Southwest Airlines 737 MAX Suffers Dutch Roll at 32,000 Feet

But the 737 series has had CHRONIC and at times life & aircraft FAILURES. Why has FAA let Boeing continue to deliver equipment that other agencies would have in effect "grounded"? Self driving Teslas were "grounded" until proven safe. Not until the next failure.

I haven't flown commercial in years. This doesn't encourage me to change that.

Let's see what the investigation determines. Dutch roll, combined with over-control while correcting, could cause damaging stress, especially if the aircraft had not been slowed to below max maneuvering speed.

As I recall, the B-47 Stratojet was very easy to get into "dutch roll" as any swept wing design is prone to under the right conditions. Proper training was instituted to deal with it as it arose inflight.

Had a dutch roll incident back in my flying days on the 727. It was something we got training in during sim training in initial qualifications. Flying from NY to Chicago one night the autopilot kicked off, and the plane started to act crazy. The Captain grabbed the yoke and started to fight the back and forth of the yaw/banks. He said you try it and see what you think. It was squirrely for sure, and difficult to control. We figured it must be dutch roll because when we did the inputs we were taught, we kept the plane under control. We flew it that way for another 45 minutes or so until we could land at our hub where there where mechanics that could tackle this issue. On block in the mechanic came inside the cockpit and told us you gotta come look at this. The 727 had a lower and upper split rudder system. The upper rudder had failed like 20-30 degrees off center. Absolutely, positively, overnight was the cargo carriers TV commercials back then, and I absolutely remember this night.

Would the passengers have been aware of this incident?

This could have been a result of turbulence. It brings to my memory AA flt 587 that crashed after the A300 flew into the wake turbulence of a departing 747 and the pilot used excessive rudder control causing the entire vertical stabilizer to detach from the airframe.

Now that we have almost unlimited data storage on our keychain fob, it seems like we could have more than two hours of cockpit voice recordings.

(Duplicate Squawk Submitted)

FAA investigating substantial damage to Boeing 737 Max in 'Dutch roll' incident

A federal investigation is underway into how a Southwest Airlines passenger jet suffered substantial damage after experiencing a rare phenomenon known as a Dutch roll at almost 38,000 feet.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/faa-investigating-boeing-737-max-dutch-roll-incident-rcna157145

Aviation Herald reports that there was damage to two ribs which support the rudder standby Power Control Unit (PCU) as well as damage to the mounts of the standby actuator. A temporary repair was done in Oakland replacing the damaged PCU, and the aircraft was then flown to Everett to replace the damaged ribs.
https://avherald.com/h?article=519ce679&opt=0

Click on the Aviation Herald link 3 "Furthermores" into this ad-laden excuse for journalism if you want to read a concise, detailed version of this incident.

Why did the article keep using "accident" when for all that mattered, this was an "incident", albeit a potentially dangerous one ? There was also so much fluff in that piece that were unrelated to the event.

"...a routine scheduled flight between Phoenix and Arizona." - editing isn't what it used to be.

If not a rudder control unit issue, possible turbulence induced followed by improper flight control inputs. The B-727 could become quite a handful. Mind you the 737 has less wing sweep. If left unchecked dutch roll can get very violent.

recovering from that position is a high level of airmanship and some acrabatic training too.