ET crash ADD NBO

[ian16th]

I see that the Guardian has latched on to the fact that Comair are flying a Max 8 in BA Livery.

[barkingmad]

Maybe time for the major aircraft design teams to be forced to watch "2001:A Space Odyssey" & to learm HALs chilling words-"I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you do that".

I've always wondered if there is ever a proportion of the design teams who are grumpy old pilots who've read more accident reports than the bright-eyed geeks' total of hot dinners? Then when these whizz-bang ideas for modifying a dated design are aired they can be squashed at birth.

And even if the manufacturers folk get carried away with their brilliant new widgets & systems, where are the gnarled old cynics in the regulatory chain who will be the last to stop the cheeseholes lining up?

As a personal aside, 10 years on the 'NG' and to the very end I found the STS system to be a complete nuisance during takeoff and was always trimming to oppose it midst the obvious clatter of the highly visible trim wheel. Before the incoming fire starts, neither sim instructors nor line checkers ever remarked on my actions so I have to conclude I was not in error.

And if the CVR analysis of the Lionair accident was available then just maybe the Max drivers at large would be more aware of the traps lying in wait.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Ah, but analyses take time because asses must be covered. Timely information that might save lives went out the window a while back.

[Pontius Navigator]

Fox, or X co pilot was a Cathy TC about then, sadly died of a brain tumour.

[Pontius Navigator]

There are two basic problems. The first is that modern automatics, not just in aircraft, are designed to replace the operator not aid him/her.

I believe it is not possible to fly the Typhoon without the computers working. Are passenger aircraft similarly limited, no reversion possible?

[Undried Plum]

What is the accident rate, in crashes per million flights, of the 737Max?

What would an acceptable rate be? 2.0 per million?

Have they really achieved 2,000,000 flights since the Max entered service?

[Boac]

"Are passenger aircraft similarly limited, no reversion possible?" No. I do not know about the Typhoon.

[Ex-Ascot]

I am repeating myself but why don't airlines encourage pilots to hand fly. Monarch did. Don't go 10 miles downwind for an instrument approach at some holiday resort destination if approaching VMC from the opposite direction to the runway in use. Get yourself downwind in the visual circuit and bang the thing on the ground manually. Huge saving in costs and the pilots keep their hands in. I really do not understand it.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Unstable aircraft like modern fighters cannot be flown manually by the average FJ pilot, which is why there's no non-computer mode.
For stable aircraft, aerodynamically-speaking, which is everything else, the "computer" bit needs to be clarified.
If there's no manual control linkage (ie. solely fly-by-wire), then the aircraft can't be flown without a flight control computer.
Added to this are often Stability Augmentation Systems. These may be separate computers or integrated into the flight control computer. They may be isolatable or not.
There are also autopilot computers, which again may be separate or not. They are isolatable but it may not be straightforward or clear which bits are still in use.
There are also Flight Management computers, which may include some form of auto checklist action, or not, and have the same caveats as the other 3 computers.

Depending on the design of the aircraft and systems, all these computers may use the same input sensors, or have their own, and they may output to the same control surfaces by the same control jacks, or have their own.
Each of these systems may have differing levels of redundancy. Only one component is simplex. This is inherently dangerous and only used for non-critical systems, unless the failure is instantly obvious to the crew. Duplex systems can check each other, and flag up when there's a difference. The crew decide which one, OR BOTH, are wrong. Sometime, for fun and giggles, both systems can go wrong the same way at the same rate, so the self-check says OK but it isn't. This used to happen with the F3 twin inertial navs occasionally. Triplex systems usually included 'voter' units, where the system uses the two that agree if one differs. Quadruplex is still usable after 2 failures in any one module, as it fails to triplex after the first failure.

With any discussion of reversion, it is important to be clear about what sensors can be isolated, which of the computers are isolated, and which control surfaces are being used, driven by which jacks.
The MCAS on the 737 MAX appears to control the stabilizer - the front of the tailplane, whereas the stick controls the elevator - the back of the tailplane. I am not clear from reading around how many AoA sensors there are, what the redundancy is, and whether or not they are used by any of the other computers. I do not think the crews have access to the AoA sensor raw readings, or can isolate them.

Ex-A Fully automatic flying saves fuel and is smoother; not much of either, but there you go. Bean counters rule the airlines - no hands-on for you!

[Boac]

Ex-A because they have been sold the myth that automation is safer. To be fair,it generally is, but ONLY when a crew is able to handle the resulting aircraft when it goes wrong. I know of several airlines that have 'criticised' a Captain for allowing manual flight eg in the climb when he 'should' have engaged the autopilot. Yes, manual flight significantly increases the monitoring required by the other pilot but in the right conditions it should be fine. I recall several times 'persuading' young co-pilots to fly a visual circuit from downwind in CAVOK and not flying out to 15 miles for an ILS...... generally they needed talking through but when asked why they didn't do it they said "most Captains don't like it".................QED.

Fox - a 15 mile ILS does not 'save' any fuel and certainly no airframe hours!

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Oh, granted. I remember flying into Yellowknife, and the pilot did a run-in-and-break (or its airliner equivalent) in a 737 (nobody looking!), but that isn't the way beancounters think.

[Boac]

Did one of those at Volos (LGBL) in a 737. Very efficient. Tried not to cause CI amongst the crew and passengers....

[boing]

There are so many individual threads tangled together in this web of aircraft automation that it is difficult to follow them.

Once aircraft needed to be inherently flyable manually before they could be certified for commercial use. Then, as jet aircraft were introduced, it was found that some of these aircraft had undesirable flight characteristics under certain conditions so simple stability augmentation systems were permitted to solve specific problems. This stability augmentation has now encroached to the level where it is a commonplace for it to modify flight control operation on a routine basis. Money being the driver of many decisions modern stability augmentation is commonly utilized to permit an established airframe design to be stretched or otherwise modified to permit certification when it would otherwise have failed. I would think that is the problem with the 737MAX. The aircraft probably could be flown routinely by a competent pilot (with some complaints) but this implies the availability or a competent pilot and the training involved in learning to handle the problem properly.

These are the priorities involved in safely installing stability augmentation systems that can actually and routinely manoeuvre the aircraft.
1. The systems need redundancy and channel cross-comparisons to instantly detect a fault condition and display same to the pilot.
2. The system should "fail soft" ie. return the aircraft to control of the pilot in a reasonably flyable condition.
3. The system should be capable of instant override by the pilot.
4. Pilots need to be properly trained to handle the reversion to manual control.

I think we can find no better example of how things should be done than the 747-400. It was, of course, a stretched version of the basic 747, it actually improved on the basic 747's flying qualities and removed several of its annoying glitches. Since the aircraft possessed such inherently good flight characteristics it needed no stability augmentation that I remember. The level of systems automation was perfect in that with any failure the automated systems for the most part carried out what would normally have been the flight manual "Immediate Actions" and then returned the aircraft to you with a big smile.

I knew we were in trouble with Boeing after I talked to someone who had been at the 777 introduction festivities. Apparently someone asked a Boeing representative why the aircraft had not been fitted with side-stick controllers rather than the standard control yoke. The reply was that it was because they wanted to keep the "old farts at the airlines happy". Well, what he did not understand at all is that the "old fart" was keeping n touch with what the autopilot and the copilot was doing to the aircraft by simply resting his hands lightly on the yoke with having to scan the instrument panel continuously.


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[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Our pax were all oil workers or Inuit. Judging by their total lack of reaction, I guessed this was the norm.

[Pontius Navigator]

Thomson into Dalman couple of years back, severe windsheer, bags of power and round we went, visual and straight in.

Cries of fear from pax even a 'we're all going to die ' react ion.

Having read here perhaps I should have been scared

[Rwy in Sight]

Doomed Ethiopian Boeing jet 'had smoke pouring from the rear' before 'crashing with a loud boom as luggage and clothes came burning down', killing all 157 on board, witness says . Guess the newspaper ?

A famous quote in aviation was about a guy putting an aircraft in fire and crashing it at Farnborough Air Show to satisfy all those eye-witness that keep mentioning an aircraft in fire before every crash.

Serious question now: the two MAX crashes so far involve airlines with a strong hierarchy culture. Would a culture with a strong / powerful Captain and a weak FO would make an otherwise survivable but difficult situation,fatal? The question goes mainly to Ex-A and Slasher but all inputs are welcome.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

I have seen a Saudi Tornado navigator sit there and not eject whilst his Princely pilot (literally) crashed the sim from straight and level at 1,500 feet. I was able to speak to him alone afterwards, and he explained that his family would be very well looked after if, for real, he just sat there and died; but that if he did anything against what the Prince wanted, he would be blamed for the crash and his family persecuted. He had been a goatherd a few years before, so this was all an amazing status change for him, and he wasn't going to rock any boats, even if it meant dying. His son would be fine.

[Woody]

Seems to be quite a few airlines taking these aircraft out of service

[Pontius Navigator]

Heard a good witness report on BBC at lunchtime, quite positive, straight down, impact, fireball.

[Capetonian]

Also heard that a/c was on fire before hitting the ground.

None of which appears to match up with what has been gleaned from the tracker sites.