Boeing 737 MAX family

[galgot]

So where are hiding the "criminals"?

Okay, the basics of law around professionals and responsibility. English law, which I'm most familiar with, has the wonderful concept of "the man on the Clapham omnibus", which is just another way of saying the average man or woman on the street. The man on the Clapham omnibus isn't expected to have any special responsibility for the things they produce or work on. But when you become an expert in something, whether being a doctor, fitting a gas boiler, or piloting an aircraft, the law demands a higher standard of responsibility from you. You are expected to be aware of all aspects of your role, to identify risks, and to take actions to address those risks. Not doing so makes you culpable in law, either for civil action or disbarment by your professional body, or, if it is bad enough, to legal sanctions up to and including a manslaughter conviction, the generic term being criminal negligence. It's the kind of thing that regularly sees doctors disbarred, and occasionally jailed, and the same principle applies to engineers and pilots (also to the organisations that employ them, though corporate manslaughter prosecutions are somewhat rare).

Turning to the Mulhouse flight, let's look at the pre-flight planning:
Airshow flypast. Okay
Airshow flypast at high alpha, low speed and low altitude*. Dubious, let's leave that one to the Airbus test pilots*.
Turning off the Alpha-Floor to allow that. Very dubious. Definitely one to leave to the Airbus test pilots (preferably at 10000m in case they need to recover the aircraft).
Doing it with a full load of passengers. Hell no!

At this point in his pre-flight planning the pilot should have refused to carry out the flight with passengers. The crew can volunteer to risk themselves, but they have a professional responsibility to not place their passengers at unnecessary risk, such as by taking them into coffin corner at 100ft**.

Note that I haven't discussed what happened in the air, I believe the pilot was criminally negligent from the moment he agreed to conduct the flight. And yes, prosecutions should have followed up the chain of those who authorised the flight.

* Yes, Asseline had been the Air France rep on the flight test team, but as far as I'm aware he wasn't a qualified test pilot, so professionally he was incapable of assessing the risk of the proposed manouevre, and in either case you treat risk assessment for a passenger flight very differently to a test flight.

** BTW, does anyone know where on the fuselage the A320 measures its altitude from? (Not necessarily the radar altimeter location, I can see a case for subtracting several metres in software to allow for the difference between the radalt sensor and the wheels). I've never been clear whether that planned 100ft/actual 30ft was the actual lowest point on the aircraft, and at 30ft that starts to become very significant.

Ok thanks, So how does that compare to the LionAir/Ethiopian's crew actions ?
And what is the point of bringing this specific Mulhouse case here in the first place, apart from trying to associate LionAir/Ethiopian's crew with the nut Mulhouse pilot (moreover flying a different plane).

 

[steelpillow]

Shouldn't some of this discussion go in the A320 thread?

 

[TomcatViP]

Yes and no. The problem is similar with a combined set of software programming and pilot slight negligence leading to passenger losses (albeit not statically as severe in one case).

@DWG : you should read back the report and start with the wiki page that is well balanced and focused on the fact The pilots that day never intended to pass the 100ft floor, what led to the alternative protecting law mode that their were unaware of. Hence the nugget in last Airbus declaration.

both pilots were also unfamiliar with the airfield when they began their descent from 2,000 feet (610 m) only 6 nautical miles (11 km) from the field. This distance was too short for them to stabilise the aircraft's altitude and speed for the flyover.[3]

Additionally, the captain was expecting from the flight plan to do the pass over runway 02 (3,281 feet (1,000 m) long, paved) and was preparing for that alignment. But as the aircraft approached the field, the flight deck crew noticed that the spectators were gathered beside runway 34R (2,100 feet (640 m) long, grass). This last-minute deviation in the approach further distracted the crew from stabilising the aircraft's altitude and they quickly dropped to 40 feet (12 m).[3]

@steelpillow : see the parallel now?


Last but not least, IMOHO the focus should be on the pitot tube still feeding data to the system after a catastrophic failure. Industry has been using torque limiter for decades. And this could be a problem of an eventual lack of reactive thinking from the regulators.

Torque limiter - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[steelpillow]

@steelpillow : see the parallel now?

No. I see you grossly distorting the MAX incidents and then pushing an irrelevant discussion about another accident in the hope that you can draw a parallel to support your distortion. There is none to draw.

 

[DWG]

Ok thanks, So how does that compare to the LionAir/Ethiopian's crew actions ?
And what is the point of bringing this specific Mulhouse case here in the first place, apart from trying to associate LionAir/Ethiopian's crew with the nut Mulhouse pilot (moreover flying a different plane).

No idea why TomcatViP brought it up, there's absolutely no comparison as far as I can see.

 

[TomcatViP]

Airbus said:
The origin of the “excessive pitch” is associated to a reduction in efficiency of the angle of attack protection in a very remote combination of conditions, these being: The need for the crew to perform a dynamic manoeuver (such as a go around) AND the aircraft being below 100ft AND specific landing configuration AND a very aft CG.

see previous page.

 

[DWG]

@DWG : you should read back the report and start with the wiki page that is well balanced and focused on the fact The pilots that day never intended to pass the 100ft floor, what led to the alternative protecting law mode that their were unaware of. Hence the nugget in last Airbus declaration.

I
both pilots were also unfamiliar with the airfield when they began their descent from 2,000 feet (610 m) only 6 nautical miles (11 km) from the field. This distance was too short for them to stabilise the aircraft's altitude and speed for the flyover.[3]

Additionally, the captain was expecting from the flight plan to do the pass over runway 02 (3,281 feet (1,000 m) long, paved) and was preparing for that alignment. But as the aircraft approached the field, the flight deck crew noticed that the spectators were gathered beside runway 34R (2,100 feet (640 m) long, grass). This last-minute deviation in the approach further distracted the crew from stabilising the aircraft's altitude and they quickly dropped to 40 feet

I've been following the Mulhouse crash since the day it happened. Never intending to descend below 100ft does not absolve the crew of blame, people are regularly convicted of criminal negligence for things they never intended to do, it's an essential element to the prosecution. In fact it further demonstrates the inadequacy of their planning. Equally continuing an unstable descent adds to the pilot's culpability. Examine any airline's operating procedures and you'll find unstable descent past a certain point =mandatory go around. This is something that is regularly reported in crash and incident reports. Attempting the manoeuvre at an airfield they didn't know further adds to the culpability.

 

[TomcatViP]

Apples and Bananas? What then would you then think if your Cessna won't pull away next time you initiate an aborted landing? And re-read the recent Airbus statement: we have here the same case.

Back to the MAX, the first thing that someone should think when facing an abnormal increase in stick effort is to cut speed. It's the basis. In that case, without re-writing the events, an egress from the flight mode where they were experiencing the troubles would have saved them. Here, as we know today, cutting speed and prepping the plane for an immediate landing would have turn down the faulty MCAS (errounous data).

As I wrote much earlier think at the cabin mood, the fear and the screams of the passengers submitted to the frenetic pitch inputs from the pilots. Look at the curves, the time laps...

 

[Jemiba]

Please back to a sensible tone, without too theatric statements, no need to mention
offenses or insults !
And here a clue: If two irreconcilable opinions are coming into conflict, without a sign
of a change on one side or the other, ignoring may be a wise option.
And there's even a button for !
This should be regarded as a warning by all participants !