Quote:
Originally Posted by mapuc
When it comes to fly or to fully understand how to fly an airliner, like a 747 or similar, I'm useless.
I do know, however that these air crash detectives are really, really good at what they are doing.
In the nearest future we will know exactly what happened and what caused it.
Maybe the producere will upgrade some software and/or some hardware and the pilots will have to upgrade some learning on take-off.
Markus
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They do upgrade the software, but the patch had to be pulled again because it was bad, too. MCAS trim is nothing new, it is around since a very long time, but the 737 Max has so drastically changed airframe geometry and shifts in the weight distribution due to the heavy engines moving forward, that parts of the code had to be written new to match the new airframe. The plane is now more vulnerable to the tail striking the runway during takeoff, becasue the gear has moved forward together with the wings, and so the tial got longer. These changes in MCAS trim are suspected to not being documented sufficiently in order to save time and get the airplane out earlier - because if new training beyond a certain treshhold level is required for a pilot who switches to another but "familiar" plane model, the FAA demands a new certification process for the plane itself, and the procedures for that cost much more time than the way the pushed it through the process now: becasue a pilot who flies lets say a 737-600 or -700, mostly is qualified to also fly the -800 and -900 models, since they are quite similiar. If training and documentation beyond a certain amount would be required, FAA ticks by the logicof that then the plane is quite so different from earlier versions of the family that a new certification of the hardware is necessary - and that is what Boeing wanted to avoid, since they lost orders on Airbus' 320 and a further certification of the hardware would have costed them more time.
If then the new part of the code maybe was programmed with an error or several ones in it, or the code commands a handling that is too different than what the pilot knows from earlier versions of the plane, but Boeing did skip proper documentaiton and training (a claim that has been risen by many pilots by now from several airlines areound the globe), then you get into very serious problems. The software issue obviously is serious - a patch Boeing had announced for the MCAS trim thing, had to be pulled again and given back into rework once again. It does not matter whether there is really a flaw, or the work ergoniomic demanded by the new software collides with the pilots' handling as he knwos MCAS - the way it functions has to be recoded, obviously. That Boeing engineer said that normally for developing a project like the 737 MAx and its changes over earlier versions of the 737 (which already are quite optimised to ther max and thus do not offer too much space for more cost efficienct operation anymore, Boeing would have given them m ore than twice the time than they had this time, indicates that the race with airbus was a priority. And that was bad, they overplayed it apparently. Lacking docuemntation. Lacking communication. Lacking retraining to avoid new certification. Lacking knowledge on side of the pilots who did not - and could not!! - have fully understood the changes. Boom. Boom.
Additionally the FAA has grounded the plane model for another software error unrelated to the MCAS issue, that the FAA rates serious enough that for that new issue alone they keep the plane grounded. Boeing, of course, says its minor. What else should they say - they have lost two planes and 300 people are killed and their PR currently hits rock bottom. The new issue illustrates that deliverign new software with errors in it, is not only possible, but real. The enormous time pressure that a Boeing engineer has pointed out in the project and the desire to avoid certification procedures bvy the FAA to save more time, certainly did not help to run all tests properly and check things the way they usually do.
If adding all these hints together, its cheap to already label it a pilot error just to give Boeing a stain-free, clean jacket again. Its far more likely that Boeing pushed the pressure level beyond their usual safety limits. You cannot avoid to add that conclusion to the list of possebilities. Ethiopian Airlines must have had a reason why they did not deliver the blackbox to the US and Boeing for analysis, but to France. depending on whom you ask, that is more or less an affront. Boeing was said to be not happy with that decision and wanted the state department to intervenbe and set up diplomatic pressure on France. Trump was wise enough not to allow that, since the French - the initiators and in principal the founders of Airbus - certainly would have turned stubborn. US diplomacy could only lose, and the criticism that Boeing is being too close to the US goverment and the Pentagon would have gotten fed for free - and this after Boeing was just found guilty by the WTO to have gotten illegal state subventions, like Airbus before. No, staying out of this was the best Trump could have done.