Exclusive: Cockpit voice recorder of doomed Lion Air jet depicts pilots' frantic search for fix

Reuters ^ | 20 March 2019 | Cindy Silviana, Jamie Freed, Tim Hepher

[csvset]

JAKARTA/SINGAPORE/PARIS (Reuters) - The pilots of a doomed Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX scoured a handbook as they struggled to understand why the jet was lurching downwards, but ran out of time before it hit the water, three people with knowledge of the cockpit voice recorder contents said

The captain asked the first officer to check the quick reference handbook, which contains checklists for abnormal events, the first source said.

For the next nine minutes, the jet warned pilots it was in a stall and pushed the nose down in response, the report showed. A stall is when the airflow over a plane’s wings is too weak to generate lift and keep it flying.

The captain fought to climb, but the computer, still incorrectly sensing a stall, continued to push the nose down using the plane’s trim system. Normally, trim adjusts an aircraft’s control surfaces to ensure it flies straight and level.

“They didn’t seem to know the trim was moving down,” the third source said. “They thought only about airspeed and altitude. That was the only thing they talked about.”

[nwrep]

sounds like it’s American or from the Commonwealth

Only American or the Commonwealth? What about German or French pilots? No respect for them?

[Gay State Conservative]

... but I want to hear the Captain speak in some English accent that sounds like it’s American or from the Commonwealth.

There's a great British comedian (actually he's Scottish) name Billy Connolly who once addressed that very subject.

Billy Connolly

[Haiku Guy]

This is a 737 horizontal stabilizer.

The trim system pivots the entire horizontal horizontal stabilizer on that point about halfway back by the operation of a jackscrew. It can pivot though a range of motion defined by the slot opening toward the front of the stabilizer.

The pilot control input moves the small control surface at the rear of the stabilizer assembly, up and down.

Just looking at the thing, if the jackscrew pushes the front of the stabilizer assembly fully up, causing a downward trajectory, while the pilot is commanding full up and deflecting the control service fully upwards, it is a near thing which force will carry the day. The full assembly operates in a smaller range of motion, but is much larger than the control surface.

In any case, it is no way to fly.

[mindburglar]

Yeah. Them too. I guess. I knew an Irish pilot. Dude was always drunk in Wanchai.

[SkyPilot]

Suppose you have a situation where the ability to recover is dependent on the skill and training of the pilot involved, but the effectiveness of the automation is such that people and corporations get lazy and disinclined to employ pilots with the necessary skills and/or put out the money and resources to train them?

Aviation is a dangerous business. It is relatively safe everyday because of good people....from mechanics, to air traffic controllers, pilots, and others.

An instructor told me years ago: "You make a mistake on the road, you can probably recover. Make a mistake in the air, and your chances are a lot worse."

Is there "cost cutting"? Sure. Poor maintenance can and has been a factor, but it usually was a poor management decision. Just my bias: but Western nation aircrews are far, far above other nations. And some of the Muslim nations just have wacky nepotism and other factors going on. Egypt Air is one example. With some of these nations, you can provide the same and best training afforded to say a Lufthansa crew, but they will still be crummy. Is it cultural? I would love to see a study on this - but no one would dare ever conduct one.

[LouAvul]

Seems I recall a ship with those same criteria. She was named the “Titanic.”

[csvset]

: “Reuters did not have access to the recording or transcript.”

Yeah, I saw that and cringed when the headline read “Exclusive”, but you’re not supposed to change headlines. Rather than “exclusive” it should be labled as “leaked” .

[LouAvul]

Not confined to jeep. My Honda and my Ford manuals have no logical organization. And with all the added high tech computerized on board displays, I definitely need a more logical index in the manuals.

[SkyPilot]

I developed PTSD from one flight I had with Air Malawi.

I remember a story about someone flying an African nation airline. Don't know if its anecdotal or not. The co-pilot never showed, so the pilot took off without one! In mid-flight, the pilot got out to take a piss, and discovered he was locked out of the cockpit. He broke back in using a crash ax, and the entire passenger compartment witnessed it.

Helluva story if true.

[Hot Tabasco]

If you have push-button start, aren’t you supposed to leave the fob in your pocket and push a button on the door if you want to lock it after you exit the vehicle?

Yea, but the occasions I unknowingly left the car running was when I made a quick stop to run into the gas station to buy something. I generally don't lock the car when I do that because the car is shut off and the keys are in my hand.

But with this new Jeep, I haven't yet gotten used to the fact that the fob on my key chain isn't an actual key and I have to push the button to turn it off.

And after a lifetime of knowing my car is shut off because the keys are in my hand, it's hard to get used to this new way.

[Hot Tabasco]

the last time he did it, the car was in the garage and ran for hours.

LOL!

[Delta 21]

Garbage in, Garbage out.

[Delta 21]

Its on page 422 of the emergency checklist manual and you can get there easily after completing the 5 prior steps that fail to resolve the situation. Dont forget.......5000 feet.....YOU ARE STALLING!!....air speed is dropping.......Whats your vector, Victor?.....Roger? ROGER???

[AnalogReigns]

200 hours of flight experience.

US FAA standards have the CO-PILOT having AT LEAST 1500 hours of flight experience with the pilot having many (many) more.....

[1Old Pro]

200 hours of flight experience. Equivalent to 5 weeks.

Perhaps sufficient for an UBER driver, but not a pilot.

[WhoisAlanGreenspan?]

The Reuters article has one new clue that I hadn't heard before and it might help explain why the previous Lion Air crew didn't relate their situation to the doomed crew.

On the same aircraft the evening before the crash, a captain at Lion Air’s full-service sister carrier, Batik Air, was riding along in the cockpit and solved the similar flight control problems, two of the sources said. His presence on that flight, first reported by Bloomberg, was not disclosed in the preliminary report.

So the first crew didn't solve the problem alone. Add that to the fact that they did report the faulty AOA (angle of attack) pitot tube which was reportedly replaced. (the aircraft has one AOA on each side of the fuselage)

The MCAS system logic should have disabled itself. It has a stall condition reported from one, not both AOA. And it has the pilot desperately pulling back on the yoke. This is not the time to read the manual.

Also, several American pilots have reported problems with the 737Max that are related to the MCAS system and exiting the autopilot, causes nosedive.

[RayChuang88]

It's turning into the flight control issue with the early 727-100 operation all over again.

(For those who don't know, there were a number of unexpected 727-100 crashes shortly after the plane went into service. Boeing determined that the flight crew let the angle of attack (AoA) go too high, causing an unrecoverable "deep stall" condition, a known fault with T-tail airplanes. A change a operating procedures during takeoff and landing and the installation of "stick shakers" to warn the pilots of excessive AoA resolved that issue.)

[oh8eleven]

WTH is so funny about people dieing?

"Deadly Convenience: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll"
"... more than two dozen people killed by carbon monoxide nationwide since 2006 after a
keyless-ignition vehicle was inadvertently left running in a garage. Dozens of others
have been injured, some left with brain damage."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/13/business/deadly-convenience-keyless-cars-and-their-carbon-monoxide-toll.html

[norwaypinesavage]

"The previous flight crew were able to solve the same problem without crashing."

Right, isn't it interesting that this problem is so serious that all similar airplanes are now grounded? Yet the crew didn't immediately land and ground the plane, and didn't even bother to tell the next crew what they did about it.

[WhoisAlanGreenspan?]

Exactly.

What a sorry way to automate an aircraft.