https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-crashes.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=The%20New%20York%20Times%20Magazine

An interesting read in the NYT. Boeing fucked up, but shit pilots contributed big time, apparently.

sibeen said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-crashes.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=The%20New%20York%20Times%20Magazine

An interesting read in the NYT. Boeing fucked up, but shit pilots contributed big time, apparently.

You mean, it wasn’t the US government this time?

What am i going to do with all the ’737 Max truther’ merchandise then?

captain_spalding said:

sibeen said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-crashes.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=The%20New%20York%20Times%20Magazine

An interesting read in the NYT. Boeing fucked up, but shit pilots contributed big time, apparently.

You mean, it wasn’t the US government this time?

What am i going to do with all the ’737 Max truther’ merchandise then?

7.37m Max truther headroom

ChrispenEvan said:

captain_spalding said:

sibeen said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-crashes.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=The%20New%20York%20Times%20Magazine

An interesting read in the NYT. Boeing fucked up, but shit pilots contributed big time, apparently.

You mean, it wasn’t the US government this time?

What am i going to do with all the ’737 Max truther’ merchandise then?

7.37m Max truther headroom

Good idea, but i think it’s going to be marketing to a very small niche clientele.

sibeen said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-crashes.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=The%20New%20York%20Times%20Magazine

An interesting read in the NYT. Boeing fucked up, but shit pilots contributed big time, apparently.

Aren’t aircraft designers supposed to allow for shit pilots, so far as is reasonably practicable?

Seems to me that having to manually shutdown a major safety feature of your aircraft to avoid it from committing suicide is not something that’s normally taught – and would not be part of simulator sessions.

From that link – “The speed, meanwhile, was producing such large aerodynamic forces on the tail that the manual trim wheel lacked the mechanical power to overcome them, and the trim was essentially locked into the position where the MCAS had left it —”

That’s what I thought. The crew left it too long to stop the runaway trim, and it got to the point where they just couldn’t physically wind the stabiliser trim in the nose-up direction due to the huge load on it. The trim mechanism is a large threaded tube (about 100 – 150 mm diameter I think) And there’s a collar (type of nut) that’s attached to it and runs up & down it to alter the stabiliser position as desired. But if the load is too great, there is simply not enough mechanical force able to be generated by pilots – one would have to have both hands on the controls to keep them pulled nose-up, unless he also happened to be a weight lifter then maybe he could use a free hand to help the other pilot wind the trim wheel.
It’s a big catch-22. You need to reduce speed to unload the stabiliser, so you either have to pull harder back on the controls (which possibly won’t work as needed as the elevator itself is only a fraction of the size of the big horizontal stabiliser, hence has less pitch authority) or reduce power on the engines as being quite powerful and low-down, they generate a strong pitch-up movement when power is added, and vice-versa. So if they’d gone back to idle that would have reduced one component of the nose-up forces but then of course that would make the nose pitch down even more, thus increasing the speed even more.

We use to train for runaway trim in the simulator a fair bit and if it’s caught in the first few seconds it’s very manageable. The 747 is different to the 737 though as there is no manual trim for any of the primary flight controls, they all require hydraulic power. There is of course a backup system for all of them and it is in fact possible to control the pitch by means of changing power settings (same as the 737’s) and by careful use of the leading & trailing edge lift devices.

In 1994 I did a type rating on the 737 – never flew one though – and they do need a careful hand at times.

Dropbear said:

Seems to me that having to manually shutdown a major safety feature of your aircraft to avoid it from committing suicide is not something that’s normally taught – and would not be part of simulator sessions.

Been over ten years so I don’t remember all the tricks but yeah, sometimes you have to turn-off some gear to stop it from making things worse. Airbus as well. (I did a type rating on the A330 with the Big Red Rat in 2008 to become a sim instructor, but they weren’t very good to work for so I quit)

Gun b lot

Boeing will plead guilty in US probe of fatal 737 MAX crashes, DOJ says

of sudden deaths soon¿

Ooh updates¡

We knew it¡ Those Indonesian and Ethiopian families fighting in court are just CHINA agents trying to cripple the USSA military¡

Boeing also makes a capsule for NASA. Two astronauts will remain at the International Space Station longer than expected while Boeing and NASA engineers troubleshoot problems with the propulsion system used to manoeuvre the capsule. Even some Boeing critics have worried about crippling a key defence contractor. “We want Boeing to succeed,” Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, said during a Senate hearing last month on what he termed the company’s broken safety culture. “Boeing needs to succeed for the sake of the jobs it provides, for the sake of local economies it supports, for the sake of the American travelling public, for the sake of our military.”