Re: What Boeing really did
From: Clarence Romero Jr. (clyderomerof4gmail.com)
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2019 15:33:34 -0700 (PDT)
Don’t remind me of that insane pusher system on the Voodoo 
Boeing is trying to replicate the Airbus stall system 



     RF4-4EVR

Scars are Tattoos with better stories !

If you have no enemies, you have no character !

Clyde Romero    


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On Mar 18, 2019, at 11:54 AM, Luke Graves <buyer1 [at] airmail.net> wrote:

So, the MCAS is a separate system from the Autopilot.  I wonder how you overide or disengage the system??? Sounds sort of like the old Pusher on the F-101, Clyde.  After a few hair raising incidents, we kept it turned off until above 5k.
 
Luke


From: Ferrari [mailto:ferrari-bounces+buyer1=airmail.net [at] ferrarilist.com] On Behalf Of clyderomerof4 [at] gmail.com
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2019 3:36 AM
To: Col Luke Graves
Cc: The FerrariList
Subject: [Ferrari] What Boeing really did



Transportation Department Is Probing FAA’s Approval of Boeing’s 737 MAX


The U.S. Department of Transportation is investigating the Federal Aviation Administration’s approval of Boeing Co.’s BA 1.52% 737 MAX jetliners, according to people familiar with the probe, an unusual inquiry into potential lapses in federal safety approvals for new aircraft.

The inquiry focuses on a safety system that has been implicated in the Oct. 29 Lion Air crash that killed 189 people, according to a government official briefed on its status. Aviation authorities are looking into whether the anti-stall system may have played a role in last week’s Ethiopian Airlines crash, which killed all 157 people on board.

On Sunday, Ethiopia’s transport minister, Dagmawit Moges, said there were “clear similarities” between the two crashes. U.S. officials cautioned that it was too early to draw conclusions because data from the black boxes of the Ethiopian Airlines plane still need to be analyzed.

The two crashes have sparked the biggest crisis Boeing has faced in about two decades, threatening sales of a plane model that has been the aircraft giant’s most stable revenue source and potentially making it more time consuming and difficult to get future aircraft designs certified as safe to fly.

The Transportation Department’s inquiry was launched in the wake of the Lion Air accident and is being conducted by its inspector general, which has warned two FAA offices to safeguard computer files, according to people familiar with the matter. The internal watchdog is seeking to determine whether the agency used appropriate design standards and engineering analyses in certifying the anti-stall system, known as MCAS.

The FAA said Sunday that the 737 MAX, which entered service in 2017, was approved to carry passengers as part of the agency’s “standard certification process,” including design analyses; ground and flight tests; maintenance requirements; and cooperation with other civil aviation authorities. Agency officials in the past have declined to comment on various decisions regarding specific systems. Sunday’s statement said the agency’s “certification processes are well established and have consistently produced safe aircraft.”

A Boeing spokesman didn’t respond to a request for comment about the inspector general’s probe. Earlier, a Boeing spokesman said: “The 737 MAX was certified in accordance with the identical FAA requirements and processes that have governed certification of all previous new airplanes and derivatives. The FAA considered the final configuration and operating parameters of MCAS during MAX certification, and concluded that it met all certification and regulatory requirements.”

Investigators near debris at the site of last week’s Ethiopian Airlines crash.
Investigators near debris at the site of last week’s Ethiopian Airlines crash. PHOTO: TONY KARUMBA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg said in a statement Sunday the company continues to support the Ethiopian investigation, “and is working with the authorities to evaluate new information as it becomes available.”

Mr. Muilenburg added: “As part of our standard practice following any accident, we examine our aircraft design and operation, and when appropriate, institute product updates to further improve safety.”

A Department of Transportation spokesman declined to comment about the investigation by the inspector general, whose office couldn’t be reached on Sunday.

Governments world-wide have grounded the MAX, an updated version of the decades-old 737, while investigators and engineers seek clues.

The Department of Transportation inquiry, which hasn’t been previously reported, focuses on a Seattle-area FAA office that certifies the safety of brand new aircraft models and subsequent versions, as well as a separate office in the same region in charge of mandating training requirements and signing off on fleetwide training programs, people familiar with the matter said.

Files and documents covered by the directive also pertain to the FAA’s decision that extra flight-simulator training on the automated system wouldn’t be required for pilots transitioning from older models, according to people familiar with the matter.

Officials in those offices have been told not to delete any emails, reports or internal messages pertaining to those topics, people familiar with the matter said, adding that the probe also is scrutinizing communication between the FAA and Boeing.

The Department of Transportation inquiry is casting a wide net for documents about potential agency lapses just as House and Senate committees prepare for public hearings in the coming weeks that are expected to grill the FAA’s senior leadership on the same topics.

The DOT investigation is likely to raise more questions about how Boeing designed the airliner, how pilots are trained to fly it and the decisions the FAA took approving the model. The result could be changes to how the FAA certifies aircraft models, particularly giving more scrutiny to design changes from earlier models.

The FAA is moving to require more extensive training on the anti-stall system than Boeing had been championing, according to people familiar with the deliberations. The more-robust instruction, consisting of pilots engaging in self-guided instruction on a laptop computer, would include more details and require more time to complete than reading a handout, according to people familiar with the matter. Boeing has been advocating comparatively limited training, the people said, consisting of new, written materials aviators would receive explaining operation of the automated stall-prevention feature—and how to respond if it malfunctions.

The investigation is the latest problem for a plane that was born in a different kind of corporate emergency, according to industry officials and engineers close to the company: an urgent need in 2011 to create a relatively small, fuel-efficient jetliner that could compete with a model from rival Airbus SE that had swiftly gained traction among customers. A person familiar with Boeing’s development of the plane said the company didn’t rush the project, which had been on the drawing board for some time then.

To meet the marketing and financial imperatives of speedy FAA certification, Boeing needed to build a plane that would handle basically the same as earlier versions of its 737. From the outset, that was a regulatory requirement in order to obtain certification as a so-called derivative model, which would translate into a significantly faster approval process and traditionally less FAA scrutiny of certain systems.







Versions of the Boeing 737 have been flying for decades. Clockwise from top left, 737s in 1968, 1977, 2008 and 2017.PHOTOS: CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: MUSEUM OF FLIGHT/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES (2); DAVID MCNEW/GETTY IMAGES; BAYNE STANLEY/ZUMA PRESS

The automated anti-stall system, called the maneuvering characteristics augmentation system, initially was intended to assist cockpit crews in the unlikely event that high-altitude, high-speed maneuvers suddenly pushed up the nose more than aviators anticipated. The goal was to make cockpit controls behave the same as they did in previous models, even though behind the scenes the automated system was doing much of the work.

But as the engineering effort and flight tests progressed, according to industry and FAA officials familiar with the process, the Boeing team saw the same feature as a potentially important safety net for a different hazard highlighted in previous crashes: lower-altitude stalls in which startled pilots mistakenly pulled back on the controls and sometimes crashed aircraft. FAA officials also recognized the potential benefits and approved the system as part of the overall MAX approval.

Outside experts now contend both Boeing and the FAA underestimated the accompanying risks—and installed a system that wasn’t highlighted in manuals or pilot training.

The FAA’s green light, according to safety experts and former agency officials, came in part because earlier versions of the 737 had proved so safe.

During some of the discussions with the FAA, according to people familiar with the matter, Boeing’s team persuaded the agency that the system shouldn’t be considered so essential that its failure could result in a catastrophic accident. As a result, it would be acceptable for the system to rely on a single sensor.

The MAX’s grounding threatens Boeing’s ability to generate cash with plane deliveries halted. Boeing, which has been minting 737s at an unprecedented clip of 52 planes a month, plans to reach 57 planes monthly this year.

The 737 has been a cash cow for Boeing since shortly after it entered service in 1967. Last year, Boeing delivered to Southwest Airlines Co. the 10,000th 737 to roll off its production line in Seattle. It was an industry record for any airliner. The company has a backlog of more than 4,600 of the planes airlines have ordered and yet to receive.

Boeing was toying with a new plane to replace the 737, launched in 1967, and had engineers working on the new plane concept. While many airlines liked the idea, existing 737 customers didn’t want to retrain their pilots at huge cost and so lobbied for an updated, more-efficient 737 they could also get faster and more cheaply.

Then in 2011 Boeing learned that American Airlines , one of its best customers, had struck a tentative deal with Airbus for potentially hundreds of A320neo planes to renew its short-haul fleet. American invited Boeing to make a counteroffer. Boeing realized it needed to act fast, and offered what would become the MAX.

American eventually bought 260 Airbus planes and agreed to take 200 upgraded 737s from Boeing.

To win customers, and avoid more defections to Airbus, Boeing also made commitments that there would be minimal requirements for new pilot training, which can be costly to airlines, especially if expensive flight-simulator sessions are needed, according to people familiar with the matter. So Boeing tried to minimize differences from its existing fleet. Pilots were never specifically trained, for instance, on the MCAS system, according to people familiar with the matter.

Boeing has said it developed the MAX’s training and manuals as part of its normal process and its aim was to provide information pilots needed to safely operate the aircraft.

Rick Ludtke, a former Boeing flight deck design engineer who worked on the MAX but wasn’t directly involved with the MCAS system, said managers applied significant pressure to keep costs low and timetables quick.

“The pressure was incredible to be fast” to keep pace with Airbus, Mr. Ludtke said.

A former senior Boeing official recalled a “healthy urgency that comes from competition” in producing the MAX, but no “undue pressure on the design or the team.”

A Boeing spokesman didn’t immediately respond Sunday to a request for comment about the former Boeing engineer and official’s recollections.

Boeing started building the first MAX in June 2015.

Write to Andrew Tangel at Andrew.Tangel [at] wsj.com, Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor [at] wsj.com and Robert Wall at robert.wall [at] wsj.com

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     RF4-4 ever



If you have no enemies, you have no character !

Clyde Romero    


Confidentiality Notice:  This e-mail ( including attachments ) is covered by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U. S. C., Sections 2510-2521, and is intended only for the persons or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain confidential or privileged material.  Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure, dissemination, copying, forwarding or distribution is prohibited.
This email transmission, and any documents, files or previous email messages attached to it, may contain confidential information that is priviledged.  If you are not the intended recipient, or a person responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the information containes in or attached to this message is STRICTLY PROHIBITED.  If you have received this transmission in error, please immediately notify us by reply e-mail at Clyde.romerof4 [at] gmail.com or  by telephone at (678 6419932)and destroy the original transmission and its attachments without reading them or saving them to disk.

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