rowingman

Today's press (NYT, WSJ, CNN) indicates AA pilots and the pilots union confronted Boeing, and that the pilots did not feel safe or adequately trained and informed about the Max8 after the first crash. Credit to the AA pilots for confronting Boeing. The AA pilots knew it was the MCAS system that caused Lion Air, and Boeing knew it. Before the Ethiopian crash, or they wouldn't have been in a confrontational meeting at DFW about the system. Again, before the second crash.

The return to the air will be very slow, given apparently the complexity of the fix, the deep questions about the lack of regulatory oversight in the accreditation, and the criminal investigations now underway of Boeing. The proverbial "what did you know, and when did you know it?" questions. The AA pilots were sufficiently concerned after the first crash. It makes me question the commercial reassurances by AA prior to the grounding frankly that "our pilots are well trained and we are fully confident in the aircraft's safety." From the audio of the AA/Boeing meeting at DFW, it sounds like the pilots were anything but reassured.

JDiver

The BBC is carrying this.

Ironically, it appears AA pilots were the most informed on this issue, and AA purchased both offered safety “options” (Angle of Attack sensor display and disagree indication).

Also, the article has a good illustration on the issue.

VegasGambler

I find this somewhat concerning. Are the pilots (as a group, presumably through their union) empowered to tell AA "we don't think this plane is safe and we aren't flying it"? If they are, what is the bar for doing that? And why didn't they? It sounds like they had legitimate concerns and felt strongly about them -- is that not enough of a reason?

I don't particularly care about the corporate spin from AA or Boeing (they are companies; they lie to the public through their PR departments -- that's just what they do) but I am concerned if pilots are flying planes that they have this level of concern about.

JDiver

If pilots had a major concern, I’m sure they’d not be putting their lives on the line for AA or Boeing. Remember, they were pretty knowledgeable about the issue, and they had two safety devices installed neither Lion nor Ethiopian did. They were sufficiently concerned to tell Boeing, and presumably the APA had input to AA - maybe that input was what got the safety devices bought in the first place.

Boeing / Muilenburg needs to own up, pull out all the stops to make this a safer aircraft. (IMO, he really should make a serious apology, resign and get out of the way for newly inspired leadership with a greater commitment to passenger safety. The short term cost for that is likely to me much less than the long term cost for not doing so, particularly when you add in a sum of human lives. As I mentioned elsewhere, it seems a number of new aircraft designs that weren’t quite sorted before launching incur a blood sacrifice and the leader’s hands certainly appear bloody while they bloviate, deny and spread their soft soap.

We’ve been through this before with the Lockheed L-188A Electra. The original entered a mode referred to as “whirl mode” at certain engine RPMs and propeller settings that induced vibrations causing the wings to fall off. IIRC two aircraft were lost to whirl mode, Braniff and Northwest (The February 5, 1959, an American Airlines Electra that crashed into the East River while on final approach to New York’s LaGuardia Airport, with 65 people were killed, was not from whirl mode.) Lockheed ultimately rectified that after restrictions, the aircraft flew safely and was the platform for the popular Navy P-3 Orion. When it returned to service, AA renamed it the Electra II so passengers would get the idea this was not the whirl mode article.

rowingman

All respect to JDiver. Truly (not sarcastic). JDiver you are the FlyerTalk Man. All respect. BUT two comments on your statement: "If pilots had a major concern, I’m sure they’d not be putting their lives on the line for AA or Boeing. Remember, they were pretty knowledgeable about the issue, and they had two safety devices installed neither Lion nor Ethiopian did. They were sufficiently concerned to tell Boeing, and presumably the APA had input to AA - maybe that input was what got the safety devices bought in the first place."

First comment: There are always pilots out there who will fly an aircraft, even if it is demonstrably unsafe. Whether denial, macho, believing the spin, whatever, they will buckle up and show that aircraft who is in charge. There are pilots flying the Max8 today on ferry flights to the desert. Demonstrably flawed aircraft, but some pilots somewhere are flying them from Renton to storage, and the airlines (SWA, UAL, and AA) to the desert for storage. Boeing is still turning out Max8s from the plant, albeit at a slower production rate. They can't stop.

Second comment: The WSJ last week indicated that in 2017 that Boeing discovered the AOA indicator "disagreement" system which AA purchased had problems, and Boeing didn't correct it. The software issues relating to the AOA disagreement were known. It seems that AA pilots were given erroneous information from Boeing, in the face of systems consider not critical to flight safety, which ultimately proved to be disastrous. The one AA pilot in today's journalism is quoted as asking why the pilots weren't told about a system which could kill them (to paraphrase). And that was simply after the first accident.

I completely agree with your statement that Mullenberg should step down. The Audit Committee of the Boeing BOD is now enmeshed in litigation. Mullenberg makes $2M/month in comp, yet still wants to say the pilots should have recovered the aircraft. In 40 seconds. At low altitude. Fighting the aircraft on systems they had never trained to overcome. Today's WSJ indicates that Boeing told the FAA none of these systems were flight safety critical, so the FAA never examined them. The whole thing stinks.

But complete respect JDiver (truly).

VegasGambler

That really sums up the whole issue right there.

Boeing should not be telling the FAA what is and isn't safety critical. The FAA should be telling Boeing.

nk15

Boeing has gone rogue you guys...

cmd320

I watched this documentary a few days ago and there is some really alarming stuff about the way all of this went down.

JDiver

Thank you for the kind words, rowingman.

Yes, there are some macho pilots that will fly regardless; I’ve known a few, though they weren’t AA. We have a saying that has force in the pilot community, originally an observation made in 1949 by early airmail pilot, E. Hamilton Lee: "There are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots."

But in this instance it’s the group / APA saying they could handle it and they believed it as a group, with possibly a few dissenting ones we’re not likely to hear about. Iirc, they wouldn’t be required to fly the MAX anyway if they expressed reservations and could have easily beeen assigned to 738s, given the relative numbers of aircraft (at grounding, 24 MAX, 304 738).

The disagree and display systems: the disagree alert system wasn’t functional if the AOA indicator display system wasn’t installed. “. The Max’s software would only allow the disagree alert to work on airlines that had purchased an optional AoA indicator as well.“ In AA, it was functional as I understand it because AA ordered both. (Southwest iirc only ordered the disagree alert, which indicates they believed they were covered but weren’t
because they didn’t buy the AoA indicator. UA purchased neither, as many others did including Lion and Ethiopian.)

Link to WSJ article for those wanting to read it.

Though senior management keeps trying to make excuses, I imagine a number of lawyers will have a field day with that and the lack of speedy action that may have allowed the Ethiopian loss. I’d not be surprised to see the term “criminal negligence” in their filings. Let the BoD chew on that as they record the long term costs of this fiasco.

DenverBrian

This 60 Minutes Australia piece, while a bit dramatic (because that's TV in 2019), features Dennis Tajer from AA...and his opinion seems clear: Boeing screwed up bigtime.

nk15

Another interesting WSJ clip, with Nader talking about the cozy relationship between Boeing/airlines and FAA. Remarkably, he wrote a book about it in 1994 and lost his grandniece in the Ethiopian Max crash...

nk15

The gist of the documentary basically is that Boeing tried to hide the pitch up problem and MCAS from everybody, and put only one mandatory censor to avoid the need for extra pilot training and to speed up certification. The insinuation is that Boeing did it because they thought that the airlines wouldn't have bought the Max if they knew about the design flaw and the MCAS and the need for more pilot training.

JDiver

APA’s Dan Carey on Youtube.

DenverBrian

Assuming you're referring to the 60 Minutes Australia piece, I think the insinuation is that Boeing "did it" because they thought they had no chance of competing with Airbus on aircraft orders if they didn't get this plane out to customers ASAP...which meant it absolutely HAD to be offered without a separate type certification.

It's becoming more and more, in my mind, a classic case of profits over safety. Airbus caught Boeing with their pants down - 100% on Boeing, as they made some horrible wrong decisions in the 2000s, not the least of which was halting 757 production. A" 757 MAX "would have been easy to put efficient engines on, would have had the seating capacity needed to compete with the A320/321 neo, and would have had the ground clearance and components to allow for future improvements without destabilizing the wing/engine area.

It's also becoming clear to me that Southwest's obsession with maintaining an all-737 fleet has had the unintended consequence of Boeing kowtowing too much to the cost control that such airlines have tried to stretch across 40 years.

nk15

I agree it was about the speed of the certification, but I also think they were trying to hide the pitch up issues and the MCAS completely from airlines and pilots (maybe even the FAA?), that's why there was no mention of it in the pilot training manuals. They were hoping, against common sense, that the one sensor will never malfunction.

Or, even worse, they perhaps knew it could/will happen at some point but planning to correct it later (when and if needed, e.g., after a crash), after they passed the certification and got the first orders and deliveries out...