Will you fly the Boeing 737 Max 8?

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fountainhall

Will you fly the Boeing 737 Max 8?

Post by fountainhall »

The Indonesian authorities have issued their preliminary report into the circumstances surrounding the crash of Lion Air flight JT610 on 28 October. With the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) still lying somewhere in the ocean and unable to be located – surely after the disappearance of MH370 airline regulatory bodies should have immediately insisted on both the CVR and Flight Data Recorder (FDA) giving off location signals for far longer than just 30 days? – they still have no access to discussions in the cockpit which will be vital in putting important parts into the jigsaw puzzle.

One key issue is now very clear. Boeing introduced a new safety feature in the 737 Max 8 but failed to include details of this feature in the pilot instruction manual. The feature, named the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), is an automatic anti-stall system that repeatedly pushes the nose of the plane down if the computers believe the aircraft is about to stall. A week after the crash Boeing sent out a Safety Bulletin about MCAS but only after pilots’ unions had publicly criticised Boeing for failing to disclose this new feature to their customers.

During the 11-minute Lion Air flight, the pilots had to counter this nose-down feature by manually aiming the nose up, only for the sequence to be repeated about 5 seconds later. This happened no less than 26 times during the short 11-minute flight. Throughout, the stick shaker, a warning device which vibrates the pilots’ control columns to alert them to the danger of a stall, was vibrating throughout the flight. There were also problems with other instrumentation including errors with the plane’s airspeed indicator and altitude information.

Some, if not all, of these conditions had been apparent on all the aircraft’s recent flights before the accident. On the previous evening’s flight from Bali, the instrument problems were so severe that the authorities now claim the flight was in an “un-airworthy condition” and should have been aborted. Yet the pilots were able to overcome the problems and landed safely in Jakarta. Lion Air engineers then replaced one major part overnight.

The Report criticises Lion Air’s safety culture and the need for all documentation on flights to be correctly completed. As an example, it cites the fact that the paperwork for the doomed flight lists 5 flight attendants as being on board. In fact there were 6.

Although the final report on the crash will not appear until next year, Boeing is clearly concerned about the criticisms of their latest aircraft. These follow the battery problems which grounded all the revolutionary 787 aircraft soon after its introduction some years ago.

Over the last week, Boeing executives have met privately with pilot unions at American and Southwest Airlines, two airlines currently operating the 737 Max 8. A Union spokesman Mike Trevino said this type of “urgent” meeting was the first of its kind ever held directly with Boeing. The meeting was held at the request of Boeing. Said the Airline Pilots Association spokesman –
“They reached out to us, which is what we’ve been looking for . . . They brought their A team. It tells us it is very important to them and they’re ready to make this right.”
Yet, he then adds –
He said the union did not get a good answer on why the anti-stall system . . . wasn't disclosed to pilots before the crash.

He said the union awaits Boeing's "solutions and fixes.''

American pilots were "deeply disturbed and concerned over the fact that a system that automatically takes over one of the flight controls in the air during a critical time, we weren't even aware that it existed”

He said Boeing has updated the information since the crash so there is more heightened awareness of the system.

"We are now where we should have been before this crash happened”

But pilots had remaining technical questions about sensors, faulty signals and the overall MCAS system.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/f ... 138115002/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46373125

One Indonesian family who lost relatives in the crash has so far launched a lawsuit against Boeing. More are expected to follow. The new 737 Max family is Boeing's fastest-ever selling aircraft with firm orders on its books for 4,783 planes.
windwalker

Re: Will you fly the Boeing 737 Max 8?

Post by windwalker »

Would I fly in one? No Way, at least until they are certified safe.
Jun

Re: Will you fly the Boeing 737 Max 8?

Post by Jun »

They probably ARE certified safe.

Although whilst the FAA will certify new aircraft, I believe it is policy that any presidential aircraft must be of a design that has been in service for at least 5 years. So the US government is not "eating it's own cooking".

I try to follow a similar 5 year policy, so the 737 max is to be avoided for now.

Avoiding new planes was easy enough when something unique like the A380 was launched. However when there are virtually new 737 and A320 derivatives out there, it takes more care to figure out who is flying what. I also intend to avoid the C919 for several years too.
fountainhall

Re: Will you fly the Boeing 737 Max 8?

Post by fountainhall »

Jun wrote:I try to follow a similar 5 year policy, so the 737 max is to be avoided for now
I have a three-year policy which I have mostly stuck to throughout my career. The one time I broke the rule was to take a DC10 between Geneva and Zurich instead of the train. I always liked that aircraft and its successor the MD11. But after my flight it started crashing with such regularity that, like the Dreamliner, it was eventually grounded by the FAA, but only for about 5 weeks.

Many years later I was on a long trip to Europe, the US and Japan. At my request my travel agent had booked on a combination of Cathay Pacific, British Airways and American. Some weeks before departure, my agent called to say he had found a promotion and if I was prepared to make a couple of short detours, he could get me on Singapore, Swissair and Delta first class for no extra cost. Well, that was a no brainer for me. London to New York in late August resulted in one of those detours with a hop first to Geneva. The aircraft on the transatlantic route was an MD11 which had been refitted with the latest on-demand in-flight entertainment system. The flight was great. But a couple of weeks later when the aircraft was making the return flight back to Geneva it crashed off Newfoundland with the loss of all lives. It was the same aircraft I had flown. A fire had broken out on board related to the wiring of the new IFE system. It was not the only cause but it resulted in the new on-demand IFE system being stripped from Swissair's other MD11s.

I still liked the aircraft and was later to make lots of Bangkok/Hong Kong trips on Finnair which operated the MD11 and extended its Helsinki/Bangkok flights to HKG three times a week.
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