Leaderboard

Maybe we should assume they're innocent until there is enough evidence to prove they're guilty? You know, do our due diligence to gather all the facts before making decisions?

Shit, he picked the throwaway COA.

Ridiculous. Next you will tell me that they aren’t teaching fix-to-fix in UPT anymore. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

The TBM is a nice plane. But for $4M, I just don't get why so many owners don't go with a twin-turbine.

The same clown organization that ”forgot” to annotate an Airman’s court martial conviction for domestic violence in the FBI NCIC database. Which allowed him to pass a background check, purchase guns, and subsequently shoot up his former in-laws church in Texas.

This thread took a violent left turn somewhere. The world some of you fucking live in....jesus. You act like there are hordes of women running about trying to entrap you in salacious situations just to ruin your careers. There are three sides to every story. Some of you dudes love to listen to just one.

It is what happens when you press DIR on your FMS...

Also yes - we were supposedly that last fighter FTU still doing them (F-16s) and we just got rid of them (both form takeoffs and landings) because the CAF doesn’t need that skill set/hasn’t done them in years.

Whiteman interview notifications went out

You definitely posted it in the correct thread. That was absolutely horrible. LOL

Are you sure you don't work for OSI? Head over to the WTF thread for plot thickening posts. Which brings me to my next point...watch putting your dick in crazy! Same. They won't let little things like facts get in the way of their predetermined outcome.

Having seen enough of OSI’s shenanigans in my time, my biggest fear is ever being in their gunsights. I’ve had the pleasure of working with them as a DO and also watching the aftermath through a court-martial. Good God. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

Flash was on my combat team at Creech several years ago, we were named together. He was always kind of a goofball, but I would have never expected something like this. I can definitely say I’m glad I wasn’t young and single when I was sent to Vegas to kill people for a living, who knows how I would have handled it. Whether he actually did what he was convicted of or not, his life definitely took a dark turn the past few years. I’m shocked to say the least. He walked into his naming stripped down and wearing a toga, Roman helmet, and carrying the Spartan shield and spear. It was pretty hilarious. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This seems appropriate here... We're definitely off scale high.

I'll preface this with I know it kind of contradicts what I said above but only to a point (y'all got me reading a lot more into this). The initial motivation between an update vs clean-sheet wasn't cost, it was competition, but at the end it was still a series of decisions driven by money not sound engineering or safety. The 737 wasn't supposed to be updated. I won't say never but the actual plan in 2006 was to replace the aircraft with a clean-sheet design following the 787. They kept putting off deciding on the new design until in mid-2010 they committed to making a decision in 2011. Enter Airbus in December 2010 announcing the A320neo program and securing an order of hundreds of planes from the then Boeing dominated American Airlines fleet. The downside for Airbus was that the contract with American hindered their ability to make deal with other airlines, giving Boeing time to react. Boeing pushes off the new airplane to 2030 and rushes to build a more efficient 737 to secure their dominance with other airlines. "Easiest" way to increase efficiency? Larger engines with higher bypass ratios (they also made some aero/weight changes but that's the big one). The problem is the original 737 was designed with thin turbojets, not turbofans, and also designed to sit as low as possible for weight and maintenance. The new engines don't fit under the wing so they moved them forward, up, and I think slightly in as well. This put them more forward of the lateral axis, increasing moment. Not only that, the engine nacelles themselves now generated a fair bit more lift. This came to a head when doing high speed stall testing where the aircraft would perform relatively as expected but the stick wouldn't The forces on the stick would suddenly drop off through the stall due to the increased lift on the nacelles. FAA cert requirements say that the forces on the stick have to make smooth changes. So while the aircraft was still safe to fly, it didn't meet cert requirements. Enter MCAS. The first iteration used the AoA sensor and a g-input to determine if the aircraft was entering a high speed stall and adjusted the elevator by up to 0.6 degrees to compensate. Test pilots say it works beautifully and the program continues. Some more test flights and the same stick load issue is discovered during low speed stalls as well. Lower airspeed means larger deflections are required to control the aircraft, and their won't be excessive g-forces to trigger the MCAS system. So Boeing scraps the g-force input, ups the amount of authority of the MCAS system, and allows in to activate multiple successive times in a row stacking the pitch change. Note that while they scrapped the g-input and the 737 has two AoA sensors, they never update it to read more than one. Test pilots, engineers, designers all raise concerns but are shouted down and literally told "Don't rock the boat." The safety assessment relies on the pilots assessing and correcting a runaway pitch condition within 3 seconds, which was never going to happen for several reasons. The accidents that happened were caused when that single AoA sensor failed and the MCAS system activated. A pilot may recognize a single specific issue in 3 seconds but that's not the cockpit environment when an AoA sensor fails. Master warning, stall warning, stick shaker, TAWS, overspeed, wildly spinning trim wheel, and who knows what else all suddenly comes on at the same time. The pilot figures out that nose is pitching down and yanks the yoke. Too bad the force required to pull up is suddenly well over 40 or 50 pounds. The pilot recognizes the runaway elevator and does the standard procedure of hitting the trim switch to correct. Too bad the MCAS system disables the yoke trim switch when it's activated. Go to the flight manual for the runaway elevator procedure to see what to do about MCAS. Except there's nothing in there about it. Boeing made an extremely conscious decision to leave it out. Transition training from the older 737s to the max? Nothing about MCAS was there either. So in the aftermath people turn to Boeing for answers. Why wasn't it designed safer? Why was the system reliant on a single input? Why weren't the pilots trained? Boeing's response: We did everything right. The system passed the legal requirements, our system safety assessment showed it was safe per the requirements, and the training provided was more than enough for the pilots. One hour on an iPad. You want to know why those planes crashed? Ask the pilots flying them. (This response was disgusting then and more so now with this next part coming to light). People probe deeper and the truth comes out. MCAS was a band-aid. It was tested in its original form but not in it's second evolution. Why? Because management actively suppressed flight testing of it. A new system safety report wasn't written for the new system. Why? They did a back of the envelope calculation and figured they didn't have to. The flight manual didn't continue info about MCAS or how to disable it. Why? Boeing worked very hard to convince the FAA that they didn't need it. They didn't want people to be aware of how different the aircraft really was (various reasons for that, but it all comes back to money). There was no real training program for the transition pilots. Why? Same as above. So where are we now? The FAA is auditing everything Boeing has, likely finding more issues. That'll happen, there's an absolutely insane amount of documentation, mistakes are going to happen, mostly innocent ones. Boeing is losing huge amounts of money due to the grounding and lost faith in their safety. Customers losing faith in Boeing products, but this is absolutely true: Boeing continues to insist they bear no fault and people shouldn't stop trusting them. And 346 people are dead. Gone. Never to be seen again. All because Boeing couldn't be bothered to change an 'if/then' statement to 'if/if(and)/then/else'.

Because the bigger engines created adverse aircraft handling that they used software to fix since they couldn’t change the design.

Ya, that was just a play on the old joke that somewhere along the way, Boeing fired all the engineers and hired lawyers. I find your post to be spot on.

It's less engineers/lawyers as engineers/bean counters, at least from what I've seen on both hardware and software cert. Certifying clean sheet aircraft, especially part 25, is stupid expensive so incremental design makes sense. But then they no doubt had engineers screaming about why problems and finance came down and pressured the UMs to save a buck and approve it anyway instead of spending the time and money to do it right. The problem is for a publicly traded company to be successful it can't just be profitable, it needs to be increasingly profitable, which is absolutely unsustainable. Boeing needed new sales to increase profits, so new plane. Fine, makes sense. While they can more than afford a clean sheet design it cuts too heavily into profits, so iterate an existing design. OK, fine, happens all the time. But issues come up from trying to staple those huge engines to an aircraft never designed to carry them. Hardware fix is affordable but again, cuts into profits so they can't post growth. Software is cheaper so just do that. The software fix sucks and doesn't work, but the bean counters already figured the were going to make X dollars and it just hurts too much to make less than that, so lean on the UMs to get them to sign it off anyways. Besides, pilots are smart, they'll know what to do. Except you never gave them a proper training program (too expensive and it would draw attention to the flaws in the design) and you laughed at the pilots that asked for one. You don't know what to do when the aircraft is nose low? Idiot. Never mind that it's nose low because the aircraft forced it there, and we never told you how to stop it from doing that. So now instead of spending X dollars on doing it (mostly) right the first time they're spending 10X dollars fixing it as the FAA audits everything after a lot of people died. Not to mention lost revenue from sales as those planes pile up on the ground. All because fiscal quarters > long term profitability > any kind of moral responsibility. Don't be shocked if those audits find issues endemic to the 737 platform and it has repercussions outside of just the MAX series.

The only reason for the this rusty coat hangar abortion that is MCAS is Boeing trying to squeeze blood out of the turnip. Here's hoping more heads roll and they reevaluate the engineer to lawyer ratio on their books. This is what happens when you care more about profits (and investors) than the people who provide those profits. It's mind boggling that someone can saddle a company with a clusterfuck like this and bail with millions.

Agree on the availability date. A bro of mine was getting out, I told him not to dick around with it; he did. Delta called and said "congrats your indoc date is XXX day." "yeah, I was hoping to change that to after YYY day." "If you want to work at Delta, we'll see you on XXX. Goodbye". He flies for AA now.

Thread bump. Just attended this course as an O-5 staff MAJCOM Stan/Eval guy. Excellent course, excellent staff, went above and beyond. I’ll put the plug out there that if you are flying FTIP reviewed procedures to really double check the TERPS / MAJCOM A3 review. There are a lot of assumptions on both sides of the table but the BL is you are the PIC and it’s your ass. Just because it is signed doesn’t mean it’s safe.

Or maybe just don't touch the asses of your subordinates' spouses. With your dick. At a work event. I mean, I understand it's tough. But such are the burdens of leadership.

Wow, I’m late to the fight but have to throw in my 2 cents. I worked directly for Combo during her time as the ATG/CC. I never heard a raised voice or saw any of the issues you guys cite. She was a competent, professional leader of a very diverse group. I’ll also add to the comments that combat time is occasionally a function of timing and luck. When the war kicked off, my squadron was being shut down and we were denied any opportunity to deploy. I volunteered again in my next two squadrons, but the CC wouldn’t let people go - it would have left him short handed. I got to augment the Army and picked up a BSM, but no air medals.

Some guys did it in June and some didn't. It seemed to depend on which flight doc you got. One was much more thorough than the others.