I agree with you on the consequences of deregulation, but the idea that “economics” is somehow separable from “politics” is laughable.
So, the law passed in 2005 but took 4 years to implement. That doesn’t surprise me, it takes a while to put together the requirements for a company.
It doesn’t seem to square the assertion that the Democrats are somehow to blame for a law passed by the GOP though.
Sure I started the fire, but the house didn’t burn down until your shift started, so it’s your fault.
Why would you do this?
sprays gasoline over another building and lights a match
I have a glass of water. Will that help? :)
Who said the Democrats were to blame? My assertion was that blaming the 737 Max situation on Congressional Republicans wanting to enrich airplane manufacturers belongs more in P&R than it does here. Here’s Matt Stieb in New York Magazine’s “Intelligencer” who I’d say reallly hits the mark:
“In 2015, Boeing reportedly pushed to expedite the 737 MAX’s approval in order to compete with the comparable Airbus A320neo, which had hit the market nine months ahead of Boeing’s newest 737 model. Several FAA employees told the Seattle Times that their managers asked them to hurry up the process, and hand over more work to Boeing. “There was constant pressure to reevaluate our initial decisions,” said one former FAA safety engineer. “Review was rushed to reach certain certification dates.””
That’s regulator managers pressuring regulator employees, both of which categories would be civil service employees, not political employees. Did the managers have too cozy a relationship with the Boeing guys doing the self-certification? Most likely. But blaming that on a political party is a bit of a stretch.
They passed the legislation that let it happen at all.
Passing the buck to the people who had to enact the law you passed doesn’t cut it imo.
And regulatory capture is always an issue, but it often happens when you deregulate everything and let things self-regulate.
Let’s be fair. If the Republicans hadn’t passed the law, then some pencil-pusher at the FAA couldn’t be pressuring people to enact that law faster. Because that would’ve been illegal in the first place.
Let’s be fair. In 2015, when this internal FAA pressure was applied, an Obama appointee was in charge of the FAA allowing it to happen.
Boeing Statement on 737 MAX Software Enhancement
…
For the past several months and in the aftermath of Lion Air Flight 610, Boeing has been developing a flight control software enhancement for the 737 MAX, designed to make an already safe aircraft even safer. This includes updates to the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) flight control law, pilot displays, operation manuals and crew training. The enhanced flight control law incorporates angle of attack (AOA) inputs, limits stabilizer trim commands in response to an erroneous angle of attack reading, and provides a limit to the stabilizer command in order to retain elevator authority.
…
Am I alone in being super curious about what exactly goes in to this software update?
Might be hardly anything. From what I understand of the 737MAX problems is that the crashes happened because the pilots were not told about MCAS trimming and how to turn it off.
So the fix is a software fix: a PSA to all who fly it and perhaps a cockpit indicator to tell abou MCAS state.
Great article, thanks for sharing it!
I agree with you about this part:
A United spokesman said the airline does not include the features because its pilots use other data to fly the plane.
What other data? Is United installing aftermarket gauges? I’m imagining something like this:
Boeing says flight control law is one of the changes; that basically means how the aircraft response to commands from the pilot.
I imagine they’re programming MCAS to shut the hell down if the pilots manually command the plane to go against where MCAS wants to go.
Maybe, but my understanding is that MCAS was put in place specifically because of incidents like Air France Flight 447, in which case one of the pilot sticks was pointing up without him realizing it which caused a stall, and the pilot couldn’t recover from it by pushing it down because the other flight stick was still up and cancelled the correction out.
Boeing’s don’t have that issue because the pilots can feel what the other pilot is doing. Plus, it’s easier to see. Boeing uses a traditional center yolk, while Airbus uses sidesticks.
Ah did not know that.
Can you (or anyone else here) post a photo of each of the cockpits? I did a search, but came up with tons of results and don’t know which cockpit photos are real or relevant.
Boeing 737 NG (Boeing said that NG pilots only needed a 3-hour course to get up-to-speed on the Max).
https://secure.boeingimages.com/archive/The-Boeing-737-Next-Generation-Flight-Deck-2F3XC5KE3X4.html
Airbus cockpits. Notice that there is no central yolk. They have a sidestick, that looks like a joystick.
Pilots don’t both go hands on at the same time, ever, even in emergencies.
Some pilots prefer the sidestick, others prefer the yoke, there’s probably a lot of selection bias, and neither system is demonstrably better overall.
I read that too and it seems to be a major misstep / contributing factor. Boeing need some additional marketing points so found one in “same as every other 737”. This seems to set up an expectation say among airline senior management, that they are interchangeable for pilots. Maybe another 2% contributing factor?
The commonality thing is a big thing. If a new version is deemed (by the FAA!!) to be sufficiently different, pilots need to get a whole new type rating for it. That means months of sim time, classroom training etc. Expensive. Makes the new variant less attractive to buyers.
The 737MAX was not deemed to warrant a new type rating. But the addition of MCAS turned out to be sufficiently different to kill two planes full of people. Had boeing not bribed or bamboozled the FAA into their decision to not demand new type ratings for the MAX, this shit wouldn’t have happened.
So its the suits and their greed that killed. That and the fact that the part of government that is supposed to keep the greedy suits in check (the FAA) turned out to be corrupt/insufficient.