
Indonesia to Fault 737 MAX Design, U.S. Oversight in Lion Air Crash Report - cmurf
https://www.wsj.com/articles/indonesia-to-fault-737-max-design-u-s-oversight-in-lion-air-crash-report-11569185664
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grecy
I'm calling it now: The US Government will pass a law protecting Boeing from
litigation over this, or they will bail them out, because "too big to fail".

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sschueller
At least I as the consumer can avoid any airline using Boeing or flights that
are operated with boeings. It's small potatoes but I did what I could and if
everyone does the same it will hurt Boeing.

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Kirby64
Good luck. At least in the US, the vast majority of airlines use Boeing planes
in most, if not all of their fleets. In Europe it's a different story, but
that limits you to almost no carrier in the US.

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amluto
For a counterpoint:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-
crashes.html)

~~~
cmurf
It's a useful article. But as a pilot and former CFII, I do not agree with
Langewiesche's assertion that AF447 was "an exercise in poor airmanship".
That's a callous disregard for the final report that put blame on Airbus and
Air France, for training deficiency, simulator deficiency, and cockpit UI/Ux
confusion contributing to the problem of pilot panic.

Is it poor airmanship that resulted in US Air 427? How is what happened on
AF447, Lion Air 610, Ethiopian Airlines 302, anything to do with pilot
competency and airmanship, while US Air 427 pilots don't get any of that
criticism? Is it American pilot versus foreign pilot bias? It would seem so,
but it's also a distraction from the question of pilot role: is it really
appropriate to consider them the last line of defense as if the airplane and
now automated flight systems are capriciously trying to kill everyone at any
moment and if the pilot can't intervene that "airmanship" has to be brought
into the discussion?

I just think it's a cheap shot. Only from the mistakes of these dead pilots,
and a bunch of dead people, is their the concern that leads to fixes from
manufacturers. And Langewiesche didn't bother to bring up Boeing's previous
track record with 737 defects either, and how unconscionable their intentional
misdirection was.

~~~
o-__-o
as a CFII you are well aware that US has the most strict regulations around
livery pilot training requirements. you cannot fly a large jet without 2000+
hours. LA610 and EA302 had copilots with <2000 hours. Boeing even said they
need to redesign their planes to account for lesser skilled pilots. sounds
like culpability of the foreign government, boeing, airlines, and pilots.. in
that order.

and yeah pilots will always get the final blame because they're the ones
ultimately in control. or, dead (wo)men can't defend themselves.

~~~
cmurf
I don't understand your point. You throw out a factoid thinking it's relevant,
and that it speaks for itself. How is experience related to these two crashes?

Only FAR 121 operations require ATP certification, which has a 1500 hour total
time experience attached. And that ATP certification requirement follows the
Colgan Air 3407 crash, just ten years ago. And the extra time experience
probably wouldn't have made any difference in that crash, because the NTSB
dinged the captain more than the first officer, and the inadequacy of training
overall. It was the captain flying, he was the one apparently startled by the
stall warning, and he was the one who did the exact opposite of what his
training should have told him. And he met the newer experience and
certification requirements already.
[https://www.flyingmag.com/safety/accident-
investigations/aft...](https://www.flyingmag.com/safety/accident-
investigations/aftermath-mystery-colgan-3407/)

~~~
o-__-o
I'm going to go on a soapbox here and authoritatively state by correlation
that fatal accidents from narrow-body jets where pax have survived have only
occurred with pilots with extra time. I don't have any raw data to share to
back this up, but I have read enough NTSB reports to see this one nugget of
information stand out. And if you want to determine a cause, an obvious and
likely to be denounced as a red-herring, is the additional time spent learning
the aircraft.

Pilots with additional time on the MAX were able to spend more time in the
simulator. The previous pilot of LA610 recognized the malfunction and was able
to correct. We can't ignore the evidence here. The outcome is very binary.
Either we dumb down airplanes so your commander-in-chief can fly one ala an
Icon A5 or we continue to keep a minimum of 5000 combined flight time on deck.

~~~
cmurf
You keep getting basic facts wrong. A jump pilot on LNI 043 recommended
stabilizer trim cutoff, not the flying pilots. That flight also didn't exhibit
nearly as aggressive MCAS upset as the crashed flights. The action you credit
to LNI 043, is the same action taken by ET302. The MCAS induced mistrim was so
quickly severe they could not manually retrim, reenabled electric trim to get
assistance to retrim, and in an instant MCAS activated and shoved the nose 20
degrees down. It was so aggressive flight recorder data shows negative G
forces. They were literally lifted iff their seats.

You have blinders on, fixated on unproven relevance of experience, while being
resistant to available facts showing a deadly aircraft design flaw.

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dang
Url changed from
[https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/462541-indonesia-t...](https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/462541-indonesia-
to-blame-plane-design-oversight-in-fatal-boeing-737-max-jet), which points to
this.

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zelienople
Well we couldn't expect them to blame the former airport hustler who made
billions ignoring safety and bribing government investigators now, could we?

Nor could we expect them to blame the pilots for being so poorly trained and
under-prepared for a simple runaway trim situation that they allowed aircraft
to fly fast enough that any control input would fatally damage the control
surfaces, could we?

Noooo. We don't let the facts interfere with our opinions here. We just dance
to the tune set by our masters in St. Petersburg and destroy the second
largest US defence contractor.

Because facts are soooo tired. I can't possibly be expected to read and
understand complex technical material before having an opinion. Nooo. We don't
want that.

~~~
cmurf
What facts demonstrate the pilots are poorly trained? What facts demonstrate
this was a case of simple runaway trim? What facts indicate control surfaces
were damaged, let alone related to speed or improper control input?

What we do know is MCAS can so rapidly induce mistrim, that it's not possible
to recover from at low altitude. No one was informed of or trained on this
possible failure vector and it's not at all clear it looks like the kind of
runaway trim they are trained for.

United 585, US Air 427, Eastwind 517. The facts there are this was the result
of PCU malfunction causing rudder reversal. In the case of US Air 427 the
pilots pulled back on the yoke the entire time, progressing the stall, and
making recovery impossible. But the direct cause of the accident is still
Boeing's responsibility, the instigating action that led to the crashes was
rudder hardover due to a mechanical defect.

Just because pilots may have, with perfect information, been able to recover
the plane, does not absolve Boeing's defective design and implementation for
MCAS, the deception from the FAA, the lack of documentation about its function
and malfunction in the flight manual or training materials, the lack of any
procedure for its malfunction that would require additional training.

And now they're changing the behavior of MCAS in the case of angle of attack
sensor disagreement, such that MCAS is disabled. That's a very clear sign that
the previous behavior is inappropriate. And the ensuing change in airplane
behavior without MCAS will certainly require additional training, the very
thing they sought to avoid.

