advertisement


Would you fly on this plane?

cctaylor said:
Ralph Nader's niece was one of the casualties.

What he knows about about taking on big companies will make life difficult for Boeing's legal team.
Click to expand...

He’s suing them, so it’s going to be interesting. I think the FAA should also be in court.
 
Mullardman said:
I do recall the days when smoking was generally a delightful adjunct to gazing out of the window as we floated over the European continent and down towards the Med.

.
Click to expand...

I was a non smoker. The non smoking seats were at the rear of the plane. I recall a flight to Spain where my non smoking seat was in the first row behind all the smoking seats.

Non smoking ? ... the airlines should have been sued under the Trades Decriptions Act.
 
Rug Doc said:
This was a strange quote I read the other day..



An ‘Optional safety feature’ I mean wtf! It’s an aeroplane, not a BMW 318
Click to expand...

Yes, somewhat bizarrely it wasn't mandated by the FAA, so Boeing were entitled to charge extra for fitting it. Naturally some of the lesser carriers decided they couldn't spare the extra outlay, including the operators of the two downed aircraft - Lion Air and Ethiopian Air.

Strangely enough, since the entire fleet was grounded, Boeing have decided to fit the safety feature for free. Shame it took 346 lives to make them see sense.
 
Strange - when I flew during the 'smoking' on planes years the smoking rows were at the back, as I remember. When I was working in South Africa in 1983 I was a smoker and so me and the boss (also a smoker) always sat at the back as nipped between Jo'burg and Durban.
 
Ah but the government doesn't put the planes together. I mean, can you imagine the current HoP designing the plane? If they can't manage a Brexit, they certainly couldn't get the thing airborne, what with one side heading to one end of the runway and the other the opposite.
 
I flew on the last European smoking flight, Barcelona to Madrid, nearly every seat was smoking, it was a party. It was cloudier inside than it was at 20,000 feet.
 
Mercifully, there was no smoke detected on TOM 459 from CUN to BHX yesterday. All went smoothly and I am now back home, poised to pepper PFM with more inanities.. :D
I still couldn't quite get my head around the bizarre situation of being at 40000 ft 2000 miles from land over an icy ocean in the dark, supported by only a couple of wings and two engines.. But Hey!!..
 
JonR said:
Yes, somewhat bizarrely it wasn't mandated by the FAA, so Boeing were entitled to charge extra for fitting it. Naturally some of the lesser carriers decided they couldn't spare the extra outlay, including the operators of the two downed aircraft - Lion Air and Ethiopian Air.

Strangely enough, since the entire fleet was grounded, Boeing have decided to fit the safety feature for free. Shame it took 346 lives to make them see sense.
Click to expand...
Thing is, the 'important safety feature' is an indicator to show that the angle of attack indicator is faulty, which may mean the stability system will make unwanted control inputs and should be shut off. But my understanding is that the crew of the Ethiopian Airlines flight realised it was this system which was malfunctioning, and followed the correct procedures in order to shut the system off. But it didn't work, which makes the advanced warning indicator a bit lame as an 'important safety feature'.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Thing is, the 'important safety feature' is an indicator to show that the angle of attack indicator is faulty, which may mean the stability system will make unwanted control inputs and should be shut off.
Click to expand...

Not 'should be shut off', it will be shut off automatically by the new version of the software being proposed. The problem then is if you need to do a rapid go-around (aborted landing) at high AoA and pull the flaps in, the whole purpose of MCAS (higher stick forces approaching stall) will have been compromised.

The design of the aircraft is poor and needs sorting out, not simply adding the MCAS sticking plaster.

CHE
 
Mullardman said:
Mercifully, there was no smoke detected on TOM 459 from CUN to BHX yesterday. All went smoothly and I am now back home, poised to pepper PFM with more inanities.. :D
I still couldn't quite get my head around the bizarre situation of being at 40000 ft 2000 miles from land over an icy ocean in the dark, supported by only a couple of wings and two engines.. But Hey!!..
Click to expand...
Remember what you agreed with the others Mull. What happens in Cancun stays in Cancun...
 
CHE said:
The problem then is if you need to do a rapid go-around (aborted landing) at high AoA and pull the flaps in, the whole purpose of MCAS (higher stick forces approaching stall) will have been compromised.

The design of the aircraft is poor and needs sorting out, not simply adding the MCAS sticking plaster.

CHE
Click to expand...
I agree. I can understand unstable designs for military applications, and to some extent I can accept a degree of reduced stability as a tradeoff for increased efficiency in civil designs. In both cases you need fly by wire to fill in the gaps, and there is a measure of artificiality to the stick forces as a result.

But instability as a result of flawed design decisions, and software fudges to get around the certification or training issues is surely a step too far. It feels like exactly the sort of scenario the certification standards were intended to prevent. This is a failure of regulation as much as poor design because the former failed to prevent the latter.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top