Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 12A: The Boeing 737 MAX

Episode Date: January 26, 2020

In this episode which took entirely too long to produce, @aliceavizandum, @oldmananders0n, and @donoteat1 realize they don't know anything about airplanes, and insult the French. Here's the link to the slides: https://youtu.be/yvM6vaZKKm4 join @phillyTRU: http://phillytru.org/ listen to trashfuture: https://trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/ Here's the Patreon link so you can watch the Groverhaus episode: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod

Yes, I am recording delightful. Hello and welcome to you. Well, there's your problem the first podcast not only to be listened to But also recorded at two times speed Yes, well welcome to a well there's your problem a podcast we record three times factor of three Never let it be sad. We don't suffer for our art. Yeah This is this is slightly different format than we originally intended on to the regrettable death of our guests Yeah, rest rest in power We shall not see his like again. Yeah. Yes

We'll miss you. Hi. So Anyway, welcome to well there's your problem a podcast about engineering disasters I'm Justin Rosniak my pronouns are he him you can find me on the Twitter at do not eat one And those are all the things I'm gonna say. Hmm. Hello Alice called. Well Kelly pronouns She her listen to podcast trash future that I'm on Also with my co-host Riley Quinn who is going to be on this one and then unfortunately died of Yeah, he yeah, just died Unfortunately killed by USB connector

I Death by focus, right? Very very unfortunate. Yeah, thanks to nothing Apple. Well, we're all heartbroken, but we go on regardless The show must go on. Mm-hmm. That's right Liam. Oh, yeah, sorry. Oh I am three times three three. I am leave Anderson I am at old man Anderson on Twitter right pronouns are he and him And by and large you can just find me being a dick in our YouTube comments section And getting real mad about national security on Twitter because I don't have I

Don't know anything interesting to say. It's interesting. Thank you. Oh Congratulations, Roz on knowing your own Twitter handle this time. Yeah, I usually forget that one. Yeah, Rose What what episode number is this? It's probably 13 Well, there's your problem. Yeah, that's why we've been having the problems where we have to record this three times in a row Yeah, which we really I'm gonna call it episode 12 a yeah, I think that's smart Yeah Episode 13 is a utility episode. You can't get the elevator directly there It's a secret episode 13. You just have to keep putting in random YouTube

You gotta press like episode four and episode ten and then episode three three times in quick succession And then it'll clip through to episode 13 It has one of those has one of those keyed buttons on the elevator. Yes. Yes You only get it with the key or if you have the fire mode key. Just push the button All right, so anyway Today's gonna be our first episode about planes. Hmm people been people in demanding this The the mode of transport we know least about yes I don't know anything about planes and boy. Howdy. Are we gonna show it? Well, you know all about the L 10 11

Fucking weird out. I don't I do know about the L 10 11 But that's not what we're talking about because the L 10 11 was good and not an engineering disaster. Mm-hmm. Yeah Yeah, that's that's gonna be well there isn't your problem our sister podcast about engineering successes. Yes, it's one episode long Stuff that worked a very short list. Okay, so there's a bunch of planes here in the parking lot, right a little model We you end there. Hey, you got you got Turkey. You got Iceland more Turkey Iceland You have American who's that United Sunwing is that is that's American. Yeah, Sunwing It wasn't that a cheap Canadian airline. I want to say that's what I usually associate with Canada is son Yeah, I've been to Newfoundland

So Anyway, so these planes are not supposed to be there, right? Hmm. These planes are supposed to be in the sky where planes live Yeah, if you're doing their natural diet of ingesting birds For for sustenance. I love doing the same joke three times. It really gets funnier every time Genuinely, I think like this the second time we were a bit more low energy and then it did the thing where it came back around again And now it's fun So anyway today we're gonna talk about the 737 max Famously a good plane. Yes

So we're gonna start by talking about the Boeing corporation, right a little bit about you know, it was founded in 1916 by William Boeing Hmm, right, you know bill Boeing big bill Boeing. Yes Hobbit that man is a hobbit. He has a hobbit's name But that's why he built big planes so he could feel big about himself. Thanks for nothing bill you dick That's why the fuselage is around like a hobbit door His name was actually bill bow, but then he decided that the company should be Boeing because it bows bill bill bow Boeing What is that let go space-ass logo though, I

I'm still confused about like the ramp. You say you say you get air. It's like a Soviet aircraft So I assumed that that was supposed to be a b2 bar So it's like a wing I see so you get like air and space because you have like orbit thing there Boeing didn't make the b2 that's why I was always confused is that it was not the Grumman the Stealing Valor in their logo. Yeah, I don't know. I think it looks like that Kazimierz Malovich that like red wedge. Yeah, it does kind of remind me of that so anyway Founded in 1916 in Seattle by William Boeing right now

They produce pretty much all the commercial aircraft that Airbus doesn't make right There's a couple little manufacturers like Embraer and Bombardier Goddamn French is it Bombardier or Bombardier or is it both? It's both. Is it both? Oh, I'm saying Bombardier. It probably is you probably have to say both you probably have to like Say Bombardier and then the French people get mad at you and you have to be like Bombardier This is a bilingual podcast. That's true except I don't I don't know French So well if it was Bombardier, wouldn't there be an like an accent? I have no idea It would be like a little a little accent over the E. This is Bomb Bombardier. I'm I'm I don't know. I'm sorry

Justin we know so little about planes We can't even put them into the like train good car bad thing. We're like train goods car bad horse chaotic neutral The plane Yeah, yeah, we we don't know we don't know we didn't go to like school for this The thing it's a big metal bird that goes in the sky. That's terrifying It is terrifying us. Oh Boeing did try and make a few trains and they sucked at it Did the US standard light rail vehicle for Boston and San Francisco which worked which they tried to unify the order So it would work in both cities and it worked in neither of them

Perfect. Oh, it's like you in Quebec. Oh, yeah Okay, so tell us about Airbus then so could we've got these like two houses alike and dignity here so Sort of the difference between Boeing and Airbus right and sort of design philosophy has always been that you know Airbus like this big Emirates a 380 here, right? They um They they tend to design the plane in such a way that you know, there's lots of automated systems, right? There's lots of times when the plane will decide that the pilots input is is is wrong and just override it You know or that date they tend to design planes that try to fly themselves Yeah, the guy that the flight designer said that he wanted to design a plane that his concierge could fly and

Because of that French airline pilot started like threatening to kill him and he had to have like police protection and stuff Which is just incredibly chat chat aggressively French. Yeah. Yeah, you want to make my job slightly easier I will literally murder you That's the kind of labor organization Energy I want to see in 2020 that in the French nuclear power plant workers being like yeah, okay You can you can refuse our demands. Here's a photo of us and our off button for the nuclear power station Yeah God dear French nanny state

We're delirious from recording this three times We're all losing it. It's like yeah, it's absolutely like we're fucking delusional off of this Okay, so if if Airbus are the like Wearing blackface to work and like drawing pictures of the Prophet Muhammad like Euro bullshit then that must make Boeing the Like Anglos I bring your freedom. Yeah. Yes, so on on a Boeing aircraft unlike an Airbus aircraft You know, but such as this Iran air 747. Hmm, you know the plane owned by the good guys

Especially like contrasted with Emirates Jesus. Yeah. Yeah, I picked these for a reason Hmm So on a Boeing aircraft generally speaking is designed with the sort of philosophy that the pilot always has final say Over what the aircraft does right? It's very like militarized and fetishistic like Chuck Yager the pilot in command Who's like gonna like fucking but fly the machine and like do the do the thing as opposed to the airbus Which is just like as a computer This is very very much the just wanted to tell you all good luck. We're all counting on Yeah, but when you talk when you like fly this plane you have to do the Chuck Yager voice when you're doing announcements

Otherwise, it doesn't work. You have to like do the kind of like slight draw passengers, this is your captain speaking Oh Do they teach them to do that is they're like a school somewhere that's like when you when you like want to speak slowly just say In between I wonder if they have something in pilot school that's similar to what they used to do for ESB and broadcasters Or they would basically attempt to just knock the regionalism which is why like a bunch of American sports casters all like Sound kind of off. Hmm. Because they were trained for years to get rid of any accent or

Just for total standardization. Yeah, that's probably it Like this there's probably even like it's probably safer because like Easier to talk to air traffic control and everything when everyone has the same accent But like imagine how jarring it would be to get on a plane and hear like Minnesota nice coming from the cockpit just Visorily it's sort of traumatic and wrong. Well, yeah, because in the pilot pulls it in me club of shard just starts flinging staplers at your head This is your captain speaking we're gonna experience a little bit of a little bit of turbulence coming up. Oh, there it is

Oh Yeah, your stewardess will be through a hot dish All right, so wow, we're even go up we're going we lost Riley and we're going even slower this time All right the the Chad Boeing and the Virgin Airbus right anyway, so Let's talk a little bit about the Boeing aircraft in question. Let's talk about the Boeing 737, right? Delightful. This is yes, you can tell this is from the age of aviation. We're like the pilot is six martinis in everybody's like smoking

like you Everyone is carrying a suitcase that weighs 500 pounds because it's made just out of pure like reinforced leather and somebody's about to demand that the plane Go to Cuba get a nice vacation in sunny Havana with a hundred and nine of your closest friends Absolutely, this was this was the golden age, right? Like you're flying got more dismal after this Yeah, so this was this shows the Boeing 737 original on its maiden flight. This is April 9th 1967 you see has old-fashioned, you know, just regular jet engines Hmm as opposed to like new turbo fans, which are more efficient now. This is the old-fashioned stuff

It's just a big tube. Just suck the air through get suck the air through add fuel spewed out the back Didn't it was like that Delta flight. They didn't combust the fuel and just shot fuel out of the back roll roll and call Extremely inefficient. Yeah What's complete? All right, so you have this like plane that's being propelled by like fucking chemtrails of like jet fuel out of the back No treasure real Yeah, it turns out, you know back when they use it was leaded kerosene. That's basically chemtrails Yeah, this is this is the plane that like kind of killed the world though

Like not just because it sprayed jet fuel on everyone and made them Republicans But because this is like the short-haul plane right instead of you don't anymore go to a big Airport and fly to another big airport you take a short-haul flight from like a place You don't want to go to to another place. You don't want to go to like fucking. I don't know What's an airport? That's only international because it flies to Canada HIA Harrisburg International Airport Yes, that's that's the kind of thing or like you you fly to like from Glasgow to I don't know like Manchester or something and it takes 15 minutes and it's dismal But you know at least you're not on a train like some kind of peasant to be fair. I once did I mentioned this the

Celtic FC morning special from Dublin to Glasgow. I think we were in the air for a grand total about half an hour And it was on a turbo prop. So at least they know what they were doing. Yeah, very progressive Passengers, this is this is your captain speaking. Thank you for joining us on this scheduled flight from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania We will be touching they do that flight that flight exists. We will be touching down in approximately 45 minutes Please prepare for takeoff And I would like to ask the stewardess to please please bring me three martinis Consume over the duration of this flight. Yeah, and she's just like wearing a skirt that goes up to like nowhere the whole time

Everyone's drunk Everyone's like setting fires with discarded cigarettes. Yeah, that was Glaver as Alice Glassless So anyway, so the Boeing 737 was designed to fill a sort of niche between That will a niche that the Boeing 707 and the 727 Couldn't you know fill which was yeah short-haul flights. Yeah on these on these dumb roots that shouldn't exist and It was a roaring success, right? You know, they that this was in production for a very long time But it is still well it was in production until recently

So after the Boeing 737 classic we started adding new technology to these planes, right? So we have the the next one is the 737 classic, right? And that's when we start adding these these new turbo fan engines, right and the turbo fans are more efficient You can tell a 737 because as these flattened bottoms to the fairings, right? Because they couldn't they didn't have enough room to do a fully circular fairing And they could they could do that then because by then they had like CNC machines Whereas before that like the the 737 classic was designed by a guy with a slide rule and like a lathe who was also drunk One sixteenth of an inch

The 737 classic I I am almost certain that if you go wandering through the manuals uses an RCH as a measurement of length just So yeah, I mean, you know, the old one is just you know people beat-and-sheet metal with hammers Now you have more more better Metal working techniques. So, you know, yeah, you can get a machine to like beat the the mess or with hammers really quickly Still does this thing where the landing gear folds in and the tire is just exposed to the elements. That's fine Yeah, well even the new ones do that. It's fine. Yeah, if you're only in the air for 45 minutes, you know, what's it's fine What's the worst that's gonna happen? Yeah, I mean, it's not like tires react You know in strange ways to rapid increases and decreases in temperature, right? No, no

So, yeah, we got the new turbofan engines, right and these were in production for a long time until 1997 when the next 737 came out. It was called 737 next generation Ah Awesome everyone's seen this joke three times now. Yeah, and I'm the only one making an effort, but I genuinely do find it Yeah, you enjoyed it the first two times. Yeah, I will say yeah, it's good. I love it You're doing terrific. Oh, thank you. So the blowing 737 next generation, right? It has they redesigned the wing They add these winglets here. No, those things I hate because you can see the end of the wing go up and down

Yeah, no, thank you. No Just put the window shade down I don't need to like it may be Technically stronger that it's able to like flex like that. I don't I don't want to see it I'm just sitting there sweating and like white knuckling airline rum and coax on my 45 minute flight to Harrisburg You leave Harrisburg alone You could you could you could have spent less money and take an m-track, but you know, that's also like the Part your time is really inconvenient. I hate when I look out the window of my Amphilic car and see the wing flexing

It's supposed it's reassuring Alice Well, one of the one of the design philosophy behind the Amphilic car was you know, they were like, oh, well people like airplanes Let's make a passenger car that seems like it is round like an airplane and has tiny windows like an airplane You're right. That is that is what I want. Of course the first generation of Amphilic They had to retire because those square windows just you know depressurized like that So But so they redesigned the wing they got more efficient engines, right still turbo fans, right? They have higher maximum takeoff weight so you can handle more passengers

You can make the plane bigger, you know all this stuff still basically the same aircraft Yeah, they're just patching it. They're doing like It's a Boeing 737 version like one point whatever. Yeah, yes And and then one fun fact about these airplanes since we're talking about trains, too Boeing 737s are I believe the only aircraft Which traveled by train as part of their production process, right? So that's that they're good then because they yeah, yeah, why fly when you can take the train? Just doing the like math here on train good plane

Confusing plane train. Good. Good ish. It's it's it's interesting because there was um, I believe one of the one of the train loads of 737 Max's Actually derailed and fell down an embankment It's like that's a it's a pretty expensive piece of cargo to lose. That's fine like This this does look though like a kind of a a ship post you would come up with the what flying should look like It's just like this is it in the dictatorship the wheel Institute This is what taking an airplane flight looks like If you just get into this airplane body that is just like loaded onto a flatbed

So another fun fact So these 737s are going for final assembly in the written Washington Boeing plant right. Hmm. It's sort of that Pacific Northwest sort of near Seattle ish, right? and Renton is a fully unionized plant if you've heard recently about Boeing Hiring nine union workers. That was um, that was at their new South Carolina plant where the 787s were assembled and I believe they're now unionizing that plant, but um, the the Renton plant is interesting because it has one of the very few Engineers unions, right? So there's the society of professional engineers in aerospace, right the sp e a

right But Amy Amy to Reese taught me that like engineers are part of the professional managerial class And shouldn't be in unions because you should only be in a union if you'd like hit the thing with the hammer I need to reset the uh days without uh, Amy to Reese showing up on the timeline counter to Right now and now everyone else needs to reset their living living rent free in my head. Yeah, I'm sorry guys So one of their slogans when they were on strike, you know, I was like uh, or agitating for better labor conditions was uh, no nerds no birds It's good. I like that. But go birds. It's cool

You don't usually think of engineers as being you know a group with uh, Any kind of labor, you know solidarity, but it can be done. Hmm. So it travels by train. It's built. It's built with union labor What is there not to like about this plane? Why are we doing an episode on why it's it's not that's good? Why why why is there a problem? So after the Boeing 737 next generation, uh, Boeing decided we need to We need to spice things up, right? Because airbus was coming up with a new more efficient Airbus plane that was designed to compete with the 737, right? Yeah, it was the um, the new engine option the neo because that's you know, they thought it would be cool to call it that I guess Yeah, the the ceo just watched the matrix and yeah, yeah, that's that seems cool. I want to be like that guy

Yeah, airbus's chief test pilot's just two really like, uh, albino guys and white suits with dreadlocks Just awesome Maybe we must be played like this. Oh, they came out with the Boeing 737 max, right? Now one of the characteristics of this plane is to increase efficiency What they did was they made the engines more bigger, right? They look more bigger like look at the size of them compared to the old ones That's a that's a giant fucking they've they've literally just taken that engine off of a A longer haul jet and just bolted it onto the wing, right?

Yeah, exactly and in order to do that since the Boeing 737 as we saw before doesn't have a lot of ground clearance That's why they had to do the weird fairings, right with the flat bottom Um, they had to mount the engines a little further forward, right in order to have enough space to put them, right? Now the thing is that alters the handling characteristics of the aircraft, right? So it has more of a tendency to pitch up in certain situations. So, you know in some situations, right? Yeah, that thing that you don't want to do because then you stall and you crash the airplane Yeah, you don't want to stall and crash the airplane. That's bad. Yeah, so you want to keep the nose down Uh, so how do how do you go about doing that?

So the smart thing to do would be to retrain pilots, you know You'd say look this we should we should get you in the simulator here and you should What you should do is say all right here are the situations where this 737 handles differently from earlier 737s, right? But that's expensive, right? Yeah, we don't like doing expensive stuff. Yes. So what Boeing's uh executives decided, you know, is that so they They wanted to market this as basically the same aircraft as it was before They're like, you know, we can do is we can have computers solve this problem. No, no, no, no Well, that's fucking ironic the the time that Boeing gets owned

It's the one time that they act against type and do something that airbus would have done and be like, oh We just we just have a computer do the thing That's what happens when you dot the mannerisms of the french but like also this being the same plane that's like a That's a headache too because if it's a different plane You've got to like re-certify it and everything and you've I guess got to put a new number on it So it's not a 737 anymore. So you you kind of have to be like, yeah, it's the same basically We just move is this fine. It's the same thing. Hold on a second. Did Liam drop out?

uh Uh, this this is the episode that kills co-hosts uh The lights go out we hear a gunshot like I don't know. Maybe I'm next. We don't know. I I would have heard the gunshot He's 30 feet that way. Well, what if they what what if there was a silencer, you know, you don't you don't know You didn't think about these things. Uh, that's a good point. Yeah, it could be a very very good silencer. Oh my god um

Liam are you there? I I can hear you. I can hear you. What? Oh, okay. You are you are there. All right. Yes. God fuck Well, I was like I asked I asked if you were there. I yeah, I heard I heard and uh You slipped into my room and muted my microphone Entirely by yourself and not just me looking at on accident Frantically trying to figure out why I could hear you and you couldn't hear me. This episode is so cursed. Oh We're cursed. We're cursed Yeah, so

No, I was making jokes about the french No one was laughing which I thought was pretty disappointing because of course Alice is absolutely right. It's the one fucking time bowing. It's just like, you know, it's a good idea Emulating the goddamn french, you know what won the war. Yeah, we we we we put a blackface generator in the air Yeah, right, uh, we get really really mad about how our Of african descent soccer players who won the goddamn world cup aren't quite french enough Just the dumbest fucking shit and then why is the flight computer on the on the 737 max? Why isn't 90% of its processing time dedicated to like thinking about

Killian and Bappé Like or did he a drop but why address the fact that yeah We're the the the the fucking on board computer is too busy doing casual european weirdo racism To uh to compute anything else properly It's like it's like it's generating all of the balkan youtube comments that you see that are just like Oh, uh, manchester is greatest Serbia and then like a bunch of inexplicable death threats That's what it's doing while you're up there every time every time you boot up the plane's computer systems Right on every screen

On the plane including like in the passenger compartment with the little uh entertainment systems It just displays a picture of the prophet behind me Yeah, emmerits not a huge customer of this one weirdly All right, so now that Liam is back, um, I'd ever left technically If the worst part is it's gonna be on your recording too, right because you muted it on sky So there's gonna be a recording that justin's gonna have to edit out of like you yelling jokes into a void He's gonna turn out the jokes. We're like really good and i'm not gonna Oh my god, they weren't they weren't don't worry. Don't worry. I'm not especially funny. Don't put yourself down like that

Thanks. Yeah, this is a wholesome podcast. It is. It's a safe space Do you want to come in there and give you a hug or? No, we gotta do work Oh, okay. Yeah. All right moving swiftly on Do the catastrophe. All right, so they decided in addition to all these other features that we discussed that the computer did Um, you know with european characteristics. They um, they created something called the maneuvering characteristics augmentation system or the mcas Oh, that sounds safe and not foreboding the mcas

Do they call it an mcas or an mcas? I have no idea. I like mcas more because it has fewer syllables Hmm, it sounds more piloty to me. So yeah, let's go with that the mcas Yeah, because we are of course Aircraft experts. We are we're all doing the pilot voice constantly Uh This is your podcast host speaking We're going to move this conversation along outside temperature is about 44 degrees Fahrenheit. That's

No, I have no idea what it is. I'm making a joke about pilot voice Just the idea that you have like an information screen that shows you the location and like speed of the podcast That's a destiny Tiny little screen that shows you the map of the area where we are Goes goes from philadelphia to glasgow. Yeah, you you can watch like, uh, like Fucking meet the fuckers or something with like all the swearing removed while you listen to this podcast Whenever i'm on the airplane, I always watch airplane. That's that's like a tradition for me All right, so um the the maneuvering characteristics augmentation system adds some force feedback

To the yoke. That's the uh, that's the thing the pilot's used to control the plane Jesus No, that yeah, that's the thing you do with like cheap like logitech. Yes You just fuck it. We put we put a force feedback on here So like if you like think that you're wearing through this thin shitty plastic We'll just like have it and push back so you don't notice if it's good enough for a grid too. It's good enough for me Leave me alone Yeah, it's I I

So it was it's designed to add some force feedback to mimic the flight characteristics of uh, Older 737 it comes that the 737 max comes bundled with a copy of x-plain I will get to that Now this this uh mcass relied on information from the angle of attack sensor, right? That's the pito tube, right? It's just something that measures relative air pressures determine how fast the plane is going and what angle it is So it's it's it's it's the part that crashes the plane It's because like helicopters, right? They'll just kind of crash from anything But like a big fixed-wing commercial aircraft like this just kind of keeps flying or gliding

Pretty much whatever you do to it for a long time And the pito tube which has all of this electronics in it is like the one part that works like a helicopter Where it like is just like oh, I don't work anymore. I'm gonna kill everyone Yes, and and that's the reason why there are usually two on every airplane. Hmm because they're not they're not especially reliable no, they're very sensitive and uh, like off the top of my head Like planes have crashed because uh a ground crew guy left one covered in tape And because a colony of wasps started living uh in like a nest they had built in one of the tubes. Oh You don't yeah, why did he leave the plane sitting that long?

You don't want to be the guy who has to like clean out the wasps from the thing, right? Like I'll I'll write a b on this engine so we know there's bees Yeah So the thing about the mcast system is that while there were two pito tubes on the aircraft It relied on information from only one of them Oh good As you do now a lot of a lot of workers and engineers and so on at bowing thought this was dumb But you know management sort of overrode them. They're like, you know, it's probably fine

Probably nothing will happen, right? Yeah, you know, this this system was equipped on the bowing 737 max and also the military Kc 46 pegasus uh tanker Oh, good. That's the the thing that's filled with uh, like aviation fuel Oh, yeah, just like a big balloon full of of kerosene with a big hose coming out the back of it also has this problem It's not a balloon. It's a plane You'lls gotta go please A balloon is also a lifting body. This is fine. This is true

But I I assumed that like the plane has like bows is full of fuel in it And those are going to be balloon like in nature. So I'm not wrong. Fuck you All right, so uh now obviously so this mcast system's job is to pitch the nose down and add force feedback, right? You know, so let's see how good it is at doing its job. So the first incident Was lion air flight 610, right? This was a 737 max 8 Right. The 8 was like a sub designation. So this is like a longer airplane than some of the other ones, right? This is october 29th 2018

There are 189 people aboard, right? So they took off from jakarta, right? I hardly know, huh? is uh No, nothing Beggar beggin Jakarta, I hardly know. Yeah. Got it. All right. No, that works. That works. That took me a second. I was like I was unfamiliar. I was unfamiliar with that formatting of the joke. Yeah, jakarta main This is a flight from jakarta main to bar harbor. No, this was uh This plane uh crashed into the java sea 13 minutes after takeoff, right? Because the mcast got confused, right? And decided

You know, it had unreliable information from one of the pitot tubes And decided the angle of attack was wrong And started forcing the nose down, right? Because you don't want to stall the plane and so it just pushes the the nose down That's cool. That's safe. It's a safety feature. Yeah, it's a safety feature. Yes. It's very safe Well, the one thing the plane did not do was stall. There you go. There you go. Yes, that's true Maintained powered flight throughout Uh directly into the ocean. Yes, uh aerodynamically stable. Mm-hmm. Congratulations Boeing you you automated 9 11 If you could be one thing you should be efficient, so the the the the terrorist union just uh

Yeah, you you have to have at least 19 hijackers and they all have to have like a five hour break I'm just looking look at this the one thing that's really depressing me is the like, uh Not the 189 people who died so much as the like weird angle on the l of lion Like it doesn't match the Ion. Oh, yeah, it's really weird. Yeah. Well, there's your problem. It's like seriously like did you like the the Turning or whatever it is is off. It's probably why it crashed. Yeah, because the the the pitot tube was um since in the angle of the l Yeah, it's italic. Yeah, there there's your problem

We'll do it the people who are coming here with sir with wanting serious and like engineering Information it could be really angry at this podcast. They already are That's true. Yeah, so the pilot struggled against the mcast force feedback for a while But they couldn't really overcome it, right? And they didn't really know that the mcast was responsible, right? They didn't know they could maybe turn this off Yeah, you can't like physically fight it because it turns out that it's like because it's doing force feedback It pushes down twice as hard as it should be like Counteracting the force right because it's expecting the aircraft to be pushing up when it's activated

So if it's just the aircraft just traveling level it's going at twice the force it needs to be And it's just activating like on for five seconds off for five seconds on for five seconds like that Like one of the one of the articles about it described that there's like fighting a rabid dog Which is not what you want to do when you're you're uh operating a commercial airliner No, you don't want to install a rabid dog in the uh in in the in the cockpit Like if anything you should have like a nice dog like an emotional support dog Like like just a nice little dog in the cockpit and he's like very friendly Maybe he goes sleeps in a corner. He's very cute. Yeah, but no, this is the wrong type of dog

Haven't you mentioned at one point also that the pilots didn't really know what mcast was or even that it existed in the first place? Yeah, it's like buried way in the manual. Oh worse. It was never in the manual Oh, they bowing did not acknowledge at the time of this first crash Uh that the mcast existed at all like it was out It was not in any manuals or in any notices given to aircrew because they thought Well, it's never gonna encounter a situation where it's gonna turn on so they don't need to know about that That is that's a fantastic design philosophy right there We're gonna add this safety mechanism, but we're not gonna tell you about it because you're never gonna need it

Yeah, um, but that's that's why we thought we needed to add it though Yeah, it's it's it's if it's only gonna activate if you Like try to stall the plane under a very limited set of circumstances that Nobody's ever gonna do that in like regular commercial Service so we don't need to tell them and also that means that it's still a 737 and we don't have to like Neutrating anything like that. Yeah Yeah, because it's the same aircraft We don't have to call it a 738 and because we're kind of running out of numbers there. Oh, yeah

They got the 797 and that's it. Yeah, then they're gonna run out of numbers have to shut down bowing Yeah, they had to start making plans. Yeah have to start using letters. Yeah Oh, yeah, do the thing that Nvidia and AMD do where they just pretend those old products just never existed Yes, or the fucking trend where you just rename a video game the same thing You do the soft looking at you call a modern work there. Do you see Tomb Raider hit man? Yeah, this this is just gonna be like the 737 and then they'll have to put in brackets 2018 Okay, so this plane crashed it murdered everyone aboard and bowing tried to blame the pilots

You know, they're like they're inexperienced underpaid And also the nice thing about blaming the pilots was that they were dead So they really couldn't defend themselves, right dead dead and uh, indonesian which helps a lot because like yes the new york times like long read about this which is The angriest any newspaper article has ever made me was very much of the sort of uh, like the opinion that well And I I use quotes because this is what it says the Chinese As like as a race of pilots or whatever learn by rote Unlike the like airmanship having americans who are all chuck jager and just fly the dang machine

Uh, so yeah, no, it's it's it's very it's very it's very cynical to be like Oh, you just learn by rote and you just look for the things in the checklist when you have systematically concealed the existence of this thing from The fucking checklists. I'm just thinking now of an ancient race of confusion pilots You know, yeah, my father was a pilot and his father was a pilot his father was a pilot before Yeah, every year you have to do the like civil service examination where you have to like write a bunch of confusion heavily formalized essays about like startup procedures Yeah, it was it was the it was easily like one of the most cynical things I've ever read

It was by a guy called william langavisha who was uh, like a cargo pilot and it was just so So frustrating and insulting and I highly recommend reading it if you want to like punch holes in your drywall all day I have to do it. Oh, yeah It be overgrown frat boy. All right, so Buying tried to blame the pilots and you know, they they made some headway there, right until it happened again Did it happen again? Did it happen say in a country where we could also just blame uh Say the nationality of the pilots rather than the catastrophic failure

By an american corporation to do their goddamn jobs properly getting getting out my skull calipers And like wandering the wreckage in search of like pilot remains to be like, ah the brain pan here Uh, just doesn't doesn't allow for airman. Shit. I mean boeing is doing their job. Which is killing brown people That's true. That's true Shit, I wonder if those nerds those union nerds also make like reaper drones because if they do then like I feel a lot worse about them Are you think the um the engineers union only covers the civilian division of um, uh boeing Well, that's okay, but yeah, but boeing boeing as a company like, uh It still makes a lot more from the military side than the civilian, right? Like well, especially after this

I think it's about 60 40. Um civilian military. Yeah, it's almost exactly 60 40 So ethiopian airlines flight 302, right? This is from adis ababa to nirobi 157 people on the plane Both both in main for some reason. Oh, yeah on march 10th 2019, right? So this was this flight was even shorter than the previous one, right? MCAS activated two minutes into the flight. It pitched the nose down, right? Pilots tried to counteract with brute force on the yoke And then since MCAS was a little bit more known about at this point

They used a boeing approved recovery procedure, right? So they disabled the electric trim Um, which disabled MCAS now that the trim are small at small control surfaces On the larger control surfaces, which sort of altered their Resting position, right? So like flaps or et cetera. Yeah, like flaps elevators ailerons on and so forth Right once they disabled the electric trim that disabled the MCAS, but it also disabled their ability to Alter the trim except manually, uh, which meant they needed to use a big crank, right? Bullshit. Yeah. No, there's no there's a big big hand crank they had to use to alter the trim So

Shades of lark mug and teak. Yeah Well, I'm thinking of the like the mine cart that you see with like two guys pumping a big crank to move it down a railroad Yeah, basically Just just inadvertently like create like transforming this billion dollar aircraft into a hand cart Yeah, well at least it gets this workout out of it. That's that's boeing technology right there as you're crashing into the ground Yeah, get that get that core strength Well, they didn't have enough core strength because They owing to the aerodynamic forces on the trim

Right, they they couldn't really alter the trim position at all which had been pushed down Which had been pushed down Yeah, and like if you if you turn the electric trim back on the MCAS comes on and it pushes it back down again Yes So you just have to like crank the big crank that you physically can't crank Damn should it should have been stronger should have had more gains. Yeah, that's why you never skip arm day, bro It's about to say this is a failure due to the lack of swallocity They did they did like in as part of boeing's press thing in response to this

I remember seeing an article that was like The flight crew on this were both men, but uh, they were like are women pilots physically strong enough to fly? Uh, because you know, maybe they can't move the the crank that these two guys couldn't move I mean, maybe you shouldn't add like a hydraulic press That you know forces the controls into position so that you crash the plane. You know, this is my idea Little controversial You've turned the cockpit into the hydraulic press channel you know

All right, so they're like the the pilots are like, okay, we got a problem. We need to return to the airport Right, so they start to they ask permission to return to the airport They start trying to turn the plane around but you know, they're like, all right. Well, we got to turn the electric trim back on Mm-hmm. Because otherwise they can't really maneuver the airplane at all. So they do that They turn the electric trim back on and mcast is like, oh, wow, we're gonna stall I better put the nose down and did and they crashed didn't stall once again. Once again did not stall. Yes So Yes mcast 2 stalls zero

Um So again, yes, this murdered everyone on the plane once again, right? So at this point Boeing is is kind of up shit creek, right? So it starts with the Chinese grounding the plane The faa tried to make an argument that, you know, it's fine. Nothing's going wrong here And then two days later, they decided to ground the 737 max as well This isn't like march of 2019 We all we're all doing

We are all doing Xi Jinping's thought on the basis that like the chinese aviation authorities were quicker than this one. Yay regulatory capture. The faa is the most cucked regulator though, right? Like aside from maybe the sec Yeah, the sec basically can't do anything to anyone who decides not you have to make a conscious decision to get caught by the sec But like the faa like if you're an airline as opposed to like just some like Piper cub driver Uh, you kind of like what can they really do to you? Like I I I guess they can I guess they can stop you flying your plane eventually after it kills like a couple of hundred people Yeah, it it killed uh in total 346 people yikes, right? Yeah

So one thing that came out in the wash, right after these planes were grounded and they're still grounded to this day And Boeing has stopped production of them. Um, one thing that came out of the wash is that there was in fact optional extras which would have let the pilots know That mcass was causing the problem, right? There was dlc that would have fixed the plane No, that was uh, that was uh Angle of attack disagree light, right that would show that the angle of attack sensor that the mcass relied on Was showing a different result than other angle of attack sensors, you know the two pito tubes, right? Jesus fuck and that would be that would show that a mcass is the problem

Maybe you should turn it off, right? But this was an extra feature So budget airlines didn't buy it, right? No, of course They they also got their parts, uh, like cheaper because they got them used Uh, there's a place called cockroach corner in florida, which has a bunch of like Essentially just parts bins for commercial aircraft And and this came out in the Boeing press stuff, too They were like, you know, these kind of these shady these fly by night operators Uh, they they just buy their parts from anywhere and it turns out they were buying their parts from

Well, americans, but that never really gets mentioned But you just get this this angle of attack sensor out of a bin somewhere and you like Screw it into the aircraft and then yeah, it's it's fine. It's cool. Uh until it doesn't it's good It's good put some drywall around it. It's fine. That's a safe Grover plane grover plane as it happens to try to mount a barbecue on a wing Yeah, the the course of the crash is the galley just has a grill in it and it's melting the plastic siding So, um, all right, so the plane killed 346 people in total This is a massive economic disaster for Boeing, right? They've lost about 20 billion dollars in canceled orders and and you know

Just a gravity. Oh, no And of course the investors, uh kicked out Boeing CEO, right? Not not over killing a lot of people but over the lost revenue Of course And and that that guy's definitely not fine wherever he is. He's um He yeah, that guy died. I think or is in jail or something That's a lot of faith the american justice system there, bud He he definitely he definitely didn't get like some kind of generous severance package and then go to work for somewhere

He didn't get severance. He just left with 80 million in stock up. Oh, well, that that's a just punishment actually Yeah, I was about to say like you know how much we mean 80 million dollars isn't a lot of money anymore No, let's get real. That's like one candy bar like or like a sata cable Uh, that's like only two penthouses in central park west could get some mentos for that several mentos Several mentos some diet coke luxury. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, you know on Boeing is Well, we'll see we'll see how they pull through this. I'm sure with massive government subsidies I don't I don't think I don't think we'll I don't think we'll see the death of america's main commercial aircraft manufacturer

I don't think the government would let it let them go No, I mean, I guess this is nice if you're uh, Like if if you're I don't know like northrop grumman and you decide. Hey, maybe I want to get back into civil aviation Now might be a nice time for you to do that And it's great if you're airbus because you can just be like, oh, we just we install zeresis computers more and like Like when when an air France flight from Rio de Janeiro to paris just smacks into the ocean because the computer decides Yeah, I I feel it's on we I am dissipated. I I crash the plane into the ocean

I kill everyone there's bastards. Then yeah, no, that's that's fine. You just like muscle through that somehow the computer is smoking There is there there is no ethical aircraft manufacturer under capitalism It's true. Yes. That's the damn truth That the last good aircraft was the l 10 11 Oh god, anyway, of course litigation and investigation is still ongoing into these Incidents and I'm sure we'll do maybe a more detailed podcast later when we have more information Yeah, um, of course, you know that that is what it is Boeing screwed the pooch on this airplane screwed screwed the pooch on this airplane, but got away with it because

uh, we live in some very racist times and you can just like So long as you don't kill 350 white people, it's kind of okay and you can kind of get away with it. Yes Yep, uh, and and then and then you can like you can call the pilots incompetent And you know, even when you're proved to have been lying It doesn't really matter still and everyone involved still keeps their money and their reputations Uh, and some some podcasts just make fun of you and yeah, no, it's a hard life It is it is they must all be uh, so devastated by this r.i.p Boeing but not really. Yeah

Is the the the real the real casualty here like Several hundred families losing, uh, you know one or more family members. That's Sad but like uh an like a manufacturer of planes having to change CEOs Is that's the kind of tragedy that just sticks with you when you do a podcast like this? That is true We're we're all we're all going to therapy for this deeply sad. Yeah by Yeah, there's unfortunate ouster. We did we did say that we were not going to do another tremendously depressing episode, but here we are Uh, you know, yeah, we're all weeping openly. Yeah the changing of the guard R.i.p. Well next time we'll have a nice lighthearted episode

Uh about the Tacoma Nara's bridge disaster Finally. Yeah. Yes. Well done. So that's the end of the episode. Does anyone have any commercials? Uh No, listen to trash future. It's a good podcast. We're doing a live show at some point in february Uh, so look out for that. But yeah, that's all I go up Liam do you have a commercial? I guess uh, follow me on twitter at old man anderson Uh, and thank you to the people who have been uh

Also piling on just dog. Shit idiots in our comment section on youtube. Yes. Thank you Thank you for cyberbullying bros Appreciate you. Yeah, just so you know if if you're if your comment gets pinned Under any video that means it's the worst comment. I always pin the worst one Except except I think on the um On the traffic engineering one because there was a guy who was a traffic engineer just commented and say Oh, yeah, all this stuff is true. And I was like, yeah, this guy's cool. So yeah, that was that was the worst comment No, he was he was like a nice person. So that was not the worst comment

So I changed my policy there, but generally speaking If you get your comment pinned that means it was a bad comment And now everyone needs to dunk on you. Yeah Do do better Yes, do better at commenting. Mm-hmm. Well, there's your podcast Yes, so my thing to do a commercial about is So here in philadelphia, we just started the Philly transit riders union. Um, this is a coalition of or this is a union made of both transit riders and transit operators

Um, and we're meeting on the third sunday of every month We know we'll stick to information about that in the description of the video Uh, if if you are a philadelphia transit rider and you're tired of being considered like a second class citizen You know compared to like drivers. I recommend you join the union One of our campaigns right now is we want to do something about SEPTA converting route 15 from an electric trolley into a diesel bus, which is of course happening uh tomorrow, uh Which is the uh, january 24th

So, I mean if you're if you're interested in better transit in the philadelphia region I I you should come to our meetings. That's my commercial tram good, uh bus bad Bus less good. Yeah bus less good. Yes diesel bus very much less good Especially when you're replacing an electric trolley with the diesel bus bus less Yeah, you second they may not get new trolleys in until um 2031. I'm like port richman's going to be underwater in 2031 You're not even doing the thing glasgo did when we got rid of our trams Well, we replaced them with a trolley bus for a year and then decided that that was a dog shit idea And we were just going to do diesel buses SEPTA says they're going to temporarily suspend

trolley operations for 18 months now the last time they did this was when They temporarily suspended trolley bus operations for 18 months and that 18 months lasted five years We need public pressure on these guys to just not be complete clowns about this So that that's my commercial and then other than that, um Follow my twitter and watch my youtube channel the the videos are coming soon. I swear. I swear to god swears in the real We have we have our second patreon episode coming on the subject of liam's van with riley quinn from trash future Who is unfortunately deceased who is unfortunately. Yes died of of usbc Yes

All right, so uh, I think that's all the things I think so. Yes. All right, but only finally got three tries Only took three tries and declaring it podcast 12a Yeah, we absolutely have to number it 12a. I'm calling it 12a. Yes We did it. We did it. We finally did it. Bye everyone