irrational fear of flying

[ron l edmiston]

-- yes sir Saab 2000..,

-- in 1970.., when i returned home.., so many assumed i was a killer of innocents, war-mongers, or even worse...
i followed orders, cried when i lost life / took life and protected my men to the best of my ability...
we were the best trained, best equipped and all wanted to return home safely ----- shit happens...

thank Jehovah for the medevac chopper pilots...

we were not stupid idiots or killers "we were soldiers.."

ronnie

[jclay]

Well said Jorn, and I am in agreement.

[vertical_doug]

Apologies for any misstatements I have made.
I appreciate your response Saab and know that this hits home for you.

I'm just a guy who gets on the plane and hopes to get off afterward.
It is compelling reading to see the info come out afterward and see the flight lines of these 2 crashes and not connect them.

Bigger picture though is that it seems apparent that additional pilot training should be expected to fly this new plane.
Details will no doubt come out at some point about the actions of the pilots in both crashes.
And note that several USA pilots made comments on the issue on the anonymous board that can be used to make observations about flight anomalies.
Boeing did expect a software update by the end of 2018... to address this issue? Seems like it.

On the USA and it's acting FAA finally grounding the planes ( not the ones that were flying at the time* They had to land before they were grounded. WTF?* ).
It would make interesting reading to see how many ticket holders were refusing to get onto these planes at that point.


* trump comment.

Flawed analysis, failed oversight: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system | The Seattle Times

out of the Seattle Times. The article was largely written before the Ethiopian crash
1. FAA has over-delegated(abdicated) certification duties to manufacturers
2. MCAS was massively misrepresented by BA to FAA

[jclay]

Flawed analysis, failed oversight: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system | The Seattle Times

out of the Seattle Times. The article was largely written before the Ethiopian crash
1. FAA has over-delegated(abdicated) certification duties to manufacturers
2. MCAS was massively misrepresented by BA to FAA

This country has spent decades building effective regulatory frameworks and cultures, across all areas of human endeavour, to make life better for people. In the USA and other Western countries the results make it look easy; so easy that folks who aren't very astute or inquisitive think it is easy, and that it, which ever "it" we're talking about (clean water, reliable air transport, public health), just spontaneously happened....or at the more egregious end of the spectrum it happened in spite of government, hence the acquaintance of mine opining that having a dedicated Secretary of the FAA isn't really important and that the job isn't difficult.

Regulating aviation and keeping airplanes from falling out of the sky isn't easy. But we're good at it. And like anybody who's really good as something we make it look easy. But since the days of Reagan many have been chipping away at the foundations of our regulatory bodies and impugning the very notion of their necessity. I haven't read the article but I don't need to, to realize that there are too many foxes guarding the regulatory hen houses (FAA, EPA, DOE, you name it) and that, once you get into the upper floors of regulated corporations, money makes misrepresentation of "stuff" happen. Even in the aircraft industry. Nobody wanted to make Alaska 261 happen but it did; and it was about money and maybe an FAA that wasn't quite as sceptical of extending elevator jackscrew service intervals as it should have been.

If this country keeps electing people like Trump, if the population doesn't reject the notion that govt is inherently bad, and reject the divisiveness that he and his ilk foster, we'll see more of this sort of thing. We already are.

[SteveP]

This Boeing thing gets more bizarre by the day.
Check this out.

Off-duty pilot who hitched a ride saved Lion Air 737 day before deadly crash - The Boston Globe

and, despite this the plane was still in use the next day.
Jayssus, heads need to roll on this fiasco.

[BBB]

Gets worse:

Lion Air pilots were looking at handbook when plane crashed | World news | The Guardian

[rwsaunders]

On a positive note, my wife and I are headed to Europe next weekend and we are on the top deck of an Airbus A380...the Airbus model that was just discontinued. I am really looking forward to the flight as I've never been in such a beast and I've never walked up and down stairs in an aircraft.

Transport designer Paul Priestman on designing the Airbus A38 interior

Reasons why the Airbus A38 failed - SlashGear

[BBB]

A380s are great planes. Customers love them, the airline's bean counters do not!

[Scott G.]

A380s are great planes. Customers love them, the airline's bean counters do not!

A380-800 is overweight, the popular model was intended to be the never built larger A380-900
Wings and landing gear are sized for the larger a/c. Didn't help the fuel consumption.

[bcm119]

This Boeing thing gets more bizarre by the day.
Check this out.

Off-duty pilot who hitched a ride saved Lion Air 737 day before deadly crash - The Boston Globe

and, despite this the plane was still in use the next day.
Jayssus, heads need to roll on this fiasco.

"The so-called dead-head pilot on the earlier flight from Bali..." What does this mean? Was he wearing tie-dye?

[randonneur]

"The so-called dead-head pilot on the earlier flight from Bali..." What does this mean? Was he wearing tie-dye?

Deadheading is when crew fly between working assignments, to get to and from shifts.

[busdriver1959]

Here's my two cents on the Lion Air crash. First of all, don't draw conclusions from media reports being circulated. Google "lion air preliminary report" and draw your conclusions from facts. Look at the graphs of the trimming being done by the airplane and the crew. Count how many times the crew countered the airplane's nose down trim. Because there were times when the crew stopped and started trimmimg very quickly, different people will come up with different counts but I counted 37 times. That's too many. The crew needed to accomplish the required memory items for runaway trim. Did the crew need to know which system was causing the runaway trim? Nope. Runaway trim is runaway trim. There are a number of potential causes but the response is always the same. Memory items for runaway trim. Saab can tell us what they are for the 73. In my airplane it's "Stab trim cutout switches-cutout. Don't exceed current airspeed." Probably not much different in the 73. Memory items must be known cold and accomplished immediately. A crew that can't recall memory items isn't qualified to fly that airplane.
The other problem was unreliable airspeed. We have a sticker on the yoke with the proper steps. I've heard that these are memory items on the 73. Again, Saab can tell us more. Accomplishing these items will bring the crew to a point where the airplane is stabilized and the crew can think again and then do the unreliable airspeed checklist. All the while, the stick shaker is going off telling the crew they are close to stall speed (actually, stall angle of attack). That's got to be very unnerving when it's unexpected but the same thing happened on the previous flight with a different crew. Did they not stop to consider that it might happen again?
This is a difficult situation but it's not impossible to survive, as proven by the three previous crews that encountered this problem on this airframe.
The 73 max isn't perfect but it didn't kill those people. I hate that the end conclusion for almost every crash is pilot error but this one sure points that way. When the crew doesn't even try to do the proper procedures for the problems they encounter, it's hard for me to see it any other way.

[SteveP]

Earl,
I appreciate your comments on this and I understand that, as a pilot, you know far more about this than I ever will.
Would it not have made sense to require pilots flying this plane to have specific training in this system*?
Pretty clearly these pilots were panicked ( 37 times trying to correct ) and all the while unable to control the plane?
Somewhere in all this I remember from the first episode to unrecoverable descent was only 40 seconds?

And maybe the " safety equipment " that Boeing made optional would have helped these pilots if they just used the i-pad model update that I understand that they were given?

* this was a new system, unlike the "standard" one used in prior models, correct I believe?

For a simple guy looking on this is a disaster for Boeing, the FAA and the airlines that have bought these planes.
It will be a long time before travelers will comfortably get onto one of these "software updated" planes.

[Tom]

I'm familiar with running fast complex technical systems and it resonates with me that you can't automate everything, when it goes sideways it comes down to human preparation - and predisposition. Some people can pull up the memory items no problem and some people can't. But the system to put them in that position more often is an issue. I'd have easily gotten on one of those planes before a fix, even more so after. But Boeing needs to learn from it and not have a series of coincidental problems again. I'm having a tough time connecting it other than it's the new model which may just be enough.

[busdriver1959]

Earl,
I appreciate your comments on this and I understand that, as a pilot, you know far more about this than I ever will.
Would it not have made sense to require pilots flying this plane to have specific training in this system*?
Pretty clearly these pilots were panicked ( 37 times trying to correct ) and all the while unable to control the plane?
Somewhere in all this I remember from the first episode to unrecoverable descent was only 40 seconds?

And maybe the " safety equipment " that Boeing made optional would have helped these pilots if they just used the i-pad model update that I understand that they were given?

* this was a new system, unlike the "standard" one used in prior models, correct I believe?

For a simple guy looking on this is a disaster for Boeing, the FAA and the airlines that have bought these planes.
It will be a long time before travelers will comfortably get onto one of these "software updated" planes.

Steve, I've been scratching my head about the "40 seconds til you die" test results. The articles I can find are short on details but they seem to say that everybody will die in 40 seconds when faced with this emergency unless they place the stab trim cutout switches to cutout. The reality is, the Lion Air flight flew for 11 minutes this way. The Etheopian flight flew for 6 minutes but, until the preliminary report comes out, we don't know what actions they took. Since there are no problems I've seen with the stab trim cutout switches functioning properly, I'm going to assume that they didn't use them. There's either a problem with that test or a problem with the writers' interpretation of the test.
Back to the memory items. In the Air Force, they were called, as a group, "boldface". My company calls them "Phase Ones". They MUST be memorized along with a collection of operational limits. Typically, when training on a new airplane, the first step a pilot takes is to memorize phase ones and ops limits. If a pilot can't memorize and recall phase ones under pressure, they can't fly that plane. There's no wiggle room. You're not a pilot if you can't do phase ones.
On the flight prior to the fatal Lion Air flight, the crew didn't do the phase ones until prompted by the jumpseater from another airline. We don't know how long that took so I can't comment on just how bad it was but the phase ones needed to be initiated by the crew, not the jumpseater. On the fatal flight, they never did the phase ones. That's simply an unacceptable level of performance. I don't know any other way to phrase it.
There is a very real "startle factor" that must be considered and the crew must collect themselves and figure out what is happening. The time allowance for that is well short of 11 minutes.
The media is making a big deal out of the fact that the manuals don't describe the MCAS well enough. That doesn't matter. When the trim starts running and the crew didn't ask it to, that's runaway trim. There are a number of potential causes for runaway trim, MCAS only adds one to the list. The proper response to any runaway trim event is to do the memory items. The crew doesn't care what caused it. That's what maintenance will find out after the plane is safely on the ground. If you're riding in the back of an airplane and the oxygen masks suddenly drop, are you going to ask the flight attendant how the pressurization system works before you put the mask on?
This AOA vane malfunctioned and caused problems on the previous flight. It should have been written up in the maintenance logbook that the flightcrew reviewed before the flight. The crew should have talked about the possibility that it could happen again. It'll be interesting to see what they discussed during preflight.
Boeing can't design a plane that will overcome that level of performance. No manufacturer can.

[Saab2000]

Ethiopian Airlines Pilots Initially Followed Boeing’s Required Emergency Steps to Disable 737 MAX System - WSJ

Just to add to this, it appears the crew may have followed Boeing procedures regarding trim issues. Again, we must wait for the real report but the WSJ is at least a reputable publication. Let’s see where the facts lead.

[SteveP]

Thanks for the replies from actual pilots.
We will see how it all turns out.

[monadnocky]

Thanks for the replies from actual pilots.
We will see how it all turns out.

+1. Appreciate the input from people who actually know what they are talking about. Means more for me - and a lot of us, I'm guessing - than a lot of preliminary (semi-sensationalist, perhaps) stuff in the media.

[thollandpe]

Question about MCAS, are there other planes that have used software to address a stability issue?

If I understand it correctly, the original 737 was designed around the long, narrow JT8D engines with cigar-like nacelles. When they stretched it and re-engined it with the higher-bypass, larger-diameter CFM56, they had to move the gearbox off the bottom of the engine for ground clearance, which gave the nacelles that distinctive flat-bottomed shape.

On the MAX, with still higher bypass and larger diameter engines, they had to move them even farther forward. Now those flat-bottomed nacelles decrease stability at high angles of attack by generating lift that's well ahead of the center of gravity. Addressed by the MCAS software.

Has there ever been another airliner with a stability issue like this, that was compensated for by software? I thought the F-16 was the first aircraft ever purposely designed with "relaxed" stability.

TH

[Saab2000]

Question about MCAS, are there other planes that have used software to address a stability issue?

Yes.

Pretty much every airplane you can imagine since about 1970.

Think 777s or 787s or Airbus of all models are flown with cables and pulleys? Think again.