irrational fear of flying

[SteveP]

Will be interesting when the report finally arrives.
I suspect it will be quite awhile before these planes fly again and it will be a really long time before customers stop asking
" What plane is this flight on?"

I usually looked up what plane I was going to flew on as a curiosity ... Now the question will have more impact on actually choosing a flight.
A huge jam for the airlines that were flying them I assume as well as the airlines in the queue to purchase.

[Saab2000]

“Human factors” is one of the most crucial components of a safe operation. These pilots went from the “green” to the “red” instantly and were dealing with an issue that nobody really understood with a system Boeing didn’t train. It’s not hard to see that they could succumb to severe tunnel vision due to task saturation and extreme stress. Any pilot who says they never made a mistake that could have led to someplace bad is lying.

The goal now should be to learn all that happened, resolve the hardware and software issues, train everyone and make sure that this doesn’t happen again.

Blaming crews who experienced extreme stress dealing with a critical flight control problem at low altitude is too easy in my opinion. We all hope we would do better but until confronted with this kind of situation there’s no guarantee any of us would have done better in identical circumstances.

Just my $.02 and this $.02 is worth what it cost you.

[busdriver1959]

“Human factors” is one of the most crucial components of a safe operation. These pilots went from the “green” to the “red” instantly and were dealing with an issue that nobody really understood with a system Boeing didn’t train. It’s not hard to see that they could succumb to severe tunnel vision due to task saturation and extreme stress. Any pilot who says they never made a mistake that could have led to someplace bad is lying.

The goal now should be to learn all that happened, resolve the hardware and software issues, train everyone and make sure that this doesn’t happen again.

Blaming crews who experienced extreme stress dealing with a critical flight control problem at low altitude is too easy in my opinion. We all hope we would do better but until confronted with this kind of situation there’s no guarantee any of us would have done better in identical circumstances.

Just my $.02 and this $.02 is worth what it cost you.

Saab,
Your point about the extreme stress and tunnel vision is a good one. We tend practice stuff in the sim only after a good briefing. When in the real world would you get the chance to prebrief the impending emergency? The Lion Air guys had that chance. It'll be interesting to see if they bothered to review the maintenance log before the flight. I wonder because the previous flight had the same problem. As you know, a good writeup would include the problem and the actions taken to resolve it. At one point, the Lion Air captain had the flight manual out trying to figure out what to do. They should have read the answer right before the flight. That, by the way, would have been a good time to discuss what to do if the problem repeats again. There were three previous writeups on this airplane but all three might not have been in the maintenance log. The previous flight had to be there though.
The Ethiopian crew should have read about and thought about the symptoms and required actions if they saw this problem. Given the amound of press and the communications from Boeing, it shouldn't have been much of a surprise by the time they saw it.
The performance by both of these crews, and the crew on the previous Lion Air flight is below acceptable. Again, Boeing screwed up but they didn't kill anybody.

[Saab2000]

We haven't seen the logbook writeup nor the corrective action from the writeup. At least I haven't. It would be a valid starting point for that investigation. I have read accident reports and they tend to be incredibly thorough, so I'm sure this angle will not be ignored.

I guess my point is that airplanes are operated by fallible humans. Our job is to learn from and try to not repeat the mistakes of others. Believe me, this issue and a review of the trim system was front and center in the memos that came out after the Lion Air accident. Obviously with all the MAX aircraft now grounded, all we can do is wait and see what Boeing and the regulatory agencies decide is appropriate. This is clearly an existential issue at my carrier, which operates hundreds of 737s and has hundreds of MAX8s on order. I have enjoyed flying it and probably have close to 100 hours in the variant. It's a nice machine and tragic that these accidents have stained a previously good rollout.

I know you are in the training department of your carrier. I have never been an instructor or check airman. Just a workaday driver and hope to learn from others, be a good employee and coworker and have a boring and uneventful career. If I can retire anonymously it will have been a very good career.

[rwsaunders]

We had some weather issues (high winds at both high and low altitudes according to our captain) flying home yesterday and JFK had a little backup on the ground. I snapped the pic on approach and in between bumps.

[SteveP]

ouch.
windy as anything here these days also

[BBB]

Great photo! I would not want to be sitting in that Cathay Pacific plane at the end of the long queue.

The A380 really is a massive plane!

[Saab2000]

Here is a video demonstrating a runaway pitch trim in a 737-800. It’s not the same as the MAX8 but it’s close and illustrates what it’s like when the pitch trim goes awry, especially at high speed.

This is in a simulator so they’re not dealing the the same stress here that one would encounter in a real situation.

This YouTuber is a pilot with a European airline (Ryanair, I think) and posts pretty nice videos explaining the job in layman’s terms. I like what he does and his dog is a frequent visitor in his videos as well. He’s serious but fun too.

He mentions this isn’t in relation to other aircraft but what he experiences in the simulation isn’t so different from what we think happened in the MAX8 accidents. Operationally they are nearly identical. The physical forces on the yoke can almost be too much. Also illustrated are the trim wheels and the fold-out lever we have mentioned in past posts.

[SteveP]

interesting piece Saab.
MAybe they just couldnt control the stabilizer...
knew what to do but simply couldn't do it.

[monadnocky]

I'm a big fanboy of that youtube channel (Mentour Pilot) - not only for his explanation of the industry as well as details of piloting, but for his dogs as well.

[j44ke]

I'm not sure what to do with this article. Obviously something is going on here that appears at least to increase risks if not creating conditions for actual accidents and to diminish customer satisfaction with newly built airplanes delivered off the assembly line. At the same time, there is this quote:

All factories deal with manufacturing errors, and there is no evidence that the problems in South Carolina have led to any major safety incidents. The Dreamliner has never crashed, although the fleet was briefly grounded after a battery fire. Airlines, too, have confidence in the Dreamliner.

And then there is this:

In 2014, factory employees were told to watch a video from the chief executive of Qatar Airways.

He chastised the North Charleston workers, saying he was upset that Boeing wasn’t being transparent about the length or cause of delays. In several instances, workers had damaged the exterior of planes made for the airline, requiring Boeing to push back delivery to fix the jets.

Ever since, Qatar has bought only Dreamliners built in Everett.

In a statement, Qatar Airways said it “continues to be a long-term supporter of Boeing and has full confidence in all its aircraft and manufacturing facilities.”

Just seems like there are ways a corporation works that marketing and messaging and managing and buying and selling get way too emulsified with the process of production, and that the best intentions of a company to maintain quality in a product can get subsumed by mythology very very quickly. I'd say when reporting a problem by the people whose job it is to find and report problems starts to read to management like willful trouble making or creating intentional logjams, then a company has at least begun to lose their way.

Also incredible how many corporations preach transparency and yet that is exactly the thing that terrifies them the most and they devote significant manpower to prevent from ever actually occurring. As such, I am not sure Boeing is any different than any other corporation. However, when they fail, lots of people die in a single event.

[rwsaunders]

Freddie Mercury once worked as a baggage handler for BOAC...tough job...especially on days like today.

[rwsaunders]

Breaking the sound barrier somewhere over the rainbow.

[SteveP]

Continuing the 737 Max saga.
This is another ugly chapter... These are American Airline pilots. This is well before the 2nd crash.

Before Ethiopian Crash, Boeing Resisted Pilots’ Calls for Aggressive Steps on 737 Max - The New York Times

[jclay]

Continuing the 737 Max saga.
This is another ugly chapter... These are American Airline pilots. This is well before the 2nd crash.

Before Ethiopian Crash, Boeing Resisted Pilots’ Calls for Aggressive Steps on 737 Max - The New York Times

This is what happens when you start to hollow out regulatory agencies by reducing budgets, heading them up with former captains of the regulated industries and increasingly allow self certification and policing (which the FAA and other agencies have been doing to an increasing degree over the decades and is only accelerating under Trump). We can thank Ronald Reagan for starting the ball rolling by popularizing the notion that “government isn't the solution, it's the problem” rather than instilling the necessity for good, effective government, which in an advanced country won't be small or cheap, in the citizenry. We can also thank Clinton and his Third Way for failing to reverse the deregulatory trend and for making the final touches necessary to set up the economy to implode in 2007 (Glass Steagal repeal). Having voters who don't know the lessons of history, who don't care to be a little bit circumspect and who are far more wed to tribal ideology than becoming adequately familiar with issues doesn't help either.

[rwsaunders]

Hey, is that a volcano out there?

[SteveP]

continuing saga...
Boeing looks worse every time new information comes out.

Boeing Built Deadly Assumptions Into 737 Max, Blind to a Late Design Change - The New York Times

[thollandpe]

continuing saga...
Boeing looks worse every time new information comes out.

Boeing Built Deadly Assumptions Into 737 Max, Blind to a Late Design Change - The New York Times

Wow.

The automated system (MCAS) went from relying on two sensors to only one. One that can be damaged by a bird strike or ground operations. One that had been damaged at least 38 times on other 737's.

Then Boeing expanded its envelope of potential actuation, from high speed only into low speed flight.

Boeing also increased the system's power, how fast it can move the control surface, by more than a factor of four.

And then Boeing asked to remove any mention of MCAS from the pilot's manual, to save on training expense, and the FAA complied.

Wow.

[Matthew Strongin]

Wow.

The automated system (MCAS) went from relying on two sensors to only one. One that can be damaged by a bird strike or ground operations. One that had been damaged at least 38 times on other 737's.

Then Boeing expanded its envelope of potential actuation, from high speed only into low speed flight.

Boeing also increased the system's power, how fast it can move the control surface, by more than a factor of four.

And then Boeing asked to remove any mention of MCAS from the pilot's manual, to save on training expense, and the FAA complied.

Wow.

On the one hand, it's hard to fathom. On the other hand, working in web engineering at a large company, I can totally see how this happened. Only the consequences here are literally life and death.

[monadnocky]

This whole sad saga has changed my opinion about one of the few corporations I had any modicum of respect for. Methinks this will end in criminal prosecution.