Posted on 12/01/2025 8:41:02 PM PST by zipper
On Lion Air Flight 610, the sensor fed erroneous data, making MCAS think the plane was pitching up too high.
Their maintenance had installed a miscalibrated AOA sensor before the flight. The aircraft showed faulty readings on the previous flight, though it was still dispatched the next morning.
Investigators later criticized Boeing’s reliance on a single point of failure (one AoA sensor led to MCAS confusion).
They also found inadequate pilot training requirements (instructor and line pilots worldwide - all of them - didn’t know how the MCAS worked or that it was vulnerable to single AOA failure). And there were gaps in the regulator’s (FAA) certification process.
I think the Air India crash is likely being covered up by the Indian government, the official Indian investigative team, and by the Air India pilot’s union. The red flags for cover-up were noted in the article, and that points to the likelihood the final report will not disclose the whole truth, pointing to suicide/mass murder by the captain of the flight.
It’s nothing like the 737 Max issues we experienced back in 2018/2019.
I disagree.
I have ZERO confidence in the honesty and technical competence of Ethiopians and Indonesians who sued for hundreds of millions of dollars.
What was their motive for blocking Boeing and USA investigators for more than one week at each crash site?
Bottom Line...
60,000 consecutive take offs in Europe, Japan, and English speaking countries without one incident report!
Their motive is simple. They don’t want to blame the Indian pilot.
That’s the only motive that could unite all three interested parties - the Indian government, the AAIB, and their pilot union.
I suppose you aren’t aware that ‘in simulator tests flown after the crashes (by U.S. crews), one consistent finding was that recovering from the worst-case MCAS malfunction — especially at high speed — was “a near-impossible task.”’
The conclusions were:
Recovery from repeated MCAS activations at high speed is “nearly impossible.”
The manual trim wheel becomes physically unmovable due to aerodynamic loads.
Loss of control is extremely difficult to prevent in low-altitude scenarios.
Simulator fidelity understated the difficulty (stick forces were much higher on the actual aircraft), meaning the real aircraft was worse.
Other factors:
1) The foreign pilots were less likely to have familiarity with previous 737-series aircraft, so were less familiar with runaway-trim recovery techniques.
2) maintenance crews of foreign carriers had less advanced diagnostic equipment - a factor that could have affected the installation of an improperly calibrated AoA vane that ended up being the original point of failure in at least one of the two crashes.
I do NOT think foreign crews in Indonesia/Ethiopia are generally as competent as U.S. crews, but the fact is, in these cases, flaws in the deceptively-implemented MCAS software, and the single point of failure design were much more responsible for the fatalities than the nationality of the pilots.
My crash site comments were in regard to Ethiopia and Indonesia - NOT India.
Why did Ethiopia and Indonesia both block Boeing and USA investigators from the crash sites and recovered parts for more than one week?
Total cost for Boeing - $2 billion, and still counting, plus previous threats for criminal prosecutions.
Please let me know when some one with high level engineering authority publicly and explicitly excludes sabotage or pilot suicide as the cause in both crashes.
There were plenty of public statements, and in each case there was never a serious suspicion of sabotage. Nobody involved in either investigation publicly suspected suicide at all, and there is no known evidence of sabotage or suspected sabotage in either 737 Max crash. The CVR's and DFDR's were recovered in each crash, and back up the accident reports (below links).
The NTSB, Boeing, and the FAA were participants, assisting in both investigations.
There were plenty of allegations of misconduct, however. And whistleblowers on the MCAS shortcomings - several, within and outside of Boeing, before, during, and after either accident.
It didn't total $2 billion. It's up to $2.5 billion (2021) and $1.1 billion (2025) plus US$200 million in SEC-related investor-fraud settlement. There is also pending civil litigation.
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Lion Air JT610 (Oct 29, 2018) — Indonesia’s NTSC/KNKT final report documents that the airplane had a recently replaced AoA sensor that was likely mis-calibrated and that erroneous AoA input repeatedly triggered nose-down MCAS commands. The report lists maintenance and procedural failings (and that crews had fought similar uncommanded trim on prior flights). The investigation attributes the accident to those technical/maintenance and information-sharing failures.
https://www.aaiu.ie/sites/default/files/FRA/2018%20-%20035%20-%20PK-LQP%20Final%20Report.pdf
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Ethiopian Airlines ET302 (Mar 10, 2019) — the formal investigation (final report and follow-on reviews) concluded the left/right AoA disagreement and erroneous AoA data caused repeated MCAS nose-down inputs. The BEA/Ethiopian final report (and NTSB/FAA comments) document the MCAS design’s reliance on a single AoA channel, inadequate crew training/recognition of the failure mode, and certification shortcomings.
https://bea.aero/fileadmin/user_upload/ET_302__B737-8MAX_ACCIDENT_FINAL_REPORT.pdf
If the additional $500 million has been paid, I do not see that in my news archive.
My point - that kind of money attracts every kind of criminal in the entire world.
In terms of corporate financial liability, Boeing stock crashed from an all time 2018 high at $300 billion market cap to a $155 billion market cap today.
Also, the fact that Boeing was challenging for the #1 USA Defense Contractor in the 2018-2019 time period was also a curious coincidence.
The international fire storm of anti-Boeing criticism was unprecedented in my opinion.
In addition, the media assault was aggressively led by Hard Left pilot unions and Hard Left government safety unions.
Several USA pilots noted in 2018 that turning off the Trim Cut Out switches would have silenced the MCAS commands.
After the 2019 crash, no USA pilots made any public statements that were not authorized or encouraged by the Pilot Unions.
My Bottom Line...
The media assault on Boeing was exactly like the political destruction of Enron and the Arthur Andersen accounting firm in 2001.
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