Some context:<p>1. There have been 865 737 related ASRS reports since 1/1/2018<p>2. I don't know how to quickly separate out 737-MAX reports from the non 737-MAX reports, as the ASRS database doesn't include 737-MAX as an airplane type! From scanning, I can say that there are more than five MAX related reports, though.<p>[1] All 865 737 reports since 1/1/2018<p>CSV - <a href="http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=54668679794062195281" rel="nofollow">http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=546686797940621...</a><p>DOC - <a href="http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=72649718879825392207" rel="nofollow">http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=726497188798253...</a><p>[2] Airplane model filter with no MAX option: <a href="https://imgur.com/a/09rRtzX" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/09rRtzX</a><p>[3] ASRS database: <a href="https://titan-server.arc.nasa.gov/ASRSPublicQueryWizard/QueryWizard_Filter.aspx#" rel="nofollow">https://titan-server.arc.nasa.gov/ASRSPublicQueryWizard/Quer...</a><p>[4] Document linked in the article with plane models listed under 737-800 or 737-Next Generation Undifferentiated <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5766398-ASRS-Reports-for-737-max8.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5766398-ASRS-Reports...</a>
For a car analogy, imagine Tesla creates a new model that under certain conditions tends to over-steer left. To prevent any accidents because of that, they have added a system that turns the steering wheel clockwise. To disable the system it is not enough to try to prevent by force the steering wheel from turning, but you have to press a button that disables electric steering assistance.<p>Notice they have never briefed you about this new system because they didn't want to retrain you.<p>You happily drive along the highway at 70mph when the system malfunctions and incorrectly thinks the car is over-steering left, so the steering wheel starts rotating clockwise. The car swiftly moves to the lane in your right as you use all your strength to prevent it and manage to bring the car back in the lane.<p>In the mean time all kind of lights and sounds go off on your cockpit. In 5 seconds, while you are trying to find out what to make out of all the lights flashing, the steering wheel starts turning the card right again. This time you are not so lucky and you crash into the truck on your right.
This is off topic. But I've been skeptical of the commercial aviation accident risk compared to cars.<p>I'm not saying cars are safer. But using accident count per mileage seems a bit odd, especially when the most risky parts of flying are taking off and landing.<p>A plane travelling 400 more miles doesn't incur much more risk. But a car travelling 400 more miles incur a much bigger risk (e.g. fatigue, car malfunctioning). So, of course, the stats for planes is going to look much better.<p>I wonder if anyone has an insight into why we are using this metrics, and what is a better metrics?
There are at least three inter-related issues here: 1) Was MCAS an issue in the Ethiopian Airlines crash? 2) Did Boeing err, prior to the Lion Air crash, in not informing pilots of the existence of MCAS, and the way it changes how a failure is experienced by the flight crew? 3) Does MCAS pose a risk that cannot be adequately addressed through appropriate awareness and training?<p>IIRC, after the existence of MCAS was disclosed, the US pilots' unions were divided over this issue, with the union representing Southwest pilots castigating Boeing for its nondisclosure, while that representing United pilots did not consider it to be a big issue. Unfortunately, this article does not make it clear where pilots stand on issue 3, and the investigation of the Ethiopian Airlines crash might reveal additional issues.<p>The forthcoming software upgrade for MCAS certainly implies that there were improvements to be made.
The thing that worries me most is that, based on mere amateur observations in the media, the number of incidents involving user interfaces, repeated changes to procedures, and software fixes to "unexpected" corner-cases seems to have been in the increase.<p>To the uninitiated, it seems that problems in airline incidents used to revolve around mechanical failures, bad wiring, sensor malfunctions, toasted electronics causing smell of smoke and such. Plain and simple. Issue a fix in the design and apply to all planes of the same type, and you'll end up reducing the failure surface bit by bit.<p>I might be totally wrong about this because I don't track actual data. But if I've spotted the trend right it's scary because the problems are shifting into <i>our space</i>, i.e. software engineering. And being a software engineer, I know we're pretty much fucked at that point. We've only ever managed to write reliable and trustworthy software when we've split it into very tiny pieces that we can verify and kept the number of pieces small.<p>Maybe aviation computers used to be much simpler that they could be verified more throughoutly. Maybe airplanes used to have less features and they could keep the complexity sufficiently down and functionality orthogonal. Maybe there was enough human glue in between the systems so that there was a live sanity-check during flights and pilots could react properly if the computers didn't agree on something.<p>But now I sense a new category of error conditions that are eerily similar to what we've had in non-critical software for decades where assumptions are laid on top of other assumptions, and when they fail the whole stack comes crashing down. Only this time there might be a whole plane coming down instead of getting a curious SIGSEGV on the screen with a blinking cursor. It might start as an innocent "couldn't access flight plan because of wifi went down" but such interdependencies between certified and uncertified systems grow exponentially and this will snowball into the unmanageable very soon.
> The News found at least five complaints about the Boeing model in a federal database where pilots can voluntarily report about aviation incidents without fear of repercussions.<p>Is this a lot?
Please make a conscious choice when flying 737 Max on US domestic flights. It is your right to know the type of aircraft when you are booking your flight. Switching to a reasonably expensive alternative is worth more than any foreseeable trouble.
This article is less compelling than the title would suggest.<p>After the Lion Air crash the FAA released a Emergency Airworthiness Directive, these five comments are in response to that directive. That differentiates it from pilots that had a negative run-in with MCAS or other defects in the 737 Max 8 (which would be significant news).<p>This article might inform you pilots are unhappy, but that fact has been widely circulated elsewhere since the Lion Air crash. The fact that five pilots submitted official comments doesn't add to what we knew.<p>These comments for example wouldn't have helped inform the FAA's decisions, since the FAA told the pilots about the issues in the Emergency Airworthiness Directive that these comments are based upon.
In the wake of the previous Boeing 737 Max crash:<p>"Boeing Co. <i>withheld information about potential hazards</i> associated with a new flight-control feature suspected of playing a role in last month's fatal Lion Air jet crash, according to safety experts involved in the investigation, as well as midlevel FAA officials and airline pilots."<p>"Safety experts involved in and tracking the investigation said that at U.S. carriers, <i>neither airline managers nor pilots had been told such a system had been added to the latest 737 variant</i> — and therefore aviators typically weren't prepared to cope with the possible risks."<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18438607" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18438607</a>
If I am reading the article correctly, the complaints all came after JT610? It would have been more damning if they had been complaining about this for the last couple years.
You can see the archive.is copy of it without jumping through hoops: <a href="http://archive.is/GsHVR" rel="nofollow">http://archive.is/GsHVR</a>
man fuck canada and the usa. how are we the only ones in the world to not care about safety. even if its a 0.5% chance 150+ people die, isn't that enough to warrant temporarily grounding a handful of planes. sigh common
This is a great video that does a concise and understandable of the main theory for the issue that occured on the LionAir flight: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfQW0upkVus" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfQW0upkVus</a><p>It was very helpful for me to understand exactly what "runaway trim" meant. Essentially, it's a force (down or up) on the elevator on the horizontal stabilizer. The pilot still controls it from his yoke, but the more trim applied the more it pushes the result in a given direction. If the system applies trim consistently to push the nose down (to avoid what it thinks is an imminent staff), it will progressively more difficult for the pilot to counteract that and pitch up. Eventually, it's too much to handle.<p>This situation should be easily detectable, from what I understand, due to large wheels moving visibly in the center console, and the pilots can counteract the trim in a known procedure.
> Nor have other civil aviation authorities provided data to us that would warrant action,<p>What, except for the data of <i></i>the two crashes happening<i></i>? The person that wrote this statement is a fucking idiot.
>> Thank you for being a patron of the Dallas Morning News. Unfortunately, our site is unavailable to European Union visitors<p>Please learn some basic geography. Norway (and Switzerland) are not in the EU.
In order to increase fuel efficiency on the 737 MAX, the engine fan diameter was increased;<p><pre><code> "Premature optimization is the root of all evil" -- Knuth</code></pre>
Here are a few links to petitions you can sign to help out and ground boeing:<p><a href="https://groundboeing.com" rel="nofollow">https://groundboeing.com</a><p><a href="https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/ground-boeing-737-max" rel="nofollow">https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/ground-boeing-737-...</a><p><a href="https://www.change.org/p/your-government-ground-the-boeing-737-max" rel="nofollow">https://www.change.org/p/your-government-ground-the-boeing-7...</a>
More context missing in this news.
Southwest certainly was aware of the MCAS issues, they are the only airline having demanded a second AOA sensor to be installed and used, they also changed the UI to display the attack angle.<p>So they lied. Even if it's safer to fly a SW max than AA.<p>> A spokesperson for Southwest Airlines told The News that it hasn't received any reports of issues with MCAS from its pilots, "nor do any of our thousands of data points from the aircraft indicate any issues with MCAS."
Car manufacturers RECALL defective cars; Why isn't Boeing doing that?<p>And hope Boeing is NOT simulating <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_control" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_control</a>
US media. Why do I need always a VPN from Europe? Beeing GDPR compliant is not rocket science. "Unfortunately, our site is unavailable to European Union visitors... blablabla".<p>UPDATE: And this news website even detects if I use incognito mode: "To continue reading, please disable private/incognito mode, log in, or enroll as a member" omg