Action Certification Recertification: Fill & Download for Free

Michael Moldenhauer wants to know:“What would it take for Americans to finally agree we need a mandatory unified gun licensing, training, certification-recertification regime with background checks, license tiers, trust vouchers, registration, transfer reporting, & waiting periods?”I pondered how to respond to this question, no honestly I did.Then I realized it is so absurd that the only course of action for questions like this is to report them as the insincere tripe that it is.

This is a dicey question.$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ MONEY $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$Sorry, I can’t resist. I absolutely despise the American Board of Medical Examiners for my specialty, the ABIM. Yes, I did score in the top 2% of doctors nationwide on my first board exam. I am not the whiner who hates tests. I am the person who LOVES TESTS and would have taken a job as a standardized test taker if the job existed.But….I am currently listed as “not participating in maintenance of certification” by the ABIM. This is despite the fact that I keep recertifying and spending $2,000 per test to take their unproven and useless piece of shit exam every ten years. They have the “right” to list me as “not participating in maintenance of certification,” THUS negating my most recent recertification exam that I paid good money to take, simply because they…can. They can. They are unelected. They have millions of our dollars. I just made the little mistake of not paying them hundreds of dollars per year for them to say I am in good standing. It is all about the BENJAMINS.So, why should I memorize chemotherapy regimens and other random factoids that I am not going to use ever in my life and then pay hundreds of dollars, and then take multiple hours of study that I will take away from learning the things that are important for the type of work that I personally do, and then take a full day of exams that have ZERO evidence of correlation to improved quality of care?I have literally hundreds of CME hours. These hours are all gained when I read about things that are affecting MY PATIENTS. Hundreds of hours. But I have to give up these hours and spend them doing test prep about things that I don’t do. Then I have to pay lots of money to a corrupt organization that spends like a drunken sailor and provides less than no value to the community that they are supposed to serve.Then they will be like…Oh, you can’t work, because doing our bullshit is a condition of your employment. I guess you can tell how much I hate them. I hate them so much that I spent hundreds of dollars that I COULD have spent paying their ransom money and instead I spent it on a class action suit brought by a group of my colleagues around the country. We lost. Sucks to be us.Or…it might be that your family doctor is dumb and can’t pass a test. But that is what they WANT you to think.See what I mean?

Too Long, Didn't Read:Boeing and the FAA chased money and cut corners and in the process did unethical and bad things that made the MAX seem safe using manipulated data so that nobody knew about MCAS, which crashed two planes. The majority of the time was spent collecting evidence which was hard due to the cover-up by Boeing and the FAA, along with punishing Boeing and the FAA along with cleaning up the organizations so that they wouldn’t do something like it again.The full story:To understand why it took so long, you have to understand what went wrong in the first place. I’m going to answer/explain everything as I would explain it to someone with zero aviation knowledge just to make sure anyone reading can understand.First, Boeing was chasing costs and trying to keep them as low as possible. Airliner manufacturers like Boeing and Airbus try to make planes as efficient and maintenance-free as possible so that the airline that buys the plane can make a larger profit off of the aircraft, costing less in fuel and parts over the course of its life. Airliner parts are not cheap, along with the aircraft themselves. The average price of the 737 MAX 8 (the two that crashed) is 121.6 million US dollars. The ways Boeing tried to cut the costs are what ended up causing the two crashes. Here’s what they did:They fitted larger engines onto the plane, which were more fuel and maintenance efficient. The new engines were 10–12% more fuel-efficient than the previous 737NG the 737MAX generation was replacing. A 737 flight from Miami to Chicago costs the airline roughly $7,201 USD for only the fuel. Now if you factor in the 12% lower fuel burn, that amount comes down to $6336.88. I am including cents to emphasize how important a small cost saving is to them, as a 10 cent reduction for a gallon of Jet Fuel means large savings. For example, a 10 cent per gallon price drop (originally $2.02 USD) on our Miami to Chicago run means they save 10 cents on all 3,565 gallons (estimated) used during the flight, bringing the per-gallon price to $1.92 USD, total fuel cost to $6844.80 USD, and saving them $356.20 USD. However, the 737NG’s engines are already very low slung and there wasn’t enough ground clearance with the new engines on the MAX if they left them in their original spot. What Boeing then did was move the engines forward, where they were further in front of the wing, and then raised them up with the new room achieved by moving them forwards.Here are some diagrams:Here’s the point where we switch from economics/business to science.So when Boeing changed engines and moved their position they changed how the aircraft behaved as a whole. The reason for this can be explained by a little bit of basic physics and Aviation Knowledge.Every plane balances on a point called its Center of Gravity. This is the ideal balance to maintain the aircraft in optimal flight. It’s usually located in front of the Center of Lift, CL. The Center of Lift is the point at which the aircraft is balanced on the lift of its airfoils while flying. Both of these points are usually at the level of the aircraft wing. If you mess with the CG and CL you can drastically change how an aircraft behaves. Incorporated into the CG and CL along with the overall balancing of the aircraft is the thrust provided by engines. Because the engines are below the Center of Gravity and Center of Lift, they have an effect on the plane. Planes have something called trim where a preset angle is set on a control surface so that even if the plane is not perfectly balanced on the CG and CL, the plane remains in level flight through that continuous control input counteracting the imbalance in the CG and CL. However it can only compensate to an extent, and planes that are horribly imbalanced will either not fly or be uncontrollable.Physics Time!I’m not going to do calculations but I will explain why the engine change mattered. When Boeing moved the engines they changed the distance to be further from the CG and CL. Engines also provide thrust, which is a Force. I think you can see where this is going. The new 737MAX engines provided a greater torque force that would raise the nose of the plane up more than the 737NG’s would. This is because of not only the larger lever arm (distance from CG/CL) but also the increased torque force (roughly 3,000 more lbs of thrust). This meant the MAX behaved differently than the NG, especially at takeoff when the engines were at full thrust. This was bad for Boeing, as it meant that 737NG crews would have to be retrained and Type Certified to fly the MAX, something which would cost a lot of money. So how did they work around that?CG diagram of 737 MAX:Boeing created a solution to the problem which was called Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS. What MCAS did was adjust the trim of the entire elevator (the wing in the back which pushes the nose of the plane up or down) on the fly to make sure that the new plane behaved like the old one by pushing the nose of the plane down at times to counteract the new nose-up tendencies of the MAX caused by the engine change. The MCAS read the Angle of Attack (AoA) through AoA sensors located on the nose of the plane. If a plane’s AoA is too high (nose up), the air going over the wing is disturbed to the point where it can no longer give the lift that makes the plane fly. The only way around this is if you have enough thrust to keep the plane going. However, that means that the plane has to have more engine thrust than weight, which the 737 does not have. The MCAS system did not move the actual elevator but used smaller movements of the entire horizontal tailplane via the existing trim system to have a smaller trim movement have a greater effect.Here is a picture of the horizontal stabilizer with visible trim measurements in degrees. The MCAS system would move the stabilizer so that the front of it was pointing up a little so that the nose of the plane would lower.As another cost-saving measure, Boeing made it an option to have 1 or 2 AoA sensors, and airlines looking to save money chose the cheaper 1 sensor option. Boeing reasoned that modern tech would never fail and one sensor would be enough and the second redundant sensor would be an extra-cost option.Now Boeing was scoring big. Its new plane was cheaper to operate, would raise airlines’ profits over the 737NG and other offerings from AIRBUS, and since the cockpit was barely changed and the MAX now had the same flight characteristics of the 737NG because of MCAS, this meant 737NG pilots would not have to be extensively retrained and Type Certified to fly the MAX, saving tons of money for airlines. Pilots would only have to receive light retraining on some of the new features and procedures of the MAX from the NG. The last thing to do before the plane could be sold, however, was to get an FAA Airworthiness Certificate for the MAX.What is the FAA?The FAA is like the DMV or whatever other Driver’s License/Motor Vehicle certifying system is where you live. The FAA certifies Planes and pilots, oversees the manufacturing of aircraft, manages Air Traffic Control practices and procedures, as well as conducting studies to make flying better for not only the passengers but the airlines and aircraft manufacturers too.So Boeing went to the FAA with their brand spanking new 737MAX and asked the FAA to check the plane out to give it an Airworthiness Certificate so Boeing could start selling the planes to airlines. The FAA is a US federal body, and Boeing is a major US aircraft and research company. The FAA and Boeing also had a very close relationship, which resulted in alarming situations arising. Boeing also put lots of pressure on the FAA, as literal Billions of dollars were on the line with aircraft orders. So the FAA did Boeing a few favors and ignored things that were very wrong and corrupt.Here is what the FAA did:The FAA rushed the Certification and testing as fast as possible and missed crucial things or wasn’t thorough enough. This was apparent with the MCAS failures and approving Boeing’s very sparse 737NG to 737MAX training program, which barely mentioned MCAS.The FAA investigators sometimes left early, relying on Boeing to provide them with full data or leaving with incomplete data.The FAA had test pilots do some of the 737MAX tests in a simulator that wasn’t programmed with MCAS, meaning the test results were worthless.The FAA conducted tests in a simulator that was programmed with MCAS, but Boeing officials were present and instructed the test pilots when to hit the switch that turned off MCAS, corrupting the tests.The FAA heavily punished whistleblowers who tried to warn about the incorrect and corrupted testing and backroom dealings between Boeing and the FAA.As a result, the FAA gave the green light very quickly and 737MAX aircraft quickly started entering service. Boeing started making big bank. Airlines used the Boeing training guidelines approved by the FAA to convert their 737NG pilots to the MAX. The first commercial flight was in May of 2017. Things were going well.So what happened?On October 29, 2018, Lion Air flight 610 crashed into the Java Sea 13 minutes after takeoff. Then on March 10, 2019, Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 crashed into the ground near Bishoftu, Ethiopia six munites after takeoff. Both of the aircraft were 737MAX 8 aircraft. Whenever an aircraft crashes, it is customary that air crash investigators from the aircraft manufacturer’s country assist and investigate along with the investigators from where the plane crashed. As such the NTSB from the USA were dispatched to investigate both of the crashes. The job of the NTSB is to determine the causes of crashes and recommend changes to aircraft or procedures and training to the FAA, which can then initiate and enforce those changes.Even more corruption occurred after the 2018 Lion Air crash, where Boeing revealed for the first time what MCAS was, as well as MCAS did not appear in the manuals for the aircraft. The pilots didn’t even know it existed. Boeing knew how MCAS worked so they sent a bulletin to all MAX owners on how to recover from an MCAS malfunction. When facing the FAA, Boeing deflected blame and said the crew should have been able to recover if they took appropriate action. The FAA gave Boeing a slap on the wrist and told them to update MCAS so that it wouldn’t happen again, and to do so by March 2019.The cause of the accidents themselves was MCAS. The accident investigators analyzed the planes’ Flight Data Recorders and both showed the AoA sensors were reading incorrectly, thinking the nose of the plane was too high. This activated MCAS to push the nose of the plane down so that the plane wouldn’t stall. These aircraft were only equipped with 1 angle of attack sensor, so the aircraft had no backup sensor and no other way to know that the AoA was fine and MCAS wasn’t needed. So the plane thought it was stalling when it was actually nosediving the plane into the ground. The pilots didn’t know what MCAS was so they didn’t know how to turn it off, and they could only hope the Boeing written and FAA approved recovery plan worked. It didn’t. So when the NTSB approached the FAA with questions, the FAA had to play dumb and silence whistleblowers, or else they were in big trouble for doing their job horribly wrong and with neglect.The FAA ordered the 737MAX to be grounded on March 13, 2019, two days after the second crash of the Ethiopian Airlines flight. It was during the grounding that the US Congress, Transportation Department (which oversaw the FAA), ad hoc panels, and the FBI investigated the manner in which the FAA certified the MAX. This is the main reason the grounding took so long, as it was a long and drawn-out investigation and conclusion conducted by the US government. Boeing and the FAA did not want to talk or admit blame. Some important documents the investigation requested to look at mysteriously didn’t exist. How convenient. It was after the long evidence-gathering process could there be a ruling and judgment made on who was to blame.The other long part of the recertification time was determining what changes needed to be made, what appropriate punishments for those involved were, and how to initiate and enforce those changes so similar situations wouldn’t happen again. The FAA still had to function as the governing Aviation body in the US, but there were major changes that had to be instituted. Boeing also received a lot of criticism for how they handled the incidents, all boiling down to chasing that bottom line and cutting the corners to cut costs. Public faith in the 737MAX program was lost, even though airlines still had orders for them.The FAA recently recertified the 737MAX, and it made its first commercial flight since then today, December 29, 2020. The reason it took so long was not the changes that had to be made to the aircraft, which could be done in a few months. The reason it took so long was so that the blame and responsibility for the accident could be brought down on Boeing and the FAA, which both have very important jobs. Boeing’s job is to make the next generation of airliners and improve them so that air travel is cleaner and safer. The FAA’s job was to make sure that any aircraft presented to them would be tested and certified thoroughly and in an unbiased and uncorrupted manner, as well as making sure that air travel is as safe as possible. Both organizations succumbed to greed and were chasing the bottom dollar at the cost of safety, and eventually, human lives.