Boeing promoted 737 MAX as requiring little additional pilot training

Does anyone else here think that this would be good enough to land someone in some pretty hot water for lying.

Boeing promoted 737 MAX as requiring little additional pilot training

New evidence has surfaced that Boeing told its commercial airline customers that the 737 MAX was fundamentally similar to previous versions of the workhorse jet, despite the addition of a stability system investigators are scrutinizing in probes of the Lion Air and Ethiopian crashes.

The planes are so similar, the sales pitch went, that airlines could avoid extensive and costly training for pilots who flew earlier versions of the 737.

At the Paris Air Show in 2017, Boeing's 737 MAX chief pilot at the time, Ed Wilson, highlighted the similarities between the 737 MAX 9 and the previous series known as the Next Generation or NG. At the time, the video of the demonstration was posted by the aviation website FlightGlobal.

"The airplane is configured to be very common with the NG," Wilson, who is now retired, said, "and so a pilot can walk into here and will find everything he can just like he can in the NG

What Wilson did not mention in the video is a new computerized control system, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System or MCAS, which appears to be at the center of investigations into two recent crashes involving the 737 MAX 8.

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Pilots at American Airlines, who are represented by APA, and Southwest Airlines, who are represented by a different union, moved from older versions of the 737 to the MAX by taking an online course that lasted between 56 minutes and three hours, according to union spokesmen.

That training included some differences between the two-plane series but did not explain MCAS, they said.

https://apple.news/An1sSVj2fT2CQjoB7IuooLw

Corporate America is not OUR friend. Their tactics all boil down to campaign donations handed out by lobbyists.

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MCAS asserts itself when the flaps are retracted and the autopilot is not engaged. Boeing must have realized that there is an inherent stability hazard when the pilot is flying the plane. Also, it only asserts control when the pilot is not moving the tail elevators. In other words, the plane is not capable of flying safely with hands off the controls under some conditions. This is a fundamental difference with previous 737s or do they also have this issue and Boeing just passed over it?
Anyway the screw up is monumental with the basic design, and Boeing's actions and the FAA certifying the plane and not taking action after the first crash. After the second crash ignoring the problem became impossible. But what an outrageous cost!
The FAA claims that they don't have the budget, skills or staffing to properly certify aircraft. Holy shit Batman! This undermines the entire process that is necessary to ensure safe flight. It makes air travel not viable.
Like all engineered vehicles there is a cost-safety trade off. We rely on government regulators to guaranty that tradeoffs keep the aircraft in a operating space that results in extremely low loss of life. That judgment needs to be made by the regulator, not the manufacturer.
I wonder about the current preffered configuration of passenger jets. I'm referring to engines hanging off of the bottom of wings, attached to the lower side of the fuselage. Thrust from the engines produces a pitching moment driving the nose up, just what you don't want when you are approaching a near stall condition. Hmm,any thoughts out there from our experienced pilots?

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Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.

snoopydawg's picture

@The Wizard

Trump hasn't nominated anyone to it or McConnell hasn't let anyone be confirmed. The ex CEO of Boeing has a high position in the pentagon and he is being looked at now to see it he is sending Boeing jobs. I'm betting that they won't have to look too hard.

The FAA claims that they don't have the budget, skills or staffing to properly certify aircraft. Holy shit Batman! This undermines the entire process that is necessary to ensure safe flight. It makes air travel not viable.

This isn't just happening in the FAA. Lots of agencies have cut personnel and of course their budgets. Then there is the biggest problem with our regulatory agencies. They have been captured by the industry they are supposed to be regulating. This happens with the FDA too. They are letting the drug companies write the reports on their drugs and the FDA just rubber stamps their results.

But of course it's not just the agencies that have been captured. The whole government has been captured and the congress members who sit on committees that are supposed to protecting us from them have been picked by the agencies. The head of the foreign affairs committee has been picked by military lobbyists and so on. I was shocked when I learned that.

The world is being led by psychotic assholes who only care about $$$$$. Star Trek once had a show where 3 people from our century were found frozen and one guy used to deal with money. He couldn't believe that nobody used it anymore. I want to live in that reality.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

vtcc73's picture

I’ve never flown any variant of the 737. I’ve purposely avoided reading anything in the media about the the subject. There has never been anything printed or produced in the print or TV media that is accurate or complete enough upon which to form an opinion. Their stuff is dismally worthless from a technical standpoint. A dog teaching quantum mechanics has almost as much chance of offering a clear understanding as our media. Only the dog won’t have an agenda or profit motive like the media.

My knowledge of the MCAS and the issues is limited to what Bisbonian wrote last weekend. My understanding from his explanation left me with two clear thoughts. MCAS is a seriously flawed design due to there being a built in single point failure in the single AOA (Angle Of Attack) sensor. A single sensor system has no way to detect an unreliable our partially failed sensor. Detection requires two sensors and three are required for a fault tolerant system. A hard fault is the only detectable failure mode. This is a totally unacceptable design for a critical flight control system. I think it is likely that this was a design choice driven by cost considerations. It should never have gotten past certification testing.

Certification is the second issue. MAX probably has demonstrated in clear language that there are limits to the common type rating system. The 737 in particular has grown so much that there is little except the name in common with the 737-100 and the MAX. The 737 type has been stretched beyond the intent and letter of the common type idea. Differences training is totally inadequate but especially when the manufacturers don’t thoroughly train crews. The cynic in me says that the need for MCAS by itself demonstrates that the MAX’s flight characteristics are different enough that it should have a separate type designation. This suggests a motive for Boeing not thoroughly training crews in the MCAS. Expect to hear more about this in the months to come. Beware if the issue doesn’t become prominent in the investigations. Not addressing common type designations is in my opinion a sign this can happen again.

One last point. Almost nothing we read, see, or hear in any media is trustworthy. Everyone has an agenda. Sit back and wait for the investigations to run their course. That is no guarantee of truth but it is the best we have.

The point about a crippled FAA has validity. Delta’s former Senior VP of Flight Ops is supposed to be nominated for Administrator. He is as the Brits would say a right twat. He is a weasel who is firmly in the pocket of the industry. He is out for himself. My personal dealings with him left me completely unimpressed. He will do what is right for Steve Dickson. He always has. He is a perfect match for this administration.

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"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."