It is!
Helicopters, wow! they fly weird! lots of moving parts held together with a Jesus nut!
But..... Flying them is just about the most fun you can have with your clothes on. ;-)
Rogue Boeing 737 Max planes ‘with minds of their own’ | 60 Minutes Australia
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It is!
Helicopters, wow! they fly weird! lots of moving parts held together with a Jesus nut!
But..... Flying them is just about the most fun you can have with your clothes on. ;-)
I have a question for anyone with a Boeing type.
If the automation is doing something you don't like, or worse, in a runaway condition, is the solution to push or push and hold the AP disconnect? And doesn't that stop the MCAS from doing anything?
If the automation is doing something you don't like, or worse, in a runaway condition, is the solution to push or push and hold the AP disconnect? And doesn't that stop the MCAS from doing anything?
computers flying planes, can be awesome or deadly.
It is surprising.
I think that the intent of the FAA’s “Changed Product Rule” which came into effect after the Next Generation 737s were certified was to rein that in some. It basically changed the point of view on changes to an existing type design to go from “while you’re in there, do what’s reasonable to step up to the current certification basis” to “explain to us and justify why you are NOT stepping up to the latest certification basis on parts of the airplane you change and we will tell you if that’s acceptable.” It also introduced much discussion and some confusion about what constitutes a change. For example, if you modified a particular device, did that mean that everything whose wiring was in the same wire bundle as that for the changed device needed to be scrutinized, even if all the rest of the things that wring serves were unchanged? This led to lots of churn between Boeing’s certification people and the FAA, and rippled back into the design organizations as things churned. In the end we wound up going over all the wiring in the Max from the point of view of the latest (at that time) certification rules that applied to wiring and doing quit a bit of updating. This is just one example.
Actually, I expect that Airbus had similar “fun” with some aspects, at least, of the A320/A321neo effort as well.
If you look at the 737’s evolution from the original -100 to the -200/-200 Advanced, then the re-engining from JT8Ds to the early CFM-56s that was the center of, but not the only change to create the -300/-400/-500, then from there to another re-engining with a different CFM-56 along with a bigger wing (and tails) that was the Next Generation (-600/-700/-800/-900 and -900ER), and then finally to the MAX family where again the center of the effort (but not the only change) was a re-engining, it is really probably (my opinion) too much. Each new family looked at the previous family as the basis for the changes, and therefore the certification basis. They didn’t look all the way back each time. Evolution occurred as the new members of the family were created as well.
And yet through all of this, the basic systems architecture for most of the airplane remains (and incidentally this is why changing to a more modern crew alerting system would be really hard to do — there is no one central computer in the 737 for anything — there are lots of different boxes that can do calculations [some are even analog]).
The same is true for the structural approach/architecture. There are specific exceptions to this, of course. And across many thousands of airplanes and many millions of miles flown, the overall record has been good.
Computers fly a lot of planes today, just with a high level of human oversight.
From what I remember reading using a single sensor allowed the system to be treated less thoroughly and eliminated the need for pilot simulator training (and possibly something else). Using two would bump the category forcing required training and the associated expense, across all affected customers.
boatgeek
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Here's some questions about pilot training. Let's say you have an airline with a bunch of twin-engine jets that's getting a new model. For the sake of argument, call it a 777X (when they come out), and the airline has never flown any 777 variant before. I'm assuming that you'd promote your most experienced pilots to the new plane, and that there's a combination of simulator and actual flight training that the first group of flight crews would undergo before they're ready to fly the 777X's. Is that accurate? How many hours is that of each? How do the flight crews get flight training? Are there services around with one or two each of the most popular aircraft where you can go and get hours in the pilot's seat?
Relevant to this thread because one of the pilots is discussed as having very low (~50) flight hours in the 737 Max. It's a new plane, so how would he get the flight hours?
Relevant to this thread because one of the pilots is discussed as having very low (~50) flight hours in the 737 Max. It's a new plane, so how would he get the flight hours?
While I was privy to the study that put the original (pre-flight test) version of MCAS on the airplane, I am not privy to the discussions that went on in the flight controls community about the actual implementation or with folks in flight crew operations where they would have decided what level of training was necessary, if any, due to the incorporation of this system. At least at the beginning, the belief was that a failed MCAS would be recognized as runaway stabilizer trim and that that would trigger the memorized flight crew procedure for that issue to be performed very quickly.
When the 737-8 was in flight test, there was some other handling quality issue uncovered (and to this day I am not clear what it was) that giving MCAS more authority than it needed to solve the initial column-force-decreases-as-a-stall-approaches issue AND took away using an accelerometer on the airplane as a secondary trigger along with the AOA vane.
From my knothole, THAT was where things went horribly wrong, and decisions made in the heat of a flight test schedule led, ultimately, to setting up those two fatal accidents. This all took place after I retired and I do not have any internal insight into what the actual other handling issue was or how the *bleep* it got through the flight controls council, the flight crew operations people and the test pilot community, never mind got approved by the chief engineer on the program and probably some higher ups than him.
There was, as Pat (@pterodactyl) noted, significant pressure on the program to not do anything that would require any full-motion-simulator training to transition someone from an NG to a Max. I don’t know if the figure he quoted from the deal with Southwest is correct, but I’ve no real reason to doubt it. That was an additional big constraint to the designs along with the effects from implementation of the Changed Product Rule that I mentioned in my prior post.
The Max was sold as an improved NG that got ~15% better gas mileage but wasn’t much different from a flight crew (or cabin crew or even maintenance crew) perspective so that crews who worked on/in one could also do so on the other without a major disruption. The expectation was that most, if not all, Max customers would be customers who already had fleets of Next Gen 737s with which the Maxes, at first, would be mixed and then over a number of years, replaced.
That the 787 flight deck displays (with the resulting new display system software supplier) and the software-based partial central maintenance computer I mentioned above got on the airplane are really, in retrospect, quite surprising. Pretty much everything else was driven by the new engine installation (including lengthening the nose gear eight inches and the ripple effects that had on all the stuff — lots of stuff — in the lower lobe of the nose section) or other changes to reduce drag (such as the tail cone change, APU inlet change, fancier new winglets).
Enough. I need to go mow my yard.
That is not my understanding, but then I'm just a meat servo.
How it works at most US airlines is the new postions (Capt and F/O) are put out in a new bid. That is every pilot in the airline can request to be crewed on it, but the bid goes in seniority.
If the pay is higher than other airframes on the property then it will most likely be bid by senior pilots.
Everything in US airlines is done by seniority, crew positions/bases/schedules/vacation/training, everything.
Generally your senior pilots have the most experience/flight hours unless they are management pilots. Those guys don't fly much.
A completely new aircraft will generally have a 3 month training footprint. 2-3 weeks of systems school followed by 1-2 weeks of procedure training, think simple sims. They don't have visuals or motion but they are a cockpit mockup that has working switches/lights/instruments. This is followed at my airline by 12 full motion sims, 4 hour sessions. These are very advanced and expensive ($15-20 million each). Generally 1/2 a sim session is regular flying then everything after is malfunction/emergency training. The last 3 sims are a MV, LOFT, LOE sim. Maneuver Validation, Line Oriented Flight Training, and then a Line Oriented Evaluation. The MV and the LOE are checkrides. The LOFT and LOE are "normal" airline flight legs flown using normal operational procedures, just done in the sim. These mimic normal passenger flights.
After sims you go into the operational experience phase with a flight instructor. This is the 1st time you fly a real aircraft. Usually this is done during normal airline operational flights, yup with passengers on board. OE generally is 30-40 hours of flying.
On a new aircraft the 1st group of pilots will do OE on empty aircraft because there are no qualified pilots to
fly on passenger routes. After enough pilots are qualified then the aircraft enters passenger service. But, in the US, airlines can't crew a new Capt and F/O together until they each have a few hundred hours in the aircraft.
So you can't crew a 100 hour Capt with a 75 hour F/O with passengers on board. Generally airlines will fly empty aircraft around on route proving flights in the beginning because the ground crews need to learn how to handle the new aircraft.
New pilots also have higher weather minimums than "experienced" pilots.
While all this is going on the flight attendants and maintainers need to learn the aircraft.
The costs and logistics of bringing on an all new aircraft are very high.
Did this answer your question?
boatgeek
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I think so. When Boatgeek Airlines buys its new 777X's, we'd do 3 months of ground training including some basic simulators and then ~50 hours in full motion simulators. Then we'd take delivery of our new plane and start flying route proving flights with flight instructors to get our pilots and F/Os up to 300 hours or so (in ~5 weeks), then we'd be in business with paying passengers.
Of course, this could be simplified when we're training up a new group of pilots while we already have experienced pilots and F/Os so that the newbies can sub in with them.
Thanks for the perspective.
pterodactyl
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Good summary there Meat Servo......lol
jondub
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Always wondered how I would feel knowing I was boarding a MAX. I didn't even notice until about 3/4 of the way between Seattle and Anchorage a couple of weeks ago. I had noticed it was a newer airplane with lots of leg room in coach (probably more to do with it being Alaska Airlines).
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boatgeek
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There's a couple of signs you can see from the gate. They have a little different winglet design, and the engines have a distinctive sawtooth pattern that you also see on the 787. I've flown on a Max a few times since the accidents, and am not worried about it after Boeing cleaned up their mess.
I find it interesting that some people say they won’t fly a particular model of a plane but at the same time express zero interest in the flight experience of the crew and/or maintenance history of the plane they do fly.
I too have flown on the Max a couple of times since the crashes. No probs for me.
Thanks for ridding on Alaska!
The legroom is nice, the Recaro seats are a bit more money than standard airline seats, but pay dividends in passenger comfort, durability, and low maintenance in the long run.
boatgeek
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I've probably said this in this thread already, but I fly Alaska any chance I get because of better passenger comfort.
You're an Alaska guy?
My wife just finished her interview and has a July 17th class date there. I've got my app in as well, hoping to hear back soon.
You guys are scooping up quite a few pilots from my current place of employ. All good people!
MBAs, maybe like this: Jack Welch --> GE --> MD --> Boeing --> these events
(yep, I know JW was a PhD ChE).
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Tho much time has passed, thanks for your lucid explanations and the work you put into them. I finally feel I have some understanding of the control system.
