Flying to conclusions
September 19, 2019 12:01 PM Subscribe
As FAA administrator Steve Dickinson prepares to meet with Boeing executives to assess changes to the 737 Max 8, both the New York Times and The New Republic have published detailed reports on the 737 Max crashes. William Langewiesche writing for the New York Times: "What Really Brought Down the Boeing 737 Max? Malfunctions caused two deadly crashes. But an industry that puts unprepared pilots in the cockpit is just as guilty." Maureen Tcacik, writing for New Republic: "Crash Course: How Boeing's managerial revolution created the 737 MAX disaster."
Having read both articles, they didn't reach the exact opposition conclusion, they reached effectively the same core conclusion, which is that Boeing irresponsibly produced an aircraft it knew or should have known would become very hard to fly if some foreseeable maintenance issues arose.
Langewiesche elaborated on this with the obvious corollary that airlines with poorly-trained pilots and a weak safety culture were going to be most exposed to those maintenance issues and least able to deal with the aircraft if became very hard to fly.
There's no debating that Lion Air has a poor safety record. I don't know he made that point about Ethiopian (or that point being controversial if he had made it).
Lion Air and Ethiopian selecting and training their pilots in such a manner that they have poor response capabilities when things go pear shaped is the most contentious thing he said, but that needs to be countered with evidence, not some bald assertion that it's victim blaming.
posted by MattD at 12:25 PM on September 19, 2019 [8 favorites]
Langewiesche elaborated on this with the obvious corollary that airlines with poorly-trained pilots and a weak safety culture were going to be most exposed to those maintenance issues and least able to deal with the aircraft if became very hard to fly.
There's no debating that Lion Air has a poor safety record. I don't know he made that point about Ethiopian (or that point being controversial if he had made it).
Lion Air and Ethiopian selecting and training their pilots in such a manner that they have poor response capabilities when things go pear shaped is the most contentious thing he said, but that needs to be countered with evidence, not some bald assertion that it's victim blaming.
posted by MattD at 12:25 PM on September 19, 2019 [8 favorites]
Preliminary satellite data showed that the plane dove just after takeoff, then recovered—and then dove again, and recovered again, and dove again, over and over. It wasn’t the usual flight path of a pilot who’d lost control of a plane. Twenty-two times the demons had violently jerked down the nose, and 22 times the pilot had corrected with equivalent force. “I get so mad at Boeing trying to tar this captain when he was actually the most proficient pilot of all of them,” said Bjorn Fehrm, a former Swedish air force pilot whose technical blog on the aviation web site Leeham News is a 737 MAX must-read. “He was mastering this wild animal—22 times and he kept it in check!”
There had been a flight the day before (I think) that bucked all the way to its destination. In this case the pilot handed control over to his first officer while he tried to figure out how to keep the plane from diving and the first officer couldn’t keep it from killing everyone.
They only ask rodeo bull riders to ride for 8 seconds.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 12:38 PM on September 19, 2019 [5 favorites]
There had been a flight the day before (I think) that bucked all the way to its destination. In this case the pilot handed control over to his first officer while he tried to figure out how to keep the plane from diving and the first officer couldn’t keep it from killing everyone.
They only ask rodeo bull riders to ride for 8 seconds.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 12:38 PM on September 19, 2019 [5 favorites]
Langewiesche also makes the point that Boeing was still happy to sell many planes to Lion Air, even when Boeing knew about Lion Air's poor safety record. Boeing's apparent argument that "Our planes our fine, these idiots just don't know how to fly them" is not really a good one.
(Still reading Langewiesche, will get to Tcacik in a bit.)
posted by carter at 12:41 PM on September 19, 2019
(Still reading Langewiesche, will get to Tcacik in a bit.)
posted by carter at 12:41 PM on September 19, 2019
Not to be forgotten is the role that the United States plays in providing massive subsidies to Boeing in the form of military contracts which constitutes almost half of its earnings while simultaneously decrying any form of subsidy its international competitors, which focus primarily on passenger jets, get.
Boeing's system for building passenger jets was flawed but America's system for building Boeing is just as flawed and amazingly the U.S. now has to beg its highly concentrated aerospace and rocket industry to actually build for them (they have started not even bidding).
All the eggs are in one basket and the basket has holes and some of the eggs are broken. But somewhere some MBAs have nice new BMWs.
The FAA has lost metric tonnes of credibility on this and that could also seriously hurt Boeing as they can no longer count on an excessively compliant and cooperative domestic regulatory agency having sufficient weight to count with overseas purchasers. All it would take is some EU, Russian or Asian regulation to stiffen up and Boeing could end up in an even bigger world of competitive hurt. This would be an easy non-military way for foreign powers to put a significant hurt on American military preparedness.
All because of mindless deregulatory ideology.
posted by srboisvert at 1:00 PM on September 19, 2019 [21 favorites]
Boeing's system for building passenger jets was flawed but America's system for building Boeing is just as flawed and amazingly the U.S. now has to beg its highly concentrated aerospace and rocket industry to actually build for them (they have started not even bidding).
All the eggs are in one basket and the basket has holes and some of the eggs are broken. But somewhere some MBAs have nice new BMWs.
The FAA has lost metric tonnes of credibility on this and that could also seriously hurt Boeing as they can no longer count on an excessively compliant and cooperative domestic regulatory agency having sufficient weight to count with overseas purchasers. All it would take is some EU, Russian or Asian regulation to stiffen up and Boeing could end up in an even bigger world of competitive hurt. This would be an easy non-military way for foreign powers to put a significant hurt on American military preparedness.
All because of mindless deregulatory ideology.
posted by srboisvert at 1:00 PM on September 19, 2019 [21 favorites]
I, not being a pilot, may be less susceptible to the machismo-like inclinations of distinguishing "ace pilots" versus "crap pilots" and believe that a system that needs a pilot to disrupt a dangerous automatic maneuver is not airworthy.
relevant:
“After all, the right stuff was not bravery in the simple sense of being willing to risk your life (by riding on top of a Redstone or Atlas rocket). Any fool could do that (and many fools would no doubt volunteer, given the opportunity), just as any fool could throw his life away in the process. No, the idea (as all pilots understood) was that a man should have the ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and put his hide on the line and have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull it back at the last yawning moment—but how in the name of God could you either hang it out or haul it back if you were a lab animal sealed in a pod?”
― Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff
(emphasis mine)
posted by mikelieman at 1:27 PM on September 19, 2019 [6 favorites]
relevant:
“After all, the right stuff was not bravery in the simple sense of being willing to risk your life (by riding on top of a Redstone or Atlas rocket). Any fool could do that (and many fools would no doubt volunteer, given the opportunity), just as any fool could throw his life away in the process. No, the idea (as all pilots understood) was that a man should have the ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and put his hide on the line and have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull it back at the last yawning moment—but how in the name of God could you either hang it out or haul it back if you were a lab animal sealed in a pod?”
― Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff
(emphasis mine)
posted by mikelieman at 1:27 PM on September 19, 2019 [6 favorites]
The New York Times piece reads to me sort of like an apology for Boeing in light of the paragraph from The New Republic piece which notes that:
posted by straw at 1:34 PM on September 19, 2019 [16 favorites]
The Ethiopian pilots had followed the Boeing checklist. They had switched the stabilizer trim cutout switches to the “cutout” position and attempted to turn the nose of the plane back up using the manual crank—they just couldn’t. ...because of force issues on a small trim wheel at high speeds. The macho pilot "they just weren't trained well enough" thing seems way too soft on Boeing's management.
posted by straw at 1:34 PM on September 19, 2019 [16 favorites]
I love Langewiesche's writing - his "Columbia's Last Flight" about the loss of the space shuttle and "American Ground" about recovery efforts after 9/11 are both outstanding if you haven't read them (though American Ground is not without controversy in that it eschews the hero worship that is typically the exclusive way to describe first responders on that day).
I can understand that there's some blame for airlines putting unskilled pilots in the cockpit, and I get the broader point, but it seems crazy to suggest that the blame is anywhere near equal. Boeing failed twice when they designed a plane that had this inherent risk and then insufficiently corrected it with buggy software/sensors. Fighting against an inherently dangerous airplane should not be a threshold for commercial aviation competence.
posted by AgentRocket at 1:34 PM on September 19, 2019 [12 favorites]
I can understand that there's some blame for airlines putting unskilled pilots in the cockpit, and I get the broader point, but it seems crazy to suggest that the blame is anywhere near equal. Boeing failed twice when they designed a plane that had this inherent risk and then insufficiently corrected it with buggy software/sensors. Fighting against an inherently dangerous airplane should not be a threshold for commercial aviation competence.
posted by AgentRocket at 1:34 PM on September 19, 2019 [12 favorites]
I read the NYT piece yesterday and the TNR piece today; it was interesting to read them side by side, and I agree that in the end the pilots seem a lot less to blame than Boeing does. Honestly, that TNR piece reads like a good argument in favor of the corporate death penalty being applied to Boeing, not that such a thing is possible.
posted by COBRA! at 1:37 PM on September 19, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by COBRA! at 1:37 PM on September 19, 2019 [5 favorites]
This is the reason I refuse to fly anymore and I LOVE to fly. Goddamn companies putting shit in place that overrode fine pilots. That's fucking insane.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:57 PM on September 19, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:57 PM on September 19, 2019 [1 favorite]
Wasn't one of Boeing's selling points that they added systems so the pilots didn't need additional training to handle the changes? It takes some brass to claim that and then blame the pilot.
posted by Ziabatsu at 3:51 PM on September 19, 2019 [20 favorites]
posted by Ziabatsu at 3:51 PM on September 19, 2019 [20 favorites]
This is the reason I refuse to fly anymore and I LOVE to fly. Goddamn companies putting shit in place that overrode fine pilots. That's fucking insane.
That's incredibly short sighted. The A320 is one of the most successful lines of planes of all time. It's entirely fly by wire, it overrides pilots from doing stupid things all the time. The A320 line in its entirety has had 1393 fatalities. Since 1987. It has a crash rate of 0.08 fatalities per million miles flown. If cars had that safety record over 30,000 people in the US would stop dying every year.
Planes are ridiculously easy things to keep flying using computers. Hell, we've been doing it electro-mechanically using inertial systems when they were first made over 80 years ago. Turns out when you don't need to react to avoid anything or other people, and the process is just processing inputs and making control surface outputs, computers are great at that. Computers don't forget, they don't miscalculate, they don't have egos, they don't have hunches. They just consistently take input, make output. Humans are really bad at those things. That's why we put things like flight laws in airplanes and why after adopting these things planes tend to fall out of skies way less. Once you reach the inversion point where the computers are able to get rid of the meat bags, bring it on. Get humans out of the system ASAP. All they do is screw it up anyway.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 4:36 PM on September 19, 2019 [9 favorites]
That's incredibly short sighted. The A320 is one of the most successful lines of planes of all time. It's entirely fly by wire, it overrides pilots from doing stupid things all the time. The A320 line in its entirety has had 1393 fatalities. Since 1987. It has a crash rate of 0.08 fatalities per million miles flown. If cars had that safety record over 30,000 people in the US would stop dying every year.
Planes are ridiculously easy things to keep flying using computers. Hell, we've been doing it electro-mechanically using inertial systems when they were first made over 80 years ago. Turns out when you don't need to react to avoid anything or other people, and the process is just processing inputs and making control surface outputs, computers are great at that. Computers don't forget, they don't miscalculate, they don't have egos, they don't have hunches. They just consistently take input, make output. Humans are really bad at those things. That's why we put things like flight laws in airplanes and why after adopting these things planes tend to fall out of skies way less. Once you reach the inversion point where the computers are able to get rid of the meat bags, bring it on. Get humans out of the system ASAP. All they do is screw it up anyway.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 4:36 PM on September 19, 2019 [9 favorites]
The Ethiopian pilots had followed the Boeing checklist. [...]...because of force issues on a small trim wheel at high speeds. The macho pilot "they just weren't trained well enough" thing seems way too soft on Boeing's management.
Yeah, they followed the checklist, and it didn't save them--because of the high speed aerodynamic force issues that they caused. They got so distracted and flustered that they ignored another important aspect of flying the plane, which actually turned out to be fatal: they weren't just going at high speed, they apparently hadn't throttled back at all since takeoff and were now going "25 knots faster than the maximum operating speed of 340 knots" causing the overspeed clacker to sound. They followed the checklist, but failed at another aspect of flying, and that's why the checklist wasn't sufficient.
Boeing screwed up, and there are structural problems that I hope have a chance of improving now that they're getting some attention, but poor crews have been killed by things that shouldn't have killed them since aircraft were invented.
Automation is generally a good thing that I think will improve safety, but it still requires well-trained crews (while possibly making it more difficult for crews to get experience actually flying planes).
(This is a good talk about United Airlines Flight 232, where a great crew saved a lot of lives in a situation that "should" have killed everyone onboard.)
posted by jjwiseman at 4:56 PM on September 19, 2019 [7 favorites]
Different field, but the FDA had a term in verification: foreseeable misuse. That is, if your product could be predicted to be used in the wrong way by anyone, you are just as much at fault as if you sold a directly faulty product.
Selling gear that will cause "crap" pilots to crash is foreseeable misuse, and should never be possible as an excuse.
posted by cowcowgrasstree at 5:55 PM on September 19, 2019 [11 favorites]
Selling gear that will cause "crap" pilots to crash is foreseeable misuse, and should never be possible as an excuse.
posted by cowcowgrasstree at 5:55 PM on September 19, 2019 [11 favorites]
As far as I can tell, Langewiesche blames not just the pilots (for not knowing how to deal with a routine problem) and Boeing designers (for opting for a software fix to an aerodynamic problem, executing it badly, and then failing to inform the airlines about it), but also the Lion Air maintenance people, along with regulators. The maintenance crew installed a faulty sensor on the plane that eventually crashed, and then failed to fix it after it had caused problems on a previous flight--a sensor that was directly involved in the operation of the system (MCAS) that was implicated in the crash.
posted by epimorph at 6:17 PM on September 19, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by epimorph at 6:17 PM on September 19, 2019 [3 favorites]
The maintenance crew installed a faulty sensor on the plane that eventually crashed, and then failed to fix it after it had caused problems on a previous flight--a sensor that was directly involved in the operation of the system (MCAS) that was implicated in the crash.
Boeing only ever used one AOA sensor anyway (unless you bought the safety pack DLC which would light up when you couldn't trust the AOA sensor but not actually do anything about it) so the redundancy wasn't even there and it was dumb luck on Boeing's part that the plane didn't crash before the faulty sensor was picked up.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 7:42 PM on September 19, 2019 [2 favorites]
Boeing only ever used one AOA sensor anyway (unless you bought the safety pack DLC which would light up when you couldn't trust the AOA sensor but not actually do anything about it) so the redundancy wasn't even there and it was dumb luck on Boeing's part that the plane didn't crash before the faulty sensor was picked up.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 7:42 PM on September 19, 2019 [2 favorites]
I thought one major aspect of this was that the 737 Max is dynamically unstable to a degree unprecedented in nonmilitary aircraft, making the fly by wire aspect critical to piloting in a way that wasn’t true in previous 737s and wasn’t made clear in training. Is this not part of the problem?
posted by q*ben at 8:15 PM on September 19, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by q*ben at 8:15 PM on September 19, 2019 [2 favorites]
This is the reason I refuse to fly anymore and I LOVE to fly.
For some perspective:
According to this list: Wikipedia Mass Shootings in the US 8 less people have been killed in mass shootings in the US so far this year than were killed by the Boeing 737 Max crashes.
2X as many pedestrians have been killed just in the US since the planes have been grounded, and we are almost to 3X.
If we put as much work, energy and thought into most anything as we do into airline crashes, we could save so many lives. The Boeing 'disaster' is a textbook case of what should be done in the face of accidents and tragedy.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:25 PM on September 19, 2019 [4 favorites]
For some perspective:
According to this list: Wikipedia Mass Shootings in the US 8 less people have been killed in mass shootings in the US so far this year than were killed by the Boeing 737 Max crashes.
2X as many pedestrians have been killed just in the US since the planes have been grounded, and we are almost to 3X.
If we put as much work, energy and thought into most anything as we do into airline crashes, we could save so many lives. The Boeing 'disaster' is a textbook case of what should be done in the face of accidents and tragedy.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:25 PM on September 19, 2019 [4 favorites]
I thought one major aspect of this was that the 737 Max is dynamically unstable to a degree unprecedented in nonmilitary aircraft, making the fly by wire aspect critical to piloting in a way that wasn’t true in previous 737s and wasn’t made clear in training. Is this not part of the problem?
Not really. The 737 MAX's center of balance was shifted with the engine being moved forwards and up and MCAS was supposed to stop the plane from going into a stall by pushing down slightly when the pilots went too far up on the angle of attack. This was in an attempt to keep the type certification so pilots wouldn't have to do dozens of hours in the sims to get certified for the new airframe. The problem was when the AOA sensor was out of whack. When the AOA sensor was out of whack it could cause the MCAS to do... things. Even if you had two AOA sensors installed, the MCAS would only use the output of one sensor so if that one was broken, MCAS would start doing stuff according to the broken sensor.
The new arrangement is to have mandatory dual AOA sensors and MCAS will disable itself if either of the sensors disagree with each other AND it will let the pilots know. At that point, pilots will have to be more careful with their trim but in all honesty, they shouldn't encounter this system because, traditionally, a commercial pilot shouldn't be anywhere near the stall margin.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 8:29 PM on September 19, 2019 [6 favorites]
Not really. The 737 MAX's center of balance was shifted with the engine being moved forwards and up and MCAS was supposed to stop the plane from going into a stall by pushing down slightly when the pilots went too far up on the angle of attack. This was in an attempt to keep the type certification so pilots wouldn't have to do dozens of hours in the sims to get certified for the new airframe. The problem was when the AOA sensor was out of whack. When the AOA sensor was out of whack it could cause the MCAS to do... things. Even if you had two AOA sensors installed, the MCAS would only use the output of one sensor so if that one was broken, MCAS would start doing stuff according to the broken sensor.
The new arrangement is to have mandatory dual AOA sensors and MCAS will disable itself if either of the sensors disagree with each other AND it will let the pilots know. At that point, pilots will have to be more careful with their trim but in all honesty, they shouldn't encounter this system because, traditionally, a commercial pilot shouldn't be anywhere near the stall margin.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 8:29 PM on September 19, 2019 [6 favorites]
I won't believe anything Boeing or the FAA says until theirs a public inquiry into the Max8 mistakes. As an engineer I take my profession's reputation seriously. Boeing gave it a black mark, but what's really ruining public trust is that AFAIK no one is getting turfed over this, and no regulator is investigating how to keep it from happening again.
posted by Popular Ethics at 8:29 PM on September 19, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by Popular Ethics at 8:29 PM on September 19, 2019 [8 favorites]
It' s making old school Boeings engineers so unhappy. They were proud of doing it right to the last detail, a whole guild-like tradition passed on at work after all the formal education, and now they can't be.
It is odd realizing that the company falling apart probably wouldn't ruin Seattle's economy any longer. We have a new master now.
posted by clew at 8:59 PM on September 19, 2019 [7 favorites]
It is odd realizing that the company falling apart probably wouldn't ruin Seattle's economy any longer. We have a new master now.
posted by clew at 8:59 PM on September 19, 2019 [7 favorites]
Why can’t Boeing just keep producing their tried-and-true planes, and attract buyers by giving them slicker interiors or driving down price by increasing manufacturing efficiency? Even if it hurts their market share, it produces safe planes and gives people good jobs. Doesn’t sound very investable, but that’s OK. Who needs investment when you’re not doing heavy R&D? Take away the deal they had with the airlines to smooth out their numbers and it’s less investable, anyway...
posted by mantecol at 9:39 PM on September 19, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by mantecol at 9:39 PM on September 19, 2019 [2 favorites]
The end to the New Republic article is a gut punch, with the testimony of Paul Njoroge:
“As an investment professional, allow me to inform Congress as to how Boeing has viewed this whole crisis.” Noting that the stock had surged from $140 four years earlier to $446 right before the crash that had killed his wife, and his son, four-year-old daughter, nine-month-old daughter, and mother-in-law, Paul Njoroge laid out the sequence of 737 MAX orders, ten-figure stock buybacks, and dividend hikes that had dealt out this horrible fate to his family.
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:51 PM on September 19, 2019 [11 favorites]
“As an investment professional, allow me to inform Congress as to how Boeing has viewed this whole crisis.” Noting that the stock had surged from $140 four years earlier to $446 right before the crash that had killed his wife, and his son, four-year-old daughter, nine-month-old daughter, and mother-in-law, Paul Njoroge laid out the sequence of 737 MAX orders, ten-figure stock buybacks, and dividend hikes that had dealt out this horrible fate to his family.
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:51 PM on September 19, 2019 [11 favorites]
Why can’t Boeing just keep producing their tried-and-true planes, and attract buyers by giving them slicker interiors or driving down price by increasing manufacturing efficiency?
Because in the markets these planes work in, the plane is effectively a write off. The single aisle narrow body planes are in the air as much as possible on domestic short haul routes, flight, turn, flight, turn, flight, their entire working lives so the most important factor, more than any other, is fuel costs per passenger mile. Carriers stick a LEAP engine in the place of a CFM-56 the fuel bill goes down 10-20%. The problem is that a LEAP engine won't fit under a regular 737 hence the MAX variant.
Also, these new planes with more fuel efficient engines fly longer distances on the same amount of fuel so you can fly new routes you couldn't before. A 737 MAX 7 will fly 3850nm, the A321neo just topping 4000nm. That's crazy for a twinjet. In the '80s you needed a jumbo to fly transatlantic. In the '90s/00s, thanks to ETOPS, we picked up the 777 wide body twinjet. Now the modern 737 and A320 variants make routine transatlantic journeys. You only need to fill 200ish seats to make a route workable compared to 300+ for a 777.
Everyone gets cheaper, more accessible, more efficient air travel with these new models. If Boeing stayed by its 737 NG it would go broke as the entire market shifts to the A320neo.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 10:28 PM on September 19, 2019 [10 favorites]
Because in the markets these planes work in, the plane is effectively a write off. The single aisle narrow body planes are in the air as much as possible on domestic short haul routes, flight, turn, flight, turn, flight, their entire working lives so the most important factor, more than any other, is fuel costs per passenger mile. Carriers stick a LEAP engine in the place of a CFM-56 the fuel bill goes down 10-20%. The problem is that a LEAP engine won't fit under a regular 737 hence the MAX variant.
Also, these new planes with more fuel efficient engines fly longer distances on the same amount of fuel so you can fly new routes you couldn't before. A 737 MAX 7 will fly 3850nm, the A321neo just topping 4000nm. That's crazy for a twinjet. In the '80s you needed a jumbo to fly transatlantic. In the '90s/00s, thanks to ETOPS, we picked up the 777 wide body twinjet. Now the modern 737 and A320 variants make routine transatlantic journeys. You only need to fill 200ish seats to make a route workable compared to 300+ for a 777.
Everyone gets cheaper, more accessible, more efficient air travel with these new models. If Boeing stayed by its 737 NG it would go broke as the entire market shifts to the A320neo.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 10:28 PM on September 19, 2019 [10 favorites]
For example, Chicago to London nonstop is 3950nm. JFK to Berlin is 3968nm. These routes open up to narrow body twinjets as you can now do them with an A321neo.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 10:34 PM on September 19, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 10:34 PM on September 19, 2019 [2 favorites]
I've also been watching some of the videos on the MAX on this Youtube channel - it's another useful perspective. Lots of other videos too, but the Boeing ones are clearly labeled.
posted by carter at 3:35 AM on September 20, 2019
posted by carter at 3:35 AM on September 20, 2019
For some perspective:
Yeah, thanks for the rational perspective that I'm already aware of, but that's not what's going on here, heh.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:29 AM on September 20, 2019
Yeah, thanks for the rational perspective that I'm already aware of, but that's not what's going on here, heh.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:29 AM on September 20, 2019
Yeah, thanks for the rational perspective that I'm already aware of, but that's not what's going on here, heh.
If it helps, if you fly Delta you can be pretty sure the plane is old enough to still have a cassette player.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:33 AM on September 20, 2019 [8 favorites]
If it helps, if you fly Delta you can be pretty sure the plane is old enough to still have a cassette player.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:33 AM on September 20, 2019 [8 favorites]
Maybe Langewiesche is right that it takes the combination of MCAS and poor pilot training to consistently crash, but he's just wrong in his conclusion that the grounding was an overreaction and that the airplane is safe. If you need more "airmanship" to fly safely, then you need to train for it, and the aircraft isn't safe until you do. The Ethiopian pilots followed the procedures they trained in, and wouldn't have known about the manual trim jamming at high speeds or how to get out of it because Boeing took that out of the manual a long time ago.
It's really sad to see Boeing go the way of GE: getting its guts scooped out by mangement until it finally collapses. It was pretty obvious when they moved the HQ from Seattle to Chicago in 2001 that they intended to manage it right into the ground, but it takes a long time for companies that big to die.
posted by netowl at 10:10 AM on September 20, 2019 [9 favorites]
It's really sad to see Boeing go the way of GE: getting its guts scooped out by mangement until it finally collapses. It was pretty obvious when they moved the HQ from Seattle to Chicago in 2001 that they intended to manage it right into the ground, but it takes a long time for companies that big to die.
posted by netowl at 10:10 AM on September 20, 2019 [9 favorites]
way too soft on Boeing's management.
Well, in fairness, they are mostly white and all rich, so punishing them is against the fundamental laws of physics. It's like you're expecting gravity to stop working or something.
posted by aramaic at 11:25 AM on September 20, 2019 [3 favorites]
Well, in fairness, they are mostly white and all rich, so punishing them is against the fundamental laws of physics. It's like you're expecting gravity to stop working or something.
posted by aramaic at 11:25 AM on September 20, 2019 [3 favorites]
No such disaster as the 737 Max has a single root cause. Which also means there were multiple opportunities to prevent it, none of which were taken advantage of.
posted by tommasz at 4:56 PM on September 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by tommasz at 4:56 PM on September 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
If Boeing knows an airline doesn't put its pilots in a position to fly its "sometimes heroic pilots must save the day!" planes, Boeing shouldn't sell that airline its damn SHPMSTD! planes.
posted by away for regrooving at 11:04 PM on September 20, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by away for regrooving at 11:04 PM on September 20, 2019 [4 favorites]
I, not being a pilot, may be less susceptible to the machismo-like inclinations of distinguishing "ace pilots" versus "crap pilots" and believe that a system that needs a pilot to disrupt a dangerous automatic maneuver is not airworthy.
Rare malfunctions that require immediate action to preserve safety are inherent to almost every nontrivial tool.
It is true that two sets of pilots failed to identify the problem and also failed to recall and apply some of the basic flying skills they must have mastered at some point to even be in a position to get "advanced" ratings long before they qualified to fly a passenger airliner. It is also true that their training since was deficient in its coverage of basic stick and rudder skills, increasing the chance of skills atrophy.
It is also true that Boeing either intentionally concealed or misjudged the safety effects of the MCAS system and its interactions with other systems to a shocking degree of incompetence. It is also true that Boeing was under considerable pressure from certain of their customers to design the MAX in a way that made it more likely that something would go wrong and to minimize the difference in training between the MAX and prior 737s.
It is also true that even if all of this was the norm, air travel would still be the safest thing we humans ever do, just by a smaller margin. At least at first. What is exceptional about this isn't any of the individual decisions anyone made or even the regulatory . friendliness. The exceptional parts are that all of them happened together, on one project and that nobody considered the systemic effects of all those compromised choices and how they changed the risk profile of the entire system.
Engineering choices about safety margin are a fact of life that will never go away and probably literally can't. Any of these were at least reasonably defensible on their own and would probably have never led to a crash, all of the factors combined added a lot of risk to the system.
If you want to get into the earliest identifiable link in the chain of causation, look at Southwest and RyanAir. Not because they were part of the group pressuring Boeing to do a bunch of things whose combination created excessive risk (which, to be clear, does not excuse Boeing for its failures in risk management, design, and other areas!), but because they bought so many 737s that it continued to evolve rather than it being the 757 that evolved to fill the space. It's not that it would have been better in principle, but because the 737s short stature was the thing that necessitated the system that malfunctioned in the first place. It's meaningless in practical terms, I just thought it was interesting/darkly amusing.
posted by wierdo at 2:56 AM on September 21, 2019
Rare malfunctions that require immediate action to preserve safety are inherent to almost every nontrivial tool.
It is true that two sets of pilots failed to identify the problem and also failed to recall and apply some of the basic flying skills they must have mastered at some point to even be in a position to get "advanced" ratings long before they qualified to fly a passenger airliner. It is also true that their training since was deficient in its coverage of basic stick and rudder skills, increasing the chance of skills atrophy.
It is also true that Boeing either intentionally concealed or misjudged the safety effects of the MCAS system and its interactions with other systems to a shocking degree of incompetence. It is also true that Boeing was under considerable pressure from certain of their customers to design the MAX in a way that made it more likely that something would go wrong and to minimize the difference in training between the MAX and prior 737s.
It is also true that even if all of this was the norm, air travel would still be the safest thing we humans ever do, just by a smaller margin. At least at first. What is exceptional about this isn't any of the individual decisions anyone made or even the regulatory . friendliness. The exceptional parts are that all of them happened together, on one project and that nobody considered the systemic effects of all those compromised choices and how they changed the risk profile of the entire system.
Engineering choices about safety margin are a fact of life that will never go away and probably literally can't. Any of these were at least reasonably defensible on their own and would probably have never led to a crash, all of the factors combined added a lot of risk to the system.
If you want to get into the earliest identifiable link in the chain of causation, look at Southwest and RyanAir. Not because they were part of the group pressuring Boeing to do a bunch of things whose combination created excessive risk (which, to be clear, does not excuse Boeing for its failures in risk management, design, and other areas!), but because they bought so many 737s that it continued to evolve rather than it being the 757 that evolved to fill the space. It's not that it would have been better in principle, but because the 737s short stature was the thing that necessitated the system that malfunctioned in the first place. It's meaningless in practical terms, I just thought it was interesting/darkly amusing.
posted by wierdo at 2:56 AM on September 21, 2019
It's a bit pedantic, but I'd also like to note that the certification issue MCAS was designed to address wasn't that the plane would nose up on its own when already at high angles of attack; that doesn't actually happen.
Regulations require that when the pilot pulls on the control column with a constant force, the rate at which the nose rises is required to remain constant or decrease as pitch increases during the maneuver. What happens in the MAX without MCAS is that the pitch rate increases (modesty) once it reaches a sufficiently large angle of attack, such that the pilot would have to relax the back pressure somewhat to maintain the same rate.
It's a subtle difference, but important for a complete understanding.
posted by wierdo at 3:45 AM on September 21, 2019 [2 favorites]
Regulations require that when the pilot pulls on the control column with a constant force, the rate at which the nose rises is required to remain constant or decrease as pitch increases during the maneuver. What happens in the MAX without MCAS is that the pitch rate increases (modesty) once it reaches a sufficiently large angle of attack, such that the pilot would have to relax the back pressure somewhat to maintain the same rate.
It's a subtle difference, but important for a complete understanding.
posted by wierdo at 3:45 AM on September 21, 2019 [2 favorites]
If you want to get into the earliest identifiable link in the chain of causation, look at Southwest and RyanAir.
9/11 killed the 757. You don't need 240 seats if your occupancy just took a massive hit and even after recovery isn't anywhere near where it used to be.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 5:34 AM on September 21, 2019
9/11 killed the 757. You don't need 240 seats if your occupancy just took a massive hit and even after recovery isn't anywhere near where it used to be.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 5:34 AM on September 21, 2019
FAA misled Congress on inspector training for Boeing 737 Max, investigators say
posted by peeedro at 6:49 PM on September 23, 2019 [2 favorites]
Investigators examining a whistleblower complaint have concluded that safety inspectors who worked on training requirements for Boeing 737 Max pilots were themselves “underqualified” — and that the Federal Aviation Administration provided misleading information about the issue to Congress.Another strike against the blame-the-pilots narrative.
The findings of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which independently investigates whistleblower complaints, have added to questions about the effectiveness and transparency of safety oversight at the FAA, which has come under scrutiny after two new 737 Max jets it had certified as safe crashed in Indonesia and Ethiopia, killing 346 people.
posted by peeedro at 6:49 PM on September 23, 2019 [2 favorites]
Managers who don't know how to do a job, but are sure they know how to manage the people doing it.
Trainers who don't know how to use a tool or program, but are certified as competent to teach others how to use it.
We've all been there, right?
posted by hank at 9:08 AM on September 25, 2019
Trainers who don't know how to use a tool or program, but are certified as competent to teach others how to use it.
We've all been there, right?
posted by hank at 9:08 AM on September 25, 2019
Another strike against the blame-the-pilots narrative.
They are in no way competing, so this framing is completely nonsensical. As with all air crashes, failures at many levels all had to align to end up with the smoking crater outcome. Boeing fucked up, the FAA fucked up, maintenance fucked up at Lion Air, and the pilots flying the planes fucked up. None of those fuck ups excuse or diminish the others, except to the extent that we can say they were one of many.
posted by wierdo at 10:38 AM on September 25, 2019
They are in no way competing, so this framing is completely nonsensical. As with all air crashes, failures at many levels all had to align to end up with the smoking crater outcome. Boeing fucked up, the FAA fucked up, maintenance fucked up at Lion Air, and the pilots flying the planes fucked up. None of those fuck ups excuse or diminish the others, except to the extent that we can say they were one of many.
posted by wierdo at 10:38 AM on September 25, 2019
This is coming in real late (I was on vacation, sue me!) but:
Yeah, they followed the checklist, and it didn't save them--because of the high speed aerodynamic force issues that they caused. They got so distracted and flustered that they ignored another important aspect of flying the plane, which actually turned out to be fatal: they weren't just going at high speed, they apparently hadn't throttled back at all since takeoff and were now going "25 knots faster than the maximum operating speed of 340 knots" causing the overspeed clacker to sound. They followed the checklist, but failed at another aspect of flying, and that's why the checklist wasn't sufficient.
The NYT article doesn't give any reason for the airspeed being so high, but the New Republic article claims the high speed was in response to another alert:
In accordance with the prescribed fix for an alert they were getting on the flight control computer, the pilots had been flying extremely fast, and above the speeds of about 265 miles per hour at which the manual trim wheel became unbearably heavy.
So was it that the pilots forgot to reduce speed, or that they felt they couldn't because of the additional alert? Should they have been able to prioritize the fix for the manual trim wheels being too heavy? Is it possible it didn't even occur to them due to chaos on the cockpit, poor training, or both?
In any case, if the "checklist" you're supposed to use to address a faulty MCAS activation doesn't include instructions to reduce airspeed so that the trim wheels can be used, then you're either relying on a certain amount of pilot training and experience to kick in (assuming that experienced pilots would know that high airspeed causes greater force on the flight surfaces), or the checklist is incomplete and wouldn't actually have prevented a fatal outcome.
posted by chrominance at 8:13 PM on October 2, 2019
Yeah, they followed the checklist, and it didn't save them--because of the high speed aerodynamic force issues that they caused. They got so distracted and flustered that they ignored another important aspect of flying the plane, which actually turned out to be fatal: they weren't just going at high speed, they apparently hadn't throttled back at all since takeoff and were now going "25 knots faster than the maximum operating speed of 340 knots" causing the overspeed clacker to sound. They followed the checklist, but failed at another aspect of flying, and that's why the checklist wasn't sufficient.
The NYT article doesn't give any reason for the airspeed being so high, but the New Republic article claims the high speed was in response to another alert:
In accordance with the prescribed fix for an alert they were getting on the flight control computer, the pilots had been flying extremely fast, and above the speeds of about 265 miles per hour at which the manual trim wheel became unbearably heavy.
So was it that the pilots forgot to reduce speed, or that they felt they couldn't because of the additional alert? Should they have been able to prioritize the fix for the manual trim wheels being too heavy? Is it possible it didn't even occur to them due to chaos on the cockpit, poor training, or both?
In any case, if the "checklist" you're supposed to use to address a faulty MCAS activation doesn't include instructions to reduce airspeed so that the trim wheels can be used, then you're either relying on a certain amount of pilot training and experience to kick in (assuming that experienced pilots would know that high airspeed causes greater force on the flight surfaces), or the checklist is incomplete and wouldn't actually have prevented a fatal outcome.
posted by chrominance at 8:13 PM on October 2, 2019
It's complicated. Management of energy and knowing how much power produces how much speed in a given configuration is one of the core skills taught from the very beginning. Having that relationship committed to reflex is essential for handling the loss of airspeed indications and a litany of other abnormal and emergency situations. The entire system is predicated on most pilots maintaining basic airmanship such as this most of the time.
However, it is well known that being startled causes the brain to discard most all input from the ears, induce tunnel vision, and otherwise work in unproductive ways. That's what checklists and memory items are for, to give the conscious brain (which, incidentally, mostly edits out its absence in later recollection) time to get back into working order. It is therefore a failure of the overall system that immediate action items had not been identified beforehand and trained effectively.
In the absence of explicit guidance, the mind tends to focus on one thing and fails to integrate information not directly related to that thing. Often, it is the wrong thing, and there are precious few opportunities to alter course in an ongoing emergency.
In short, it's a little bit of everything, as it almost always is among airlines that are in a position to operate new airliners. Nobody looks good because anyone could have interrupted the chain of causation and all were afforded the opportunity.
posted by wierdo at 3:25 PM on October 3, 2019
However, it is well known that being startled causes the brain to discard most all input from the ears, induce tunnel vision, and otherwise work in unproductive ways. That's what checklists and memory items are for, to give the conscious brain (which, incidentally, mostly edits out its absence in later recollection) time to get back into working order. It is therefore a failure of the overall system that immediate action items had not been identified beforehand and trained effectively.
In the absence of explicit guidance, the mind tends to focus on one thing and fails to integrate information not directly related to that thing. Often, it is the wrong thing, and there are precious few opportunities to alter course in an ongoing emergency.
In short, it's a little bit of everything, as it almost always is among airlines that are in a position to operate new airliners. Nobody looks good because anyone could have interrupted the chain of causation and all were afforded the opportunity.
posted by wierdo at 3:25 PM on October 3, 2019
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I, not being a pilot, may be less susceptible to the machismo-like inclinations of distinguishing "ace pilots" versus "crap pilots" and believe that a system that needs a pilot to disrupt a dangerous automatic maneuver is not airworthy.
posted by tclark at 12:24 PM on September 19, 2019 [23 favorites]