Another 737 MAX down.

[moeman]

https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2019/03/heres-what-was-on-the-record-about-problems-with-the-737-max/584791/

 

Quote

While the fundamentals remain unknown, here are some relevant primary documents. They come from an underpublicized but extremely valuable part of the aviation-safety culture. This is a program called ASRS, or Aviation Safety Reporting System, which has been run by NASA since the 1970s. That it is run by NASA—and not the regulator-bosses at the FAA—is a fundamental virtue of this system. Its motto is “Confidential. Voluntary. Nonpunitive.”

The ASRS system is based on the idea that anyone involved in aviation—pilots, controllers, ground staff, anyone—can file a report of situations that seemed worrisome, in confidence that the information will not be used against them. Pilots are conditioned to treat the FAA warily, and to make no admissions against interest that might be used again them. What if I confess that I violated an altitude clearance or busted a no-fly zone, and they take away my certificate? But they’ve learned to trust NASA in handling this information and using it to point out emerging safety problems. I’ve filed half a dozen ASRS reports over the years, when I’ve made a mistake or seen someone else doing so.

Reports flow into NASA by the dozens each day; they’re put into a searchable public database (it’s here); and every month, NASA puts out a publication, Callback, listing the emerging trends.

I’ve searched just now for ASRS reports in the past year involving the 737. This past year covers the 737 Max’s introduction to airline fleets.

 

[blues deville]

10 hours ago, Bobcaygeon said:

YYZ can take them. I saw the whole C3 fleet lined up at Pearson shortly after 911 and that was before the 24L was built

That would have been November 2001 and I saw them too but they were parked on a yet to be opened 06R/24L. There’s a lot of ramp space east of T1 at YYZ which is currently used daily to park AC aircraft. At some point I believe T1 will expand into that area. 

[Guest]

Air Canada’s service line inundated with calls as grounding of Boeing 737 Max snarls travel

 

‎Yesterday, ‎March ‎14, ‎2019, ‏‎9:54:29 PM | Canadian Aviation News

News provided by The Globe and Mail

CHRISTOPHER REYNOLDS, MONTREAL, THE CANADIAN PRESS
PUBLISHED MARCH 14, 2019

An Air Canada Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft taxis to a runway at Vancouver International Airport in Richmond, B.C., on March 12, 2019.DARRYL DYCK/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Canada’s largest airline was inundated with calls as travellers scrambled to rebook flights after Ottawa joined dozens of countries in grounding the Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft Wednesday.

Calls to Air Canada’s customer service line Wednesday and Thursday prompted a recording that said call volume has temporarily exceeded the company’s capacity to answer or even place callers on hold.

The message cites “unforeseen circumstances,” and directs callers to Air Canada’s website.

Kimberly Yetman Dawson, visiting family in Ontario, said she booked a second return flight to Halifax this Saturday at double the cost due to confusion over whether her original trip — scheduled initially on a Max 8 — would go ahead.

“I’m hoping that I’ll be compensated or I’ll be credited,” she said. “It’s a schlimazel. It’s up in the air.”

The logjam prompted Air Canada to set up a service line for Max 8 passengers flying in the next 72 hours: 1-833-354-5963.

Air Canada said it will waive cancellation charges and rebooking fees for Max 8 flights within three weeks of the original travel date.

The Montreal-based company has 24 Max 8s that carry between 9,000 and 12,000 passengers daily. The jets fly popular routes including Vancouver-Calgary and Montreal-Los Angeles as well as to Mexico, the Caribbean and Hawaii, causing headaches for thousands of March break vacationers and travel agents.

Maninder Singh, the owner of InterSky travel agency in Montreal, said the ban will cost him cash as he refunds passengers whose flights have been cancelled.

“Obviously we lose our markup,” he said. “We have to call every single 1/8 Max 83/8 customer and check for alternate dates.”

Transport Minister Marc Garneau said the decision to ground the planes was a precautionary move made after a review of the available evidence in the wake of the Ethiopian Airlines disaster Sunday that killed all 157 people on board, including 18 Canadians.

WestJet Airlines Ltd., which has 13 Max 8s that fly to destinations in Florida and elsewhere, said 11 domestic flights were cancelled Thursday, impacting 1,200 passengers.

More than three-quarters of those travellers would be rebooked on flights Thursday, with the remainder departing Friday or Saturday, the airline said.

The Calgary-based company has a no-fee cancellation policy for Max 8 flights, though rebooked flights may cost more.

Both airlines say customers will not be compensated for accommodations.

“The first 72 hours is a major shock,” said Mark Gallardo, vice-president of network planning at Air Canada.

“As time progresses we’re going to have a lot more recovery options.”

The airline hopes to hang on to several Embraer E-90 and Airbus A320 planes that were slated to exit the fleet this month, Gallardo said. Slashing the number of flights and swapping in bigger planes and reserve crews is another strategy, along with rerouting passengers through other airlines, but the options all come at a cost.

More than 40 countries, including the U.S., China and all European Union states, have now grounded or banned the Max 8 from their airspace over safety concerns and possible parallels to an Oct. 29 incident which saw the same type of aircraft plunge into the Java Sea, killing 189 people.

Mary Jane Hiebert, who chairs the Association of Canadian Travel Agencies, said the virtual blanket ban on the more than 375 Max 8s in service across the world will snarl up the global flight grid.

“There are connecting flights, there are alliance partners. So you take an Air Canada plane to a certain destination, you get on a Max 8 with United Airlines or another carrier — except you can’t now.”

Pilots, flight attendants and mechanics are trained to work on specific types of aircraft, which could make staffing and maintaining the replacement aircraft more difficult, Hiebert said.

Andrea Carr-McNeill, director of marketing with The Travel Store in Charlottetown, said the travel agency has been inundated with customer calls over the past 24 hours.

“We’ve got six offices in the Maritimes and we’ve stopped counting; there’s been that many,” she said.

“Patience is a virtue that every one of us needs to have right now.”

[dagger]

This could be a red herring, but a jackscrew is today's focus in the Ethiopian crash

 

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/investigators-find-new-clues-to-potential-cause-of-737-max-crashes-as-faa-details-boeings-fix/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=article_left_1.1

 

Investigators on the ground near the crash site of the Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX found the plane’s jackscrew, a part that moves the horizontal tail of the aircraft, and it indicates that the tail was in an unusual position, according to an aviation safety consultant briefed on the findings.

The consultant, John Cox, chief executive of Safety Operating Systems and formerly the top safety official for the Air Line Pilots Association, said that Boeing’s new flight control system on the MAX — implicated in the preliminary investigation into the earlier crash of a Lion Air jet in Indonesia — is one of several possible systems that could explain the unusual deflection in the horizontal tail, a control surface that swivels to pitch the plane’s nose up or down.

 

....

 

 

MCAS is designed to swivel the horizontal tail so as to push the plane’s nose down automatically, without pilot input, if a sensor on the fuselage indicates the nose relative to the air flow is at too high an angle — the Angle of Attack (AOA).

[Ex 9A Guy]

There are of course other reasons for the jackscrew to indicate that the stab was in an unusual position.

But IMHO if it indicates full or significant ND stab position that would be an indication that the MCAS had input or a substantial ND stab trim runaway that went uncontrolled. The stab trim runaway seems unlikely as simple back pressure on the column should engage the stab brake. In an MCAS intervention the stab brake function is disabled. 

[FireFox]

Sully comments...

 

Captain C.B. Sully Sullenberger

16 hours ago

We do not yet know what caused the tragic crash of Ethiopian 302 that sadly claimed the lives of all passengers and crew, though there are many similarities between this flight and Lion Air 610, in which the design of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 is a factor. It has been obvious since the Lion Air crash that a redesign of the 737 MAX 8 has been urgently needed, yet has still not been done, and the announced proposed fixes do not go far enough. I feel sure that the Ethiopian crew would have tried to do everything they were able to do to avoid the accident. It has been reported that the first officer on that flight had only 200 hours of flight experience, a small fraction of the minimum in the U.S., and an absurdly low amount for someone in the cockpit of a jet airliner. We do not yet know what challenges the pilots faced or what they were able to do, but everyone who is entrusted with the lives of passengers and crew by being in a pilot seat of an airliner must be armed with the knowledge, skill, experience, and judgment to be able to handle the unexpected and be the absolute master of the aircraft and all its systems, and of the situation. A cockpit crew must be a team of experts, not a captain and an apprentice. In extreme emergencies, when there is not time for discussion or for the captain to direct every action of the first officer, pilots must be able to intuitively know what to do to work together. They must be able to collaborate wordlessly. Someone with only 200 hours would not know how to do that or even to do that. Someone with that low amount of time would have only flown in a closely supervised, sterile training environment, not the challenging and often ambiguous real world of operational flying, would likely never have experienced a serious aircraft malfunction, would have seen only one cycle of the seasons of the year as a pilot, one spring with gusty crosswinds, one summer of thunderstorms. If they had learned to fly in a fair-weather clime, they might not even have flown in a cloud. Airlines have a corporate obligation not to put pilots in that position of great responsibility before they are able to be fully ready. While we don’t know what role, if any, pilot experience played in this most recent tragedy, it should always remain a top priority at every airline. Everyone who flies depends upon it. 

https://www.foxnews.com/us/hero-pilot-who-landed-plane-in-hudson-river-blasts-pilot-training-in-wake-of-ethiopian-airlines-crash

[J.O.]

Sully nailed it. Cadet programs may work when everything goes according to the plan, but throw someone with 200 hours an aircraft that feels like it's out of control and you will almost surely get a "deer in the headlights" response. 

[blues deville]

Sulley makes some valid points about cadet pilots and their lack of flight experience but I don’t know if that’s really the issue here. There is a long list of airlines who have successfully had cadet pilot programs for years and several are still active including some now in Canada. 

Sulley never mentioned the fact that two relatively new Boeing aircraft had some kind of common fault which the pilots couldn’t troubleshoot in the short amount time available. I would like to know if a supplier to Boeing who provides components associated with the MCAS or autoflight system are faulty or lack normal quality control. 

If Boeing’s own people are leaving tools and garbage behind in new 767 USAF tankers, how closely are they looking at their imported components?

[Maverick]

Garuda Indonesia, Lion Air reconsider Boeing 737 MAX orders
Mar 15, 2019 Chen Chuanren

Garuda Indonesia and LCC Lion Air are reconsidering Boeing 737 MAX orders following the Ethiopian Airlines ET302 crash March 10 that killed 157 people soon after takeoff from Addis Ababa, and the worldwide grounding of the type.

The Indonesia transport safety committee (KNKT) will also hasten the release the accident report for Lion Air flight JT610, a Boeing 737 MAX that crashed into the Java Sea Oct. 29, 2018.

Garuda president director I Gusti Ngurah Askhara Danadiputra told Indonesian reporters the “airline lost confidence in the model (737 MAX) following two crashes and is in talks with Boeing for the potential cancellation of the remaining 49 737 MAX 8s on order.

Garuda’s first and only 737 MAX 8 has been grounded since March 11 under orders by the Indonesian Transport Ministry. Garuda was to take delivery of the remaining 49 aircraft through 2030, part of a 50-aircraft deal signed in 2014.

According to a Bloomberg report, LCC Lion Air also mooted the idea of canceling its order of more than 180 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, in favor for the Airbus A320.

The airline is still studying the legality of the matter, although airline director Daniel Putut said Lion Air has suspended the delivery of four 737 MAX deliveries scheduled for this year.

Lion Air had made similar threats in December 2018, following the October JT610 crash and there have been disagreements between Boeing and the airline over responsibility.

The group has both the MAX 8 and MAX 9 in service, flown under the Malindo and Thai Lion Air subsidiary in Malaysia and Indonesia, respectively.

Meanwhile, KNKT head Soerjanto told Reuters the agency will release the JT610 accident report by at least a month earlier than the expected August-September timeframe. KNKT also offered assistance to relevant Ethiopian authorities for the ET302 crash investigation.

The Association of Asia Pacific Airlines called on FAA and Boeing for clarity, as well as a timely MAX resolution, so as to provide airlines and authorities the necessary information to access risks and make judgments to lift suspensions.

Chen Chuanren, chuanren@purplelightvisuals.com

 

 

https://atwonline.com/airframes/garuda-indonesia-lion-air-reconsider-boeing-737-max-orders?NL=ATW-04&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_1&utm_rid=CPEN1000002544843&utm_campaign=18905&utm_medium=email&elq2=031128b909424efba4192ca938079c7b

[Johnboy]

Quote from Greg Feith's FB page last evening. Sorry cannot post link....Greg is a former Senior Air Safety Investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board

Quote

There are many timelines that have been circulating as to when the “issue(s)” with the Ethiopian airplane began. Some timelines indicate the issue occurred shortly after takeoff. If this is the case, and the airplane was still configured for takeoff (flaps/slats) deployed and the pilot was hand flying, the MCAS would not have been active. If the pilot engaged the autopilot shortly after takeoff, the MCAS would not have been active.

The airplane must be flown manually and the flaps must be retracted for the system to be active. Thus, it will be important to determine the configuration change schedule that the crew executed during the climb out to see if the MCAS was active, and whether or not it was responsible for the initiating events.

Also the with regards to the 200 HR F/O aboard ET302 surely the total time "on type" and not total time.

[Vsplat]

Two thoughts:

1) I have not heard any official story disputing that the FO TOTAL time was 200 hours.  Like so many I wonder if there is a correction coming to that figure.  In the absence of same, Sully's perspective is more articulate than anything I can add;

2) To Blues' point, the cadet program has been running for some time.  That said, I consider how long it takes in this business for bad policy to make it to an accident scene.  I wonder if the intrinsic safety of this industry has resulted in new cadets having the benefit of low aircraft malfunction rates (and relatively minor events when they do occur) while they get their feet under them.  This accident may be one of the few cases where a low time cadet had the misfortune of encountering a severe problem near the very beginning of their time on the line.

So much that we don't yet know.

Vs

[st27]

This might seem to be an extreme case but in our backyard.....How is the Sunwing experience working out??

Quote

There's no way a 23-year-old, right out of school, can fly a 737. But we're doing it."

And yes, first officers do indeed get to fly the plane. They have all the training and knowledge, they just need to add the experience. So, for example, Leckie will fly the plane down to Jamaica. The captain will fly back.

https://www.therecord.com/news-story/7156230-uw-grads-take-to-the-skies-with-sunwing/

[Guest]

Daniel Elwell on Wednesday cited unspecified evidence found at the crash scene as part of the justification for the agency to reverse course and temporarily halt flights of Boeing's largest selling aircraft. Up until then, American regulators had held off as nation after nation had grounded the plane, Boeing's best-selling jet model.

 

The piece of evidence was a so-called jackscrew, used to set the trim that raises and lowers the plane's nose, according to the person, who requested anonymity to discuss the inquiry.

A preliminary review of the device and how it was configured at the time of the crash indicated that it was set to push down the nose, according to the person, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly about the investigation.

 

 

 

The jackscrew, combined with a newly obtained satellite flight track of the plane, convinced the FAA that there were similarities to the Oct. 29 crash of the same Max model off the coast of Indonesia. In the earlier accident, a safety feature on the Boeing aircraft was repeatedly trying to put the plane into a dive as a result of a malfunction.

Lawyers are already targeting Boeing for Sunday's Ethiopian Airlines disaster even while investigators are still trying to figure out what caused two 737 Max 8 jetliners to go down in a span of five months, killing 346 people.

Boeing faces the prospect of substantial payouts to the families of...

All 157 people aboard Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 died early Sunday shortly after the plane took off. The pilot reported an unspecified problem and was trying to return to the airport. The plane crashed near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital. The plane's crash-proof recorders have been sent to France to be analyzed.

The discovery of the jackscrew was earlier reported by NBC News.

Separately, The New York Times reported that doomed Ethiopian Airlines plane was in trouble almost immediately after takeoff as it lurched up and down by hundreds of feet at a time. The captain of the Boeing Co. 737 Max 8 asked in a panicky voice to turn back only three minutes into the flight as the plane accelerated to abnormal speeds, the newspaper reported, citing a person who reviewed the jet's air traffic communications.

[blues deville]

Greg Feith: Some timelines indicate the issue occurred shortly after takeoff. If this is the case, and the airplane was still configured for takeoff (flaps/slats) deployed and the pilot was hand flying, the MCAS would not have been active. If the pilot engaged the autopilot shortly after takeoff, the MCAS would not have been active.

I think one could also argue that if the MCAS or any system associated with it was faulty, the MCAS may function when its not supposed to resulting in these crashes. 

[Guest]

8 hours ago, Rich Pulman said:

I still think the “cadet programs” are just the “proving grounds” for single-pilot operations. After all, a 200-hour FO is probably more hindrance than help when things go seriously off the rails.  

How does the Cathay Cadet program measure up? 

[Guest]

Ethiopian jet's cockpit recorder data successfully downloaded: BEA

•  

PARIS (Reuters) - Data from the cockpit voice recorder of the Ethiopian jet that crashed last week has been successfully downloaded, France’s air accident investigation agency said on Saturday.

The French agency said in a tweet it had not listened to the audio files and that the data had been transferred to Ethiopian investigators.

It added that work on the flight data recorder would resume Sunday.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-airlines-bea-cvr/ethiopian-jets-cockpit-recorder-data-successfully-downloaded-bea-idUSKCN1QX0O9?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Reuters%2FworldNews+(Reuters+World+News)

[conehead]

And now, for a little humour:  Genius finds a solution!

 

[blues deville]

From Vox: Last line of article not so funny.

 

Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

The similarities between the doomed Boeing 737 Max 8 jet that crashed in Ethiopia last weekend, killing 157 people, and the fatal Lion Air crash in Indonesia in October keep growing. 

According to a New York Times report, investigators at the crash site of the Ethiopian Airlines flight found evidence that suggests that the plane’s stabilizers were tilted upward. At that angle, the automatic stabilizers would have forced down the nose of the jet — a similarity with the Lion Air plane that crashed into the Java Sea 12 minutes after takeoff, killing all 189 passengers and crew.

Both investigations are both still in the early phases, but the new evidence potentially indicates that the two planes both had problems with a newly installed automated system, the Times’ Jack Nicas, Thomas Kaplan and James Glanz report. The new Boeing 737 Max 8 system, known as MCAS, is intended to prevent a stall. But the two crashes in the last few months are worrying signs that the system could have unforeseen risks. 

In the case of the downed flight in Ethiopia, investigators at the crash site are specifically looking at a piece of equipment known as a jackscrew, which controls the angle of the horizontal stabilizers. The stabilizers could have been tilted for other reasons, but they can be triggered by the MCAS. And in the Lion Air crash, investigators are also examining whether the MCAS set up a struggle between the new flight controls and the pilots.

Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration have continued to stand by and support the safety of 737 Max aircraft. Even so, the company is pushing to finish a software update and push it out by April that will modify features of the jet around the automated system.

This could have major ramifications for one of the world’s largest global aircraft manufacturers and defense contractors

The two crashes have raised questions about the safety of the Boeing planes, which are used by airlines around the world.

Earlier this week, the United States decided to temporarily ground all Boeing 737 Max 8 and 9 planes. The US was one of the world’s last large countries to do so on Wednesday, following the lead of China, the member states of the European Union, and several other countries.

Three US-based airlines — American, Southwest, and United — have Boeing 737 Max jets in their fleets. (American Airlines has 24 Max 8 jets, Southwest has 34, and United has 14 Max 9s, according to NPR).

In total, some 300 planes in operation were grounded globally. In addition, there are more than 4,000 737 Max planes are on order that have yet to be delivered, and according to Bloomberg, the crashes have put those $600 billion worth of orders in jeopardy of not being completed. 

Whether there was an issue with the plane’s new features on both crashes or not, the global community is no longer so sure about Boeing after the back-to-back tragedies: The company is now worth $25 billion less than it was at this time last

[FireFox]

4 hours ago, conehead said:

And now, for a little humour:  Genius finds a solution!

 

What newspaper...New York Times?

[Trader]

Sunwings 'cadet' program does not come close to the cadet programs in Europe or the Middle East where cadets will spend years in sophisticated training programs before moving online and then will continue through a system of sim and line training. Even after all of that, in my experience, they were poor first officers. They were 'sufficient' and 'legal' and going from ILS to ILS presented few issues. But decision making and support during critical times, even with something as straightforward as a go-around, was often close to non-existant. A true emergency and I would not want one in the right seat.

With enough time in the right seat - 5 years or so - their performance improved to a point where I would term them a competent pilot.

Taking students from a University program and adding a bit of extra sim training will most certainly not produce qualified first officers and based on the comments from friends at Sunwing the cadets are very weak.

All anecdotal I agree, but not sure I would believe the airlines either, whose motivation is to put pilot bums in seats.

[Guest]

Re a rush to put pilot bums in seats   you have to wonder why those carriers who insist on a university degree don't fall back to just high school graduation?

[Don Hudson]

Both the flight data and voice recorders' data have been successfully downloaded and forwarded to Ethiopian.

[Don Hudson]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ethiopian-airlines-black-boxes-showed-clear-similarities-with-lion-air-crash-11552839318?mod=hp_lead_pos4

March 17, 2019 12:15 p.m. ET

*Analysis of Black Boxes of Crashed Ethiopian Airlines Flight Showed ‘Clear Similarities’ With Crashed Lion Air Flight —Ethiopian Transport Minister

*Data from ET302 Black Boxes Has Been Validated by Ethiopian, U.S. Investigators—Minister

*Investigators Were Able to Recover All Relevant Data from ET302 Black Boxes—Minister

*Preliminary Report on Crash to Be Released Within 30 Days—Minister

[rudder]

11 hours ago, Trader said:

Sunwings 'cadet' program does not come close to the cadet programs in Europe or the Middle East where cadets will spend years in sophisticated training programs before moving online and then will continue through a system of sim and line training. Even after all of that, in my experience, they were poor first officers. They were 'sufficient' and 'legal' and going from ILS to ILS presented few issues. But decision making and support during critical times, even with something as straightforward as a go-around, was often close to non-existant. A true emergency and I would not want one in the right seat.

With enough time in the right seat - 5 years or so - their performance improved to a point where I would term them a competent pilot.

Taking students from a University program and adding a bit of extra sim training will most certainly not produce qualified first officers and based on the comments from friends at Sunwing the cadets are very weak.

All anecdotal I agree, but not sure I would believe the airlines either, whose motivation is to put pilot bums in seats.

SW is not the only Canadian 705 carrier that uses this type of program.

There are others doing it on a much larger scale.

[deicer]

Another lighter moment, taking a poke at a fave...