This never ending quest for cheaper flying just became lethal...

I dread to think about the noises a 737 could be making in a full on nose dive.

MD80Ttail wrote:

Fact the US system is superior.

AMEN.

May be you should consider, that the US of A is only a small part of the (aviation) world.

Re: total hours, and hours in type. IMO, just as important is a pilot's reaction to a real emergency, vs. being in a sim where a pilot knows "I'm in a sim". The AF447 pilots prove that point ... they stayed in panic mode all the way down.

How does a pilot determine that a cargo shift has moved the c/g to make LOC inevitable? Is that scenario part of recurrent?

“The plane was very close to the ground and it made a turn. We looked and saw papers falling off the plane,” Malka Galato, the farmer whose land the plane crashed on, told Reuters from the rural area where horse-drawn carriages ply rough roads.

“Cows that were grazing in the fields ran in panic ... There was smoke and sparks coming from the back of the plane.”

The plane tried to climb but failed, then swerved sharply trailing white smoke and objects including clothes before crashing, said farmer Tamirat Abera, who was walking nearby.

I question the reliability of these observer reports at the crash site. The plane was in trouble from the moment it took off - and there are no reports of a 20 mile long debris field or 20 mile smoke trail. "The plane tried to climb but failed" seems like projection but at least 2 observed a final the turn/swerve/wing drop that indicates a final fatal stall.

slider wrote:

giopan1975 wrote:

MCAS obstructs an airman from trusting one of his basic instincts and perform pitch and thrust when unreliable speed indication is noted.
This is not normal.
Certifying a commercial airplane that works on unsuitable engines for its design is also not normal. It is also suspicious and also scary when a US manufacturer who are named Boeing are involved.
737max should all be scraped tommorow, not grounded. Scrapped.
And certifiers sued for bribery and homicide.
And this has nothing to do with the cause of this accident.

Well, this could be a tragic by-product of trying to upgrade a warmed-over 50 year old airframe instead of having designed a new clean sheet airplane. WN drove the train on the NG from the start--Boeing should have taken that singular opportunity to thank them but tell them that their fleet commonality wasn't going to dictate much necessary airframe improvements for the 737. So then you have Frankenstein at work, with the 737-900ER, and then the MAX with shoehorning a significantly different engine on it and having to programatically compensate for aerodynamic compromise. Separate rant altogether about how Boeing's desire to placate a major customer in WN actually hurt them in the long run. And we may--*may*--be seeing the ultimate price for that now, which would be tragic.

I'm not a big fan of the MAX but how do you fault Boeing/WN for the NG when it was an incredible market success? Are you saying it would have been even more successful and profitable had they done a clean sheet back in the 90's?

With the MAX, it is what it is. Aside from what we know about the MCAS system, it doesn't seem to be an abject failure - just not the best.

I remain interested in why the FR24 data stream stopped well before the aircraft went down.

And, I find it improbable that a reasonably-trained and aware crew of an airline flown by a well-managed airline would repeat the failures of the crew of the ill-fated Lion Air flight - and, from all accounts I've read, Ethiopian is a solid carrier with high standards for crew training and qualification.

In this, I use the same reasoning as why I firmly expected, after the CVR and DFDR data for AF447 became available, that there would never again be a mishap of the same nature in an A330.

And, I think we can all agree, in a dispassionate analysis of the facts, that both AF447 and the Lion Air crash were, in themselves, the results of highly improbable combinations of events, circumstances and people, and that the information gleaned from each occurrence has served - and will serve - to make future occurrences of like nature nearly impossible.

---

I predict that, when the root cause of this latest crash is learned, it will have had nothing at all to do with the aircraft's MCAS system.

[quote="dopplerd"]Based on the fr24 raw data this does NOT appear to be MCAS related, unless there is another unreported MCAS mode that is different than what Boeing has stated post Lion Air crash. MCAS is not operating if flaps are down.

Some things to consider, from a software testers perspective. At what altitude do they begin retracting the flaps? Given the altitude is the airport, it’s possible there’s a major software and or instrument defect calculating a variety of factors which can snowball, like a domino effect, therefore enabling the MCAS mode immediately upon retraction of the flaps?

I’m guessing takeoff from an elevation of 7000 plus feet requires different input than say EWK or Heathrow.
The plane is only doing what the onboard system is asking it to do. Now throw in some pilots trying to override a plane overriding itself.

slider wrote:

giopan1975 wrote:

MCAS obstructs an airman from trusting one of his basic instincts and perform pitch and thrust when unreliable speed indication is noted.
This is not normal.
Certifying a commercial airplane that works on unsuitable engines for its design is also not normal. It is also suspicious and also scary when a US manufacturer who are named Boeing are involved.
737max should all be scraped tommorow, not grounded. Scrapped.
And certifiers sued for bribery and homicide.
And this has nothing to do with the cause of this accident.

Well, this could be a tragic by-product of trying to upgrade a warmed-over 50 year old airframe instead of having designed a new clean sheet airplane. WN drove the train on the NG from the start--Boeing should have taken that singular opportunity to thank them but tell them that their fleet commonality wasn't going to dictate much necessary airframe improvements for the 737. So then you have Frankenstein at work, with the 737-900ER, and then the MAX with shoehorning a significantly different engine on it and having to programatically compensate for aerodynamic compromise. Separate rant altogether about how Boeing's desire to placate a major customer in WN actually hurt them in the long run. And we may--*may*--be seeing the ultimate price for that now, which would be tragic.

Wow! It only took 25 pages and 1200 posts to blame this on WN. Good work.

Moose135 wrote:

MD80Ttail wrote:

Oh, and just wondering, how did Jacob van Zanten's 11K+ hours serve him in preventing the Tenerife disaster?

I think in that case, his 11,000+ hours worked against him...he had a classic case of “getthereitis”.

I have had times in the flight deck where boarding is taking forever, cargo is still being loaded and the feelers seem to be pumping molasses into the tanks - you get frustrated and that’s only human...I remember one of my instructors using Jacob van Zanten as a classic example of what happens when you rush.

That lesson clearly has stuck with me.

SWADawg wrote:

slider wrote:

giopan1975 wrote:

MCAS obstructs an airman from trusting one of his basic instincts and perform pitch and thrust when unreliable speed indication is noted.
This is not normal.
Certifying a commercial airplane that works on unsuitable engines for its design is also not normal. It is also suspicious and also scary when a US manufacturer who are named Boeing are involved.
737max should all be scraped tommorow, not grounded. Scrapped.
And certifiers sued for bribery and homicide.
And this has nothing to do with the cause of this accident.

Well, this could be a tragic by-product of trying to upgrade a warmed-over 50 year old airframe instead of having designed a new clean sheet airplane. WN drove the train on the NG from the start--Boeing should have taken that singular opportunity to thank them but tell them that their fleet commonality wasn't going to dictate much necessary airframe improvements for the 737. So then you have Frankenstein at work, with the 737-900ER, and then the MAX with shoehorning a significantly different engine on it and having to programatically compensate for aerodynamic compromise. Separate rant altogether about how Boeing's desire to placate a major customer in WN actually hurt them in the long run. And we may--*may*--be seeing the ultimate price for that now, which would be tragic.

Wow! It only took 25 pages and 1200 posts to blame this on WN. Good work.

Indeed.

And, in the process, to find fault with one of the best aircraft ever built.

sccutler wrote:

I remain interested in why the FR24 data stream stopped well before the aircraft went down...

It was explained several posts ago that that flight was done mostly outside FR24's coverage range.

That's why the data ends up abruptly.

Pluto707 wrote:

This never ending quest for cheaper flying just became lethal...

Maybe... But if flying cost more to the point that more people drove, way more deaths would occur.

Pluto707 wrote:

This never ending quest for cheaper flying just became lethal...

I think it's too early to call this accident a result of the quest for cheaper flying, mind you - accidents also occurred when flying was anything but cheap.

Any reason why the aircraft never appeared to try and turn back towards the airport like the supposedly requested not long after takeoff? Do we assume they were just too busy trying to keep the aircraft airborne?

The problem with low experience pilots (200 hours in the MPL program, USAF UPT grads, or prior to ATP rule in US, it’s all the same) is that, as long as everything follows the sim script-fine and dandy. When things start going off the rails, the captain starts flying solo and becomes an instructor, top. I’ve been there and lots of civil LCAs in the days of 200 hour copilots would agree.

GF

cledaybuck wrote:

Any reason why the aircraft never appeared to try and turn back towards the airport like the supposedly requested not long after takeoff? Do we assume they were just too busy trying to keep the aircraft airborne?

Wait for CVR/FDR data publish, for now we cant even take FR24 fully since flight was outside their coverage.

I dont think We even know at this point if the plane tried to do an U-turn.

the captain starts flying solo and becomes an instructor

Good CRM should prevent that from happening.

Over 42% of delivered 737 MAX worldwide are now grounded (China/Indonesia/Ethiopia/South Africa...) If Boeing is targeting emerging Asia & Africa markets (with sub-par pilots, sub-par training, and sub-par maintenance based on earlier comments in this thread) it should account for that in its product, and blame should not rest on those airlines.

If going by the FlightRadar24 (unfortunately some of the data and especially vertical speed doesn’t make aeronautics sense) ground speed and altitude data (and neglecting vertical speed), from the time the flight took off reported to be around 05 38 43Z to the time data was lost at around 05 41 02Z (2 minute 19 sec) they had only gained 875’ (and at this last data point only 170’ above the terrain below). At no time in the short duration of this flight did they get more than 1400’ above the airport elevation, while their GS at the final data point was a whopping 383 kn.

The elephant in the room seems may be (if one can assume that the FRadar24 altitude data is accurate) that they could not climb after takeoff. You don’t traverse 10 nm after takeoff and only be 1400’ above the runway elevation unless there is something very seriously wrong with climb capability. And if this flight was consistently at an altitude of less than 1000-1400 ft above airport elevation, had MCAS initiated at that very low altitude and that close to terrain below it would have been quite a challenge IMO to get out of that mode and climb. But even if MCAS did happen, and they got out of that mode surprisingly quickly, they still never gained any appreciable altitude during the 10 nm traversed after takeoff to when FRadar24 data was lost.

Just saying, one has to consider that this event may have been caused by a serious deficiency of climb thrust (and there are a lot of root causes that would cause that, as well as associated control devices), for whatever reason, and not focusing exclusively on potentially another MCAS event.

Learning how to operate a modern airliner (autopilot, FMS, basic flying etc) does not a competent pilot make, yet can be taught in just a few hundred hours. Safe and competent flying is made up of 90% judgement - and that almost entirely comes from experience. I don't get paid for I do, I get paid for what I know.

MD80Ttail please explain EXACTLY, and I mean you must detail every step, that would have found out Lubitz's problems had he needed the 1500 hours required in the US, using US training and monitoring methods as he would not have been flying for an airline. There is NOTHING wrong with pairing short on hours FOs with experienced Captains, that's how they learn in today's two crew cockpits. Flying MU2s (reputedly quite a handful in certain conditions) on your own through the often turbulent night skies of the USA year round might build hours and flying experience but unless you are monitored by a more experienced left hand seater, you will develop faults, have no experience of crew based CRM and, the first time you sat in a jet airliner or simulator, you were back to the same square one as a rookie given the difference between today's airliners and their systems and general aviation aircraft. Has it not occurred to you that a new entrant pilot who has only been trained on one airliner type might just react exactly as he should to an emergency as it is the only way he knows how to react, compared to a multi thousand hour Captain who could, feasibly, revert to the handling required for a previous type which he has flown a few thousand hours compared to a small amount of hours on the new type. Just under 80 years ago boys as young as 18 were handed fighters and bombers to fly with minimal training. They had to learn how to handle what were then complex, now seemingly simple, machines in combat. They had to learn fast, their lives and those in their crew depended on it. Today the low hours boys and girls getting into right hand seats have just as much training as their grandparents and great grandparents in basic airmanship, the difference is that once they can pass the basics, they have to become systems operators and monitors and the youth today are generally very good at it.

cledaybuck wrote:

Any reason why the aircraft never appeared to try and turn back towards the airport like the supposedly requested not long after takeoff? Do we assume they were just too busy trying to keep the aircraft airborne?

Or did they? I posted a question earlier about the four things that needed to occur for MCAS to activate. The 4th item as I understood was a steep turn. Maybe that is when the loss of control happens?

PlanesNTrains wrote:

slider wrote:

giopan1975 wrote:

MCAS obstructs an airman from trusting one of his basic instincts and perform pitch and thrust when unreliable speed indication is noted.
This is not normal.
Certifying a commercial airplane that works on unsuitable engines for its design is also not normal. It is also suspicious and also scary when a US manufacturer who are named Boeing are involved.
737max should all be scraped tommorow, not grounded. Scrapped.
And certifiers sued for bribery and homicide.
And this has nothing to do with the cause of this accident.

Well, this could be a tragic by-product of trying to upgrade a warmed-over 50 year old airframe instead of having designed a new clean sheet airplane. WN drove the train on the NG from the start--Boeing should have taken that singular opportunity to thank them but tell them that their fleet commonality wasn't going to dictate much necessary airframe improvements for the 737. So then you have Frankenstein at work, with the 737-900ER, and then the MAX with shoehorning a significantly different engine on it and having to programatically compensate for aerodynamic compromise. Separate rant altogether about how Boeing's desire to placate a major customer in WN actually hurt them in the long run. And we may--*may*--be seeing the ultimate price for that now, which would be tragic.

I'm not a big fan of the MAX but how do you fault Boeing/WN for the NG when it was an incredible market success? Are you saying it would have been even more successful and profitable had they done a clean sheet back in the 90's?

With the MAX, it is what it is. Aside from what we know about the MCAS system, it doesn't seem to be an abject failure - just not the best.

Furthermore, the market dictated the development of the MAX not the other way around. It's not like Boeing went out and said, here's the max, take it or leave it. They developed what the market wanted. The market didn't want to wait for a new single aisle aircraft and it didn't want to pay the sticker price of a new single aisle aircraft.

May I make a suggestion to the moderators?

Years ago, when there were these very long and frequently updated threads, usually to discuss a crash, a thread would be closed after a certain number of pages, and given a number N. Then, a new one would be opened with a number N+1, and a brief summary of the *facts* about the crash known up to that point, as its initial post. So, this thread would have been split, for example, into "Ethiopian 737MAX crash 1", "Ethiopian 737MAX crash 2", "Ethiopian 737MAX crash 3", and so on. This, in my opinion, made the thread easier to read, and easier to catch up with.

If there is enough interest, perhaps something like this could be restarted for this thread.

GEUltraFan9XGTF wrote:

sandyb123 wrote:

akb88 wrote:

Should I be having concerns about my flight with Norwegian 737-800 to Athens in about a month? Different aircraf from the one that crashed but my anxiety riddled mind is getting nervous about these planes.

The NG’s don’t have the system that caused problems on LionAir 610. The MCAS system is potentially the culprit here but either way the 800 NG doesn’t have the system.

I think that's an inaccurate statement. The NG has a similar system with a different name and not as aggressive as I understand it.

Then you'd be the inaccurate one. NO 737NG has MCAS. Only the 737Max generation has MCAS.

Earlier 737s do have a STS - Speed Trim System - that acts to lower the nose by using the pitch trim in slow speed situations. I don't know of any accidents caused by the STS. The 737s also have a Mach Trim System that uses pitch trim to raise the nose, IIRC.

RIP to all that perished. One of my long time comrades flew for ET for a time and always spoke well of the airline and it's people. No doubt this is a tragic and sad time for them.

IADFCO wrote:

May I make a suggestion to the moderators?

Years ago, when there were these very long and frequently updated threads, usually to discuss a crash, a thread would be closed after a certain number of pages, and given a number N. Then, a new one would be opened with a number N+1, and a brief summary of the *facts* about the crash known up to that point, as its initial post. So, this thread would have been split, for example, into "Ethiopian 737MAX crash 1", "Ethiopian 737MAX crash 2", "Ethiopian 737MAX crash 3", and so on. This, in my opinion, made the thread easier to read, and easier to catch up with.

If there is enough interest, perhaps something like this could be restarted for this thread.

The current facts atm are that the crashed plane is a 3M8, the FDR and CVR have been both found, and that all lives aboard are gone.

tenHangar wrote:

Over 42% of delivered 737 MAX worldwide are now grounded (China/Indonesia/Ethiopia/South Africa...) If Boeing is targeting emerging Asia & Africa markets (with sub-par pilots, sub-par training, and sub-par maintenance based on earlier comments in this thread) it should account for that in its product, and blame should not rest on those airlines.

We may as well move straight into fully autonomous airliners then.

Blaming Boeing for bad pilot training just isn't fair. Boeing provides instructions for how the aircraft should be operated. It is up to the airline and regulating authority to make sure that it is being implemented.

Pluto707 wrote:

This never ending quest for cheaper flying just became lethal...

Perhaps you can tell us when Ethiopian became a ULCC?

What a stupid comment.

Etheereal wrote:

cledaybuck wrote:

Any reason why the aircraft never appeared to try and turn back towards the airport like the supposedly requested not long after takeoff? Do we assume they were just too busy trying to keep the aircraft airborne?

Wait for CVR/FDR data publish, for now we cant even take FR24 fully since flight was outside their coverage.

I dont think We even know at this point if the plane tried to do an U-turn.

Actually we kind of do know that they tried to turn. Look at this picture from the previous page. The guardian's website has it labeled. The top left dot is origin, top right is the last radar ping. Bottom dot is the location of crash site.

Norlander wrote:

From this article on The Guardian's website.



The top right is the last radar signal received from the flight, the bottom is the crash site.

BHM wrote:

cledaybuck wrote:

Any reason why the aircraft never appeared to try and turn back towards the airport like the supposedly requested not long after takeoff? Do we assume they were just too busy trying to keep the aircraft airborne?

Or did they? I posted a question earlier about the four things that needed to occur for MCAS to activate. The 4th item as I understood was a steep turn. Maybe that is when the loss of control happens?

See above.

I'm not saying this is the cause, but just because the crew were able to request a turnback to ADD doesn't mean it wasn't a terrorist act. A bomb doesn't always mean an instant breakup the plane. I believe an E170 survived a bomb blast in Somalia several years ago.

Pluto707 wrote:

This never ending quest for cheaper flying just became lethal...

What the hell is that supposed to mean? Last I checked ET was a full service carrier.

FAA has announced they will issue a CANIC for the Max.....Sounds fishy to me!


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Everything about this flight seems fishy to me. Hot and high airport. Trouble to climb out. Doubt they would have retracted flaps if they were having trouble climbing so it doesn't seem like an MCAS issue. High speed impact so they should have had enough speed to climb out. None of this makes sense.

TTailedTiger wrote:

We may as well move straight into fully autonomous airliners then.

Give it time, it's coming. Cars and trucks are here already. Sea shipping is next. Aviation will be down the road.

Blaming Boeing for bad pilot training just isn't fair. Boeing provides instructions for how the aircraft should be operated. It is up to the airline and regulating authority to make sure that it is being implemented.

True, hence why more automation is forthcoming. Any time you can eliminate/mitigate human decision making, the belief is that risk drops.
Manufacturers, operators and insurance companies are the driving force for this, regardless of the industry.

AviationBob wrote:

Totally agree! The US requires 1500 hours to sit in the right seat of a CRJ, I thought they inadvertently dropped off a zero when saying how much total time the FO had. 200 hours !?!? Are you kidding me?

I agree the 737 Max should be looked at with suspicion, but so should the low pilot standards in these developing countries since both crashes have that in common also. Its probably a combination of the two, strange behavior from the 737 Max combined with pilots not experienced, or well trained enough to know how to handle it properly.

Yes, 200 hours seems low. But it used to be minimum 250 in the US until 2013, and it wasn't like the FO was the only guy in the cockpit here.
To solely focus on this - and in some really deplorable and offensive language, too, when the FO's usefulness is likened to that of a dog - seems, if nothing else, incredibly misdirected at this point.
The whole thread keeps going on tangents where it's first debated how third-world ET (and/or JT) really is, whether 200 hour FOs (with 8000h PICs beside them) are really good enough for such a great plane as the 737...
It's basically the exact opposite side of the spectrum of those people who shouted "ground the MAX!" in basically the first 5 minutes after the news came out.
This sole focus on the FO's hours and similar topics seems very single-minded in avoiding to even touch upon the potential possibility that it might be conceivable that a contributing factor may have - unlikely as it sounds - been an issue with the plane.

Which is odd, because in the last decade or so the required FO hours in Europe haven't really changed (contrary to the US), nor have they with JT or ET. Not that it really matters with JT, as both flight deck officers on JT610 had 5000h or more under their belt. It's also odd because especially ET operates way more modern planes than the MAX, namely the 787 and A350, and have been doing so without any major incidents.
One thing you don't see, not with JT, not with European airlines, not with ET, is planes regularly driven into the ground (or sea) at high speed in fine weather.
It's just something that doesn't really happen all that often.

Now we've seen it twice within less than half a year, and with the same sub-type of plane, too.
After JT610 we at least know the MAX has some software features that, uhm, raised an eyebrow or two, as the plane does behave ever so slightly differently in certain situations. Plus it has an automatic system that still acts on sensor input even if sensors disagree. Which on its own doesn't crash a plane, of course, just like a 5000h FO doesn't, or a faulty AoA sensor doesn't.
In both instances, the crews were unable to recover from issues which they reported early on in the flight and which led them to request a return to their originating airport. In both cases, they unfortunately didn't make it back.

It is quite possible that other crews would have been able to get these two flights back onto the ground safely (as evident by the preceding flight to JT610). And it is quite possible that training (or lack thereof) may have been a contributing factor in both cases. That said it's of course possible that if this was a systematic problem with training then no matter how many hours under your belt you wouldn't have stood a chance. It's perfectly possible that these two crashes were just coincidences and e.g. the ET flight was hit by a standard issue that would have had the exact same remedy on a Classic or NG, and which gets handled properly 9.99 times out of 10, and in this case it didn't, except it happened to happen on a MAX rather than a previous generation 737.

But: It's of course also quite possible that both flights just happened to hit a corner case in which some elements of the amended flight control systems didn't work the way the crew expected and in a moment where they had another failure already identified, some changed characteristic versus the 737NG compounded their issues and sorting things out before they ran out of clearance between them and the ground would have been luck rather than the expected result 9.99 times out of 10.

The remedy to which would of course be to amend training requirements (which is what happened after AF447) - but it would also quite possibly entail some changes to the MAX's systems and/or hardware (which is also something that happened with the pitot tubes after AF447).
To be honest that seems the likeliest outcome here as well.
It's unlikely going to be a 100% black/white case of "it's the airplane's fault" or "it's the pilots'/airline's fault".
Remember: Aviation got as safe as it has by building and designing everything so it can also be safely operated by an average crew on a bad day.

From my understanding of MCAS after JT610 alone, there should be a change in that MCAS deactivates itself when it gets inconsistent sensor information.
I mean, come on... that's just incredibly sloppy system design.
A highly available database cluster or IT storage system tends to be more clever than that and has mechanisms in place to avoid so-called split-brain situations.
The same principle also applies to how critical systems on Airbus' FBW-native planes have been designed (I'd be confident the 777 and 787 aren't any different, but wouldn't be 100% sure as I haven't read about those).
Oh, and training should of course be amended (where it hasn't been already) to mention MCAS and how to disable it properly (without it recurring after 10 seconds).

sccutler wrote:

I remain interested in why the FR24 data stream stopped well before the aircraft went down.

Easy to lose track of this considering the rate at which this thread is growing, so: It stopped early because of the lack of coverage FR24 have in the region.
See here:
https://twitter.com/flightradar24/statu ... 3613764609

MD80Ttail wrote:

Scorpio wrote:

Please name one accident in Europe that was caused by a pilot who had fewer than the minimum number of required hours of flying in North America, where that lack of experience played a role.

One. We'll be waiting.

Germanwings. If the FO had followed a path of building hours the same as done in the US his mental instability would have become apparent before crashing mainline plane.

Scorpio asked for instances where lack of experience of the FO caused a crash or at least contributed to it.
You're countering with a deliberate crash that would have looked and ended the same completely regardless of the hours under the FO's belt.
As Scorpio himself already pointed out, the Germanwings FO's hours of experience did not contribute to nor cause the crash.
His mental issues did, and that would have been exactly the same if he'd happened to have developed these issues at a point when he had 10,000 hours experience.

sccutler wrote:

I remain interested in why the FR24 data stream stopped well before the aircraft went down.

And, I find it improbable that a reasonably-trained and aware crew of an airline flown by a well-managed airline would repeat the failures of the crew of the ill-fated Lion Air flight - and, from all accounts I've read, Ethiopian is a solid carrier with high standards for crew training and qualification.

In this, I use the same reasoning as why I firmly expected, after the CVR and DFDR data for AF447 became available, that there would never again be a mishap of the same nature in an A330.

And, I think we can all agree, in a dispassionate analysis of the facts, that both AF447 and the Lion Air crash were, in themselves, the results of highly improbable combinations of events, circumstances and people, and that the information gleaned from each occurrence has served - and will serve - to make future occurrences of like nature nearly impossible.

---

I predict that, when the root cause of this latest crash is learned, it will have had nothing at all to do with the aircraft's MCAS system.

If the field elevation in the area is as advetised and the aircraft failed to climb then it was only about twenty feet off the ground. If the crew got preoccupied with the aircraft in their attempt to return to the airport and forgot about the surrounding terrain, then they accidently stalled the aircraft out and flew it into the ground. A pilot error accident that had nothing to do with the MCAS.

Another scenerio the aircraft had just completed a successful flight. While on the ground could it have picked up a foreign object like bugs in the pitot tube resulting in erroneous airspeed readings? It's happened before.

I'm sure investgators will look into all of this.

cledaybuck wrote:

Any reason why the aircraft never appeared to try and turn back towards the airport like the supposedly requested not long after takeoff? Do we assume they were just too busy trying to keep the aircraft airborne?

Busy yes. It’s a very reasonable asumption the pilots were extremely busy. If you are dealing with speed and / or power issues especially at a hot and high airport making a turn may not be the safest thing to do at a low altitude. Impossible to say without the CVR but there is much to be said for stabilizing the aircraft before turning back to the point of departure. The AeroSucure (sp apologies) 727 is a prime example. In retrospect keeping the bird flying straight and trying for an off airport landing would have been better than the immediate return back to the field which ended tragically for 4/5 of those onboard. (I think there were 5 onboard)

oschkosch wrote:

FAA has announced they will issue a CANIC for the Max.....Sounds fishy to me!


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Please tell us why it sounds fishy...

IADCA wrote:

KarlB737 wrote:

MD80Ttail wrote:

We have no idea what caused the ET accident but the experience of the pilots, maintenance and operating culture of the airline does. If they let people with 200 hrs fly the darn planes how much experience do you think their maintenance people have??

I believe that one point has been over looked here. 350 of the 737-8 MAX have been put into service. 348 are still flying OK as of today.

The MAX has been in service well under 2 years, and most of the 350 frames have done much less than that. Even if you use the mathematical fiction that all 350 had been flying for 2 full years, you're talking about a loss rate of almost .6% of the active fleet in 2 years, or almost .3% per year. Might not sound like much until you realize that an equivalent rate would be 4.5 hull losses per year for the 777 or approximately 20 hull losses every single year for the 737NG. And again, that's actually a gross underestimation of the loss rate so far, so that "348 out of 350 are still flying ok" is not a comforting statistic. It might end up being meaningless as the frame might not have been at all at fault here, but that's not a number that helps me sleep: quite the opposite, actually.

2 is not a significant enough number out of 350 to manufacture such a trend line or extrapolate anything with such a high degree of certainty to apply it to another type.

For all we know, there could be 0 hull losses in the next 10 years, with 3000 in service by then and a hull loss rate of 0.01% per year.

Does it make sense for ET to temporarily ground the Max? Yes. They are wise to examine all aspects of their operation to understand what happened.

Is it wise for Cayman? Who knows, probably not. But they only have 2.

Is it wise for China? No. Its pretty obviously political during trade negotiations that have gone sour. If China were actually concerned about safety they would wait to find out more about the ET accident, then decide. They made their decision before they could possibly know anything.

trpmb6 wrote:

Everything about this flight seems fishy to me. Hot and high airport. Trouble to climb out. Doubt they would have retracted flaps if they were having trouble climbing so it doesn't seem like an MCAS issue. High speed impact so they should have had enough speed to climb out. None of this makes sense.

Hot would not be the description I would use for Addis Ababa. They are currently running 50-70 F. High , yes. 7600 feet up.

It is a confusing issue, but as we have seen in many crashes it make sense once all the data comes in. Waiting for that data will take time.

remcor wrote:

I'm not saying this is the cause, but just because the crew were able to request a turnback to ADD doesn't mean it wasn't a terrorist act. A bomb doesn't always mean an instant breakup the plane. I believe an E170 survived a bomb blast in Somalia several years ago.

It was an A321

oschkosch wrote:

FAA has announced they will issue a CANIC for the Max.....Sounds fishy to me!

https://mobile.twitter.com/FAANews/stat ... 3244750849

A CANIC may just be a message saying "Oh, we're looking at it, stay tuned."
FR24's Twitter gave an example:
https://twitter.com/flightradar24/statu ... 6075250690

MD80Ttail wrote:

cledaybuck wrote:

Any reason why the aircraft never appeared to try and turn back towards the airport like the supposedly requested not long after takeoff? Do we assume they were just too busy trying to keep the aircraft airborne?

Busy yes. It’s a very reasonable asumption the pilots were extremely busy. If you are dealing with speed and / or power issues especially at a hot and high airport making a turn may not be the safest thing to do at a low altitude. Impossible to say without the CVR but there is much to be said for stabilizing the aircraft before turning back to the point of departure. The AeroSucure (sp apologies) 727 is a prime example. In retrospect keeping the bird flying straight and trying for an off airport landing would have been better than the immediate return back to the field which ended tragically for 4/5 of those onboard. (I think there were 5 onboard)

The Lion crash may have happened because the pilots decided to turn back without enough altitude and without solving their issue.

Which is odd, because in the last decade or so the required FO hours in Europe haven't really changed (contrary to the US), nor have they with JT or ET. Not that it really matters with JT, as both flight deck officers on JT610 had 5000h or more under their belt. It's also “”odd because especially ET operates way more modern planes than the MAX, namely the 787 and A350, and have been doing so without any major incidents.
One thing you don't see, not with JT, not with European airlines, not with ET, is planes regularly driven into the ground (or sea) at high speed in fine weather.
It's just something that doesn't really happen all that often.”l

JT prefers to take theirs off-roading and swimming. They are a dumpster fire of an airline on so many levels.

Eu hrs haven’t change and neither has their accident rates. Whereas the US has a perfect record the last decade.

ikramerica wrote:

Is it wise for China? No. Its pretty obviously political during trade negotiations that have gone sour. If China were actually concerned about safety they would wait to find out more about the ET accident, then decide. They made their decision before they could possibly know anything.

China has just produced its own competitor to the 737 MAX and is using this as an opportunity to promote it and frame the American plane as inferior.

oschkosch wrote:

FAA has announced they will issue a CANIC for the Max.....Sounds fishy to me!


https://mobile.twitter.com/FAANews/stat ... 3244750849

Gesendet von meinem SM-G950F mit Tapatalk

They should issue a Precautionary Air Notice for the International Community.

casinterest wrote:

trpmb6 wrote:

Everything about this flight seems fishy to me. Hot and high airport. Trouble to climb out. Doubt they would have retracted flaps if they were having trouble climbing so it doesn't seem like an MCAS issue. High speed impact so they should have had enough speed to climb out. None of this makes sense.

Hot would not be the description I would use for Addis Ababa. They are currently running 50-70 F. High , yes. 7600 feet up.

It is a confusing issue, but as we have seen in many crashes it make sense once all the data comes in. Waiting for that data will take time.

Addis Ababa is one of the quintessential Hot and High Airports.

Could a wonderful member of this form recap for the rest of us that don’t want to read through the speculation posts just the facts so far that’s Been officially released on this incident. We really appreciate it!

TTailedTiger wrote:

tenHangar wrote:

Over 42% of delivered 737 MAX worldwide are now grounded (China/Indonesia/Ethiopia/South Africa...) If Boeing is targeting emerging Asia & Africa markets (with sub-par pilots, sub-par training, and sub-par maintenance based on earlier comments in this thread) it should account for that in its product, and blame should not rest on those airlines.

We may as well move straight into fully autonomous airliners then.

Blaming Boeing for bad pilot training just isn't fair. Boeing provides instructions for how the aircraft should be operated. It is up to the airline and regulating authority to make sure that it is being implemented.

I think Boeing and regulators pushing this model and the NG as same type with minimum change in training Between type is a major issue. How many pilots have trained or Have access to train in a MAX Sim and not an NG one? How does the NG Sim simulate this particular Max specific system?