by Bob Walsh
Yesterday I was listening to my favorite talk radio guy, Tom Sullivan. He is primarily a financial guy but also does normal political and general interest stuff. He is also a pilot, and his son is a commercial pilot. He was talking about the 737 Max crashes and presented this information.
The 737 Max is in many ways a new airplane rather than a simple revision of the existing 737. It has MUCH more efficient and larger engines. The engine housings themselves are a lift component in fact. Also the nose gear of the plane is 8 inches taller than the old one because they need to change the angle of attack on takeoff and they need to clear the engines.
The new plane has a LOT of automation which many of the pilots don't fully understand or are not comfortable with.
The new plane has two angle of attack sensors, one on each side, but the flight computer only gets info from ONE of them. In one of the planes that crashed the two sensors had a 20 degree difference of opinion between them.
Rather than give a simple stall warning if they think the plane's angle of attack is too great the computer pushes the nose down, forcibly. Theoretically this was 0.6 degrees. Actually it was 5.0 degrees.
It does this over and over again, with increasingly greater force, if it thinks this is necessary. Yet another 5 degrees each shove.
Due to a shortage of F A A inspectors and engineers Boeing was allowed to self-inspect and self-evaluate much of the new plane. There were allegedly-apparently some issues which did NOT get forwarded to the F A A.
This is all very preliminary and I am hardly an expert. That being said if I owned a chunk of Boeing stock right now I think I would get rid of it until the dust settles. But that's just me. Boeing is still talking "undertrained pilots" rather than aircraft issues. Hell, they might even be right.
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