>, “Boeing 737-800 pilots were required to receive some additional training on the MAX 8, which included an hour lesson on some differences. Additional training was not required, as the 737-800 and the MAX 8 have same type certification.”
How are those type certifications determined? It seems to me that there should be an instance checking if the type certifications make sense.
Or perhaps they did, and they just really look like similar planes. In which case I wonder if the threshold for 'versioning' should be changed.
(I know nothing of how this actually works, it just baffles me that seemingly different planes get the same certificate)
EDIT: I read the FAA does check this, but I wonder on what _grounds_ it makes the decisions.
More and more of this has been delegated to the manufacturers themselves.
They simply assert to the FAA that the aircraft meets the type requirements.
Boeing showed the FAA their test results, said that with MCAS the aircraft meets requirements, doesn't require extra training, and the FAA took their word for it. Authorities in most other countries trust the FAA, so they took their word for it too.
That's an oversimplification, but more or less what happened.
As to whether Boeing was deliberately deceptive, we'll probably find out in due time as investigations have begun and subpoenas issued.
More and more of this has been delegated to the manufacturers themselves.
They simply assert to the FAA that the aircraft meets the type requirements.
To assert this, but also change such a critical emergency procedure, which is made more critical by a decision motivated primarily by economics -- this just sounds bad.
Basically, we've set up a situation where short term thinking is eventually, over many thousands of iterations of such decisions which go into producing such a complex product, going to override long term safety thinking.
Unfortunately, substituting regulations for good thinking has the potential to nonsensically stymie progress if done incorrectly.
I would say more that this is a case of gaming the metrics - regulation is looser for variations of the same plane (This Is A Good Thing) and so Boeing did shady shit to classify this new plane as a variant. The only way to prevent this is to sufficiently fund the regulators so that a human can do a sanity check and reject the gaming; but decades of defunding of regulatory agencies and the resulting regulatory capture made the FAA incapable of doing that.
The purpose of MCAS was precisely that it didn't change procedure. There was already an existing procedure for runaway trim control. In the case of the Lion Air crash at least, applying that existing procedure would have allowed the pilots to fly the plane normally, albeit without the benefit of automatic trim. For reasons we will never fully know, the pilots did not apply that existing non-MAX specific procedure.
The very likely reason they didn't follow that procedure is that they didn't recognise the failure as runaway trim, which in turn is likely related to the apparent fact they didn't know MCAS existed. So couldn't know that the behaviour they experienced was what MCAS runaway trim felt like.
I don't think it's wise to speculate, but the stabilizer is coupled to a very large trim wheel in the cockpit that both audibly clicks as it spins and is market with white stripes (on a black wheel) to make the movement apparent. It's possible the pilots didn't realize what was happening, but it's not as if MCAS was silently causing a runaway.
Regulation is why Boeing felt the need to construct and jump through such elaborate hoops to avoid losing the 737's original certification. The better approach would have been to treat the Max as an entirety new aircraft model, and not try to fool pilots into thinking it was just another boring old 737 variant. But the regs are written to encourage the latter approach.
The regulation encouraged this how? Do you have an example?
Model doesn't matter. It's possible to have two different models with the same type rating (Airbus A320 vs A340), and it's just as possible to have a derivative that requires a different type rating.
It would have been better for whom to treat the MAX as something different, requiring its own type rating? It's pretty clear it was overwhelmingly the airlines who wanted a new 737 in the existing 737 type rating.
That doesn’t follow. The FAA allowed Boeing to self-regulate, with somewhat disastrous results. I don’t understand how the regulations forced Boeing to take the approach the did. My read is that they took advantage of loose regulations to avoid recertification, all in the name of profit.
Having said all that, I’m open to hearing how you think regulation was the real culprit here.
Nonsense. The primary reason Boeing wanted to retain the same type rating is because their buyers, the airlines, don't want to pay out to retrain all the pilots. Which as you say, is the correct thing to do - but regulations aren't preventing that, simple economic forces are.
Are you suggesting that regulation in this instance would not help with safety?
Not at all. Often regulations help with safety in the short and medium term. The problem is that they aren't written by oracles, so they can become outdated and fail to account for changes in technology. (How does "stymie progress" translate to not helping with safety?)
It makes sense that very minor differences don't require extra training if the differences have no meaningful impact on cockpit design or flight characteristics. But in this case, flight characteristics were clearly different, and MCAS was supposed to compensate for those differences.
I don't know how they measure such differences, but you'd think that different engines, different aerodynamics, and a new control system to compensate for those differences, are enough to warrant a new type certification.
They should really have type certification diffs. If 90% of the airplane is the same as the previous version, the manufacturer should expect a type certification procedure that costs about 10% of a fully new design and pilots should gain the new type rating with about 10% of the effort and hours of what would be required for a completely new plane.
It sounds really cumbersome to have it either-or way, making it difficult to develop planes too much incrementally and keeping it very costly to start from scratch with a completely new design.
well, yes, exactly, MCAS was supposed to compensate for these differences, to make sure that the flight characteristics are close enough to not require additional training. But tragically, what was supposed to be part of the solution turned out to be part of the problem...
The system, known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, was incorporated because the plane has larger engines placed further forward on the craft, and so has a chance of facing a stall at lower speeds than earlier 737 variations.
> has a chance of facing a stall at lower speeds than earlier 737 variations
No, that's not the issue. The issue is that, because of the pitch up moment created by the engines, at higher angles of attack the force required to move the yoke decreases instead of increasing. That's (a) a highly undesirable characteristic since the changing feedback confuses pilots and makes it hard for them to know when a stall is imminent, and (b) a violation of FAA certification requirements. MCAS was added to compensate for the pitch up moment from the engines by adding nose down trim, so the yoke force would be similar to that of previous 737 models.
You're correct, however without MCAS it could be easier for the pilot to accidentally pitch into a stall when flying manually. That is why the requirement for consistent feedback, as you say. So the people who say the MAX engine placement makes it "more prone to stall" are not entirely wrong.
The media has done a poor job of communicating exactly what MCAS does and why it was developed. With today's media motivated by virality, ad clicks and eyeballs, most seem more interested in reporting this as dramatically as possible.
With today's media motivated by virality, ad clicks and eyeballs, most seem more interested in reporting this as dramatically as possible.
In 2019, we need to wise up to these shenanigans. Fear isn't the only mindkiller. It turns out that Outrage Virality is very synergistic with fear. Our society needs to become very skeptical and notice when something is evoking that particular emotion. We need to view people hawking outrage like we now view medicine shows.
EDIT: If someone has gotten one to really hate a person, really want to harm them, and wonder if they're really sentient, or wonder if they're looking at the same reality, or wonder if they're really human -- this is a big red flag. This is precisely the state of having those in-group/out-group instincts tweaked. Word to the wise! Expert tip: It even counts when one is shocked at someone else's groupthink! Perhaps especially so.
> the people who say the MAX engine placement makes it "more prone to stall" are not entirely wrong.
Agreed. But "more prone to stall" in this sense ("easier for the pilot to accidentally pitch into a stall") is not the same as "stalls at lower speeds", which is what the post I responded to was claiming.
Thank you. MCAS is not an anti-stall mechanism and should not be confused with one. Yes, pitch the aircraft too much and you will stall. But MCAS would allow a stall regardless, it is not its job. The job, as you point out, is to keep the aircraft handling similar to existing models.
This is not just splitting hairs. These distinctions matter.
I don't think the comment you are responding to means "the speeds at which it will stall are lower compared to earlier 737 variations," but rather "at low speeds, it has a greater chance of stalling compared to earlier 737 variations."
It doesn't matter which of those two the poster meant; they're both wrong as descriptions of the effect of the new engines on the 737 MAX. See my other post upthread.
How are those type certifications determined? It seems to me that there should be an instance checking if the type certifications make sense.
Or perhaps they did, and they just really look like similar planes. In which case I wonder if the threshold for 'versioning' should be changed.
(I know nothing of how this actually works, it just baffles me that seemingly different planes get the same certificate)
EDIT: I read the FAA does check this, but I wonder on what _grounds_ it makes the decisions.