Ethiopian flight 302: second new Boeing 737 to crash in four months

Guardian ^

[Yardstick]

Love that dang song and video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5rRZdiu1UE

Best part is those ‘80s vintage MOPAR cop cars.

[SaveFerris]

That first blue car is a Ford LTD or whatever name they were using then. They may have dropped “Galaxy” by then.

[tcrlaf]

Boeing took a 50 year old design, and modified it ti fit the latest generation of engines to it. They were able to do this by moving the engines forward, lifting the nose up a few inches, and changing the tail cone.

This caused the airplane’s handling characteristics to change. Basicly the airplane has a tendency to lift the nose.

So the Boeing engineers tried to remedy the situation by programming the airplane’s MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) to help the pilots bring the nose down in case the nose it drifted too high. In the Indonesia crash, The problem was that this wasn’t even written in the Flight Crew Operations Manual (FCOM), and crew didn’t know about it.

[humblegunner]

I'd think twice about flying on an Ethiopian airline with an Ethiopian pilot. I'm thinking the folks who build airplanes know what they are doing.

Ethiopian pilots maybe not so much.

[CodeToad]

According to Boeing’s own employee training, the most important ethics is ensuring a black person is on every team, not making airplanes that don’t crash.

I kid you not. When Boeing speaks of ethics they speak about minorities being included on every team. They never speak about airplane safety in their ethics programs.

[tcrlaf]

“I thought that Boeing issued instructions how to disable this feature with a flick of a switch after the first crash?”

If the crew is not trained or told about it, then the switch may as well be on Mars.

[SaveFerris]

There should be an Alyssa Milano on every team! That way everything would be covered! (well, except for white males)

[Zhang Fei]

[It’s a terrible way to die.]

---

My take is that it’s a terrible reason to die. Because of mechanical malfunction or someone else’s human error. But as ways to die go, it’s one of the easiest - a few minutes of fear, mixed with hope (that the pilots will figure it out), at most, followed by oblivion. Whereas even a victim of a car crash can linger for days before succumbing. That’s not even counting terminal cancer patients or sufferers of things like liver cirrhosis.

[SaveFerris]

Great. So you have 3rd world pilots possibly having to transition from the old handling standard to one where the MCAS software (thanks for the term) is now involved.

[LukeL]

In the early 90s Boeing had trouble with their rudder control where the pilot inputs would sometimes reverse themselves so a right rudder input would make the plane yaw to the left. It wasn’t until a plane with the problem was able to land safely that the issue was revealed.

[9YearLurker]

I wonder how accurate this report is:

https://nairobinews.nation.co.ke/editors-picks/us-government-warned-citizens-to-avoid-ethiopian-airport-before-plane-crash

[Reno89519]

Why bother, AOC is going to ieliminate air travel. Next to take a train to Hawaii. When does the next one leave?

[Reno89519]

By now they surely know about it. The problem is that maybe that’s not the only problem or not the problem itself.

[Yardstick]

Good call on the Ford.

[SaveFerris]

Thanks.

There was the dark green Mopar in Hunter.

Those were good days.

[Yardstick]

Those boxy sedans are just what cars looked like when I was a kid. Huge sense of nostalgia when watching the video.

[Phil DiBasquette]

There wasn’t just one but 3 Nairobi warnings

[9YearLurker]

What were the other ones?

[SaveFerris]

AND a Boss 429 in the background

[dynoman]

I wonder if the pilots were the same on both fatal flights.