Boeing and China

Boeing has always been blind about China, but China has never been blind about Boeing.

As the first person to brief the NSA on China's new (ca. 2003) national business model, I was cautioned, including with terms such as "capital punishment," not to share what others said in that meeting. However, I was told it would be fine to repeat what I (not they) had said.

The briefing, originally set for a half-day, was doubled at noon to go the full day (leaving my loyal EA stuck in a nearby Dunkin' Donuts for a full 8 hours). At the end, I approached a member of Boeing's board of directors, saying that the company needed to focus on the long-term threat China posed to his firm, from IP theft to later direct competition. I departed with the impression that I'd soon hear back; I never did.

I had the same experience at the Aspen Security Forum, this time with a top officer of the firm. No one home.

Boeing had become a victim of China's commercial capture, carefully selected by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for special treatment, in what might be termed a host / parasite program. China had picked out a few companies for first-class treatment as "show ponies" to fool the West into thinking that all firms would get the same; and, more important, in arenas in which China had top priorities - but no abilities - to steal as much IP from the host as possible before kicking the host out of the country.

(This process continues today, with Intel, Apple, Tesla, and a few others.)

China's plan, then and now, was to copy the best-selling plane of all time - the Boeing 737 - and manufacture it under its own brand. Pilots and aerospace executives I talked with at the time insisted that China's plane would never receive international certification, so Boeing had nothing to worry about.

No doubt, Boeing also felt the same.

While Boeing was immensely better at making planes than China, China was, it turned out, much smarter than Boeing at playing the "great game." An early example was to force Boeing to further drop its once-unbreakable principle of not allowing offshore manufacture of any high-IP airframe parts (wings, tail, etc.) - although Boeing had earlier caved in, just a little, to Japan. (And here, too, it's worth noting that Japan had invented the first version of China's new business model, which we call "InfoMercantilism.")

And so it came to be that - using Airbus and Boeing against each other, and leveraged by large potential annual purchase orders - Boeing caved. Call it "China 1, Boeing 0."

One thing Boeing knew for sure was that the 737 engines, which were being made by a GE/Safran joint venture called CFM International, were essentially impossible to re-engineer. India had tried it for a decade without success, so there was reason for confidence. In fact, GE was so sure of this that then-CEO Jeffrey Immelt, on his first day as the US "jobs czar," handed a blueprint for an engine to China's then-president Hu Jintao (a seeming act of corporate suicide right up there with Bill Gates handing Hu the source code for the Windows OS).

Boeing Before China's Move

Boeing, in this phase of China's long-term plans, was selling breathtaking numbers of airplanes to China (and the world), as shown in this chart by evoX:

Until China cut off Boeing in 2019, the prior-year sales run rate was $10B per year, and the cumulative total was about $84B.

No wonder Boeing was cocky.

China, at that time, badly needed: a) infrastructure; and b) transport to run on it, in order to grow its IP-theft-based economy at rates approaching 30% per year.

Not only was China Boeing's largest customer, but that trade had also made Boeing the US's largest exporter, by dollar volume. This, in turn, gave Boeing a unique position in the balance of trade statistics between the two countries (and the US vs. the rest of the world).

Here's a view of the trade deficit the US has had with China over time. (Please note the misstatement regarding the so-called "trade war"; China's economic war with the US has been ongoing since its new business model began in 2003):

As America's most important mitigator in this economic bloodletting, Boeing was king.

Or at least, for as long as China wanted it to be.

Boeing As "Useful Idiot"

Per Wikipedia:

In political jargon, a useful idiot is a term currently used to reference a person perceived as propagandizing for a cause - particularly a bad cause originating from a devious, ruthless source - without fully comprehending the cause's goals, and who is cynically being used by the cause's leaders.

Boeing became one of the most dependable places for China to turn when it wanted to influence US behavior for China's benefit, from Congress to the Oval Office. The fact that this lobbying almost always harmed larger US interests seems to have eluded the Boeing C-suite. (The same remains true of Apple's Tim Cook and Tesla's Elon Musk today.)

In what other ways did this useful idiocy play out? In no particular order, and as only a partial list, we would include:

• IP theft ignored, almost encouraged
  
  
• Manufacturing in China for IP heavy parts, with full knowledge of the above
  
  
• Training of local Chinese to make these parts, with full awareness of the long-term result
  
  
• Ignoring threats and transgressions that harmed the US and Boeing shareholders in the long term
  
  
• Willingly and knowingly serving as the "good China" counter-example, even as hundreds or thousands of US firms were being stripped of profits and intellectual property
  
  
• Playing into the role of global transport importance in the CCP's long-term plans for dominance
  
  
• Playing into the role of the importance of stolen aviation IP for China's military

And much more.

The 737 Story

The Boeing 737 has made more money for Boeing than any other model, and it has had more deliveries.

It has also sold more than any other brand, including Airbus - at least until China pulled the plug, two years after this chart was made:

China's Commercial Judo: A Manufactured Crisis?

For some reason, it seems to have evaded media attention not that these two crashes were horrible, but that many planes, historically, have crashed, with the subsequent loss of many lives.

This is even true within just the 737 family. From Wikipedia (highlight ours):

The following is a list of accidents and incidents involving the Boeing 737 family of jet airliners, including the Boeing 737 Original 737-100/200), Boeing 737 Classic (737-300/-400/-500), Boeing 737 Next Generation (737-600/-700/-800/-900) and Boeing 737 MAX (737 MAX 7/8/200/9/10) series of aircraft. As of March 2022, there has been a total of 503 aviation accidents and incidents involving all 737 aircraft, including 219 hull losses resulting in a total of 5,717 fatalities.

The 737 first entered airline service in February 1968; the 10,000th aircraft entered service in March 2018. The first accident involving a 737 was on July 19, 1970, when a 737-200 was damaged beyond repair during an aborted takeoff, with no fatalities; the first fatal accident occurred on December 8, 1972, when United Airlines Flight 553 crashed while attempting to land, with 45 (43 on board plus 2 on the ground) fatalities; and, as of November 2018, the greatest loss of life aboard a 737 occurred on October 29, 2018, when Lion Air Flight 610, a 737 MAX 8, crashed into the Java Sea shortly after takeoff, with 189 fatalities.

Several accidents of the 737 Original and Classic series were due to a design flaw in a power control unit (PCU) causing uncommanded rudder movement under thermal shock: see Boeing 737 rudder issues for further info.

In October 2018 and March 2019, two fatal crashes of 737 MAX aircraft led to a worldwide grounding of all 737 MAX aircraft until December 2020.

[For an exhaustive list, go to: List of accidents and incidents involving the Boeing 737 - Wikipedia]

So, with 503 crashes and incidents and 5,717 deaths in 737 history (as of March 2022), why, exactly, was the 737 MAX grounded after two crashes?

In general, the cause is ascertained by investigators, usually over a course of months (or, in this case, three years); steps are then taken to avoid future problems. The technical issue appears to have been the MCAS system on the MAX (with related issues regarding physical damage to the angle-of-attack [AoA] sensor), all agree. But was it the cause, or was it just a contributing factor, with the cause being pilot training and performance?

Other than the flights themselves, there was another very unusual aspect to the decertification and grounding of the MAX. Normally, this kind of directive would have come from the world's most respected aviation agency, the FAA. But in this case, no; rather, it was China that first decertified the plane, soon after the crashes and before the reports, leading to a cascade of junior global players following suit. The US and some other Western nations continued to fly the plane until the FAA - among the last - agreed to ground it.

This reverse order breaks an important pattern in international protocol: trust and credibility. To the best of my knowledge, China had never taken the lead in decertifying a US- or Western-made plane. And if it had, it isn't clear whether anyone else would have followed suit, unless other nations (most predictably, in this case, Ethiopia and Indonesia, denying all pilot error, and then Canada) jumped in.

To put the question another way: How many successful flights had been flown already in the MAX by properly trained pilots prior to the two crashes?

According to the FAA, at the time of the second crash there were 8,600 flights per week in the MAX, which was already Boeing's best-selling plane of all time. Wikipedia provides the first-year figures:

After one year of service, 130 MAXs had been delivered to 28 customers, logging over 41,000 flights in 118,000 hours and flying over 6.5 million passengers. Flydubai observed 15% more efficiency than the NG, more than the 14% promised, and dependability reached 99.4%. Long routes include 24 over 2,500 nautical miles (4,630 km), including a daily Aerolneas Argentinas service from Buenos Aires to Punta Cana over 3,252 nmi (6,023 km).

The MAX entered service in 2017 and was grounded in 2019; this suggests that something between 2x and 3x the above figure applies. In other words, between 894,400 and 1,341,600 successful flights had been made, using the same MCAS system listed as the cause of the two crashes in the Ethiopian and Indonesian final reports, by pilots from all over the world - but mostly in North America and China.

Strangely, although Chinese airlines had no crashes, it chose to ground the MAX.

No one wants to see two crashes - or any - even after 1,000,000 flights, but one has to stop at this stage and ask whether the above facts and reports are consistent with normal practice. The answer, obviously, is a strong No.

Economic Wars, Report Wars

This problem erupted again in January of this year, with the final release by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) of its report on causes. After having discussed all of the above for several years with pilots and flight experts, it was this last report that led me to choose this topic for this week's Global Report.

In fact, the NTSB took issue with a number of conclusions in the Ethiopian Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (EAIB). In short, the EAIB did not include pilot training, skills, or error as causal, which the NTSB strongly suggested were indeed primary issues. Further, the NTSB noted that by omitting these factors, it harmed the industry, which needed to know that training needed improvement.

Shortly thereafter, the NTSB released another comment document, noting that the EAIB had ignored evidence that the angle-of-attack sensor - which had failed - had failed not due to heating or electrical problems caused by Boeing (per the EAIB's claim), but likely by a bird hit. The failure was physical, not electrical. The EAIB had been given the evidence on this but chose to ignore rather than include it (a violation of international protocol), causing the NTSB to suggest basic malpractice was afoot on the country's part.

Only this past January did we have the final, objective report by the NTSB, after all the damage to Boeing had been done. And that report strongly suggests that the real crash cause was a bird strike against the AoA sensor, combined with very poor pilot training and performance.

Here is the language of the first complaint, led by coverage in Leeham News:

Omissions and misstatements

The NTSB's critique noted that the final report failed to include its comments and misstated other documents and findings in assessing the blame to Boeing. The NTSB also concluded Boeing was partly culpable.

The NTSB's nine-page critique is here. The press release is here. Releasing an independent set of findings is unusual and was prompted by the exclusion of its comments and what the NTSB characterized as misstating critical information that should have been part of the report for the safety of operators worldwide.

Here's the NTSB press release on same:

WASHINGTON (December 27, 2022) - The National Transportation Safety Board published Tuesday the comments it provided to the Ethiopian government on their draft accident investigation report into the 2019 crash in Ethiopia of a Boeing 737 MAX airplane.

The NTSB took the unusual step of publishing the comments on its website after Ethiopia's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (EAIB) failed to include the NTSB's comments in its final report on its investigation into the March 10, 2019, crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302, a Boeing 737-8 MAX. The NTSB received the EAIB final accident report on December 27.

In accordance with the provisions of the International Civil Aviation Organization Annex 13, countries participating in the investigation are provided the opportunity to review the draft report and provide comments to the investigative authority. If the investigating authority disagrees with the comments or declines to integrate them into the accident report, participating countries are entitled to request that their comments be appended to the final report.

The EAIB provided the NTSB with its first draft of the report last year. The NTSB reviewed the report and provided comments on several aspects of the accident the NTSB believed were insufficiently addressed in the draft report. The comments primarily were focused on areas related to human factors.

After the EAIB reviewed the comments, it provided the NTSB with a revised draft report for its review. The NTSB determined the revised report failed to sufficiently address its comments. As provided by the ICAO Annex 13 process, the NTSB provided the EAIB with more expansive and detailed comments.

Instead of incorporating the most recent and expanded comments into their report, or appending them as had been requested, the EAIB included a hyperlink in their final report to an earlier and now outdated version of the NTSB's comments. 

The NTSB also noted that the final report included significant changes from the last draft the EAIB provided the NTSB. As a result, the NTSB is in the process of carefully reviewing the EAIB final report to determine if there are any other comments that may be necessary.

The NTSB's comments are available online.

And an excerpt from that final report:

Overall, the US team concurs with the EAIB's investigation of the MCAS and related systems and the roles that they played in the accident. However, many operational and human performance issues present in this accident were not fully developed as part of the EAIB investigation. These issues include flight crew performance, crew resource management (CRM), task management, and human-machine interface. It is important for the EAIB's final report to provide a thorough discussion of these relevant issues so that all possible safety lessons can be learned.

The comments presented below discuss aspects of the accident that were not adequately addressed in the EAIB's draft report. The comments are grouped into three main areas: draft probable cause, airframe/systems aspects, and operational and human factors. The final section of this document describes Boeing's and the FAA's safety actions after the 737-8 MAX accidents and the NTSB's September 2019 recommendations to the FAA.

DRAFT PROBABLE CAUSE

We agree that the uncommanded nose-down inputs from the airplane's MCAS system should be part of the probable cause for this accident. However, the draft probable cause indicates that the MCAS alone caused the airplane to be "unrecoverable," and we believe that the probable cause also needs to acknowledge that appropriate crew management of the event, per the procedures that existed at the time, would have allowed the crew to recover the airplane even when faced with the uncommanded nose-down inputs.

We propose that the probable cause in the final report present the following causal factors to fully reflect the circumstances of this accident:

 uncommanded airplane-nose-down inputs from the MCAS due to erroneous AOA values and

 the flight crew's inadequate use of manual electric trim and management of thrust to maintain airplane
control.

In addition, we propose that the following contributing factors be included:

 the operator's failure to ensure that its flight crews were prepared to properly respond to uncommanded stabilizer trim movement in the manner outlined in Boeing's flight crew operating manual (FCOM) bulletin and the FAA's emergency airworthiness directive (AD) (both issued 4 months before the accident) and

 the airplane's impact with a foreign object, which damaged the AOA sensor and caused the erroneous AOA values.

Here's the language of the second complaint:

The National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday published a second round of comments detailing concerns with several findings in the Ethiopian Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau's (EAIB) final report on the March 10, 2019, crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8. The comments come less than a month after the NTSB protested what it called the investigation's insufficient attention to the human performance aspects of the accident.

Although the NTSB said it agrees with the finding in the EAIB report related to the role the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) and related systems played in the accident, the report also contains findings not supported by evidence, according to the Safety Board. For example, the NTSB specifically cites the EAIB's conclusion that aircraft electrical problems caused erroneous angle-of-attack (AOA) output.

In its final report, the EAIB wrote electrical anomalies that existed since the time of the accident airplane's production caused the AOA sensor heater to fail. As a result, the Ethiopian authority added, the AOA sensor provided erroneous values that caused the MCAS to repeatedly pitch the nose of the airplane downward until it struck the ground.

The NTSB, however, found that impact with a foreign object, most likely a bird, resulted in the separation of the AOA sensor vane, causing erroneous readings. The NTSB added that it provided the EAIB with evidence that supports the finding of a foreign object strike during the accident investigation, but the EAIB failed to include it in the final report.

According to the EAIB, an open circuit, wire fatigue, multiple arcing events, unexplained electrical/electronic anomalies, and the loss of heater power led to the failure of the originally installed and tested Boeing AOA sensor. The U.S. team believes that an electrical failure affecting the left AOA sensor did not occur before the left AOA vane's impact with a foreign object, said the NTSB.

"The conditions present at the time of the accident were above freezing temperatures with no moisture present (that is, ice could not form regardless of the heater's operational status)," the NTSB commented. "Thus, a loss of electrical current through the vane heater at any time during the accident flight would not explain the event because the loss of electrical current would have had no effect on the AOA sensor output. Another factor that occurred simultaneously with the loss of the AOA sensor vane heater's electrical current would have been required to cause the observed change in the AOA output signal."

Additionally, the NTSB said the AOA sensor vane heater and the two internal AOA resolvers operate on different electrical circuits, so a loss of electrical current in the AOA sensor vane heater does not indicate an electrical failure of the two internal AOA resolvers. The accident FDR data showed no indication of an electrical issue with the resolvers, it added.

Finally, the maker of the AOA sensors, Collins Aerospace, performed a fault-tree analysis to evaluate possible AOA vane failure scenarios caused by internal and external electrical faults. This analysis also considered every short circuit path to the AOA connector pins. The analysis found no electrical failure mode consistent with the circumstances of the accident, according to the NTSB.

The U.S. authority also called misleading the EAIB's finding about the lack of MCAS documentation for flight crews because Boeing had provided the information to all 737 MAX operators four months before the Ethiopian Airlines crash.

Although the NTSB acknowledges that information about the flap position required for MCAS to activate did not appear in Boeing's flight crew operating manual (FCOM) bulletin and the FAA's airworthiness directive in response to the crash of a Lion Air MAX 8 on Oct. 29, 2018, Boeing provided the information in a multi-operator message (MOM-MOM-18-0664-01B) sent to all 737NG and MAX customers on Nov. 10, 2018.

Although the EAIB appended Boeing's multi-operator message to the final report, the EAIB failed to mention that the flaps information appeared in that document-thus rendering the finding misleading, concluded the NTSB.

According to the NTSB's most recent statement, the EAIB issued its final report without giving the U.S. regulator the chance to review and comment on new information incorporated since its last review, as stipulated by the International Civil Aviation Organization's Annex 13.

- "NTSB Finds More Problems with Final Report on ET MAX Crash"

(AINonline.com, 1/24/23)

From the outset, the question of the contribution of poor pilot training and performance was raised by many experts. For example (highlights ours):

The pilots of the fatal Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX searched pilot handbooks and checklists trying to work out why their jet was pitching nose down and one prayed as the aircraft dived into the ocean killing all 189 aboard, according to sources that have heard the cockpit voice recorder.

The report carried by Reuters says that the problem with the angle of attack sensor started just after take-off when the first officer reported a "flight control problem" to air traffic control.

While the first officer did not specify the problem, the source said airspeed was mentioned on the cockpit voice recording, and an indicator showed a problem (Angle of Attack sensor) on the captain's display but not the first officer's.

SEE: Boeing's 737 MAX statement

READ: Pilot Training, Automation under intense scrutiny

The captain then asked the first officer to check the quick reference handbook, which contains checklists for abnormal events.

For the next nine minutes, the Lion Air 737's warning system alerted the pilots it was approaching an aerodynamic stall and pushed the nose down in response.

Sources said that the captain fought to climb, but the computer, still incorrectly sensing a stall, continued to push the nose down using the plane's trim system located in the tail of the aircraft.

But the sources told Reuters that the Lion Air pilots "didn't seem to know the trim was moving down, they thought only about airspeed and altitude. That was the only thing they talked about."

This activated the stabilizer trim wheel in the cockpit which would have been spinning forward and making a loud noise. How the pilots could have missed this or its significance has stunned 737 pilots.

What is called a "Runaway Stabilizer Trim" is a memory item for pilots. You don't need the checklist, you simply switch it off. [. . .]

The Reuters report comes after Bloomberg, this time quoting two sources, reported that a pilot traveling in the jump seat of a flight on the same plane the night before diagnosed a similar problem with the aircraft and told the flight crew how to fix it. Bloomberg reported the third pilot told the crew to hit two switches that turned off the stabilizer trim.

- "Confusion and Prayer in Lion Air Cockpit"
(AirlineRatings.com, 3/21/19)

Damage to Boeing

We have focused above on the revised causations of the Ethiopian crash specifically because China misused the original, faulty conclusions to ground the MAX, and, by doing so, harmed Boeing.

Boeing estimates that it has incurred about $20B in losses thanks to the MAX decertification; our estimate is quite a bit higher. It is also worth noting that, after all the articles, investigations, reports, and recertifications, with 180 out of 195 countries using the planes again, China was almost dead-last to recertify.

In addition to the direct costs named above and other damages, such as reputation, morale, layoffs, and global trade imbalances, there is the obvious story of Boeing vs. Airbus, shown in this chart:

It is not surprising, then, that China's commercial judo move against the 737 MAX turned Boeing's biggest customer into Boeing's biggest loss, and - more important - helped launch Boeing's future biggest Chinese competitor, the COMAC C919 copycat 737 - exactly what I warned the Boeing board member would happen, way back at that NSA meeting.

In fact, the C919's certification for flight by China coincided almost to the day with when the NTSB released its final report, thereby allowing deliveries to a customer list already approaching 1,000 planes inside China and around Southeast Asia.

Readers who have gotten this far should also not be surprised that, just shortly after being certified, the C919 had a near-crash on a landing, caused by the malfunction of a jet engine thrust reverser. One pilot friend suggested this was "an excellent way to make a turn." The CCP rapidly put out word that it was due to "foreign parts" in the engine, but further investigation reveals that COMAC is still buying CFM engines from the West.

My bet is that the reversers were put on locally. Good luck with that shiny new plane, Xi.

In summary: While there is no doubt that the MCAS system needed sensor redundancy and other refinements, our current view is that the proximal cause of the downing of those two planes was bird strikes to the AoA sensor, in combination with weaknesses in pilot training, skills, and performance under stress.

But make no mistake: it was China that brought down Boeing.

Your comments are always welcome.

Sincerely,

Mark Anderson

mark@stratnews.com

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"A senior captain with 35 years' experience with a leading pilot training organization told AirlineRatings.com that of the pilots his company is training 'only 10 percent are smart enough to understand every system on an aircraft.'

"'Today's aircraft - the A350, 787, A320neo and 737MAX are hugely complicated with multiple redundancies which is why flying is so safe. But when I instruct the pilots, I've got to be very careful about not telling them too many facts. Sure, if I've got a very, very clever pilot I will tell him or her more of the facts. But essentially, they don't have to know all the complex background systems. The pilot just has to know how to react if a system fails,' said the training captain.

"He adds: 'For instance, the tutorials that we are given have the simplest little cartoon pictures on how this thing works. Really simple, and essentially that's all the guys have to know and they don't learn anything more than that. Both major manufacturers are buying into this philosophy. There are focused on making their planes as simple as possible to operate while increasing the complexity in the background to improve safety.'" - AirlineRatings.com

"A senior 737 check captain with an Australian airline backs up the background MCAS system saying 'we don't want to go too deep into background systems or pilots get overloaded at critical times. The runaway stabilizer trim procedure has been in Boeing aircraft since 1960.'" Ibid.

"'If you have a stabilizer trim runaway, which they had, and it's not your action, there are two cut-off switches right next to the throttles,'' he says. 'You uncap them and you switch it off. It's just that simple.'

"'The previous crew that had the same problem should have written that up properly so when the next pilot comes in, he looks in the tech log and he sees what happened. Even if he forgot the procedure he would have been reminded of the procedure.'

"On the new much talked about MCAS system software, the training captain says 'even if they had intimate knowledge of the system you still have to cut off the stabilizer trim regardless.'" Ibid.

Former senior air safety investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, Greg Feith, also questions the flying skills and training of the pilots in the Lion Air and Ethiopian crashes.

"United Airlines stated after the Lion Air accident that their training program for the 737MAX was robust and that their pilots were thoroughly trained,'' he says.

"Over the past few days [after the Ethiopian crash], US carriers who stood behind the airplane also expressed confidence in their respective training programs for the MAX and the pilots who fly them."

"So, the question that needs to be asked and investigated is how thorough and robust is the 737MAX pilot training program at Ethiopian Airlines [and Lion Air], what was the training history of the two accident pilots, how much time-in-type did they both have?

"Lastly what is the expectation and competence level of a 200-hour F/O in the Ethiopian crash and if the captain had very limited time in the MAX, his competence level as well," Feith told AirlineRatings.com.

"I think the Lion Air accident is a good example - the pilots who flew the accident aircraft in the days before the crash were successful in recognizing the anomalous airspeed and stall warning indications and they took the appropriate corrective actions to successfully complete their respective flights - yet the accident flight crew failed to take the proper corrective actions.

"When that investigation is completed, I believe improper actions by maintenance personnel and the accident flight crew will be the prominent causal factors."

Feith says that "in the coverage of both accidents virtually no one is talking about the pilots, nor the airlines involved, nor the training, nor the experience of the pilots".

"It is well beyond time that these direct factors are understood, investigated and considered a possible contributor to the two distinct MAX accidents."

Feith says the Ethiopian captain's 8000 hours total time is one thing but "how much time in type is the real question."

"Ethiopian does not have many of these model airplanes currently in service and the accident airplane was delivered in November,'' he says.

"Thus, one question is how many hours did both pilots have in the actual airplane since they completed training. A 200-hour F/O begs the questions about the training program and how much the F/O could really contribute with very limited experience." - Ibid.

"The NTSB said the Ethiopian report's finding that aircraft electrical problems caused erroneous AOA output was 'unsupported by evidence.' The NTSB said it found the erroneous sensor output was likely caused by a bird strike soon after take-off from Addis Ababa.

"The NTSB added that the Ethiopia report's finding that MCAS documentation for flight crews was 'misleading since Boeing had provided the information to all 737 MAX operators four months before the Ethiopian Airlines crash.'" - Reuters

"France's BEA air accident investigation agency, which read and analyzed the black boxes at the request of Ethiopia, has also taken issue with aspects of the Ethiopian report.

"It said earlier this month 'the operational and crew performance aspects are insufficiently addressed'". - Ibid.

More on MAX Pilot Error and Training

Experts have noted that other Boeing and Airbus models had their own similar difficulties, and have had for years, while in active service. To wit:

Pilot Training, Skill Levels and Automation Come Under Intense Scrutiny

Seattle and Toulouse, we have a serious problem with pilot training, skill levels, and automation.

That is the emerging message from the recent loss of two Boeing 737 MAX aircraft along with AF447, an A330 in 2009; Ethiopian ET409, a 737-800 in 2010, Asiana OZ214 a Boeing 777 in 2012, Indonesia AirAsia QZ8501, an A320 in 2014, and the Atlas Air 767F last month.

While the debate rages about the pilot automation interface, that may not be the direct issue.

Potentially more important is what happens when humans interact with that interface under intense pressure and the emerging problem of "automation paralysis".

Although we are yet to find out what happened on ET302, it appears pilots under intense pressure may not have followed either basic airmanship fundamentals, core basic training or straightforward instructions from their fellow pilots (AF447 and QZ8501).

Professor Najmedin Meshkati*, a professor of engineering and aviation safety at the University of Southern California believes what Boeing and Airbus need to do is "first acknowledge and second to address individual differences in information processing and decision making both under routine and non-routine situations".

He says they should also if possible, design "adaptive" automation to cater to the needs, limitations, and capabilities of different pilots regardless of their experience and varied training standards.

"I am talking about their cognitive styles which are totally different and independent from age, IQ, experiential knowledge or flying skills," he says.

"I think it's not simply making the aircraft "idiot proof" as many suggest. During the time of stress, some pilots are or may be "freezing up".

Meshkati was commissioned to study the phenomenon, called "decision making under stress or overload" in the 1990s. He was given two grants from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and designed and conducted experiments at a small nuclear reactor EBR II in Idaho Falls.

- AirlineRatings.com (3/18/19)

[To read the balance of this interesting article, go to: Pilot training, skill levels and automation come under intense scrutiny - Airline Ratings.]

Only recently was the final report on the two crashes released by the FAA. It pointedly criticized the local final reports from Ethiopia and Indonesia for failing to even mention pilot ability or training.

From Reuters:

U.S. safety board chair rebukes Ethiopia over Boeing 737 MAX report

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON, Jan 25 (Reuters) - The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has faulted Ethiopia's final report into the March 2019 Boeing 737 MAX fatal jetliner crash and said that country's investigators did not adequately address performance of the flight crew.

NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said in an interview on Tuesday that Ethiopia's Aircraft Investigation Bureau (EAIB) had made errors in its report.

"We feel what they did not do is really delve into the flight crew performance issues and whether they were adequately prepared," Homendy said. "We felt like it was not as comprehensive and robust as it could have been."

[1/2] The Boeing logo is seen on the side of a Boeing 737 MAX at the Farnborough International Airshow, in Farnborough, Britain, July 20, 2022. REUTERS/Peter Cziborra

The MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 in Indonesia and Ethiopia, which cost Boeing more than $20 billion, led to a 20-month grounding for the best-selling plane that was lifted by regulators after Boeing made software and pilot training changes. Boeing declined to comment Tuesday.

The NTSB was not given a chance to review or comment on Ethiopia's final report before it was made public last month, a violation of rules overseen by the United Nations.

"It's unprecedented -- under ICAO we get a right to review the report and to provide comment," Homendy said.

The NTSB comments released in December were in response to an earlier draft the board reviewed.

The NTSB said earlier Ethiopian inspectors investigating the cause of the March 2019 Ethiopian Airlines' crash that killed 157 people did not pay enough attention to crew training and emergency procedures in their report.

To read the rest of this interesting article, go to: "U.S. safety board chair rebukes Ethiopia over Boeing 737 MAX report" (Reuters, 1/25/23)

Other select sources for this week's issue of the Global Report include (but are not limited to):

US comments ET302 Report March 2022.pdf (ntsb.gov)

Pilot training, skill levels and automation come under intense scrutiny - Airline Ratings

NTSB Releases Comments on Ethiopia's Investigation of the Boeing 737-8 MAX Accident

NTSB issues critique of Ethiopia's final report of Boeing 737 MAX 2019 crash - Leeham News and Analysis

Boeing 737 MAX - Wikipedia

Boeing's 737 MAX prepares for long haul to recovery | Financial Times (ft.com)

737 MAX revenues charts - Google Search

A New Approach to Rebalancing the U.S-China Trade Deficit (hbr.org)

China Southern flags 737 MAX flights in possible return of model | Reuters

U.S. safety board chair rebukes Ethiopia over Boeing 737 MAX report | Reuters

Final report on Boeing 737 MAX crash sparks dispute over pilot error | The Seattle Times

Re:    SNS: THE ERA OF HYPERCHANGE, PART I

         SNS: THE END OF TIKTOK IS NIGH

Mark,

Well done. What's better for each of us and our families than Health and Happiness? ;o)

William Lohse

[Venture Capitalist
Founder, Social Starts LP and the Pivot Conference
Reno and Paris]

Bill,

One obvious question would be, is the internet - mother of all technology and change - still a benefit for us? Is it? Are we better off? I'm not sure, really. I've recently said in public, a couple times, I'd just push the red button if someone gave me one, just to see.

I don't think that we get enough back out of it, compared with what it does to us. I'm not sure we're healthier. I'm sure we're not happier; I'm sure of that, and we might talk more about that subject.

But if you're looking for a healthy, happy life? If that's your personal goal? Tell me why the internet makes it better.

Mark Anderson

Mark,

Lots of headlines this evening that FBI Director Christopher Wray says the FBI also believes COVID originated in a leak from a Chinese lab. As I've said in other posts, I don't think we know one way or another. Not knowing has been twisted in a lot of reports into the lab leak conclusion being an established fact. But set that question aside for a second. In the exclusive interview which Wray gave to Fox News he actually said something far more dramatic. He claims that it was an accidental leak of a virus designed to kill Americans.

Here's the quote, with emphasis added ...

"The origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan. Let me step back for a second. The FBI has folks - agents, professionals, analysts, virologists, microbiologistts [sic], etc. - who focus specifically on the dangers of biological threats, which include things like novel viruses like Covid. And the concerns that they're in the wrong hands - some bad guys, a hostile nation-state, a terrorist or criminal - the threats that those could pose. So here you're talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab that killed millions of Americans and that's precisely what that capability was designed for.

"I should add that our work related to this continues. And there are not a whole lot of details I can share that aren't classified. I will just make the observation that the Chinese government, it seems to me, has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work that we're doing."

This comment has barely gotten any attention, which I find baffling. The focus has been on the FBI's judgement that a lab leak is the most likely explanation for the emergence for COVID and that China is trying to thwart investigations into its origins (which is certainly true). But the import of this comment couldn't be more clear: that this was a viral agent designed with a capacity to kill Americans.

One of the reasons that it's hard to know just how COVID originated is that there don't have to be signs of genomic engineering in the virus. Samples can be taken from the field, brought into a lab setting and then jump into the human population. In other words, the lab leak theory is entirely compatible with little or no bio-engineering of the virus.

But Wray seems to be suggesting that that it was actually a bioweapon that the Chinese had developed and then lost control of. To date there is really no public evidence of this at all. And studies of the COVID virus itself seem to show no evidence of this kind of engineering. Without the evidence being contained in the genomic structure itself, determining just how it first infected humans becomes much more difficult.

As I said, all the information I've seen tells me we really don't know how COVID originated. That lack of information, which China is itself largely responsible for, leads everyone to go with their favored assumption. But this is why a lot of people are so wary about this kind of speculation - because it quickly jumps from accidental lab leaks to the inadvertent release of a bioweapon designed to kill Americans.

Late Update: I've heard from some people who say that the highlighted portion is a reference not to the virus and how many Americans it killed - which is I think the syntactically most logical read - but to the FBI tracking capacity. Perhaps that's right.

But at best it requires a clarification of what he meant. My interpretation still makes the most sense to me, but I wanted to flag this other possible interpretation.

Charles A. Richardson

[Founder, Syngevity.com
Friday Harbor, WA]

Charles,

Taking exception to a couple of your statements, based on our own research, which we have previously published here:

1. The Furin cleavage discovered by German scientists soon after COVID release pointed clearly to bioengineering, to most objective observers, as it increased effectiveness with no obvious prior genetic history in nature.
   
   
2. The variant of the original COVID, or something very close to it, was achieved in North Carolina by scientist Ralph Barak, using passaging (fast evolution) techniques. Barak, by all accounts, was wise enough and worried enough about the risk to say so publicly in his published findings. This, in turn, seems to have led to a cessation of that research under the US federal government, with the research continued at Wuhan Virology Lab.
   
   
3. It is likely (but not proven, to the best of my knowledge) that at this stage the virus did not yet have the Furin cleavage. If not, it would have been acquired somewhere after, on the track to, and before, its ultimate release. Whether this was done in Wuhan is not known - partly because the CCP has destroyed all evidence of all research performed there.
   
   
4. That continued research in Wuhan was partially paid for by the US government, through scientist Peter Daszak and his EcoHealth Alliance nonprofit. At that point, we had what was effectively a bioweapon, originally made by us to be super-effective against human cells, sent to Wuhan and then released.

Whether that release was an intentional act of war or whether it was accidental, by then treated as a weapon by the CCP, we do not have enough information to distinguish. But, at least from our perspective, it doesn't entirely matter; either way, CCP lies and coverups - and general behavior in allowing 40k Chinese to travel the world from Wuhan at that time, etc. - weaponized COVID.

The result, so far, is 1 million dead in the US. This is more than World War II and the Civil War, our two most costly of lives, together. For those who understand the CCP's prime book on warfare, Unrestricted Warfare, and those who have read Sun Tzu's The Art of War, this is a perfect example of both. Others would call it the ancient Chinese tactic of the "Assassin's Mace" - an unexpected, killing, blow.

I will add that something like 90% of fentanyl components are made in China for export, mostly to Mexico, where cartels are happy to finish the process and ship this killer into the US. The US government has asked the CCP to stop, without success. US fentanyl-related deaths per year total about 100k, which means that deaths per decade are about 1 million.

Add COVID to fentanyl, and you get about 2 million American dead so far, thanks to China, with no obvious end in sight. This would be more than all of our prior wars combined.

Perhaps Christopher Wray's comments, his upgrade from moderate confidence to high confidence, and the recent Department of Energy report will begin to repair the CCP's (and Peter Daszak's) misinformation campaign against the WHO, the world, and the US.

Thanks for writing in on this,

Mark Anderson

Subj.: RE: THE END OF TIKTOK IS NIGH

Berit,

I've been tracking this story closely. A few additional concerning data points.

1. Much of the oversight board and trust portion here is being outsourced to Oracle. I'm not sure I trust Oracle to be impartial.
   
   
2. Even worse though, as security researcher Klon Kitchen says, "TikTok is adopting a "catch me if you can" strategy like the one previously employed by Huawei in the United Kingdom" rather than providing full transparency.
   
   
3. ByteDance continues to launch new apps in the US, including the latest Lemon8 in the US. So it's more than just TikTok.
   
   
4. In addition to short form and mindless algorithmic sap, TikTok also has become a top search engine for GenAlpha / Z / Millennials - as Google's own research shows that 40% of young people use TikTok or Instagram when they want to search for food - and presumably other things. I'm more afraid of TikTok than GenAI-infused Bing or Bard for sure.
   
   
5. And TikTok is now where an increasing number of GenAlpha / Z / Millennials go for news too - Pew found last year that more than 25% of under 29 year olds use TikTok for news - and they tend to trust "regular people", rather than journalists for this information.

Imagine if CNN or CNBC were owned by the Chinese. We'd be up in arms. But TikTok is news, search, travel, and so much more for such a large part of the Western population.

However, even if it isn't shut down, I think [TikTok] will be severely hamstrung by regulation. I've been surprised by the lack of EU action here, but they seem to be coming to the party too, albeit a bit late.

I wouldn't worry too much about your kids or creators if the app is shut down. My friends in India tell me that Instagram - and to a lesser extent YouTube shorts - have become the dominant short-form platforms there since TikTok was banned. At least those companies are based here in the US.

For more on Project Texas check out this detailed report.

Jim Louderback

[Creator Economy & Digital Media Adept;
Author, "Inside the Creator Economy" Newsletter;
(fmr.) CEO, VidCon
San Francisco, CA]

Jim,

Thanks. Agree on all fronts. I don't think most "adults" understand the extent to which "the youngs" rely on TikTok for news. And the dissolution of trust in established news sources.

Copying Sally so she can include your comments in our next GR.

On a related note, we'd love to take you up on your offer to reach out to [redacted] to join us as keynote conversations at FiRe, Nov 6-9, 2023, at the Terranea. [. . .] Currently, Andrew Anagnost, CEO of Autodesk, is our Centerpiece Speaker [. . .] on the 8th. [. . .]

Berit

And ...

P.S.

Oh also note that TikTok YESTERDAY announced that they would add 60 minute default limits to teens. Good first step, but easily circumventable.

I wrote about it on LinkedIn here: (99+) Post | Feed | LinkedIn

This is going to be an interesting story to watch.

Jim

* At the end of April, Mark will be traveling to the annual Swiss Biotech Day conference in Basel, to Zurich/Zug and ETH, and then to see friends and new partners in Hamburg. * And on November 6-9, he will be hoping to see many of our members in person, at FiRe 2023 at the Terranea Resort.

In between times, he will be trying to figure out what to call his latest pattern-discovered physics equation, linking matter, light, least-action mathematics, and Planck's Constant. How about the "Quantum Action Equation"?

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