 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. We are going to discuss again the much discussed item already in NewsClick, the MCAS system, the Boeing 737 MAXIS problem and the new issue that has been raised that all of this is the result of Indian software people who charge very low and have apparently caused this two Boeing's to crash. Sagu, when the Boeing's crashed first in the Lionair case and then in the Ethiopian Airlines case there was also this kind of arguments that's really the brown and black pilots were not very good and that's why it crashed but it never crashes elsewhere. And then it transpired that even when all the suggestions whatever Boeing had issued us what it has to be done after the MCAS system become public none of that actually did work in the Ethiopian Airlines neither of the flight simulator where it was tested. So how seriously do you take this $9 Indian engineers issue? I don't take it seriously at all. I think it's a typical red herring. Last-ditch Boeing effort to avoid, shall we say, claims? Exactly. One of many I'm sure there'll be more of these to come. Next time it'll be some other scapegoat that they are looking for. In this particular case though Boeing's own earlier statements are obviously in contradiction. Boeing is on record as saying that the software designed in response to the MCAS system did precisely what it was required to do which was to respond to the high angle of attack by lowering the nose. This is what the software was told to do and that's what the software did. The two problems with that were the following. One is there was a single sensor which was connected to the MCAS system and the two sensors checking the two sensors and the agreement all this wasn't there. And if one of them malfunctioned then you were not sure what happened. And in fact the one of the ones which was sending the signal did malfunction and whatever may have been the reason. So it had a wrong shall we say understanding or an input of the angle of attack and therefore it was trying to dip the nose and that is what finally the pilots couldn't overcome. The second argument which was given was that the pilots could have stopped all of this if they had followed the what is called the runaway situation in which the stabilizer was in by switching it all and doing the manual operation which is really to pull up the pull up the aircraft manually and it was then shown that under the condition the speed at which it was then flying that this was hydrodynamically not possible for them to fight the forces of the tank and therefore the pilots couldn't really pull it up. These are the two things now this is nothing really to do with the software. Nothing at all you see that's precisely the point they had nothing to do with the software and what the software was designed to do was to respond to a high angle of attack. And it's thought there's a high angle of attack because of the sensor. So the problem is with the sensor not with the software. Or the fact that you had a single sensor and you did not do two out of three or that's you know put the whole thing on manual that's so on. But there is another issue which again has something which we need to focus on which is again now public it's been discussed for the last two to three months which is again being avoided at the moment that when the FAA initial proposal was given by Boeing the amount of intervention and the speed at which it would be intervening the MCA system those limits were very different but finally was actually done in the field. In fact the number of times it would intervene the speed at which it would intervene and the total amount to dip the nose all of this changed which meant that the actually the nose dipping was faster and more than what was originally disclosed to the FAA and it was never actually placed before the FAA that these changes have taken place. That's right and if it had the FAA because the angle of dip the change in that as well as the number of times that would intervene if Boeing had disclosed these to FAA it would have further raised the risk level at which the number of inspections the FAA would have had to do the extent of corrective measures that the FAA would be required to call upon would have increased that would have taken more time for certification which is obviously what Boeing wanted to avoid it wanted a quick certification by the FAA and which is what they got at the end leading to these problems. I'm not going to go into of course the larger issue whether we should have had a again a 40 year essentially 40 year design being loaded with all of this trying to compete essentially with a much newer design which was the Airbus 320 but coming back to the issue of software the new tests that FAA has conducted has thrown out something which people have been arguing regarding the 737 that the problems of the max 737 max version under certain conditions are similar to what the 737 would experience and therefore some of the unexplained crashes of the 737 which have been blamed on the pilots might be actually a problem of the older problem of instability trying to correct manually under certain conditions the tail stabilizers. Now one of the issues that has again come here it seems regarding the testing that FAA is doing and they had said they are going to also test some of these issues on the older design. Now that seems to show that the controllers the flight controller that seems to get overloaded and this was not something which is to do with the MCAS but in trying to take the MCAS inputs into account or doing some of the what are called the MCAS improvements fixes bug fixes that have been attempted it seems to have uncovered a different problem which is the flight control system actually overloading and therefore not responding under whether you are really flying under automatic controls and this is something which now is sought to be blamed on the Indian engineers. Now how do you seriously do this again? There is absolutely no connection because this is a like you said this is a 30 to 35 year old problem with the 737 fuselage and in fact the 737 with its old fuselage and older engines has had one of the best safety records in the industry. It is today being tested against the background of what we know today going back tracing it back to 30 years has nothing to do with the software which is designed for the MCAS system which has come in because of the leap engine and its peculiar placement on the Boeing aircraft. So this throwback and then reinventing a problem of Indian engineers I mean it is a very clear red airing. You know the other thing is that the controllers the flight control controllers are actually 80 to 86 processors and they are of again late 80s vintage and the reason they are there of course is that you know it's something that works you don't want to change it and the 80 to 86 processors of the 86 processors essentially work very well they have been in various control systems but 30 years down the line that seems really something which should have been paged out long back you know and you have had at least at least five generation of processor families in between that's right and I as you know have a control system background that we worked on these processors they were really something which were state of the art in the late 80s and it's very very surprising for me when I want I see this issues and they are actually written basically in machine code assembly language because you want them to respond fast. So effectively what you have done is you are loading MCAS signals already on a processor and it's the external signals that come in of course that increase also the load so it seems to be adding an MCAS itself causes certain problem is the basic control flight control systems and again this is not something that is somebody sitting in HL would have done it also this is super this is super imposing the MCAS based system on a pre-existing system dating back to 25 years to 30 years so it's clearly not a problem caused by the specific software in which case something would have turned up over all these years and not suddenly now. So it's also interesting that when you talk about how do you test software fixes there are two things you always do once you of course test it for various conditions which is what the FAA at the moment is doing which is uncovered this new problem and they did say that they are going to check also the 737 problems which might be older vintage but also has become worse because of the shall we say exactly what you said the change in fuselage the way the vengeance have been mounted and the addition of the MCAS system. Now one of the things that you do in software as again this would be known to people who deal with it is that you have to test it for all conditions FAA is doing it other thing you have to do is also stress it that means overload the system all the signals all the things that can subject it to all the worst scenario what is called a stress test that's right and under the stress test you still we have to have some margins and you can define define what the margin is but the stress test of those margins have also to be tested and this is always done by the end supplier that this is not something which would be shall we say handed out to HCL or any outsourced vendor in the world and so this to say and frankly even if it is as the main contractor who is doing the job if you subcontract this job to somebody it's your business to test it before you particularly if it is 30 year old controllers that's right and with that's hand coded essentially the hand coded assembly codes and if you're using it in a situation where there is a probability of a runaway elevator problem which is really in a sense a crisis situation the fact that you ran it without testing it fully if that's what has happened is amazing that that's what it seemed to show you know and I would say that when we initially discussed this issue remember at the time there was a talk about how the Ethiopian pilot the co-pilot had very low experience but the other pilot was a very experienced one here's the thing about 5000 hours of experience both the linear pilots were pretty experienced but we saw in the blogs in the shall we see the social media a huge amount of comments about how the brown and black pilots and you see the reputation again not serious technical evaluated discussions but in the blogs and other places nine dollar per hour engineer has been flagged as the cause and considering that today whether it is Google whether it's Microsoft you can see the whole leadership of a lot of these companies tech companies are Indians in fact at one point it was said in the Silicon Valley that if we didn't have an Indian on your startup then the funders actually would not fund you okay so therefore to talk about the outsourcing which has been the model which has been what most companies have done including R&D outsourcing to India and China it actually shows that this is a playing up to the racist gallery and Boeing trying to create a red herrings as you said two small points I wanted to add precisely on this one is this is not just Boeing this is also the FAA which is trying its best to cover its backside on this issue FAA knows full well that it has goofed it has either been quiet or it is actively colluded with Boeing to allow improperly tested safety equipment etc and controllers and so on into these 737 max now it is a trying to bend over backwards to keep testing and retesting stuff just last week Boeing brought another computer based software to test on the simulators the minute the FAA guy sat inside the simulator it the computer was giving wrong signals the FAA guy in disgust walked out and said don't do this to us don't keep bringing stuff which you want us to test hoping that we'll pass it you test it run it through all the tests and call us when you think it's ready so I think Boeing and FAA are both chasing each other's tail in defending their own incompetence incompetence and bad performance actions of bad faith and both of them are trying to scapegoat somebody or the other the second point I wanted to make was in particular this attack on Indians and the H1B visas and the $9 stuff is pandering to Donald Trump and is dragging Donald Trump into this controversy thinking he will find something to latch on to he'll have something to tweet about at 3 a.m. the next morning and hoping that that will also then snowball into a pattern of blame which they can then use to shift to somebody else it's also interesting the 787 issue the Boeing has proposed that a lot of the tests be done through computer simulation that's right now of course how do you do computer simulation of computer controls is a question we still need to ask but nevertheless that instead of increasing testing Boeing at this point of time should have come out with a suggestion the testing being reduced speaks volumes about Boeing absolutely at this rate it is going this max 737 issue is not going away is not going away they are still continuing Boeing still continues to add provisos by which they can reduce costs for their airline customers all the simulations they are running now are supposed to finally culminate in a system which you can train pilots on using an ipad that's what the max 737 transition to transition to but they are still sticking to that methodology which very experienced pilots including the famous sullenberger the miracle on the Hudson pilot has recently said there is no way in which a successful testing of this or training can be done by using an ipad you have to be able to do it on a simulator if you really want your pilots to learn and particularly if you have to physically move that's that's that's just out of controls back and forth ridiculous and it's interesting these are not hydraulically controlled they're actually wear in pulleys so fly by wear gets a different meaning when you talk about this exactly so this is what happens when you do a 30 35 40 year old technology and then try to break it up today today thank you very much Ragu for being with us sharing with us what are the latest on the 737 max long running saga which seems to be going longer absolutely this is all the time we have for news click today do keep watching news click and do visit our website