Documentary "Downfall"

[skykrawler]

22 hours ago, A64Pilot said:

Boeing should never have built an unstable aircraft and never resorted to electronic magic to fix it, t

That's debatable...strictly speaking it was more of handling quality than a stability problem. 

 

22 hours ago, A64Pilot said:

Since deregulation way back in the 70’s the Airlines have been slipping slowly to become the Greyhound bus, that along with the heavy reliance of automation and you end up with an airline crew that can stall an airplane all the way down from the flight levels and never figure out what’s wrong before impacting the Ocean and everyone dies.

In that case the system was fly-by-wire and had a known problem with pitot system that led to the system going into full reversionary mode.  Three pilots were in that cockpit and couldn't figure out how to save it.   The accident report leaned heavily against the pilots.  Where was the outrage and visceral hate for Airbus when that happened?  It all seems just a little out of balance regarding the MAX.  I hope the company gets back on course....it's a very important component of our country's economy and trade balance.

[GeeBee]

It is true you can over-ride MCAS with the yoke trim button, but after 5 seconds from switch release, the MCAS comes back.

Second, after the Lion Air crash, that was not the procedure Boeing published for errant MCAS. The procedure Ethiopian did was the Boeing published procedure, except it was executed too late and the procedure did not take into account manual trim forces and the effect of control column movement on the stab trim brake.

 

[A64Pilot]

I just watched the show, anyone has to admit it was definitely a hatchet job on Boeing, of course that's what sells, but this time it sure seems Boeing had it coming.

The part that bothers me is that those responsible won’t see any retribution at all, they are immune. I retired when I did because the old Company President died and the new one was simply a Crook, when I’d tell him you can’t do that it’s immoral or you can’t do that, sure you’ll profit in the short term but you will lose business in the long term, he would look at me like I was some kind of idiot and say “it’s just business” To him any kind of illegality or immorality was justifiable if it “was just business”

 He was a Business man, had owned several other companies but knew nothing about aviation.

He DID run the company into Bankruptcy, and I’m sure took a whole lot of money with him too.

 

So back to the Boeing thing, I believe those “Businessmen and Women” who were responsible ought to suffer some kind of penalties, in my opinion prison time, and not the one with the golf course, the one with Bubba. But that will never happen.

I was unaware that at high speed that the elevator jack screw couldn’t be adjusted, That in itself seems to be a bad idea MCAS or no. I know on small aircraft any flight control has to be free of excessive forces up to VD, why not an Airliner?

Either way as I understand it, they had 10 sec to apply the corrective action and apparently exceeded 10 sec. 10 Sec is a LONG time. World I came from the Emergency procedure for a flight control malfunction is called an Immediate Action Emergency procedure and must be memorized and preformed immediately and correctly in a simulator, mock up cockpit or the aircraft, miss it once and you lose your PIC status.  

So I’m back to yes Boeing produced an unsafe aircraft, but what killed people in my opinion was lack of training both in understanding the aircraft systems and in not being trained in Emergency procedures.

For cockpit training it doesn’t take a full motion simulator, a check pilot and the trainee can sit in the real aircraft and go over the procedure, sure a full motion simulator is best, but not always necessary.

All accidents are a chain, one broken link and no accident, the aircraft was one link and another link was lack of training.

Edited March 1, 2022 by A64Pilot

[steingar]

On 2/27/2022 at 1:05 PM, skykrawler said:

Boeing definitely screwed the pooch. 

But don't forget......the first accident happened after an airplane with a unreported deficiency was put in service.  Then, Boeing was essentially denied access to flight recorder data for a month.  They did distribute a bulletin after that accident regarding cockpit indications and procedures.  Ethiopia Air had received that bulletin.

During the Ethiopia accident the stick shaker went off - and the pilots changed the configuration of the airplane (retracted flaps) - this enabled the MCAS to behave badly.  Even then, all they had to do was use the electric trim button under their thumb - it overrides the trim commands which come from the autopilot.  You can even see it in the plots.

On the 737 the autopilot trim is about half the rate of manual electric trim.

I believe these to be facts. 

 

According to the documentary the Ethiopian air pilots did what Boeing told them and turned the system off when it misbehaved.  Didn't help them much.  Boeing was busy worrying about the bottom line.  Now they get to worry about survival.  I think they should move their headquarters back to Seattle and start listening to their engineers or this will happen again.

[GeeBee]

10 seconds is a long time................ except when you have a bunch conflicting and contradictory messages. Stick shaker with high airspeed, airspeed disagree, config error,  feel differential and a trim wheel going ape......from a system that you do not know exists? No, 10 seconds is not long enough in any world where the aircraft is giving contradictory messages. I remember flying in a 757 when we had an air/ground sensor failure at altitude. It took longer than 10 seconds to sort it out.

[A64Pilot]

1 hour ago, GeeBee said:

10 seconds is a long time................ except when you have a bunch conflicting and contradictory messages. Stick shaker with high airspeed, airspeed disagree, config error,  feel differential and a trim wheel going ape......from a system that you do not know exists? No, 10 seconds is not long enough in any world where the aircraft is giving contradictory messages. I remember flying in a 757 when we had an air/ground sensor failure at altitude. It took longer than 10 seconds to sort it out.

Every bit of that goes back to training.

But even without training the trim wheel going ape should have been a real big clue. Even in one of our Mooney’s if the aircraft suddenly starts getting real nose heavy and the trim wheel is spinning towards nose down trim, that’s a pretty big clue that you have a run away trim. Now with zero knowledge of the 737 aircraft I’d bet runaway trim Emergency Procedure is auto trim off, re-trim manually? Just a  SWAG

Now I’m no airline pilot but isn’t what this MCAS was doing essentially just run away trim? Sure there were other anomalies, but there’s that training thing again, if they were trained on and understood aircraft systems then these anomalies would have made sense as an AOA sensor error. Prioritizing things (that training thing again) should have had them working aircraft control first, then scratch your head about why you have A/S and Alt disagree, but those aren’t trying to kill you like the trim is.

Again just as a guess but it seems one of the A/S and altitudes were picked off of AOA, and the stick shaker was turned on because that means push the nose down, which is what the MCAS is trying to accomplish, if I understand the system every thing that happened makes sense, and I bet that if they were trained on the system, it would have to them too.

I  realize I’m Monday morning Quaterbacking, but I still think with training the pilots could have handled the systems failure, I don’t think it rendered the aircraft un flyable,but then again I don’t have any familiarity with the 737, or other aircraft in its Category.

 

Edited March 1, 2022 by A64Pilot

[GeeBee]

So tell me the visual difference between MCAS and the speed trim system activating? Both activate without pilot input so tell me how you know the difference between speed trim, MCAS actuation and a runaway trim?

[Fly Boomer]

8 hours ago, A64Pilot said:

So I’m back to yes Boeing produced an unsafe aircraft, but what killed people in my opinion was lack of training both in understanding the aircraft systems and in not being trained in Emergency procedures.

Again, on the money.  All airplanes are unsafe without training and understanding how they work.

[A64Pilot]

17 hours ago, GeeBee said:

So tell me the visual difference between MCAS and the speed trim system activating? Both activate without pilot input so tell me how you know the difference between speed trim, MCAS actuation and a runaway trim?

Does it matter? Isn’t the corrective action the same for a trim runaway, if that’s what it’s called, remember I have zero experience with these aircraft. 

So I’m assuming whatever the cause of the trim wheel rapidly going nose down with an excessive control force required to keep the nose up is the same, trim off, retrim manually?

On edit, in fact I’d bet that is why Boeing thought that no additional training was required for MCAS. that it would be diagnosed and reacted to as a speed trim malfunction.

But as someone who doesn’t know the system at all and is just guessing one difference between MCAS activation and runaway trim is stick shaker activation. Stick shaker activation when the aircraft isn’t near a stall is an indicator of MCAS activation? 

I bet if most pilots were even told that simple thing, that MCAS activation will be accompanied with stick shaker activation, that alone would have told them MCAS was active, But then in my opinion MCAS activation should have tripped a master caution along with a segment light marked MCAS, that would tell the pilot thet he had an excessive nose up attitude or MCAS failure and would explain the stick shaker.

Again I’m no airline guy but if I understand it, stick shaker activation will really elevate one’s heart rate, it’s not normal?

Edited March 2, 2022 by A64Pilot

[GeeBee]

1 hour ago, A64Pilot said:

Does it matter? Isn’t the corrective action the same for a trim runaway, if that’s what it’s called, remember I have zero experience with these aircraft. 

So I’m assuming whatever the cause of the trim wheel rapidly going nose down with an excessive control force required to keep the nose up is the same, trim off, retrim manually?

On edit, in fact I’d bet that is why Boeing thought that no additional training was required for MCAS. that it would be diagnosed and reacted to as a speed trim malfunction.

But as someone who doesn’t know the system at all and is just guessing one difference between MCAS activation and runaway trim is stick shaker activation. Stick shaker activation when the aircraft isn’t near a stall is an indicator of MCAS activation? 

I bet if most pilots were even told that simple thing, that MCAS activation will be accompanied with stick shaker activation, that alone would have told them MCAS was active, But then in my opinion MCAS activation should have tripped a master caution along with a segment light marked MCAS, that would tell the pilot thet he had an excessive nose up attitude or MCAS failure and would explain the stick shaker.

Again I’m no airline guy but if I understand it, stick shaker activation will really elevate one’s heart rate, it’s not normal?

Yes, it does matter. No, it is not the same actions.  Speed trim activates commonly after takeoff and is a normal function. So unlike your "Mooney example" you would look down and see the trim wheel moving, with no input from you and that is normal. A speed trim malfunction does not require the same steps as an MCAS malfunction.  I really don't know where to go after that because your misunderstanding of how the entire trim system and it adjuncts operates I can only quote you. "I have zero experience with these aircraft. " Take it from there. 

[PT20J]

Bringing this back to the Mooney world...

The GFC 500 has a similar function as part of ESP (Envelope and Stability Protection) called USP (Underspeed Protection). It kicks in if the autopilot is OFF and you get below 69 KIAS when >200 feet AGL (GPS altitude compared to terrain database). Once activated, you must accelerate to 74 KIAS to deactivate it. What it does is apply a subtle pitch down force to the elevators through the pitch servo trying to maintain 69 KIAS. The natural tendency when it does this is to pull against it. Then, it seems to relax a bit (probably because you are overpowering the servo) and then it pushes harder. So you pull harder and it seems to release and then pushes harder yet. If you keep it up long enough, the autopilot will eventually engage in LVL mode. At least USP doesn't command the trim servo, so it won't leave you with full nose down trim if you disable it by holding down the autopilot disconnect button .

There is no required training on this, of course. And, the AFMS says that when USP engages it will annunciate with a MINSPD label above the airspeed tape and a voice alert, AIRSPEED! AIRSPEED!. But the AFMS is wrong -- it doesn't do any of that until the autopilot engages in LVL mode. So if you are practicing slow flight, or (as happened to me) find yourself a bit high on final and decide to slow early to increase sink rate, don't be surprised if your airplane starts to fight you with no warning and no annunciation.

What I have learned with my new panel is that to fully understand it you have to become a test pilot. There is no real in-depth training available, most instructors don't fully understand the intricacies all these different systems (how could they?), Garmin support frequently cannot answer questions beyond what is in the manuals, and the Garmin documentation is sometimes incomplete, ambiguous or wrong. 

Skip

 

[GeeBee]

It would seem at least a DVD or YouTube video would help.

[201Steve]

The fact that all you get with a new autopilot is a paper manual is a shame in 2022. Same goes for navigators, MFD’s etc. There is a market for third parties to create training material on these products and that is a travesty if you ask me. It should be mandatory for MFGs to offer a modern full spectrum online training platform of sorts for anything certified avionics. 

[PT20J]

1 hour ago, GeeBee said:

It would seem at least a DVD or YouTube video would help.

The problem is that modern avionics are  mostly software. Garmin issues a LOT of software updates. Kind of like Microsoft. There is no way that the documentation or training can keep up. Traditionally, software release notes contain three items: New features, Issues fixed, Known issues remaining. Garmin release notes (when you can find them) are often cryptic: “Improved XYZ feature.” And, I’ve never seen a known issue documented in a release note. 

Skip

[skykrawler]

Autopilots have been software based for maybe 40 years now.

On both flights the stick shaker went off.  On the Ethiopia flight this was after takeoff.    With the stick-shaker rattling and other cockpit indications the crew retracted the flaps and attempted to engage the AP.  The memory checklist for stick shaker is to not change the aircraft configuration and if the flaps were just retracted to put them back out.  Retracting the flaps enabled MCAS.  The Lion Air crash was recent and in the news, the bulletin had been released. 

The 737 trim wheels are 10 inches in diameter and hard to miss.   The 757 just has a 4 inch tape type indicator.