[Peetwo]

Flight JT610 - Preliminary report released. 

Via the Oz: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/busines...c6641bbcaf

Plane shouldn’t have flown

ROBYN IRONSIDE


The Boeing 737 Max 8 that crashed off Indonesia last month should not have been allowed to fly on October 29, after experiencing serious technical problems the day before.

That is the key finding of the preliminary report released today by the National Transportation Safety Committee of Indonesia, following the crash that killed all 189 people on board.

The report detailed the flight on October 28 from Denpasar to Jakarta, which experienced the problem of automatic nose trim commands, making the 737 Max difficult to control.

Despite the issues, the engineer in Jakarta did not brief the pilot of flight JT610 about the “very serious” problems with the expectation that he would read the maintenance log.

It was revealed the pilots on the previous flight ran through several checklists to overcome the issues with the automatic nose down commands, thought to have been triggered by erroneous information from an angle of attack sensor.

A statement from Boeing said it was not known if the pilots in the cockpit of flight JT610 carried out the same procedures.

“Data from the flight data recorder summarised in the report makes clear that, as on the previous flight, the aeroplane experienced automatic nose down trim (commands forcing the nose the aircraft down),” said the statement.

“In response, the flight crew repeatedly commanded nose up trim. This sequence repeated for the remainder of the flight during which the flight crew was able to maintain control of the aeroplane for approximately ten minutes.”

The statement went onto say it was unclear if the pilot performed the “runaway stabiliser” procedure or cut out the stabiliser trim switches which should have overcome the issues with the automatic nose down trim, controlled by a system known as MCAS.

“Boeing appreciates Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee for its ongoing efforts to investigate the causes of the accident,” the statement said.

“Boeing is taking every measure to fully understand all aspects of this accident, working closely with the US National Transportation Safety Board as technical advisers to support the NTSC as the investigation continues.”

Although the flight data recorder has been retrieved, search crews are yet to locate the cockpit voice recorder which will reveal just how the pilots responded to the unfolding crisis.

There is much at stake for Boeing which has seen its share price plummet in the weeks after the crash, and revelations pilots were not aware of the MCAS implications in certain conditions.

Today’s statement emphasised the culture of safety at Boeing and said customers and passengers of the 737 Max, should be assured the aircraft was “as safe as any other to have flown the skies”.

The NTSC report recommended pilots “familiarise themselves better with operating manuals and ensure all operation documents be properly filled out and documented”.

 
And from Oz Aviation: 

INDONESIA RELEASES PRELIMINARY REPORT ON LION AIR CRASH
written by Australianaviation.Com.Au November 28, 2018

[img=565x0]https://i0.wp.com/australianaviation.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Lion-Air-737-MAX.jpg?resize=1160%2C660[/img]Lion Air had 11 737 MAX 8s in its fleet before the October 29 2918 accident. (Boeing/Lion Air)

Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) says the pilots of Lion Air flight JT610 were battling a “flight control problem” before the aircraft plunged into the Java Sea.

The NTSC has released its preliminary report on the accident involving Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX 8 PK-LQP, which crashed shortly after it took off Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta International Airport bound for Pangkal Pinang on October 29.

The aircraft was carrying 181 passengers, two pilots and five cabin crew. There were no survivors.
Indonesian search and rescue teams located the flight data recorder on November 1. However, the cockpit voice recorder is yet to be found.

The investigation so far from the Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee has found the aircraft had experienced airspeed indicator malfunctions on its last four flights.

In particular, the pilots that operated PK-LQP’s second-to-last flight – from Denpasar to Jakarta on October 28 – experienced conflicting information despite an angle of attack (AOA) sensor being replaced.

The preliminary report published on Wednesday afternoon said the digital flight data recorder (DFDR) showed the “stick shaker activated during the rotation and remained active throughout the flight” from Denpasar to Jakarta.

The pilot in command noticed a warning on the primary flight display an indicated air speed warning IAS DISAGREE.

After handing control to the second in command cross checking the PFDs with the standby instrument, the pilot in command determined that the left PFD had the problem.

The pilot in command declared a “PAN PAN” to the Denpasar Approach controller due to instrument failure and requested to maintain runway heading.

Then, after performing three non-normal checklists, none of which contained the instruction “Plan to land at the nearest suitable airport”, the flight continued onto Jakarta and landed safely.

Once on the ground, the pilot in command informed engineers what happened and entered the details in the Aircraft Flight Maintenance Log (AFML).

An engineer then performed the flushing of the left Pitot Air Data Module (ADM) and static ADM and conduction an operation test off the ground. The electrical connector plug of the elevator feel computer was also cleaned and tested on the ground.

PILOTS REPORTED FLIGHT CONTROL PROBLEM BEFORE JT610 CRASHED

The next day, when PK-LQP took off as JD610, the preliminary report said the DFDR “recorded a difference between left and right angle of attack (AoA) of about 20° and continued until the end of recording”.

“During rotation the left control column stick shaker activated and continued for most of the flight,” the preliminary report said.

The preliminary report said the second in command requested approval from air traffic control “to some holding point” due to what was described as a “flight control problem”.

“After the flaps retracted, the FDR recorded automatic aircraft nose down (AND) trim active for 10 seconds followed by flight crew commanded aircraft nose up (ANU) trim. The flaps extended to 5 and the automatic AND trim stopped,” the preliminary report said.

“At 23:25:18 UTC, the flaps retracted to 0 and several seconds later, the automatic AND trim and flightcrew commanded ANU trim recorded began again and continued for the remainder of the flight.”

“The LNI610 PIC advised the controller that the altitude of the aircraft could not be determined due to all aircraft instruments indicating different altitudes and requested to the controller to block altitude 3,000 feet above and below for traffic avoidance.”

The last communication between air traffic control and the aircraft was the pilot in command’s request to block altitude 3,000 feet above and below for traffic avoidance.

“The air traffic controller asked what altitude the pilot wanted.

“At 23:31:35 UTC, the LNI610 PIC responded ‘five thou’,” the preliminary report said.

The recording ended about 20 seconds later and the flight disappeared from the Aircraft Situational Display (ASD) at 23:32:19 UTC.

ACCIDENT PROMPTED EMERGENCY AIRWORTHINESS DIRECTIVE FROM US REGULATOR

In response to the accident, the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an emergency airworthiness directive (AD) on November 7 to operators of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, which called on them to address procedures in the event of pilots receiving erroneous angle of attack sensor information.

“This emergency AD was prompted by analysis performed by the manufacturer showing that if an erroneously high single angle of attack (AOA) sensor input is received by the flight control system, there is a potential for repeated nose-down trim commands of the horizontal stabiliser,” the AD said.

“This condition, if not addressed, could cause the flightcrew to have difficulty controlling the airplane, and lead to excessive nose-down attitude, significant altitude loss, and possible impact with terrain.”

The AD followed Boeing issuing an operations manual bulletin (OMB) that asked 737 MAX operators to remind pilots of how to handle “erroneous” information from the aircraft’s angle of attack sensors.

Boeing said in a statement on November 21, before the preliminary report was published, that it was working with investigators to uncover the cause of the crash.

“We are deeply saddened by the loss of Lion Air Flight JT 610. We extend our heartfelt condolences and sympathies to the families and loved ones of those on board,” Boeing said.

“We are taking every measure to fully understand all aspects of this accident, working closely with the investigating team and all regulatory authorities involved.”

“We are confident in the safety of the 737 MAX. Safety remains our top priority and is a core value for everyone at Boeing.”

The investigation has also canvassed the role of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) that was introduced on the 737 MAX.

The MCAS helps push the nose to reduce the risk of at the aircraft stalling in response to a high angle of attack (AOA) by tilting the horizontal stabiliser. Pilots can override the system by manually adjust the trim.

It was added to the 737 MAX’s systems following some design changes from the 737 NG, with the engines a little further forward and the nose gear a little longer.

Some airlines and pilots groups have claimed information on the stall recovery system was not included in documentation for the 737 MAX.

However, Boeing has rejected the claims, with chief executive Dennis Muilenburg saying it was included in the flight crew operations manual, according to a memo to staff seen by The Air Current.

Indonesian regulators had also temporarily suspended some Lion Air technical staff, including the company’s technical director.

AUSTRALIA’S CIVIL AVIATION SAFETY AUTHORITY ALSO RESPONDS TO LION AIR ACCIDENT

The Lion Air accident has also prompted Australia’s aviation safety regulator to undertake additional checks on Lion Air subsidiaries that currently fly to Australia.

Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) director of aviation safety and chief executive Shane Carmody told delegates at the Australian Airports Association (AAA) national conference on November 13 inspections of Malaysia-based Malindo Air and Indonesia’s Batik Air – both part of the Lion Air group – have been ramped up following the crash of JT610.

“This week and last week, my staff were at aerodromes and airport in Western Australia and in the Northern Territory conducting active surveillance on Malindo and Batik Air as a consequence of the Lion Air tragedy of a couple of weeks ago,” Carmody said.

“Again, doing ramp checks and focusing our inspection regime on looking to see if something had been missed.”

NTSC REPORT OFFERS TWO SAFETY RECOMMENDATIONS

The preliminary report’s safety recommendations called on Lion Air to ensure the “implementation of the Operation Manual part A subchapter 1.4.2 in order to improve the safety culture and to enable the pilot to make proper decision to continue the flight”. 

Further, it recommended “ensuring all the operation documents are properly filled and documented”, noting there flight lists had six flight attendants on board when there were only five.  

“This indicated that the weight and balance sheet did not contain actual information,” the preliminary report said.

The full report can be read on the NTSC website: http://knkt.dephub.go.id/knkt/ntsc_aviat...Report.pdf

MTF...P2 

[Peetwo]

David Learmount on Flight JT610.


Via the Aerosociety news: https://www.aerosociety.com/news/lion-air-lessons/

Lion Air lessons

There is much to learn from the Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX 8 accident in October 2018 that killed all 189 on board, as a preliminary report lays out. DAVID LEARMOUNT considers the potential implications.

The Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX 8 accident may have many specific lessons for the industry but in most respects it is likely to prove yet another casualty of the complicated relationship between pilots and highly automated systems. The pilots found themselves having to deal with what appeared to be a runaway horizontal stabiliser trim system and failed to control it.

Automation issue



So far the Indonesian accident investigator (KNKT) has published only a preliminary factual report but if the automation issue proves to have been a major causal factor when the final report on the crash delivers a verdict, solutions need to be found for this phenomenon. The loss of big jet aircraft and everyone on board just because pilots have difficulty relating to automated control system anomalies is no longer acceptable, even if the results like this are statistically rare. They may be rare but they are plural. Complex systems, especially combined with automation, taking human operators by surprise is an issue that faces not only the aviation industry but many others, including automotive manufacturers seeking automation or vehicle autonomy.

The International Civil Aviation Organisation is quietly working on a new human performance manual that may hopefully, when completed, address many of the human performance issues that are obviously present in the Lion Air accident, even at this early stage in the investigation.

Meanwhile, before considering what could be done to mitigate generic automation-related problems, it is important to understand the specifics of what the Lion Air pilots faced in this very new Boeing 737 MAX 8, if only to discover whether this event contains new lessons, or reveals familiar patterns.

Existing faults

According to the preliminary accident report, the same aircraft (PK-LQP) that crashed fatally on 29 October had suffered faults on flights in the previous three days, many of which appear related to the fault that triggered the aircraft loss. These included speed and altitude disagree alerts on the captain’s primary flight display, speed trim and mach trim warnings, auto-throttle malfunction and, on 27 October, a stall alert.

On each flight where the faults occurred, the crews had decided to continue to their destinations. Then, on arrival, they logged the faults for maintenance, and the engineers – following rectification – had declared them cleared before the next flight. Indeed the left angle-of-attack (AoA) sensor was replaced after the flight on the 27th. But then many of the faults recurred.

The KNKT, also known as the National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) has – understandably – devoted a lot of space in its preliminary report to what happened on the 28 October flight, the last flight by PK-LQP before the fatal departure. The NTSC did this because both flights suffered an almost identical succession of system faults but the first flight landed safety, and the other crashed into the sea, killing all 189 people on board.

Stick-shaker

Soon after take-off for the flight on the 28th, the captain’s stick-shaker activated and remained active and he was presented with IAS and ALT Disagree alerts on his primary flight display. After retracting flaps during the climb he noticed that the stabiliser trim system was running away in the nose-down sense. He told the co-pilot to take over the flying, identified that the problem was with the PFD on his own side, and switched the flight director to the right hand side system so it operated normally for the co-pilot. Whenever the co-pilot relaxed his nose-up trim input via his control column thumb switch, the automatic nose-down stabiliser input resumed. Eventually the force needed on the control column to keep the nose up became very high, so the captain selected the STAB TRIM switches to CUT OUT.

The captain may not have known specifically what had caused the unexpected stabiliser trim activity but the NTSC report notes that – before the flight – the captain, after scanning the maintenance log, had discussed the AoA sensor replacement with an engineer. Then, in-flight, having isolated the electrical input to the stabilisers, the captain decided that the flight could proceed to Jakarta, its scheduled destination, with the crew using manual trim inputs via the centre console trim wheel. The checklist suggests landing at the nearest suitable airfield but the flight landed safely at Jakarta anyway.

On the fatal flight the next day, however, after a similar sequence of events, once the aircraft’s stabiliser trim system was triggered, it kept on trimming nose down until the crew could not overcome it with elevator force or the use of control column thumb-switch trim controls, and it dived into the sea at high speed.

The automatic nose-down stabiliser trim on both flights was caused by the programmed reaction of a stall protection system to a faulty AoA sensor on the captain’s side. The system is unique to the MAX series, and is known as the manoeuvring control augmentation system (MCAS). MCAS is effectively an AoA-triggered stall protection system that can operate when the flaps are up. In this case, the left hand AoA sensor provided a high reading, differing by 20° from the one on the copilot’s side, and this caused the MCAS to react, pitching the nose down to reduce the AoA. The faulty AoA sensor system on the captain’s side was the one that had been replaced by the engineers two days before. Discovering the cause of the AoA sensor faults is one of the subjects of the continuing NTSC inquiry.

Boeing’s response



Boeing released a statement in response to publication of the NTSC preliminary report in which it makes this observation: “Unlike as is stated with respect to the prior flight, the report does not state whether the pilots performed the runaway stabilizer procedure or cut out the stabilizer trim switches.”

The Indonesian preliminary accident report raises more questions than it answers for the time being but that is not unusual for a preliminary report. Boeing’s basic contention is that the information on how to deal with a runway stabiliser trim “regardless of source [cause]” is in the MAX’s flight crew operations manual (FCOM), and the company’s statement notes that the captain of the flight on 28 October used the non-normal checklist for stabiliser runaway. However pilot associations for airlines in the USA that operate the MAX have professed publicly that there was a widespread ignorance among MAX-qualified pilots of the very existence of the MCAS and also an assumption that a runaway trim would be dealt with in exactly the same way as for all the earlier 737 marques.

The reason for this professed pilot ignorance about the new MCAS system is not clear. Boeing explains the lack of fanfare about the new system by pointing out that it is a ‘variant’ of the speed-related automatic stabiliser trim system on the 737NG series, but adds: “MCAS does not control the airplane in normal flight. It augments the stall recovery characteristics of the airplane in a non-normal part of the operating envelope.” The manufacturer also insists it has “discussed MCAS flight control functionality with more than 60 airline operators at several Service Ready Regional Conferences globally since 2016,” a statement that is also difficult to reconcile with the claims by US pilot associations.

An experienced Southwest Airlines captain with whom AEROSPACE discussed the MCAS issues says that, in practice, the 737NG and MAX feel the same to fly. He did remark, however, that he was surprised that a single-point AoA sensor failure could be allowed to trigger what feels like a stabiliser trim runaway, venturing his personal opinion that this showed poor system redundancy design.

Pilot conversion to the MAX

Pilots converting from earlier 737 marques to the MAX are not required to undergo a new type rating course, because all 737s are deemed to have sufficient commonality to operate under the same type rating. Thus 737-rated pilots being prepared for the MAX are required only to undergo a brief “differences course”. For example, Southwest Airlines pilots do their differences course entirely online and American Airlines the same, so there is no practice in a flight simulation training device. Southwest anticipates getting its first MAX full flight simulator in March 2019.

The type conversion situation appears the same in Europe. Ryanair, which is to take delivery of its first MAXs at its London Stansted base in April 2019, says its differences course will be delivered via computer-based training, the CBT course designed using a combination of Boeing input and Ryanair’s own. The airline says it will begin installing its first MAX FFS at its London Stansted training base starting in January.

Although the preliminary report does not mention it, this accident is likely to focus minds on the delicate issue of common type ratings. Manufacturers and operators love them but some experts insist aviation authorities need to be far more critical of them. Even more specifically, are the certification standards around trimmable horizontal stabilisers sufficiently robust?

Meanwhile, over and above the technical argument about the AoA sensor fault triggering MCAS and whether this was a causal factor in the Lion Air crash, the simple fact remains that a crew became confused about what was happening, and as a result failed to implement a checklist procedure that could have prevented the loss of control. That description generates a powerful sense of déjà vu.

The preliminary report contains a long list of safety actions to be carried out by Lion Air and the aircraft maintenance providers. The report criticises the crew that survived the 28 October flight from Denpasar to Jakarta for deciding to continue to its destination despite the fact that the captain’s stickshaker was operating continuously from just after take-off, which makes the aircraft un-airworthy. It says Lion Air needs to “improve the safety culture”, implying that a crew that can make a decision to continue a flight to destination with an un-airworthy aircraft demonstrates the absence of such a culture. It also remarks that the weight and balance sheets showed five cabin crew aboard, whereas there were in fact six of them. The sheer number of repeating faults in the accident aircraft have driven the investigators to call for more accurate technical reporting by crews and better fault troubleshooting, and there is much more.

Complexity-related pilot confusion



Aside from the specific Lion Air lessons, the generic problem of complexity-related pilot confusion needs to be addressed. There is much study ongoing about why such crew confusion events have frequently been precursors to loss of control in flight (LOC-I) during the last 20 years, and whether there are solutions. It has already been established that pilots – the commercial air transport system’s goalkeepers – sometimes face shots they did not see coming, so they dive the wrong way.

Answers put forward are many, including improved training inculcating deeper levels of knowledge; conformance with standard operating procedures and improving the quality of information available to pilots. Information, and the way it is presented, is key. Crews in modern flightdecks are bombarded with information to the point where quantity can become the problem rather than the solution.

For example, the classic crew confusion scenario was what happened on Air France flight 447 in the middle of the night over the South Atlantic in 2009. The pitot tubes were momentarily blocked by ice crystals, so the indicated airspeed readings suddenly made no sense and the autopilot tripped out noisily and handed the aircraft back to the pilots because it recognised that its sensor inputs had been corrupted.

There was a drill for the unreliable airspeed scenario, and the AF447 accident report noted that on six previous occasions where airspeed sensor data had been rendered useless, the crews managed to deal with it safely by following procedure. However in AF447 it was two hours after midnight, the pilots were at their absolute circadian low, and the startle effect robbed them of much of their mental capacity. There was plenty of information in front of them providing their aircraft attitude, altitude, power settings and – after about a minute from the IAS loss – a return to accurate airspeed readings. Unable to make sense of what they saw on the instrument panel, they rapidly reverted to instinct, which was disastrous for a crew over a dark ocean on a moonless night.

The aim of improving the quality of data available to pilots is an admirable one but, while it is easy to voice the objective, it is not easy to decide what data should be presented, in what form, and according to what priorities. Messages like “IAS and ALT Disagree” flashing up on one PFD while – simultaneously – the stickshaker is operating (Lion Air), or the autopilot disconnecting and the aircraft’s control law changing from normal to alternate (AF447) do not provide the pilots with the essential information to help them ensure safe flight. What is more, such cryptic information risks becoming a dangerous distraction.

The information essentials for a confused pilot are those which help the crew to follow the absolute pilot priorities: aviate, navigate, communicate. The industry needs to resolve these issues to prevent pilot confusion dooming more flights.

David Learmount
11 January 2019

MTF...P2

[Peetwo]

Trouble to the MAX for Boeing - 

Via the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/world...ilots.html

Behind the Lion Air Crash, a Trail of Decisions Kept Pilots in the Dark

Boeing’s 737 Max is the latest version of a plane that first went into service half a century ago.CreditCreditMatt Mcknight/Reuters

By James Glanz, Julie Creswell, Thomas Kaplan and Zach Wichter
Feb. 3, 2019



In the brutally competitive jetliner business, the announcement in late 2010 that Airbus would introduce a more fuel-efficient version of its best-selling A320 amounted to a frontal assault on its archrival Boeing’s workhorse 737.

Boeing scrambled to counterpunch. Within months, it came up with a plan for an upgrade of its own, the 737 Max, featuring engines that would yield similar fuel savings. And in the years that followed, Boeing pushed not just to design and build the new plane, but to persuade its airline customers and, crucially, the Federal Aviation Administration, that the new model would fly safely and handle enough like the existing model that 737 pilots would not have to undergo costly retraining.
Boeing’s strategy set off a cascading series of engineering, business and regulatory decisions that years later would leave the company facing difficult questions about the crash in October of a Lion Air 737 Max off Indonesia.

The causes of the crash, which killed 189 people, are still under investigation. Indonesian authorities are studying the cockpit voice recorder for insights into how the pilots handled the emergency, and are examining Lion Air’s long history of maintenance problems.

But the tragedy has become a focus of intense interest and debate in aviation circles because of another factor: the determination by Boeing and the F.A.A. that pilots did not need to be informed about a change introduced to the 737’s flight control system for the Max, some software coding intended to automatically offset the risk that the size and location of the new engines could lead the aircraft to stall under certain conditions.

That judgment by Boeing and its regulator was at least in part a result of the company’s drive to minimize the costs of pilot retraining. And it appears to have left the Lion Air crew without a full understanding of how to address a malfunction that seems to have contributed to the crash: faulty data erroneously indicating that the plane was flying at a dangerous angle, leading the flight control system to repeatedly push the plane’s nose down.

Understanding how the pilots could have been left largely uninformed leads back to choices made by Boeing as it developed the 737 Max more than seven years ago, according to statements from Boeing and interviews with engineers, former Boeing employees, pilots, regulators and congressional aides.

Those decisions ultimately prompted the company, regulators and airlines to conclude that training or briefing pilots on the change to the flight control system was unnecessary for carrying out well-established emergency procedures.

The story of the change to that system, and how it came to play a central role in the Lion Air crash, shows how safety on modern jetliners is shaped by a complex combination of factors, including fierce industry competition, technological advances and pilot training. It illustrates how, in the rare instances when things go awry, the interplay of those factors can create unintended and potentially fatal consequences.

The crash has raised questions about whether Boeing played down or overlooked, largely for cost and competitive reasons, the potential dangers of keeping pilots uninformed about changes to a critical element of the plane’s software.

And it has put a new focus on whether the F.A.A. has been aggressive enough in monitoring Boeing in an era when technology has made airliners both remarkably reliable and increasingly complicated. European regulators initially disagreed with the F.A.A.’s judgment about the need for additional training but ultimately went along, a pilot familiar with the certification process said, while regulators in Brazil broke with the F.A.A. and required that pilots be made familiar with the change.

Boeing has taken the position that the pilots of the Lion Air flight should have known how to handle the emergency despite not knowing about the modification. The company has maintained that properly following established emergency procedures — essentially, a checklist — long familiar to pilots from its earlier 737s should have allowed the crew to handle a malfunction of the so-called maneuvering characteristics augmentation system, known as M.C.A.S., whether they knew it was on the plane or not.

Boeing said that various systems on both the Max and its previous generation 737 can push the nose down. “Regardless of cause,” the company said, the flight crew should go through the checklist, “which is contained in existing procedures.”

The company said that in developing training materials for the 737 Max, it followed long-established practices. “The process ensures flight crews have all the information to safely operate the airplane,” Boeing said, “and for maintenance and fleet chiefs to understand how to ensure the airplanes are serviceable.”

But in the aftermath of the crash, Boeing plans to release a software upgrade for the 737 Max, according to a person briefed on the matter, though it is not clear how the upgrade will affect M.C.A.S. Boeing said that it “continues to evaluate the need for software or other changes as we learn more from the ongoing investigation.”

The F.A.A. declined to comment about the crash but acknowledged that its own role was being examined.

“The F.A.A.’s review of the 737 Max’s certification is a part of an ongoing investigation with the N.T.S.B. and Indonesian civil aviation authorities,” the agency said in a statement, referring to the National Transportation Safety Board. “We cannot provide details of that review until the investigation is complete.”

Boeing’s position has left many pilots angry and concerned.

“Any time a new system is introduced into an airplane, we are the people responsible for that airplane,” said Jon Weaks, the president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association.


A 737 simulator being used by Lion Air aviation students. The Federal Aviation Administration decided that 737 pilots would not have to undergo additional simulator training to fly the new Boeing 737 Max.CreditWilly Kurniawan/Reuters

Referring to the addition of M.C.A.S., Mr. Weaks added, “We felt and we feel that we needed to know about that, and there’s just no other way to say it.”

John Barton, a 737 captain who spoke on the condition that the airline he flies for not be identified, said the blame started with Boeing and the F.A.A. but extended to airlines and pilot unions.

“Many pilots feel the training was inadequate, and therefore it appears to me that Boeing, the F.A.A., the airline training centers and possibly the unions themselves are culpable for the incident that happened,” he said.

Saving Airlines Time and Money

In designing the 737 Max, Boeing was selling airlines on the aircraft’s fuel savings, operating cost reductions and other improvements. But at the same time, it was trying to avoid wholesale aerodynamic and handling changes that would spur the F.A.A. to determine that existing 737 pilots would need substantial new and time-consuming training.

Internally, a primary requirement for the Max was that no design change could cause the F.A.A. to conclude that airline pilots must be trained on the system differences between the then-current version of the plane, the 737 NG, and the Max using simulators, said Rick Ludtke, a flight crew operations engineering analyst who was involved in devising some of the other new safety features on the 737 Max.  

By limiting the differences between the models, Boeing would save airlines time and money by not putting their 737 pilots in simulators for hours to train on the new aircraft, making a switch to the Max more appealing.

“Part of what we wanted to accomplish was seamless training and introduction for our customers, so we purposely designed the airplane to behave in the same way,” Dennis A. Muilenburg, Boeing’s chief executive, said on CNBC in December in response to a question about whether the company wanted to hold down training costs. “So even though it’s a different airplane design, the control laws that fly the airplane are designed to make the airplane behave the same way in the hands of the pilot.”

But Boeing’s engineers had a problem. Because the new engines for the Max were larger than those on the older version, they needed to be mounted higher and farther forward on the wings to provide adequate ground clearance.

Early analysis revealed that the bigger engines, mounted differently than on the previous version of the 737, would have a destabilizing effect on the airplane, especially at lower speeds during high-banked, tight-turn maneuvers, Mr. Ludtke said.



A Boeing employee examines wiring on a 737 Max at the company’s plant in Renton, Wash.CreditDavid Ryder/Bloomberg

The concern was that an increased risk of the nose being pushed up at low airspeeds could cause the plane to get closer to the angle at which it stalls, or loses lift, Mr. Ludtke said.

After weighing many possibilities, Mr. Ludtke said, Boeing decided to add a new program — what engineers described as essentially some lines of code — to the aircraft’s existing flight control system to counter the destabilizing pitching forces from the new engines.

That program was M.C.A.S.

M.C.A.S., according to an engineer familiar with the matter, was written into the so-called control law, the umbrella operating system that, among other things, keeps the plane in “trim,” or ensures that the nose is at the proper angle for the plane’s speed and trajectory. In effect, the system would automatically push the nose down if it sensed that the plane’s angle was creating the risk of a stall.

Both M.C.A.S. and the so-called speed trim system — the automatic stabilizer controls used on the 737 NG and earlier versions — operate primarily via the horizontal section of the 737’s tail fin, which consists of a relatively narrow “elevator” in the back and a larger surface called a stabilizer in the front. In manual flight, pilots move the nose up and down by pulling or pushing on a control column, also called a yoke, to pivot the elevator one way or the other.

Ordinarily, the stabilizers accomplish a more subtle task, making sure that the up or down forces on the tail keep the plane balanced around its center of gravity. Either pilot can control the stabilizers electrically using switches at the top of the yoke.
M.C.A.S. was written to use the stabilizers in a different way.

The modified system’s first task was to automatically offset the stall risk created by the change in the size and location of the engines.

“M.C.A.S. was necessary then for the airplane to be certified by the F.A.A. to have met all of the regulatory design requirements for stability and control,” Mr. Ludtke said.

In addition to addressing safety, M.C.A.S. also let the plane handle much like its predecessors from a pilot’s perspective. In assessing whether existing 737 pilots would need to spend hours training on simulators to fly the Max, the F.A.A. would take into account how similarly the two versions handled.

Boeing said that the modification “improves aircraft handling characteristics” and decreases “pitch-up tendency” only in unusual circumstances. “It does not control the airplane in normal flight,” the company said.



The 737 Max was Boeing’s response to a more fuel-efficient version of its archrival Airbus’s A320 jetliner.CreditMatt Mcknight/Reuters

The F.A.A. would also determine what kind of training would be required for pilots on specific design changes to the Max compared with the previous version. Some changes would require training short of simulator time, such as computer-based instruction.

“I would think this is one of those systems that the pilots should know it’s onboard and when it’s activated,” said Chuck Horning, the department chairman for aviation maintenance science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

That was not the choice that Boeing — or regulators — would make.

The F.A.A. Sides With Boeing

Ultimately, the F.A.A. determined that there were not enough differences between the 737 Max and the prior iteration to require pilots to go through simulator training.

While the agency did require pilots to be given less onerous training or information on a variety of other changes between the two versions of the plane, M.C.A.S. was not among those items either.

The bottom line was that there was no regulatory requirement for Boeing or its airline customers to flag the changes in the flight control system for its pilots — and Boeing contended that there was no need, since, in the company’s view, the established emergency procedures would cover any problem regardless of whether it stemmed from the original system or the modification.

At least as far as pilots knew, M.C.A.S. did not exist, even though it would play a key role in controlling the plane under certain circumstances.

Boeing did not hide the modified system. It was documented in maintenance manuals for the plane, and airlines were informed about it during detailed briefings on differences between the Max and earlier versions of the 737.

But the F.A.A.’s determination that the system did not have to be flagged for pilots gave pause to some other regulators.

Across the Atlantic, the European Aviation Safety Agency, the European Union’s equivalent of the F.A.A., had qualms, according to a pilot familiar with the European regulator’s certification process.


The larger, more fuel-efficient engines Boeing wanted for the 737 Max led to a change in the flight control system that was never highlighted for pilots.CreditDavid Ryder/Bloomberg

At first, the agency was inclined to rule that M.C.A.S. needed to be included in the flight operations manual for the Max, which in turn would have required that pilots be made aware of the new system through a classroom or computer course, the pilot said. But ultimately, he said, the agency did not consider the issue important enough to hold its ground, and eventually it went along with Boeing and the F.A.A.

When Brazilian regulators published their required training for pilots, they singled out M.C.A.S. as one of the changes that needed to be flagged.

The F.A.A. said that “other countries base their standards on conditions specific and unique to each nation.”

Among the many unanswered questions raised by the crash is the degree to which Boeing and the F.A.A. considered what would happen in the event that M.C.A.S. — or the sensors that fed the system information about the plane — were to malfunction.

In the Lion Air crash, one of the primary theories is that the system was receiving faulty data about the angle of the plane from what is known as an angle of attack sensor, vanelike devices on either side of the fuselage that measure how much the plane’s nose is pointing up or down. Preliminary findings from the investigation suggested that the sensor on the pilot’s side of the plane was generating erroneous data.

In designing the 737 Max, Boeing decided to feed M.C.A.S. with data from only one of the two angle of attack sensors at a time, depending on which of two, redundant flight control computers — one on the captain’s side, one on the first officer’s side — happened to be active on that flight.

That decision kept the system simpler, but also left it vulnerable to a single malfunctioning sensor, or data improperly transferred from it — as appeared to occur on the day of the crash.

There is no evidence that Boeing did flight-testing of M.C.A.S. with erroneous sensor data, and it is not clear whether the F.A.A. did so. European regulators flight-tested the new version of the plane with normal sensor data feeding into M.C.A.S. but not with bad data, the pilot familiar with the European certification process said.

The stabilizers on older models could have moved in unpredictable and dangerous ways as well, because of factors like electrical shorts, bad sensor data or computer problems. Boeing reasoned, according to people the company has briefed, as well as a bulletin it sent airlines after the crash, that the emergency procedure for malfunctioning speed trim and other stabilizer problems on the earlier 737s would work on the Max for problems related to M.C.A.S., too.


Lion Air Flight 610, a Boeing 737 Max, crashed into the Java Sea off Indonesia on Oct. 29, killing all 189 people on board.CreditUlet Ifansasti/Getty Images

The centerpiece of that procedure is to switch off two “stabilizer trim cutout” switches on the central console of the cockpit, and then flip open the handles on wheels near the knees of the captain and first officer. By cranking those wheels, the pilots can adjust the stabilizers manually in an effort to keep the plane from pitching up or down.

The Role of Pilots

At the heart of the debate is whether the pilots would have responded differently if they knew the plane’s nose was being forced down specifically by M.C.A.S.

Information from the flight data recorder shows that the plane’s nose was pitched down more than two dozen times during the brief flight, resisting efforts by the pilots to keep it flying level. If M.C.A.S. was receiving faulty data indicating that the plane was pitched upward at an angle that risked a stall — and the preliminary results of the investigation suggest that it was — the system would have automatically pushed the nose down to avert the stall.

The standard checklist for dealing with that sort of emergency on the previous version of the 737 focuses on flipping the stabilizer trim cutout switches and using the manual wheels to adjust the stabilizers.

Boeing has asserted the pilots on the next-to-last flight of the same Lion Air aircraft that crashed encountered a similar, if less severe, nose-down problem. They addressed it by flipping off the stabilizer cutout switches, in keeping with the emergency checklist. Still, Indonesian investigators found, the pilots broke from the checklist by flipping the switches back on again before turning them off for the rest of the flight. That flight, with different pilots from the flight that crashed, landed safely.

Older 737s had another way of addressing certain problems with the stabilizers: Pulling back on the yoke, or control column, one of which sits immediately in front of both the captain and the first officer, would cut off electronic control of the stabilizers, allowing the pilots to control them manually.

That feature was disabled on the Max when M.C.A.S. was activated — another change that pilots were unlikely to have been aware of. After the crash, Boeing told airlines that when M.C.A.S. is activated, as it appeared to have been on the Lion Air flight, pulling back on the control column will not stop so-called stabilizer runaway.

The preliminary results of the investigation, based on information from the flight data recorder, suggested that the pilots of the doomed flight tried a number of ways to pull the nose back up as it lurched down more than two dozen times. That included activating switches on the control yoke that control the angle of the stabilizers on the plane’s tail — and when that failed to stop the problem, pulling back on the yoke.

There is no indication that they tried to flip the stabilizer cutout switches, as the emergency checklist suggests they should have. Findings from the cockpit voice recorder could establish in more detail what culpability, if any, rests with the Lion Air pilots.

Boeing’s position that following the established emergency checklist should have been sufficient understates the complexity of responding to a crisis in real time, pilots said.

Referring to Boeing’s focus on the need for pilots to flip the stabilizer cutout switches, Dennis Tajer, the spokesman for the American Airlines pilots union and a 737 pilot, said, “They are absolutely correct: Turning those two switches off will stop that aggressive action against you.”

Still, Mr. Tajer added, a pilot needs to know what systems are aboard so that they become “a part of your fiber as you fly the aircraft.”

The pilot of the plane’s next-to-last flight, in his entry into an electronic log, noted a variety of problems he had encountered, and speculated that the plane’s speed trim system — the stabilizer functions used on the 737 NG and earlier versions — was not operating correctly. But no one involved in that next-to-last flight of the doomed plane flagged M.C.A.S. or seems to have recognized that it might have been the root of that flight’s problems.

“It really tells you what professional pilots, having flown this very aircraft for the past 10 years, are feeling,” said Bjorn Fehrm, an aeronautical engineer and former fighter pilot for the Swedish air force, referring to the previous generation 737. “They have no idea Boeing has introduced something new.”

Next, via the LA Times: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-l...story.html

Lion Air crash shows cockpit computers are no substitute for pilot skills


By RALPH VARTABEDIAN and SAMANTHA MASUNAGA FEB 04, 2019 | 11:25 AM



A member of the Indonesian National Commission of Transportation Safety shows the cockpit voice recorder recovered from a Lion Air jet that crashed off Indonesia in 2018. (Aditya Irawan/EPA-EFE/REX)

When an altitude sensor failed on a Turkish Airlines Boeing 737 flight to Amsterdam in 2009, the jetliner’s computerized flight controls erroneously cut the engine thrust. The pilots didn’t understand what happened in time to prevent a crash.

The accident had striking similarities to the recent Lion Air tragedy in Indonesia, which took the lives of 189 people. A failed sensor led flight computers to put the 737 MAX jetliner into a series of dives, based on the erroneous calculation that it was losing lift and about to stall. The crew didn’t diagnose the problem, which could have been remedied with the flip of a switch, and the plane fell into the Java Sea. The investigation into the crash is ongoing.

Aviation experts say automated systems have made planes safer than ever and are a major reason why crash rates have declined all over the world. The push to automate — which also reduces airlines’ training costs — is only growing stronger. Boeing has a research project in the works to develop a fully automated jetliner. A company spokesman said last month that testing was ongoing.

But automated flight systems are also implicated in a series of incidents in which they made the wrong decisions and pilots did not fully understand the complex software that adjusts flight controls constantly during automated takeoffs, landings and high-altitude cruising.

“A lot of the optimization that the computer is doing is not made clear to the pilot,” said Douglas Moss, an instructor at USC’s Viterbi Aviation Safety and Security Program. He is a former United Airlines captain and before that, an Air Force test pilot, as well as an attorney. “The pilot is sitting there for 10 or 15 seconds trying to figure out why the computer is pitching up the nose or adjusting the throttle. I can think of thousands of times when the autopilot or flight management system would do something that caught me by surprise. Almost always, it is the right thing to do, but it is the pilot who is responsible for the safety of the flight.”

The two accidents also highlight the potential risks of basing automated flight control decisions on readings by only two sensors — which can create uncertainty when one fails.

Boeing and Airbus, the dominant international manufacturers of large jetliners, declined to provide detailed information about how many sensors their aircraft models have for various critical measurements, such as altitude, airspeed and angle of attack, citing the ongoing Lion Air investigation.

But Federal Aviation Administration documents reviewed by The Times, along with interviews of union officials and aviation experts, point out that some, though not all, aircraft have three sensors for critical readings, allowing a computerized voting system to eliminate a discrepant sensor.

Aviation experts say the pilots’ authority, certainly outside of the U.S. and Western Europe, is being gradually encroached on by automated control systems that offer air carriers lower training costs and crew expenses in an increasingly competitive international industry. It has led to a decline in basic manual flying skills, the ability to use the stick, rudder and throttle to keep a plane at the correct speed, pitch and altitude, a wide range of safety experts say.

“Pilots are not being told or taught everything they need to know about their airplanes,” said Chesley Sullenberger, the renowned pilot who made an emergency landing on the Hudson River a decade ago that saved every person on board.

“It is not easier or cheaper or requires less training to fly an automated airplane. It frequently requires more, because you have to have a deep understanding of how a system works, including the dark corners, the counterintuitive things it might do in certain circumstances. Many foreign carriers are trying to take people with zero flying experience, put them in simulators and quickly put them in the right seat of a jetliner. They don’t have the experience, knowledge, skills and confidence to be the absolute master of the aircraft start to finish.”



Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who safely ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in January 2009. “It is not easier or cheaper or requires less training to fly an automated airplane," he says. "It frequently requires more." (Todd Sumlin/MCT)

Dennis Tajer, an American Airlines captain and spokesman for the Allied Pilots Assn., agrees automated systems should result in more pilot training, not less.

“It makes the aircraft a bit more complicated, so understanding that, being able to utilize it and making it a part of your safety standard is critical,” he said. When a piece of equipment fails, it’s incumbent on the pilot to keep control of the plane, he said, adding, “stick and rudder skills save lives.”

The U.S. airline industry agrees, and Boeing doesn’t dispute the value of pilots.

Company executives have questioned where global airlines are going to get all the pilots needed to fly the planes that are on order and expected over coming decades.

As air travel increases rapidly around the world, many foreign carriers are coming to depend on automated controls to help flight crews that do not routinely have the deep experience, military background and intensive training that is common among major U.S. and Western European airlines. American experts are growing increasingly concerned that such crews are reluctant to fly aircraft manually and lack the skills necessary to intervene when computers make the wrong decisions.

Those concerns were at the forefront in the crash of an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 at San Francisco in July 2013, which killed three and injured 187. The crew had inadvertently disengaged the auto throttle, which is akin to cruise control on an automobile, as it made its final approach. The airspeed and altitude varied widely over the prescribed glide slope and the plane’s landing gear and tail hit the concrete sea wall at the far edge of the runway. Federal investigators blamed the accident on improper speed and altitude control, noting that Asiana Airlines emphasizes the use of cockpit automation. As a result of similar policies, many crews from nations around the world have limited hands-on manual flying skills.

In the Turkish Airlines and Lion Air accidents, the pilots should have been able to manually fly the planes out of harm’s way, experts say.

In the Turkish Airlines flight, one of the aircraft’s two radar altimeters reported that the plane was eight feet below the ground, leading the computer to think it was about to land and triggering an automatic reduction in the throttle. In fact, the aircraft was at about 2,000 feet and the crew was trying to reduce airspeed on the approach. But the crew did not realize the power settings had been cut to idle until it was too late, and the plane crashed a mile short of the runway. Nine people were killed.

In the Lion Air accident, one of the plane’s two angle-of-attack sensors, which measure the angle at which the wings are moving through the air, failed on takeoff from Jakarta. The aircraft’s autopilot disregarded the good sensor and followed readings of the discrepant left side, or captain’s sensor. As a result, it triggered software meant to offset the aircraft’s tendency for the nose to pitch up.

Such a nose-high attitude can reduce lift and potentially stall the jetliner. But in this case, the software — the maneuvering characteristics augmentation system, or MCAS — was responding to wrong data and putting the plane into a dive. It is similar to what is known as a “runaway trim,” which can be caused by as many as five problems. Some experts say the crew should have known how to flip off the MCAS and manually fly the plane, which is what another crew had done the day before in the same plane. Instead, the captain repeatedly attempted to pull up the nose and never correctly diagnosed the problem.



An Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 lies burned near the runway after it crash-landed at San Francisco International Airport in 2013. (Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)

“Automation complacency is a huge issue,” said Andrew Skow, founder of Tiger Century Aircraft, which develops cockpit safety systems, and a former Northrop Grumman chief engineer and flight test director. “If an automation system has control and is right most of the time, you become complacent.”

Skow said automation systems often fail to consider unintended effects, which occurred in the Turkish Airlines and Lion Air accidents. He also faults Boeing’s design of the MCAS, saying it trimmed the nose down at too fast a rate, because it was designed to be engaged at a lower speed. At 250 knots, it was generating violent nose-down movements that the crew could not counteract.

Boeing declined to comment on the matter, citing the pending investigation.

A third angle-of-attack sensor may have allowed the flight computers to determine which sensor was giving a bad reading, Skow said, a view shared by other experts.

Tajer, the pilots union spokesman, said airline flight manuals indicate Boeing planes have two AOA sensors, while Airbus models have three. Could three sensors have made a difference in the Lion Air accident?

“I think Boeing is very much asking itself that question,” said Steve Wallace, the former director of the FAA’s office of accident investigation and now an aviation safety consultant.

But Wallace and others don’t make the case that three sensors would have necessarily changed the outcome. William Tuccio, a former aerospace engineer at the National Transportation Safety Board, said engineers rely on what’s called failure mode and effects criticality analysis as one way to assess risk probabilities and determine the proper amount of protections.. Additional sensors may be unnecessary and could be a waste of money or an increase in complexity, he said: “If you’re going to answer a single question about reliability or engineering resilience, just asking how many AOA sensors is an incomplete question.”

Wallace pointed out that no jetliner has crashed while on an automated landing, though there have been accidents because of the crew’s incomplete understanding of the automation. “Fundamentally, automation is a huge plus for aviation safety,” he said. “You still need to know the basics of stick and rudder flying.”

And then there is the cost versus benefit. “How many backups to your backups do you need?” said Michael Barr, the former director of the USC safety program. “Nobody wants to talk about cost.”

No one in aviation expects automation to slow down, though there are sharp disagreements among experts about how far it should go.

As far as a fully automated aircraft, Sullenberger, who retired as a commercial pilot in 2010, is skeptical that it will happen for a long time and doubts he would fly in one. “Unless it is actually capable of learning in the moment and improvising, unless it could be essentially human, I don’t see how you ever have the same level of confidence.”

Robert Ditchey, a safety consultant, expert witness and former airline executive, says the day there is no pilot in the cockpit is when he will stop flying. “We have the ability to autonomously land a spacecraft on Mars, but do we want to put people on board? I don’t think so.”

But Wallace is a big fan of automation and where it is headed. “I drive my Tesla with autopilot on all the time. It keeps a safe distance.”

MTF...P2 

[Kharon]

I won’t hammer the obvious points home just now. I expect all concerned are shocked and puzzled by the recent event in Texas. But find a coffee and a quarter hour to watch and listen to a professional, competent outfit, led by ‘can-do’ folks as they set out to discover what happened to the 767.

Enough said -

[Gobbledock]

Kharon;

”find a coffee and a quarter hour to watch and listen to a professional, competent outfit, led by ‘can-do’ folks as they set out to discover what happened to the 767”.

Agreed. Good briefing by the NTSB Big Kahuna outlining the relevant parties involved and the steps already taken and still to follow. Well worth the 15 mins. Their brief was opposite the team Hood Crew who wouldn’t commence anything until they were permitted to lift their hands off the Miniscule’s doodle. I also noticed Mr Sumwalt wasn’t prancing about in a hi-vis vest like a prize goose......

[Kharon]

Badges – we don’t need no stinkin’ badges.

Good catch GD - not a Hi-Viz vest in sight. Speaks volumes about the ‘phycology’ of confidence and competence.

I always think of that picture of the Hi-Viz Hood, trying to look stern, wind-swept and interesting on the deck of the 370 search ship, dressing up to look the part of a ‘serious’ investigator and a rugged sea going accident investigator. Probably wetting his panties when the docked boat moved under his lightweight dancing boots. Pure flummery, self and public deception, designed to cover the simple fact that Hood could barely get a clerical job with NTSB. Contempt don’t quite cover it, but it will do for a start.



Toot – toot….(is that fellah behind standing a little too close?)

[Kharon]

This short video - HERE - gives me the shivers -

[Kharon]

FDR and CVR both recovered.

Great work

Macinbird – “Fresh from the accident scene, muddy, without a pinger attached.
Somehow, I don't think they were keeping an Allen wrench handy to immediately remove the pinger as soon as the unit was discovered.”

Well done NTSB and all agencies concerned – great effort in difficult circumstances. Now we can get to the heart of this tragic matter, with both CVR and FDR data. Bravo boys and girls and thank you…….

From the expert positive action perspective :-

“The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is providing the following information to urge the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to take action on the safety recommendations issued in this report. These recommendations address the need to install cockpit voice recorders (CVR) with a minimum 25-hour recording capability on all newly manufactured airplanes required to have a CVR and retrofit these CVRs on existing aircraft required to have flight recorders. These recommendations are derived from the NTSB’s experiences with investigations that lacked access to relevant CVR data. Information supporting these recommendations is discussed below.”

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Acci...SR1804.pdf

[Kharon]

Cheers to 'Airbubba' on the UP he keeps us all up to date on the Texas accident, without any frills. Thank you.

_ HERE _

[Kharon]

Another video clip to add to the 'cold shivers' library. - HERE -

N.B. You need full screen and look at the trees - don't blink.

[Gobbledock]

ETHIOPIAN AIRLINES CRASH. 737-800

The crash occurred after the plane experienced an "unstable vertical speed after take-off", Swedish flight-tracking website flightradar24 said.

Far too early to speculate, but not a good look for the brand new 800’s.

https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/www.bbc....a-47513508

R.I.P

[Peetwo]

#ET302: Another MAX down -  

ETHIOPIAN AIRLINES CRASH. 737-800

The crash occurred after the plane experienced an "unstable vertical speed after take-off", Swedish flight-tracking website flightradar24 said.

Far too early to speculate, but not a good look for the brand new 800’s.

https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/www.bbc....a-47513508

R.I.P

---

Ethiopian Airlines plane crash kills all 157 people on board
The aircraft, carrying passengers from 35 countries, was only months old and of the same type involved in a previous disaster.


Sunday 10 March 2019 18:40, UK



Search teams scour the scene of the crash that left 157 dead, including seven Britons

All 157 people aboard an Ethiopian Airlines plane have been killed after it crashed minutes after take-off.

The state-owned carrier has confirmed there were no survivors from Flight ET 302, carrying 149 passengers from 35 countries and eight crew members.

Seven Britons and an Irish citizen are among the dead, authorities have confirmed.


One of the Britons has been named as Joanna Toole by Manuel Barange, the director of Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations fisheries and aquaculture department.


She had been travelling to Nairobi to represent FAO fish at the UN Environment Assembly.



Joanna Toole has been named as one of the plane crash victims by Manuel Barange, the director of Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations fisheries and aquaculture department.

Other victims included 32 Kenyans and nine Ethiopians, 18 Canadians, eight each from China, the US and Italy, seven from France, six from Egypt and five from Germany.

Slovakian MP Anton Hrnko said on Facebook that his wife and two children were among those killed.

The Nairobi-bound flight was likely to be have been carrying people heading for a major United Nations environmental conference in the Kenyan capital.



A picture of the Ethiopian Airlines plane taken last November. Pic: Preston Fiedler

The Boeing 737-8 MAX was on a regular scheduled flight from the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa when it came down shortly after take-off near the town of Bishoftu, some 31 miles (50km) to the southeast.

The jet left the airport at 8.38am local time before losing contact with the control tower at 8:44am.



An emergency centre is being set up for relatives waiting at the airport in Nairobi

The airline's chief executive Tewolde GebreMariam said the pilot, who had an "excellent flying record", reported difficulties and had been cleared to turn back.


The plane "had an unstable vertical speed" after take-off, according to the flight tracking website Flightradar24.



The plane had been heading to Nairobi in Kenya when it came down minutes after take-off

In a video message posted on Twitter, British ambassador to Ethiopia and Djibouti Alastair McPhail said he and his team have been working hard in response to the "tragic crash", and are in "close contact with the Ethiopian authorities".


"Ethiopian Airlines have confirmed that there were seven British nationals among the dead, and my consular staff are working hard to establish the details," he said.



"My condolences go out to the families and friends of those involved."


The aircraft was just a few months old, having taken its first flight at the end of October. Its last maintenance was on 4 February and it had flown just 1,200 hours.


It was one of 30 being delivered to the airline by Boeing.



It is the same type as the Lion Air plane which crashed into the sea off Indonesia last year killing all 189 on board.


In the wake of that disaster, Boeing issued a warning to airlines using its 737 MAX planes after a sensor failure was identified as a potential cause of the crash.

Ethiopian Airlines said in a statement that it "deeply regrets the fatal accident" and later published a photo of the chief executive standing at the crash site.

"He expresses his profound sympathy and condolences to the families and loved ones of passengers and crew who lost their lives in this tragic accident," the company said in a social media post.


The airline, which changed its Twitter account cover photo to black following the disaster, has posted emergency numbers to call.



Ethiopia's prime minister Abiy Ahmed has visited the crash site and expressed "his profound sadness at the loss of life and wishes healing to the friends and families of the bereaved," his office said.


Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta said: "My prayers go to all the families and associates of those on board."

Boeing said it was "deeply saddened" at the tragedy.


It said in a statement: "We extend our heartfelt sympathies to the families and loved ones of the passengers and crew on board and stand ready to support the Ethiopian Airlines team.



2A Boeing technical team will be travelling to the crash site to provide technical assistance under the direction of the Ethiopia Accident Investigation Bureau and US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)."


The NTSB has confirmed it is to send a team to assist the investigation.



Ethiopian Airlines has changed its cover photo to black following the disaster.

Ethiopian Airlines is one of the biggest carriers in Africa by fleet size.


It has said previously it expected to carry 10.6 million passengers last year.


The airline's last major crash was in January 2010, when a flight from Beirut went down shortly after take-off.

---

RIP - 


MTF...P2 

[Gobbledock]

BOEING - People have short memories.

I will be one of the first to admit I have no issue flying on a Boeing. It is however interesting to note that we now have two complete hull loses of brand new aircraft in similar circumstances yet there are many who claim ‘they simply cannot be related’. Really says I ? Why not? My feeling is that the ‘issue’ will be overcome by additional training, procedures and awareness of the parameters of the new aircraft type. I believe we are looking at an example of technology exceeding basic human capability and understanding. I may be wrong, and that’s fine if I am incorrect, I’m now an old man anyway. The AF296 Airbus crash back in 1988 is testimony of this potential issue where ‘man and machine’ are NOT serving as one.

A comment on the Ethiopian Airlines crash;

“It’s highly suspicious,” Mary Schiavo, an aviation analyst and the former inspector general of the US Transportation Department, told CNN. “Here we have a brand-new aircraft that’s gone down twice in a year. That rings alarm bells in the aviation industry because that just doesn’t happen.”

Reminds me of the B737 uncommanded full rudder deflection issue back in the 90’s when a series of rudder issues resulted in multiple incidents. In two separate accidents, pilots lost control of the aircraft due to a sudden and unexpected movement of the rudder, and the resulting crashes killed everyone aboard. Loss of life was around 160, less than the approximately 350 lives lost in the two 737 MAX crashes. Going back to the 90’s, similar rudder issues also led to a temporary loss of control on at least one other 737 flight before the problem was ultimately identified on which the NTSB determined that the accidents and incidents were the result of a design flaw which could result in an uncommanded movement of the aircraft's rudder.

Anyway, I’ve digressed and I know that the Ferryman hates speculation. Time (and quality investigative techniques) will no doubt reveal the root cause. I hope.....

[Kharon]

Good post GD – and over an Ale, I’d not have too much to disagree with; valid points for consideration. Tim Tam despatched…

GD – “Anyway, I’ve digressed and I know that the Ferryman hates speculation. Time (and quality investigative techniques) will no doubt reveal the root cause. I hope.....

But, I’ve no quarrel with ‘speculation’ when it is based on ‘known’ facts; at the moment we only have one tangible fact i.e. the aircraft crashed; and, one ‘perhaps’ – ‘maybe’ related – speculation that it is similar to the Lion Air accident. But, no one knows, not yet. An interesting line of inquiry would be a world wide audit of ‘tech-logs’ to see just how many reports of ‘control problems’ there has been logged and the engineering corrections made.

Anyway – the ‘Black boxes’ have been recovered and gods willing, we will get some hard data to work with. Meanwhile, it is a sad day for everyone.

Toot – toot.

[Gobbledock]

FORT FUMBLE BUYS INTO THE 737 MAX DEBACLE

“The Civil Aviation Safety Authority's director of aviation safety, Shane Carmody, said in a statement that the temporary suspension of Boeing 737 MAX 8 planes in Australia was in the best interests ( P7 - based on the evidence he has - what ducking evidence? Show it or STFU_ ) of safety”.

I can imagine that Mc’Do’Nothing will be on TV soon trying to cash in on how safe his country is with a proactive Regulator in control. F...wits

Boeing 737 MAX 8 operations suspended in Australia after Ethiopian Airlines crash


PHOTO 
The crash in Ethiopia was the second in six months for the 737 MAX 8.
AP: MULUGETA AYENE

---

Australia's Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) says it is suspending operations of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 plane in Australia after a deadly crash killed 157 people in Ethiopia at the weekend.

Key points:

• Boeing announced plans to upgrade the software of its 737 MAX 8 planes earlier today
  
  
• The suspension comes following the crash of the same model in Ethiopia over the weekend
  
  
• Safety concerns about the model were first raised in October
  

Fiji Airways was the only airline flying the MAX 8 into Australia after Singapore's Silk Air grounded its fleet early today.
In a statement released earlier today, Fiji Airways said it had "full confidence in the airworthiness" of its two aircraft.
On Sunday an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX 8 crashed shortly after take-off from Addis Ababa, killing all 157 people aboard.

Safety concerns about the model were first raised in October after a Lion Air flight in Indonesia crashed, killing all 189 people aboard.

CASA director of aviation safety Shane Carmody said in a statement that the temporary suspension of Boeing 737 MAX 8 planes in Australia was in the best interests of safety.


"This is a temporary suspension while we wait for more information to review the safety risks of continued operations of the Boeing 737 MAX to and from Australia," he said.


"CASA regrets any inconvenience to passengers but believes it is important to always put safety first."

The organisation said it was closely monitoring the situation and said the suspension would be reviewed as relevant safety information became available from Boeing, the United States Federal Aviation Administration and accident investigators.

Boeing to roll out software updates

Boeing announced plans to upgrade software in its 737 MAX 8 planes "in the coming weeks" earlier today.

The move to deploy the upgrade came after the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it would mandate "design changes" in the MAX 8 aircraft by April.

In a notice, the FAA said Boeing was working to complete "flight control system enhancements, which provide reduced reliance on procedures associated with required pilot memory items".

Boeing rolled out the MAX 8 in 2017 as an update to the already redesigned 50-year-old 737, and had delivered 350 MAX jets out of the total order tally of 5,011 aircraft by the end of January.

Australia's move to suspend the MAX 8 follows China and Indonesia, which ordered their airlines to ground their Boeing 737 MAX 8 planes indefinitely on Monday.

Ethiopian Airlines spokesman Asrat Begashaw said the carrier had grounded its remaining four 737 MAX 8 planes until further notice as an "extra safety precaution".

The airline was using five new 737 MAX 8s and awaiting delivery of 25 more.

Virgin Australia has ordered 30 MAX 8s, but had not started using them prior to CASA's suspension of the model.

Comparisons to Lion Air crash premature: FAA


Preliminary reports following the Lion Air MAX 8 crash — the newest version of Boeing's single-aisle, narrow body aircraft — found the pilots struggled to control the plane.


The model's automatic safety system, designed to prevent stalling, was found to have repeatedly pushed the plane's nose down.

Pilots had to manually raise the nose to correct the flight, only for the sequence to repeat about five seconds later, the report said.

Investigators said they believed faulty information from sensors could have activated the system.


It is not known whether the same anti-stall system was at fault for the Ethiopian Airlines crash.


The FAA acknowledged the comparisons being drawn between the crashed in Indonesia and Ethiopia earlier today.


"However, this investigation has just begun and to date we have not been provided data to draw any conclusions or take any actions," it said, according to the Continued Airworthiness Notification to the International Community for Boeing 737 MAX 8 operators.

ABC/wires

https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-1...a/10894426

Tsk tsk. CAsA will simply do anything to ground aircraft operations. Empty skies are safe skies.

[Peetwo]

Flight #ET302 Update: 13/03/19

FORT FUMBLE BUYS INTO THE 737 MAX DEBACLE

“The Civil Aviation Safety Authority's director of aviation safety, Shane Carmody, said in a statement that the temporary suspension of Boeing 737 MAX 8 planes in Australia was in the best interests ( P7 - based on the evidence he has - what ducking evidence? Show it or STFU_ ) of safety”.

I can imagine that Mc’Do’Nothing will be on TV soon trying to cash in on how safe his country is with a proactive Regulator in control. F...wits

Boeing 737 MAX 8 operations suspended in Australia after Ethiopian Airlines crash


PHOTO 
The crash in Ethiopia was the second in six months for the 737 MAX 8.
AP: MULUGETA AYENE

---

https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-1...a/10894426

Tsk tsk. CAsA will simply do anything to ground aircraft operations. Empty skies are safe skies.

Further to above, via the Oz:

US puts money above safety in flying Boeing’s 737 Max 8 jet

The United States aviation sector appears to have shamefully put money and corporate interests above safety with its decision not to temporarily ground the 737 Max 8 jet.

Commonsense dictates that when two planes of the same model crash in strikingly similar circumstances within the space of five months then the need for immediate precaution trumps the need for proof.

That is why the twin tragedies of the combined loss of more than 300 lives in Indonesia’s Lion Air crash last year and this week’s Ethiopian Airlines disaster has the shocked most of the world’s aviation industry into action.

Today Britain, France, Germany and the EU joined Australia, China, Indonesia, Ethiopia and others in temporarily grounding or banning Boeing’s 737 Max 8 until they can be persuaded that the plane is safe.

They know that it is too early to know whether the two crashes were caused by the same issue. But as the UK Civil Aviation Authority put it: “Given the similarity of the two accidents, it has been decided that as a precautionary measure that all” 737 Max flights “should stop until appropriate safeguards are in place.’

So why has the US not adopted a similar ‘precautionary measure’ to ground its own 737 Max 8s which are currently operated by both Southwest and American airlines?

The United States Federal Aviation Administration has chosen instead to take a strictly evidence-based approach to the problem, stating that “If we identify an issue that affects safety, the FAA will take immediate and appropriate action.’

One might think that the unexplained loss of two of the same model jets, shortly after takeoff with similar erratic flying patterns was ‘an issue that affected safety’ even if the specific cause cannot yet be proved.

The trouble with the evidence-first approach is that complete investigations of airline crashes can take years. Even the initial findings can take months. The travelling public doesn’t want to wait that long to learn about a potential deadly flaw on a plane they are likely to travel on. Already in the US, passengers have been calling airlines to try to get off flights which are using the 737 Max 8. Most have been refused refunds.

Boeing, which stands to lose billions of dollars by any global grounding of the Max 8 model of its jet has refused to take the lead, instead maintaining that ‘we are confident in the safety of the 737 Max.’

The FAA has said only that it will mandate ‘design changes’ to the aircraft by April and Boeing has promised that a software update in the coming weeks will ‘make an already safe aircraft even safer.’

So, barring a sudden change of heart by the FAA or Boeing, passengers in the US will be faced with the prospect of flying on the 737 Max 8 before any software update becomes available and before the causes of the Ethiopian crash are known.

US aerospace giant Boeing is trying to avoid a business nightmare here. The Max model of its 737 represents about two-thirds of Boeing’s future deliveries and about 40 per cent of its profit. It is one of the most important parts of the company’s business.

In the US the Max 8 model is flown by Southwest, which has 34 of them and by American Airlines which has 24. The FAA knows that grounding the 737 Max 8 in the US would badly hurt Boeing, impact the reputation of the US airline industry and would severely disrupt the domestic operations and profits of two of the country’s major carriers.

So, yes, the stakes are higher for the US to ground the 737 Max 8 than they are for many other countries.

But money and corporate interests should not lead the US to ignore the rest of the world on the issue.

Australians should be relieved they live in a country where the aviation industry takes safety more seriously than profit.

Boeing 737 Max 8: US pressured to ground jet

The United States is under enormous pressure to follow the rest of the world in grounding Boeing’s 737 Max 8 jet after Australia, Britain and the European Union joined at least 10 other countries in suspending flights.

The United States Federal Aviation Administration, the planes manufacturer Boeing and the two US airlines that use the 737 Max 8, Southwest and American Airlines, maintains there is no reason yet to ground the jet.

However, pressure came even from the White House, with Donald Trump tweeting that “airplanes were becoming far too complex to fly”.

“Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT. I see it all the time in many products,” he said.

“Always seeking to go one unnecessary step further, when often old and simpler is far better. Split second decisions are needed, and the complexity creates danger. All this cost for very little gain.

“I don’t want Albert Einstein to be my pilot. I want great flying professionals that are allowed to easily and quickly take control of a plane.”

Concerns about the safety of the 737 Max 8 spread across the globe in recent days after the second crash of a new 737 Max 8 in less than six months.

The crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max 8 shortly after take off this week followed the crash of an Indonesian Lion Air 737 Max 8 last year with the combined loss of more than 300 passengers.

Australia, China, Indonesia and Ethiopia were among the countries that quickly grounded or banned 737 Max 8 jets until further investigation. Today they were joined by Britain, German, France and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, among others.

The UK Civil Aviation Authority said the similarity between the two accidents — in which both planes crashed shortly after takeoff after experiencing highly irregular flying patterns — dictated that no 737 Max jets should operate in British airspace until safeguards were in place.

“Given the similarity of the two accidents, it has been decided that as a precautionary measure that all” 737 Max flights “should stop until appropriate safeguards are in place. This is needed to assure the [UK Civil Aviation Authority] that the aircraft involved are fully compliant with internationally recognised standards,” the agency stated.

A worldwide grounding of the popular 737 Max 8, one of the news versions of the hugely popular 737 aircraft, would have a devastating financial impact on Boeing, whose share price has been savaged in recent days.

The company has so far refused to recommended the grounding of its aircraft, claiming that the plane is safe.

“Safety is Boeing’s number one priority and we have full confidence in the safety of the 737 Max,” Boeing said in a statement. “We understand that regulatory agencies and customers have made decisions that they believe are most appropriate for their home markets. We’ll continue to engage with them to ensure they have the information needed to have confidence in operating their fleets.’

The US FAA has so far refused calls, including by some members of Congress, to ground the planes, saying “this investigation has just begun and to date we have not been provided data to draw any conclusions or take any actions”.

SouthWest and American airlines have also not grounded their fleets of 737 Max 8 jets, saying that their pilot training is good enough for pilots to deal with any emergency like the one that caused Indonesia’s Lion Air to crash last year.

The Lion Air crash is believed to be linked to a faulty sensor and automatic feature on the Max 8 model which automatically pointed the nose of a plane down, overriding efforts by the pilot to make the plane climb.

Airspace bans for B-737 Max 8

• Australia
• China
• All European Union countries
• India
• Indonesia
• Malaysia
• Namibia
• Oman
• Singapore

Airlines to ground B-737 Max 8 
• Aerolineas
• Argentinas
• Aeromexico
• Cayman Airways
• Comair
• Eastar Jet
• Ethiopian Airlines
• Gol Airlines
• Icelandair
• LOT
• MIAT Mongolian Airlines
• Norwegian Air Shuttle
• Smartwings
• Turkish Airlines

CASA announces Boeing 737 MAX 8 jets are banned in Australia

Fiji Airways has been banned from flying its Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft in or out of Australia as concerns grow about the safety of the plane following two fatal crashes in five months.

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority yesterday imposed a temporary ban on all 737 Max 8 operations to and from Australia in “the best interests of safety”.

Singapore’s SilkAir also operates the aircraft to Australia but yesterday the airline grounded its fleet of 737 Max 8s until safety concerns were addressed.

Since October 29 last year, 346 people have died in two crashes involving near-new 737 Max 8s — one operated by Lion Air in Indonesia and one in ­Ethiopia.

Both crashes occurred minutes after take-off, with the pilots requesting to turn back because of difficulty controlling the aircraft.

The second crash, on Sunday, prompted several countries, including China, Indonesia and Singapore, to ground the aircraft and ban 737 Max 8s from flying in their countries.

CASA yesterday decided Australia should follow suit, despite the US regulator declaring the plane to be safe.

The US Federal Aviation ­Administration issued a “continued airworthiness notification to the international community” in an effort to quell concerns about the 737 Max 8.

CASA chief executive Shane Carmody said in light of the two recent fatal accidents, the temporary suspension of Boeing 737 Max aircraft operations was the best response. “This is a temporary suspension while we wait for more information to review the safety risks of continued operations of the Boeing 737 Max to and from Australia,” he said.

“CASA regrets any inconvenience to passengers but ­believes it is important to always put safety first.”

No Australian airlines operate the 737 Max 8 but Virgin Australia has 30 of the planes on order, with the first scheduled to arrive this year.

Yesterday, a spokesman for Virgin Australia said the Nov­ember delivery date would allow sufficient time to consider the outcome of crash investigations, and to reassess if necessary.

AeroMexico also grounded its Max 8 fleet yesterday and India issued an order that pilots flying the aircraft must have more than 1000 hours of flying experience.

Such sweeping bans on a particular model of aircraft have not been seen since 2013, when airlines temporarily stopped operating Boeing 787 Dreamliners because of concerns over lithium-ion batteries in the auxiliary power unit.

In an email to staff, Boeing chief executive Dennis Muilenburg said he was confident in the safety of the 737 Max.

“Since its certification and entry into service, the Max family has completed hundreds of thousands of flights safely,” he said.

The FAA airworthiness notification revealed Boeing had been ordered to make design changes to the aircraft by April, and update training requirements and flight-crew manuals.

All the changes relate to the controversial MCAS, or manoeuvring characteristics augmentation system, which is central to the investigation into last year’s Lion Air crash off Indonesia.

The preliminary report on the crash found the pilot struggled to control the aircraft as the MCAS issued nose-down orders in response to erroneous angle-of-­attack sensor data.

It is not known whether the MCAS was activated in Sunday’s crash near Addis Ababa.

Investigators have recovered the voice and data recorders from the jet and Boeing, the National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA are supporting investigative authorities in Ethiopia.

A preliminary report is expected next month.

 
"Australians should be relieved they live in a country where the aviation industry takes safety more seriously than profit..."  FDS where the hell do they find these journos these days?

"..CASA chief executive Shane Carmody said in light of the two recent fatal accidents, the temporary suspension of Boeing 737 Max aircraft operations was the best response"... “This is a temporary suspension while we wait for more information to review the safety risks of continued operations of the Boeing 737 Max to and from Australia,”...“CASA regrets any inconvenience to passengers but ­believes it is important to always put safety first.”

The only reason, our Patron Saint of Australian Aviation Safety, St Carmody got off his shiny-arsed buttocks yesterday was because he had nothing to lose and lots to gain. Fortunately for St CC there was only two international operators who were currently operating in and out of Oz with the 737-MAX. One of those, Silkair had already self-suspended 737-MAX ops UFN and the other Fiji Airways was non-plussed with only 2 737-MAX in their fleet. 

St CC has effectively created a nice big smokescreen, to hang his halo on, in the lead up to what is IMO an important Senate RRAT committee inquisition on Thursday - see HERE .

Disgusting the sheer hypocrisy on display when you compare the above St CC statement yesterday with the damning evidence of obfuscation with both the Great White DFO Elephant still parked at Essendon Fields Airport and Fort Fumble's obvious abrogation of oversight of Harfwit's partime Airport Rescue and Fire Fighting Service.   

UFU submission:  https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ash...bId=667139

...The presence of the ARFF service is key to safeguarding the safety and security at major

metropolitan and regional airports around the country, which is critical for international and
domestic tourism Any adverse impact on the reputation of Australia’s national and
international aviation industry, particularly those associated negatively with passengers’
safety and/or the seamless movement of both passengers and goods, therefore has the
potential to cause massive economic loss to the economy. Depending on the level and type
of reputational damage, including the quantum of fatalities, the affects could last for many
years.

If a significant downturn in aviation travel occurred due to an incident involving massive loss
of life, particularly if it was revealed that this could have been avoided through compliance
with standards that already exist internationally, the ARFF provider, regulator and ultimately
the Government who are blamed for not addressing the cause of the incident earlier, would
be held in public contempt and potentially exposed legally, politically and internationally...

     
MTF...P2 

[Gobbledock]

DEAR SENATORS PLEASE OBSERVE

Senators, for you below, P2’s nail on the head analysis;

“The only reason, our Patron Saint of Australian Aviation Safety, St Carmody got off his shiny-arsed buttocks yesterday was because he had nothing to lose and lots to gain. Fortunately for St CC there was only two international operators who were currently operating in and out of Oz with the 737-MAX. One of those, Silkair had already self-suspended 737-MAX ops UFN and the other Fiji Airways was non-plussed with only 2 737-MAX in their fleet.

St CC has effectively created a nice big smokescreen, to hang his halo on, in the lead up to what is IMO an important Senate RRAT committee inquisition on Thursday”

As always, CAsA are looking for a free penalty shot, an easy goal. This is the organisation that takes 8 months to answer a simple QON, yet they can ‘ground’ an aircraft type in a heartbeat?? Ha ha ha, yeah right Messrs Comedy and Aleck, as if!!!

CAsA are just looking to cash in and take advantage of a situation to make themselves look good for doing absolutely nothing. Touch wood that no accident take place here, the ARFFS would be short staffed and not allowed to use power tools or ladders!

CAsA = cheap points scored for all.

P9 - (Competently Asinine Self Aggrandizing)?

[Gobbledock]

BOEING GROUNDS 737 MAX

Apparently Trump put some muscle on the FAA and the rest as they say, is history;

Boeing statement on Twatter;

In Consultation with the FAA, NTSB and its Customers, Boeing Supports Action to Temporarily Ground 737 MAX Operations
March 13, 2019 – Boeing continues to have full confidence in the safety of the 737 MAX. However, after consultation with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), and aviation authorities and its customers around the world, Boeing has determined -- out of an abundance of caution and in order to reassure the flying public of the aircraft’s safety -- to recommend to the FAA the temporary suspension of operations of the entire global fleet of 371 737 MAX aircraft.

“On behalf of the entire Boeing team, we extend our deepest sympathies to the families and loved ones of those who have lost their lives in these two tragic accidents,” said Dennis Muilenburg, president, CEO, Chairman of The Boeing Company.

“We are supporting this proactive step out of an abundance of caution. Safety is a core value at Boeing for as long as we have been building airplanes; and it always will be. There is no greater priority for our company and our industry. We are doing everything we can to understand the cause of the accidents in partnership with the investigators, deploy safety enhancements and help ensure this does not happen again.”

Boeing makes this recommendation and supports the decision by the FAA.”

Link;

https://boeing.mediaroom.com/news-releas...tem=130404

[Peetwo]

BOEING TRUMP GROUNDS 737 MAX -

Apparently Trump put some muscle on the FAA and the rest as they say, is history;

Boeing statement on Twatter;

In Consultation with the FAA, NTSB and its Customers, Boeing Supports Action to Temporarily Ground 737 MAX Operations
March 13, 2019 – Boeing continues to have full confidence in the safety of the 737 MAX.  However, after consultation with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), and aviation authorities and its customers around the world, Boeing has determined -- out of an abundance of caution and in order to reassure the flying public of the aircraft’s safety -- to recommend to the FAA the temporary suspension of operations of the entire global fleet of 371 737 MAX aircraft.

“On behalf of the entire Boeing team, we extend our deepest sympathies to the families and loved ones of those who have lost their lives in these two tragic accidents,” said Dennis Muilenburg, president, CEO, Chairman of The Boeing Company.

“We are supporting this proactive step out of an abundance of caution. Safety is a core value at Boeing for as long as we have been building airplanes; and it always will be. There is no greater priority for our company and our industry. We are doing everything we can to understand the cause of the accidents in partnership with the investigators, deploy safety enhancements and help ensure this does not happen again.”

Boeing makes this recommendation and supports the decision by the FAA.”

Link;

https://boeing.mediaroom.com/news-releas...tem=130404

MTF...P2

[Peetwo]

#JT610; #ET302 - Update: Flawed to the MAX??

Some very interesting analysis in recent days on the disturbing disconnections and recriminations within the original FAA certification of Boeing's 737-MAX...  

First from Dominic Gates in the Seattle Times...  

Flawed analysis, failed oversight: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

Originally published March 17, 2019 at 6:00 am Updated March 17, 2019 at 12:06 pm


A worker is seen inside a Boeing 737 MAX 9 at the Renton plant. The circular sensor seen at bottom right measures the plane’s angle of attack, the angle between the airflow and the wing. This sensor on 737 MAX planes is under scrutiny as a possible cause of two recent fatal crashes. (Mike Siegel / The Seattle Times)
Federal Aviation Administration managers pushed its engineers to delegate wide responsibility for assessing the safety of the 737 MAX to Boeing itself. But safety engineers familiar with the documents shared details that show the analysis included crucial flaws.

 
By 
Dominic Gates 
Seattle Times aerospace reporter

As Boeing hustled in 2015 to catch up to Airbus and certify its new 737 MAX, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) managers pushed the agency’s safety engineers to delegate safety assessments to Boeing itself, and to speedily approve the resulting analysis.

But the original safety analysis that Boeing delivered to the FAA for a new flight control system on the MAX — a report used to certify the plane as safe to fly — had several crucial flaws.

That flight control system, called MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System), is now under scrutiny after two crashes of the jet in less than five months resulted in Wednesday’s FAA order to ground the plane.

Current and former engineers directly involved with the evaluations or familiar with the document shared details of Boeing’s “System Safety Analysis” of MCAS, which The Seattle Times confirmed.

The safety analysis:

• Understated the power of the new flight control system, which was designed to swivel the horizontal tail to push the nose of the plane down to avert a stall. When the planes later entered service, MCAS was capable of moving the tail more than four times farther than was stated in the initial safety analysis document.
  
  
• Failed to account for how the system could reset itself each time a pilot responded, thereby missing the potential impact of the system repeatedly pushing the airplane’s nose downward.
  
  
• Assessed a failure of the system as one level below “catastrophic.” But even that “hazardous” danger level should have precluded activation of the system based on input from a single sensor — and yet that’s how it was designed.
  

The people who spoke to The Seattle Times and shared details of the safety analysis all spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their jobs at the FAA and other aviation organizations.

Both Boeing and the FAA were informed of the specifics of this story and were asked for responses 11 days ago, before the second crash of a 737 MAX last Sunday.

Late Friday, the FAA said it followed its standard certification process on the MAX. Citing a busy week, a spokesman said the agency was “unable to delve into any detailed inquiries.”


Boeing responded Saturday with a statement that “the FAA considered the final configuration and operating parameters of MCAS during MAX certification, and concluded that it met all certification and regulatory requirements.”



Adding that it is “unable to comment … because of the ongoing investigation” into the crashes, Boeing did not respond directly to the detailed description of the flaws in MCAS certification, beyond saying that “there are some significant mischaracterizations.”



Several technical experts inside the FAA said October’s Lion Air crash, where the MCAS has been clearly implicated by investigators in Indonesia, is only the latest indicator that the agency’s delegation of airplane certification has gone too far, and that it’s inappropriate for Boeing employees to have so much authority over safety analyses of Boeing jets.

“We need to make sure the FAA is much more engaged in failure assessments and the assumptions that go into them,” said one FAA safety engineer.


Certifying a new flight control system



Going against a long Boeing tradition of giving the pilot complete control of the aircraft, the MAX’s new MCAS automatic flight control system was designed to act in the background, without pilot input.


It was needed because the MAX’s much larger engines had to be placed farther forward on the wing, changing the airframe’s aerodynamic lift.


Designed to activate automatically only in the extreme flight situation of a high-speed stall, this extra kick downward of the nose would make the plane feel the same to a pilot as the older-model 737s.



Boeing engineers authorized to work on behalf of the FAA developed the System Safety Analysis for MCAS, a document which in turn was shared with foreign air-safety regulators in Europe, Canada and elsewhere in the world.



The document, “developed to ensure the safe operation of the 737 MAX,” concluded that the system complied with all applicable FAA regulations.


Yet black box data retrieved after the Lion Air crash indicates that a single faulty sensor — a vane on the outside of the fuselage that measures the plane’s “angle of attack,” the angle between the airflow and the wing — triggered MCAS multiple times during the deadly flight, initiating a tug of war as the system repeatedly pushed the nose of the plane down and the pilots wrestled with the controls to pull it back up, before the final crash.


On Wednesday, when announcing the grounding of the 737 MAX, the FAA cited similarities in the flight trajectory of the Lion Air flight and the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 last Sunday.


Investigators also found the Ethiopian plane’s jackscrew, a part that moves the horizontal tail of the aircraft, and it indicated that the jet’s horizontal tail was in an unusual position — with MCAS as one possible reason for that.


Investigators are working to determine if MCAS could be the cause of both crashes.


Boeing 737 MAX planes sit in a row last week behind the Renton plant on the south shore of Lake Washington. (Mike Siegel / The Seattle Times)

Delegated to Boeing


The FAA, citing lack of funding and resources, has over the years delegated increasing authority to Boeing to take on more of the work of certifying the safety of its own airplanes.



Early on in certification of the 737 MAX, the FAA safety engineering team divided up the technical assessments that would be delegated to Boeing versus those they considered more critical and would be retained within the FAA.


But several FAA technical experts said in interviews that as certification proceeded, managers prodded them to speed the process. Development of the MAX was lagging nine months behind the rival Airbus A320neo. Time was of the essence for Boeing.


A former FAA safety engineer who was directly involved in certifying the MAX said that halfway through the certification process, “we were asked by management to re-evaluate what would be delegated. Management thought we had retained too much at the FAA.”


“There was constant pressure to re-evaluate our initial decisions,” the former engineer said. “And even after we had reassessed it … there was continued discussion by management about delegating even more items down to the Boeing Company.”



Even the work that was retained, such as reviewing technical documents provided by Boeing, was sometimes curtailed.


“There wasn’t a complete and proper review of the documents,” the former engineer added. “Review was rushed to reach certain certification dates.”



When time was too short for FAA technical staff to complete a review, sometimes managers either signed off on the documents themselves or delegated their review back to Boeing.


“The FAA managers, not the agency technical experts, have final authority on delegation,” the engineer said.


Inaccurate limit


In this atmosphere, the System Safety Analysis on MCAS, just one piece of the mountain of documents needed for certification, was delegated to Boeing.


The original Boeing document provided to the FAA included a description specifying a limit to how much the system could move the horizontal tail — a limit of 0.6 degrees, out of a physical maximum of just less than 5 degrees of nose-down movement.



That limit was later increased after flight tests showed that a more powerful movement of the tail was required to avert a high-speed stall, when the plane is in danger of losing lift and spiraling down.


The behavior of a plane in a high angle-of-attack stall is difficult to model in advance purely by analysis and so, as test pilots work through stall-recovery routines during flight tests on a new airplane, it’s not uncommon to tweak the control software to refine the jet’s performance.



After the Lion Air Flight 610 crash, Boeing for the first time provided to airlines details about MCAS. Boeing’s bulletin to the airlines stated that the limit of MCAS’s command was 2.5 degrees.


That number was new to FAA engineers who had seen 0.6 degrees in the safety assessment.


“The FAA believed the airplane was designed to the 0.6 limit, and that’s what the foreign regulatory authorities thought, too,” said an FAA engineer. “It makes a difference in your assessment of the hazard involved.”


The higher limit meant that each time MCAS was triggered, it caused a much greater movement of the tail than was specified in that original safety analysis document.



The former FAA safety engineer who worked on the MAX certification, and a former Boeing flight controls engineer who worked on the MAX as an authorized representative of the FAA, both said that such safety analyses are required to be updated to reflect the most accurate aircraft information following flight tests.


“The numbers should match whatever design was tested and fielded,” said the former FAA engineer.



But both said that sometimes agreements were made to update documents only at some later date.


“It’s possible the latest numbers wouldn’t be in there, as long as it was reviewed and they concluded the differences wouldn’t change the conclusions or the severity of the hazard assessment,” said the former Boeing flight controls engineer.


If the final safety analysis document was updated in parts, it certainly still contained the 0.6 limit in some places and the update was not widely communicated within the FAA technical evaluation team.


“None of the engineers were aware of a higher limit,” said a second current FAA engineer.



The discrepancy over this number is magnified by another element in the System Safety Analysis: The limit of the system’s authority to move the tail applies each time MCAS is triggered. And it can be triggered multiple times, as it was on the Lion Air flight.


One current FAA safety engineer said that every time the pilots on the Lion Air flight reset the switches on their control columns to pull the nose back up, MCAS would have kicked in again and “allowed new increments of 2.5 degrees.”



“So once they pushed a couple of times, they were at full stop,” meaning at the full extent of the tail swivel, he said.


Peter Lemme, a former Boeing flight controls engineer who is now an avionics and satellite-communications consultant, said that because MCAS reset each time it was used, “it effectively has unlimited authority.”


Swiveling the horizontal tail, which is technically called the stabilizer, to the end stop gives the airplane’s nose the maximum possible push downward.


“It had full authority to move the stabilizer the full amount,” Lemme said. “There was no need for that. Nobody should have agreed to giving it unlimited authority.”



On the Lion Air flight, when the MCAS pushed the jet’s nose down, the captain pulled it back up, using thumb switches on the control column. Still operating under the false angle-of-attack reading, MCAS kicked in each time to swivel the horizontal tail and push the nose down again.


The black box data released in the preliminary investigation report shows that after this cycle repeated 21 times, the plane’s captain ceded control to the first officer. As MCAS pushed the nose down two or three times more, the first officer responded with only two short flicks of the thumb switches.



At a limit of 2.5 degrees, two cycles of MCAS without correction would have been enough to reach the maximum nose-down effect.

In the final seconds, the black box data shows the captain resumed control and pulled back up with high force. But it was too late. The plane dived into the sea at more than 500 miles per hour.


Recovery work continues around the crater where the Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed shortly after takeoff last week near Bishoftu, southeast of Addis Ababa. Flight data analysis is yielding clues about the cause of the crash. (Yidnek Kirubel / The Associated Press)

System failed on a single sensor

The bottom line of Boeing’s System Safety Analysis with regard to MCAS was that, in normal flight, an activation of MCAS to the maximum assumed authority of 0.6 degrees was classified as only a “major failure,” meaning that it could cause physical distress to people on the plane, but not death.

In the case of an extreme maneuver, specifically when the plane is in a banked descending spiral, an activation of MCAS was classified as a “hazardous failure,” meaning that it could cause serious or fatal injuries to a small number of passengers. That’s still one level below a “catastrophic failure,” which represents the loss of the plane with multiple fatalities.

The former Boeing flight controls engineer who worked on the MAX’s certification on behalf of the FAA said that whether a system on a jet can rely on one sensor input, or must have two, is driven by the failure classification in the system safety analysis.

He said virtually all equipment on any commercial airplane, including the various sensors, is reliable enough to meet the “major failure” requirement, which is that the probability of a failure must be less than one in 100,000. Such systems are therefore typically allowed to rely on a single input sensor.

But when the consequences are assessed to be more severe, with a “hazardous failure” requirement demanding a more stringent probability of one in 10 million, then a system typically must have at least two separate input channels in case one goes wrong.

Boeing’s System Safety Analysis assessment that the MCAS failure would be “hazardous” troubles former flight controls engineer Lemme because the system is triggered by the reading from a single angle-of-attack sensor.

“A hazardous failure mode depending on a single sensor, I don’t think passes muster,” said Lemme.

Like all 737s, the MAX actually has two of the sensors, one on each side of the fuselage near the cockpit. But the MCAS was designed to take a reading from only one of them.

Lemme said Boeing could have designed the system to compare the readings from the two vanes, which would have indicated if one of them was way off.

Alternatively, the system could have been designed to check that the angle-of-attack reading was accurate while the plane was taxiing on the ground before takeoff, when the angle of attack should read zero.

“They could have designed a two-channel system. Or they could have tested the value of angle of attack on the ground,” said Lemme. “I don’t know why they didn’t.”

The black box data provided in the preliminary investigation report shows that readings from the two sensors differed by some 20 degrees not only throughout the flight but also while the airplane taxied on the ground before takeoff.

No training, no information

After the Lion Air crash, 737 MAX pilots around the world were notified about the existence of MCAS and what to do if the system is triggered inappropriately.

Boeing insists that the pilots on the Lion Air flight should have recognized that the horizontal stabilizer was moving uncommanded, and should have responded with a standard pilot checklist procedure to handle what’s called “stabilizer runaway.”

If they’d done so, the pilots would have hit cutoff switches and deactivated the automatic stabilizer movement.

Boeing has pointed out that the pilots flying the same plane on the day before the crash experienced similar behavior to Flight 610 and did exactly that: They threw the stabilizer cutoff switches, regained control and continued with the rest of the flight.

However, pilots and aviation experts say that what happened on the Lion Air flight doesn’t look like a standard stabilizer runaway, because that is defined as continuous uncommanded movement of the tail.

On the accident flight, the tail movement wasn’t continuous; the pilots were able to counter the nose-down movement multiple times.

In addition, the MCAS altered the control column response to the stabilizer movement. Pulling back on the column normally interrupts any stabilizer nose-down movement, but with MCAS operating that control column function was disabled.

These differences certainly could have confused the Lion Air pilots as to what was going on.

Since MCAS was supposed to activate only in extreme circumstances far outside the normal flight envelope, Boeing decided that 737 pilots needed no extra training on the system — and indeed that they didn’t even need to know about it. It was not mentioned in their flight manuals.

That stance allowed the new jet to earn a common “type rating” with existing 737 models, allowing airlines to minimize training of pilots moving to the MAX.

Dennis Tajer, a spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association at American Airlines, said his training on moving from the old 737 NG model cockpit to the new 737 MAX consisted of little more than a one-hour session on an iPad, with no simulator training.

Minimizing MAX pilot transition training was an important cost saving for Boeing’s airline customers, a key selling point for the jet, which has racked up more than 5,000 orders.

The company’s website pitched the jet to airlines with a promise that “as you build your 737 MAX fleet, millions of dollars will be saved because of its commonality with the Next-Generation 737.”

In the aftermath of the crash, officials at the unions for both American and Southwest Airlines pilots criticized Boeing for providing no information about MCAS, or its possible malfunction, in the 737 MAX pilot manuals.

An FAA safety engineer said the lack of prior information could have been crucial in the Lion Air crash.

Boeing’s safety analysis of the system assumed that “the pilots would recognize what was happening as a runaway and cut off the switches,” said the engineer. “The assumptions in here are incorrect. The human factors were not properly evaluated.”



The cockpit of a grounded Lion Air 737 MAX 8 jet is seen at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Cengkareng, Indonesia, last week. The crash of an Ethiopian Airlines plane bore similarities to the Oct.... (Dimas Ardian / Bloomberg)

On Monday, before the grounding of the 737 MAX, Boeing outlined “a flight control software enhancement for the 737 MAX,” that it’s been developing since soon after the Lion Air crash.

According to a detailed FAA briefing to legislators, Boeing will change the MCAS software to give the system input from both angle-of-attack sensors.

It will also limit how much MCAS can move the horizontal tail in response to an erroneous signal. And when activated, the system will kick in only for one cycle, rather than multiple times.

Boeing also plans to update pilot training requirements and flight crew manuals to include MCAS.

These proposed changes mirror the critique made by the safety engineers in this story. They had spoken to The Seattle Times before the Ethiopian crash.

The FAA said it will mandate Boeing’s software fix in an airworthiness directive no later than April.

Facing legal actions brought by the families of those killed, Boeing will have to explain why those fixes were not part of the original system design. And the FAA will have to defend its certification of the system as safe.



Seven weeks after it rolled out of the paint hangar, Boeing’s first 737 MAX‚ the Spirit of Renton‚ flies for the first time Jan. 29, 2016, from Renton Municipal Airport. (Mike Siegel / The Seattle Times)

  
And from Patrick Hatch in the SMH:

This is your captain computing: 737 MAX crashes put heat on autopilots


By Patrick Hatch
March 16, 2019 — 12.05am

It's not every day that experts in their field agree with what United States president Donald Trump posts on Twitter.

But it happened in a small way this week, when the president weighed into the crisis engulfing US aeroplane maker Boeing, after one of its 737 MAX 8 aircraft flown by Ethiopian Airlines crashed outside of Addis Ababa killing 157 people on Sunday.

"Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists," Trump wrote, adding a flourish that hit on a hot topic in aviation circles: "I don't want Albert Einstein to be my pilot. I want great flying professionals that are allowed to easily and quickly take control of a plane!"

A day after Trump's post, US aviation safety authorities grounded Boeing's almost brand new 737 MAX 8 and 9 series aircraft, falling into line with regulators in Australia, Europe and China.

The same model of aircraft flown by Indonesian carrier Lion Air went down shortly after take-off from Jakarta in October, crashing into the Java Sea and killing 189 people.

US Federal Aviation Administration officials had on Tuesday cleared the planes but eventually it grounded the jets based on new data that showed similarities between the two crashes.



Wreckage at the scene of Sunday's Ethiopian Airlines crash south of Addis Ababa. CREDIT:AP

The Lion Air crash is still being investigated, but preliminary findings point to a new anti-stall system installed on the MAX aircraft, which has only been flying for two years. It is this computerised intervention that has again got aviation experts talking about the limits of automation and its merits set against the abilities of pilots.

“We’re not yet at the stage where computer software and the code written by on-the-ground technical people... [can] take over the decision making of a well-trained crew," says Marcus Diamond, a safety consultant at the Australian Federation of Air Pilots and former 737 pilot.


“We do need some of these systems in the aeroplanes to assist the pilot. But they must be fully cognisant of their existence and their use and they must know how to override them."

That system - the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) - is designed to prevent a "stall", in which a plane would lose lift, by forcing the plane's nose downward if it is flying at too steep an angle.


[/url]BEA | Bureau d'Enquêtes & d'Analyses   @BEA_Aero


[url=https://twitter.com/BEA_Aero/status/1106221599735332864]

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03/10 accident to the #Boeing737Max @BoeingAirplanes  ET-AVJ operated by @flyethiopian / First picture of the FDR provided by the Ethiopian investigation team.
2:52 AM - Mar 15, 2019 · Le Bourget, France

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The Lion Air crash investigation has been centred on whether incorrect sensor data triggered the MCAS system, when it was not needed, and if the pilots knew how to disengage it.

Boeing did not tell airlines about the new system prompting fury from pilots groups - particularly in the US, where the carriers American Airlines, Southwest and United have been operating dozens of the new jet.

It has emerged that at least two American pilots reported the MCAS system unexpectedly engaging mid-flight, and that Boeing had promised after the Lion Air crash to fix the system quickly.

Boeing says pilots should know how to override a jet's autopilot whether they know about the MCAS or not.

Diamond says that in marketing the MAX to airlines, Boeing presented it as a simple update of its popular 737 series, requiring minimal additional training for pilots who already fly 737s - only a few hours of ground training.

That was wildly successful. The MAX became the fastest-selling jet in history with about 4600 planes worth about $US550 billion ($775 billion) currently on order.

The FAA has now ordered Boeing to change the MCAS' design and update its training guide to include expensive and time-consuming simulator training.

Keith Tonkin knows first-hand what can happen when a new computer program is installed on an aircraft from his time flying F-111 fighter jets for the RAAF from 1996 to 2000.

He was one of the first pilots to train on an upgraded model that swapped analogue with digital flight control computers and recalls "pretty interesting" situations in the sky he had to recover from when the new system took over.

"Luckily, we did," says Tonkin, who is now an aviation safety expert and managing director of the consultancy Aviation Projects.

"The solution is to go away and work out what the problem was, and then go and tell everyone."

That learning process is normal when introducing new flight systems, he says.

"It is unclear to what extent the crashes could have been prevented with better pilot training or knowledge of how the aircraft operates."


The Lion Air investigation crash is still underway, and the Ethiopian probe has only just begun, with the black box flight data and pilot voice recorders arriving in Paris for analysis on Friday.

So it is unclear to what extent, if at all, the crashes could have been prevented with better pilot training or knowledge of how the aircraft operates.

Ethiopian Airlines flight 302's pilot had 8000 hours of flying experience but its co-pilot had only 200 hours -  which is not enough experience to do that job in the US.

"There’s a difference in pilot capabilities around the world… so perhaps the aircraft are becoming too sophisticated for their operators," says Tonkin.


Foreign investigators examine wreckage at the scene where the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 crashed.CREDIT:AP

"Perhaps it was a glitch in the flight control law, or perhaps it was a lack of understanding in how they worked and how to recover from the situation.

"That’s been happening throughout the years when flight control has been more and more automated through a computer rather than just [coming] direct from the pilot’s hands through a cable to the flight control surfaces.”

Prior to last Sunday's disaster, there were about 350 MAX 8 aircraft operating around the globe, but only two airlines flying them into Australia - Singapore's SilkAir and Fiji Airways.

SilkAir promptly grounded its planes, and Fiji Airways was given no choice after the Australian regulator stepped in. It's not clear when they will resume service, with the global MAX grounding expected to last at least to the end of April.

The jet could eventually become a more familiar sight in our skies though, as Virgin Australia has 40 MAX aircraft on order to start replacing its domestic fleet. The first two were due to arrive in November and December.

Virgin has assured the public it will not introduce any of those aircraft to its fleet "unless we are completely satisfied with its safety" - flagging the possibility of pushing back its order.

Reassessing the order - estimated to be worth around $2.6 billion, including a discount for buying in bulk - was already expected to be a priority for Virgin's new chief executive Paul Scurrah when he takes over the airline on March 25, given the airline's string of heavy financial losses.

The order had promised outstanding fuel and efficiency savings but that equation has now already changed due to the more onerous pilot training that will be required.

If Virgin formally pushed back the order, it would come with financial penalties, while cancelling it outright would be even more expensive for Virgin than a delay.

"This is going to be a very good aeroplane, but they've had a very significant hiccup."
Marcus Diamond

Boeing said on Friday it had stopped making deliveries of the new aircraft, but production was continuing apace. That includes wingtips made at a factory in Melbourne.

Diamond says Virgin pilots would still feel comfortable flying the MAX at some stage, so long as they are fully aware of what programs are installed on the jet and how to turn them off.

"This is going to be a very good aeroplane, but they've had a very significant hiccup," he says.

Tonkin meanwhile says the two crashes should give pause for thought to the trend towards handing the control stick over to computers.

“The human in the loop is certainly not redundant," he says. "Not yet anyway.”

MTF...P2