[conspire] (forw) Re: (forw) Added carrier scrutiny

[Rick Moen]

{sigh}

----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2019 14:39:25 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: Ruben Safir <ruben at mrbrklyn.com>
Subject: Re: (forw) [conspire] Added carrier scrutiny
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.

Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben at mrbrklyn.com):

> I was expecting to hear from you about this as I was reading the reports
> in the Times yesterday, but you lost me after the attack on Heritage
> House ....

High-level government corruption and incompetence, basically.  The line
is not difficult to draw, nor is it difficult to notice the stunning
turnaround where interational deference to FAA judgement is _gone_.
Countries aren't even saying 'Hold on, let's stop and think for a few
days.'  They just silently decide 'Screw the FAA; they're now useless'
and ignore the FAA completely, same day.  _With good reason._

I hope you got my I-tried-not-to-be-subtle point that, almost 50 years
before the recent Lion Air disaster, pilots including Pan Am Captain
Arthur Moen were being killed by a defective Boeing automated warning
system leading to loss of vertical control.  50 years on, all that's
changed is updated technology _plus_ the innovation that FAA and the
Department of Transportation are not merely slow to respond but rendered
useless and ineffective by official corruption and incompetence imposed
from above.

The prosecutions have been starting making a dent in the cronyism, but
already FAA inaction has been directly implicated in the deaths of 346
passengers and crew on two 737 MAX 8 jets.  How many more?  Perhaps a
couple thousand?  I expect prison time eventually for some of these
failures where corruption can be proved, perhaps with a tar and feathers
sentence enhancement.

> As for the world, I don't trust the world.  I do smell a rat here
> though, and agree with your general assement.  To my lay ears, it makes
> zero sense that whatever problem is involved here should be fixable with
> a software overhaul.  When should software contribute to catosptriphic
> crashes?  NEVER.  And yet it did so with the French crash out of Central
> America and now these two crashes.

Immediately upthread, I already described where the core of the (known)
737 MAX 8 problem lies -- a badly designed 'safety' subsystem designed
to override the pilots without warning them it even exists less alone
has acted autonously to pitch the nose down, utter failure to take
timely measures to inform pilots, and regulatory override involving
crony-capitalism relationships with The Toddler and his henchbeings.

> Whatever the trouble is, lets hope that Boeing can run it down quickly
> and get a working solution because a major hit to Boeing will ripple
> right through the entire US economy.  The economic implications of these
> events make this one of the two most important news items this month,
> the other being the Taliban gains in Afganastan and the Iranian
> incursion in Iraq.

If you cared about economic implications, you should not have voted to 
put a crime family in charge of the Executive Branch and power-mad
lackies of the very most extremely wealthy in charge of the Senate.  The
crippling of world trade and permanent loss of US leadership in economic
matters is on you.

It sounds, by the way, as if you have absolutely no clue what happened
to Air France Flight 447 in 2009, so I'll explain it to you.  As is
sometimes the case, there was both an equipment failure and a
human-factors failure.

The flight had been obliged to climb to high altitude as part of
avoidance of an Atlantic weather system.  That's really high, which
created one of the factors towards disaster:  At that high altitude, the
'flight envelope' of safe operation to avoid stall becomes much
narrower.

Weather conditions and high altitude then added more risk factors:
pitch darkness and icing of the pitot tubes (instruments to measure
airspeed).

The most-experienced crew member, Captain Marc Dubois, left the cabin
for the second rest period, leaving the flight in the hands of two
co-pilots.  (This was entirely normal on a 13-hour flight, but the most
senior pilot vacating had dire effects.)

As the pitot tubes blocked with ice, the reporting system, Air Data
Reference #1, started giving inconsistent (hence, clearly suspect)
airspeed figures to the A330 computer. By well-documented design, the
computer gave the pilots several seconds' audible warning that it was
going to disengage autopilot and why, and then did so, putting the craft
in what is called Alternate Law 2 mode:

  Alternate law 2 (ALT2) loses normal law lateral mode (replaced by
  roll direct mode and yaw alternate mode) along with pitch attitude
  protection, bank angle protection and low energy protection. Load factor
  protection is retained. High angle of attack and high speed protections
  are retained unless the reason for alternate law 2 mode is the failure
  of two air-data references or if the two remaining air data references
  disagree.

  ALT2 mode is entered when 2 engines flame out (on dual engine
  aircraft), faults in two inertial or air-data references, with the
  autopilot being lost, except with an ADR disagreement. This mode may
  also be entered with an all spoilers fault, certain ailerons fault, or
  pedal transducers fault.

So, suddenly two junior pilots had control kicked back to them as
planned fallback, under conditions where there was only a slim 
flight-control envelope because the stall speed climbs perilously 
close to cruising speed.  One of the co-pilots started rolling to 
compensate for turbulence, and ALT2 mode amplified his control action,
he kept trying to correct by rolling bakc and forth, and then made the
fatal mistake of also raising the nose, which initiated a stall, which
the copilot tried to correct by climbing -- but with again the fatal
problem that instruments were no longer giving reliable airspeed
measurements, and it was pitch-dark, so the co-pilots were disoriented,
and the craft topped out at FL380 (38,000 feet), slowed to 93 knots, and
started diving.  He thinks he's climbing, but he's not -- and summons
the captain over intercom.  The co-pilot starts climbing again, loses
airspeed, but doesn't have an airspeed indication.  One of tte pitot
tubes de-ices, and instruments start working, but the pilots are
confused, and keep doing wrong things from this point.

The co-pilot tried to increase speed to gain more control, but did so
as if he were near sea level instead of at 37,500 feet, by raising the
nose, which at that altitude caused the plane to descend rather than
climb.  Again, it topped out at FL380 and starts to drop.  The second
co-pilot now started also trying the controls, fighting the first one --
a basic violation of CRM (crew resource management) that imposes a plan
for crew cooperation.  Both co-pilots occasionally try to steer but
neither thinks to just stop and let the attitude autocorrect, which
would have worked.  90 critical seconds later, Captain Dubois reentered
the cabin, with stall alarms blaring.

The plane was now dropping 10,000 feet/minute, nose pitched 15 degrees
up, 100 knots and dropping.  Now, the airspeed became so low that
although the now-correct pito tubes correctly showed speed, the AoA 
(angle of attack) inputs were no longer valid to the onboard
computer (a reasonable computing assumption), so the computer shut off
the stall warning -- probably delaying realisations.  And the last
error:  Captain Dubois made no effort to physically take back control of
the airframe, hence was unable to apply his better instincts and cease
the pulling back on controls while stalled (as one or the other of the
two co-pilots kept doing).  Instead, he deferred to the two confused
co-pilots.

39 seconds before AF447 hit the ocean, as the craft approached FL100
(10,000 feet), the worse of the two co-pilots mentioned that he's had his
stick back the whole time.  Captain Dubois finally realised what had
been happening, seizes control, and puts the nose down -- but
unfortunately they're approaching 2000 feet, they no longer had the
airspeed to initiate a climb, and everyone died.

And all of that was absolutely nothing like the Lion Air disaster.


----- End forwarded message -----