I’m not a superstitious person, nor am I particularly spiritual nor religious. I’m an agnostic on the paranormal, but I’ll admit to going a little around the bend on the existence of gremlins in old airplanes. Gremlins were, of course, well supported in World War II aircraft training manuals. Also, William Shatner saw one on the wing of a Constellation in 1963, fully three years before %$#@ really got weird in Star Trek.
In Sullenberger’s first book he seemed to mention the pay cuts that airline pilots had to take in every chapter. While it is fun to complain about how much some folks make for what we would consider “easy” jobs I always thought that part of their pay was to allow them to fly, and keep their basic flying skills up to date. I knew an airline pilot who was out in the pattern in a Cub at least once a week. The airlines don’t force the pilots to hand fly and the accountants don’t like the cost of hand flying so we find ourselves watching the erosion of skills without any way to change it.
Are we proving (over and over) that partial automation is a less than ideal choice? Perhaps we need to make the call - is the pilot in control, or is the computer? If the pilot is in control, the computer should not be making inputs.
We could go fully-automated - pilot out of the loop, monitoring only (humans kinda suck at this, so the less monitoring, the better). Like an always-on autopilot that does everything, gate to gate. More development is needed here, but it is a solvable problem.
We could go non-automated and stop adding ‘features’ that provide inputs that the pilot isn’t commanding and thus potentially confusing him and leading to disaster. The pilot will need to ‘fly’ more than is becoming common today, but how is that not a good thing when things go awry?
The middle ground seems to be increasingly littered with tragedy, eroding piloting skills, and confusion (“what is it doing now?”).
Recently talking with a famous pilot most of you here know of, this exact subject came up. The comment was made regarding automation in Airbus’ that the two most commonly heard comments in the cockpit aree, “Why did it do that,” and, “what’s it gonna do next?”
I recently had a similar ‘spat’ with a newer pickup I have. Some meathead designed a failsafe software routine in the ECU that shut the engine down while it was being driven. When driving it IN traffic, the thing shuts down and I had to wait 5 minutes before it’d allow a restart. Turns out the ECU had gotten ‘stupid’ while it was parked for six months. The software allowed it to be started in some “fail safe mode” but then it’d shut down and I’d have to wait. In the hands of a different driver, this could have lead to disaster. Same story, different vehicle. You can’t see, feel, touch or even know of software … it’s invisible.
So when I hear that Boeing is designing new software for the Max airplanes … WHOA! I want sim time AND I want to know what those software routines are potentially gonna do to the airplane.
As for non piloted transportation aircraft, I suggest we wait to see how non human driven cars for transport of humans works out. We need to give that plenty of time and there will be some accidents but hopefully less than caused by human driven surface vehicles. Lets work it out in 2D before we take it to 3D.
As for commercial and military pilots (both our cream crops), I have found that only 10-15% have time or interest in staying in the loop of hand flying small GA aircraft. In the heavies, they don’t get to practice real stalls (both coordinated and uncoordinated) and also don’t get much time doing slips or flying on the edge (which or course you don’t want to do in heavies).
Our GA Glass panels don’t have a presentation of coordinated flight that can compete with a turn coordinator in my opinion.
Let’s work on that Garmin, Avidyne, Aspen, etc. Most glass panel presentations of standard rate turns and half standard rate turns are nowhere near as easy to use as a turn coordinator in my opinion. and certainly the substitute for a ball is not even close as the ball in a curved tube indicator that we have been using since the '30’s.
The computer data may be as good or better but the presentation sure doesn’t seem as good to this writer!
For now we need to make existing pilot better. Staying in touch with GA aircraft might a route to take along with more innovations in the flight training industry which sorely needs it, regardless of the progress we have been making.
Here here! on the glass cockpit turn coordinator. It is hard enough to teach encourage typical students to religiously coordinate flight with analog turn coordinators in trainers like the 172. It’s all but a lost cause on the PFD in the G1000 172. Same for rate of turn, although I don’t sweat that as much in the private phase.
I am a retired aerospace engineer who has worked for Lockheed, Boeing and Douglas, on missile guidance, navigation and control.
I worked for Boeing on the SaturnV Moon rocket (We were Systems manager). Even 50+ years ago Boeing knew enough to provide triple-redundancy, with voting logic, in its flight control systems. I cannot FATHOM why they failed to provide this feature in the 737 MAX 8.
I have been reading the Wall Street Journal’s features on this problem, where they reported that Boeing effectively froze their test pilots out of the design loop. The software people must have imposed an arrogant approach to the design. In my experience, some of the software people dismisse the input of people working with their product, resulting in embedded bugs.
I would also fault Boeing’s decision to move corporate HQ away from Seattle to Chicago, while retaining engineering and manufacturing in Seattle, Charleston and elsewhere. This very move isolated company management from their own engineers, who could have access to report problems, face-to-face…
Is anyone else bothered by the Seattle Times’ (as well as other media outlets, including AvWeb) continuing claims that Boeing has not accepted blame? Muilenburg’s statements following the Ethiopian Air crash included the following:
> We at Boeing are sorry for the lives lost in the recent 737 MAX accidents.
> [The] accidents were caused by a chain of events, with a common chain link being erroneous activation of the aircraft’s MCAS function.
> The history of our industry shows most accidents are caused by a chain of events. This again is the case here, and we know we can break one of those chain links in these two accidents. As pilots have told us, erroneous activation of the MCAS function can add to what is already a high workload environment. It’s our responsibility to eliminate this risk. We own it and we know how to do it.
Are these statement untruthful or misleading? What would a blame-acceptance statement satisfactory to the media mob look like?
The main theme of these articles seems to be that since Boeing has redesigned the way MCAS operates it should admit fault in the original design process; either its process is flawed, or it didn’t follow the process. Is it possible that Boeing did indeed follow proper design/test/implementation processes AND that those processes failed to take into account all factors involved in the pilot/system interface? Isn’t that the case with pretty much all aviation accidents traced back to aircraft design? Humans design something they believe will function in a particular way, or that pilots will interact with in a particular way, only to find they lacked a full understanding of how that something works in the real world.
If Boeing actually cut corners in its design process the public absolutely has a right to know. But shouldn’t we have proof before smearing a company that deserves a large share of the credit for a decade of unprecedented aviation safety in which some 90 million commercial flights were conducted with only a single fatality? The Seattle Times article includes the statements of “people involved with the program” (who are they?) “[t]wo people familiar with the discussions” (who are they?), “an engineer” (who?), “two people familiar with the details” (who?), “one of the people familiar with the MCAS design” (WHO!!?), but stops short of making any direct claims about Boeing’s behavior, choosing instead to rely on innuendo. I guess we can take comfort in the fact the Seattle Times recognizes that innuendo is not proof.
There are serious flaws in the reasoning put forth in this article. The first is the tacit implication that required simulator training would have somehow “fixed” the flawed MCAS certification. If an experienced pilot like Sully “struggled to regain control” after a single point failure in a scenario he knew was coming, then the system should have failed certification as designed. No amount of simulator training can correct a serious flight control problem with effects like those. Now, a “software fix” has been proposed and is under review. The MCAS system now has, presumably, substantially different failure modes and effects. The decision as to whether or not additional simulator training should be required will depend upon a thorough review of those failure modes and effects. The MCAS certification process was a tragic failure - let’s not jump to conclusions about what is required to correct it.
FAA approval of minimal training is nothing new. Back in the 90s, a large multi billion-dollar concern operated dozens of 757 aircraft. When they bought new 767s, the training consisted of a workbook and videotape. The only hands-on training required was how to the open and close the door. I’m not kidding.
I wholeheartedly agree that moving HQ from SEA to ORD was a bad move. CEO’s and executives who are close to their products/services are much more apt to be hand’s on and intimately involved in the entire process. They might as well have moved to Wall ST to advance their purpose.
It is a fact that operators of equipment or services must be intimately involved in the design and testing phase if the product or service if it is to succeed out of the box. It took Garmin a while to learn it, but they have nailed it.
Decades ago the 737-300 series had a problem with a rudder hardover as flap was extended on approach. The fix was a 10kt increase on the flap/speed schedule for flaps 5 thru up, however one airplane was lost before thi was done. The 700NG had a revised rudder fit and the problem disappeared. When the TCAS system was retrofitted on the 747-412 the airline gave every crew a 2hour sim detail to familiarise.It is surprising that the revised & reformed MCAS will not require a similar presentation with the new software.
Mr. Bertorelli has consistently written about the MAX in a vitriolic fashion. It is a truth that a second vane input should have been an input for MCAS. It is also a truth that both of these accidents could have been prevented had the pilots used their left thumb. Boeing was in the process of re-working the MCAS when the second accident occurred and had issued bulletins to operators. The final accident reports and findings are not complete in either of these accidents. In either case a blame game does not serve safety. Yup…its the fault of the software designers. Right.
Vapid comment. It’s about 357 lives lost and the loss of public confidence in the aircraft.Boeing erred, people died, design malfunction not yet controlled, several hundred aircraft grounded, a Boeing nightmare yet the spin continues.