737 Max 8.... I can't help but feel

[Sovek]

I can't help but feel a tad.... cautious before saying "Max8 BAD!, KILL IT". The loss of life is tragic, but grounding 8,600 flights to zero, then the knee jerk reactions from the comments, I just want to play devil's advocate. 

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for safety, but after watching a crap ton of Air Crash Investigations I can't help but say "woah guys, lets wait till we know more" cause its not like the media is known for jumping the gun..... OH WAIT, yes they are. 

 

I've done some reading on the previous crash of Lion Air, and whats posted makes me going, "Why in the hell did the people working on the plane allow it to fly?". Also neither airline is know for its stellar safety track, Lion Air had pilots testing positive for meth...... 

 

Quote

On 7 November, the NTSC confirmed that there had been problems with Flight 610's angle of attack (AoA) sensors. Thinking that it would fix the problem, the engineers in Bali then replaced one of the aircraft's AoA sensors, but the problem persisted on the penultimate flight, from Denpasar to Jakarta. Just minutes after takeoff, the aircraft abruptly dived. The crew of that flight, however, had managed to control the aircraft and decided to fly at a lower than normal altitude. They then managed to land the aircraft safely and recorded a twenty-degree difference between the readings of the left AoA sensor and the right sensor.

 

They shouldn't have flown in the first place, in fact they made a Pan-Pan call, then continued the flight. From my perspective, this is downright reckless. I mean WTF were you thinking. You should have made an immediate about face, and landed the plane because something is seriously wrong with that aircraft. 

 

And then there is this gem.

Quote

On 28 November, Indonesia investigators said the Lion Air jet was not airworthy on the flight before the crash

 

I'm beginning to wonder if a similar situation isn't what played out the other day. 

 

And another gem. 

Quote

 

On 28 November, the Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) released its preliminary accident investigation report.[144] After airspeed and altitude problems, an AoA sensor was replaced and tested two days earlier on the accident aircraft.[145] Erroneous airspeed indications were still present on the subsequent flight on 28 October, which experienced automatic nose down trim.[145] The runaway stabilizer non-normal checklist was run, the electric stabilizer trim was turned off, and the flight continued with manual trim; the issues were reported after landing.[145] Shortly after takeoff on 29 October, issues involving altitude and airspeed continued due to erroneous AoA data and commanded automatic nose-down trim via the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS).[145] The flight crew repeatedly commanded nose-up trim over the final ten minutes of the flight.[145] The report does not state whether the runaway stabilizer trim procedure was run or whether the electric stabilizer trim switches were cut out on the accident flight.[145]

Leeham News, which principally covers Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier and Embraer issues,[146] reported that the crew did not have a clear knowledge of the trim runaway checklist which all 737 crews are required to know, and that the MCAS was going to be updated to operate from multiple, verified AoA signals.

 

 

This just screams that the pilots were not fully versed on the systems of the aircraft, and an extreme reliance on automation. Considering Lion Air's past, I'm not surprised. I havn't done enough research on Ethiopian Airlines to comment on their pilot training.

 

I dunno, is there a potential problem? yeah, you could say that, but to put the entire blame on the aircraft and remove the human element just seems foolish and doesn't help this from happening again. Frankly, the first one shouldn't have happened and the FAA addressed it in the first place, now if these airlines heeded the warnings remains to be seen. Also I'm interested in seeing if we can't track down the exact problem because a persisting sensor error could mean either a faulty bunch of sensors (unlikely due to lack of reporting) or some faulty and incomplete diagnostics. 

 

My reaction? I'm gonna wait till the NTSB files their report and we can see EXACTLY what happened before making a judgement call and kneejerk reaction. 

[DrMacintosh]

2 crashes in 6 months with the same model of plane is a concern. Grounding the aircraft is the only logical course of action if there is even a slight hint that the aircraft may be faulty. As Mr. Trump once said, its just until "we can figure out what is going on".

 

These are hundreds of lives we are talking about, Boeings feelings and investors can step aside. 

[Sovek]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

2 crashes in 6 months with the same model of plane is a concern. Grounding the aircraft is the only logical course of action if there is even a slight hint that the aircraft may be faulty. 

 

These are hundreds of lives we are talking about, Boeings feelings and investors can step aside. 

Which leads me back to the earlier statement I made. The Lion Air flight SHOULD NOT have taken off, that aircraft was not airworthy. Also planes are prone to breaking down same as any other mechanical device. Thats not a reason to ground the entire world wide fleet because a bunch of idiots in the hangars arn't listening to their brains and allowing the airplane to fly. What happens if we have a couple of engine failures because the mechanics screwed up in the repair hanger? do we ground thousands of planes because of some idiots screw up and then blaming Rolls Royce for a faulty product when the fault lies at the people responsible for maintaining those engines?

 

In certain cases, yes, grounding the fleet is warranted, this might be one of them, but like I said, I can't help but feel I'm seeing an unhealthy level of hate towards a company that may have no actual hand in the accident where that ire should be directed the individuals that allowed that plane to fly in the first place.

[DrMacintosh]

5 minutes ago, Sovek said:

Thats not a reason to ground the entire world wide fleet because a bunch of idiots in the hangars arn't listening to their brains and allowing the airplane to fly.

That isn't your call to make. 

 

Nobody other than Boeing and their investors is negatively impacted by Air authorities around the world being cautious. Further there is no legitimate reason to be opposed to grounding the 737 at this time. 

 

[D13H4RD]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

That isn't your call to make. 

 

Nobody other than Boeing and their investors is negatively impacted by Air authorities around the world being cautious. Further there is no legitimate reason to be opposed to grounding the 737 at this time. 

 

Unless you’re a small carrier and most of your fleet is made up of the MAX.

 

Boeing can take the hit. They’re a huge company and have multiple divisions to take up the slack. The 777X is also already revealed, albeit privately. Major carriers can also take the hit because they’ve got large fleets and can assign different aircraft as replacements, whether it’s a 737NG or another type of airframe.

 

The issue is when you’re a smaller carrier who mostly uses the MAX and are already cutting it loose. The groundings would certainly have an adverse effect on operations.

 

I’m not totally opposed to the groundings, but I am concerned for those smaller guys 

[straight_stewie]

I'm the first to say we should take it slowly and wait for more data when an aircraft crashes. 10/10 times it's due to pilot error.

According to Boeing, two things have happened in this case:

1. Publicly, Boeing claims that the pilots were under trained, and that turning off the MCAS system in an emergency is as easy as flipping two easily located switches under the trim stack.
2. Without a big announcement, Boeing today released a mandatory MCAS software update, so the update either does nothing and is meant to save face, or there was some bug in it that they found.

[Jurrunio]

So you think people are overreacting? Then that's good, overreacting on a safety concern is better than not reacting enough. Just like cooling, if you don't know how much of it you need, give it as much as you can.

[Sovek]

7 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

That isn't your call to make. 

 

Nobody other than Boeing and their investors is negatively impacted by Air authorities around the world being cautious. Further there is no legitimate reason to be opposed to grounding the 737 at this time. 

 

Not my call to make, no because I don't have all the facts, neither does anyone else, except for the NTSB/FAA and even then, considering they havn't released a report on the first one could mean they don't either. All I'm saying is maybe lets calm down and not immediately call for torching Boeing when we don't have the facts like we've seen so often from earlier news stories that turned out to have a false narrative.

 

Edit: @Jurrunio

So you think people are overreacting? Then that's good, overreacting on a safety concern is better than not reacting enough. Just like cooling, if you don't know how much of it you need, give it as much as you can.

 

Overreacting on safety, yes, good, but the reactions I have seen need a healthy amount of caution because many are accusing Boeing of acting for the bottom line instead of for the passengers. Wouldn't be the first time a aeronautics company has done so, but those companies usually suffered as a result (DC-10 I'm looking at you). The bodies are barely cold and people are demanding blood from people who may not have a role in it. 

[D13H4RD]

22 minutes ago, Sovek said:

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for safety, but after watching a crap ton of Air Crash Investigations I can't help but say "woah guys, lets wait till we know more" cause its not like the media is known for jumping the gun..... OH WAIT, yes they are. 

Just saying. Watching a crap ton of Air Crash Investigation doesn’t turn you into someone who knows a lot about commercial aviation.

 

Your best bet is still the aviation community, especially those made up of pilots working commercially 

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, D13H4RD said:

Unless you’re a small carrier and most of your fleet is made up of the MAX.

The delay is unfortunate. But that Airline has connections and can schedule flights with other airlines that use more than 1 type of aircraft.

 

The business of small Airlines is insignificant next to the safety of the passengers. If one of them has to go out of business from the grounding of one model of plane, then that Airline is simply a victim of the market and that is just the way the cookie crumbles. 

[D13H4RD]

Also, the groundings remind me of this 

[DrMacintosh]

3 minutes ago, Sovek said:

All I'm saying is maybe lets calm down and not immediately call for torching Boeing when we don't have the facts like we've seen so often from earlier news stories that turned out to have a false narrative.

Who is calling for torching Boeing? 

[Jurrunio]

7 minutes ago, D13H4RD said:

Unless you’re a small carrier and most of your fleet is made up of the MAX.

 

not to mention small carriers don't have the budget to buy new planes in the first place. They only get retired ones from the big players.

[D13H4RD]

2 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

The business of small Airlines is insignificant next to the safety of the passengers. 

So kinda like the DC-10 debacle

[Sovek]

4 minutes ago, D13H4RD said:

Also, the groundings remind me of this 

And that one right there was the fault of the airline, namely the idiots responsible for replacing the No1 engine. Not the DC-10 itself, though it still didn't recover. Though in that case the grounding may have been a good idea, no idea how many idiots used a forklift to install engines. SMH

 

Also, I will admit I'm not an expert on air crashes, but a majority of the crashes are a result of human error, like the above and Air France 447. Some like the 777 crash at Heathrow and the 737 rudder hard over are a result of mechanical failures unforseen by engineers. This may be a result of both.

[DrMacintosh]

Just now, D13H4RD said:

So kinda like the DC-10 debacle

I'm not familiar with that incident. All I'm saying is that I'm not going to take the side of Airlines when it comes to passengers being potentially at risk. The corporate desire to disregard caution in order to keep making money sickens me. 

[Jurrunio]

10 minutes ago, Sovek said:

Overreacting on safety, yes, good, but the reactions I have seen need a healthy amount of caution because many are accusing Boeing of acting for the bottom line instead of for the passengers. Wouldn't be the first time a aeronautics company has done so, but those companies usually suffered as a result (DC-10 I'm looking at you). The bodies are barely cold and people are demanding blood from people who may not have a role in it. 

That's what media and KOLs do when clicks are more important than information. Doesn't affect what airlines, plane makers and the governments' should act though

[PlayStation 2]

As much as I understand why they're grounding all the 737 MAX 8s and 9s, I do feel like it's a huge knee-jerk reaction because in this modern day, emotions > evidence.

Back when all of the DC-10s were grounded, there was reasonable proof that the aircraft was likely at fault. Here in this case, we notice potential similarities between two separate crashes and conclude it as the 737's fault.

Don't get me wrong, I don't give a shit about the 737 line (always was a huge fan of trijets, to be honest), but it seems like we're taking two cases and blowing it out of proportion. If it is truly down to an engineering problem with the plane, then I'll understand the reaction a lot more, but this seems less DC-10y and more unique to this.

[handymanshandle]

a lot of people are rather quick to pass judgment. I don't wanna write the 737 MAX off just yet, it seems pilot error isn't likely but it could be something as simple as training or as complex as a design flaw in a system and which case, narrowing it down to which system seems not all that hard because there's a few keys for what system(s) could be at fault.

 

Any Loss of Life is unfortunate for all those involved, especially the families and I think it's important to take a step back and investigate fully how the two incidents, in Ethiopia and in Indonesia which may have similar causes were caused and linked and how to quickly fix it so the issue doesn't happen again.

[D13H4RD]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

I'm not familiar with that incident. All I'm saying is that I'm not going to take the side of Airlines when it comes to passengers being potentially at risk. The corporate desire to disregard caution in order to keep making money sickens me. 

The DC-10 debacle was a series of incidents and accidents that culminated in the airframe’s reputation being dealt serious blows and became a prime example of engineering ethics.

 

• The cargo door was known to fail as early as 1970 before the plane went into service but was never fixed. Subsequently, in 1972, the door burst open on AA096 and damaged controls and put the tail-engine in idle but the crew were barely able to make a high-speed emergency landing. 
• Despite urgent recommendations and even Convair’s urgent request to Douglas in implementing these recommendations, Douglas didn’t carry out much of it, particularly because they had a gentleman’s agreement with the FAA, and so was only voluntarily done, not mandated. 
• As such, because much of these changes weren’t carried out (and also because some of the work which was claimed to be done never actually took place), THY981 had its cargo door blow out in the same fashion, only now with all rear control surfaces deemed inoperable, which caused the aircraft to crash into a forest, killing all 346 aboard, making it the deadliest aircraft accident at the time.

And what dealt the final blow? American Airlines Flight 191, where its left engine detached from the wing, causing it to leak hydraulic fluid. That alongside the lack of slat locks caused the left wing to stall until it crashed near a hangar, killing all 271 aboard and another 2 on the ground, making it the deadliest air accident in the United States.

 

While the accident was ultimately blamed on poor maintenance, that photo I posted earlier spelt trouble

[Sovek]

16 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

I'm not familiar with that incident. All I'm saying is that I'm not going to take the side of Airlines when it comes to passengers being potentially at risk. The corporate desire to disregard caution in order to keep making money sickens me. 

The Douglas DC-10 suffered a number of high fatality crashes due to design and manufacturing flaws. Off the top of my head I can name 3. United 232 crashed in Sioux City killing 111 people after the No 2 engine failed taking out the three hydraulic lines, poor engineering and a failure to properly test for cracks caused the accident. 

 

American 191 suffered another high fatality crash after the No 1 engine detached from the aircraft on takeoff, the resulting loss of thrust and yaw to the left put the plane on its side causing it to crash shortly after takeoff. The cause of the accident was from the monkeys in the hanger changing the engine WITH A FORKLIFT. Due to the nature of using this piece of improvised machinery, it damaged the pylon and the stress fracture caused the pylon to detach from the wing with the engine.

 

Turkish Airlines 981 was destroyed with all hands after the rear cargo door blew out causing a catastrophic decompression and taking out vital systems, there was no way to recover with the damage done to the airframe. The cause a design flaw in the door that had been identified on previous flights (American 96) but were not addressed properly to prevent Turkish 981

 

Edit: confused Turkish 981 with American 96

[Sovek]

12 minutes ago, handymanshandle said:

As much as I understand why they're grounding all the 737 MAX 8s and 9s, I do feel like it's a huge knee-jerk reaction because in this modern day, emotions > evidence.

Back when all of the DC-10s were grounded, there was reasonable proof that the aircraft was likely at fault. Here in this case, we notice potential similarities between two separate crashes and conclude it as the 737's fault.

Don't get me wrong, I don't give a shit about the 737 line (always was a huge fan of trijets, to be honest), but it seems like we're taking two cases and blowing it out of proportion. If it is truly down to an engineering problem with the plane, then I'll understand the reaction a lot more, but this seems less DC-10y and more unique to this.

Mmm, There was mysterious problem with the 737s falling out of the sky causing crashes. Thankfully one flight recovered and it allowed investigators to finally unlock the cause of the problem. Two fatal crashes of the 737 with a similar problem DIDN'T result in the entire 737 being grounded. Granted that was 20-30 years ago, so like you said, nowdays its emotions first, lets not even consider the evidence.

[D13H4RD]

13 minutes ago, Sovek said:

The Douglas DC-10 suffered a number of high fatality crashes due to design and manufacturing flaws. Off the top of my head I can name 3. United 232 crashed in Sioux City killing 111 people after the No 2 engine failed taking out the three hydraulic lines, poor engineering and a failure to properly test for cracks caused the accident.

United 232 could have been much more catastrophic had it not been for the actions for the flight crew.

 

They did one heck of a job even getting the plane on the ground. Shame not everyone had survived, but more than half did

[straight_stewie]

35 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

The business of small Airlines is insignificant next to the safety of the passengers.

Pretty sure that no airline would ever get business if they never got their passengers where they are going.

Also pretty sure that safety is the number one factor considering how willing airlines are to change around multi billion dollar deals based on single incidents...

 

I think I might have misread your reply. Are you saying that airlines don't care about passenger safety, or that passenger safety is worth risking small airlines ability to stay in business?

[Princess Twilight Sparkle]

Planes like this are technical marvels that are designed to last decades with millions of non-stop running hours. 

 

Two of the same models that are basically brand new that have catastrophic failures is about the biggest red flag that there can be. 

 

I'm just relieved that the US finally decided to ground them as well.