The pilots were unable to control the planes. We know that much. Boing is apparently blaming a lack of proper training.
The planes should be grounded until Boing can explain why it happened and how it can be prevented in the future.
In the interim, if it’s Boing, I ain’t going.
It’s probably just the MAX variant of the 737. Overall the 737 is an incredible craft and flies 100,000 +/- successful take-offs and landings every month around the world.
The 737 MAX is slightly different - it has more powerful, ‘fuel efficient’ engines, but they are also much heavier. That changed the weight distribution of the plane and causes the nose to tilt up in flight. To accommodate that shift in weight they made the wings wider and mounted the engines in a more forward position. Ordinarily this kind of situation can be adjusted by the pilot of any craft. If the nose is constantly tilting up, or if it constantly changes direction left or right the pilot can ‘trim’ the flight control to adjust for these shifts.
Seemingly, the 737 MAX has some sort of automatic system to do this for the pilots, and the pilots were not even aware of it. And then if some kind of alarm goes off saying the plane is stalling, they are trying to fight the auto-controls. We don’t yet know all the details but there may be some faulty sensors or sensors that aren’t programmed to know about this auto-adjust system. If the plane thinks it is in a stall (loss of lift) then the first order of business for the pilot is to nudge the nose of the plane down. But they may be over-compensating or not even aware that they are actually pointing the nose down towards the earth. In the first few minutes after take-off there is not a lot of time to figure it out and take corrective measures.. especially if you don’t even know that the plane is either fighting against you or trying to do what you are also trying to do.
Very good description of MCAS;
https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/what-is-the-boeing-737-max-maneuvering-characteristics-augmentation-system-mcas-jt610/
Boeing says pilots can easily override the system, and it’s covered in the manual. The pilots that previously flew the Lion Air accident aircraft did disable the MCAS system and made their flight safely. The accident pilots didn’t. It seems to be a training/awareness problem. We don’t yet know if MCAS was the cause of the most recent accident.
https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/boeing-to-upgrade-737-max-flight-control-software-456540/
Also witnesses said the Ethiopian plane was was trailing smoke and debris before it crashed;
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-airplane-witnesses/ethiopian-airlines-plane-trailed-smoke-debris-before-crash-witnesses-idUSKBN1QS1LJ
I mean just imagine in the case of the first crash 5 months ago. The plane is flying through the air smoothly and every thing is fine. An instant later the plane is nose diving to the ground because some sensor told the computer that the air speed was suddenly Zero. The computer now thinks that the plane needs to recover from a stall. Can you imagine what it would be like as a pilot to experience that? The cockpit is not level. There are sudden G forces. Heck the pilot may not even have been strapped in at that moment. But they are suppose to work against all the forces, and understand instantly that the computer is crashing the plane. And in all of that they need to be able to disable the computer and recover the diving plane. And if they were already close to the ground then they may only have seconds to react. And Boeing blames it on improper training. Hogwash.