If the sensor had just stopped responding, there wouldn’t have been any problem. The planes would keep flying, the sensors would get replaced, and everyone would be fine.
What happened was that the sensor gave erroneous readings. The MCAS system reacted to those erroneous reading and crashes the plane.
With two sensors, you can detect failure. It’s very unlikely that both would fail simultaneously. If they did, it’s very unlikely that both would provide the same erroneous readings.
Birgenair 301 crashed into the Atlantic because mud dauber wasps built nests in both pitot tubes while the plane was on the ground. It happens.
Think about it like the Antilock brakes on your car. Suppose the wheel position sensor fails. It's fine if the car puts up a warning light and says that you don't have antilock brakes anymore. You can drive fine without them until you can get them fixed with a minor safety impact. It's not fine if the wheel position sensor fails and this causes the car to slam on the brakes going 65mph down the highway.
You wouldn't hear about it unless the activation was triggered by egregious pilot error and you're scouring aviation news sites.
It's not fine if the wheel position sensor fails and this causes the car to slam on the brakes going 65mph down the highway.
Been there, done that. It's an unpleasant failure mode, but it is survivable.
And, anecdotally, I've had ABS kick in in some occurrences for which I was very thankful.
Suppose the crash probability on a normal flight is 1/1E7, but without MCAS it's 100x more dangerous, or 1/1E5. Suppose MCAS failure probability is 1/1E6, the probability of an additional crash due to the failure of MCAS is 1/1E11, which is acceptable.
The problem is that in practice, the crash probability if MCAS fails is empirically 2/3 instead of 1/1E5, because MCAS actually causes the crash rather than merely failing to prevent a crash.
"ABS has close to a zero net effect on fatal crash involvements."
Further down, there is a chart which seems to show that ABS is associated with a huge increase in fatal accidents in inclement weather, and a large increase in side impact accidents, both fatal and non-fatal.
Maybe there's something obvious I'm missing?
This is something all 737 pilots are trained for, so they have to balance that pitch up from the engines throttling up by pitching the plane down more than they would otherwise need to. The precise relationship between throttling up and pitching up was changed when the 737 was modified to create the 737 MAX. Namely, on the 737 MAX the pitch-up is more extreme. It is not so extreme that it makes the airplane a bad design, but it is extreme enough that pilots need to not expect the legacy 737 behavior.
Had pilots been trained for the performance characteristics of the 737 MAX specifically, it would have been perfectly fine. But they weren't, and instead MCAS was meant to paper over the difference so pilots could be kept in the dark (which is cheaper but borderline homicidal...)
To put this another way, in some hypothetical universe where the 737 MAX was the first 737 ever, it would have been introduced without MCAS and pilots would have said it handles like a dream. Then, when the 737 NG was introduced after the 737 MAX, there might have been a reverse-MCAS system implemented to make the NG handle like a MAX. That reverse-MCAS system may have then failed catastrophically.
The problem with the 737 Max is that the engine nacelles are further forward and larger than previously, so the lift that the nacelles make at high angle of attack is greater. This results in less stick force being necessary to maintain a high angle of attack than at lower angles of attack. This is uncertifiable behavior. Hence, MCAS, to augment the manuvering characteristics of the 737, to increase stick forces at high angles of attack.
In a hypothetical universe where the Max was the first 737, it'd be fly by wire and all the stick forces would be synthetically generated anyway.
“The investigation concluded that one of the three pitot tubes, used to measure airspeed, was blocked.”
They don't have to fail simultaneously in a flight. And they don't have to fail by internal sensor problems. There are many cases in which they can simultaneously fail and give same readings, article even mentioned such types of events:
>> That probability may have underestimated the risk of so-called external events that have damaged sensors in the past, such as collisions with birds, bumps from ramp stairs or mechanics’ stepping on them.
And AF447 gives an example when such erroneous readings combined with pilot errors may lead to.
AF447 is an example of a fly by wire system that has to keep working no matter what happens, thus a bunch of redundant systems and a series of alternate modes the system can fall back on to operate in a degraded state.
MCAS, in contrast, is not a critical system. It could shut down with no problems at all. These crashes happened only because it didn’t shut down when faced with a failed sensor, because it couldn’t detect the failure.
AoA sensors by design don't work reliable in low speed and they don't work at all on the ground.
> AF447 is an example of a fly by wire system that has to keep working no matter what happens, thus a bunch of redundant systems and a series of alternate modes the system can fall back on to operate in a degraded state.
AF447 is a good example that two AoA sensors can simultaneously have same erroneous readings. It's not that unlikely.
Airspeed is a critical system while aoa is not. (Unless aoa is tied to mcas like in the max jets)
You’re just badly arguing details while ignoring the actual point here.
What was the point? Two sensors (in this case alpha vanes) can fail at the same time and in the same way on an Airbus:
> First: I said it’s very unlikely, not impossible.
> You’re just badly arguing details while ignoring the actual point here.
My point here was that with two AoA sensors you can't reliably detect failure. They can both fail simultaneously and provide the same erroneous readings. And because it's not that unlikely we have to be sure that pilots can handle MCAS problems when two AoA sensors fail.
> Second: the failure of AF447’s pitot tubes was detected immediately
Because A330 have three pitot tubes, right? Not two out of two sensors?
I'm not arguing about AF447 case, I gave it as an example that two sensors _can_ have same erroneous readings. Airbus engineers were not sure that can happen in real life, so stall warning issue was a real surprise for them.
Triple redundancy is the norm for the specific reason that it's highly likely for symmetrically placed sensors to be prone to failing in the same way not long after each other, but having a third differently placed can keep you flying.
Although there's at least one instance where an Airbus plane had two AoA sensors malfunction at the same time and outvote the last remaining sensor.
This is why critical systems are built with higher degrees of redundancy and graceful degradation of operational envelope in mind.
Training on how to deal with unaided flight is also absolutely essential. Many Airbus accidents where pilot's were caught off guard when the automation that kept them from breaking out of the operating envelope failed.
Long story short; Boeing has put themselves in the unenviable position of having delivered a product in ways that are not only illegal, but deadly, and short of pilots accepting a significant burden in the form of being as good at or better than the MCAS system at this point; a lot of man hours and capital has been expended to end up in a situation where every MAX is in a not inconsiderable risk of being scrapped.
The problem is that in order to save tiny amount of money Boing made plane rely on unreliable sensors.
https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/558483-iced-aoa-sensors-...
You're assuming that faulty sensors will tend to have random output. But since we're talking about a real life mechanism, it seems likely it has some erroneous states that are more likely to occur than others. For instance if the mechanism often fails up against one of it's mechanical limits, the sensor might erroneously read out the limit position every time.
You can't actually say anything about the distribution of failure states for a sensor without evaluating that particular sensor.
Ice, insects, birds, and volcanic ash are all things that tend to cause the pitot and the static tubes to become blocked. When you encounter ice, insects, birds, and volcanic ash, it is often the case that you get multiple simultaneous blockages. Blockages of the various tubes are not statistically independent events in practice.
Would it trouble everyone to get a basic grasp of what we’re talking about before replying? I’m getting a little tired of constantly correcting basic stuff in the replies.
You get a reading of 20 on one sensor and get a reading of 34 on the second, which one is correct. To achieve reliability a minimum of five sensors need be used. four primary and one back-up. If three primary agree then system normal. If two primary disagree then switch to backup.
There’s a big difference between a system which must work and a system which must not go wrong. For example, the fly by wire system in an Airbus must work. A failed sensor must not disable the system. Thus, you need at least triple redundancy to keep functioning in the event of a failure.
Boeing’s MCAS system, on the other hand, doesn’t need to work. The plane flies just fine without it. It merely needs to not go crazy. Two sensors is sufficient.
Per the article MCAS was originally intended to handle uncommon edge cases but was extended to cover additional (low speed) deficiencies. This expanded scope is what made MCAS as problematic as it is because it did away with the second input (accelerometer) and expanded the authority dramatically (from something like 0.6 degrees to 2.4 degrees of stabilizer movement).
The pilots knew something was going wrong. That wasn't the issue. The issue was that the bloody thing could mistrim the plane to the point of nigh irrecoverability, and no one knew enough about it until two planes full of people plunged out of the sky.
The plane may be able to fly just fine; but the way this thing was developed and brought into mainstream use had critical problems in terms of essential information being communicated.
All the decisions and motivations behind these lack of communication have to some point been traced back to trying to circumvent regulations in order to prop up share price by scoring sales of a new airframe of comparable efficiency to the a320neo.
Fly-by-wire Boeings still only have two alpha vanes. Go ahead, take a look at the next 777 or 787 you come across.
When you do that you now have an aircraft the pilots aren't certified to fly.
It would increase risk. But for that increased risk to materialize into harm, the plane would also need to experience an unlikely, near-edge-of-flight-envelope situation that the working MCAS was intended to handle.
This would be comparable to a plane with any other mechanical defect that is discovered in-flight. If the above situation is expected to be too-risky to continue the flight and repair on the ground, then it would give cause for an emergency landing.
Failure of the AOA sensor and edge of the flight envelop events can't be assumed to be uncorrelated.
It's actually higher than the probability that a one-sensor version will fail. With two sensors, you have an effective failure if either sensor fails, and the probability of that happening is roughly twice the probability that a single sensor will fail (assuming failures are independent, which is not necessarily a valid assumption).
However, with two sensors you can tell when one has failed (even though you may not know which one it was) and so the consequences of the failure might be less severe.
The problem is: now pilots need to be prepared to fly the plane with a failure sensor, which is to say, without MCAS. To do that, they will need additional training. Avoiding that was the whole point of MCAS in the first place. That's the reason it's taking so long to sort this out. Technically, it's an easy problem to solve. It's the economics that are daunting.
Note that Airbus uses three of these sensors on their planes, so that when one fails you know which one it is, and can still rely on the signals from the two remaining good ones. Then you replace the failed sensor before the next flight.
>The aircraft's computers received conflicting information from the three angle of attack sensors. The aircraft computer system’s programming logic had been designed to reject one sensor value if it deviated significantly from the other two sensor values. In this specific case, this programming logic led to the rejection of the correct value from the one operative angle of attack sensor, and to the acceptance of the two consistent, but wrong, values from the two inoperative angle of attack sensors. This resulted in the system's stall protection functions responding incorrectly to the stall, making the situation worse, instead of better.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XL_Airways_Germany_Flight_88...
Considering the number of flights, that does sounds reliable to me.
I still think two failures in the same sensor, in the same airplane, under the same condition, in less than one year did not happen by chance.
Also, your GPS measurements give you position, direction, and speed, but they don't give you orientation. You would have to have another instrument to feed that into the system (such systems exist).
But yes, it would be a sanity check.
Unfortunately, no. Stalling is a function of the wing's _angle_ relative to the flow of air, not of speed. If the angle is too sharp the air can't follow the curve of the wing. The critical angle is (pretty much) independent of speed. For example: if you stick your hand out of the window of a car traveling at 60 MPH, and hold it almost flat to the wind (say 80 deg.), then the air can't follow down the back of your hand. All of the "push" is backwards, and there's no push up. If you hold it at 30 deg. then the air flows around your hand, which deflects the air down and your hand up, very strongly.
Even if you're only traveling at 5 MPH, if you hold your hand at 30 deg. the air will flow around your hand and deflect it upward; it will just be a very weak effect.
The angle between the wing and the air flow is what is called the "angle of attack", and what the AoA sensors measure. The only other instrument that comes close is the Attitude gauge (the globe thing). However, it measures the plane's angle relative to the horizon, and air moving relative to the plane usually isn't parallel to the ground in conditions where the AoA matters.
Wikipedia article, with much detail, pictures, etc.: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_attack
Normally, speed is from a tube aimed into the air. Normally, direction is from a little fin that can spin.
There are lots of alternatives:
Direction can be via multiple tubes aimed into the air, each with slightly different direction.
Speed can be from a hot wire. Weather stations sometimes use this.
You can get both via lidar. You just need to make it sensitive enough to pick up a response from minute particles of dust or ice.
I think I just invented a new way: do a short-duration high-power pulse of an electron source or an EUV laser, causing the air to fluoresce at enough distance from the aircraft to be clear of the boundary layer. Track the motion of the fluorescing air with multiple cameras.
* IAS is the raw airspeed reading from the pitot tube.
* CAS is IAS corrected for instrument errors, e.g. if the plane is at an angle that disrupts air flow around the pitot tube.
* TAS is basically CAS adjusted for altitude and air pressure. It’s the aircraft’s speed relative to the air around it.
* Ground speed (or speed over the ground) is TAS adjusted for the wind. This is the number that GPS is going to give you.
IAS and CAS are particularly important for describing performance characteristics - if an aircraft stalls at 100 knots CAS, then it always stalls at that CAS. If you try to describe the stall speed in terms of TAS you go from a single data point to a graph of speed and altitude.
If these accidents prove anything, it's that we need a computer that takes many different inputs (GPS from the tail and the nose, pitot, barometer, AoA indicator, input from the pilot, engine RPM, etc) and put them into a mathematical model of the airplane before overriding the pilot.
I mean, if one-sensor based MCAS failed twice so early in the life span of the plane model, what is the probability that a two-sensor model will fail pretty soon as well? The math should be simple, we have all data needed: combined hours flown by all planes of the type and number of failures (at least two known, which can help us to estimate a MTBF of the sensor).