Boeing's fix tames the
'tiger' in the 737 MAX flight controls, say experts and critics
 Dozens of Boeing 737 MAXs are stored on parking ramps at the airport at Moses Lake. These are among 192 of the jets parked at Moses Lake, all built since the plane was grounded in March. Their engines are covered and all openings are wrapped against contamination. At least seven are white-painted "ghost planes"; the airline that originally ordered them backed out. (Mike Siegel / The Seattle Times) After months of intense scrutiny, even some of the harshest critics of the 737 MAX's flight-control system believe Boeing's software fix will prevent a recurrence of the scenarios that killed 346 people in the crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. Boeing has redesigned the MAX's new automated Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) that relentlessly pushed down the noses of the two aircraft on both crash flights. Though serious questions linger about the overall safety culture at Boeing that waved through MCAS's original development and certification, U.S. airline pilots are almost ready to fly the updated jet. "The hazard is designed out of it," Capt. John DeLeeuw, chairman of the safety committee of the Allied Pilots Association (APA), the union for American Airlines pilots, declared to colleagues a week after trying the flight-control fix in a Boeing simulator in Miami in late September. Bjorn Fehrm, an aerospace engineer and former fighter pilot in the Swedish Air Force, now a France-based aviation analyst with Leeham.net, has said Boeing's original MCAS design was "criminally badly done ... unforgivable," and compared the system's aggressiveness to a tiger. He too believes the redesign now makes the airplane as safe as the previous 737 model. "There's no part of any airplane out there that's been as thoroughly vetted," said Fehrm. "MCAS is no longer a tiger, but a house cat." The final pieces of that vetting are now imminent. Boeing expects the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to formally unground the jet next month and to pin down all the pilot training requirements in January. That's pending a formal certification flight and a final evaluation of the software fix for the jet's flight controls. And the FAA insisted Friday that it will take its time and won't be swayed by pressure from Boeing. After the FAA clears the plane to fly and issues the pilot training regimen, Boeing and the U.S. airlines will need 30 to 40 days to complete the enormous logistical challenge of getting their airplanes ready to fly after the better part of a year in storage. Boeing will install the final software fix, refresh all the fluids and lubricants, do ground tests on the engines and flight controls, then conduct a checkout flight. The FAA will inspect every plane. The worldwide fleet of MAXs previously delivered to airlines was 385, including 72 jets at U.S. airlines. With all the airplanes Boeing has built since, the total of parked MAXs is now just over 700. American, Southwest and United have all already pushed out the MAX's return to early March and have said it will rejoin their schedules in a phased approach over several months. Boeing will also begin delivery of MAXs to carriers like Alaska, whose finished jets the manufacturer has parked and stored pending the ungrounding of the fleet. Boeing's fix On the two crash flights, the pilots struggled to counter MCAS after it was triggered by a single sensor that fed the system an erroneously high value for the jet's angle of attack - the angle between the wing and the oncoming air flow. MCAS activated for up to 10 seconds, swiveling the horizontal tail, known as the stabilizer, so as to aggressively pitch the nose of each aircraft down. When countered by the pilots, the system stopped, then kicked in again with a new activation five seconds later. After a vain struggle against these repeated nose-down movements, each short flight - the first 12 minutes, the second just six minutes - ended in a high-speed nose-dive to earth. Boeing's fix for MCAS entails three changes to the system design: Sign up for Evening Brief Delivered weeknights, this email newsletter gives you a quick recap of the day's top stories and need-to-know news, as well as intriguing photos and topics to spark conversation as you wind down from your day. It will take input from the jet's two angle of attack sensors instead of just one. If they disagree by more than a nominal amount, the system assumes a false signal and will not activate. If both angle of attack sensors somehow get stuck at the same wrong high value - perhaps if they got frozen in the wrong position - again MCAS won't activate because the upgrade is designed to do so only when the angle moves suddenly from below the threshold to a new high value. If both sensors together register a sudden movement to a high angle of attack, the system will activate once only - not repeatedly, as in the accident flights. The capability of the system to move the horizontal stabilizer so as to pitch the jet nose-down will be limited. The pilot will always be able to counter it by pulling back on the control column. In addition, Boeing has revised the overall architecture of the MAX's flight-control computer system, so that on every flight the MAX takes separate inputs from the jet's two flight-control computers, rather than just one as previously. These two computers, each processing air data readings from the various sensors on both sides of the airplane, will cross-check and compare values. Again, if they disagree, automated systems including MCAS will be shut down. This change should catch any computer error as opposed to a sensor fault. A person briefed on the details said such a shutdown would come in less than one-third of a second, so even if the pilots are distracted and fail to notice the airplane moving as it shouldn't, the automation won't be allowed to continue. This addresses a problem identified in both accident investigations: that pilots took much longer to recognize and react to an MCAS fault than Boeing had assumed. By stopping any erroneous uncommanded movements automatically, the redesign takes the response out of the pilots' hands altogether. "We're not letting the system run while the pilots are inattentive," said the person, who required anonymity because parties to the ongoing accident investigations are not allowed to speak publicly. Peter Lemme, a former Boeing flight-controls engineer and avionics expert who has been very critical of the original MCAS design, said Boeing has addressed all his concerns. Once the FAA approves the fixes, said Lemme, he'll fly on a MAX with "no misgivings." To get the flying public equally comfortable with the MAX, Boeing needs also to counter a recurring theme on social media: the idea that software shouldn't have been needed in the first place and that the plane's large engines throw its aerodynamic balance out of whack and make it "inherently unstable." We need your support In-depth journalism takes time and effort to produce, and it depends on paying subscribers. If you value these kinds of stories, consider subscribing. Boeing says MCAS is needed not for stability but only to make the MAX feel the same to a pilot as the previous 737 model. The airplane will fly safely with or without MCAS, Boeing insists. To prove that, Boeing has flown near-stall maneuvers in flight tests this summer with MCAS turned off. Safety regulators plan to do the same during upcoming recertification flights. Pilot checklists and manuals Pilots from American and Southwest, as well as Air Canada and some overseas carriers, in late September got hands-on experience with the new MAX flight controls in Boeing's full-motion, full-flight simulator in Miami. At a pilot-union conference a week later, Greg Bowen, training and standards committee chairman at the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association union, echoed APA's DeLeeuw in declaring MCAS no longer a problem. "In terms of handling characteristics ... those anomalies have been designed out of the airplane," said Bowen. He said all that remains to be resolved is the training required for pilots, with new attention to how flight crews handle the confusion of a cockpit inundated with multiple alarms. The training and instructions need to be calibrated for pilots with lesser training and experience, he said. The FAA will issue a report recommending the pilot training regimen, with a period for public comment likely in January. It's expected that pilots already qualified to fly the older 737 model will be required to take only a two-hour computer course to highlight the differences on the MAX and the changes with the new software. Bowen said the FAA is also considering significant changes to clarify the procedures in six pilot checklists that cover abnormal flight conditions, including the Runaway Stabilizer checklist that Boeing says the crews on both crash flights could have used to recover the airplanes. Moving the tail manually The Runaway Stabilizer checklist is a focus because the Ethiopian flight crew partially followed it: They cut off electric power to the horizontal tail, stopping MCAS from activating. However, at that point the nose was still pitched downward and when they tried to move it back up manually by turning a wheel connected by cable to the stabilizer, they couldn't budge it. The problem was that as they coped with the emergency, the pilots allowed the plane to accelerate to 45 mph beyond the jet's maximum design speed, causing high opposing forces on the tail that rendered the control surfaces immovable. Even if the revised MCAS cannot act up again as it did on the crash flights, MAX pilots will still want to be comfortable with manual control of the stabilizer. A 737 captain on a U.S. airline, who asked for anonymity to speak without permission from his employer, described his own extensive experience as a former test pilot of moving the tail manually. He said that with the 737 tail at full nose-down position and at maximum design speed, it is "nigh impossible for a normal human to move the manual trim wheel in the nose up direction. The forces are too strong." Dennis Tajer, an American Airlines captain and APA spokesman, recently replicated that flight situation in a simulator, deliberately inducing an MCAS-style nose-down pitch at high speed, though still within the normal flight range. He was able to move the wheel only "a couple of inches, but not enough." Tajer said that if the MAX is pitched down toward the ground, it gathers speed all too easily. "The 737 is a slippery airplane," said Tajer. "When you put the nose down, it wants to accelerate very quickly." He and his co-pilot in the simulator were able to recover control by using an old piloting skill called the roller-coaster technique that's no longer in the manuals: letting go of the control column to ease the forces, then cranking the wheel, and repeatedly easing and cranking. "Before we can be fully confident in the MCAS fixes we have to know more about the accompanying pilot training, emergency checklist changes, the extraordinary effort required to recover the aircraft with the manual trim wheel," Tajer said. While the FAA is likely to mandate hands-on Runaway Stabilizer training built into every airline pilot's yearly recurrent training sessions in a simulator, some foreign regulators may make that a requirement for their pilots before they permit the MAX to return to service. In a recent interview with trade magazine Aviation Week, Patrick Ky, executive director of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), indicated that his agency will likely go along with the FAA in not making that a requirement. Ky said that while some nations may demand simulator training for "purely political or public relations-driven" reasons, it would be "a complete disaster" if the FAA and EASA diverged. "We need to be fully harmonized," he said. That suggests the world's two major aviation regulators are now aligned, though EASA's schedule lags slightly the FAA's. Ky said he expects an EASA decision on returning the MAX to the air "sometime in January." In the 737's largest global market, China, the return of the MAX could be delayed by political factors around trade talks and U.S./China tensions. For U.S. air travelers, though, the MAX could soon be airborne again. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeings-fix-tames-the-tiger-in-the-737-max-flight-controls/ Back to Top |
Boeing settles several
more lawsuits over Max plane crashes
 DALLAS -- Boeing is settling a few more of the roughly 150 lawsuits filed by families of passengers killed in two crashes of the 737 Max jet. A Seattle law firm said Friday it settled four of the 46 cases it's handling for families of passengers who were on board a Lion Air Max that crashed off the coast of Indonesia in October 2018. On Thursday, a federal judge in Chicago approved settlements of nine other cases involving the same crash. A Boeing spokesman said the company has settled "dozens" of claims. Terms of the settlements were kept confidential at Boeing's insistence, according to lawyers. Chicago-based Boeing has spent about a year making changes to flight software that played a role in the crashes. The company expects Federal Aviation Administration approval in January for a new pilot-training program around the changes, which would let U.S. airlines resume using the plane early next year. The FAA, however, has not laid out a timetable for approving Boeing's changes, and the agency's chief vowed again Friday that the plane won't fly until it's safe. "I know there is a lot of pressure to return this aircraft to service quickly," FAA Administrator Stephen Dickson said Friday in a video for agency employees, "but I want you to know, and I want you to take the time you need and focus solely on safety." According to federal court records, more than 50 lawsuits were filed against Boeing by families of passengers on the Lion Air Max that crashed Oct. 29, 2018, and about 100 lawsuits were filed relating to the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Max on March 10. Boeing Co. is working with a mediator, "and we are pleased to have resolved dozens of claims on terms that we believe fairly compensate the victims' families," Boeing spokesman Peter Pedraza said in a statement. "We remain committed to this mediation process." Boeing didn't disclose the amount of the settlements, but Pedraza said Boeing has paid more than $7 million in separate aid to the families since setting up a special fund two months ago. The company's legal strategy, however, has come under fire by lawmakers and lawyers for the passengers' families. Lawyers for Boeing have said in several court filings that they could seek to move the lawsuits to courts in Indonesia, on grounds that it would be more convenient - most of the victims were Indonesians. Legal experts say judgments in Indonesian courts would likely be smaller. Boeing lawyers have not yet asked the judge to move the cases, but the mere threat of a motion could be helping the company negotiate with victims' families. Alexandra Wisner, a Chicago-area aviation lawyer whose settlements were approved by a federal judge this week, said lawyers like her must consider Boeing's potential defenses - including the ability to send the cases overseas - when negotiating for their clients. She said, however, that it would be overly simple to suggest that Boeing's strategy resulted in lower settlements for her clients. Seattle aviation lawyer Mark Lindquist, whose firm announced four new settlements and has 42 other cases pending against Boeing, said there are strong reasons for keeping the cases in the U.S. "The U.S. has a great interest in the safety of aircraft manufactured in the United States, most of the evidence of Boeing's wrongdoing is here in the U.S., and only a United States court can hold Boeing accountable," he said. Last month, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg told a congressional committee he wasn't aware of the company's legal strategy. That drew a skeptical response by Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., chairman of the House Transportation Committee. "You're looking at hundreds of millions, billions of dollars of claims ... and you don't know that that's happening?" DeFazio said. "Congressman, my focus has been on safety," Muilenburg replied. On Friday, DeFazio said he sent several follow-up questions to Muilenburg, including whether Boeing intends to move the Lion Air lawsuits to Indonesia. The settlements that have been publicly announced or revealed in court filings all involve families of passengers on the first Max crash. The families agreed to take part in mediation with Boeing. Lawyers for families of passengers in the second crash, in Ethiopia, have opted instead to seek documents from Boeing. Victims in that crash represented many more nationalities. Wisner, who has clients related to both incidents, said Boeing is open to more second-guessing about the second crash. "What did they know, what did they learn from the first crash, and why didn't they take any action" to ground the plane immediately? she said. https://abc7chicago.com/business/boeing-settles-several-more-lawsuits-over-max-plane-crashes/5701279/ Back to Top |
Boeing says timing of
737 MAX return in hands of regulators
FILE PHOTO: Aerial photos show Boeing 737 Max airplanes on the tarmac in Seattle By Tim Hepher DUBAI (Reuters) - Boeing moved on Saturday to ease tensions with regulators over the return to service of its 737 MAX, saying it was up to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and its global counterparts to approve changes to the jet in the wake of two accidents. The FAA told its staff this week to take whatever time was needed to review the grounded plane after Boeing said it expected the FAA to certify the 737 MAX in mid-December. "We put some targets out that still line up to December ... type certification," Stan Deal, chief executive of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, told reporters. "The FAA has said they are not going to put a time frame on it and we are going to track behind them on this," he told a news conference ahead of the Dubai Airshow. Boeing's mid-December estimate sent the planemaker's stock price soaring on Monday, though it also said it would not win approval for changes to pilot training until January. U.S. officials privately said this week that Boeing's timetable was aggressive -- if not unrealistic -- and was not cleared in advance by regulators. On Friday, FAA Administrator Steve Dickson indicated the agency would decide in its own time whether to unground the plane that was involved in two fatal crashes in five months, killing 346 people in Indonesia and Ethiopia. "This effort is not guided by a calendar or schedule," Dickson wrote in a memo seen by Reuters. Dickson is due to attend the Dubai Airshow this week. Speaking on the eve of the show, the head of Boeing divisions spanning jetliners, defence and services expressed sympathy for the relatives of victims of the two crashes that led to the plane's worldwide grounding in March. Deal said Boeing is in discussions with host airline Emirates over the impact of delays to its much larger 777X, for which the Dubai carrier is by far the largest customer. Boeing is also talking to Emirates about the future of a tentative order for 40 787 Dreamliners, which is among a number of orders left in the balance since the last Dubai show in 2017. Emirates has taken a tough stance on new orders ahead of the Nov. 17-21 show but industry sources say it could agree to confirm at least some of the 787s in exchange for a deal with Boeing that would allow it to cancel or defer some delayed 777X. It is also expected to confirm orders for some Airbus jets.
Airbus exec: Boeing's 737 Max grounding
benefits no one
 GP: Airbus A340-313X take-off DUBAI - Airbus Chief Commercial Officer Christian Scherer forcefully rejected the notion that his company is benefiting from the grounding of Boeing's 737 Max fleet while speaking to CNBC during the Dubai Air Show. "I really need to correct that cultural belief. This does not benefit anyone in this industry, the least of which would be Airbus," Scherer told CNBC's Hadley Gamble on Sunday. "It's a tragedy, it is an issue for Boeing to resolve, but it is not good for competitors to see problems on any one particular airplane type." The 737 Max fleet of roughly 400 planes has been grounded across the globe since mid-March after two crashes in less than five months that killed 346 people combined. The grounding has forced airlines to cancel thousands of flights, driven up costs and dented airlines' profits. To make up for the expected loss in services, Boeing in the second quarter took a $4.9 billion after-tax charge to compensate airlines but final amounts are unknown because regulators haven't yet lifted the grounding. Boeing and Airbus, often described as holding a duopoly over the large commercial airline industry since the 1990s, each own approximately half of that market. Orders for each company's airliners, however, are expected to be smaller this year as the industry faces headwinds including a slowing global economy, climate change and safety concerns. Airbus, Europe's largest aerospace group, cut its delivery expectations for 2019 as it grapples with manufacturing delays at its recently expanded plant in Hamburg, Germany. It now plans to deliver "around 860" planes this year, down from an original target of between 880 and 890. It recorded an adjusted operating income of 1.6 billion euros ($1.78 billion) for the third quarter of 2019. American Airlines flight attendants union president under fire over 737 Max comments  Lori Bassani is the president of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants. The president of the union which represents flight attendants for American Airlines is coming under fire for saying union members haven't been financially impacted by the grounding of the 737 Max. Lori Bassani, president of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants which represents 28,000 American Airlines Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: AAL) flight attendants, has been asked by a union board member to resign, according to emails obtained by the Dallas Business Journal. Additionally, more than 2,100 people as of Saturday night have signed an online petition calling for Bassani's resignation. On Thursday, Bassani told the Business Journal that unlike other aviation employee groups, the APFA will not sue Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) seeking damages for lost wages. The pilots union at Southwest Airlines has sued Boeing claiming $100 million in lost wages and the Southwest flight attendants union is weighing litigation over the grounding of the 737 Max, CNBC reported. "It's not our only aircraft, so our people didn't really lose wages," Bassani said Thursday. "Their schedules were changed and they were impacted, but they could always get another flight on another airplane." John Nikides, president of APFA's Los Angeles International Airport's base, took umbrage with Bassani's comments, and said he had received information that Bassani's husband worked for Boeing. Bassani lives in Washington state. "Could self-interest be driving your move to deny our members the opportunity to receive damages due to the Max grounding?" Nikides wrote in an email to Bassani, copying other union leader members in the process. "You're quite a sleuth," Bassani responded. "My husband looks forward to meeting you. He's a machinist." According to the emails, Nikides had previously asked Bassani to talk with American about obtaining financial damages incurred by flight attendants from the 737 Max grounding. After Bassani's Thursday comments became public, Nikides said Bassani should step down. "I hereby formally request your resignation as APFA president, effective immediately," Nikides wrote in another email to Bassani. "You are clearly in no position to lead this union." When reached Saturday night, Bassani said if American receives any damages from Boeing, she expects the APFA to share in those reparations. "The APFA Board has expressed an interest in discussing this issue further, which we expect to do next week," she said. She also confirmed her husband works for Boeing, and pointed out that she called on the 737 Max to be grounded in a television interview just before the plane was ultimately grounded in the U.S. "Where my husband works has nothing to do with the safety of my members and our passengers, nor had any bearing on my calling for the grounding of the 737 Max," she said. This discord within the organization comes at a critical time for the union. National officer elections began Nov. 10 and run through Dec. 10, according to its website. And next month, the contract between the APFA and American becomes amendable. Negotiations between the union and American have been ongoing since February. FAA Chief explores overhaul of plane approvals  The deadly crashes involving the grounded Boeing 737 Max has brought about a look into how planes are certified to fly. The head of the Federal Aviation Administration says regulators are looking at just that, according to the Wall Street Journal. FAA Administrator Stephen Dickson talked about it on Sunday. Thoughts include the possibility of the FAA being involved in the design of a new plane from the outset. Currently manufacturers have a list of rules they have to follow, the FAA assesses the design at the end of the process. The FAA has been under pressure over its safety approval and scrutiny of the 737 Max and for backing the plane's safety after the first crash, which was previously reported by the Wall Street Journal. |
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