Extra pilot averted disaster on previous Boeing 737 Max 8 flight - report

[brooklynite]

Source: CNN

An off-duty pilot in the cockpit of a Boeing 737 Max 8 jet jumped in to help crew disable a malfunctioning flight-control system as it experienced difficulties in October, according to Bloomberg.

The next day, with a different crew, the same plane crashed into the sea off Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board.

On doomed Lion Air Flight 610, pilots searched in a handbook for a way to stop the plane from nosediving, according to an exclusive Reuters report.

Reuters cites the information from three people with knowledge of the contents of the cockpit voice recorder that has never been made public.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/20/asia/lion-air-third-pilot-intl/index.html

[NurseJackie]

1. Who compensates the survivors? Boeing or the airlines?

[underpants]

2. Deepest pocket

Probably Boeing.

[turbinetree]

4. They will be going after Boeing first and foremost................

and then the other chips will fall on every firm involved in the development of this aircraft.

[eggplant]

14. You sue them both, then they sue each other.

Rule #1 in law school. Never sue the poor.

[LisaM]

18. Yeesh, the airline shouldn't have put it back in the air the next day...

and Boeing obviously has culpability too, in this particular instance, I'd say they are both at fault.

[at140]

26. There were no survivors!

Do you mean families of survivors?

[NurseJackie]

28. The victims have family members collectively referred to as "survivors".

Do you mean families of survivors?

No, there were "no survivors", remember?

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

3. I wonder if maintenance was performed on relevant sensors after the first incident.

I wonder if the first incident was reported immediately, to alert someone to tend to it.

[turbinetree]

5. From my understanding on a magazine that I get, maintenance was performed on

the stall warning system, the previous day.

So if the system was checked and found to have no faults, ie .............jacking the plane and putting it in air mode configuration, placing a Rosecrans's on the stall warning vanes that is a fault, or just checking both vanes, then placing lugs on the proximity sensors on the landing gear's to make the plane think it is in flight, moving the flaps, and moving the stall warning vanes, and then pickling the stabilizer to to get stick shaker movement, and if this was not done properly, then there is a problem, but, if there was no procedure to override the MCAS, within the fault check requirement, then this can also be a problem.........................

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

7. Agree, lack of training or documentation on MCAS was a major oversight.

I was just wondering if the MCAS had been looked into after the first incident. It sounds like it got maintenance performed, so that's good. But, if the maintenance checks indicated the system was fine, then the prior incident might get written up as "just one of those things that seem to fix themselves". I always hated those when I worked on computer systems. I'm grateful that none of my computer systems had life-or-death impact if (or when) they failed.

[machoneman]

9. Say, you know more about this than most. But, can't Boeing/airlines disable the stall warning..

permanently, before each take-off, etc.? Does not the software allow a turn-off feature? I mean, if they allegedly can turn off same (I've heard) when it kicks in at the wrong time, why not all the time?

I'll guess it's not easy or possible to do.

?????

[turbinetree]

12. I am familiar with stall warning systems on numerous aircraft, they are all basically the same

that we had to perform if we got a write-up. For example prior to flight the pilots must perform a stick shaker check on the stall warning prior to departure and if and when we performed overnight maintenance we had to do a stall warning check, if it failed then the plane was a no go, you or we could not defer that check or that system failure according to the MEL requirement for safety of flight.

AS a added note:

The auto pilot is also linked to this MCAS system it has to be linked, and the pickle switches on the control column are suppose to be linked along with the autopilot, along with the throttles, stab setting, flap setting, ect...............

People are also forgetting the engines on this aircraft, they are bigger and this changes the flight characteristics of the aircraft, this is why MCAS was developed to compensate for that forward thrust to control that stall that the plane wants to do in flight especially at take-off, climb and in flight, the throttles are all linked to the autopilot, there are a lot of variables to this issue.


I do not have the answer, these are just my opinions since I have been out of the business for some time ....................but I /we did follow the maintenance procedure for a system check prior to flight, and if this was not in the procedure..................to verify MCAS, then .....................

[groundloop]

15. Just a stall WARNING wouldn't cause issues....

It's when the computer gets into the act and starts (erroneously) overriding pilot inputs that's a problem.

I have no experience with planes this big, but on the ones I flew there were two backups in case of a problem.... I could physically overpower the autopilot if it ran away, plus the autopilot could always be disabled by pulling a single circuit breaker that was right in front of me. It seems that manufacturers now have a notion that their machines are smarter than pilots and IMO that is dead wrong.

[LudwigPastorius]

25. MCAS control of stabilizer trim can be disengaged with the flip of two switches.

If a faulty sensor was sending the plane into a dive, the pilots could have regained control quickly, via those switches.

If they were unaware of this, then they weren't properly trained and shouldn't have been certified to fly that plane.

[MissB]

30. That's exactly what my brother says

He flies a 737 for a living and his client was considering a purchase of the max 8. He said they should have known how to overcome this.

[at140]

27. Looks like it was a glitch in software

which controls the autopilot functions. Maintenance is never going to be able to find that.

[Nitram]

6. I can imagining them trying to google a solution moments before crashing.

Boeing fucked this up big time. I wonder if they had hints that there was an issue before they put the plan into service. They would have calculated that subtracting a few settlements from the overall profits was worth the price.

[turbinetree]

8. WE also have to take into account, that the FAA with its lack of funding over the years, let BOEING

self inspect the product.
Because of the last twelve plus years of republican control of the FAA funding, there are not enough resources to inspect the certification process on the product, and all of the down road requirements to safety of flight.
Because the republicans wanted to privatize safety, so they started this process, and this should land squarely in there lap along with the manufacturer.

[elleng]

22. YES.

Drown them in a bathtub!

[PatSeg]

10. I'm just imagining how that off-duty pilot

must have felt when the exact same plane crashed the next day. Such mixed emotions.

This was a preventable disaster and a known issue for a long time.

[leanforward]

11. K & R

Someone here is a subject matter expert. Thank you for the funding back ground.

In the interest proper decorum, I'll talk around what type of penalty those in charge deserve.

When you are in charge and you minimize oversight this is what you get. Have the corporations cleaned up the coal ponds? Is the livestock industry discharging crystal clear water?

[Tactical Peek]

13. Boeing should change their name to Pintoing.

[End Of The Road]

16. I can't believe that Boeing stock hasn't tanked.

FWIW, I kinda think Boeing has had problems since they merged with MD. Lots of problems with the Dreamliner (I’m not sure if they even broke even on it, and now it’s out of production). Right now they’re having issues with the KC-46 tanker ( military refueler) because of assembly debris left on board. I read recently that their schedule for pushing out the MAX is so aggressive that at least one of their suppliers (Spirit, I think), can’t keep up. The quality that used to be associated with the Boeing name has hit a rough patch??

[LisaM]

19. People I know who worked there would agree with you about MD.

I know someone who was at Boeing for years, and he said the culture completely changed with the merger. It was a huge stress for him, too.

[RobinA]

21. I Have Nothing

to do with either company or the aerospace industry, but I have been on board twice (unrelated) when two large companies merged and the culture ends up in smithereens because the money men/women who do mergers have no, zero, zip, nil understanding that culture exists, what it is, that is affected by anything, or that it can kill your company. Just something the peons worry about, doncha know. Meanwhile, the people doing the actual work are trying to kill each other and the company is collateral damage. No worries, though. The big people sold their stock and are long gone before the company finally augers in.

[appleannie1943]

17. Then they kept flying the same plane.

The only thing that was changed was the crew.

[PuppyBismark]

20. Boeing, FAA, and the Air Line are at fault

It now seems to be clear if the pilots have been trained on the MCAS failures, they could have avoided the problem. This is now been shown of both crashes. That being said, Boeing clearly did not document and provide training materials on the MCAS and the FAA, being short staffed (and inadequately funded) did not review the certification well.

Likewise the Trump government shutdown delayed the fix being approved by 5 weeks, try to get Trump to pay part of the costs of the settlement.

As to the Ethiopian crash, Boeing did provide better training materials, but apparently it did not stick in the minds of their pilots when the problem happened, but again, previous pilots of the plane were able to deal with it. The Ethiopian crash never should have happened.

Also, this is not just a problem at Boeing as there were similar problems with Airbus airplanes in the past.

[CaptainTruth]

23. IMHO Boeing is in trouble on this, it's the result of conscious decisions they made.

From what I've read in pilot discussion forums & articles, Boeing didn't tell pilots that the system had been added, so pilots didn't know it was there, didn't know what it did, didn't know how to override it, & of course Boeing didn't include it in their training.

Boeing also decided to have the MCAS act based on readings from just one AoA (angle of attack) sensor, when the plane has two. One pilot pointed out that the system should have checked both sensors while the plane was on the ground prior to takeoff, when both sensors should have been reading zero, but Boeing decided not to do that. (The AoA sensor on one of the planes that crashed was reportedly 20 degrees off while the plane was taxiing, based on data from the black box, & that's the faulty sensor that caused MCAS to drive the plane into the ground after takeoff.)

All of these factors were not accidents on Boeing's part, they were conscious decisions about how the system should operate & how much they should tell pilots (or not) about it. Boeing bears a ton of responsibility in this.

[brooklynite]

24. C'mon...what Court wouldn't accept as a legal defense...

"we told them to shut the damn thing off if it doesn't work right"?

[at140]

29. Shut down the system is a universal solution to any automatic system.

For example if the cruise control begins to mal-function, the driver should quickly disengage it.