Posted on 03/18/2019 1:14:55 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Flight data recovered from the wreckage of an Ethiopian Airlines jet showed “clear similarities” to another deadly crash of one of Boeing’s top-selling 737 Max aircraft last October, according to the French accident investigator that downloaded the information.
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a Boeing 737 Max 8, went down shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa on March 10, killing all 157 people on board. That occurred less than five months after a Lion Air jet crashed into the Java Sea in Indonesia during a similar stage in its flight, killing all 189 passengers and crew. Both 737 Max 8 jets were delivered to the airlines just months before their fatal flights.
The U.S. on Wednesday joined dozens of other countries in ordering airlines to ground the planes after the Federal Aviation Administration said it found new evidence that may link the two crashes.
Investigators who verified the data from the doomed Ethiopian Airlines jet’s flight data recorder found similarities between the Lion Air and Ethiopia crashes, “which will be the subject of further study during the investigation,” French accident authority BEA said in a statement Monday. That echoed statements from Ethiopian Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges a day earlier.
Data from the other black box — the cockpit voice recorder — has also been extracted and has been handed over to Ethiopia’s accident investigator, BEA said. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, which is participating in the investigation of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, also verified the data, BEA added.
Scrutiny has increased on the federal approval process for the new Boeing Max jets, which have been flying for less than two years.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
Yes. Fortunately the captain on QANTAS flight 72 was a former US Navy pilot who used a high speed landing technique when landing an A330 that was making unrequested nose dives. The high speed was in case the plane tried to dive close to the ground so there would be enough energy to get out and do a go around.
It's quite timely. The episosode of Air Disasters broadcast on Sunday was about QANTAS 72.
Pilots not training themselves on MCAS? good video,
Click here to view: Highlights in the History of Aviation and Aerospace - The Past, The Present, and The Future:
Please ping me to aviation and aerospace articles. Thank you.
If you want added to or removed from this ping list, please contact EveningStar or Paleo Conservative.
I heard this morning on the local KING 5 Seattle news that one of the fixes for this is the computer system will onky try to nose down once if the pilots try to fight against it. It will supposedly shut itself down and let the pilot fly the plane.
Never...and, I mean never listen to one word uttered by these Media folks....they have no idea what happened except “hearsay”...which in most cases turns out to be 100% incorrect or wrong.
- -
The average media minion doesn’t know a wing flap from a mud flap.
DO AWAY WITH THIS AUTOMATED PIVOTING HORIZONTAL STABILIZER NONSENSE! This is where technology exceeds common sense.
I can understand why the FAA wanted a system to to make sure pilots don't stall the plane but make the 737 Max handle more like a 737 NG. I just think the consequences of the MCAS system was thoroughly though out, especially in light of problems with similar systems on Airbus A330's A321's. The MCAS system should have been in the flight manuals prior to cerification. Pilots should have been told about it. Simulator time cover MCAS should have been required before flying the 737 Max.
If a plane crashes because of a sensor. You need 50 or more depending on MTBF. crazy. Benefit vs loss calculation.
There are two FCC’s and two MCAS. Two sensors, one feeding each system.
Activation of the MCAS is essentially the same response as runaway trim which is covered in the manual and training.
Somewhere along the line emphasis on trim has been lost?
Activation of the MCAS is essentially the same response as runaway trim which is covered in the manual and training.
Somewhere along the line emphasis on trim has been lost?
Perhaps it has at some airlines. Still the Runaway trim on the 737 Max was caused by a fly by wire system that was actively trying to fight the pilots.
I read somewhere that a pilot said it was similar to recovering from runaway trim on a 727 which was a common simulator exercise.
I would also consider integrating all relevant sensors via an AI scheme to make sense of true ground speed, pitch attitude - anything a pilot would want to consider when evaluating a sensor conflict in order to make sense of the situation. And even with that, you would want pilots to routinely get in manual hands-on flying experience on an systematic basis - and a clear understanding in the cockpit of how to take manual control instantly.
You wouldn’t need 50. You just need enough to determine that there is a fault so the pilots can be aware of the situation. With 3 sensors, 2 sensors can outvote the 1 defective sensor. If a fight has an issue with a faulty sensor, the plane should not take off again till the sensor is replaced. In the Lion Air case, the same plane had problems with the same sensor on multiple flights, but the Lion Air maintenance did not replace the sensor after any of those flights.
“I can understand why the FAA wanted a system to to make sure pilots don’t stall the plane”
So, explain to the layman, does that only activate at a certain altitude? And what happens in those scenarios if the pilot put the plane into a stall(no MCAS)?
This thread serves as a perfect example of what has happened on every one of these 737 Max 8 threads. The article states that the examination of the data from the Flight Data Recorder showed “similarities” with the data recorded on the earlier Lion Air accident. What similarities the mean exactly is not reported.
However, many comments proceed to discuss the use of sensor data, errors in sensor data, or other details that emerged from the Lion Air accident. Those facts have not yet been established. We don’t know if their was a sensor failure in the Ethiopian accident. Perhaps it did, but it hasn’t been reported yet, certainly not in this article. Absent in this article are any findings about crew training or crew performance, although those will certainly be forthcoming at some point.
The problem that we are having right now is that we appear to have veered off into an argument about the bad old USofA and their bandit aircraft manufacturer, Boeing and the rest of the world who don’t want any criticism of their crew selection, training, and performance; even if it is warranted. Most accidents have multiple causes and this one may have involved both the MCAS system and crew issues. That won’t be a surprise.
Meanwhile, these threads continue to be fact free zones, at least in part.
I'm not so sure that is relevant. After all, how can he ever get more if you never let him in one. The relevant question here would be how many hours did the pilot have? Was it substantially more than 200?
All the Captain has to do is hit the trim switch on the yoke and the autopilot disconnects returning full control to the pilot. This is a basic procedure known by any properly trained pilot. Manual trim is available, electric trim is available and dinner with a flight attendant is probably also available at the evening layover point.
The MCAS was added, because in order to put an engine with a larger fan on a 737, Boeing had to mount the engines forward of the wing rather than under. The 737 Max landing gear is the same as the 737 NG landing gear. It's very difficult to make the 737 landing gear any longer that it is, because of the way it retracts into the wing root. It is a legacy of the original 737-100 and 737-200 that had a much smaller diameter low bypass engine mounded under the wing. The 737 was originally designed to go to small airports that previously just had propeller service. The short landing gear saved weight. It also cut down on the ground equipment needed to service the plane between flights. Unfortunately it has caused great headaches in updating the 737 starting the the 737-300 in the 1980's.
re: “That’s the advantage of having redundant aviation national regulators.”
Bear in mind the NTSB is an independent investigative agency not beholden to the FAA or any other agency. The NTSB oversees more than just the aviation industry, too.
https://www.ntsb.gov/Pages/default.aspx
I’ve been saying to look at the Angle of Attack probe since day one.
Once upon a time, a lieutenant came into the instrument shop where I worked with an AOA indicator that he said came from a crashed plane and wanted to know if it was working at the time of the crash. It didn’t work at that point but I thought it probably was working at the time of the crash because it was stuck at an AOA other than zero. In fact, it showed a negative AOA.
So maybe runaway trim simulations should have been run to make sure the pilots were fresh. I'm pretty sure pilots at any of the North American airlines that fly the 737 Max were proficient in runaway trim situations. I'm not so sure a lot of foreign airlines were. Also the first officer on the Ethiopian Airlines flight only had 200 hours total flight time. That is well below the 1500 hours required to fly for an airline in the US. Still for the MCAS system to create runaway trim situations as often as it has is unacceptable. Even with properly trained crews, what if the system deployed at a lower altitude where there is very little time to recover. The MCAS system need a major revision even after the currently proposed software upgrades are installed. Yes, 737 pilots should know how to handle runaway trim situations, but the MCAS system needs to be adjusted so it is orders of magnitude less likely to cause those situations.
The only precedent I can think of for a new jet aircraft to have such serious multiple crashes from the same cause was the De Havilind Comet back in the 1950's.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.