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Interesting Article on 737MAX and Related Issues


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1 minute ago, ST0RM said:

I fly twice a month, if not more. 

Customer Service and airmanship is very poor. Landings are typically hard, flights delayed more than on time, in-flight service is garbage and minimal. Overcrowded airplanes.

The 737 Max issues just highlight the lack of training on the airline's half of this. 

None of that has to do with actual airman ship.

 

The "hard" landings are due to restricted approach patterns due to encroachment from housing developments, thus forcing steeper approached due noise abatement requirements.

 

Flight delays are due to the airline management not building into their flight schedules any wiggle room, if an aircraft can't fly for mechanical reasons or is delayed for some reason it has ripple effects throughout the who schedule.

 

In-flght service has nothing to do with the pilot, he's not in the back handing out peanuts/sodas, he's up in the pointy part of the tube being an organic stick actuator.

 

Over crowding is again management, trying to pack as many cattle on board in order to make the flight more cost effected. Again, the organic stick actuator has nothing to do with how many cattle the airline decides to stuff in the tube, he just takes that tube with wings from one place to another.

 

You are correct, the 737 max crashes highlight the lack of training the airlines are giving their flight crews, but how is this Boeing's fault?

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7 minutes ago, Mfezi said:

 

Your source also says 387 had been delivered. So where did you get 2700?

Order and deliveries by customer column, total for the -8. I miss read it as being delivered when it really is just the total being ordered, my bad.

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1 minute ago, GW8345 said:

You are correct, the 737 max crashes highlight the lack of training the airlines are giving their flight crews, but how is this Boeing's fault?

 

In the case of MCAS it is entirely the fault of Boeing (and FAA). Boeing convinced FAA that MCAS did not require additional/changes to existing 737 training and was not even mentioned in flight crew operation manuals. This let airlines and pilots avoid having to get trained on an additional certification type. 

 

My point is lack of training by the airlines is different than intentionally not training on a system because no one (Boeing) told you about it’s existance. 

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1 hour ago, GW8345 said:

 

You are correct, the 737 max crashes highlight the lack of training the airlines are giving their flight crews, but how is this Boeing's fault?

If all you take away from this issue is that 3rd world pilots are undertrained and BA is not at fault, it’s really not worth spending much more time debating this.   

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11bee by any chance are you following this story over on ars technica?

 

I found this quote on that forum. It speaks to the diversity in the quality of pilot training around the world.  In no way does this excuse the design or certification deficiencies of Boeing’s MCAS but I thought it was interesting. 

 

edit: I just realized the following quote is also included in bits and pieces in the OOPs link to the NYT article

 

 

Quote

Dave Carbaugh, the former Boeing test pilot, spent his first 10 years with the company traveling the globe to teach customers how to fly its airplanes. He mentioned the challenge of training pilots in Asia. “Those were the rote pilots,” he said, “the guys standing up in the back of a sim. They saw a runaway trim. They saw where and how it was handled in the curriculum — always on Sim Ride No. 3. And so on their Sim Ride No. 3, they handled it correctly, because they knew exactly when it was coming and what was going to happen. But did they get exposed anywhere else? Or did they discuss the issues involved? No. It was just a rote exercise. This is Step No. 25 of learning to fly a 737. Period.” 

This was the history that Boeing had in mind 10 years ago when it decided to intervene with Lion Air. Carbaugh said: “Boeing spent a shitpot full of money trying to bring those folks up to Western standards. We could only do so much, but we knew we had to try. It was an extraordinary effort.” But it was not good enough. Lion Air continued to crash airplanes around runways as it had before. The Indonesian authorities lacked the political will to rein that in. It is no secret that Rusdi Kirana prioritized efficiency over regulation. 

Nonetheless, the lethargy of the company’s initial response to the loss of Lion Air 610 seemed rooted less in fear or feelings of remorse than in genuine incredulity that these two pilots had been so incompetent as to plunge into the sea because of what amounted to a runaway trim.

This spring, I drove an hour west of the Jakarta airport to a compound known as Lion City. There, 2,500 flight attendants live in dormitories and batches of pilot recruits sit through up to six months of initial ground school before moving on to four to five months of flight training in Cessna 172s, followed by guaranteed jobs as co-pilots for the Lion Air Group. The pedagogical approach is that of a production line, with no accommodation for creativity or the unexpected. The tuition is $60,000. About 150 to 200 students pass through every year. The completion rate for the flight training is an astonishing 95 percent. When I asked how the completion rate could be so high, the head of training explained that it is because of aptitude testing at the start. For instance, applicants must have graduated from high school. In other words, when it comes to predicting the competence of its pilots, Lion Air has achieved the clairvoyance that has long eluded Boeing and Airbus, both of which have spent decades in that pursuit without finding good answers.

At Lion City, I stood in front of a class of buzz-cut clean-shaven young recruits in white uniform shirts and narrow black neckties — the new checklist children of global aviation. At a loss for words, I said, “Congratulations.” Dutifully and in perfect unison they answered, “Thank you, sir.” The visit was an education for me. Boeing is aware of this academy and feeder facilities just like it all over the world. The situation is evidently grave. I left Lion City struck that Boeing has not reacted with greater urgency to the larger problems now faced.

 

Edited by habu2
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@GW8345

 

I know the things I listed dont relate to poor airmanship, I was generalizing the US Airline issues.

However, I've got friends in the sim training centers who have shared stories of pilots who cant fly without autopilots. Fly a routine approach or departure procedures. 

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17 hours ago, habu2 said:

11bee by any chance are you following this story over on ars technica?

 

I found this quote on that forum. It speaks to the diversity in the quality of pilot training around the world.  In no way does this excuse the design or certification deficiencies of Boeing’s MCAS but I thought it was interesting. 

 

edit: I just realized the following quote is also included in bits and pieces in the OOPs link to the NYT article

 

 

 

Hi Habu, yep, I saw it in the article and the site you mentioned.   I'm by no means an expert but from what I see, there are two major issues with those crashes.   One is BA's obsession with cost savings and over-riding their engineers, which resulted in flawed MCAS being introduced with zero pilot awareness.  The other is the issue you flagged in your post with declining airmanship.   I don't think that the airmanship issue is restricted to third world countries though.    The Korean 777 crash at SFO and the Air Canada jet nearly landing on a packed taxiway at the same airport are other good examples.

 

If you ignore the MCAS issue entirely (because pretty soon this will be corrected), seems like you have got two choices for solutions to the airmanship issue.   Up pilot training worldwide to remediate / eliminate those who are overly dependent on automation (unlikely to happen) or increase the level of automation in planes so that pilots who lack basic airmanship are protected from themselves (which is kind of Airbus' philosophy).   The fact that the Ethiopian crew kept their throttles at full take-off power for the entire duration of that doomed flight is mystifying and deeply troubling. 

 

Out of curiosity, would an A320 have offered some additional automatic overspeed protection?

 

 

 

 

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  • 8 months later...
2 hours ago, Da SWO said:

Was reading (WSJ?) an article that said Boeing hopes for the first test flight next week.

 

I hope it happens, they need to get this fixed.

Just in time for the worst business climate in airline history.  Maybe just call it quits on the Max and go with a clean sheet design?    Or take all those engineers and finally fix the KC-46?

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