Rogue Boeing 737 Max planes 'with minds of their own' | 60 Minutes Australia

[Music] so we're on the takeoff roll now we're just just passing 100 knots and at the moment everything is fine veteran 737 pilot Chris Brady is about to take me on a terrifying flight approaching the the rotatespeed there we go so just easing back on the on the elevators by moving the stick back and you see the aircraft becomes airborne in this simulator we're replicating the 12 minutes pilots on board the Indonesian blind air flight 610 experienced before crashing into the sea in October last year now the flaps have retracted this is the point at which damn cats would work on the line unbeknown two pilots on this brand-new aircraft the Boeing 737 max a computer flight control system called MCAS hidden in the plane suddenly activates 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 7,000 I'm stopping there because that's already looking very uncomfortable Wow and I'm gonna try and pull back out of that I'm gonna have to use trim to help me out of it MCAS has the ability to automatically and repeatedly take control of the plane and on this slide air flight it did just that so you can see how dramatic that was that's happening irrespective of or anything you're trying to do that this that's just happened whether you liked it or not yes MCAS had malfunctioned and allowed the pilots just five second intervals to regain control so I now think the problem is gone I think the problem solved but what we don't know is behind the scenes in the black boxes they're counting to five and as soon as they count to reach five like there we go again Vincent misbehaving and you look out the window oh my god you you're in the dive again it's got a mind of its own it's logic is programmed 10 seconds on five seconds off and we don't know that because where's the we have the pilots have never been told it was never in our manuals again and again Chris Brady fights the rogue M care system but it's a losing battle it will start to trim down so let's going two three four five six seven eight nine ten and you've seen that we're now in a very very steep dive I'm not a pilot but that makes me almost sick to think about her I think me too me too it's such a horrible situation to be and it's unimaginable lost contact with air traffic control at 6:32 a.m. local time on October 29th last year line air 6:10 crashes at extraordinary speed friends if those on board appeared helpless and killing all 189 men women and children on board we learned that there was a system on the aircraft which we had no knowledge of it wasn't in our books maybe we hadn't been trained to it it was absolute blindfold in a dark forest for us but five months later despite Boeing's assurances its new jet was safe another 737 max crashes into the mountains of Ethiopia it's pilots fighting to the death to take control and this voice said is this Susan riffle and I said yes and they said are you alone and so I just knew and I just said both are boys and he said I'm really sorry 346 lives and the reputation of Boeing the world's largest aircraft company placed scattered in the waters of Indonesia and in the soil of Ethiopia the last six minutes their life is had to be horrific it's just that that'll haunt me for the rest of my life my life now it's taken away from me the 737 max was Boeing's most successful aircraft ever [Music] now the entire fleet is grounded with many questioning its future airlines around the world had already ordered 5000 of Boeing's new 737 max but with two Jets down the company was now faced with the unthinkable did the news star of their fleet have a serious design flaw this is now one of Aviation's greatest scandals and the subject of two criminal investigations pilots around the world are furious 350 people died as a result of this what else has got through you know what else could be could be onboard that we haven't seen yet and it's relentless it's powerful it was a monster in a cage design engineers are asking how did this happen when you go home at night and you put your head on the pillow you ask yourself what did I miss how was it that an aircraft could seemingly have a mind of its own all of a sudden the aircraft's nose went down to 40 degrees now 40 degrees is terrifyingly steep this is literally kamikaze stuff now whistleblowers are talking we were under pressure to minimize changes to cut costs and to get it done quickly and Boeing is being asked was there a flaw in the system was all triggered by this intense competition because he put profits before people Boeing was always playing catch-up coming up the Hidden Falls that pilots were saying what's going on here and a company denying responsibility it's clear that after that crash Boeing's immediate impulse was to suggest that it was pilot error that's next on 60 minutes Boeing 737 has been the most successful passenger aircraft of all time since it first flew in 1967 over 10,000 have been made revamped multiple times but by 2011 Boeing decided it was time to design something new that was until its competitor Airbus released their neo an advanced version of its a320 coin was always playing catch-up Seattle Times Aviation reporter Dominic gates has long covered the hometown giant Boeing I mean a lot of our readers work and remembers the company's alarm when Airbus launched its ultra-modern neo in July of 2011 Boeing executives learned that American Airlines was about to order 200 a320neo this nuri engined plan and there was total panic here in Seattle almost overnight Boeing found itself in a dogfight with its greatest competitor Airbus so it made a decision instead of starting from scratch and developing a brand new plane Boeing decided to take one more roll of the dice with the 737 they didn't have a max they didn't have a plan but on the spot they said okay we'll rien gender an American said yes we were under pressure to minimize any changes to cut costs and to get it done quickly in my view Boeing was making decisions on the basis of share price these claims are from a Boeing Insider who can't be identified and is now an FBI informant in a criminal investigation into this company your most profitable single-aisle aircraft he was involved in the design and development of the 737 max and says that part of the sales pitch to prospective buyers was that this new aircraft wouldn't require costly retraining of pilots the main requirement driving the design of the max was that there could be no changes that would require flight simulator training by pilots we could have really upgraded that aircraft but the companies mandate about no extra training stopped us upgrading the old 737 to keep up with its new Airbus rival was easier said than done it's new fuel efficient engines were too big to fit beneath it's 53 year old body they moved the engines forward and up but Boeing then discovered that caused a serious problem in flight a live defect that forced the plane's nose up risking a stall and stalling can literally make an aircraft fall from the sky Boeing knew the engine design and placement would make the aircraft pitch up with an increased risk of stalling especially at low speed but we were too close to certification to change the design sorry Boeing came up with a fix a computer program called in that would automatically force the plane's nose down that could be activated by just one sensor the decision was made to add a software program to the flight control system am Cass but M cast was not heavily reviewed we didn't really understand its failure modes the mechs became a runaway success Boeing believed the MCAS system would automatically deal with any stall issues and that the plane would handle just the same as the older version and that meant to fly the new plane pilots only needed to upgrade by completing a course on an iPad this was the upgrade was it yes when we first received the max we were provided a 56 minute iPad course which we could accomplish anywhere at home or in a Starbucks Dennis Teja is a veteran pilot for American Airlines and spokesman for the American pilots it's pretty much the same right so go ahead and fly it we accepted that at their at their work but nowhere in the iPad course the pilots flight manual my Boeing ever mentioned the MCATs anti-stall system no mention of M case not one not a mention of it it's not in our books it's not in our lesson plan American Airlines didn't even know about it Boeing's error in not telling pilots about the existence of the MKS system would soon have catastrophic consequences masseter the crash of line Air flight 610 of the Indonesian coast killed all 189 onboard the flight path of this brand-new 737 max showed dramatic changes in altitude until its final high-speed death dive into the sea it's clear that after that crash Boeing's immediate impulse was to suggest that it was pilot error and I think because of legal liability Boeing's very very reluctant to say anything that indicates there's something wrong with our plan until it became very clear that in fact there was something wrong with the plan how quickly did you realize that this was an aircraft problem that we were looking at I think pretty much right away as soon as we saw the airplane end of down straight into the water that that indicated there's something wrong with the airplane Peter Lemmy is a former Boeing engineer an aviation expert who is now cooperating with a US Justice Department investigation into Boeing he reviewed glein Air's flight data recording as an aviation engineer I imagine that when you look at that your heart sinks seeing seeing the pilot fighting an aircraft system is very difficult to watch that pilots were saying what's going on here I'm having to deal with the system which I didn't know about it has been grounded in London aviation expert David Lee amount from the international flight global group I think a lot of confidence in their own also suspected the cause of the crash was not pilot error I think one of the smoke screens is that Indonesia doesn't have a brilliant safety record it really doesn't and so you have a crash in Indonesia and some people in the end recei will say what do you expect after the lion air crash Boeing finally revealed the existence of their new MCAS flight control system pilots around the world was shocked we called our safety experts that said where is this in a book and they said it's not and I said well does does a higher line American have it no and we learned later that no one across the globe had it in their books it was unacceptable this is an unforgiving profession that counts very heavily on the pilots knowledge background and training and there are lives depending on that why on earth didn't Boeing name this system in the flight crew operations manual what is the analogy for those of us who don't fly planes of what it must have been like to learn of something brand-new in your cockpit well is this if you buy a new car and you're driving along and and suddenly it veers off and careens into a wall and you didn't do anything and you ask the dealer what was going on there and oh well it was a system what system auto drive system an auto drive system yeah when it's raining in your windows half-open it just automatically tries to find a garage and it just turns right to the nearest one well it turned into a wall and I didn't know about it that's what it's like that's what it felt like betrayal shock how in the world could you do that I don't think I want to buy another car from you representing thousands of American pilots Dennis Teja met with Boeing executives asking why pylons hadn't been told about MCAS and their response was they didn't want to inundate the pilot with extra information that they didn't think was necessary to fly the aircraft they thought that would overload you with information if you knew about this yes and so our response was tryin but it sent a very strong signal to us that somewhere near the philosophy had been tainted and poisoned it was just illogical Boeing claimed that any malfunction of the MCAS system could have always been dealt with if pilots followed a safety checklist trouble is pilots didn't know what they were dealing with it was a monster in a cage and when it came out when it wasn't supposed to it had no boundaries and the pilot was left after all of those distractions left to just simply refer to a very common checklist give me a break that's not how it really happens in a cockpit Boeing knew a week after the land air crash there was something wrong with that system but then they thought they'd fixed and they thought they'd fixed it and they said there's a way of handling it maybe you we didn't tell you about this before you didn't know the system was on the airplane but now you know and if this happens again you do this so yes they knew the problem and they thought they had a solution for five months boeing kept cranking out the maxes and assured the aviation industry that the MKS software installed in the 737 max was safe on march 10th this year that assurance would be proved tragically wrong coming up five four three two one six of terror there would have been calamitous noise on the flight deck so this is all happening in seconds and then comes the chainsaw and a family's unimaginable torment that'll haunt me for the rest of my life that's next on 60 minutes as brothers they were chalk and cheese 26 year old Melvin ripple was the life of the party who loved outdoor sports Bennett was three years younger and the quieter one who preferred the solitude of nature but together these boys from Redding in Northern California were a tight team with their mum susan and dad Ike this was a loving family they liked exploring the world it seems yes Melvin did more travel than Bennett Bennett talked about doing more travel and I think Melvin probably challenged him somewhat to say you talk about it so let's go and so they did in February this year Melvin and Bennett set off on a brothers Odyssey around the world I imagine as parents who viewed this trip like others a great adventure for them oh yeah you didn't have any particular fears for them you know I did personally have some fears like I'm kind of warrior you know and but the last thing on my mind was it would an air and air accident at 8:38 a.m. on March the 10th Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 takes off from addis ababa it's considered one of the world's safest airlines and on board the brand-new boeing 737 max our Melvin and Bennett but shortly after takeoff Ethiopian flag 302 is suddenly out of control a critical sensor sending information to the plane's new flight control system called MCAS has malfunctioned MCAS thinks the aircraft is in a stall and literally takes over the controls pitching the plane into a steep dive [Music] it's almost identical to what happened to line air flight 610 just five months earlier in Indonesia the Boeing had since assured pilots further disasters were avoidable as long as they followed the safety checklist what Boeing described to us was that simply you go to a known checklist but what they failed to recognize is that this was a complex intense emergency because the airplanes telling you you're about to stall so that's happening right after takeoff within metres of the earth five four three two one zero in this flight simulator british 737 pilot Chris Brady replicates what's happening in the cockpit each time you notice we're getting lower the Ethiopian pilots wouldn't be trying to follow Boeing's checklist but what they didn't know was that the MCAS system will repeatedly turn on and off it means they have only five seconds of control before MCAS overrides the plane forcing it to nosedive a few at a time how long it would to take me to find runaway stabilizer on this list and go to it in the book page nine point nine as your nose-diving and it's barely enough time for the pilots to consult the boeing checklist which can only be found in a paper manual okay so that's taken me what about two or three seconds mm-hmm so I've only now got two more seconds potentially before MCATs comes alive and starts trimming me down for me this is all outrageous on so many levels it is these are unintended consequences of an ill-thought-out add-on that was nest that there would have been calamitous noise on the flight deck the aircraft was going faster and faster and faster so there was a clacker going to tell the crew that they were over speeding and it gives you an indication of how overloaded those pilots were nothing even though they tried the checklist it wasn't working for them so this is all happening in seconds it is a sledgehammer to the head followed by ball-peen hammers to the forehead and then comes the chainsaw will be nominalism to us and that chainsaw rips through that cockpit and it's relentless the parts were literally in a tug of war with their own aircraft the aircraft which is powering at a 40-degree nose down attitude which would have been terrifying [Music] six minutes they must have realized oh my god yeah it is horrifying yeah unimaginable what what the flight must have been like what with passengers have thought in both those flights would they have known pretty quickly that things are things are not good it's very sad it's been terrifying because of those dives I'm certain of it the crash sites strewn with personal effects eyewitnesses gave their version of the final seconds it went straight into the ground with its nose it then exploded I presume you got a phone call we did I can Susan riffle were at home that Sunday morning Susan had just seen a headline about the crash when the call came and so then when I picked it up and this voice said is this Susan riffle and I said yes and they said are you alone and so I just knew I just said both our boys and he said I'm really sorry when you are giving news like that where do you begin to when you want to try and understand you know there's there's no understanding there's there is still no understanding now and it's and it's and and I guess you just don't believe it at first you know you think okay I'll wake up and this all be over and then and the next day and the next day you'll wake up this is this is not true how could how could something like that happen [Music] for their daughter-in-law Brittany the news was devastating she'd not long returned from the Australian leg of the holiday with her husband Melvin coming home to rest up and prepare for the birth of their first child whom they'd already named Emma can you describe your life now my life now it's taken away from me [Music] you know I have a mind it's just unfair that Emma has to grow up without her father here and and he was so excited he was so excited for this next chapter of his life and so has been it and it was so excited to be an uncle and so having that taken from them and taken from us as a family is really hard to deal with on a daily basis it's obviously gonna stay that way for the rest of our lives for this family the loss of two brothers two sons in the prime of their lives is unimaginable I feel like our family's just gone the loss of nobody to pass anything on to you know the the stories the there'll be Emma and she'll hear stories from her grandparents for as long as we're around but that's not the same all the family isms all the things that we as a family of four all of that just seems like it's ripped out and it's gone and it's all for naught all the little things like that that only the boys in us would know and I'm acutely aware that these were your only boys yeah you know really we were lucky I told you this exactly but we were we were really lucky that we were a family that all loved each other and all loved each other's company and be together and to do things together and stuff with dad and it's and then you know you know Susan I were getting you know we're getting we're getting later in life we're looking at retiring and traveling and and and and just watching and you know watching our boys grow up and grow old didn't have you know you know they were supposed to bury us you know do you think about the fact that they were together yeah I do I kind of wondered if they were sitting together because you never know and maybe but I wondered about that whether they were actually together at that moment and I kind of wish they were but then I kind of don't really want to know if they weren't you know kind of a thing I'm not gonna ever the the last six minutes their life is something that haunts me though it's that what they had to do but yeah then when everybody on that plane had to go through for six minutes the last six minutes their life had to be horrific it's just that that'll haunt me for the rest of my life [Music] coming up this drop through what else has gone through our commitment to safety is unwavering and Boeing's response we do regret the impact that this has had two passengers infuriates a grieving dad who you angry at 60 minutes Boeing's embattled CEO Dennis Muhlenberg is standing by his plane right thank you and I appreciate you joining us here this morning hello everyone the company's cash cow the 737 minutes that's despite the damning evidence of a fatal software flaw in its flight control system called MKS again our commitment to safety is unwavering and we do regret the impact that this has had to passengers but it all sounds like PR to Ike and Susan reform who lost their only sons Melvin and Bennett in the Ethiopian Airlines crash just two months ago I feel like if I was to talk to Boeing I would say feel cheated that I don't you know I don't get to see our son be a father our other son being uncle a software malfunction memories you know that I feel cheated I'm very angry I mean I've very angry Ike is a former private pilot so understands the Deming revelations about the aircraft who you angry at I am angry at Boeing for not addressing the problem too but to find out what really happened you know I guess you know the 737 max was it was a huge seller for for Boeing and they had a lot of orders they had a lot of planes flying and I don't think that they wanted to take those off the line at the time and and it's pretty obvious right now that they should have I think this is going to be one of the biggest cases against Boeing ever in their history mark Lindquist is a former US District Attorney now he's said to take Boeing to court on behalf of the families of victims in the Indonesian and Ethiopian crashes there's almost no question here about the legal liability of Boeing Boeing is at fault their plane crashed twice the real question here is more one of moral culpability and the difference is with legal liability you're just saying okay we're legally responsible with moral culpability you're saying we did something wrong we own it and we're gonna try to make it right central to determining Boeing's culpability will be the company's failure to inform its airline customers and pilots of the flight control system called MCAS that could take control of the plane most aircraft safety systems rely on two or more sensors so the fact that MCAS was able to be triggered by a single sensor is almost unheard of it is absolutely basic in aviation design that no critical system should depend on one thing feeling yet Boeing did just that according to Seattle aviation journalist Dominic gates and nobody saw the potential of what could happen if it failed or some aspect of it failed correct and that seems like terrible feeling how can a system on airplane take over the plane and and and not allow the pilot to actually fly the plane if like if if you have a system that's going to move the nose of the plane from stalling why is it not going to move the nose up when it's flying into the ground I think Boeing now must be asking itself did we really do that did we really design such a fragile system that accidents like this could result from it did we really do that experts around the world are shocked by Boeing's decision including David Lee amount in London I think they must be in a state of disbelief because they didn't abide by a lot of the rules they've always abided by before former Boeing engineer Peter lemme in Seattle agrees for the general public it is mind-blowing that one faulty sensor could bring down a plane but that's what happened that was the trigger that was the catalyst for the whole process yes it just took one faulty sensor right the Boeing whistleblower who's working with the FBI confirmed that making the MKS flight control system reliant on only one sensor was a deliberate decision to avoid the need for expensive level D or flight simulator training em caste was designed using data from only one of the sensors because we knew the FAA would not have certified a to sensor system without level D training and for those pilots who were expected to fly the mechs even more disbelief I've been doing this for over three decades I've never heard of a system that is so dramatic it has such a dramatic effect on the aircraft to be dependent on one sensor unacceptable you're taking control away from the pilots and letting a software engineer that's never flown a plane probably in his life make make the decisions of the plane you know the ultimate sensor on a plane should be the pilot it's now been revealed that while boeing was claiming this 737 max was safe pilots around the world have reported over 200 sensor malfunctions this got through you know about 350 people died as a result of this what else has got through you know what else could be could be onboard that we haven't seen yet coming up the plane question boeing is saying it's fixed the problem and that these 737 max will be back in the sky would you ever fly on the 737 max could understand passengers thinking I don't think I ever want to get on that plane in your zoo and nor do we until we're confident that it's good to go that's next on 60 minutes the impact of two crashes of the brand-new 737 max has sent shockwaves through the aviation industry and shone a light on the world's largest aircraft manufacturer Boeing is in serious damage control it's contending with falling profits and ongoing criminal investigation and increasing questions about its relationship with America's aviation watchdog the FAA the Federal Aviation Administration is the regulator the rest of the world trusts to sign off on the safety of all Boeing aircraft now the global airline industry is asking how did the FAA miss the software flaws when it's supposed to certify these 737 max it feels like we've been betrayed by Boeing in the FAA you know nowadays for two of the latest model of jet airplanes - crash - in a period of less than half a year what did they do wrong many have said that the relationship between the FAA and Boeing is just too cozy oh it's utterly too cozy the oversight of the FAA simply wasn't good enough it was certified essentially by Boeing this scandal has revealed that for years the FAA has allowed Boeing to largely certify its own aircraft and in particular the 737 max rushed into service to regain sales lost to its biggest competitor Airbus the FAA guys were under pressure from their managers to sign off quickly they weren't given time to evaluate properly but where was that pressure coming from it was coming from managers within the FAA because the whole impetus is don't stand in the way of industry we cannot have Boeing being slowed down in its pursuit of its competition with Airbus within the aviation world there's now a sense of unease at how Boeing did business international agencies including Australia's Civil Aviation Safety Authority will now be part of a team examining whether these 737 max should be allowed to fly again there are a lot of passengers who are afraid of the max have you considered resigning at a shareholders meeting last week Boeing CEO Dennis Muhlenberg was still defending the company we're gonna be working very closely with our airline customers and with the FAA and with regulatory authorities around the world as we finish up the certification process Boeing is saying it's fixed the problem and that these 737 max will be back in the skies but of course there's a whole flying public whose confidence has been severely shaken so perhaps the true test of whether or not the problem has been fixed will be based on how many people are prepared to step onboard and you can understand passengers thinking I don't think I ever want to get on that plane absolutely and nor do we until we're confident that it's good to go we are with our passengers it's just that simple it's that elementary I want it fixed I don't want another family to go through this ever it's it's already taken 300 and some lives you know and all those people had mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles in there and I don't want to see people going through what we've gone through and if somehow this can you know make positive change in the industry and make it safer we'll we'll be happy for that whatever Boeing does the fact remains that 346 lives were lost for grieving families and industry experts it's going to take a long time to understand how this could have happened there isn't any other way of describing this than a failure of design do I care what the motivation is it's you know Boeing is such a great company why did they do this we asked Boeing to be interviewed for this story but they declined the company also refused our request to film at its 737 production facility in Seattle here Virgin Airlines is the only Australian carrier with plans to fly these 737 max 8 aircraft a few days ago it announced it was deferring delivery of this model saying it won't introduce any new aircraft to its fleet unless it's completely satisfied with its safety hello I'm Liz Hayes thanks for watching to keep up with the latest from 60 minutes Australia make sure you subscribe to our Channel you can also 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Rating: 4.7080255 out of 5

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Charles Wooley, Tara Brown, Liam Bartlett, Allison Langdon, Ellen Fanning, Peter Overton, Ray Martin, Jana Wendt, Jeff McMullen, Jennifer Byrne, Mike Munro, Richard Carleton, Tracey Curro, Peter Harvey, George Negus, Ian Leslie, Gerald Stone, Sarah Abo, Boeing, Boeing 737 Max, plane, aircraft, aviation, investigation, Ethiopian Airlines flight 302, Lion Air flight 610, disaster

Id: aO7_indbfME

Length: 43min 1sec (2581 seconds)

Published: Sun May 26 2019