Was Nosediving Boeing Plane Caused By a Flight Attendant Hitting a Motorized Seat Switch? (msn.com) 166
Last week 50 people were injured when a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner experienced a sudden mid-air drop — raising concerns about the possibility of a new safety issue. But the Wall Street Journal offers a follow-up report.
"A flight attendant hit a switch on the pilot's seat while serving a meal, leading a motorized feature to push the pilot into the controls and push down the plane's nose, according to U.S. industry officials briefed on preliminary evidence from an investigation." The switch, on the back of the chair, is usually covered and isn't supposed to be used when a pilot is in the seat. Boeing issued a memo late Thursday to operators of 787 jets recommending that they inspect the cockpit chairs for loose covers on the switches and instructing them how to turn off power to the pilot seat motor if needed. Boeing said it is considering updates to flight crew manuals. "Closing the spring-loaded seat back switch guard onto a loose/detached rocker switch cap can potentially jam the rocker switch, resulting in unintended seat movement," according to the memo, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The memo says this was a known issue and that Boeing had issued a related service notice in 2017....
American Airlines issued a notice to 787 captains advising them of the potential hazard. It asked them to instruct the crew not to use the switch while the chair is occupied and said that its maintenance teams would check that the switches are properly secured.
Ipeco, the cockpit seat supplier, didn't respond to the Journal's request for a comment. But in a new CNN video, a pilot demonstrates the location of the button — and speculates that a seat pushing a pilot forward could abruptly override the plane's auto-pilot system.
"It would be good news for Boeing if it is cleared of any fault in the Latam flight," adds another CNN report. "The company is facing multiple investigations by both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board..."
The Journal's article includes footage from inside the plane just moments after the incident and notes that some passengers had been "pinned to the ceiling as the airplane suddenly descended."
"A flight attendant hit a switch on the pilot's seat while serving a meal, leading a motorized feature to push the pilot into the controls and push down the plane's nose, according to U.S. industry officials briefed on preliminary evidence from an investigation." The switch, on the back of the chair, is usually covered and isn't supposed to be used when a pilot is in the seat. Boeing issued a memo late Thursday to operators of 787 jets recommending that they inspect the cockpit chairs for loose covers on the switches and instructing them how to turn off power to the pilot seat motor if needed. Boeing said it is considering updates to flight crew manuals. "Closing the spring-loaded seat back switch guard onto a loose/detached rocker switch cap can potentially jam the rocker switch, resulting in unintended seat movement," according to the memo, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The memo says this was a known issue and that Boeing had issued a related service notice in 2017....
American Airlines issued a notice to 787 captains advising them of the potential hazard. It asked them to instruct the crew not to use the switch while the chair is occupied and said that its maintenance teams would check that the switches are properly secured.
Ipeco, the cockpit seat supplier, didn't respond to the Journal's request for a comment. But in a new CNN video, a pilot demonstrates the location of the button — and speculates that a seat pushing a pilot forward could abruptly override the plane's auto-pilot system.
"It would be good news for Boeing if it is cleared of any fault in the Latam flight," adds another CNN report. "The company is facing multiple investigations by both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board..."
The Journal's article includes footage from inside the plane just moments after the incident and notes that some passengers had been "pinned to the ceiling as the airplane suddenly descended."
Boeing aren't concerned, as it's (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Boeing aren't concerned, as it's (Score:5, Insightful)
Having the whistle-blower suffer an accident discourages further whistles from being blown. And there's plenty of other issues at Boeing we're yet to hear about.
They'd probably fuck the whistle-blower financially or administratively somehow, physical elimination doesn't seem to be their style. Because to be effective, such an accident needs to be signed -- such as polonium tea or defenestration that's the signature of a certain other opponent-eliminator.
Re:Boeing aren't concerned, as it's (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, it seems I missed the news about one of whistle-blowers having been actually unalived recently. I stand corrected: physical elimination is indeed on the table.
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Re:Boeing aren't concerned, as it's (Score:5, Informative)
You're not very good with reality are you.
Already Out in the Open for Years (Score:2)
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Now that he's dead, what are you going to do, gather up his depositions and sue Boeing on his behalf?
I didn't think so.
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He was just about to testify. The case can't proceed without the whistleblower.
You're not very good with reality are you.
So they decided that hiring a hitman was a better risk vs reward than negotiating a settlement?
Wow, I always figured that Boeing execs were guilty of enriching themselves at the cost of the company. But instead it turns out they're willing to risk life imprisonment just to save shareholders a few bucks!
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He was just about to testify. The case can't proceed without the whistleblower.
He was testifying in a defamation claim. The whistle had already been blown.
You're not very good with reality are you.
I love watching ignorant people throw insults at the end of their posts with an intent of claiming someone else is ignorant. But I'll be the bigger man and not insult you. You've already suffered enough at your own hand.
Re: Boeing aren't concerned, as it's (Score:3, Informative)
He'd blown the whistle, but his testimony was still needed for the case to proceed.
Also, suicide while in the middle of his case? When the thing he'd been working to bring to light for years was finally happening?
I get it, there's no proof. But dismissing the accusation out of hand is being wilfully retarded.
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I'm not really up on the conspiracy angle, but although John Barnett had blown the whistle, my understanding (feel freel to correct if wrong) is that he had not testified yet. Which, of course, he can't do now. So if there was anything else he might have revealed, it's lost.
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He's scheduled to give more testimony on his own suit against Boeing.
Boeing Golden Parachutes (Score:2)
Also CEOs have golden parachutes..
True but for Boeing CEOs those parachutes will have been made by Boeing so whos knows what might happen if they use them.
Automatic Pilot (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Automatic Pilot (Score:5, Funny)
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Maybe one of the flight attendants had to activate the manual inflation nozzle.
The flight attendant might have bent over to ask the Captain to check that her landing gear was in the upright and locked position.
Ejector seat button (Score:5, Funny)
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You jest but the only case of pilot ejecting from large passenger aircraft that comes to mind came from broken window, not the seat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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The power button on the new Dell laptop that work gave me is right next to the delete key.
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The power button on the new Dell laptop that work gave me is right next to the delete key.
So it's a delete all shortcut?
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Fortunately the button just sleeps the machine. You can probably change it to do nothing once booted, but I just an external keyboard anyway because the Dell one is crap.
But yes, very nearly a complete disaster.
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Same. And with the relative size of those buttons, it is very easy to Ctrl-Alt-POWER when you try to log into Windows.
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MS Flight Stimulator [Re:Ejector seat button] (Score:3)
Maybe the plane was designed by Microsoft. I remember when my work PC was upgraded from Windows 8 to 10, the Quick Access menu feature of Windows Explorer had removed the ability to have aliases (titles) for shortcuts. I didn't know this, and clicked "rename" to put my aliases back, for this is how to change alias name in Windows 8.
But I was inadvertently renaming ACTUAL network folders used by thousands of employees, not aliases, and the phone started ringing off the hook. When I realized what happened, I
I thought this was fly-by-wire? (Score:3)
I find it odd that the flight computer will reject commands that will do things like over-stress the airframe, while at the same time allowing a maneuver that's this dangerous for the crew and passengers?
I suppose it's allowed due to the pilot maybe having the need to do something like that in an emergency, but they should have to manually disengage the autopilot or something for that. I assume the autopilot was on at this stage, and that the sudden stick movement automatically disengaged the autopilot and kicked them into the nose-dive.
It also wouldn't surprise me if that server standing in the cockpit didn't get flung into the chair and possibly pilot, just making the problem worse.
Re:I thought this was fly-by-wire? (Score:5, Informative)
> I find it odd that the flight computer will reject
> commands that will do things like over-stress the
> airframe, while at the same time allowing a
> maneuver that's this dangerous for the crew and
> passengers?
That's part of the difference in philosophy at Boeing versus Airbus. (Post McDonnell-Douglas merger prioritizing of cost-cutting over quality notwithstanding.)
Boeing believes that the pilot knows best. Even where they do fly-by-wire, the pilot is allowed to override the flight envelope, even in ways that can stress the airframe or endanger passengers. The idea is that the computer's programmers can't anticipate every circumstance, pilots train for years or even decades (Especially to fly wide-bodies like the 787.) to acquire their expertise, and they should be able to use that expertise to solve the problem, even if it means ruining the aircraft or hurting some passengers if it gets the rest safely on the ground. Even the MCAS on the 737 Max can be overridden by the pilot. The ones that crashed... the airlines just didn't bother to train the pilots.
Airbus, on the other hand, believes that the computer knows best. And the pilot is nothing more than a glorified data-entry clerk; only there to operate the computer. The pilot is not allowed to take the aircraft out of the pre-programmed flight envelope. The computer on Airbus planes will (And have, on a number of occasions... at least once at an airshow,.) quite cheerfully fly the aircraft into the ground, ignoring the pilot's control input, rather than depart from the programmed envelope and place undue strain on the airframe or engines.
Re:I thought this was fly-by-wire? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well then they are both wrong. Good grief, even quitting an application without saving the file commonly asks "are you sure"
You're about to crash the plane with no survivors. Are you sure?
"Yes"
"No"
"Ask again later"
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So when they recover the bodies forensic analysis of the pilot's retina can show that she was looking at that dialog (the fifth in a series of "Are You Sure" dialogs demanded by Bugs2Squash) to the very end?
(Yes, I know that recovering an image from the retina of a dead person of what they last saw is a fictional plot device.)
Re:I thought this was fly-by-wire? (Score:4, Informative)
That's an outright lie. Boeing promised airlines a million dollars per plane where pilots had to be retrained on the new 737 max. Revealing the extent of changes to the MCAS system [seattletimes.com] would have required re-training. So Boeing deliberately hid the extent of changes to the system causing at least one deadly accident. The airlines didn't know about this system. Due to regulatory capture the FAA didn't know. And the plane fought the pilots and the plane went down.
Old Boing philosophy (Score:2)
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Obviously MCAS showed that "Boeing believes that the pilot knows best" isn't true at all.
Not at all. MCAS didn't override the pilot. It set an automatic trim, it just did so further than a pilot was able to compensate for it preventing a pilot from achieving his goal. The pilot was still able to move towards their objective. Quite critically a pilot can still stall a plane with MCAS, and can still nosedive it. The goal of MCAS isn't to overrule the pilot, it's to make them feel like they were flying a different plane.
The bigger issue was the system was convoluted, unreliable, and poorly communi
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It's a bit harsh to say that "the airlines just didn't bother to train the pilots" in the case of the 737 MAX failures because Boeing didn't include information for that training.
However I think (yes, it's easy being an armchair quarterback not suffering from inevitable tunnel vision that occurs to at least some degree in an unexpected crisis situation) a well trained intelligent pilot should have quickly recognized that something out of their control was affecting the trim and thought to execute the "Runaw
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Well, I based that particular statement on what I was told by a friend who used to be an airline pilot until he became ineligible for medical reasons. He has done quite well for himself since then and occasionally books simulator time for old times sake. Yes, really, I am talking full fledged FAA certified 737, 757, or 767 cockpits depending mood and availability. He is, to this day, THAT much of a plane geek. He told me all that was necessary was to flip two switches in the center panel, the primary and ba
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Oh more anti-Airbus bollocks.
No, an Airbus aircraft did not override a pilot at an airshow - you are talking about the Mulhouse–Habsheim Airfield crash in 1988, and that was entirely pilot induced. Too low, power at or near idle, below surrounding structures and applied power too late - no jet aircraft is going to go from lower power to high power quickly, it takes time for the engines to spool up.
That pilot was an idiot. That crash was not caused by Airbuses flight envelope protection.
And your unde
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You don't want to have to hit a bunch of buttons if you have to make an emergency maneuver. A dive like that can be necessary to avoid a midair collision.
Dreamliners are amazing planes (Score:3)
ACTUAL video of a 787 seat motor button in action (Score:5, Informative)
That CNN video is some pilot in a random different plane saying things "on a 787 there would be a button here"...
Here is an actual 787 seat in action. [youtube.com]
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Re:ACTUAL video of a 787 seat motor button in acti (Score:4, Funny)
They have to pay you to sit on them!
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Certainly ain't bump-able by accident! Sounds like the story is bullshit misdirection.
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Certainly ain't bump-able by accident! Sounds like the story is bullshit misdirection.
When in fully working order it isn't. Yet right in TFS Boeing gives ways in which it can be operated inadvertently. Boeing. The one company who stands to gain alot from your declaration that this *certainly* ain't bump-able by accident, came out and said how it can happen by accident and asked for an inspection. The company itself. Boeing. To be clear you're going against the word of the people who designed the thing. Boeing.
Do you feel silly yet? Or do I need to say Boeing disagreed with you to their own d
Re:ACTUAL video of a 787 seat motor button in acti (Score:4, Interesting)
The bigger question here is if pushing on the flight controls could cause what the passengers experienced.
I'm less familiar with Boeing, but Airbus aircraft are fly-by-wire and don't allow inputs that would cause such violent manoeuvres. And even if they did, I'm not sure that the control surfaces on the aircraft could cause such sudden changes in the rate of climb/descent.
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Actually the same thing happened once on a RAF A330.
https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com]
Didn't they just murder a whisteblower? (Score:2)
The media needs to start naming board members and associating them with their political spending. As far as I can tell, Boeing is a company that kills for profit. Ya, I believe they murdered a whistleblower but they definitely cut costs knowing it was likely to cost people their lives.
Why isn't t
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The whistle blower had blown all the whistles he had. What would be the point of murdering him now?
Just a bad company (Score:2, Troll)
Crazy single point of failure. (Score:5, Interesting)
>> "It would be good news for Boeing if it is cleared of any fault"
I don't think so.
Having a switch without any safety nor redundancy able to single-handedly jam the controls indirectly is just blatant design failure.
It is called a single point of failure, and defeats redundancy. Someone took risk analysis a little bit too light (seems like a redundant theme at Boeing...)
An occupancy detection deactivating this feature when the seat is occupied, or when the pilot in this seat is in control of the AP, would be a really good place to start.
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An occupancy detection deactivating this feature when the seat is occupied, or when the pilot in this seat is in control of the AP, would be a really good place to start.
That would just add another point of failure.
Mechanical security (button cover that works without getting stuck in the open position) or an additional release button that requires two hands to actually activate the seat motors would be simpler
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>> "That would just add another point of failure."
Not really. It would add a possible failure to move the seat. Not a failure of the whole aircraft.
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Only if it would be guaranteed that the sensor fails into the "seat occupied" state and never gives "seat empty" when not. That would lead to exactly the same situation where a single accidental press of the seat button would jam the pilot into the steering.
Re:Crazy single point of failure. (Score:5, Interesting)
These are the kind of engineering issues that are very hard to anticipate and are not discovered until thousands of switch replacements have occurred and one of those is done sloppily and then the confluent action of being accidentally pressed occurs. Now I am waiting for all of the pilot anecdotes where this happened without consequence because it would be extremely odd if this was the first time this ever happened. We are just hearing about it because it was an incident of consequence.
I'm not convinced we know the whole cockpit story. Is the pilot very large, or did they have something in their lap
This is why you (Score:2)
Keep your seatbelt on even when you don't have to. Unexpected turbulence can send you up into the ceiling.
I just didn't know unexpected turbulence included the pilot causing a nose dive
Pull the lever, Kronk! (Score:2)
Wrong leveeerrrrrrrrrr...
Why do we even have that lever?
Please remember (Score:2)
This is an incident in the US and does not appear to be related to the incident between Australia and New Zealand when an aircraft lost all of its flight controls and plunged out of the sky.
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No it's the same incident, LATAM airlines.
It's on Boeing regardless (Score:2)
'"It would be good news for Boeing if it is cleared of any fault in the Latam flight," adds another CNN report'.
Not so. And Boeing can't be cleared just by blaming it on a subcontractor. If a company subcontracts work and then sells the whole aircraft, that company is responsible for the condition of the whole aircraft. Just as a boss is responsible for failures on the part of his or her subordinates.
Nosediving Plane Caused By a Motorized Seat Swtich (Score:3)
Was Nosediving Boeing Plane Caused By a Flight Attendant Hitting a Motorized Seat Switch?
That would not surprise me. Boeing's approach to seat switch placement seems to be: 'Now, what's the dumbest possible place we could put these seat switches???
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Ever notice how a big corporate scandal gets the mainstream media into bringing up every problem... that likely hardly would be noticed?
I would like to know how many big stock players who are shorting the stock are behind such trends? Then they buy the stock when it's down and the stories get out of fashion as the company rebounds...
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Ever notice how a big corporate scandal gets the mainstream media into bringing up every problem... that likely hardly would be noticed?
I would like to know how many big stock players who are shorting the stock are behind such trends? Then they buy the stock when it's down and the stories get out of fashion as the company rebounds...
I know that hating the mainstream media is the new American pastime, but if a flight attendant accidentally hit a motorized switch on a pilot's seat while serving him a meal causing the aircraft you are in to nose dive resulting in twelve people being taken to hospital you would notice, especially if you were that one of those twelve passengers that's in serious condition.
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Ever notice how a big corporate scandal gets the mainstream media into bringing up every problem... that likely hardly would be noticed?
No I don't notice that. Mainly because you don't need a corporate scandal for the news to cover a story where 50 people get injured using the world's safest form of transport.
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Wait until you read about where the valve for the fuel tanks was in John Denver's experimental airplane.
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https://www.avweb.com/flight-safety/close-up-the-john-denver-crash/ [avweb.com]
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The Board determines that the builderâ(TM)s decision to locate the unmarked fuel selector handle in a hard-to-access position, unmarked fuel quantity sight gauges, inadequate transition training by the pilot, and his lack of total experience in this type of airplane were factors in this accident.
I I am not mistaken, To switch from one fuel tank to the next is a manual process on an unmarked and hard to reach lever plus the pilot was likely inexperienced in ever doing this(needless difficult task) before
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Motorized seats? Shit idea. (Score:3)
We all like our motorized seats in our cars but the failure of one of those has a limited impact. Speaking of impact, motorized seats in planes could literally cause one which kills hundreds of people.
Pilots only need to adjust it when they get into the seat. And these controls are supposed to be unusable by a seated pilot? So they don't actually help with that anyway? They shouldn't EXIST. The ONLY use case for power seats where they actually DO meaningfully improve usability is where you have a single vehicle being driven by at least two different people who have their own seat memory settings. And these systems don't seem to have seat memory, so they don't provide anything to pilots...
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We all like our motorized seats in our cars but the failure of one of those has a limited impact. Speaking of impact, motorized seats in planes could literally cause one which kills hundreds of people.
Pilots only need to adjust it when they get into the seat. And these controls are supposed to be unusable by a seated pilot? So they don't actually help with that anyway? They shouldn't EXIST. The ONLY use case for power seats where they actually DO meaningfully improve usability is where you have a single vehicle being driven by at least two different people who have their own seat memory settings. And these systems don't seem to have seat memory, so they don't provide anything to pilots...
You ever tried adjusting a non-motorized seat in a car? You pull the lever, lurch forward or backwards as you manage to get the seat moving, then finally get it nudged into position.
I can imagine safely adjusting a motorized seat while driving, but a manual one? That's insane. The big difference between a car and a plane is I can stop a car mid journey. If a pilot wants to manually adjust their seat in flight they better lock out their entire console in case they accidentally lurch themselves forward into i
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Good lord (Score:2)
Ok, so, part of this might be overenthusiastic reporting. Once media attention is drawn to something, things that would have been page twenty-six tend to show up above the fold because of its association with a previous incident. This tends to make things seem worse than they actually are.
That said, ye gods.
Nope (Score:2)
No, it's not just a flight attendant pushing a switch. The switch is located under a spring loaded cover, a wide one. The problem is that the rocker switch can be loose, in which case leaning on a "closed" cover can activate the switch. A video exists of just that, which appears to be maybe the seat in question in the actual plane.
This is both a design and maintenance issue. It's a design issue because most of the rocker switches I have seen are installed by pushing them into their hole and springs or s
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Airbus planes have a tray table because they have a sidestick, not a yoke. Airbus pilots are fond of teasing Boeing pilots about it. With the yoke in front of the pilot, there isn't room for a try, nor would you want one because it would interfere with the controls.
The same thing happened to me (Score:2)
I was having dental surgery when a hygienist accidentally stepped on a foot switch that controlled the dental chair. I was instantly raised from a lying position to sitting up. The surgeon had a scalpel in my mouth at the time. Fortunately I was not harmed.
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No, we may see you dead in the car on the way to their airport though. Statistically that is how you're more likely to die than in a Boeing plane.
Boeing vs. cars. (Score:2)
Boeing is working very hard to overcome car accidents statistics, it seems.
It has a lot of catch-up to achieve this.
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How many passenger deaths on Boeing airliners operated by commercial US carriers in the past 10 years have been even remotely attributable to failures by Boeing? (I think the answer is zero).
Note that both 737 MAX crashes resulting in passenger deaths were not operated by US carriers. Some foreign carriers are much less stringent on both maintenance procedures and pilot training and qualification.
That doesn't mean that Boeing couldn't do a better job. But if you need to get from point A to point B where A a
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I thought people stopped blaming the MAX crashes on "incompetent foreign pilots" shortly after Boeing did. That's quite the staying power you have.
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In one case, the problems caused by the failed component had been been reported multiple times and the maintenance crew couldn't find any problem so put the plane back "in service".
Pilots are expected to respond to failures and they had all the tools necessary to do so in both of these cases - they failed to do so.
Notice that not a single US operated 737 MAX crashed.
If you think that all foreign carriers have standards as high as the US and other "true first world" carriers, you're naive and ignorant.
If aut
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And Airbus has software capable of overriding the pilot, resulting in a crash at the Paris Air Show when said software insisted that the touch-and-go that the pilot was attempting was an actual landing attempt, and wouldn't let him apply power for it, causing a huge fireball off the end of the runway. Then there's the mysterious loss of an Airbus over the Atlantic that is thought by some to be the software not allowing the dramatic flight control deflection required to fight extremely high winds in a T-sto
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That flight deck seat switch is to move the seat back and forth to provide access by the occupant of the seat.
Pilots routinely get out of their seats while the plane is flying in order to use the rest room or, on longer flights, to swap in a rested pilot so passengers on the Singapore airlines 9,585-mile route between New York City and Singapore don't die when a pilot who has been confined to their seat without a break for over 18.5 hours is too drowsy to make good decisions when there is a mechanical failu
Re:Boeng is a gift that keeps on giving (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh stop with that bullshit.
The crash you are talking about (Air France flight at Mulhouse–Habsheim Airfield) was an idiot pilot that attempted a low altitude fly by with no engine power and expecting the engines to supply immediate power from idle when the throttles are moved - that doesnt happen on any jet aircraft, there is always a delay when power is applied.
The idiot pilot was too low (below surrounding structures), with engines at idle, and applied power too late to avoid hitting the tree line. It was entirely pilot error. What he should have been doing was flying with a lot of power applied and controlling the speed using flaps, speed brakes and other aerodynamic devices. Instead, he was flying the aircraft pretty cleanly with minimal power.
It had nothing to do with Airbus software.
And the only Airbus crash which even vaguely matches "mysterious loss of an Airbus over the Atlantic" is Air France 447, which was due to a pitot-static error which induced pilot error - the pilots literally stalled the aircraft by not following proper procedure. If the pilots had followed correct procedure, they would have recovered from the incident without issue.
Stop with your bullshit attempts to paint us a picture that Airbus has similar software issues to Boeing - they do not. That bullshit only exists in the minds of conspiracy theorists.
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Or a simple load sensor in the seat, and a relay that disables that switch if the load sensor shows 50+ pounds sitting in the seat.
Why would you ever need to use a seat positioning control on the back of a pilot chair that a pilot is actually sitting in?
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It's a long serving aircraft and a problem seems to be that cover either was broken/incorrectly positioned, coupled with what seems to be a uniquely badly moving stewardess in the cockpit. I can imagine her falling on the controls causing similar issues, though much more easily rectified.
The strangest part of design is that in the most forward position, stick isn't still free. Was pilot fat/working out way too much making him really big for the seat, or is the seat actually going too far forward causing sti
Re:Wheels on the bus ... (Score:4, Informative)
The hypothesis is that the switch under the cover had popped out, and so if the cover was pushed down it would press on the switch. This has been demonstrated in a video.
An additional hypothesis is that the pilot in that seat may have been eating his meal on a tray. That tray is what may have pushed against the yoke. Similar to the case where a pilot's DSLR camera got caught between the seat and an airbus's sidestick.
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The switches are on the rear of the seat, so it will always require someone other than the occupier of the seat to activate the switch.
If the true intent is for the switch never to be operated while someone's sitting in the seat, surely they could add a simple weight sensor that would disable the switch if there's weight on the seat, similar to the seatbelt warning sensor on just about every car.
It should not be as simple as "switch gets stuck; pilot gets squashed forward into the yoke".
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That would make sense, considering that even in full forward position, pilot shouldn't be squished against the stick. Since that would nullify the whole point behind the frontmost position being useful position for some pilots.
So a foreign object in front of a pilot (tray) pushed into the stick.
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So did the flight attendant and the meal end up stuck to ceiling of the cockpit?
Only the meal?, the Flight Attendant was not to blame.
Both? Blame the switch.
Only the Flight Attendant? I'm running short of acceptable explanations.
Neither? This entire story is a red herring.
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Boeing issued a service bulletin in 2017 with procedures for regularly inspecting this switch. It appears likely that LATAM airlines didn't follow these procedures and/or act on the results of the inspections. Hopefully the investigation will determine if this was, or was not, a contributing cause of this incident.
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That was my first thought as well. My second was that this theory sounds similar to this incident:
https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com]
It seems odd that airrcraft don't have as many safety lockouts on their power seat controls as modern cars do. Most cars won't let the driver's seat be adjusted unless it detects a parked condition. Maybe the aircraft controls should use a seat occupancy sensor with an override button that's hard to reach.
Re: Well that's quite different (Score:3)
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but Boeing can't afford to add similar switches to protect HUNDREDS of passengers on their planes
Poor systems engineering. The seat group probably took a look at the failure mode and said, "So the seat moves a few inches. So what?" With no flight control experience, they probably didn't think about that control yoke right in front of the seat.
Anecdote: There was a (classified) very high altitude plane design on the drawing board. Due to the lack of air at maximum mission altitude, the only way to cool the avionics was with a heat exchanger to the fuel. No problem at the beginning of flight. But toward
Re: (Score:2)
If that switch should not be operated while someone is sitting in the seat, why doesn't the seat have an occupancy sensor that locks out the switch that shouldn't be operated?
Oh no, we've added another $5 to the bill of materials on an aircraft with a price of $250m to $340m depending on configuration!