My source is the final committee report: at page 100, there is a table which states what I wrote, and at pages 206-08, there is a discussion of the failed test. Boeing did not apparently report this failed test to the FAA. (Another test pilot at the time was able to react successfully within four seconds.)
The report uses the FAA definition of “catastrophic,” that is, “Failure conditions that are expected to result in multiple fatalities of the occupants, or incapacitation or fatal injury to a flight crewmember normally with the loss of the airplane.”
Maybe the Lion Air crew was subpar. I don’t know. But I haven’t read anything that convinces me that all the reasonably skilled pilots in the world could have avoided the catastrophe.
Give it up Bug, if you had a clue what it takes for an American kid to get to the right seat of an airliner you wouldn’t be trolling this thread. Stick to what you know and stop with the anti American BS.
Huh? The reason McBoeing management left Seattle was the CEO’s wife didn’t like living there.
You should understand that I worked for 22 years for Honeywell and in my capacity as a senior technologist I had many interactions with both Boeing and McDonnell Douglas. From an engineering and safety perspective, MacDac was a crap company. When Boeing bought them the MacDac managers used their impressive office politics skills to gain power and turn Boeing into a crap company.
So it is kids that sit in the right seat of American airliners??
OK let’s make a deal; I’ll stop making sarcastic remarks about your silly assumptions that only American know how to fly planes and experienced Asian or Africans are unable to do so, if you stop making them. (Or document it).
Sensationalizing the 2012 simulator test is a cheap shot that doesn’t really mean much. You neglected to add that the sim pilot said it took 10 seconds to turn the MCAS off and continue. There was no catastrophe.
You also didn’t bother to add the chief project engineer’s words "“I’ve always known that a stab trim
runaway would have catastrophic effects if the pilots did not intervene.”
Any pilot with 300 hours should have known that not intervening in a runaway trim incident could be fatal, particularly when the aircraft is accelerating under full power.
There is no shortage of documentation about the lack of pilot competence in third world airlines. There was quite long thread about it here not too long ago.
Feel free to quote me but be honest enough to not try to imply I made statements such as your absurd claim that I assume only American pilots can fly airplanes.
Give it up Bug, you are in the wrong thread. Go troll something else.
Thanks for the laugh. I lived in Seattle at the time.
Boeing management left because their labor relations skills made them targets for nearly everyone who worked for the manufacturing and engineering side of the company.
If the wifey was involved in the decision it might have been because she didn’t like getting spit on when she went shopping.
Boeing was taken over by accountants. The Max 8 is their reward.
I think your quarrel is with the report and not me. The report cites the test pilot himself as saying the results of the failed test would be catastrophic:
"Boeing concealed internal test data it had that revealed it took a Boeing test pilot more than 10 seconds to diagnose and respond to uncommanded MCAS activation in a flight simulator, a condition the pilot found to be “catastrophic[.]”
The report also rejected the Chief Project Engineer’s “attempt to explain away the importance of these test results,” which you quote. The report states:
“Obviously, there are potentially fatal consequences if pilots do not intervene in time to various aviation incidents or technical mishaps. In this case, however, Boeing had internal test data revealing that its own test pilot tried – but failed – to respond in time to an uncommanded MCAS activation event in a flight simulator which would have resulted in the loss of the aircraft in a real world situation. This was not simply a hypothetical scenario. It was the result of a flight simulator test by a trained Boeing test pilot.”
Finally, the report questioned that pilots would recognize this as a runaway trim situation, which you and others have suggested should be obvious:
“But stabilizer trim runaway does not provoke the multitude of simultaneous and seemingly unrelated cautions and warnings that accompany erroneous MCAS activation when triggered by a failure of an AOA sensor. Yet, Boeing assumed that pilots would respond to an unexpected MCAS activation as it if were a runaway stabilizer trim event, within four seconds.”
This is all from the report. No sensationalizing necessary.
We’re on the same page. Having a company taken over by accountants is the way you get a crap company. MacDac was always that way. It’s not just the Max 8. It’s everything.
The report in the OP refers to this document as having been produced by “seasoned American pIlots”
I can tell you that the members of APA are offended by remarks made by those who seem to blame the pilots killed in those two crashes. Some negative aspersions have appeared in the press relating to the quality of pilots trained in Africa. I am here to tell you that I worked in Africa and trained African pilots to fly large aircraft. I am very familiar with Ethiopian Air’s pilot training program and facilities, and I can tell you that they are world-class. In fact, while not one U.S. airline has a MAX simulator, one non-U.S. airline does – Ethiopian Air. To make the claim that these accidents would not happen to U.S.-trained pilots is presumptuous and not supported by fact. Vilifying non-U.S. pilots is disrespectful and not solution-based, nor is it in line with a sorely needed global safety culture that delivers one standard of safety and training. Simply put, Boeing does not produce aircraft for U.S. pilots vs. pilots from the rest of the world.
I suggest some members read the June thread on “Culture and Aviation Safety.”
"No Boeing 737 Max was lost by an American pilot though at least two pitch down incidents were reported before the grounding. The American pilots simply turned off the system and flew the aircraft. The last Max crash hit the ground at full throttle … pulling the power and turning the system off was outside the box for those pilots. Also note that even European pilots can climb into the front seat of an airline with only 240 hours of flight experience while an American requires a minimum of 1500. You learn a lot in that extra 1260 hours.
The classic Airbus crashes were Air France 296 and Air France 447."
Too bad they didn’t know how to use it to train the response to an MCAS failure as detailed by Boeing.
The APA letter is a classic pilot union response to any accident … it was xxxx, not the pilot’s fault. I am sorry but putting a 360 hour student in the right seat of an airliner that requires a two pilot crew is insanity. Even if the left seater knows what he is doing, a right seater can kill him before he even realizes what is going on. Look at Atlas Air Flight 3591 for a great example of that fact.
If this is referring to the two incidents reported in the ASRS (article here) then in both cases it happened after Lion Air and because of that both flight crews specifically briefed on the exact problem the day of the flight prior to take-off.
Knew we had a MAX. It was my leg, normal Ops Brief, plus I briefed our concerns with the MAX issues, bulletin, MCAS, stab trim cutout response etc
I was well rested and had discussed the recent MAX 8 MCAS guidance with the Captain.
Further ASRS reports from American pilots highlight that there was no prior training
This description [MCAS System] is not currently in the 737 Flight Manual Part 2, nor the Boeing FCOM, though it will be added to them soon. This communication highlights that an entire system is not described in our Flight Manual.
Only in the last 11 years. “Before the rule changes, pilots with 250 hours could be hired by a regional carrier and be trained in an aircraft type.”
And the only thing required for US pilots who had flown prior 737 models was to watch a video that did not describe the new system:
The video tutorial assigned to pilots before the Lion Air crash did not cover a new anti-stall flight system capable of sharply pointing the plane downward, whose role was highlighted in the preliminary investigation of that crash. That system is called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, for short. Another vital change linked to the new system—that a control column to counteract such maneuvers would no longer work as it used to—was also not communicated to pilots.
One pilot reported in the ASRS after his first Max flight:
My post flight evaluation is that we lacked the knowledge to operate the aircraft in all weather and aircraft states safely.
It was a flawed system with no training provided. It’s great that Americans are required to have more flight hours, but as someone who has flown to ships around the world hundreds of times on foreign carriers, I want a plane that isn’t only safe in the hands of a minority of pilots.
Can you provide details/sources for these pitch-down incidents? In the two such incidents that I read about, the pilots turned off the autopilot and were then able to regain control of the aircrafts. Since MCAS is disabled when the auto-pilot is engaged, the incidents were not caused by MCAS, is my understanding.