This is a criminal rip-off by Boeing which should get their executives tried for murder.

The FAA is complicit in Boeing's crimes.

This has destroyed the safety image of American manufactured aircraft.

[url]https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/business/boeing-safety-features-charge.html[/url]

[quote]Doomed Boeing Jets Lacked 2 Safety Features That Company Sold Only as Extras
Standard 737 Max planes are not equipped with a so-called angle of attack indicator or an angle of attack disagree light. The indicator will continue to cost airlines extra, but the light won’t.
Credit
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Image
Standard 737 Max planes are not equipped with a so-called angle of attack indicator or an angle of attack disagree light. The indicator will continue to cost airlines extra, but the light won’t.CreditCreditRuth Fremson/The New York Times
By Hiroko Tabuchi and David Gelles
March 21, 2019
658
As the pilots of the doomed Boeing jets in Ethiopia and Indonesia fought to control their planes, they lacked two notable safety features in their cockpits.
One reason: Boeing charged extra for them.
For Boeing and other aircraft manufacturers, the practice of charging to upgrade a standard plane can be lucrative. Top airlines around the world must pay handsomely to have the jets they order fitted with customized add-ons.
Sometimes these optional features involve aesthetics or comfort, like premium seating, fancy lighting or extra bathrooms. But other features involve communication, navigation or safety systems, and are more fundamental to the plane’s operations.
Many airlines, especially low-cost carriers like Indonesia’s Lion Air, have opted not to buy them — and regulators don’t require them.

Now, in the wake of the two deadly crashes involving the same jet model, Boeing will make one of those safety features standard as part of a fix to get the planes in the air again.
It is not yet known what caused the crashes of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on March 10 and Lion Air Flight 610 five months earlier, both after erratic takeoffs. But investigators are looking at whether a new software system added to avoid stalls in Boeing’s 737 Max series may have been partly to blame. Faulty data from sensors on the Lion Air plane may have caused the system, known as MCAS, to malfunction, authorities investigating that crash suspect.

That software system takes readings from two vanelike devices called angle of attack sensors that determine how much the plane’s nose is pointing up or down relative to oncoming air. When MCAS detects that the plane is pointing up at a dangerous angle, it can automatically push down the nose of the plane in an effort to prevent the plane from stalling.
Boeing’s optional safety features, in part, could have helped the pilots detect any erroneous readings. One of the optional upgrades, the angle of attack indicator, displays the readings of the two sensors. The other, called a disagree light, is activated if those sensors are at odds with one another.
Boeing will soon update the MCAS software, and will also make the disagree light standard on all new 737 Max planes, according to a person familiar with the changes, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they have not been made public. The angle of attack indicator will remain an option that airlines can buy.

Neither feature was mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration. All 737 Max jets have been grounded.
“They’re critical, and cost almost nothing for the airlines to install,” said Bjorn Fehrm, an analyst at the aviation consultancy Leeham. “Boeing charges for them because it can. But they’re vital for safety.”
[After a Lion Air 737 Max crashed in October, questions about the plane arose.]
Earlier this week, Dennis A. Muilenburg, Boeing’s chief executive, said the company was working to make the 737 Max safer.
“As part of our standard practice following any accident, we examine our aircraft design and operation, and when appropriate, institute product updates to further improve safety,” he said in a statement.

Add-on features can be big moneymakers for plane manufacturers.
In 2013, around the time Boeing was starting to market its 737 Max 8, an airline would expect to spend about $800,000 to $2 million on various options for such a narrow-body aircraft, according to a report by Jackson Square Aviation, a consultancy in San Francisco. That would be about 5 percent of the plane’s final price.
[The F.A.A.’s approval of the Boeing jet has come under scrutiny.]
Boeing charges extra, for example, for a backup fire extinguisher in the cargo hold. Past incidents have shown that a single extinguishing system may not be enough to put out flames that spread rapidly through the plane. Regulators in Japan require airlines there to install backup fire extinguishing systems, but the F.A.A. does not.

“There are so many things that should not be optional, and many airlines want the cheapest airplane you can get,” said Mark H. Goodrich, an aviation lawyer and former engineering test pilot. “And Boeing is able to say, ‘Hey, it was available.’”
But what Boeing doesn’t say, he added, is that it has become “a great profit center” for the manufacturer.
Both Boeing and its airline customers have taken pains to keep these options, and prices, out of the public eye. ... [/quote]

I agree, two safety features WERE missing.

A white pilot
A white co-pilot

Gordon wrote on Mar 22^nd, 2019 at 9:13am:


There you have it folks.

Racism central is alive and well right here. 

The engineers at the FAA and Boeing need to hang for this.

Gordon wrote on Mar 22^nd, 2019 at 9:13am:


Racist extremist. AiA has jumped from Gordon's pocket to get out of the pungent extremist odor.

Do you have a gun Gordon?

Terrible thing to say, I agree, but you know when you fly you want white Qantas pilots 

https://www.abc.net.au/foreign/false-economy/7381368

Gee Aussie, that was a party starter!