Flight software written/coded in India.
Netflix is who I trust for all my investigative journalism.
Not.
On the other hand before all this went down the head of Boeing said they did not want my nextgen 7-28-7 designs because they had a good thing going and wanted to milk their profits for as long as possible
Some claim this is what happens when you let MBAs overrule engineers.
This was an excellent show. MCAS was installed by Boeing but they utterly refused to train pilots on the system because it would cost money to retrain.
The doc has internal paperwork out the wazoo.
Is this new and different from the PBS Frontline documentary “Boeing’s Fatal Flaw” (released September 2021)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXMO0bhPhCw
I have talked to multiple Boeing pilots and a senior person within Boeing that the lack of training by these third world airlines is deficient. Why did this not happen with a US carrier?, duh. When they recreated the scenario in the simulator for the FAA administrator, who was a pilot, he simply turned the function off and flew the plane himself. That’s why Airbus is so dominant in Europe and third world countries as their planes are designed that the computer knows best. And, that’s coming from pilpt friends that have flown both.
I just watched it about an hour ago. It’s very good, and gets to some of the core things going on. Interestingly I worked for Boeing when the merger of Boeing and McDonald Douglas took place. Well, I was a contractor in it.
You had some glasses in it but it was actually a pretty good documentary and brought out some key points. One might take away from it that what caused this whole problem was their merger with McDonald douglas. They were no longer the same company.
Even the biggest Boeing fans will tell you that when they bought McDonald Douglas, that MD management took over Beoing and it became a company of bean counters.
If you actually read the official accident reports published by the NTSB and their foreign counterparts the principal causes of the two accidents were inadequate maintenance controls to identify and correct the bent AoA sensors and insufficient training and experience of the flight crews. There is a reason why the “runaway horizontal trim” emergency is a training checklist item for all commercial pilots. The main fault of Boeing was failure to disclose the existence of the MCAS software to pilots. Boeing bore some responsibility for the accidents but making them into evil villains is despicable.
The video contained several misleading pieces of information about the MCAS. It was not a “stall protection” system but rather a software fix to make the 737 Max to perform at high angles of attack exactly like the 737. This allowed Boeing to avoid having 737 pilots get an additional type certification for the Max since its stall characteristics were identical despite the different CG created by the larger engines. Training is the largest costs of operation.
Also, the MCAS has redundant AoA sensors one for the pilot and the other for the first officer side of the controls. Only one was damaged and the flight director could have been switched over to use the functional one if the crew had noticed the disparity in time.
I also dispute the assertion that they only had 10 seconds to identify and correct the problem. If a pilot is not in IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions) he should know where the horizon is. If the flight director is pushing the nose below the horizon with all engines running it needs to be disengaged and the plane flown manually until the issue can be resolved on the ground. Pilots are trained to manage the flight director, but they can’t forget basic flying rules of Aviate, Navigate, and Communicate.
One question I had, Southwest and United had been flying them for some time. Were there any reports, as part of the investigation, from WN/UA crews regarding MCAS issues before the crashes?
I watched it. It is well done.