Ethiopian Max 8 crashes, Canadians on board

[Stealth22]

Originally Posted by atb

Came across this post on another forum that helps provide some insight.

That definitely provides a lot of insight, thanks for posting that.

I think that mostly answers why Lion Air happened. But the Ethiopian crash is another matter, because supposedly, Boeing/the FAA issued an emergency AD (airworthiness directive) regarding MCAS.

That said, though, going back to that pilot's last paragraph - he stated that you would need at least 10,000 feet to diagnose and fix the problem.

And looking at the FR24 radar data for ET302...

https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/f...es-flight-302/

https://graphics.reuters.com/ETHIOPI...1DX/index.html

It doesn't appear that ET302 gained very much altitude at all (barely 1000 feet above ground level), so even if you assume that the pilots knew about and were trained on MCAS, under the circumstances, they didn't stand a chance.

[Stealth22]

I think this image from the Reuters article I linked above illustrates it pretty well...

[edslunch]

Originally Posted by Firebot

40 seconds...in the hands of Boeing test pilots knowing to expect an error who would be able to react within those 40 seconds.



In other words, a well trained crew knowing about the MCAS and testing for the scenario would have had 40 seconds or less to disable the problem after noticing it, versus a crew that had no idea the system even existed because it was not disclosed or trained on. Boeing built a system that actively was trying to crash a fricking plane if not countered within 40 seconds, and decided not to tell anyone about it to save on cost.



A pilot taking a sip of coffee and a few seconds of inattention on a 6 hour flight could be enough to cause a plane to crash. And you have to remember to turn off 3 specific switches, after identifying the problem, within the seconds you have left or you die.



And this is the Lion Air situation, we still don't know all the details of the Ethopian Air crash, where the pilots did know about MCAS at that point. That 40 seconds for Lion Air may have been 15 seconds for Ethiopian Air due to different conditions. It crashed much sooner than Lion Air.



Lion Air pilots hit the switch over 24 times while scrambling through the manual until they eventually lost control (and they would have no idea of a 40 second counter of course).



This is like pressing the button from Lost, Boeing edition

This reminds me of Sully where simulators proved they could have landed safely IF they made an instant decision to do so, whereas in the real world the time taken to assess the problem (35 seconds) left no option but to ditch

[Resolute 14]

Not really telling us anything new, but...

https://arstechnica.com/information-...ian-737-crash/

At a high-level briefing at the Federal Aviation Administration on March 28, officials revealed "black box" data from Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 indicated that the Boeing 737 MAX's flight software had activated an anti-stall feature that pushed the nose of the plane down just moments after takeoff. The preliminary finding officially links Boeing's Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) to a second crash within a five-month period. The finding was based on data provided to FAA officials by Ethiopian investigators.

Also, this is some amazing spin:

Ewell defended the FAA's late decision to ground the 737 MAX after the Ethiopian Airlines crash, telling senators,"We may have been, I think someone said, the last country to ground the aircraft but the United States and Canada were the first countries to ground the aircraft with data."

[speede5]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

Also, this is some amazing spin:

That's not really a spin, that's the truth and the way the airworthiness system works.

Here's the thing, let's take WS as an example. If you ground your fleet on a hunch with no data, how do you determine when it is safe to fly again? What if the MCAS turns out to be a dead end and you can't establish linked a root cause for the crashes? How do you reverse your decision?

WS could have very easily had measures in place after the first crash to mitigate any issues with the system and been perfectly safe to fly. Until you have data to suggest otherwise you would keep flying. As soon as you have something that tells you your risk is higher than acceptable you change your course. The system is designed for that.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by speede5

That's not really a spin, that's the truth and the way the airworthiness system works.

Here's the thing, let's take WS as an example. If you ground your fleet on a hunch with no data, how do you determine when it is safe to fly again? What if the MCAS turns out to be a dead end and you can't establish linked a root cause for the crashes? How do you reverse your decision?

There wasn't "no data." There were two similar crashes in a short period of time coupled with reports from other pilots saying they had encountered the same type of dangerous aircraft handling that preceded the two actual crashes.

You determine it is safe to fly after you determine it is isn't unsafe to fly. The whole world was able to deduce it was potentially unsafe to fly based on glaring similarities in what was immediately knowable with the two crashes.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Sliver

There wasn't "no data." There were two similar crashes in a short period of time coupled with reports from other pilots saying they had encountered the same type of dangerous aircraft handling that preceded the two actual crashes.

You determine it is safe to fly after you determine it is isn't unsafe to fly. The whole world was able to deduce it was potentially unsafe to fly based on glaring similarities in what was immediately knowable with the two crashes.

Pilots did not say they had similar types of handling. The media reported every anomaly that the Max had whether or not it was related to the MCAS system. Were the crashes similar from the beginning. Both planes crashed on take off. Was their other data that was sufficient to say they were the same.

The nations that were the first to ban had a limited number of planes. When the consequence of banning is low you can be less certain in your decision making process and base it on avoiding catastrophic loss without eating the short term impact.

I think that the process used was reasonable. What needs to be confirmed is that there was not inference in the decision process.

[Stealth22]

The media spreading a bunch of erroneous info and equating everything to MCAS has only made the situation worse. But I suppose media scrutiny is a reason why air travel is generally so safe.

I think Canada and the US were reasonable in their approach to the situation, honestly. The FAA has some questions to answer, as does Boeing, but grounding the planes AFTER the radar data came to light was the right call.

[Bigtime]

https://twitter.com/juliejohnsson/st...183330816?s=21

[Stealth22]

Missing as in, it was lost in the crash, or missing as in, it wasn't installed on the aircraft in the first place...?

[Bigtime]

2nd tweet in that sequence talking about the DVR showing angle of attack was malfunctioning.

[Stealth22]

Tweets in question ^^

Spoiler!

[Red]

Thank your lucky stars the media is all over this. They said it was MCAS and to date there is nothing to suggest it wasn't. So why are we so quick to vilify them?
And the world airlines and FAA probably had more details than we did early on. The pilots were talking to the tower right?
Media is not the problem here.

[Bigtime]

I just posted this in the Aviation thread, but wanted to put it here because this technology could help get things figured out much faster than recovering the black boxes and going from there.


Honeywell and Inmarsat working on "Black Box in the Cloud":

https://runwaygirlnetwork.com/2019/0...oud-a-reality/

One option is to set “a data frame and a frame rate that makes sense until a certain event, and then you accelerate it. It’s kind of like, ‘hey you’re pulling a whole chunk of data every five minutes or every 15 minutes, then all of a sudden an event occurs and you’ll be pulling it every 100 milliseconds.’ That’s one way they’re looking at it.” A defined trigger event could be an unapproved course deviation, for example.
“Another way is why not take a subset of the data and take that as a continuous stream? And that’s another method,” explained Peterson to Runway Girl Network. “As it is with data, there are a lot of different ways to do it, and costs associated, and what aspect of that is the most valuable.”

[Firebot]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/boe...rash-1.5082472

https://qz.com/1586385/pilots-of-cra...ded-by-boeing/

New preliminary details coming out this morning. This is big.

Boeing anti-stall software repeatedly forced down the nose of a doomed Ethiopian jet after pilots had turned it off, sources told Reuters, as investigators scrutinize the role played by technology and crew in the fatal March 10 crash.

A preliminary Ethiopian report into the disaster, expected soon, may include evidence the software system kicked in as many as four times before the 737 Max dived into the ground, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

It was not immediately clear whether the Ethiopian crew chose to re-deploy the system, which pushes the Boeing 737 Max downward to avoid stalling. But one of the sources said investigators were studying the possibility that the software started working again without human intervention.

Now, the investigation has turned toward how MCAS was initially disabled by pilots following a checklist procedure, but then appeared to start working again repeatedly before the jet plunged to the ground, the two sources said.

I will say this because some on this thread immediately shifted blame on where the incident happened. I am tired of hearing how 3rd world countries have poor safety records, pilots are poorly trained, how every excuse can be used to dismiss a defect as soon as one of the countries involved for an incident is not from Europe or US / Canada. I've been to several 3rd world countries over the years, and my flight experience has been as good or better than seen home (heck the worst situations were US domestic flights).

Less than a year ago a woman was killed from a broken fan blade that threw shrapnel in the middle of a US flight as a result of poor maintenance standards.

https://www.seattletimes.com/busines...ne-fan-blades/

There's good reason why the planes were grounded once both flights were closely linked (including the FAA based on data), to immediately dismiss incidents to some backwater 3rd world countries pilot and maintenance crews is an insult. Planes don't go crashing down every day, even in 3rd world countries.

[Fuzz]

Are you suggesting you are fine with a FO having 200 hours experience flying passengers? Because I'm not. No matter the cause, I dont' think it's wrong to draw attention to that fact.

[Fuzz]

It's also my understanding that turning the switches off severs an electrical connection to the trim motor which turns the trim wheel, so the software can't re-enable that. It would then be an electrical failure, if they had indeed turned that switch off and it wasn't actually off.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Are you suggesting you are fine with a FO having 200 hours experience flying passengers? Because I'm not. No matter the cause, I dont' think it's wrong to draw attention to that fact.

I think some of the defending in this thread has been odd to be honest. It's two planes in 4 months, on a platform rolled out with the stated advantage of not requiring extra training when training was clearly needed. Why are people still trying to point to pilots? Even if the pilot did have low hours, the plane is clearly doing something erroneous and fatally dangerous. Is the lack of experience really going to change their ability to handle something newly implemented, and not properly communicated, at a critical point in the flight with extremely limited window to resolve this unknown issue?

Add to that, if that last report turns out to be true, that's pretty damning.

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Are you suggesting you are fine with a FO having 200 hours experience flying passengers? Because I'm not. No matter the cause, I dont' think it's wrong to draw attention to that fact.

The captain had over 8000 hours of flight experience. It wasn't until recently that the hour requirements changed in the US, heck less than a decade, where 200 for a FO would have been fine. You likely flew with a copilot with similar experience multiple times in your life without knowing.

https://thepointsguy.com/news/how-mu...o-pilots-need/

Let's not pretend that training is the problem here. Training hours was quick to be grasped at, to again try to point the finger at 3rd world regulations, when those types of hours for a pilot were fine in the past in the US and Canada, and fine in Europe

British Airways, Lufthansa and Air France each have rigorous cadet training programs. BA says its program is “a challenging course that will take you from little or no experience, to the First Officer’s seat on our short haul aircraft; currently the Airbus A320.” Same for Lufthansa; pilots completing their ATP license will start in the right seat at a Lufthansa group carrier at around 200 hours. And it’s not just the well-known carriers. For example, Ukraine International has open positions for pilots with 700 total hours.

Lufthansa, such a bad airline.

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Are you suggesting you are fine with a FO having 200 hours experience flying passengers? Because I'm not. No matter the cause, I dont' think it's wrong to draw attention to that fact.

Originally Posted by nik-

I think some of the defending in this thread has been odd to be honest. It's two planes in 4 months, on a platform rolled out with the stated advantage of not requiring extra training when training was clearly needed. Why are people still trying to point to pilots? Even if the pilot did have low hours, the plane is clearly doing something erroneous and fatally dangerous. Is the lack of experience really going to change their ability to handle something newly implemented, and not properly communicated, at a critical point in the flight with extremely limited window to resolve this unknown issue?

Add to that, if that last report turns out to be true, that's pretty damning.

There's much more to the issue to be sure, but I believe in the Ethiopian case that the experience of the FO definately was a factor. Regardless of whether the situation was recoverable, the Captain was likely essentially on his own trying to both troubleshoot the issue and fly the aircraft. There's no way you can convince me that a 200 hours FO would be much help either running checklists or flying the AC while the Captain troubleshot things.