
desire to be management, it is still useful to "know one's enemy."
Two amazing facts:
Archibald Putt is a pseudonym and his true identity has yet to be revealed. A true "Deep
Throat" for us IT guys.
Putt's Law was written back in 1981. It amazes me how the Old IT Classics (Putt's Law,
Mythical Man-Month, anything by Knuth) are even more relevant today than ever.
Every technical hierarchy, in time, develops a competence inversion. --Putt's
Corollary
Putt's Corollary says that in a corporate technocracy, the more technically competent people
will remain in charge of the technology, whereas the less competent will be promoted to
management. That sounds a lot like The Peter Principle (another timeless
classic written in 1969).
People rise to their level of incompetence. --Dave's Summary of the Peter Principle
I can tell you that managers have the least information about technical issues and they
should be the last people making technical decisions. Period. I've often heard that managers
are used as the arbiters of technical debates. Bad idea. Arbiters should always be the
[[benevolent dictators]] (the most admired/revered technologist you have). The exception is
when your manager is also your benevolent dictator, which is rare. Few humans have the
capability, or time, for both.
I see more and more hit-and-run managers where I work. They feel as though they are the
technical decision-makers. They attend technical meetings they were not invited to. Then they
ask pointless, irrelevant questions that suck the energy out of the team. Then they want status
updates hourly. Eventually after they have totally derailed the process they move along to some
other, sexier problem with more management visibility.
I really admire managers who follow the MBWA ( management by walking around
) principle. This management philosophy is very simple...the best managers are those who leave
their offices and observe. By observing they learn what the challenges are for their teams and
how to help them better.
So, what I am looking for in a manager
He knows he is the least qualified person to make a technical decision.
He is a facilitator. He knows how to help his technologists succeed.
Everyone's heard of the Peter
Principle - that employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence - a concept that walks
that all-too-fine line between humor and reality.
We've all seen it in action more times than we'd like. Ironically, some percentage of you
will almost certainly be promoted to a position where you're no longer effective. For some of
you, that's already happened. Sobering thought.
Well, here's the thing. Not only is the Peter Principle alive and well in corporate America,
but contrary to popular wisdom, it's actually necessary for a healthy capitalist
system. That's right, you heard it here, folks, incompetence is a good thing. Here's why.
Robert Browning
once said, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp." It's a powerful statement that means you
should seek to improve your situation, strive to go above and beyond. Not only is that an
embodiment of capitalism, but it also leads directly to the Peter Principle because, well, how
do you know when to quit?
Now, most of us don't perpetually reach for the stars, but until there's clear evidence that
we're not doing ourselves or anyone else any good, we're bound to keep right on reaching. After
all, objectivity is notoriously difficult when opportunities for a better life are staring you
right in the face.
I mean, who turns down promotions? Who doesn't strive to reach that next rung on the ladder?
When you get an email from an executive recruiter about a VP or CEO job, are you likely to
respond, "Sorry, I think that may be beyond my competency" when you've got to send two kids to
college and you may actually want to retire someday?
Wasn't America founded by people who wanted a better life for themselves and their children?
God knows, there were plenty of indications that they shouldn't take the plunge and, if they
did, wouldn't succeed. That's called a challenge and, well, do you ever really know if you've
reached too far until after the fact?
Perhaps the most interesting embodiment of all this is the way people feel about CEOs. Some
think pretty much anyone can do a CEO's job for a fraction of the compensation. Seriously, you
hear that sort of thing a lot, especially these days with class warfare being the rage and
all.
One The
Corner Office reader asked straight out in an email: "Would you agree that, in most
cases, the company could fire the CEO and hire someone young, smart, and hungry at 1/10 the
salary/perks/bonuses who would achieve the same performance?"
Sure, it's easy: you just set the direction, hire a bunch of really smart executives, then
get out of the way and let them do their jobs. Once in a blue moon you swoop in, deal with a
problem, then return to your ivory tower. Simple.
Well, not exactly.
You see, I sort of grew up at Texas Instruments in the 80s when the company was nearly run
into the ground by Mark Shepherd and J. Fred Bucy - two CEOs who never should have gotten that
far in their careers.
But the company's board, in its wisdom, promoted Jerry Junkins and, after his untimely
death, Tom Engibous , to the CEO post. Not only were those guys competent, they revived the
company and transformed it into what it is today.
I've seen what a strong CEO can do for a company, its customers, its shareholders, and its
employees. I've also seen the destruction the Peter Principle can bring to those same
stakeholders. But, even now, after 30 years of corporate and consulting experience, the one
thing I've never seen is a CEO or executive with an easy job.
That's because there's no such thing. And to think you can eliminate incompetency from the
executive ranks when it exists at every organizational level is, to be blunt, childlike or
Utopian thinking. It's silly and trite. It doesn't even make sense.
It's not as if TI's board knew ahead of time that Shepherd and Bucy weren't the right guys
for the job. They'd both had long, successful careers at the company. But the board did right
the ship in time. And that's the mark of a healthy system at work.
The other day I read a truly fantastic story in Fortune about the rise and fall of
Jeffrey Kindler
as CEO of troubled pharmaceutical giant Pfizer . I remember when he suddenly stepped down
amidst all sorts of rumor and conjecture about the underlying causes of the shocking news.
What really happened is the guy had a fabulous career as a litigator, climbed the corporate
ladder to general ounsel of McDonald's and then Pfizer, had some limited success in operations,
and once he was promoted to CEO, flamed out. Not because he was incompetent - he wasn't. And
certainly not because he was a dysfunctional, antagonistic, micromanaging control freak - he
was.
He failed because it was a really tough job and he was in over his head. It happens. It
happens a lot. After all, this wasn't just some everyday company that's simple to run.
This was Pfizer - a pharmaceutical giant with its top products going generic and a dried-up
drug pipeline in need of a major overhaul.
The guy couldn't handle it. And when executives with issues get in over their heads, their
issues become their undoing. It comes as no surprise that folks at McDonald's were surprised at
the way he flamed out at Pfizer. That was a whole different ballgame.
Now, I bet those same people who think a CEO's job is a piece of cake will have a similar
response to the Kindler situation at Pfizer. Why take the job if he knew he couldn't handle it?
The board should have canned him before it got to that point. Why didn't the guy's executives
speak up sooner?
Because, just like at TI, nobody knows ahead of time if people are going to be effective on
the next rung of the ladder. Every situation is unique and there are no questions or test that
will foretell the future. I mean, it's not as if King Solomon comes along and writes who the
right guy for the job is on the wall.
The Peter Principle works because, in a capitalist system, there are top performers, abysmal
failures, and everything in between. Expecting anything different when people must
reach for the stars to achieve growth and success so our children have a better life than ours
isn't how it works in the real world.
The Peter Principle works because it's the yin to Browning's yang, the natural outcome of
striving to better our lives. Want to know how to bring down a free market capitalist system?
Don't take the promotion because you're afraid to fail.
Putt's Law, Peter Principle, Dilbert Principle of Incompetence &
Parkinson's Law
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June 10, 2015
Putt's Law, Peter Principle,
Dilbert Principle of Incompetence & Parkinson's Law
I am a big fan of Scott
Adams & Dilbert Comic Series.
I realize that these laws
and principles - the Putt's law, Peter Principle, the Dilbert Principle, and Parkinson's Law
- aren't necessarily founded in reality. It's easy to look at a manager's closed doors and
wonder he or she does all day, if anything. But having said that and having come to realize
the difficulty and scope of what management entails. It's hard work and requires a certain
skill-set that I'm only beginning to develop. One should therefore look at these principles
and laws with an acknowledgment that they most likely developed from the employee's
perspective, not the manager's.
Take with a pinch of salt!
Source: Google Images
The Putt's law:
·
Putt's Law: "
Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what
they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand.
"
·
Putt's Corollary: "
Every technical hierarchy, in time, develops a competence inversion.
" with
incompetence being "flushed out of the lower levels" of a technocratic hierarchy, ensuring
that technically competent people remain directly in charge of the actual technology while
those without technical competence move into management.
The Peter Principle:
The Peter Principle states
that "
in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level
of incompetence."
In other words, employees who perform their roles with competence are
promoted into successively higher levels until they reach a level at which they are no longer
competent. There they remain.
For example, let's say you
are a brilliant programmer. You spend your days coding with amazing efficiency and prowess.
After a couple of years, you're promoted to lead programmer, and then promoted to team
manager. You may have no interest in managing other programmers, but it's the reward for your
competence. There you sit -- you have risen to a level of incompetence. Your technical skills
lie dormant while you fill your day with one-on-one meetings, department strategy meetings,
planning meetings, budgets, and reports.
The Dilbert Principle
The principle states that
companies tend to promote the most incompetent employees to
management as a form of damage control
. The principle argues that leaders, specifically
those in middle management, are in reality the ones that have little effect on productivity.
In order to limit the harm caused by incompetent employees who are actually not doing the
work, companies make them leaders.
The Dilbert Principle
assumes that "the majority of real, productive work in a company is done by people lower in
the power ladder." Those in management don't actually do anything to move forward the work.
How it happens?
The Incompetent Leader
Stereotype often hits new leaders, specifically those who have no prior experience in a
particular field. Often times, leaders who have been transferred from other departments are
viewed as mere figureheads, rather than actual leaders who have knowledge of the work
situation. Failure to prove technical capability can also lead to a leader being branded
incompetent.
Why it's bad?
Being a victim of the
incompetent leader stereotype is bad. Firstly, no one takes you seriously. Your ability to
insert input into projects is hampered when your followers actively disregard anything you
say as fluff. This is especially true if you are in middle management, where your power as a
leader is limited. Secondly, your chances of rising ranks are curtailed. If viewed as an
incompetent leader by your followers, your superiors are unlikely to entrust you with further
projects which have more impact.
How to get over it
Know when to concede. As a
leader, no one expects you to be competent in every area; though basic knowledge of every
section you are leading is necessary. Readily admitting incompetency in certain areas will
take out the impact out of it when others paint you as incompetent. Prove competency
somewhere. Quickly establish yourself as having some purpose in the workplace, rather than
being a mere picture of tokenism. This can be done by personally involving yourself in
certain projects.
Parkinson's Law
Parkinson's Law states that
"
work expands so as to fill the time available for its
completion
." Although this law has application with procrastination, storage capacity,
and resource usage, Parkinson focuses his law on Corporate lethargy. Parkinson says that
lethargy swell for two reasons:
(1) "A manager wants to
multiply subordinates, not rivals" and (2) "Managers make work for each other."
In other words, a team size
may swell not because the workload increases, but because they have the capacity and
resources that allow for an increased workload even if the workload does not in fact
increase. People without any work find ways to increase the amount of "work" and therefore
add to the size of their lethargy.
My Analysis
I know none of these
principles or laws gives much credit to management. The wrong person fills the wrong role,
the role exists only to minimize damage control, or the role swells unnecessarily simply
because it can.
I find the whole topic of
management somewhat fascinating, not because I think these theories apply to my own managers.
These management theories
are however relevant. Software coders looking to leverage coding talent for their projects
often find themselves in management roles, without a strong understanding of how to manage
people. Most of the time, these coders fail to engage. The project leaders are usually
brilliant at their technical job but don't excel at management.
However the key principle to
follow should be this:
put individuals to work in their core
competencies
. It makes little sense to take your most brilliant engineer and have him or
her manage people and budgets. Likewise, it makes no sense to take a shrewd consultant, one
who can negotiate projects and requirements down to the minutest detail, and put that
individual into a role involving creative design and content generation. However, to
implement this model, you have to allow for reward without a dramatic change in job
responsibilities or skills.
While similar things can, and do, occur in large technical hierarchies, incompetent
technical people experience a social pressure from their more competent colleagues that causes
them to seek security within the ranks of management. In technical hierarchies, there is always
the possibility that incompetence will be rewarded by promotion.
Other Putt laws we love include the law of failure: "Innovative organizations abhor little
failures but reward big ones." And the first law of invention: "An innovated success is as good
as a successful innovation."
Now Putt has revised and updated his short, smart book, to be released in a new edition by
Wiley-IEEE Press ( http://www.wiley.com/ieee ) at the end of this month. There
have been murmurings that Putt's identity, the subject of much rumormongering, will be revealed
after the book comes out, but we think that's unlikely. How much more interesting it is to have
an anonymous chronicler wandering the halls of the tech industry, codifying its unstated,
sometimes bizarre, and yet remarkably consistent rules of behavior.
This is management writing the way it ought to be. Think Dilbert , but with a very
big brain. Read it and weep. Or laugh, depending on your current job situation.
"... Eric Samuelson is the creator of the Confident Hiring System™. Working with Dave Anderson of Learn to Lead, he provides the Anderson Profiles and related services to clients in the automotive retail industry as well as a variety of other businesses. ..."
In 1981, an author in the Research and Development field, writing under the pseudonym
Archibald Putt, penned this famous quote, now known as Putt's Law:
"Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not
manage, and those who manage what they do not understand."
Have you ever hired someone without knowing for sure if they can do the job? Have you
promoted a good salesperson to management only to realize you made a dire mistake? The
qualities needed to succeed in a technical field are quite different than for a leader.
The legendary immigrant engineer Charles Steinmetz worked at General Electric in the early
1900s. He made phenomenal advancements in the field of electric motors. His work was
instrumental to the growth of the electric power industry. With a goal of rewarding him, GE
promoted him to a management position, but he failed miserably. Realizing their error, and not
wanting to offend this genius, GE's leadership retitled him as a Chief Engineer, with no
supervisory duties, and let him go back to his research.
Avoid the double disaster of losing a good worker by promoting him to management failure. By
using the unique Anderson Position Overlay system, you can avoid future regret by comparing
your candidate's qualities to the requirements of the position before saying "Welcome
Aboard".
Eric Samuelson is the creator of the Confident Hiring System™. Working with Dave
Anderson of Learn to Lead, he provides the Anderson Profiles and related services to clients in
the automotive retail industry as well as a variety of other businesses.
Putt's Law and the Successful Technocrat is a book, credited to the pseudonym Archibald Putt, published
in 1981. An updated edition, subtitled How to Win in the Information Age , was published
by Wiley-IEEE
Press in 2006. The book is based upon a series of articles published in
Research/Development Magazine in 1976 and 1977.
Putt's Law: " Technology is dominated by two types of people, those who understand
what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand. "
[3]
Putt's Corollary: " Every technical hierarchy, in time, develops a competence
inversion. " with incompetence being "flushed out of the lower levels" of a technocratic
hierarchy, ensuring that technically competent people remain directly in charge of the actual
technology while those without technical competence move into management. [3]
Jump up
^ Archibald Putt. Putt's Law and the Successful Technocrat: How to Win in the
Information Age , Wiley-IEEE Press (2006), ISBN0-471-71422-4 .
Preface.
^ Jump
up to: ab Archibald Putt. Putt's Law and the Successful Technocrat: How to
Win in the Information Age , Wiley-IEEE Press (2006), ISBN0-471-71422-4 . page
7.
Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage,
and those who manage what they do not understand. -- Archibald Putt
Neoliberal PHBs like talk about KJLOCs, error counts, tickets closed and other types of
numerical measurements designed so that they can be used by lower-level PHBs to report fake
results to higher level PHBs. These attempts to quantify 'the quality' and volume of work
performed by software developers and sysadmins completely miss the point. For software is can
lead to code bloat.
The number of tickets taken and resolved in a specified time period probably the most ignorant way to measure performance of
sysadmins. For sysadmin you can invent creative creating way of generating and resolving
tickets. And spend time accomplishing fake task, instead of thinking about real problem that
datacenter face. Using Primitive measurement strategies devalue the work being performed by Sysadmins and programmers. They focus
on the wrong things. They create the boundaries that are supposed to contain us in a manner that is comprehensible to the PHB who
knows nothing about real problems we face.
Notable quotes:
"... Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand. ..."
In an advanced research or development project, success or failure is largely determined
when the goals or objectives are set and before a manager is chosen. While a hard-working and
diligent manager can increase the chances of success, the outcome of the project is most
strongly affected by preexisting but unknown technological factors over which the project
manager has no control. The success or failure of the project should not, therefore, be used as
the sole measure or even the primary measure of the manager's competence.
Putt's Law Is promulgated
Without an adequate competence criterion for technical managers, there is no way to
determine when a person has reached his level of incompetence. Thus a clever and ambitious
individual may be promoted from one level of incompetence to another. He will ultimately
perform incompetently in the highest level of the hierarchy just as he did in numerous lower
levels. The lack of an adequate competence criterion combined with the frequent practice of
creative incompetence in technical hierarchies results in a competence inversion, with the most
competent people remaining near the bottom while persons of lesser talent rise to the top. It
also provides the basis for Putt's Law, which can be stated in an intuitive and nonmathematical
form as follows:
Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not
manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.
As in any other hierarchy, the majority of persons in technology neither understand nor
manage much of anything. This, however, does not create an exception to Putt's Law, because
such persons clearly do not dominate the hierarchy. While this was not previously stated as a
basic law, it is clear that the success of every technocrat depends on his ability to deal with
and benefit from the consequences of Putt's Law.
The Peter Principle came as a revelation to my father,
Lewis Sutton. He ran a little company in San Francisco called Oceanic
Marine that sold furniture and related equipment, which he installed
on United States Navy ships. His livelihood depended on U.S. government
bureaucrats and shipyard managers, who often made him miserable. I grew
up listening to his tirades about how these "overpaid idiots" insisted
that he produce and procure poorly designed furnishings, how they could
barely do their jobs, and how pathetically lazy they were. To make matters
worse, senior government officials produced an onslaught of absurd procedures
that required him to jump through an ever-expanding maze of administrative
hoops-which wasted his time, drove up his costs, and made him crazy.
He concluded: "The morons at the top must be paid to waste as much taxpayer
money as possible."
My father loved The Peter Principle because it explained
why life could be so maddening-and why everyone around you seems, or
is doomed to become, incompetent. The people who ran the U.S. Navy and
the shipyards didn't intend to do such lousy work. They were simply
victims of Dr. Peter's immutable principle. They had been promoted inevitably,
maddeningly, absurdly to their "level of incompetence." Dr. Peter also
taught my father not to expect the few competent bureaucrats and managers
he encountered to stick around for long, as they would soon be promoted
to a job that they were unable to perform properly. Dr. Peter even showed
that such incompetence had pervaded my dad's business for hundreds of
years. The book quotes a report from 1684 about the British Navy: "The
naval administration was a prodigy of wastefulness, corruption, ignorance,
and indolence…no estimate could be trusted…no contract was performed…no
check was enforced."
My dad took special delight in the pseudoscientific jargon that Dr.
Peter invented to describe the weird and wasteful behaviors displayed
by those languishing at their level of incompetence. Peter gave absurd
and comedic names to the tragic realities of working life. The root
of the entire book, the condition of incompetence that Peter called
"Final Placement Syndrome," leads some to develop "Abnormal Tabulology"
(an "unusual and highly significant arrangement of his desk"). This
pathology is manifested, for example, in "Tabulatory Gigantism" (an
obsession with having a bigger desk than his colleagues).
My father's business was especially afflicted with the "Teeter-Totter
Syndrome" ("a complete inability to make decisions") and "Cachinatory
Inertia" ("the habit of telling jokes instead of getting on with business").
As with so many others who were buoyed by this international bestseller,
Dr. Peter's sense of the absurd helped my father combat this tragedy
of ineptitude by responding with laughter rather than rage.
I have a soft spot for The Peter Principle because my
dad loved it so much. Before revisiting it to write this foreword, I
hadn't read it since it was first published in 1969 (when I was fifteen).
I expected it would be a quaint curiosity, that Dr. Peter's old book
would be largely irrelevant to today's workplace. I presumed that the
application of business knowledge developed over the last forty years
would have stamped out many maladies described by Dr. Peter, that market
forces would have eliminated many or most organizations that were riddled
with incompetence, and that subsequent writings on the subject would
be more useful and engaging than The Peter Principle. I
was wrong on all three counts.
Yes, the book is archaic in some ways, especially in its use of sexist
language and examples. Yet the book's main ideas remain as pertinent
to running and working in an organization today as they were forty years
ago. None of this would have surprised Dr. Peter, who depicted his ideas
as timeless and immutable facts of organizational life.
"Incompetence," he argued, "knows no barrier of time or place." Dr.
Peter observed that one reason so many employees are incompetent is
that that the skills required to get a job often have nothing to do
with what is required do the job itself. The skills required to run
a great political campaign have little to do with the skills required
to govern. There is nothing about being a great surgeon that prepares
a doctor to run a hospital. Learning to be a great litigator in no way
prepares a lawyer to run a law firm. Many organizations, from hospitals
to law firms, use such standards to select new leaders-yet devote little
or no attention to their management skills. They often end up with lousy
leaders and lose their best individual performers. These observations
remain just as true in 2009 as they did in 1969.
Or consider Dr. Peter's counterintuitive claim that "in most hierarchies,
super-competence is more objectionable than incompetence." He warned
that extremely skilled and productive employees often face criticism,
and are fired if they don't start performing worse. Their presence "disrupts
and therefore violates the first commandment of hierarchical life: the
hierarchy must be preserved." Unfortunately, this pattern persists in
many modern organizations. Several fantastic teachers that I know at
prestigious universities have been pressured by peers and leaders to
do a worse job of teaching because "you are making everyone else look
bad." One of these professors insists that he received tenure partly
because he worked to earn teaching evaluations that were no better than
those of the professors who evaluated his case.
Even the youngest super-competent people in our society still face
criticism and ostracism-like nine-year-old Jericho Scott, a star little
league baseball pitcher in New Haven, Connecticut. Jericho had never
hurt an opposing player with his well-controlled, 40-mile-per-hour fastball.
But when his coach refused to stop Jericho from pitching, the league
hierarchy responded by barring Jericho from pitching and disbanding
his undefeated team. Jericho's coach complained-to no avail-that his
young star was punished for being too good. As for Jericho, he told
the Associated Press that "I feel sad," and that "I feel like it's all
my fault nobody could play." If Jericho wants to play in this league,
I guess his choices are to play another position (like second base)
where he isn't super-competent or to figure out how to become a mediocre
pitcher.
Another reason The Peter Principle has no peer is that
it somehow manages to be devilishly silly yet accurate and useful all
at the same time. It reads like a first-rate parody of a business book-it
reminds me of the best stuff in Mad magazine or the Onion. Yet Dr. Peter
applies such silliness to describe how and why incompetence happens
with dead accuracy. Satire works when it exposes the truth and upends
fallacy. The Peter Principle is so funny because it is
so true. It is filled with practical ideas that we can all use to limit
the damage that incompetence does to our organizations and ourselves.
One reason the book is so hilarious is that Dr. Peter was not only
an incisive thinker but masterfully creative with words. If Dr. Seuss
and Peter Drucker had joined forces to write a business book,
The Peter Principle might been have been the result. Peter invented
dozens of strange, stilted, and pseudoscientific phrases and words.
I suggest reading the glossary of over 100 phrases and words from "the
science of hierarchiology" in the back before turning to the rest of
the book. The translations will help you absorb Dr. Peter's ideas more
quickly and more deeply. Plus, the silly pseudoscientific jargon (paired
with well-crafted definitions) will get you into the right mindset for
entering Dr. Peter's strange and wonderful world. Words he invented,
such as hierarchiology, structurophillia, and staticmanship, weren't
in any dictionary in 1969, and don't seem to have entered the English
language some forty years later.
And I can't find any behavioral science research on terms such as
"Percussive Sublimation" ("being kicked upstairs: a pseudo promotion")
and "Peter's Circumambulation" ("a detour around a super-incumbent,"
who is "a person above you who, having reached his level of incompetence,
blocks your path to promotion."). All these words sound just like the
jargon used in well-developed scientific fields. Yet, unlike experts
of who unintentionally develop absurd and often incomprehensible jargon,
Dr. Peter meant to be silly when he invented the language for a field
that did not (and still does not) exist.
The silliness persists with the names invented for case studies of
employees and organizations. People such as J.S. Minion, G. Spender,
and Miss T. Totland, or organizations such as the Excelsior City Special
Education Department, are given fake names, and it is often difficult
to tell if the stories themselves are real or fictional. The boldness
of Dr. Peter's claims also somehow mocks the overconfidence that runs
through most self-help and business books, while simultaneously making
his arguments more convincing.
He states repeatedly that "there are no exceptions to the Peter Principle."
This claim is absurd on the face of it because, as he says, "the science
of hierarchiology" is based on limited evidence and requires much work
to develop. Yet taking such a strong position enabled Dr. Peter to present
his ideas in efficient and persuasive ways. I laughed a lot through
Chapter III, which argues that all apparent exceptions to the Peter
Principle are not exceptions at all. In rapid-fire fashion, he shows
that Percussive Sublimation, the Paternal Instep (promoting a family
member several steps above his or her level of incompetence), and a
host of other apparent exceptions to the principle, in fact, demonstrate
the power of the principle. By the end of the chapter, I suspect that
many of the most cynical and logical readers will be convinced by his
arguments.
That is the wonderful thing about The Peter Principle.
It doesn't seem to matter that the jargon, names, and stories are fake.
It doesn't seem to matter that many of the assertions are twisted and,
at times, seemingly wildly illogical. Somehow, despite (or perhaps because)
of all this nonsense, a host of accurate and useful ideas emerge from
this masterpiece. The validity of these ideas isn't just supported by
Dr. Peter's rhetorical flourish and keen eye. Many of Dr. Peter's ideas
are also supported by modern behavioral science research.
Stanford Professor and renowned economist Edward P. Lazear published
an academic paper in 2001 called "The Peter Principle:
A Theory of Decline." Professor Lazear provides a string of impressive
and (to most of us) incomprehensible mathematical formulas to explain
why "individuals perform worse after having received promotion." He
lends mathematical proof to the truths Peter revealed through close
(and cynical) observation. Some of these formulas show that, even if
all employees promoted to the next level were competent in their previous
jobs, some percentage will be incompetent in their new jobs. Professor
Lazear lifts this assertion directly from The Peter Principle.
He then calculates-just as Dr. Peter proposed-that this age-old scenario
occurs partly because performance standards get tougher as one moves
up the hierarchy.
To give you a taste, here is just one of the many intertwined formulas
Professor Lazear provides:
A + E(€1 | A + €1 > A*) > A + E(€2 | A + €1 > A*)
Got that? Neither do I. I have no idea what this formula means, but
Lazear concludes after this fancy math: "Thus, expected ability falls
for promoted individuals from period 1 to period 2."
Not all research that supports Dr. Peter's assertions about hierarchiology
is so difficult to understand. Professor Lazear summarizes a host of
other, simpler studies suggesting that people with stronger skills tend
to be promoted more quickly and that people with weaker skills tend
to get stuck in their current jobs after just one or two promotions-as
The Peter Principle proposes. Research related to
The Peter Principle confirms that many of these ideas aren't
just right; they are also useful. Dr. Peter provides advice for employees
who strive to rise to their level of incompetence as quickly as possible.
We all fail upwards, though some of us do so sooner than others.
Dr. Peter explains, for example, how an employee can use a "patron"
to pull him up the hierarchy, along with details about how to motivate
the patron, how to get around people who block the way, and ways that
multiple patrons can join together to pull an employee up the hierarchy.
Much of Dr. Peter's advice about using "pull" echoes Jeffrey Pfeffer's
Managing with Power, the main text used in many business schools to
teach MBAs how to get ahead in organizations. Pfeffer's analysis and
advice is more detailed and sophticated, but the basic ideas are remarkably
similar.
The Peter Principle also offers many promising ideas
that have yet to be studied carefully. I would be curious, for instance,
to see research on Dr. Peter's assertion that ignorance is bliss. Peter
contends that many employees never realize they have reached their level
of incompetence, which he proposes is good for an employee because "he
keeps perpetually busy, never loses his expectation of further promotion,
and so remains happy and healthy." This conclusion clashes with numerous
experts who exhort employees-especially managers-to face "brutal truths"
and "hard facts." The idea behind most employee performance evaluations
is that, if you give employees accurate feedback about their strengths
and weaknesses, they will be motivated to eliminate the weakness, and
thus perform better.
Dr. Peter uses entirely different logic. He asserts that many employees
in every organization have risen to their level of incompetence, all
will do so eventually, and organizations rarely fire incompetent people.
(Sounds right, doesn't it?) Following this logic, performance evaluations
given to people who have achieved "final placement" might best be used
to fuel their delusions of competence-not to identify weaknesses they
are incapable of repairing. I've never heard of a performance evaluation
system designed to provoke ignorance and denial, but Dr. Peter's logic
suggests that such a system would lead to happier and healthy employees-thus
reducing sick days and employee turnover.
Creative incompetence is another idea from The Peter Principle
ripe for development. Peter believed that doing things badly, intentionally,
and publicly was the best way for an employee to avoid final placement
and, if widely applied, the best way to build organizations filled with
competent people. Dr. Peter tells a story about "P. Greene," a competent
gardener who loved his work and had no interest in promotion to foreman.
Rather than taking the risk of being offered a promotion (which would
be difficult to decline), "P. Greene" intentionally loses numerous receipts
and packing slips, which leads to reprimands from the accounting department
and causes his superiors to conclude that he has achieved final placement.
The popular press occasionally writes about this theme, such as in
Jared Sandberg's 2007 Wall Street Journal piece on the
virtues of "strategic incompetence." Sandberg reports that a manager
named Steve Crawley was assigned to organize an office picnic, but was
eventually relieved of the job (which he didn't want) by intentionally
demonstrating deep confusion and incompetence. As Sandberg concludes,
"Strategic incompetence isn't about having a strategy that fails, but
a failure that succeeds. It almost always works to deflect work one
doesn't want to do-without ever having to admit it."
If creative incompetence is a widespread and effective strategy,
we need more research here, but my mind races ahead, regardless. Imagine
university classes and management workshops where students learn how
to dress in slightly unprofessional ways, or how to give poor and boring
speeches (I can hear the professor advising, "mumble more" and "please,
please stop looking at the audience"), and how to "forget" to attend
scheduled meetings with superiors so they will conclude that you have
reached your level of incompetence. If incompetence is inevitable, perhaps
we should all learn to master it on our own terms-and stop spending
so much time trying to achieve competence, which is, by Peter's definition,
elusive.
As strange as Dr. Peter's twisted take on organizational hierarchies
may seem, the book's core ideas-and many of the crazy little ideas too-are
valid facts of organizational life. After reading this book a few times,
I suspect I know why Dr. Peter (and coauthor Raymond Hull) decided to
cloak these ideas in such a delightfully weird and perversely funny
package. The Peter Principle clashes with piles of serious
advice spewed out by an enormous industry of business educators, consultants,
and gurus (this was true in 1969 and truer in 2009). Perhaps Dr. Peter
realized that these unconventional and contrary ideas wouldn't spread
if they were enclosed in the usual, overly somber business book. The
success and enduring relevance of this gem suggests that, regardless
of Dr. Peter's intentions, writing a serious business book disguised
as a parody was a stroke of genius.
Bob Sutton, a management professor at Stanford University,
has written a new foreword to The Peter Principle, available
in bookstores Apr. 14, 2009. He is also the author of The No Asshole
Rule.
(Submitted on 2 Jul 2009 (v1),
last revised 29 Oct 2009 (this version, v3))
Abstract: In the late sixties
the Canadian psychologist Laurence J. Peter advanced an apparently
paradoxical principle, named since then after him, which can be
summarized as follows: {\it 'Every new member in a hierarchical
organization climbs the hierarchy until he/she reaches his/her level
of maximum incompetence'}. Despite its apparent unreasonableness,
such a principle would realistically act in any organization where
the mechanism of promotion rewards the best members and where the
mechanism at their new level in the hierarchical structure does
not depend on the competence they had at the previous level, usually
because the tasks of the levels are very different to each other.
Here we show, by means of agent based simulations, that if the latter
two features actually hold in a given model of an organization with
a hierarchical structure, then not only is the Peter principle unavoidable,
but also it yields in turn a significant reduction of the global
efficiency of the organization.
Within a game theory-like approach, we explore different promotion
strategies and we find, counterintuitively, that in order to avoid
such an effect the best ways for improving the efficiency of a given
organization are either to promote each time an agent at random
or to promote randomly the best and the worst members in terms of
competence.
In evolution systems tend to develop up to the limit
of their adaptive competence
The Peter Principle was first introduced by L. Peter in a humoristic
book (of the same title) describing the pitfalls of bureaucratic organization.
The original principle states that in a hierarchically structured
administration, people tend to be promoted up to their "level of incompetence".
The principle is based on the observation that in such an organization
new employees typically start in the lower ranks, but when they prove
to be competent in the task to which they are assigned, they get promoted
to a higher rank. This process of climbing up the hierarchical ladder
can go on indefinitely, until the employee reaches a position where
he or she is no longer competent. At that moment the process typically
stops, since the established rules of bureacracies make that it is very
difficult to "demote" someone to a lower rank, even if that person would
be much better fitted and more happy in that lower position. The net
result is that most of the higher levels of a bureaucracy will be filled
by incompetent people, who got there because they were quite good at
doing a different (and usually, but not always, easier) task than the
one they are expected to do.
The evolutionary generalization of the principle is less pessimistic
in its implications, since evolution lacks the bureaucratic inertia
that pushes and maintains people in an unfit position. But what will
certainly remain is that systems confronted by evolutionary problems
will quickly tackle the easy ones, but tend to get stuck in the difficult
ones. The better (more fit, smarter, more competent, more adaptive)
a system is, the more quickly it will solve all the easy problems, but
the more difficult the problem will be it finally gets stuck in. Getting
stuck here does not mean "being unfit", it just means having reached
the limit of one's competence, and thus having great difficulty advancing
further. This explains why even the most complex and adaptive species
(such as ourselves, humans) are always still "struggling for survival"
in their niches as energetically as are the most primitive organisms
such as bacteria. If ever a species would get control over all its evolutionary
problems, then the "Red
Queen Principle" would make sure that new, more complex problems
would arise, so that the species would continue to balance on the border
of its domain of incompetence. In conclusion, the generalized Peter
principle states that in evolution systems tend to develop up to
the limit of their adaptive competence.
There is a fun new working paper out from some Italian scientists
that models the Peter Principle. The principle says, of course, that
people climb in an organization until they reach their level of maximum
incompetence.
How would that happen? Well, the authors argue it should be expected
in any organization where the following two conditions hold:
The best member are rewarded with promotions
Competence in a new position is not highly correlated with competence
at a prior level
The authors simulated the preceding in a pyramidal organizational
form using a mathematical agent model. Here is the outcome:
Here we show, by means of agent based simulations, that if the
[above two conditions] actually hold in a given model of an organization
with a hierarchical structure, then not only the "Peter principle"
is unavoidable, but it yields in turn a significant reduction of
the global efficiency of the organization. [Emphasis mine]
Granted, this shouldn't be surprising news, one would think, to anyone
who has spent any time around large organizations. A disproportionate
number of the positions always seem filled by people who elicit a WTF?
reaction from reasonable-minded observers.
So, do we just live with it? After all, we can hardly get around
elevating the best people, and it isn't unreasonable to think that one's
experience in a former position doesn't adequately prepare for the new
one.
Not necessarily, according to the authors:
...the best strategies to improve, or at least not to diminish,
the efficiency of an organization, when one ignores the actual way
of competence transmission, are those of promoting an agent at random
or of randomly alternating the promotion of the best and the worst
members. We think that these results could be useful to guide the
management of large real hierarchical systems of different nature
and in different fields.
Whoa, it turns out calling someone's promotion "random" is a compliment.
Who knew darts could be so handy at promotion time?
Sounds like the ratchet, in Parrondo's Paradox. Alternating between
winning and losing strategies. Also reminds of AndrewSullivan's
recent musings on Hawk, Dove, and Retaliator role-play in game theory.
Only the Retaliator alternates strategy.
Admitting we know a lot less than we think we know could turn out
to be lots of fun.
Matt
I don't think we spend enough time with people, getting to know
them. They are asked to complete a specific set of tasks, and we
observe them in that role without further understanding of their
abilities. Everyone has underutilized skills and talents that co-workers
don't know about: if the time were spent, a complete profile of
a person would be integral to maximizing their use to the organization.
Successful promotion relies on knowledge of the unseen talents and
latent interests of employees. We have an experience-based business
culture that emphasizes the opposite.
fresno dan
Interesting - my own view is that it is an arbitrary construct that
a "manager" does something of more skill, or rarer ability, than
many of the people the manager oversees. In the sciences, the people
being overseen have a lot of knowledge - and typically another scientist
ends up managing them. But that scientist manager really has no
training, or experience that suits them for that position. I would
take it a step further - in most circumstances, the manager should
be paid less than the technicians they are managing. Its a holdover
from the assembly line that the manager should make more than the
workers. They ofter don't have much technical knowledge, and most
business theory is too much theory and too little reality.
Carlos666 ·
The problem seems to lay in the fact that many of the entry level
hires are incompetent to deliver papers on a newspaper route so
the starting level folks are over their competence level from the
get go. The Peter Principle is in effect when they walk through
the door. Carlos666
Kievite
This is a pretty primitive, abet funny model, that does not capture
the reality of the situation. First of all in many cases middle
"managers are just a place holders and has very little autonomy
being squeezed between despotic higher ups and resentful "people
in the trenches". In this case kiss up, kick down" is the most viable
strategy and it does not require too much skills just a personal
predisposition.
Another problem with that view is that it presuppose that people
who are promoted are just passive agents. This is not true in any
organization. And this completely opposite of a typical sociopath
line of behavior. specifically sociopaths are very actively seeking
promotion and that's probably why higher layers on large organization
often include them.
I know the case of woman sociopath in IT organization, who threatened
to sue the company for discrimination unless promoted.
In his
bestseller, The Peter Principle, Dr. Lawrence J. Peter theorized
that in a hierarchy, employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence.
His view is that you will advance to your highest level of competence
and consequently get promoted to a position where you will be hopelessly
inept.
If you're a proficient and effective tech support pro, you're most likely
demonstrating peak competence in your job right now. Very soon, your
boss may commend you for your excellence and valuable contribution to
your organization, and, to reward you for your efforts, favorably endorse
your promotion to an executive position. But is the managerial level
right for you? Or are you getting set up to be a statistic supporting
the Peter Principle?
Before you deliberate on which company car will go well with your new
upper management title, consider the career shift tips and insights
we gathered from three former-techs-turned-managers. Here are the realities
you need to consider, along with steps you need to take, to ensure that
your promotion from tech to manager doesn't raise you to your level
of incompetence.
In 1969, Laurence Peter set the world of management on its ear
by announcing a revelation:
"In a hierarchically structured administration, people tend to
be promoted up to their level of incompetence. Thus, every position
will eventually be occupied by someone who is not quite capable of doing
the job."
The Peter Principle quickly entered the curricula of all with-it
MBA programs, but also turned out to have such widespread applicability
that it became part of corporate folk knowledge. Everybody immediately
grasped the principle because everybody recognized that their own boss
was an example of the principle in action.
Careers were made and careers were shattered as people reacted, and
overreacted, to Dr. Peter's great insight.
Having acknowledged my debt to the past, I now suggest it is time
we update the Peter Principle.
The world that Larry Peter occupied and analyzed so cleverly is one
that has come to be labeled the "Old
Economy," the world of stable companies creating value the old-fashioned
way: they worked for it. Such was the stability in that world that employees
could actually expect to spend their careers with one company. It is
a world that is still studied as the norm in the degree programs of
economics departments and business schools.
That old working world still has applicability, but the time has
come to question its pertinence in the brave new world of dot-coms.
For, the Old Economy continues to exist side-by-side with the New
Economy, just as various cottage industries hummed along in their quaint
medieval ways through much of the 19th century as the Industrial Revolution
was rapidly rendering the old ways useless.
Brick-and-mortar we shall not always have with us, but probably for
a while yet they will continue, including their legions of careers capped
off by the unpleasant reality reflected in the Peter Principle.
The New Economy of the cyberworld requires a new theory of mismanagement,
a new statement of the dizzying reality behind the glitzy career life
in the dot-coms, the awfulness of careers spent surfing wave after tumultuous
wave of IPO's. The New Economy is a world not of slow accretion, of
gradual promotions, but of incessant and rapid job-jumping.
I give you, then, the Dick Principle:
In a cyber-economy,
people tend to be RE-hired
at their level of incompetence.
I hasten to explain:
Example No. 1 of the Dick Principle in Action:
Joe makes a software breakthrough at Company A, cashes in as the stock
skyrockets. Joe is hot. Company B headhunts and hires Joe to oversee
their software development team. Joe is brilliant at writing code but
has no talent at nurturing others to write brilliant code. In other
words, Joe is a lousy manager. Joe has been hired at the level of his
incompetence. Joe has been dicked by the Dick Principle.
Example No. 2 of the Dick Principle in Action:
Jack has a conceptual brainstorm for Company C. The resultant dot-com
becomes the overnight darling of NASDAQ. Jack cashes in and is hot.
Company D lures Jack to be its CEO. Jack is a solitary, maverick thinker
and has no talent at management. Jack has been dicked by the Dick
Principle.
Example No. 3 of the Dick Principle in Action:
Mary is a brilliant manager with Company E. She is excellent at nurturing
people and rises quickly to V-P for personnel and human resources. Company
F makes her a huge offer: Come be our CEO and do for our talented team
what you did with Company E. Mary quickly discovers that at Company
F she has no time to nurture. The company is under tremendous investor
pressure and can think only about what the price of the stock will be
five minutes from now. Mary has been dicked by the Dick Principle.
Of course, the difference today is that Joe, Jack, and Mary have
no financial worries. By the time they are hired at their level of incompetence,
they all come equipped with golden parachutes. Thus, they have no personal
need to maintain the pretense of competence in their new jobs any longer
than they want to.
They have gained a world of wealth and financial security. All they've
lost is meaning in their lives. They're no longer doing what they're
good at and what they really enjoy.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. In its effect
on people, the New Economy then turns out to be only the Old Economy
in dot-com clothing. In moving from the Peter Principle to the Dick
Principle, we have exchanged one career dead-end for another, one management
foundering in incompetence for another also foundering in incompetence.
On the macro side, the Dick Principle means this: We already
know that one price of cyber-technology is instability and rapid change
(Moore's Law, etc.). Through the Dick Principle, we can see that the
instability and rapid change also include the very people who are supposedly
guiding and shaping the brave new world. Structurally, we have traded
mid-level, stagnant incompetence for top-level, volatile incompetence.
Steve Jobs, with his successful return to Apple, is the exception
that proves the principle. For every Steve Jobs, you have a thousand...
Well, I don't want to get into naming names. If you are involved in,
employed by, or invested in the cyber-world, you can easily supply your
own examples of the Dick Principle at work.
In 1994 I applied for and obtained an Excellence in Teaching award.
Looking back I don't know how I even had the cheek to apply. In fact
I no longer believe in the concept of a Excellence in Teaching award
- perhaps a "Facilitator of Learning" award - or a "He was Lucky to
have Good Students" award are worth consideration. (No one teaches people,
what happens is that under some circumstances people learn - do you
believe that you could write a book that "teaches" someone how to ride
a bike?)
The education process is a formal application of the Peter's Principle
- "People are promoted to the level of their incompetence". In the worst
mode the education system just keeps moving a student up the ladder
until he fails. There are a number of possible exits from the education
system. A good exit occurs when a student achieves a level and chooses
not to proceed to the next level. A poor exit occurs when a student
fails between levels, at the second year of a four year course, for
example. It does not follow that a student who can achieve a pass in
first year subjects will be able to achieve a pass in higher year subjects.
I know a bloke who with moderate training ran a marathon in 3 hours
18 minutes. The following year with more intensive training he ran it
in 2 hours 56 minutes. Had he trained intensely in an attempt to achieve
2 hours 45 minutes on his third run, he would, most likely, have failed
and done himself an injury in the process. It does not follow that a
person's capabilities are indefinitely extendible with training. Coping
with Pascal in first year does not imply the capacity to cope with C++
and Object Oriented Programming in year 3.
Now that students are encouraged to do double degrees, the failure
exit is more likely, the hurdles have been raised, there are more of
them and they are of greater diversity. This really is Peter's Principle
land!
The Peter Principle was first introduced by L.
Peter in a humoristic book (of the same title) describing the pitfalls
of bureaucratic organization. The original principle states that in a hierarchically structured administration, people tend to be promoted
up to their "level of incompetence". The principle is based on
the observation that in such an organization new employees typically
start in the lower ranks, but when they prove to be competent in the
task to which they are assigned, they get promoted to a higher rank.
This process of climbing up the hierarchical ladder can go on indefinitely,
until the employee reaches a position where he or she is no longer competent.
At that moment the process typically stops, since the established rules
of bureacracies make that it is very difficult to "demote" someone to
a lower rank, even if that person would be much better fitted and more
happy in that lower position. The net result is that most of the higher
levels of a bureaucracy will be filled by incompetent people, who got
there because they were quite good at doing a different (and usually,
but not always, easier) task than the one they are expected to do.
America is a country that doesn't know where it is going but is
determined to set a speed record getting there.
An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things
he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.
An intelligence test sometimes shows a man how smart he would have
been not to have taken it.
Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo
has lost its status.
Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the
man who will get the blame.
Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.
Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being
incompetent.
Every man serves a useful purpose: A miser, for example, makes a
wonderful ancestor.
If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the
significance of a clean desk?
If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up
somewhere else.
In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular.
It is wise to remember that you are one of those who can be fooled
some of the time.
Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting
where you heard it.
Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents'
shortcomings.
Real, constructive mental power lies in the creative thought that
shapes your destiny, and your hour-by-hour mental conduct produces power
for change in your life. Develop a train of thought on which to ride.
The nobility of your life as well as your happiness depends upon the
direction in which that train of thought is going.
Speak when you are angry--and you will make the best speech you'll
ever regret.
The incompetent with nothing to do can still make a mess of it.
The man who says he is willing to meet you halfway is usually a
poor judge of distance.
There is no stigma attached to recognizing a bad decision in time
to install a better one.
Everyone rises to their level of incompetence.
Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to believe.
Competence, like truth, beauty and contact lenses, is in the eye
of the beholder.
It was the kind of mistake that wage slaves can only dream of. Because
of what the company called an "improper interpretation" of his employment
contract, Sheldon G. Adelson, chairman, chief executive and treasurer
of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, received $3.6 million in salary
and bonus last year, almost $1 million more than prescribed under
the company's performance plan.
Four more top executives of the Las Vegas Sands, which owns the
Venetian Resort Hotel and Casino, received more than they should
have. The total in excess bonus payments for the five men was $2.8
million.
The compensation committee of the board conceded that it had
made an error. But it said that "the outstanding performance of
the company in 2005" justified the extra money, and it allowed the
executives to keep it.
Shareholders of Las Vegas Sands did not fare as well. The value
of their holdings fell 18 percent last year.
As executive pay packages have rocketed in recent years, their
defenders have contended that because most are tied to company performance,
they are both earned and deserved. But as the Las Vegas Sands example
shows, investors who plow through company filings often find that
executive compensation exceeds the amounts allowed under the performance
targets set by the directors.
Executives of companies as varied as Halliburton, the military
contractor and oil services concern; Assurant, an insurance company;
and Big Lots, a discount retailer, all received bonuses and other
pay outside the performance parameters set by the boards of those
companies.
It is the equivalent of moving the goalposts to shorten the field,
compensation experts say.
"Lowering the hurdles is especially disconcerting because very
often the goals are not set all that high to begin with," said Lucian
Bebchuk, professor at Harvard Law School and author with Jesse Fried
of "Pay Without Performance." Mr. Bebchuk said shareholders should
be especially alert to increases in bonuses because more companies
were shifting away from stock options and into cash incentives.
Some employment agreements actually stipulate that they will
provide bonuses even if company performance declines. The agreement
struck in 2004 by Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer
of the News Corporation, entitles him to a bonus even if earnings
per share fall at the company. If earnings rise by 15 percent in
any given year, Mr. Chernin's bonus is $12.5 million. But if they
fall 6.25 percent, Mr. Chernin's bonus is $4.5 million, and an earnings
decline of 14 percent translates to a $3.52 million bonus.
Last year, Mr. Chernin received $8.3 million in salary and $18.9
million in bonus pay. A company spokesman declined to comment on
the bonus structure. He confirmed that the company's chief executive,
Rupert Murdoch, has a similar bonus arrangement. Company filings
show that Mr. Murdoch received a bonus of $18.9 million last year.
The rich really are different than you and me. The culture of the
extremely affluent has no accountability. This sort of flies in the
face of the American myth that you do well by working hard and doing
a good job. Above a certain level, that's a crock. The very wealthy
protect each other and create a culture of incompetence that's insulated
by money. Our very own W is the product of this culture.
I'm not referring to the latest attempt to reconquer Iraq, but rather
the wholesale political revenge campaign being waged by the hard-liners
in the Bush administration against anybody and everybody inside the
government who challenged the way the second Persian Gulf war in a decade
was marketed and run.
Out: Secretary of State Colin Powell, whose political epitaph should
now read, "You break it, you own it" for his prescient but unwanted
warning to the president on the danger of imperial overreach in Iraq.
Out: Top CIA officials who dared challenge, behind the scenes, the
White House's unprecedented exploitation of raw intelligence data in
order to sell a war to a Congress and a public hungry for revenge after
9/11.
Out: Veteran CIA counterterrorism expert and Osama bin Laden hunter
Michael Scheuer, better known as the best-selling author "Anonymous,"
whose balanced and devastating critiques of the Iraq war, the CIA and
the way President Bush is handling the war on terror have been a welcome
counterpoint to the "it's true if we say it's true" idiocy of the White
House PR machine.
Meanwhile, incompetence begat by ideological blindness has been rewarded.
The neoconservatives who created the ongoing Iraq mess have more than
survived the failure of their impossibly rosy scenarios for a peaceful
and democratic Iraq under U.S. rule. In fact, despite calls for their
resignations - from the former head of the U.S. Central Command, Gen.
Anthony Zinni, among others - the neocon gang is thriving. They have
not been held responsible for the "16 words" about yellowcake, the rise
and fall of Ahmad Chalabi, the Abu Ghraib scandal, the post-invasion
looting of Iraq's munitions stores and the disastrous elimination of
the Iraqi armed forces.
Last night on Frontline they broadcast a biting documentary entitled
"The Dark Side", which revealed the truth about how the CIA and the
Pentagon were at odds about evidence for going to war in Iraq,etc. These
guys emerged as the "Gang that couldn't shoot staight", and reminded
me of Lawrence Peters, who created the "principle" IN ANY HEIRARCHY,
PEOPLE RISE TO THE LEVELY OF THEIR INCOMPETENCY AND REMAIN THERE.
Nowhere can I find better examples of this rule than in the Bush
administration. To wit:
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: She was a talented pianist, an Oil Executive, a
Russian studies expert,etc....but when she was made National Security
Chief, she was suddenly clueless. Ditto when she "sidestepped" into
her current position as Sec. of State.
COLIN POWELL: Despite having committed criminal acts (Iran-Contra
Pentagon arms arrangements), Powell was highly respected worldwide until
he buckled under and agreed to make the preposterous UN presentation
of "evidence" of WMDs. Now he's in disgrace and tyring to find someone
to blame for HIS inadequacy.
DONALD RUMSFELD: A highly successful businessman and experienced
government "servant" in past administrations, when he joined the Bush
gang he suddenly "lost it", and made a series of absurd errors which
fouled things up in Iraq beyond belief.....and he's still at it. He
refuses to resign.
DICK CHENEY: A long time politician and businessman, he was successful
(if not popular) in most undertakings until he became VP (at his own
request). He then got caught rigging energy contracts, feeding Halliburton
good deals, and making endless false statements about WMDs and Husseins'
"connections" to al Qaeda..despite loads of evidence to the contrary.
Now he's among the most despised people in the entire world!
PAUL WOLFOWITZ: The neocon with offices in the Pentagon, Asst. Sec.
of Defense, and professional liar once in the administration. He "knew"
that Iraq's prodigious oil output would "pay for the war", and predicted
that we'd be welcomed in Iraq "with flowers and chocolate", and that
the war would be a "cakewalk"...NOT!
GEORGE W. BUSH: I must say that Dubya just doesn't fit here, but
had to be mentioned, of course.
Bush was never really successful in his own right, having failed with
a sports team (although bailed out), an oil company (bailed out) and
as governor of Texas (popular, but what did he actully accomplish?).
No, he was just a clown who was a part time drunk and alleged drug user
who saw the light and straightened up enough to get "selected" as President...twice.
Lawrence Peter would be lost when trying to figure out how one of the
dumbest and most ignorant of all candidates could ever have achieved
what he did.
What does HE know, anyway?
Bushisms "We are ready for any unforseen event which
may or may not happen." ...
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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Finally understand the roots of incompetence in higher ranks, February 10, 2000
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If you are in IT and are not familiar with Archibald Putt, I suggest you stop reading this blog post, RIGHT NOW, and go buy the book Putt's Law and the Successful Technocrat. How to Win in the Information Age . Putt's Law , for short, is a combination of Dilbert and The Mythical Man-Month . It shows you exactly how managers of technologists think, how they got to where they are, and how they stay there. Just like Dilbert, you'll initially laugh, then you'll cry, because you'll realize just how true Putt's Law really is. But, unlike Dilbert, whose technologist-fans tend to have a revulsion for management, Putt tries to show the technologist how to become one of the despised. Now granted, not all of us technologists have a desire to be management, it is still useful to "know one's enemy."
