GROUND the Boeing 737-MAX...Indefinitely!!

This is ENOUGH from Boeing! This airplane needs to be grounded...indefinitely! Like...forever!

NTSB issues 'urgent' safety alert on Boeing 737 rudder system

This aircraft is simply NOT safe, in my opinion!

We had a different problem with the rudder of the 737 way back over 20 years ago. You would be flying and the rudder (by itself) would kick left or right for no reason. It was determined after several incidents that it was the yaw dampener causing the hard over. I think one aircraft crashed going into Colo. Springs and even though some said it was due to wind shear most figure it was due to a rudder hard over.

OK found it !

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia United Airlines Flight 585 N999UA (left), the aircraft involved in the accident Accident Date March 3, 1991 Summary Loss of control due to rudder hardover[1] Site Widefield Park, near Colorado Springs Municipal Airport, United States 38°44′09.4″N 104°42′42.4″W Total fatalities 25 Total injuries 1 Aircraft Aircraft type Boeing 737-291 Operator United Airlines IATA flight No. UA585 ICAO flight No. UAL585 Call sign UNITED 585 Registration N999UA Flight origin Greater Peoria Regional Airport Stopover Quad City International Airport Last stopover Stapleton International Airport Destination Colorado Springs Municipal Airport Occupants 25 Passengers 20 Crew 5 Fatalities 25 Survivors 0 Ground casualties Ground injuries 1 United Airlines Flight 585 was a scheduled passenger flight on March 3, 1991, from Denver to Colorado Springs, Colorado, carrying 20 passengers and 5 crew members on board. The plane experienced a rudder hardover while on final approach to runway 35 at Colorado Springs Municipal Airport, causing the plane to roll over and enter an uncontrolled dive. All 25 people on board the Boeing 737 were killed on impact. The National Transportation Safety Board, (NTSB), was initially unable to resolve the cause of the crash, but after similar accidents and incidents involving Boeing 737 aircraft, the crash was determined to be caused by a defect in the design of the 737's rudder power control unit.[1]: ix 

I was flying the 727 back then and thankful I was. Then they also went through a problem with the engines flaming out on approach and a rain shower.. The fix for that was to increase the idle speed of the engines.

Back in the 2000s I picked up a new Boeing 737-800 from California. I was at 35,000 over El Paso and every CRT went blank/black on the Captains and F.O.'s side. There was a switch you could transfer/bootstrap one side to the other but it did not work to transfer the first officers over to my side for his CRTs were non functional too.

It was a nice star lit night and I could see for hundreds of miles so I told ATC what the problem was as we had no navigation.. No emergency requested by me just don't violate us for getting off an airway. ATC never had to vector us back on course as I had flown that route hundreds of times.. I even shot the ILS 14L into Houston without an ILS !! hahaha

When parked at the gate maintenance and a supervisor came to the aircraft .. I told them what happened and they said that can not happen ! "That may be what Boeing says but here is proof they are wrong !"

They did the switch thingy and popped and checked circuit breakers and were still working on the bird to no avail...

Something I believe is we are test pilots when a new aircraft enters into service... Yes the big bugs are usually worked out but the little creepers can cause major problems as time passes... Just look at the DC-10 ! The two 737 Max that became lawn darts and killed everyone would not have happened IMO if the crew had not been trained to be push button pilots. I will go to my grave sincerely believing if I would have been flying either of those aircraft they would not have crashed because of a simple run-a-way trim problem.

I did fly the MD-80 for a few years but I always thought it was a Micky mouse aircraft compared to the 727.

originally posted by: 727Sky

...... The two 737 Max that became lawn darts and killed everyone would not have happened IMO if the crew had not been trained to be push button pilots. I will go to my grave sincerely believing if I would have been flying either of those aircraft they would not have crashed because of a simple run-a-way trim problem.
......

I think you are absolutely correct. As a US-trained private pilot, I could not believe it when I first heard that many foreign-trained pilots landed and took-off without hands on the yoke.

The problem with the 737 Max was that they needed to put bigger, more powerful engines on the pre-existing wing/airframe, and didn't want to pay for redesigning the airframe. The bigger engines would not fit under the wings and still provide adequate ground clearance, so they had to put them on re-designed pylons that extended the nacelle further out in front of the wing leading edge. When nacelles are subjected to a high angle-of-attack (as in takeoff) they generate lift. And because they are out in front of the CG, that lift is fundamentally destabilizing. As an airplane designer, that's a big no-no, right there.

Boeing's "fix" was to put some additional code in the autopilot that could theoretically detect when the destabilizing lift on the nacelle was getting out of controllable bounds and not allow the nose to get any higher. That works OK on aircraft like the F-117, but those fly-by-wire aircraft always have multiple, redundant sensors on them. The 737 Max had one angle-of-attack sensor that failed in exactly the worst possible mode--a built-in single point failure! That's no-no #2.

A human pilot trained to recognize the normal accelerations and pitch angles of a 737 Max, using the vestibular system in their inner ears would have been that back up sensor that could have detected an excursion from the normal. Pilots flying without hands on the yoke are basically putting their available redundant sensors out of the loop for no good reason.

No-no #3.

a reply to: Boomer1947
Hello Sir,
in interest, I read your testimony and the opinion of you for this question, I do apprectiate:

I am not pilot, I do know pilots and have listened with great interest, their stories. You say about vestibular system in ear and backup sensor. When I do not understand you uncorrect, it is same sense that can be tricked, when you not have point of orientation. Like in cloud.

From the experience of you, where there moment where vertibular system of your body got trick into thinking positive climb rate but it negative climb rate? Or similar false impression?

One of the things which saddens me is the 737 historically is one of the most reliable commercial jets in the sky. Boeing has seemingly severely tarnished this reputation with the MAX.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk
Or it could be all part of their plan to stop us plebs from travelling freely. I remember reading somewhere parts of agenda2030 , and it included shutdown of major airports.

Don't forget, they want us imprisoned 'ideally' into 15 minute prisons (oops cities).

One would think with a plane that has been around for like forever they would have all the bugs worked out...lol

a reply to: Xtrozero

That's exactly the thing!! This aircraft (the MAX) hasn't been along forever; it's a different aircraft...despite Boeing wanting to make it the same (to save billions of dollars in "type" certification). That's the whole point! This aircraft is NOT a 737; it's a different aircraft, and it DOES require a new "type".

Boeing screwed the pooch, BIG-TIME, on this one. They had maximized the 737 so many times, it just couldn't get any bigger (and more profitable), so they went a step too far.

That's the whole problem here with the MAX (not the Boeing 737).

a reply to: 727Sky

Supposebly the park and street where flight 585 crashed is haunted now I saw it on a show a coup,e years ago

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk

That's the whole problem here with the MAX (not the Boeing 737).

I keep thinking about how the workforce does not have the quality it did in the past. Taking pride in your work seems to be a rare thing these days, and it was once common in that culture. As they build the planes, they find trash-stuffed in areas that will be closed up, things like McD bags and scrapes. I asked my friend how that can even happen, and he told me it's just that many workers suck and are lazy to clean up after themselves.

The whole stall control system is another example of just not caring. First, I don't see a reason to even have a system that will force the plane into stall recovery, seems really dangerous to me, and it isn't like airlines stall all the time either. Then not sell safety warnings of the system to foreign countries to save money that should have been mandatory, then... Do a few hours in a sim and say you are now type-rated for the Max... geez

The weird part was that generally, Boeing aircraft have always been one click to remove all autopilot inputs, well until the Max came along and they not only had to do the normal autopilot disengagement BUT had to also disengage another system as part of the auto stall recovery. It was never taught.

a reply to: Xtrozero

Wasn't even a full simulator when the MAX first came out! It was an iPad (for most airlines). The 737-NG simulators weren't set up with the MCAS system, so they couldn't do a simulation of the functions. As a general rule, full scale simulators are even better than the real thing because they can do things in the simulator you can not do in a real aircraft.

However, (and very ironically, I might add) Ethiopian Airlines had one of the only MAX certified simulators (Air Canada was the other) at the time of the ET302 crash. It is unclear if the PIC for ET302 had been through this simulator. He did have 4,120 hours in a 737 though, which is just further proof of how different the MAX is to other 737 configurations, even the NG's.