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Shyster
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Postby Shyster » Thu Mar 14, 2019 7:41 pm

2 out of how many?? :lol:

Southwest said a couple days ago that it had operated around 30,000 flights for its MAX fleet, and although Southwest has the largest MAX fleet at 31 aircraft, it has less than 10% of the 350-odd MAXes delivered so far, so I think it would be fair to guess there have been probably several hundred thousand commercial MAX flights. As mostly short- to medium-haul aircraft, narrowbodies like the 737 and A320 families tend to see a lot more takeoff and landing cycles per day than larger, more long-range aircraft.

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Postby tifosi77 » Thu Mar 14, 2019 8:55 pm

The CRJs supposedly are better if it's one of the newer NextGen versions. I've never been on one, but from what I've read, a lot of people don't like the CRJs because the windows were small and oddly low. The post-2008 NextGen versions redid the windows and have a new interior with nicer seats and bigger luggage bins.
Can confirm the older ones had annoying windows. Much prefer the Embraer 175 for short haul flights (BUR-SFO/SJC/LAS etc).

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Postby tifosi77 » Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:02 pm

Boeing 737 Max Hit Trouble Right Away, Pilot’s Tense Radio Messages Show
The captain of a doomed Ethiopian Airlines jetliner faced an emergency almost immediately after takeoff from Addis Ababa, requesting permission in a panicky voice to return after three minutes as the aircraft accelerated to abnormal speed, a person who reviewed air traffic communications said Thursday.

“Break break, request back to home,” the captain told air traffic controllers as they scrambled to divert two other flights approaching the airport. “Request vector for landing.”

Controllers also observed that the aircraft, a new Boeing 737 Max 8, was oscillating up and down by hundreds of feet — a sign that something was extraordinarily wrong.
Image
The person who shared the information, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the communications have not been publicly released, said the controllers had concluded even before the captain’s message that he had an emergency.
Pilots were abuzz over publicly available radar data that showed the aircraft had accelerated far beyond what is considered standard practice, for reasons that remain unclear.

“The thing that is most abnormal is the speed,” said John Cox, an aviation safety consultant and former 737 pilot.

“The speed is very high,” said Mr. Cox, a former executive air safety chairman of the Air Line Pilots Association in the United States. “The question is why. The plane accelerates far faster than it should.”

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Postby shafnutz05 » Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:08 pm

Why do nearly all of these plane crashes occur in less developed parts of the world? I assume the answer is obvious... Lack of oversight and not enough experts

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Postby Shyster » Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:12 pm

Immediate problems following takeoff would be a sign that MCAS is not behind the crash, because the MCAS system is disabled so long as the flaps are deployed.

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Postby tifosi77 » Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:14 pm


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Postby tifosi77 » Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:24 pm

Immediate problems following takeoff would be a sign that MCAS is not behind the crash, because the MCAS system is disabled so long as the flaps are deployed.
As I recall, MCAS was a hotfix for a control-related problem that surfaced during testing. (Its existence and purpose were not set forth in early pilot manuals for the MAX types, but that's a different issue, albeit one I think is every bit as troubling as passenger jet-sized lawn darts.) The directive for how to disable the system was only published post-Lion Air.

Which indicates to me at least that there's a chance the underlying anomaly that precipitated the need for MCAS may not be adequately addressed by the system. In other words, while MCAS itself may not be the cause of either crash, the thing that MCAS was meant to address may still be an issue with the type in ways the engineers did not fully contemplate.

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Postby tifosi77 » Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:28 pm

Why do nearly all of these plane crashes occur in less developed parts of the world? I assume the answer is obvious... Lack of oversight and not enough experts
While I mused about this the other day, if the current mishaps are indeed a design fault that wouldn't necessarily be affected by the operator's location. It's still early days here, but if this is indeed a design flaw, these accidents could just as easily have happened in Burbank.

One thing I'll be interested to see as the investigations unfold is the potential impact local weather may have played. Specifically I'm curious about the role density altitude may have played in messing with the flight data sensors in the two crashes and in the other MAX incidents reported in the last few months.

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Postby NTP66 » Wed Mar 20, 2019 6:36 am

Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 Day Before Deadly Crash
As the Lion Air crew fought to control their diving Boeing Co. 737 Max 8, they got help from an unexpected source: an off-duty pilot who happened to be riding in the cockpit.

That extra pilot, who was seated in the cockpit jumpseat, correctly diagnosed the problem and told the crew how to disable a malfunctioning flight-control system and save the plane, according to two people familiar with Indonesia’s investigation.

The next day, under command of a different crew facing what investigators said was an identical malfunction, the jetliner crashed into the Java Sea killing all 189 aboard.

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Postby tifosi77 » Wed Mar 20, 2019 1:31 pm

Yeah, that's not a good look.

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Postby tifosi77 » Thu Mar 21, 2019 12:26 pm

Doomed Boeing Jets Lacked 2 Safety Features That Company Sold Only as Extras
As the pilots of the doomed Boeing jets in Ethiopia and Indonesia fought to control their planes, they lacked two notable safety features in their cockpits.

One reason: Boeing charged extra for them.

For Boeing and other aircraft manufacturers, the practice of charging to upgrade a standard plane can be lucrative. Top airlines around the world must pay handsomely to have the jets they order fitted with customized add-ons.

Sometimes these optional features involve aesthetics or comfort, like premium seating, fancy lighting or extra bathrooms. But other features involve communication, navigation or safety systems, and are more fundamental to the plane’s operations.

Many airlines, especially low-cost carriers like Indonesia’s Lion Air, have opted not to buy them — and regulators don’t require them.

Now, in the wake of the two deadly crashes involving the same jet model, Boeing will make one of those safety features standard as part of a fix to get the planes in the air again.

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Postby NTP66 » Thu Mar 21, 2019 12:49 pm

Source of the post regulators don’t require them
That's likely to change, even with Boeing stating that they'll provide them now.

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Postby tifosi77 » Thu Mar 21, 2019 12:56 pm

When they say "regulators don't require them", that can have a whole lot of meanings. Take ETOPS, for example; non-ETOPS jets are physically capable of flying those routes, but if an operator does not actually have any such routes they don't need any ETOPS jets. (That's probably a bad example, but it's the only thing that's coming to mind at the moment.)

The FAA is reviewing the certification of the MAX jets to determine if Boeing was forthright in their disclosures to the Administration. Whatever is causing these early-flight issues seems like something inherent to the design of the jet that should not have an 'optional' remedy. But it's still early days in the investigations, and nothing is certain at this point.

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Postby Shyster » Thu Mar 21, 2019 2:22 pm

I just have a hard time believing there is some inherent structural flaw or instability in the MAX. The certification process for any new aircraft puts it through flight-envelope tests that an aircraft will normally never see in a normal lifetime. They take those things up and bank them, dive them, stall and recover them, slam them down for rough landings, do near-V1 aborted takeoffs to see if the brakes catch fire, etc. They do practically everything except barrel rolls.* And not only did the MAX go though certification, there were tens of thousands of commercial flights. If there were some sort of inherent problem, I think it would have been much more obvious.


*Unless you're Tex Johnston; then you do barrel rolls too.

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Postby tifosi77 » Thu Mar 21, 2019 5:28 pm

Design faults make it into production aircraft all the time. Perhaps 'design fault' isn't the right way to say that.... designs are often revised years after a type enters service and experiences real world conditions that either were not anticipated by test engineers, or not fully explored in the testing profile. Sometimes it's not even something unique to a particular aircraft; since that L-1011 crash in Dallas, all commercial aircraft types were outfitted with forward weather radar, and there has only been one micro-burst-triggered mishap since. After that TWA 7-4 exploded in mid-air climbing out of JFK, manufacturers installed systems to replace fuel volume in tanks with inert nitrogen to prevent remaining vapor from igniting; that's a design change that's likely never going to come about as a result of testing. An Airbus aircraft was brought down just after 9/11 because of poor pilot training, but the heart of the issue was that the cockpit crew was able to input control commands that snapped the rudder off the jet, because its inherent design amplified the perceived effects of wake turbulence.

The MAX mishaps and incidents are happening in a variety of conditions. Lion Air was like ten minutes into its flight, departing from a field that's more or less at sea level. The Ethiopian Air crash happened much closer to takeoff from a field that's over 7,000' in elevation. The commonality, at this stage, is the jet.

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Postby Shyster » Thu Mar 21, 2019 9:31 pm

Indigo Partners has withdrawn from talks about buying or investing into Wow Air, and Wow is supposedly now talking to Icelandair for the third time about some sort of deal. The withdrawal of Indigo Partners may well mark the end of Wow as an independent airline, and Icelandair might pick up the scraps just because it could use Wow's handful of remaining A321s (plus one A320) to pick up the slack for the half dozen or so Icelandair 737 MAXes that are currently grounded. Some of the Wow Airbuses are fairly new (two are brand-new A321neos), and Icelandair could use them as gap-fillers and then either dry lease them out just or keep using them once the MAXes come back.

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Postby Shyster » Mon Mar 25, 2019 3:00 pm

British Airways flight flies to Edinburgh instead of Düsseldorf by mistake.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47691478

I've certainly heard of aircraft landing at the wrong airport by mistake, but I'm not sure I've ever heard of a commercial passenger flight just going to a completely wrong city.

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Postby dodint » Mon Mar 25, 2019 4:09 pm

Hah.

Kind of reminds me of the crew falling asleep/playing on tablets and overshooting Hawaii by like half an hour.

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Postby NTP66 » Mon Mar 25, 2019 5:05 pm

I was going to bring that up. Dude overshot Hilo by half an hour because he was used to taking naps while flying. Thankfully, he’s no longer a pilot...

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Postby tifosi77 » Wed Mar 27, 2019 1:00 am

Apparently a Southwest 737 MAX that was on a ferry flight from Orlando to Victorville, CA for short-term storage during the grounding suffered an engine failure shortly after takeoff and had to declare an emergency and land.

No cause as yet, but that's not a good look.

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Postby Shyster » Wed Mar 27, 2019 7:49 pm

The optics are only bad for the panicky members of the public who don't know much about aviation, such as the fact that aircraft engines are supplied by other companies. The Airbus A320neo has LEAP engines too, and in fact the LEAP engines on both the A320neo and the MAX have been much more reliable than the PW1000G engines that are optional on the neo and standard on the A220 family. P&W has been having so many problems with its geared turbofans that there's been a line of engineless A320neos parked outside of the Airbus factory in Toulouse for months, which are waiting on P&W to deliver engines that actually run. The LEAP A320neos, by contrast, are having much fewer problems.

Also, I haven't seen any reason for the engine shutdown. For all we know it ate a seagull on takeoff, and that's why it failed.

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Postby NTP66 » Thu Mar 28, 2019 8:55 am

Boeing announces fixes for the MCAS system: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47722258

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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Thu Mar 28, 2019 9:08 am

#BREAKING: Icelandic budget airline WOW Air said in a statement that it has ceased operation, stranding passengers across two continents.
https://twitter.com/bostonglobe/status/ ... 5157088257

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Postby MR25 » Thu Mar 28, 2019 9:29 am

Can't wait to handle that **** show in expense reports

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Postby Shyster » Thu Mar 28, 2019 3:43 pm

I think WOW had a viable business model. I think there is a market for low-cost flights across the Atlantic. Ultimately, however, WOW tried to expand way too fast. Instead of building up core routes and moving forward with incremental expansion, they tried to add new flights from everywhere to everywhere. A lot of those new routes ended up losing a lot of money, and it's now clear that the company just couldn't get out from under all of the debt it incurred during that over-expansion.

I haven't checked myself, but Icelandair supposedly raised its fares by 100% immediately after WOW's announcement. RIP competition.

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