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[webfact]

Boeing did not disclose 737 MAX alert issue to FAA for 13 months

By Tracy Rucinski and David Shepardson

 

FILE PHOTO: A Boeing 737 MAX 8 sits outside the hangar during a media tour of the Boeing 737 MAX at the Boeing plant in Renton, Washington December 8, 2015. REUTERS/Matt Mills McKnight/File Photo

 

CHICAGO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Boeing Co did not tell U.S. regulators for more than a year that it inadvertently made an alarm alerting pilots to a mismatch of flight data optional on the 737 MAX, instead of standard as on earlier 737s, but insisted on Sunday the missing display represented no safety risk.

 

The U.S. planemaker has been trying for weeks to dispel suggestions that it made airlines pay for safety features after it emerged that an alert designed to show discrepancies in Angle of Attack readings from two sensors was optional on the 737 MAX.

 

Erroneous data from a sensor responsible for measuring the angle at which the wing slices through the air - known as the Angle of Attack - is suspected of triggering a flawed piece of software that pushed the plane downward in two recent crashes.

 

In a statement, Boeing said it only discovered once deliveries of the 737 MAX had begun in 2017 that the so-called AOA Disagree alert was optional instead of standard as it had intended, but added that was not critical safety data.

 

A Federal Aviation Administration official told Reuters on Sunday that Boeing waited 13 months before informing the agency in November 2018.

 

By becoming optional, the alert had been treated in the same way as a separate indicator showing raw AOA data, which is seldom used by commercial pilots and had been an add-on for years.

 

"Neither the angle of attack indicator nor the AOA Disagree alert are necessary for the safe operation of the airplane," Boeing said.

 

"They provide supplemental information only, and have never been considered safety features on commercial jet transport airplanes."

 

Boeing said a Safety Review Board convened after a fatal Lion Air crash in Indonesia last October corroborated its prior conclusion that the alert was not necessary for the safe operation of commercial aircraft and could safely be tackled in a future system update.

 

The FAA backed that assessment but criticized Boeing for being slow to disclose the problem.

 

Boeing briefed the FAA on the display issue in November, after the Lion Air accident, and a special panel deemed it to be "low risk," an FAA spokesman said.

 

"However, Boeing’s timely or earlier communication with the operators would have helped to reduce or eliminate possible confusion," he added.

Boeing attributed the error to software delivered to the company from an outside source, but did not give details.

 

INDUSTRY DEBATE

Sunday's statement marked the first time since the two fatal accidents that Boeing explicitly acknowledged doing something inadvertently in the development of the 737 MAX, albeit on an issue that it contends has no impact on safety.

 

Boeing has said the feeding of erroneous Angle of Attack data to a system called MCAS that pushed the planes lower was a common link in two wider chains of events leading to both crashes, but has stopped short of admitting error on that front.

 

The angle of attack measures the angle between the air flow and the wing and helps determine whether the plane is able to fly correctly. If the angle becomes too steep, the flow of air over the wing is disturbed, throwing the plane into an aerodynamic stall. That means it starts to fall instead of fly.

 

Although the angle itself is key for onboard systems, the industry has debated for years whether such data should be included in already crowded cockpit displays because it is directly related to airspeed, which pilots already scrutinize.

 

Some analysts and academics say having the AOA Disagree alert installed would have helped Lion Air maintenance crew diagnose a problem on the penultimate flight of the 737 MAX jet that crashed in October, killing all 189 on board.

 

The 737 MAX was grounded worldwide over safety concerns following the Ethiopian crash in March, killing 157 people.

 

When the jet returns to service, all new aircraft will have a working AOA Disagree alert as a standard feature and a no-charge optional indicator showing the underlying data, Boeing said. That restores the situation found on the displays of previous 737NG models since around the middle of last decade.

 

Airlines with grounded 737 MAX jets will be able to activate the AOA Disagree function directly.

 

Boeing is also developing a software upgrade and training changes to the MCAS system that must be approved by global regulators before the jets can fly again.

 

Boeing has yet to formally submit the upgrades to the FAA for approval but could do as early as this week once it completes a special test flight.

 

Federal prosecutors, the Transportation Department inspector general's office and a blue-ribbon panel are also looking into the 737 MAX's certification.

 

A U.S. House of Representatives panel will hold a hearing on the plane's status with the FAA's acting chief, Dan Elwell, and National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt on May 15.

 

(Reporting by Tracy Rucinski in Chicago and David Shepardson in Wasington; Additional reporting by Tim Hepher in Paris; Writing by Tracy Rucinski, Tim Hepher; Editing by Bill Berkrot and Peter Cooney)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-05-06

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[Baerboxer]

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck........................ it is a duck!

 

Own up Boeing. Bereaved families should be talking to their lawyers.

[SOTIRIOS]

....'a missing display'......???

 

...duhh....

 

...oops......were they hoping that...nobody would notice...???

 

...!@#$%^&*(....

Edited May 6, 2019 by SOTIRIOS
...grammar...

[soalbundy]

This is going to cost them and not just at the hands of the bereaved. The damage to their reputation must be enormous, time to tool up airbus

[Lacessit]

This is what happens when regulators get too cosy with the companies they are supposed to regulate, and bean counters overrule the common sense of engineers and technicians in the pursuit of more profit.

Both Boeing and the FAA have done themselves enormous damage. The damage will get greater if they keep trying to fudge the answers.

[Srikcir]

5 hours ago, webfact said:

the so-called AOA Disagree alert was optional instead of standard as it had intended

Whatever was the reason to make it optional!

That's like having an optional fuel gauge.

[rudi49jr]

If I were a surviving relative (husband/wife/child) of one of the crash victims I’d sue the pants off of them!!! Talk about playing with the lives of hundreds of innocent people, jeez! 

[Basil B]

I assume by making safety features optional they must have played down their importance, hoping the buyers would still want all the bells and whistles...

 

Obviously they overlooked the third world. 

[Basil B]

1 minute ago, rudi49jr said:

If I were a surviving relative (husband/wife/child) of one of the crash victims I’d sue the pants off of them!!! Talk about playing with the lives of hundreds of innocent people, jeez! 

I wonder if Boing will be thinking of moving their Corporate HQ to a country less litigious ...and more tax friendly? 

[balo]

6 hours ago, webfact said:

A Federal Aviation Administration official told Reuters on Sunday that Boeing waited 13 months before informing the agency in November 2018.

 

By becoming optional, the alert had been treated in the same way as a separate indicator showing raw AOA data, which is seldom used by commercial pilots and had been an add-on for years.

 

"Neither the angle of attack indicator nor the AOA Disagree alert are necessary for the safe operation of the airplane," Boeing said.

 

This is serious. If they think they can get away with it just like that, think again . Not only all the passengers that lost their lives thanks to Boeing engineers , but also most passengers in the world will think twice before they book a flight.  

Even if they claim to have fixed the issue, I will never step foot inside a 737 MAX .  I prefer Airbus anyway. 

Edited May 6, 2019 by balo

[madmen]

Flight simulator version of what happened and excellent 60 mins news piece

 

 

 

[Jonnapat]

This is what happens when a company is left to regulate itself.

Same happened with the banks and look how that turned out. 

[lagavulin1]

1 hour ago, Lacessit said:

This is what happens when regulators get too cosy with the companies they are supposed to regulate, and bean counters overrule the common sense of engineers and technicians in the pursuit of more profit.

Both Boeing and the FAA have done themselves enormous damage. The damage will get greater if they keep trying to fudge the answers.

Excellent comment There are North of 300 corpses who might disagree that Boeing's knee jerk Max response to the AB320 Neo was not the cause of their demise. 

[Dumbastheycome]

I am struggling  to understand  any sense in the defensive statements by Boeing.

They had included software which had /has erroneously contradicted normal ascent to the point of literally diving the aircraft into the ground. Uninformed and unaware pilots with no cockpit indicators of the cause given seconds to react and regain control. Optional safety features ? Would that be a small display stating: "You are crashing because something we have not told you about is making that happen. Sorry about that! "

So is the villian the  sensors that failed or the  software that over reacted to it?

Boeing  should  stop fudging the question of  culpability ! Admit negligence!

Costing them by the loss of sales should way be a secondary consideration to maximum compensation to each and every spouse, child etc!

 

 

 

[Oleolf]

This is what a software developer and pilot wrote about the disastrous development of the Boeing 737.

 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-boeing-737-max-disaster-looks-to-a-software-developer.amp.html

[billd766]

25 minutes ago, Oleolf said:

This is what a software developer and pilot wrote about the disastrous development of the Boeing 737.

 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-boeing-737-max-disaster-looks-to-a-software-developer.amp.html

Thank you for that very interesting and informative link.

[newnative]

  No safety risk?  What hogwash.  Two deadly crashes suggest otherwise.

[toenail]

USA’s reputation for safety & good quality will only get worse under the Trump administration with deregulation and more relaxed safety standards. Profits is more important than ones safety. ( Gun manufactures,  pharmaceutical companies, food inspections done by the FDA are examples.) 

[Dumbastheycome]

1 hour ago, Oleolf said:

This is what a software developer and pilot wrote about the disastrous development of the Boeing 737.

 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-boeing-737-max-disaster-looks-to-a-software-developer.amp.html

That  is  a complete condemnation of  Boeing in light of tragic events !

Thankyou for providing the link.

[Pedrogaz]

6 hours ago, soalbundy said:

This is going to cost them and not just at the hands of the bereaved. The damage to their reputation must be enormous, time to tool up airbus

Airbus have their own issues. No corporation has clean hands where safety is concerned.....all would willingly sacrifice lives for extra profit. There is no morality in a corporation, anything goes as long as it delivers the bottom line.

[madmen]

7 minutes ago, Pedrogaz said:

Airbus have their own issues. No corporation has clean hands where safety is concerned.....all would willingly sacrifice lives for extra profit. There is no morality in a corporation, anything goes as long as it delivers the bottom line.

Indeed Airbus was the first to introduce software to take control of the plane. There is a you tube vid of an airbus at an airshow flying low and slow and the flight computer saw an impending stall and next thing you can see is the plane going down into the forest and a big fireball. the test pilot survived but was fired by Airbus and was the scapegoat

Edited May 6, 2019 by madmen

[Pique Dard]

what would had happened if the indonasian plane was owned by an american compagny and had crashed in the usa? the second crash with the ethiopian plane would not have occured because all boeing 737 max would have been grounded at once. i'm pretty sure about that!

[Cryingdick]

Yeah I agree it hardly inspires confidence. Let's see if criminal charges come out of this.

[soalbundy]

14 hours ago, Dumbastheycome said:

I am struggling  to understand  any sense in the defensive statements by Boeing.

They had included software which had /has erroneously contradicted normal ascent to the point of literally diving the aircraft into the ground. Uninformed and unaware pilots with no cockpit indicators of the cause given seconds to react and regain control. Optional safety features ? Would that be a small display stating: "You are crashing because something we have not told you about is making that happen. Sorry about that! "

So is the villian the  sensors that failed or the  software that over reacted to it?

Boeing  should  stop fudging the question of  culpability ! Admit negligence!

Costing them by the loss of sales should way be a secondary consideration to maximum compensation to each and every spouse, child etc!

 

 

 

Rather like driving down the motorway at 100mph, seeing a traffic jam way up ahead you attempt to to brake and get a brake failure warning.

[mtls2005]

I'm guessing MCAS wasn't enabled on this one?

 

 

 

This one was tough to watch...

 

 

[Cryingdick]

13 minutes ago, soalbundy said:

Rather like driving down the motorway at 100mph, seeing a traffic jam way up ahead you attempt to to brake and get a brake failure warning.

That is a pretty dumb analogy. 

[Scott]

Off-topic post removed.  

 

[ballpoint]

1 hour ago, soalbundy said:

Rather like driving down the motorway at 100mph, seeing a traffic jam way up ahead you attempt to to brake and get a brake failure warning.

More like seeing a traffic jam, hitting the brake and having the car automatically divert the force applied on the brake pedal to the accelerator instead.

[dabhand]

When you link Boeing with the worst traits of the Insurance industry this is what happens:

'Families cheated of Boeing crash compensation'

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48953892 

Is there any element of this sad chain of events that shows Boeing in a good light?

[rabas]

On 5/7/2019 at 7:35 AM, soalbundy said:

Rather like driving down the motorway at 100mph, seeing a traffic jam way up ahead you attempt to to brake and get a brake failure warning.

More like you don't know the brakes don't work because you didn't pay for the brake failure indicator on a heavy unbalanced car.  So you desperately pump the breaks sending the car off a cliff and down the side of a mountain.