[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

Facts of individual accidents aside, a manufacturer having the ability to authorize items on the safety certification of their own product is an enormous red flag in and of itself.
...but I find it absurd that there's any plausible scenario where a responsible regulator will consider safety as secondary to another factor in the consideration set, time-to-market being an apparent contributor in Boeing's case.

This is not the FAA I have dealt with or worked with on regulatory matters. If this is true there is without a shred of doubt that political pressure was at work. The FAA has been under funded for at least 10 years compared to the sheer volume of work they are responsible for. The technical people at the FAA are not given to cutting corners on safety. They are not dogmatic and deliberately troublesome like the DGCA sometimes is and they know their stuff.

The 737 episode following so closely behind the 787 is concerning about how time honoured procedures may be getting diluted

Originally Posted by AMG Power

Although Team BHP is an automotive forum, the quality of content in the aviation space within Team BHP is at a much higher level than that in the automotive space. One of the reasons could be that aviation has far more detail at a technical, regulatory and commercial level than automobiles.Net, we have a forum where content quality cannot be diluted.

On behalf of all aviation professionals I thank you for your complimentary comments. There are several aviation professionals out here on T-BHP. And most of us would like to enrich the aviation threads and answer genuine questions.

I would make two requests to all to help make aviation threads even more worth while.

The first request is to some aviation writers, both professionals & enthusiasts - let's try and go easy on jargon and abbreviations as it depletes the value of the post to the reader. Some writers, purportedly from the industry, write posts which reveal that though they may be posing to be experts they are not- trust me it shows in a heart beat.

The second request is to the non-aviation reader - a genuine question we love to answer no matter how probing or controversial it may be. But when posts drift into angry rants and the '5-minute internet expertise' at least some of us switch off from the thread to the detriment of all readers.

[A350XWB]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

If the FAA has been contaminated by these 'practical' pressures then the whole aviation industry worldwide is the loser because we all depend on the credibility of FAA and EASA to fly aeroplanes.

This is quite scary and have to say that things are going down the same way as the old DC-10 days. I had mentioned this a couple of pages before. If there is a problem identified with the system, it needs to be addressed before the credibility of the certifying authority goes down the drain. This is required especially when the aviation industry all over the world look up to FAA and EASA for aircraft certification.

[Sutripta]

Originally Posted by AMG Power

Although team Bhp is an automotive forum, the quality of content in the aviation space within team Bhp is at a much higher level than that in the automotive space.
...

Net, we have a forum where content quality cannot be diluted.

Agree with you. But I hope you realise the irony: your post (and mine) are diluting/ polluting this thread!

Regards
Sutripta

[AMG Power]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

thank you for your complimentary comments.

Some writers, purportedly from the industry, write posts which reveal that though they may be posing to be experts they are not- trust me it shows in a heart beat.

You're welcome.

How does it matter if people purportedly pose as experts as long as the content is valid. Some of them may have learnt from the net and are sharing it here for the benefit of others. Even the aviation experts have also learnt from somewhere whether through education, experience or books. It is only the quality of content in any post that matters. Nothing else does. If the content is invalid there would be someone to point it out - that's a discussion forum.

Let's not make assumptions on individual backgrounds but point out the inaccuracies in the posts if any.

Originally Posted by Sutripta

But I hope you realise the irony: your post (and mine) are diluting/ polluting this thread!

Haha..of course I do. That was on my mind when I made that post but had to call this out.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by AMG Power

How does it matter if people purportedly pose as experts as long as the content is valid. Some of them may have learnt from the net and are sharing it here for the benefit of others. Even the aviation experts have also learnt from somewhere whether through education, experience or books. It is only the quality of content in any post that matters. Nothing else does. If the content is invalid there would be someone to point it out - that's a discussion forum.

Sorry if my point wasn't clearly stated. I am not referring to readers posting based on what they have read in the news or the net - I appreciate their interest in this subject as well as their concerns as passengers. I am referring to those members who pose as being from the industry when the tone and content of writing indicates otherwise. Any way, no point dwelling on it further.

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

...The FAA has been under funded for at least 10 years compared to the sheer volume of work they are responsible for. The technical people at the FAA are not given to cutting corners on safety.....

It's shocking that the richest country in the world can't sufficiently fund/staff an organisation so pivotal to global aviation. I won't get into specifics lest this gets political, but it's an absolute travesty.

Brings the NASA disasters to mind. Not only did they override safety concerns on the Challenger program leading to disaster, they let the systemic/bureaucratic issues fester, contributing to the Columbia disaster less than 20 years later.

There's always a risk:reward equation at play, but if anyone has to have an overriding veto, it should be the safety engineer, not the bureaucrat.

[the_skyliner]

This looks like a disaster for both Boeing and FAA. From all the data that is available in public domain, it does seem both of them goofed up big time.

Passing on certification authority and responsibility to manufacturer is a known and common practice but in this case it was a major change and a whole new critical system was to be introduced. This should not have been delegated from FAA to anyone, period.

Usually, they take ages to certify minor changes in primary and secondary structures so I am surprised how this delegation happened. A very serious lapse.

Saddest part is that 300 people lost their precious life and their family can never have them back. I was under the impression that learning by doing days are behind us in aerospace industry but this example is clearly telling another story.

[Redline6800]

This one is going to hit Boeing pretty badly.

https://www.seattletimes.com/busines...w-for-the-faa/

Important time for the company as the new 777X deliveries are to start later this year, and they are also supposed to decide on the New Mid-market Airplane (NMA).

After years of 787 losses, a blow to 737 MAX sales, will be a bitter pill to swallow.

Boeing released an open letter and message from Dennis Muilenburg, Chairman, President and CEO. Too little, too late, methinks.

[the_skyliner]

Originally Posted by Redline6800

After years of 787 losses, a blow to 737 MAX sales, will be a bitter pill to swallow.

Boeing released an open letter and message from Dennis Muilenburg, Chairman, President and CEO. Too little, too late, methinks.

True that. An open letter is hardly going to serve any purpose here.

I am curious to see Boeing's damage control of this disaster.

So many questions at this point: Will a so called quick fix be robust enough and certifiable from FAA? If yes, then how long it will take to implement in all affected aircrafts?

Also, will it be enough to bring back the lost confidence of airliners as well as passengers?

This is just the beginning of this issue and will take more than just a quick fix to resolve this matter (which Boeing is hoping to).

In the haste of beating A320neo, they have landed themselves in a bigger mess!

[Jeroen]

The problem is this whole thing is now becoming everybody being very indignified and throwing solutions and expectations out, whilst really we do not know what happened in either of the two accidents.

The Lion cash definitely has some severe short comings in the maintenance area and the aircraft should never have been dispatched for that fateful flight that day.

To day we have no idea why either of the crew could not disable the auto-trim (which would have disabled the MCAS). So it could still be down to pilot error (which statistically by the way is the most likely)

Unless you really understand the root cause of an accident you simply can not take adequate effective measures to ensure it never happens before.

I am not saying there might be a problem with for instance the certification process, but was that the root cause of the problem?

Jeroen

[Redline6800]

A very good article by the Seattle Times on the situation.

Boeing & the FAA will certainly have a lot to answer for what has been going on.

https://www.seattletimes.com/busines...ion-air-crash/

[mazda4life]

IN some fast knee jerk reaction... Trump has picked an ex Delta airlines guy to head FAA.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...e_iOSApp_Other

[A350XWB]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

The Lion cash definitely has some severe short comings in the maintenance area and the aircraft should never have been dispatched for that fateful flight that day.
To day we have no idea why either of the crew could not disable the auto-trim (which would have disabled the MCAS). So it could still be down to pilot error (which statistically by the way is the most likely)

I agree in part but for Boeing, there is a lot of ground to cover. There are several shortcomings identified with the design, processes and procedures within Boeing and FAA due to these accidents.
From the Seattletimes article:

But the original safety analysis that Boeing delivered to the FAA for a new flight control system on the MAX — a report used to certify the plane as safe to fly — had several crucial flaws.
The safety analysis:

• Understated the power of the new flight control system, which was designed to swivel the horizontal tail to push the nose of the plane down to avert a stall. When the planes later entered service, MCAS was capable of moving the tail more than four times farther than was stated in the initial safety analysis document.
• Failed to account for how the system could reset itself each time a pilot responded, thereby missing the potential impact of the system repeatedly pushing the airplane’s nose downward.
• Assessed a failure of the system as one level below “catastrophic.” But even that “hazardous” danger level should have precluded activation of the system based on input from a single sensor — and yet that’s how it was designed.

From theverge article:

Boeing said it would update the Max 8’s flight control systems, pilot displays, operation manuals, and crew training. The FAA is expected to mandate the changes by the end of April.


But rather than rely on multiple sensors, Boeing engineers determined that MCAS would need just a single sensor — measuring what is known as the angle of attack.

From aviation24.be article:

The Allied Pilots Association (APA) told American Airlines (AA) pilots in a message on its website.
“It is not in the AA 737 Flight Manual Part 2, nor is there a description in the Boeing FCOM. It will be soon.”

And it is a well known fact from multiple articles that to meet the timelines, FAA was pressurized to outsource the certification tests to Boeing, the very entity that manufactured the aircraft.

If Boeing themselves acknowledged that they have to do a lot of work in terms of rolling out a modified (rather bug-fixed) software, updating flight control systems, pilot displays, operating manuals and crew training, I don't believe that the only cause of these accidents were not just flicking two switches down. There has to be something more to it and for that, we need to wait for the official report.

[the_skyliner]

This is big:

President Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated a former Delta Airlines executive to become the new administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration as the country's airlines continue coping with the grounding of Boeing 737 Max jets.

Link: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/19/p...son/index.html

There were questions raised on leadership at FAA and Boeing both in last few days.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by the_skyliner

There were questions raised on leadership at FAA and Boeing both in last few days.

We should be raising questions on the leadership of the President and his government. The FAA has been underfunded for many year and it was without a formal Head of the organization for more than a year. Took two crashes for the President to appoint somebody?

Trump loves to come across as decisive and action orientated, but he left the FAA to their own devices, funding wise and leadership wise. Early on in his tenure he tried to convert the FAA set up to a system where the aviation industry (i.e. companies such as Boeing and the carriers) would be running and funding the FAA functions completely. It never made it into real legislation. It was heavily opposed and he lost interest and left them.

Trump is never part of the solution, He is part of the problem. He is just a master in making a large part of the population belief he is taking charge and taking decisions.

Jeroen