Week one Discussion

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National University College *

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320

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Mechanical Engineering

Date

Feb 20, 2024

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Uploaded by PatSwazy

Week one Discussion 1. What safety culture failures occurred? The technical and ethical problem is that the MCAS designed by Boeing was only capable of providing data from one Angle of Attack sensor rather than two. This leaves no room for misreading and the sensor needs to be 100% correct on all readings because of this. They knew that this would be an issue but went along with it anyway. Concerning this Chelsey B. Sullenberger even states that “a single point of failure in an aircraft goes against widely held aircraft design principles.” which this clearly was (Sullenberger). Sully continues to speak of the technical and ethical problem as he highlights how apparent it is that the “fatally flawed” MCAS should have been rejected from the beginning. To make a statement branding the system as fatally flawed says a lot about the ethics that went into the final decision-making process. They knew that this was flawed yet decided to put people’s lives on the line to get the MAX in the sky. Also, in the previous versions of Boeing 737, to adjust or disengage the trim, the pilot just had to move the control wheel. This was not the case in the MAX. this feature was not available because the engineers decided that the if the stabilizer trim was activated through this MCAS system, then it is what the aircraft needed to stay inflight. In his statement, Sully highlights that in the designing of the MCAS, Boeing didn’t recognize the failure of the system to be anything to lose sleep over because assumptions of the pilot being able to take controls would be the contingency to safety. Ethics comes into question with this decision as well, basing a technical decision on assumption in disregard to human life. They expected the pilot to be able to handle a situation like this without even designing an aircraft with “fatal surprises” set up for them. This sounds a lot like somebody who does not want to take responsibility for the death of people.

More training was necessary for the pilots flying the 737 MAX for them to understand it as they understand the rest of the aircrafts they fly for work, especially with this MCAS system. Give pilots who fly the 737 MAX additional Level D full flight simulator training so that they will see, hear, feel, experience and understand the challenges associated with MCAS, such as Unreliable Airspeed, AOA Disagree, Runaway Stabilizer and Manual Trim. They must have the training opportunity to understand how higher airspeeds greatly increase the airloads on the stabilizer, making it much more difficult to move manually, often requiring a pilot to use two hands, or even the efforts of both pilots to move it. And in some cases, how it cannot be moved at all unless the pilot flying temporarily stops trying to raise the nose and relieves some of the airloads by moving the control wheel forward. We must look closely at the certification process. There have been concerns about the aircraft certification process for decades. Just a brief search revealed 18 reports produced by GAO, DOT OIG, and Congressional committees since 1992. Did oversight fail to result in accountability?

2. What leadership failures occurred?

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