[Jeroen]

Here is an interesting approach from Southwest to the 737 Max issues:
The short story is: Southwest believes their pilots are well trained and experienced to handle a runaway stabiliser scenario. No additional simulator training is required.

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/ar...-south-457706/

Southwest Airlines does not expect its pilots to undergo simulator training as part of a process to return the Boeing 737 Max to service, as the carrier stresses its aviators are well-equipped to handle a problem that has emerged as a common link between two fatal crashes of the aircraft type.

"We are not hearing that will be a requirement," chief executive Gary Kelly told analysts on an earnings call on 25 April, in response to questions on whether pilots will have to undergo simulator training ahead of the aircraft's return to service.

Kelly says these indications were drawn from discussions the airline has had with several parties, including its pilots union, the US Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing. He stresses that the pilots of Southwest, the largest 737 operator in the world, are "extensively trained".
"Managing the aircraft in a runaway stabiliser scenario is something that we've already covered," says Kelly, saying the airline is "the most experienced 737 operator in the world". Investigations into two crashes of the 737 Max 8 have centered on an aircraft system that might have activated the aircraft stabiliser to push the nose down into a dive.

Training for 737 pilots transitioning to the 737 Max has emerged as a point of discussion in the scrutiny cast upon Boeing's newest narrowbody following two fatal crashes. Southwest's pilot union had criticised Boeing for not informing operators about the system, the manoeuvring characteristics augmentation system (MCAS), which the union called "ill-designed".

The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA) says it is awaiting the proposed training programme for the software update. "Once we see the final training product from Boeing, we will decide if more training should be given to SWAPA pilots in conjunction with the company. If we and the company disagree, we will do what we think is best for our passengers and the flying public," says SWAPA's president Jon Weaks.

[V.Narayan]

Boeing's Chairman/CEO took home $23 million and change last year. What do you think - should the top 20 executives and board of directors be asked to refund a substantial part of their remuneration.

Should the top management from Chairman down to the senior leadership of the Boeing 737 division be asked to go home? Should the same leadership that at least in part created the 737 situation be the one trying to solve it? I realize these are provocative questions with no easy answers.

My own personal experience albeit on a very much smaller scale is that the financial investor bean counters do not understand the first word of flight safety and the million pieces of engineering, training, certification, et al that goes to make it all work together and I do believe the pressure to keep beating analyst estimates of quarterly results was a very strong influencer to put that 737MAX out there into the sky by short circuiting at least some of the checks and balances that the technical teams follow. The 737 was built in three broad families the original -100 and -200. Those of you who remember Indian Airlines flew the -200. Then came the Classic series with bigger turbofans. And then the NG series, or New Generation which are what you see today with Jet Airways, Spicejet and Air India Express. All three families were/are superlative in design, reliability and common sense and a joy to work with. Alas with the MAX all this has been shaken up. The MAX will get back to service of that I am sure but it will take quite a while before passengers get back their confidence.

[Hayek]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Southwest believes their pilots are well trained and experienced to handle a runaway stabiliser scenario. No additional simulator training is required.

But isn’t that what Southwest has to say? Think about it - unlike any other airline, Southwest is an exclusive 737 operator. It needs its passengers, crew and regulators to believe that the Max is safe, that it is perfectly interoperable with the 737 NG and Classic, and that the changes that Boeing is making are only needed to help “incompetent third world pilots”. Else it would hurt Southwest’s economics enormously - it probably has more at stake on the Max than anyone other than Boeing. So I would take anything Southwest says with a pinch of salt. Agree that we should wait for the final reports - I am reasonably confident that non FAA regulators won’t let the Max fly without being 100% certain it is safe. The interesting thing will be if the FAA lets the Max fly and other regulators disagree. We will probably learn about the errors that the pilots committed when the enquiry reports on Lion Air and Ethiopian come out.

[the_skyliner]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Here is an interesting approach from Southwest to the 737 Max issues:
The short story is: Southwest believes their pilots are well trained and experienced to handle a runaway stabiliser scenario. No additional simulator training is required.

I am quite surprised by SW's eagerness and proactiveness in declaring that they don't need additional training. Most airliners would be extra cautious before taking such a decision especially when Max issue is still on heat.

I guess they just want to get out of this Max issue as fast as Boeing to get the fleet back in air.

[Sutripta]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Boeing's Chairman/CEO took home $23 million and change last year. What do you think - should the top 20 executives and board of directors be asked to refund a substantial part of their remuneration.

How about nn number of take off and landings a year in the 737Max on randomly chosen flights from all over the world. Skin (literally) in the game!

Should the top management from Chairman down to the senior leadership of the Boeing 737 division be asked to go home? Should the same leadership that at least in part created the 737 situation be the one trying to solve it? I realize these are provocative questions with no easy answers.

I don't think this requires any deep thinking. Solve first.
Then accountability will be determined. (But an 'easy' solution from the same teams will put them in the same quandary as the FAA - what were you doing the first time around).

My own personal experience albeit on a very much smaller scale is that the financial investor bean counters do not understand the first word of flight safety and the million pieces of engineering, training, certification, et al that goes to make it all work together and I do believe the pressure to keep beating analyst estimates of quarterly results was a very strong influencer to put that 737MAX out there into the sky by short circuiting at least some of the checks and balances that the technical teams follow.

Going by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Muilenburg , should have been more Bob Lutz than Roger Smith. Unless he had a midlife heart transplant.

Originally Posted by Jeroen

There are potential similarities: Systems break down, pilots can’t recover. Both cases had equipment failing, putting the plane in a situation that nobody had anticipated, manual flying under emergency conditions. From a piloting skill, RCM very similar aspects come into play.

Once we understand in more detail why the Lion Air and Ethopian crews could not recover, we might find it is very similar to the AF situation.

Similarities, if any, will be found at levels of abstraction several levels higher than what should be immediately looked at in case of the 737Maxs.

I was more surprised about how much of the certification was left to Boeing, then theis design shortfall. Design have been wrong before. Certification is not a 100% guarantee that design shortfalls get caught either. But again it is a layer of safety.

A regulator gets its power from its mandate.
It gets its strength from the trust all the stakeholders it affects have in it. Mainly competence and fairness.

I am not saying that the regulator - regulated relationship should be adversarial, but a degree of cynicism/ skepticism, a trust but verify attitude is a job requirement for the regulator. Being BFF with the regulated is just perverse.
But this is common enough the world over. Common enough to have a term for it - Regulatory Capture.

The FAA is in a spot with no easy solutions.
What it needs to gain back trust is also going to keep the planes grounded for a long time. Even more important from a bureaucrat's PoV is that such action makes them vulnerable to claims that they willingly and knowingly shied away from their duties the first time around. That would be an existential crisis for them.

So the FAA will ensure that it is seen as pulling all the stops on this one.

To me a fair (as opposed to - they put us in this position. Lets teach them a lesson) 'all the stops' means for certification/ recertification
a) Treat the 737 Max as a new airframe because its inherent flying characteristics are different from the previous members of the family
b) And because two have crashed, everything (and I mean everything) should be checked with almost paranoid eyes

If this is followed, the 737 Max is not going to fly anytime soon.

In the end the 737Max will fly again, I am in no doubts about that.

The question becomes one of when. And the associated commercial losses, and thus pressures. Money normally trumps morality.

I am interested to see the full/final investigation reports of both accidents. My concern is that this whole Boeing problem is drawing away attention from other, extremely relevant factors in these accidents. Why bother looking into the maintenance / piloting skills if we know Boeing made a design error, and the FAA effectively approved it, as they effectively handed over certification to the same said Boeing? Big thing, but not the only thing that needs due attention

Sure. There is likely to be enough blame to go around (Almost always is. Since accidents are normally the result of a series of errors, one cumulating/ compounding the other). At which point 'Blame the Victim' (a time honoured, time proven defense strategy) becomes frighteningly effective. Letting others get off almost scott free.

Regards
Sutripta

[Hayek]

Originally Posted by Sutripta

How about nn number of take off and landings a year in the 737Max on randomly chosen flights from all over the world. Skin (literally) in the game!

Unless nn is very high, those are odds I would take. About 340 737 Max 8s were making about 8600 flights per week at the peak - viz about 3.6 flights per plane per day. Given the product is about 2 years old, that works out to almost half a million 737 Max 8 flights of which 2 have crashed. Assuming each flight lasted a 1000 miles, we have 2 fatalities per 500 million miles travelled or 0.4 fatalities per 100 million miles.

The executives take a similar risk driving to work every day (0.47 fatalities per 100 million miles)

Just looked up this data and found it shocking - the Max 8 is as dangerous as driving and about 400x as dangerous as the average commercial flight (odds of fatalities are 0.001 per 100 million miles)

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by Sutripta

Sure. There is likely to be enough blame to go around (Almost always is. Since accidents are normally the result of a series of errors, one cumulating/ compounding the other). At which point 'Blame the Victim' (a time honoured, time proven defense strategy) becomes frighteningly effective. Letting others get off almost scott free.

An accident report is supposed to be unbiased, just stating as factual as can be, based on the analysis of our data/sources what happened. It does not put blame, although it does come up with what the main reasons of the accident where and lists various improvement advises for different parties involved.

Who to blame, or rather how much blame one party gets versus to other party is often a matter of interpretation. We have seen politics (national/company/stakeholder) involved in that many times before.

Think the biggest aviation disaster to date in terms of casualties. KLM/Panam Teneriffe accident in 1977. The three different national authorities involved (USA, the Netherlands, Spain) never fully agreed on on who was the most to blame.

(The KLM crew mostly in my opinion).

But at least the accident report provides (or should) all the details, so everybody can make up their own mind.

Jeroen

[desertfox]

Runaway trim situations can be faced on Boeing 737 NG and older versions too. In each case the procedure is the same. Cut out tri stab switches. Disconnect Auto Pilot. Put the nose down. Increase speed. Correct flaps and then climb normally.
Installing this enhanced nose down protocol MCAS did cause some problems but once corrected - which has been done software and logic processing wise, the Boeing 737 MAX will be a perfectly safe aircraft to fly.

I agree that Boeing should have made pre conversion 737 MAX smltr. training mandatory. Rather they should have strictly recommended it.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by desertfox

.

I agree that Boeing should have made pre conversion 737 MAX smltr. training mandatory. Rather they should have strictly recommended it.

What kind of mandatory conversion simulator training do you recommend. It was and remains a runaway trim problem.
I don't think Boeing is changing the NCC. If a crew could not handle a runaway trim before, they wont be able to handle it now either. With or without MCAS, irrespective of software version.

Runaway trim is a something that does get trained for already. So what will this new MCAS software do that needs different and or additional simulator training?

Jeroen

[Sutripta]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Who to blame, or rather how much blame one party gets versus to other party is often a matter of interpretation.

Crux of the matter. (After solving the problems of course)
And in recent years we have had a crash course in how already present biases work in accepting/ rejecting information. (Some experience on this forum since it also applies to the making of fanboys and bashers, a forum no no).

Yesterday was apparently 'World pilots day'. Newly constituted (only a few years old).

Would like to know if the 737 Max simulator has a setting for faulty AoA sensor.

Hope the accident report dwells on how the design landed up using readings from a single AoA sensor only. This keeps on puzzling me. If true.
A blog said that the right side computer used reading from only the right side sensor, and similarly for the left side.
I thought typical systems on an aircraft were triplicated. So what happened to the 'middle' computer.

Regards
Sutripta


Regards
Sutripta

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by Sutripta

Hope the accident report dwells on how the design landed up using readings from a single AoA sensor only. This keeps on puzzling me. If true.
A blog said that the right side computer used reading from only the right side sensor, and similarly for the left side.
I thought typical systems on an aircraft were triplicated. So what happened to the 'middle' computer.

Yes, the MCAS received input from only one sensor. It did alternate between sensor after each flight.

The answer as to why is to be found in this article:

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/26/p...rts/index.html

Quote:

In a statement, the FAA defended its certification process.
"Safety is FAA's top priority, and we have a longstanding well-established aircraft certification process that has consistently produced safe aircraft," the FAA statement to CNN said. "When certifying an aircraft, we do not consider a single factor in isolation. Rather, we look at the interaction of all elements and systems, in addition to human and other external factors.
"The single angle of attack sensor was considered in relation to a variety of other factors, specifically well-known pilot procedures that would mitigate the effects of a failure. MCAS design, certification tests, and cockpit procedures were evaluated using a standard industry approach to failure analysis.

In plain English, the pilots should have been able to deal with it, no problem.

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

For those wanting to deep dive into the cutout switches of the 737 MAX, including some actual diagram from the Boeing manuals have a look at this link: As usual from the AV lots of detailled information on various aspects of the MCAS system, design, and its operation. Worth reading!

http://avherald.com/h?article=4c534c4a/0045&opt=0

Also, interesting piece:

Quote:

On Apr 11th 2019 The Aviation Herald received a full copy of the Flight Operations Manual (FOM), Revision 18B released on Nov 30th 2018, which is currently being used by Ethiopian Airlines (verified in April 2019 to be current). Although Boeing had issued an operator's bulletin on Nov 6th 2018, which was put into Emergency Airworthiness Directive 2018-23-51 dated Nov 7th 2018 requiring the stab trim runaway procedure to be incorporated into the FOM ahead of the sign off of this version of the FOM (the entire document is on file but not available for publishing), there is no trace of such an addition in the entire 699 pages of the FOM.

Quite the opposite, in section 2.6 of the FOM "Operational Irregularities" the last revision is provided as Revision 18 dated "Nov 1st 2017".

According to information The Aviation Herald had received in March 2019, the Airline Management needed to be reminded to distribute the Boeing Operator's Bulletin as well as the EAD to their pilots, eventually the documents were distributed to the flight crew. However, it was never verified, whether those documents had arrived, were read or had been understood. No deeper explanation of the MCAS, mentioned but not explained in both documents, was offered.

It turned out, that only very cursory knowledge about the stab trim runaway procedure exists amongst the flight crew of Ethiopian Airlines even 5 months after the EAD was distributed. In particular, none of the conditions suggesting an MCAS related stab trim runaway was known with any degree of certainty. In that context the recommendation by the accident flight's first officer to use the TRIM CUTOUT switches suggests, that he was partially aware of the contents of the EAD and reproduced some but not all of the provisions and not all of the procedure, which may or may not explain some of the obvious omissions in following the procedure in full.

In plain English: The pilots of Ethiopian Airlines had no clue as to handle a runaway trim situation. Most likely they never got the EAD released after the Lion crash.

Jeroen

[V.Narayan]

^^^^^
With reference to the last several posts. On one hand I do not subscribe to the current social media hysteria seeking scalps - mainly Boeing & the FAA - before the investigation has been fully completed. After that if warranted (which seems highly likely) go for their scalp. Accident investigations need quietness and objectivity in which to work. The social media noise and doesn't help. ‎

Having said that I don't agree with Jeroen's contention that the Ethiopian pilots were to blame. If edits on a flight safety issue have been put out especially in light of the Lion Air crash it behoves of Boeing to go out of its way to make sure this is understood by its customers. Boeing and probably the airline both let the pilots down.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Having said that I don't agree with Jeroen's contention that the Ethiopian pilots were to blame. If edits on a flight safety issue have been put out especially in light of the Lion Air crash it behoves of Boeing to go out of its way to make sure this is understood by its customers. Boeing and probably the airline both let the pilots down.*

I dont know whether the pilots have any blame. I never said so. I have been saying that this accident needs to be properly investigated beyond the obvious Boeing/FAA shortfalls.

The AV quote shows that the pilots most likely never received the EAD. Once issued it is the carriers responsible to act upon it and to insure its pilots are familiar with it.

What is remarkable is that as far as I can tell the EAD held very little new information. It just re-iterated the importance of recognising AoA problems as a runaway trim issue and run the subsequent NNC.

Whether the pilots should have been able to handle this situation is a matter for the investigation. If they should have been able the next question is why did they not. That could be down to training, lack of proper instruction etc. We will see.

AV lists some thoughts on who might be responsible for what

Jeroen

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

I have been saying that this accident needs to be properly investigated beyond the obvious Boeing/FAA shortfalls.

Agree 101%. There will be shortfalls to be found, for sure, beyond the MCAS and beyond FAA-Boeing's mistakes and Boeing's greed. The pages of journalist experts filling the media are too simplistic and spinning around the same points. This hounding tone doesn't help. I recall in the dramatic Aloha 737 case Boeing called maintenance engineers from across every airline & MRO to walk them through the investigation & fresh maintenance practices recommended. This was the 1980s and Boeing could do it with professional candour in the spirit of flight safety that binds all aviation people. I believe and I am may be wrong that social media's pressure is inmical to resolving the problem and to the liberal exchange of information without having the lawyers looking over the shoulders of the engineers.