Same exact type of aircraft. Same exact phase of flight. Same issues reported immediately before the accident (airspeed/AOA). Why are you ignoring the obvious?

Following that logic, if 2 more MAXs crash in 2019, both on climb-out within the first 15 minutes of flight, still before any accident reports have been published, would you keep going about your day pretending nothing is wrong? It could take years for the reports to come out. In the mean time, it would be prudent to apply a little bit of brain power & common sense and try to see what's going on here. The investigators aren't the only people with the power of examination: the burden of being cautious and alert is on all of us, and you shouldn't need an investigation report to spoon feed you information that you could deduce.

My example actually makes perfect sense; disappearances are fairly uncommon, as are aircraft accidents. And it's in your power to instruct your kids to avoid a location, or to simply drive them to and from school, much as a government has the power to ground an aircraft and mandate finding another means of transportation in the meantime.

Prius accidents? Choking on food? Food poisoning? Are you really trying to compare three everyday occurrences to airline accidents, which we can go decades without seeing? :rolleyes:

I'm not sure what your point is here...congrats on landing the job?

Have you been reading this thread? MCAS doesn't engage when the autopilot is on. It only is active when hand-flying. I'd recommend reading up on the system before you speculate where the problem is.

Speculation might keep people alive in the mean time before an accident report is published. Is it not prudent and professional to be prepared?

You are oversimplifying your comparison. We also know that both crash aircraft had reported issues with unreliable airspeed (the Lion Air aircraft had been written up multiple times for unreliable airspeed in the days before the crash and in the flight immediately preceding the crash. The Ethiopian crash crew had reported unreliable airspeed to ATC shortly before the crash), and that both crashed in the same phase of flight, at the beginning of the en route phase (The NTSB defines the en route phase as beginning at the first prescribed power reduction or 1,000 feet above runway elevation, whichever occurs first), a phase of flight that is statistically the safest.

I'm not speculating on the problem, bright spark. That's the point.

Perhaps you can simply shortcut the investigative process with raw speculative expertise, and guess the cause and solution into existence, and save everyone a lot of time and effort.

Speculation doesn't save lives. A solid investigative process does.

We don't speculate. We don't guess. We know. It's what we do. We're not paid to guess about takeoff distance, performance, fuel burns, time enroute, or the cause of a mishap. We don't guess on those things. We know. Until we know, there's no value in guesswork.

I guess the term "precautionary measure" has no meaning to you. Why is being proactive instead of reactive such a hard concept for you to understand?

When two accidents occur that are near carbon copies of each other, a bit of educated speculation isn't just "guesswork." Comparing that to calculating takeoff distance and fuel burn is absurd, but hey, that puts it on par with your other comparisons to car crashes and food poisoning :D

By the way, none of this takes away from my point that you don't understand how MCAS functions and should read up on that before commenting on the issue. It's not as simple as flying a 207 around the pattern with full nose-down trim :rolleyes:

Your reading comprehension is low, but the comparisons were ironic (perhaps why you don't understand) to illustrate the stupidity of your straw man argument regarding kids at the end of the street. No surprise at all that they sailed over your head.

Not at all surprising that you failed to understand the reason the 207 was mentioned.

I understand MCAS well, thanks.

What I also understand is that at present, the investigation is open, and it's not known that MCAS is at fault.

Speculation and all that, you see.

Or perhaps, you don't. Carry on with your guesswork and speculation. It's very professional.

Precautionary measures work when we know what we're taking precautions against. We don't take evasive maneuvers for traffic when we don't know where the traffic is. That would be...stupid.

By your logic, next time the barn burns down, we should dehorn all the cows. I know, you don't understand. It's okay, you're off the hook, as it may be too much to expect.

Well, one source estimates there have been 500,000 flights with this model aircraft and two fatal flight instances leading to a rate of 4.0 fatal flight instances per million flights. The 737 fleet as a whole is about .18 fatal flight instances per million flights.

with 40% active 737 max fleet grounded worldwide, folks shall think why.

read boeing's own statement below, they knew they had issues related to MCAS and has been working on software update since 1st crash.

we all need educated guess with some common sense. it is not too hard to see something there, even for folks who are not pilots and not in this industry.

new engine, CG changes, MCAS for cert process, new software (and bugs), only time can tell.

we probably shall trust faa as much as we trust fda who is known to work with big phama quite closely.


================

Boeing Statement on 737 MAX Software Enhancement

March 11, 2019 - The Boeing Company is deeply saddened by the loss of Lion Air Flight 610, which has weighed heavily on the entire Boeing team, and we extend our heartfelt condolences and sympathies to the families and loved ones of those onboard.



Safety is a core value for everyone at Boeing and the safety of our airplanes, our customers’ passengers and their crews is always our top priority. The 737 MAX is a safe airplane that was designed, built and supported by our skilled employees who approach their work with the utmost integrity.



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.



Boeing has been working closely with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on development, planning and certification of the software enhancement, and it will be deployed across the 737 MAX fleet in the coming weeks. The update also incorporates feedback received from our customers.



The FAA says it anticipates mandating this software enhancement with an Airworthiness Directive (AD) no later than April. We have worked with the FAA in development of this software enhancement.



It is important to note that the FAA is not mandating any further action at this time, and the required actions in AD2018-23.5 continue to be appropriate.



A pitch augmentation control law (MCAS) was implemented on the 737 MAX to improve aircraft handling characteristics and decrease pitch-up tendency at elevated angles of attack. It was put through flight testing as part of the certification process prior to the airplane entering service. MCAS does not control the airplane in normal flight; it improves the behavior of the airplane in a non-normal part of the operating envelope.



Boeing’s 737 MAX Flight Crew Operations Manual (FCOM) already outlines an existing procedure to safely handle the unlikely event of erroneous data coming from an angle of attack (AOA) sensor. The pilot will always be able to override the flight control law using electric trim or manual trim. In addition, it can be controlled through the use of the existing runaway stabilizer procedure as reinforced in the Operations Manual Bulletin (OMB) issued on Nov. 6, 2018.



Additionally, we would like to express our deepest condolences to those who lost loved ones on Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302. A Boeing technical team is at the crash site to provide technical assistance under the direction of the Ethiopia Accident Investigation Bureau and U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. It is still early in the investigation, as we seek to understand the cause of the accident.

Crewmembers have a lot to deal with on a trip by trip basis... increases the risk of distraction... MCAS activates... is it legitimate or a spurious event? Adding Exposing crews to potential risks is just not right...

The FAA should have taken the lead and called for an immediate grounding of the MAX until the problem has been PROPERLY analyzed diagnosed, and repaired.

The AD contains many words for an antiseptic and band aide fix to a problem that’s not fully understood.

Those analogies only work in a world that has almost no car accidents or chocking events.

It seems that if only a few of these aircraft had been delivered they all would be grounded by now. Boeing comes up with a system that removes the pilot's primary pitch yolk input when there is a perceived unsafe condition and then say a few lines of code will sort it all out?