[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Boeing 737 Max 8

Thu Mar 14 15:24:50 UTC 2019

As for these planes, it sounds as though the FAA has finally agreed to
ground them here too.   Maybe Boeing believed Nader's comments about
their executives being criminally responsible for the next crash if they
let the planes continue to fly, and asked the FAA to go ahead and ground
them.

Back in February, on the Risks Digest
<https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/31/8> - an e-mail list for all sorts of
technological/societal risks, from air safety to mass surveillance to
plastics pollution to synthetic videos that look real - there was
discussion of the Lion Air crash.  It included a link to discussion
<https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/618252-boeing-737-max-software-fixes-due-lion-air-crash-delayed.html>
by a bunch of aircraft people of how the new Boeing aircraft had adopted
this aggressive stall-preventing behavior (forcing the nose down) if it
thought the plane was flying too slowly.   Some stall prevention was
needed, because of the plane's new design which gave it bigger engines
and more capacity -- a desirable thing -- but made it less stable than
previous designs.

The most critical problems people were identifying:
    - It was engineered to judge an impending stall based on the results
from just a single sensor.   Sensors should be redundant - a single
sensor can easily give false data (and have caused crashes in the past,
as when a French plane went down over the ocean when its airspeed sensor
got coated with ice.)
    - Worse, the new stall prevention system was not described to the
pilots in their training - so when it started to misbehave and told the
plane to dive, they wouldn't have known why.
    - The pilots were given a way to override the stall prevention
system - a switch could turn it off - but that only helps them if they
know to use it.

All this was clear after the *first* accident.

> Andy Pasztor and Andrew Tangel, *The Wall Street Journal*, 10 Feb 2019
> Boeing and Regulators Delay Jetliner Fixes Prompted by Lion Air Crash
> Software update, initially expected in January, now likely pushed
> until April or later [PGN-truncated for RISKS]
> https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-and-regulators-delay-jetliner-fixes-prompted-by-lion-air-crash-11549821489
> https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/618252-boeing-737-max-software-fixes-due-lion-air-crash-delayed.html

On 3/14/19 7:59 AM, Mildred O'brien via Peace-discuss wrote:
> Yesterday on Democracy Now Ralph Nader spoke of the sad news of the
> tragic death of his grandniece, granddaughter of his sister, one of
> the 157 who perished in the Ethiopian plane crash of Boeing's 737 Max
> 8/9.  She was on a health care mission in Africa representing her
> company on her first assignment of her new job after graduating from
> Amherst.  Nader called for the immediate grounding of the new Boeing
> 737 (unsafe at any speed) which as of that time before Pres. Trump was
> persuaded to make the call was grounded in most other countries except
> USA.  Nader recommends that people should refuse to fly on Boeing 737
> Max planes.  How ironic it took another tragic plane crash to affect
> the family of our foremost consumer safety advocate and founder of
> Public Citizen .
>
> I was reminded of a scary incident related by my brother, a TWA pilot 
> for 25 years who on his last flight before retirement was flying an
> old 707 charter carrying a soccer team to Los Angeles, when he
> couldn't get the landing gear lowered before approaching the airport. 
> He manually cranked the landing assembly in effort to engage the
> landing gear without success, repeated cranking until finally to their
> great relief was able to lower the wheels to safely land the plane. 
> That was more than 20 years ago before high tech and A.I. which now
> dominates the mechanics of the new "smart" aircraft that some pilots
> are not properly trained to operate in order to manually override
> computer-controlled automatic pilot, which complaints indicate is a
> design flaw. 
>
> Midge O'Brien 
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Weissman, Public Citizen <robert at citizen.org>
> To: Midge O'Brien <moboct1 at aol.com>
> Sent: Wed, Mar 13, 2019 1:42 pm
> Subject: Boeing 737 Max 8
>
> Public Citizen logo
>
> Midge,
>
> Two Boeing 737 Max 8 planes have crashed in recent months — killing
> hundreds.
>
> *As a result, these planes are now grounded nearly everywhere in the
> world *— *except the United States.*
>
> Tell Boeing, the Federal Aviation Administration, American Airlines
> and Southwest Airlines to ground these planes immediately.
>
> Sign the petition now.
> <https://default.salsalabs.org/T2584041a-437d-4f63-8328-5b43eba31702/732c1764-e378-4e59-aebd-e32f1a8005ed>
>
>
> These planes cannot be permitted to fly until their safety issues are
> identified and resolved.
> <https://default.salsalabs.org/T8bbd8185-8d25-49c0-a1a2-629a67e0bc48/732c1764-e378-4e59-aebd-e32f1a8005ed>
>
>
> In the days since the crash of the Ethiopian Airlines flight, a lot of
> information has emerged suggesting Boeing and regulators should have
> acted earlier on specific safety issues — and that earlier action
> could have saved the lives of the 157 human beings killed.
>
> In the days and weeks ahead, a lot more information is going to
> emerge, and we'll know a lot more.
>
> *But we have all the information we need to know that letting the
> Boeing 737 Max 8 planes continue to fly is reckless and inviting
> another tragedy.*
>
> Tell Boeing, federal regulators and the airlines to ground Boeing 737
> Max 8 planes right now.
> <https://default.salsalabs.org/T3307dc96-25d8-4de4-840c-32a588375c37/732c1764-e378-4e59-aebd-e32f1a8005ed>
>
>
> This is just a matter of common sense.
> <https://default.salsalabs.org/Taf56fe29-1038-4193-abc1-62b0698f58c2/732c1764-e378-4e59-aebd-e32f1a8005ed>
>
>
> There are broader lessons here about regulatory failure, industry
> capture and more.
>
> *But for right now, the imperative is: Ground these planes.*
>
> Onward,
>
> Robert Weissman
> President, Public Citizen
>
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