MAX oppdatering - Curt Lewis

Lion Air crash investigators tell victims' families 737 MAX design flaws linked to accident * Mechanical and design issues behind crash, investigators say * Assumptions about anti-stall device, pilot reactions also blamed * Lack of documentation on systems behaviour faulted * Crew communications, control of aircraft also seen problematic JAKARTA, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Mechanical and design issues contributed to the crash of a Lion Air 737 MAX jet last October, Indonesian investigators told victims' families in a briefing on Wednesday ahead of the release of a final report. Contributing factors to the crash of the new Boeing jet, which killed all 189 on board, included incorrect assumptions on how an anti-stall device called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) functioned and how pilots would react, slides in the presentation showed. The briefing slides also showed that a lack of documentation about how systems would behave in the crash scenario, including the activation of a "stick shaker" device that warned pilots of a dangerous loss of lift, also contributed. "Deficiencies" in the flight crew's communication and manual control of the aircraft contributed as well, the slides showed, as did alerts and distractions in the cockpit. The deficiencies had been "identified during training," the slides said, without adding details. Reliance on a single angle-of-attack sensor made the MCAS system more vulnerable to failure, while the sensor on the plane that crashed had been miscalibrated during an earlier repair, according to the slides. The final report will be released on Friday. A Boeing spokeswoman declined to comment on the briefing, saying, "As the report hasn't been officially released by the authorities, it is premature for us to comment on its contents." A Lion Air representative declined to comment. The 737 MAX was grounded worldwide after a second deadly crash in Ethiopia in March 2019. U.S. planemaker Boeing is under growing pressure to explain what it knew about 737 MAX problems before the aircraft entered service, especially after a Reuters report on messages from a former test pilot describing erratic software behaviour on the 737 MAX jet two years before recent crashes. Boeing has already said it would redesign the anti-stall system to rely on more than a single sensor and to help reduce pilot workload. The planemaker is set to release third-quarter financial results later Wednesday. LION AIR FLIGHT Contact with the Boeing 737 MAX jet was lost 13 minutes after it took off on Oct. 29 from the capital, Jakarta, heading north to the tin-mining town of Pangkal Pinang. The airplane had suffered a sequence of problems in cockpit readings since Oct. 26, culminating in a decision to change the angle-of-attack sensor before the penultimate flight from Denpasar to Jakarta. During the fatal night-time flight, a "stick shaker" was vibrating the captain's controls, warning of a stall throughout most of the 13 minutes aloft, based on what investigators believe to have been erroneous data on its angle to the oncoming air. That angle is a key flight parameter that must remain narrow enough to preserve lift and avoid an aerodynamic stall. The airplane's anti-stall system repeatedly pushed the nose down, which is how pilots usually get air under the wings. Boeing was widely criticised for placing emphasis on piloting and maintenance issues in its public response to an earlier report, sparking a furious dispute with Lion Air's cofounder, Rusdi Kirana. But it has since acknowledged that MCAS and a faulty sensor played a role, and apologised for lives lost without admitting formal responsibility. The planemaker last month settled the first claims stemming from the Lion Air crash, a U.S. plaintiffs' lawyer said. Three other sources told Reuters the families of those killed will receive at least $1.2 million each. The manufacturer faces nearly 100 lawsuits over the Ethiopian Airlines crash on March 10, which killed all 157 people on board the flight from Addis Ababa to Nairobi. https://www.yahoo.com/news/1-lion-air-crash-investigators-060240209.html Back to Top

Boeing fires Kevin McAllister, head of unit that makes the 737 Max Boeing president and CEO of Commercial Airplanes Kevin McAllister was dismissed and immediately replaced. Boeing on Tuesday fired Kevin McAllister as president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, the jet maker's unit that produces the 737 Max. McAllister was immediately replaced by longtime Boeing executive Stan Deal, who's led the launch of the Boeing General Services unit over the past two years. "Stan brings extensive operational experience at commercial airplanes and trusted relationships with our airline customers and industry partners," Boeing President and CEO Dennis Muilenburg said in a statement. McAllister's ouster as the head of the Renton-headquartered Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA) unit comes after less than three years on the job and a day after Boeing's board of directors met in Texas. The Chicago-based company will release its third-quarter results on Wednesday. The BCA unit overseen by McAllister has seen a host of problems and challenges, ranging from the grounded 737 Max, engine and other woes with the 777X and quality issues and concerns with 787 Dreamliners made in Charleston South Carolina. Aerospace analysts expect Boeing to add billions of dollars in a new charge for the costs of the global grounding of the 737 Max. The plane has not been allowed to fly since March. Boeing Chairman David Calhoun said the board "fully supports" the leadership changes, which come a week after Muilenburg was removed as Boeing board chairman. "Boeing will emerge stronger than ever from its current challenges and the changes we're making throughout Boeing will benefit the flying public well into the future," Calhoun said. The Boeing announcement about McAllister's firing does not mention the 737 Max, though Muilenburg said that Boeing is "committed to delivering on our commitments and regaining trust with our regulators, customers and other stakeholders." "We're grateful to Kevin for his dedicated and tireless service to Boeing, its customers and its communities during a challenging time, and for his commitment to support this transition," Muilenburg said. A longtime Boeing insider, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it became apparent that though McAllister knew much about aircraft engines from his time GE Aviation, he lacked operational experience at a much larger aircraft manufacturing company like Boeing, which employs more than 150,000 people at factories in the Puget Sound region and South Carolina. Those weaknesses became far more apparent as Boeing grappled with the 737 Max crisis and reduced manufacturing at its Renton factory. As part of the leadership changes, Boeing also named Ted Colbert to succeed Deal as president and CEO of Boeing Global Services. Vishwa Uddanwadiker was appointed to Colbert's former role as interim chief information officer and senior vice president of Information Technology & Data Analytics. https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2019/10/22/boeing-fires-kevin-mcallister-head-of-program-that.html?ana=yahoo&yptr=yahoo Back to Top

Boeing makes progress on 737 MAX, but FAA needs weeks to review * FAA has "complete system description" of 737 MAX changes * Official says FAA has "several more weeks" of work to do * Boeing says has done dry-run certification flight test (Adds more details, background) WASHINGTON, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Boeing Co is making progress toward getting its 737 MAX aircraft in the air again, but the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will need at least several more weeks for review, FAA Administrator Steve Dickson said on Tuesday. Boeing and the FAA are grappling to contain a crisis in the wake of two deadly 737 MAX crashes that have left 346 people dead, forced airlines to ground more than 300 aircraft, and put on hold Boeing deliveries worth more than $500 billion. Boeing has said it hopes to resume 737 MAX flights later this year, although major U.S. and Canadian airlines have cancelled MAX flights into January or February. Dickson said at a conference of air traffic controllers in Washington that the agency had received the "final software load" and "complete system description" of revisions to the plane, which was grounded in March. The FAA is currently using "aircraft production software" in the engineering simulator. The next step is to complete pilot workload management testing and have U.S. and international pilots conduct scenarios to determine training requirements before a key certification test flight. "It is going to be several more weeks before we go through all of that part of the process," Dickson said. "We've got considerable work to do." Separately, Boeing said that last week it successfully conducted a dry-run of a certification flight test. Dickson told Reuters last month the FAA would need about 30 days from the time of the certification test flight before the plane could resume flights. The system description is a "500-ish page document that has the architecture of the flight control system and the changes that they have made," Dickson told Reuters last month. 'SIGNIFICANT PROGRESS' Boeing shares rose on Tuesday after two sharp days of declines following the release of instant messages on Friday from a former Boeing pilot that the company had withheld from the FAA and which raised questions about what Boeing may have known about a key safety system known as MCAS. That prompted an immediate demand for an explanation from the FAA about why the messages were not turned over sooner. Boeing said on Tuesday it had "made significant progress over the past several months" in its work to return the MAX to service. The changes include an MCAS software update with new safeguards for an anti-stall system at the heart of the two fatal crashes. Dickson said once the steps were completed ahead of the certification test flight "it is a fairly straightforward process to unground the airplane." He reiterated he would not let the 737 MAX fly again "until I am satisfied it is the safest thing out there." Boeing chief executive Dennis Muilenburg will appear before Congress for two days of testimony next week. He was stripped of his title as board chairman earlier this month. On Wednesday, Indonesia plans to share with victims' families a final report into Lion Air flight 610 that crashed into the Java Sea shortly after take-off from Jakarta on Oct. 29, 2018, killing all 189 people on board. The report on the 737 MAX crash is expected to be made public later this week. The MAX was grounded after a second crash, on March 10, involving Ethiopian Airlines flight 302, which killed 157.