2019

Boeing 737 Max 8 flight crash report

Group Members

 Asad ullah
 Rizwan sagar
 Abubakar Shehzad
 Umair Khalid
 Usman Hussain
 Abuzar Inam
Part A
Boeing 737 Max 8 flight
Introduction

Garuda Indonesia is seeking to scrap its multi-billion dollar order for 49 Boeing 737 Max 8 jets
after the plane was involved in two fatal crashes. It comes as investigators work to establish the
cause of a recent crash involving a 737 Max 8, which killed 157 people.

Details

The crash Sunday morning of a jetliner in Ethiopia bears unmistakable similarities to the Oct. 29
tragedy off the coast of Indonesia involving the same model, prompting questions about whether
a design issue that arose during the earlier accident could be to blame.
Here are key details that have been reported most significantly by the Seattle Times about a
series of engineering, regulatory, and political missteps that preceded software being installed on
a widely used plane without pilots apparently fully understanding its risks.

Tug-of-war at the stick

When the MCAS activates, it automatically tilts the horizontal tail at the back of the plane, lifting
up the rear of the plane and nudging the nose down. If the system gets triggered erroneously—
and the plane dives for no reason—a pilot can pull back on the control column to lift the nose up
again.

But every time a pilot straightens the plane out, the MCAS resets. That means the system can be
triggered again, nudging the nose down and forcing the pilot to once again yank on the control
column to set the plane back on track.

Preliminary findings from the black box of the Lion Air flight show that the pilot and the MCAS
repeated this tug-of-war cycle 21 times in the minutes before the crash.

Boeing’s proposed solution

Yesterday (March 17) Boeing unveiled a plan for “a flight control software enhancement for the
737 MAX” that has been in the works since the Lion Air crash.

With the new software patch, the MCAS will take readings from both angle-of-attack sensors.
The software won’t be able to move the plane’s horizontal tail as far, and when activated, it will
only nudge the nose down once.

Boeing also plans to train pilots on the system and mention the MCAS in flight manuals.

Failure of FAA oversight

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), along with European aviation regulators, sets
the tone for much of the world’s flight safety standards. The FAA has delegated many of its
safety inspections to airplane manufacturers like Boeing, claiming that the agency doesn’t have
the budget to complete all the work itself.

Boeing did much of the work of certifying that the 737 Max 8 was safe to fly. In fact, the Seattle
Times reports that FAA managers pressured safety engineers to delegate more and more of the
safety analysis to Boeing to get the plane approved faster. In some cases, FAA engineers didn’t
even read the technical documents Boeing sent them—managers delegated the task of reviewing
Boeing’s findings back to Boeing. The task of reviewing the safety of the MCAS fell to Boeing.

New planes, no new training

Boeing designed the 737 Max 8 to be similar enough to existing 737s that it could keep the same
“type rating” meaning, as the Times reported, that pilots who already flew 737s wouldn’t have to
be retrained on a new plane and airlines would save a lot of money.

Yet the Max 8 is different from previous 737s in one major way: It has larger engines placed
farther forward on its wings. The new design increased the risk that the plane could stall if pilots
angled the nose too high. To counteract this risk, Boeing introduced the MCAS, which
automatically nudges the nose down if onboard sensors detect that the plane risks stalling

Underestimating the MCAS risk factor

The safety analysis that Boeing and the FAA collaborated on concluded that a faulty activation
of the MCAS under extreme flight conditions would be a “hazardous failure”—meaning it could
cause serious or fatal injuries to a few passengers, the Seattle Times reported. The analysis
stopped short of the “catastrophic failure” classification that predicts a total loss and many
deaths.

In anticipation of a “hazardous failure,” planes are supposed to rely on sensors that have less
than a one-in-10- million chance of failing. Generally, that means taking measurements from two
sensors.

The 737 Max 8 does have two sensors onboard to measure its “angle of attack,” the measure of
the angle between its wings and the flow of air that determines a plane’s risk of stalling. Boeing
designed the MCAS to only use readings from one of the sensors. Black box data from the Lion
Air crash shows that readings from the two angle-of-attack sensors differed by 20 degrees even
while the plane was taxiing on the runway, indicating that the instruments were faulty from the
start.

Warning lights optional

Boeing designed a warning light that would alert pilots when the sensors measuring their plane’s
angle of attack differed widely, who would give notify them of a faulty MCAS activation.

The manufacturer does not install the warning light as a standard feature on the 737 Max 8.
Airlines have to pay extra for it.

Ceding more control to the computer

The safety analysis Boeing sent to the FAA reported that the MCAS could only move the plane’s
horizontal tail 0.6 degrees (out of a physical maximum of a little less than five degrees). But
during later flight tests, Boeing discovered that 0.6 degrees of movement wasn’t enough to avert
a high speed stall, the Seattle Times reported. Boeing eventually increased the limit to 2.5
degrees.

Despite quadrupling the amount that the MCAS could move the plane’s tail, Boeing never
updated the documents it sent to the FAA. FAA engineers only found out about the change after
the Lion Air crash, when Boeing sent a notice to airlines explaining how the system worked.

“The FAA believed the airplane was designed to the 0.6 limit, and that’s what the foreign
regulatory authorities thought, too,” an FAA engineer told the Times. “It makes a difference in
your assessment of the hazard involved.”

US government shutdown delays a software fix

After the Lion Air crash in October 2018, Boeing promised a software patch to make the MCAS
safer by January. The fix has since been delayed until April, the Wall Street Journal reported,
because of “engineering challenges,” “differences of opinion” between federal and Boeing
officials, and the record 35-day US government shutdown, during which “consideration of the
fixes was suspended.”

The 61,000-member pilots’ association sounded the alarm in a Jan. 2 letter to Donald Trump,
warning that during a shutdown, “there are also airline and aircraft manufacturing oversight
activities that either stop or are significantly reduced. These safety and oversight inspections will
potentially allow for the introduction of safety issues that put passengers and airline crews at
risk.”

Part B
This situation relates to disincentive, its discourage passengers to fly in Boeing 737 max 8. This
accident discourages Indonesia’s national airline and they seek to cancel the order of 49 Boeing
737 max 8 jets they are going to bought.