Big Problem for Boeing

"someassemblyrequired" (someassemblyrequired) 11/12/2018 at 22:55 • Filed to: None

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Seattle Times reporting tonight that U.S. airline pilots converting to the 737 Max weren’t trained on the flight control changes which led to the Lion Air crash a few weeks ago.

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Spanfeller is a twat > someassemblyrequired 11/12/2018 at 23:02

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Why did Boeing change the cabin layout? I feel like it’d be like a car maker changing to dog-leg transmissions without telling anyone. 

someassemblyrequired > Spanfeller is a twat 11/12/2018 at 23:07

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Yeah I’d think the most important changes to highlight would be the changes that affect behavior at the edge of the flight envelope.   Not good to discover a “new feature” when the airplane is out of control.

Spanfeller is a twat > someassemblyrequired 11/12/2018 at 23:12

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Some aren’t Dougs at heart. 

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > someassemblyrequired 11/12/2018 at 23:20

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I’ll ask someone who flys the thing for a living and report back.

wafflesnfalafel > Spanfeller is a twat 11/12/2018 at 23:22

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yeah - I believe that would fall under “quirks”

WilliamsSW > someassemblyrequired 11/12/2018 at 23:31

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Hmmm that seems pretty dumb to me...

ttyymmnn > someassemblyrequired 11/12/2018 at 23:43

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An article linked in the story has more information.

It seems to like Boeing is caught in sort of a coffin corner here. Airline travel is booming, leading airlines, particularly in smaller international markets, to have greener flight crews. So Boeing designs a system that, on paper, would help a less experienced flight crew. But when the system goes screwy, or isn’t used properly, the inexperienced flight crew has trouble knowing how to disarm the system, or maybe even lacks the airmanship to fly the plane manually.

I can’t even imagine what those Lion Air pilots were going through. Every time they pulled the nose back up, the system pushed it down. I’ve written about enough crashes to know that figuring out the source of a problem while still trying to fly the plane, let alone a plane that may be actively trying to kill you, can be extraordinarily difficult. Then again, if the Lion Air pilots didn’t know that they could turn it off, because Boeing didn’t tell them they could, that’s another story entirely.

It sounds to me like we might be reaching technology overload. Maybe we need to go back to stick and rudder flying.

facw > ttyymmnn 11/12/2018 at 23:57

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I’m pretty sure we are going to get the opposite. More automation and remote pilots. Which will require a whole other set of adjustments, some of which will probably be learned the hard way. Still there’s nothing that indicates it can’t be done. Key problem here seems to have been a sensor failure, but that can be guarded against with redundant sensors and/or sanity checking (I’m sure other sensors on board the plane could have indicated that there was no danger of a stall, despite the reported  AoA).

ttyymmnn > facw 11/13/2018 at 00:06

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Is the flying public really ready for a pilotless plane? Or will it be like that Warren Bennis quote about the future of manufacturing:

The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.

That said, I think about the Asiana 214, and how everything seemed to go wrong when the pilot tried to fly the plane himself. Had he left everything alone, they probably would have been fine. And then there’s this little tidbit from the NTSB’s report on that crash:

Contributing to the accident were (1) the complexities of the autothrottle and autopilot flight director systems that were inadequately described in Boeing’s documentation and Asiana’s pilot training, which increased the likelihood of mode error;

facw > ttyymmnn 11/13/2018 at 00:20

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I think the public probably isn’t ready for self-flying planes, but I don’t think that means they won’t be coming. I’d imagine any transition would involve having a single pilot on board to keep an eye on things (and sure , bring a dog to keep the pilot from touching anything), with pool of remote pilots who can take control if the pilot has medical emergency or something. I think that could be much more acceptable to public, since they don’t have to trust the computers, since they’ll always have a pilot. And once you have that, it becomes easier to argue you can safely just have a remote pilot in case of emergency. There are of course obstacles, but I think people can be convinced. 

pip bip - choose Corrour > someassemblyrequired 11/13/2018 at 05:08

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did someone say lawsuit?

someassemblyrequired > ttyymmnn 11/13/2018 at 09:09

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Boeing advertised that the conversion training for the MAX was something like an hour on an iPad. Certainly not enough to get into the nitty gritty about how a system like this works, and what to do if it fails.

I’d imagine even a first-world flight crew who stick and ruddered a Stearman on weekends would have had problems if the same situation had occurred to them. It sounds like the error messages that indicated sensor failure were not helpful, and in fact, good control design would have been to mark the sensor as bad if it disagreed with the altimeter (i.e. sensor output at 0V or maxed out and/or constant altitude + forward speed indicated by GPS should have auto disarmed or locked out the system). With systems that can override human inputs it is critical to perform multiple sanity checks automatically, and then clearly and concisely inform the user the action that is being taken and how to turn it off.

tl,dr: Boeing probably has a billion dollar liability on its hands.

someassemblyrequired > facw 11/13/2018 at 09:11

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Yes, exactly, cross checking altitude change, and GPS speed or a whole host of other data would have been enough to determine that a stall has not occurred.

I think a human pilot may end up being more of a engineer/technician as things get more complex (diagnosing and addressing system failures), but I think they will always have a place - if only to reassure passengers.

someassemblyrequired > WilliamsSW 11/13/2018 at 09:12

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Yeah, I heard lots of complaints from the 90+ year old Boeing engineers at Museum of Flight events about the “new Boeing. ” They didn’t think much of the current crop of managers or technical people.

someassemblyrequired > pip bip - choose Corrour 11/13/2018 at 09:15

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WilliamsSW > someassemblyrequired 11/13/2018 at 10:55

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Well, old dudes always tend to think the younger ones are no good, so I would expect that, regardless.

This is disappointing to me from Boeing - it wouldn’t surprise me much from Airbus, but I always thought Boeing built more of a pilot’s airplane, at least from a control systems perspective.

someassemblyrequired > WilliamsSW 11/13/2018 at 10:58

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Yeah, they were pretty unhappy, but there is the “old man yells at cloud factor.”

Yeah, Airbus had a lot of “mode select” issues with the A320 family when they were new. Both of them should probably just outsource this stuff to Lockheed - there’s probably someone still there that can port the L1011's systems to the new crop of airplanes .

WilliamsSW > someassemblyrequired 11/13/2018 at 11:07

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This is what really irks me about the MAX here:

He said it was done primarily because the much bigger engines on the MAX changed the aerodynamics of the jet and shifted the conditions under which a stall could happen. That required further stall protection be implemented to certify the jet as safe.

That doesn’t quite sound to me like a 1 hour iPad session is enough to transition into the MAX.  Pilots ought to get some MAX sim time (which apparently no one has) to experience the stall characteristics a bit, and of course learn how to override the system.  Because no one has EVER built a system that can’t fail.