Ethiopian 737-8 MAX down. No survivors.

That they lost recognition of their speed might be construed as a self induced pilot error.

 

Kinda like it was going to be pilot error for Sulky to have landed in the river, when models suggested that with perfect response they could have glided back to the airport.

In Other words things rarely work or repo d perfectly.

Boeing made a deeply flawed aircraft, possibly Boeing didn’t realize the MCAS would keep firing maki g things worse. Basically when you fire many engineers do things on a shoe string, band aid designs sooner or later these problems manifest.

as a flier I do not trust anything built by Boeing past classic 777

sad as it sounds I feel safer on an airbus, and that was always second choice previously.

Untill BOeing is run by something other than financial engineers they will not have my business, and I’m not the only one.

Frankly what has happened to that company is as pathetic as it was inevitable.

All I see at Boeing is a bunch of ahats on the board firing the CEO to keep their positions.

 

If the pilots reacted to a MCAS malfunction like a runaway trim situation, they would likely be able to stabilize the aircraft. Disconnect the power trim (trim cutoff switches), one person pulls up on the yoke, the other manually cranks the trim back. Reduce airspeed if necessary to reduce the load on the trim surface. If necessary porpoise the aircraft to ease the load on the trim wheel during descent, hold trim during the assent, repeat. Hard to do at low altitude.

The problem seems to be this situation presented itself as a runaway trim along with a stall situation. Kind of a weird situation to react to. I presume reducing power is the last thing you want to do when the aircraft tells you it's stalling.

-F

 

Makes sense,

and a porpise is going to be hard to pull off close to the ground doing 300ks, as you say with stall warning youre unlkely to reduce speed, plus when everything seems to be going wrong hard to react perfectly.

Boeing still nowhere near coming up with a new single asile aircraft, and still messing around with the nma a spec which has already been superceeded with the a321 xlr single asile.

maybe Boeing should just give a single asile program to Embrader to develop.

Airbus now has the 220 series the 320 series and the 350 series which covers all the major bases betetr than Boeing. The only standout at Boeing is the 777x which they have yet to fly

 

I am not a pilot so from that perspective it seems experienced, qualified flight crews have prevented loss of control in multiple cases and once in the very same aircraft. When aircraft were lost either there was a poorly trained crew in one or a pilot left with a poorly trained copilot that was of no help in the other.
As a consumer of air travel the aircraft design issue does concern me but not as much as the apparent loss of the industries desire to have highly competent people operating the aircraft.

The issue of crew quality has lead directly to the loss of a number of perfectly good aircraft in recent years but that isn't being addressed. Thats what scares me.

 

The 321 XLR is likely a better success than even Airbus expected. Of course keep in mind none have been made yet.

Boeing's NMA may never become reality as it tries to achieve a too aggressive combination of attributes. More passenger capacity than the narrow body, a wide body/mid body cross section, operating costs like a narrow body, development costs for a clean sheet aircraft but to achieve a sell price competitive to stretched narrow bodies. It will be interesting to see how Boeing does solve this dilemma - revive the 767-100 that was never built? Would they bring back the 757 with new engines and some other tweaks?

You point to the A220 - do not forget that it was developed and certified by Bombardier.

The A350-1000 is having cancellations. One airline that can't cancel all their orders is just parking the ones they have to take.

The Boeing 787 seems to be doing reasonably fine and hits a segment that Airbus doesn't really have. The A350 is bigger attacking more of the 777 market.

The 777X is schedule to start flight testing this year.

We will have to see how things develop with the Embraer E2 as the merger process proceeds. Currently the merger can't finalize as the Europeans hold up progress while exacting some revenge for the trade fights. Maybe the E2 gets stretched to take over the bottom end of the 737 model line (-7). Does that free up Boeing to create an all new narrow body? Maybe, but they still face all the same issues - how much more operating cost efficiency is to be gained with all new versus what is achievable by making changes to the 737? Even if there is enough extra gain, is it enough to justify the cost of development and what is likely to be the resulting price increase? Keep in mind that Boeing (and all the others) clients' are the airlines.

 

FAA Certification Needs Tweaks, Not Overhaul, Special Committee Says
Sean Broderick January 16, 2020
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Credit: Boeing
WASHINGTON—The FAA’s certification process is not fundamentally flawed and “was followed” during the Boeing 737 MAX certification, but shortcomings in key guidance, global perspective, safety assessments, and agency staffing should be addressed to improve the system, an independent committee’s report found.

Commissioned by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) but left to reach its own conclusions, the Special Committee to Review the FAA’s Aircraft Certification Process spent more than six months evaluating FAA’s product-approval protocol, using the 737 MAX as a “case study,” co-Chair Lee Moak told reporters Jan 16. Its 68-page report includes 29 recommendations covering several broad areas.

Among the key takeaways: neither delegation nor FAA’s entire certification process is broken, and derivatives are not inherently less safe than new designs.

“FAA certification as a whole ... is safe. It’s effective,” Moak said.

The delegation system “is an appropriate and effective tool for conducting aircraft certification,” the report said. The FAA must ensure designees are not influenced by “undue pressure,” such as deadlines or cost concerns, that may compromise safety. Moak underscored that the committee had no specific examples of such pressure, while acknowledging that its mandate did not include an “investigative” angle.

The committee concluded that the FAA “followed regulations and guidance materials in determining that the project qualified as an amended type certificate project,” it said.

Even if Boeing was required to certify the MAX as a new design, it “would not have produced more rigorous scrutiny ... and would not have produced a safer airplane,” the report added.

Among the reasons: flawed assumptions based on longstanding FAA guidance led Boeing to determine that pilots would react a certain way during emergency scenarios linked to the MAX’s maneuvering characteristics augmentation system (MCAS). Two fatal MAX accident sequences showed that Boeing was wrong, but the assumptions and related safety analyses were tied to the MCAS’s introduction, not the fact that the MAX is a derivative.

“MCAS was identified and tested in both Boeing’s and the FAA’s certification flight tests,” the report continued. “The FAA’s regulations and protocols did not require testing of MCAS for combinations of mechanical and human failures. Boeing and FAA inspectors determined that a malfunctioning MCAS system would present itself as runaway stabilizer trim, an occurrence with specific non-normal checklist procedures and for which pilots are trained to address.”

Had Boeing factored in flight-crew errors when evaluating MCAS’s risk, certain failure modes—including the single-data-source angle-of-attack sensor [SSA] failure that triggered both MAX accident sequences—would have been classified as higher. That would have likely triggered design changes.

“Systems Safety Analysists [SSAs] should recognize that human errors are generally inevitable and consider the consequences of an equipment failure compounded with a foreseeable human failure,” the report said.

The committee also reiterated findings from other reports that the FAA’s certification process is too U.S.-centric. “The FAA should acknowledge the international profile of operators of U.S. State of Design aircraft and implement the necessary changes for its aircraft certification system to take into account differences in operations, training, and oversight across states,” the report said. The agency is already making changes in this area by using 737 pilots from a variety of non-U.S. carriers to evaluate changes to the MAX flight control system logic and related training.

The committee urged FAA to go further, codifying requirements directly in type certificates.

“The FAA ... should consider including operational requirements as part of the type certificate in order to better communicate minimum standards and promote advanced training and qualification programs,” the report said. “This would allow transfer of operational and training requirements through the validation process.”

Moak’s committee also spotlighted FAA’s staffing levels as a risk factor.

“The FAA cannot accommodate the growth and complexity in certification workload without effectively understanding and managing its personnel requirements and influencing cultural changes in the workforce to adapt to the changing nature of the work,” one finding said. “Current funding levels may be insufficient to support effective resource management. Priorities include proper skill identification, skill development, and attracting talent.” The committee recommended more aggressive outreach to younger professionals, but did not suggest more funding from Congress, despite the finding’s language.

The report’s conclusions did not sit well with some U.S. lawmakers conducting their own probes into the FAA and Boeing who believe that legislative action is the most prudent course of action.

“Our committee’s investigation has already revealed multiple junctures at which the current certification process failed, and as I’ve made clear, I intend to propose legislative fixes to ensure safety always comes first,” said House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Chair Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon), citing the 346 fatalities in the two MAX accidents as proof of gaps that need addressing in the U.S. “I appreciate the special committee’s review of the certification process and I will take the recommendations into account as Congress considers changes.”

A NASA official that advised the committee offered a different perspective during the group’s deliberations. “All complex safety systems built and maintained by humans will experience malfunctions and human error that put safety at risk,” the report said. “NASA encouraged the committee to review safety systems with this in mind.”

FAA Administrator Steve Dickson “welcomed” the recommendations, calling out the system-safety concerns specifically. “I was pleased to see that the committee recommended we advance the use of Safety Management Systems throughout all sectors of the aviation industry,” he said. “The agency will carefully consider the committee’s work, along with the recommendations identified in various investigative reports and other analyses, as we take steps to enhance our aircraft certification processes.”

 

i think this is a very acurate surmation you have made.

Yes Bombardier developed the A220, but its a great aircraft, civers the area below the a320 well and an airbus program now., plus airbus got it near free in our backyard while Boeing looked at spreadsheets. Thats Boeing management failure.

Yes the 787 does Ok, but its not in any type of big growth segment, and the 777x may suffer the same. The 787 was a development debacle costing 4x what was planned, if Boeing had not been so incompetant they could have developed 2-3 new aircraft for that price. The incompetance was Chicago MBA driven to "save" on devlopment costs.

The a321 seems to have hit the sweetspot of what airlines want and is hoovering up the 757 replacement market. The NMA to the extent its devloped will try fit into the xlr niche but not have the xlr pricing advantage. It does not seem like the 737 program can go where the XLR is.

on the other hand the a320 program suffered intialy because the aircraft was heavier more expensive to produce than the 737, but as it got amortised and stretched/developed it had growth the 737 does not, hence its current market sucess.

Boeing needs to bite the bullet and design a plane to compete across the spectrum with the 320 series aircraft. Of course it will be expensive to develop, and that means Boeing wont have the same proft as the bandaid 737, but they will have a product to take them into the future.Had Boeign done this 10 years ago, they would most likely have a 8k unit back order like airbus and be delivering 65 aircraft per month from this prgram. As it is now Boeing has a 4k aircraft backorder, hardley any new orders and theyre not delivering aircraft for over a year, thats beofre we figure in payments to airlines for non delivery and dead passenger liability. But yeah for a few years Boeings shares looked great. The retention of the 737 robbed the future for short term share gains, thats not leadership.

I do agree that a new aircraft may not have significant aero gains. But then why work on the NMA, if the gains are mostly powerplant derived then why not a reengined cleaned up 767 to fill that small gap niche. Why develop an all new aircraft there and not one where your volume is.

 

Boeing stock getting hammered today after another software problem found.

 

As I said, Boeing needs to put the 757 back in production, with state-of-the-art engines and a wing based on that of the 787, hopefully with some parts commonality. If the 757-200 fuselage is too long for some, maybe they need to revive the never-built 757-100 length.

 

(woudl have been cheaper to design a new aeroplane, not counting lost buisness going forwards.)

"Boeing stakeholders may find out more information about the costs of the 737 MAX fiasco during the company’s Jan. 29 report on 2019 financial results. While Boeing previously identified $5.6 billion in pretax customer compensation for aircraft operators, and added $3.6 billion to the 737’s program accounting block-cost, financial analysts, consultants and others see those figures as just a beginning.

For starters, new costs such as flight simulator training, already are known but have yet to be publicly explained by Boeing. “Simulator training likely will add almost $5 billion to the cost of the grounding, using Southwest [Airlines] as a benchmark for the 4,543 [737 MAXs] in backlog at the third quarter of 2019 and the 385 in existing fleets, all of which were sold before the grounding,” Bloomberg analysts George Ferguson and Francois Duflot said Jan. 9.

Similarly, aviation economist Chris Tarry said in a new report this month that Boeing faced a bill of more than $8 billion in compensation for airlines alone. In December, when Boeing announced the MAX production halt, Jefferies analysts Sheila Kahyaoglu and Greg Konrad surmised that customer concessions alone could reach $11.7 through the end of the first quarter of 2020.

Then there are costs for carrying the inventory of roughly 400 MAXs parked by Boeing, as well as potential further changes to the 3,100-aircraft program accounting block basis. The Jefferies team said the ongoing delay in aircraft certification and change in production cadence could generate another $3.6 billion charge to Boeing’s earnings.

Several industry analysts and consultants also believe Boeing will have to support its supply chain financially to some degree, so providers are able to ramp-up MAX production rates again as efficiently as possible. Moody’s Investors Service analysts said in a Jan. 10 report they expect Boeing to be supportive of suppliers on an individual, as-needed basis. But costs were not quantifiable yet.

“There will be a particular focus on weakly positioned companies and/or those that have sole-sourced products,” Moody’s suggested. “The exact nature of any support arrangements could take multiple forms, including certain suppliers maintaining some level of production (and continuing to get paid), advance payments, more favorable (i.e., quicker) payment terms, inventory assumption and/or the facilitation of access to vendor financing.”

Other costs loom, too, such as final compensation to victims’ families through legal action. Similarly, shareholder lawsuits may emerge that require spending to litigate. Last but not least, there will be additional costs from taking on more debt, which Boeing is expected to do rather than cut shareholder dividends.

Altogether, it could take years before the full costs of the MAX debacle are known. In mid-October 2019—when Boeing still saw a MAX return to service before the end of last year—Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst Ron Epstein already had expected it would not occur before the first quarter of 2020. He forecast costs for the 737 MAX to total $17.2 billion in 2019-23. On Jan. 16, Epstein told CNBC the total cost of the grounding could reach $20 billion—excluding any settlements from lawsuits from crash victims’ families—if the aircraft return by June or July."

 

Most of this is Monday morning quarterbacking. The big push to retain the 737 was Southwest Airlines wanting to maintain their fleet all 737 to keep down training cost and allow crew scheduling flexibility.

 

Southwest was also very conscious of the spares part provision costs for each line station and depot with a change of airframe.

It is hard not to listen when your largest and most loyal customer is talking.

 

Retaining the 737 design was not the worst decision made in the process. Forcing a "no new training" regime for the 737 Max seems to be the path that led Boeing to this place they are now.

That along with circumventing the steps to properly and methodically design and develop the system. Someone dramatically changed the parameters and characteristics of MCAS during the process and didn't tell anyone!

-F

 

One possibility that they missed in designing MCAS was evidently a failure to consider: what happens when the angle-of-attack sensor(s) give false readings? That was evidently a factor in both MAX crashes.

This should not have been a surprise to Boeing. History shows that two 757s crashed - one off the Dominican Republic and one off Peru - because failures in the a-o-a sensors resulted in false instrument readings that led the pilots to make fatal errors at night. So the potential for sensor failures is not new and should have been considered.

 

Don't think the Peru accident qualifies. Having a piece of tape covering the static port can definitely cause erroneous readings.

 

For those that want the all new 737 replacement, this may be that news.

It will be interesting to see if Boeing just opts for the Airbus cockpit philosophy instead of giving final authority to the pilot. I do not want to see the dumbing down of the pilot authority.

Boeing Heads Back To Drawing Board On NMA
Guy Norris January 25, 2020
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The revised design for Boeing's new midmarket airplane will build on lessons learned from the 737 MAX.
Credit: Boeing
SEATTLE -- Even as Boeing recommits itself to returning the 737 MAX to service by the middle of 2020, the company says it is going back to the drawing board over plans to develop a new midmarket airplane (NMA).

Boeing plans instead to refocus on a fresh next-generation design that meets the more immediate demands of the market. The revised design will also build on lessons learned from the MAX and potentially incorporate fundamental changes to the company’s traditional approach to flight control philosophy and piloting.

Revealing the change in direction, recently installed Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun says, the “NMA project is going to be a new clean sheet of paper.” Since the program began in earnest in 2015, “things have changed a bit. Not so much MAX related but the competitive playing field's a little different,” he says.

Boeing was on the cusp of seeking board authority to offer the NMA to airlines in March-April 2019 when the plan was derailed by the second 737 MAX accident and subsequent worldwide grounding of the model. Stemming from earlier 757-replacement studies, the baseline NMA family concept was expanded to include a successor to the 767 and by early last year was considered ready for market. The program was focused on two main versions, the 225-seat NMA-6X and 275-seat NMA-7X, with the larger of the pair expected to be developed first.

The larger NMA, believed to be dubbed internally as the 7K7-7X, was provisionally targeted at entry-into-service in 2025 and was expected to counter the similarly sized Airbus A321XLR. The new Airbus variant was officially approved by the European manufacturer in June 2019 and has recently gained ground in the key U.S. market where both American Airlines and United Airlines have selected the model. The latter carrier plans to take its first A321XLR in 2024 and begin trans-Atlantic services with the longer-range variant in 2025.

The overall rethink on NMA means that Boeing’s product development strategy is therefore more likely to pivot back to studies of a Future Small Airplane (FSA), a new generation family covering the roughly 160-220 seat sector that targets the bulk of the current 737 market. Although Boeing opted to re-engine the 737 and launch the MAX in 2011 in favor of an all-new FSA, the 4,000-plus order backlog for the MAX means production is set to continue well into the decade even if Boeing experiences significant cancellations.

This is likely to provide additional buffer time for Boeing to develop a 737-replacement family, which senior Boeing sources say would leverage the work already performed over the past four years on the low-cost production system concepts and advanced materials, structures and systems developed for NMA. Much of the sourcing activity for NMA, including engine selection, was well underway earlier in 2019 when the MAX crisis took hold.

Calhoun indicates he has faith in the resilience of the MAX backlog, despite the grounding, and that this will give the company some breathing room for developing a successor. “I am guessing and projecting that the MAX will hold its own (and) that the market split that existed prior to the MCAS (maneuvering characteristics augmentation system – the flight control system software at the heart of the MAX accidents) will restore itself and that will give us a lot of freedom on that next airplane. But I wouldn't kid you if there were a reason that that share position didn't restore itself.”

The revised focus on a new aircraft family smaller than NMA will also challenge the engine makers which, up until now, have been designing new powerplants in the 50,000 lb.-thrust range. The General Electric-Safran CFM International joint venture was competing against Pratt & Whitney to be sole source supplier for NMA and the change in direction may enable Rolls-Royce to re-enter the fray. Rolls dropped out of the NMA race in February 2019 citing concerns over its ability to meet Boeing’s original development schedule. All three manufacturers are now expected to begin evaluating new smaller engines.

Commenting on the potential change in flight control design thinking that would come with the revised design approach, Calhoun says, “I have had discussions with the FAA, we might have to start with the flight control philosophy before we actually get to the airplane. Because the decision around pilots flying airplanes, that's a very important decision for the regulator and for us to get our head around.”

In a reference to how the change may see Boeing move closer to the flight control system approach adopted by Airbus, he adds, “we have always favored airplanes that required more pilot flying than maybe our competitor did. But we're all going to have to get our head around exactly what we want out of that. So that'll be a process that will go on alongside of the next airplane development.”

In an Airbus design the flight control system will protect the aircraft from entering prescribed attitudes and speeds by limiting or augmenting the movement of control surfaces, while in a Boeing fly-by-wire design (the 777 and 787) the pilot retains final control authority to override the limits of the flight control system.

 

But isn't that sort of what they lost with the MCAS design?

 

In my 20 years on the KC-135 we had extensive training in dealing with runaway trim which is essentially what the system in the 737max did. For its first 40 years or so of its life the KC-135 didn't have a stab trim brake. On other transport catagory aircraft when force is applied to the elevator opposite the direction of trim movement there is a mechanical brake that stops the trim instantly. There were a few runaway trim events where the airplane crashed. As pointed out above when the airplane gets way out of trim and you are applying enough force to control the pitch, and in some cases there isn't enough elevator authority to completely control pitch, the trim wheel is impossible to turn. The way around this is the pilot applying the controls has to release the pressure on the elevator so the other pilot can move the trim wheel. Sometimes you can release the pressure for only a second or two before before you have to control the airplane again. It can take multiple cycles of this technique to get the airplane back under control. In all honesty if you had not been trained in this there is no way you would know what to do.

 

That didn't work out very well for the AF330.

 

In that case, Airbus allowed the pilots to monitor the aircraft's behavior all the way to the site of the crash.

 

I thought that was mostly pilot error. The Airbus system still requires a pilot to fly the airplane.

 

It was. The right seater held the stick all the way back for most of the descent, keeping the aircraft in a deep stall. You cannot see that from the left side and the left stick does not move when the right one does. Pilot error helped by design, which prevented the other pilots from figuring out what was wrong.

 

I remember in a meeting early in the 777 where some airline reps insisted that there would be two control columns instead of side sticks, " So I can see what the other guy is doing!"

 

I think that may have been a contributing factor in several early 707 crashes, including the Air France plane that crashed trying to take off from Orly.