LTC8K6 wrote:

Germany apparently refused the recorders because of a lack of the proper equipment/software to analyze them?

That's interesting if true. Or, they don't want to touch this with a 10 foot pole. Have a feeling whatever the conclusion is that comes out of this, regardless of who, what is at fault, it will be contentious. It shouldn't be - we should just focus on making aviation safer for everyone.

mxaxai wrote:

Latest request for the FDR/CVR examination is to send them to Germany, not the UK.

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - The black boxes from a Boeing 737 MAX 8 plane that crashed in Ethiopia on Sunday, killing 157 people, will be sent to Germany for analysis, an Ethiopian Airlines spokesman said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethi ... SKBN1QU29F

Both country's agencies should be more than capable to do so in a professional manner.

... And Germany now denied the request, claiming that they are currently unable to do this for a 737 MAX 8. So I guess we're back with the UK CAA?

https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/boein ... x-109.html

32andBelow wrote:

IADCA wrote:

32andBelow wrote:

Because the safety standards are totally different.

I grant you that it's a different section of the regs, but I doubt that the goal of oversight in any jurisdiction is for planes to crash. Your argument is about the FAA as a whole, not simply Part 121, so I really fail to see the relevance of which specific CFR chapter is being enforced.

Oh, never mind. I now realize you're the guy who was arguing that this crash was caused by terrorism because it was going to "Nigeria."

K I got the destination wrong but terorism still isn’t ruled out. And Kenya has had its fair share.

Sure, virtually nothing is ruled out because there is virtually nothing out with which to rule. Which is rather the core of the whole discussion at this point. But it seems a little odd to connect any terrorism hypothetical with this particular flight and Kenya at the same time: KQ flies to ADD using its own metal, so if the target is Kenya or Kenyans, you'd think a terrorist would go for that flight. And if it's a terrorist attack against ET or Ethiopians in general, one would think you'd go for a domestic flight or at least one with more Ethiopians on it.

And there is a reason that Ethiopian havent seen any major terrorist attack like Kenya and a lot of other E African countries. Their security service is no joke..

ilovelamp wrote:

APA is saying US MAXes have dual, independent AoA vanes, one on each side of the nose just like the Lion Air jets. These vanes are compared to each other and if they don’t compare equally the AoA Disagree message is displayed on the PFD. The Lion Air CEO stated they don’t have the system that compares the two vanes. So, in their case, MCAS only had one stream of data to work with essentially.


ILL

I know the accident aircraft (Lion Air one) did flash IAS DISAGREE and ALT DISAGREE warnings, so there must have been some comparison going on? Or are IAS and ALT taken in through different sensors than the AoA sensor?

Just seen this from The Telegraph. The headline runs thus:

"Pilots complained several times about 737 MAX problems before latest crash"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news ... ns-safety/

Sincere apologies if it's been posted already (huge rush here, no time to check), please delete/move as appropriate.

mxaxai wrote:

... And Germany now denied the request, claiming that they are currently unable to do this for a 737 MAX 8. So I guess we're back with the UK CAA?

https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/boein ... x-109.html

What is going on?

In an earlier post yesterday, I asked whether the root cause of the problem could be CG being too far forward due to improper loading ouf tha a/c.

Right after take off, with flaps extended and therefore no MCAS in the loop, the a/c seemed to have a very low rate of climb.
After 2 min things get worse. Flaps are probably retracted, the rate of climb is negative. But by then, MCAS may have kicked in (depending on the AoA threshold in the software) if pilots are using a high AoA to compensate for the misplaced CG.

CIOULD THERE BE A NASTY INTERACTION BETWEEN CG OUT OF LIMITS AND MCAS?

Passions wrote:

Finn350 wrote:

I know it is confusing but here are the facts:
- every 737 MAX has dual, independent AoA vanes, one on each side of the nose
- every 737 MAX has an MCAS implementation that uses input of only one of the AoA vanes, alternating side between each flight
- what is an option on the 737 MAX is AoA Disagree messages, but even with this option MCAS implementation is as above; only one of the AoA vanes is used for the MCAS (and even if you have disagreement between different vanes, how do you know which one is correct? That is something Boeing is trying to figure out as a software fix).

It's just incredible to read this. How any modern airliner would allow a system to tilt an aircraft based off 1 sensor. The A320 seems like a superior design where 2 out of 3 sensors must match. That seems logical and safe. I know the NGs have the same design but NGs didn't have MCAS. This is horrifying.

There was a Lufthansa A321 incident in which 2 of the 3 sensors froze in the same position. As a result the computers threw out the one working sensor which resulted in a dramatic pitch down event that required full aft side stick deflection to get out of. If it had happened at a lower altitude the results would have been unfortunate.

The moral of the story is fanboys need to understand that nothing is infallible which is why there should be an expectation that there are well trained pilots in the flight deck.

Air France 447 happened despite all of the protections a fly-by-wire Airbus offers because a pilot, when confronted with a situation without those protections, was not able to handle it.

The crew which manned the Lion Air plane before the fatal flight encountered the same failed sensor and MCAS activation and dealt with it accordingly and landed safely. The next crew did not.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

vaughanparry wrote:

Just seen this from The Telegraph. The headline runs thus:

"Pilots complained several times about 737 MAX problems before latest crash"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news ... ns-safety/

Sincere apologies if it's been posted already (huge rush here, no time to check), please delete/move as appropriate.

What's missing from this discussion is how this compares with routine background flight control glitches. I don't expect these systems and their interactions with flight crews to be perfect 100% of the time (though that is obviously the goal). So how does this spate of complaints compare to the industry and normal operations as a whole.

As we've reminded users multiple times, this thread is about the Ethiopian crash ONLY. Discussion on grounding the 737MAX belongs in this thread viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1417545

✈️ atcsundevil

This is the satellite solution through which complete flight path has apparently been obtained
https://aireon.com/services/global-air- ... veillance/

Finn350 wrote:

This is the satellite solution through which complete flight path has apparently been obtained
https://aireon.com/services/global-air- ... veillance/

Be nice to get that data especially with them dragging their feet on the black boxes.

Backseater wrote:

In an earlier post yesterday, I asked whether the root cause of the problem could be CG being too far forward due to improper loading ouf tha a/c.

Right after take off, with flaps extended and therefore no MCAS in the loop, the a/c seemed to have a very low rate of climb.
After 2 min things get worse. Flaps are probably retracted, the rate of climb is negative. But by then, MCAS may have kicked in (depending on the AoA threshold in the software) if pilots are using a high AoA to compensate for the misplaced CG.

CIOULD THERE BE A NASTY INTERACTION BETWEEN CG OUT OF LIMITS AND MCAS?

CG issues was my first thought as well, considering how the plane appears to have been uncontrollable almost since the beginning. I am sure investigators will be looking at the load sheet and speaking to ground handlers very carefully. Another thing that comes to mind is that Air Astana EMB-190 issue that happened in Portugal a few months back, and was very almost a fatal accident. Don't believe any conclusions from that are out yet, though.

Finn350 wrote:

This is the satellite solution through which complete flight path has apparently been obtained
https://aireon.com/services/global-air- ... veillance/

Ah, that kind of satellite. That makes more sense. Was this available for MH370?

edu2703 wrote:

I wonder what kind of evidence was analyzed and led the FAA to take this decision

The FAA Emergency Order of Prohibition says that evidence of the ET airplane's configuration just after takeoff plus newly refined data on the airplane's path taken from satellite data warrants further investigation due to a possibly shared cause between the ET crash and the Lion Air crash.

https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/media/ ... _Order.pdf

smokeybandit wrote:

Finn350 wrote:

This is the satellite solution through which complete flight path has apparently been obtained
https://aireon.com/services/global-air- ... veillance/

Ah, that kind of satellite. That makes more sense. Was this available for MH370?

Answering my own question, no, it wasn't.

Eight Iridium NEXT launches on Space-X Falcon 9 rockets successfully occurred between January 2017 and January 2019.

Finn350 wrote:

This is the satellite solution through which complete flight path has apparently been obtained
https://aireon.com/services/global-air- ... veillance/

I'm not seeing any data here.

amishfarmer wrote:

Finn350 wrote:

This is the satellite solution through which complete flight path has apparently been obtained
https://aireon.com/services/global-air- ... veillance/

I'm not seeing any data here.

You won't, it's a proprietary service. You need to pay and have rights to the data.

Backseater wrote:

In an earlier post yesterday, I asked whether the root cause of the problem could be CG being too far forward due to improper loading ouf tha a/c.

Right after take off, with flaps extended and therefore no MCAS in the loop, the a/c seemed to have a very low rate of climb.
After 2 min things get worse. Flaps are probably retracted, the rate of climb is negative. But by then, MCAS may have kicked in (depending on the AoA threshold in the software) if pilots are using a high AoA to compensate for the misplaced CG.

CIOULD THERE BE A NASTY INTERACTION BETWEEN CG OUT OF LIMITS AND MCAS?

I hope this is something that is looked at as well. Based on US carrier information only I know there have been issues with ground crews loading the Max as an NG. They require different procedures. PAX have been required to move from B to C on several occasions after the flight crew runs the load numbers for CG.

While I never speculate, I see a great deal of legitimacy in your post.

Germany says will not analyse Ethiopian Airlines black box

"This is a new type of aircraft with a new black box, with new software. We can’t do it,” BFU spokesman Germout Freitag said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethi ... ce=twitter

osiris30 wrote:

amishfarmer wrote:

Finn350 wrote:

This is the satellite solution through which complete flight path has apparently been obtained
https://aireon.com/services/global-air- ... veillance/

I'm not seeing any data here.

You won't, it's a proprietary service. You need to pay and have rights to the data.

Good to know thank you.

glideslope wrote:

Backseater wrote:

In an earlier post yesterday, I asked whether the root cause of the problem could be CG being too far forward due to improper loading ouf tha a/c.

Right after take off, with flaps extended and therefore no MCAS in the loop, the a/c seemed to have a very low rate of climb.
After 2 min things get worse. Flaps are probably retracted, the rate of climb is negative. But by then, MCAS may have kicked in (depending on the AoA threshold in the software) if pilots are using a high AoA to compensate for the misplaced CG.

CIOULD THERE BE A NASTY INTERACTION BETWEEN CG OUT OF LIMITS AND MCAS?

I hope this is something that is looked at as well. Based on US carrier information only I know there have been issues with ground crews loading the Max as an NG. They require different procedures. PAX have been required to move from B to C on several occasions after the flight crew runs the load numbers for CG.

While I never speculate, I see a great deal of legitimacy in your post.

The passenger load on the ET flight was full or very near to full, so the passengers would have been evenly divided across the cabin. This leads me to think the CG possibility is not likely unless a big piece of cargo was in the forward bin with all the luggage. Just does not seem likely. I haven't done W&B in nearly 40 years.

From CNN's 'Live Updates' ticker this afternoon:

The FAA tweeted that "new evidence collected at the site and analyzed today" impacted the agency's decision to order a temporary grounding of all Boeing 737 Max aircraft that are operated by US airlines or over US skies.

What does that even mean?? "New evidence collected at the site and analyzed today"?? Today as in March 13th? Three days after the crash, which left a giant crater in the earth and basically atomized the airframe? What on earth could they have found "at the site" today that suddenly changed their minds?

Sounds like an attempt to distract from the fact that they've been sitting on the satellite ADS-B data since Monday and trying to quash the upswell of grounding requests.

Regardless - major developments and it is NOT looking good for Boeing. The company has a categorical disaster on its hands and is severely behind the ball on unraveling it. At least we have it from the horse's mouth now - data from JT610 and ET302 coalesce and indicate a shared cause.

Seems they have now made the request to BEA in France to read the boxes. Going to great lengths to make sure the NTSB isn't the one to read them.

SheikhDjibouti wrote:

Just received from Boeing PR dept
"Message for all employees & fanboys engaged in social media warfare; enough with the strawman arguments already - it's not helping matters"

To funny. It is just amazing how people have to degrade just about everything down to Jerry Springer level nonsense. I'm amazed someone hasn't demanded to know "who is the father" yet.

If the reports that the aircraft seemed to be struggling during initial climb out, MCAS might not have even been a contributing factor because MCAS doe not become active until the flaps are full up. And I'll leave it at that until more factual information is released. Hopefully the CVR and the FDR can give the investigators "News that they can use".

Trin wrote:

What does that even mean??

Read this to find out --

https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/media/ ... _Order.pdf

rideforever wrote:

[*]

ilovelamp wrote:

APA is saying US MAXes have dual, independent AoA vanes, one on each side of the nose just like the Lion Air jets. These vanes are compared to each other and if they don’t compare equally the AoA Disagree message

There is no redundancy with 2 vanes. The only information you get is that they disagree. That's not very helpful. If you have 3 or 4 then you know which ones to use, which to disable and the whole set replaced on the ground. On the hull the fixings could hold dual vanes (of different types), so you have 4. What's the cost : $150 per unit ?
As an engineer I find it highly unintelligent to have only 2, or to use the minimum possible no for mission critical data, with very limited "redundancy".
From memory there are other AoA vanes on the rear of the aircraft used for other purposes. Therefore there are other AoA instruments on the aircraft, not used by either the automated systems, nor by the pilots.
Again wilfully unintelligent.
There is also the possibility of generating an approximate AoA from other instruments. so you have a large volume of data available .... that nobody thinks to use.

Exactly - there's a specific reason for having more than two. Guess who has used three on all aircraft for over 30 years now?

gregarious119 wrote:

Seems they have now made the request to BEA in France to read the boxes. Going to great lengths to make sure the NTSB isn't the one to read them.

This whole mess is a politically infused shitshow at this point so going independent sounds sensible. I just hope that whoever takes on this task does have the right tools/experience for the job.

gregarious119 wrote:

Seems they have now made the request to BEA in France to read the boxes. Going to great lengths to make sure the NTSB isn't the one to read them.

So that's US out (don't know why but could make a guess...), GE (doesn't have the software), now France? And the UK isn't on the list (yet). Bizarre.

gregarious119 wrote:

Seems they have now made the request to BEA in France to read the boxes. Going to great lengths to make sure the NTSB isn't the one to read them.

What happened to AAIB in the UK?

musicrab wrote:

gregarious119 wrote:

Seems they have now made the request to BEA in France to read the boxes. Going to great lengths to make sure the NTSB isn't the one to read them.

So that's US out (don't know why but could make a guess...), GE (doesn't have the software), now France? And the UK isn't on the list (yet). Bizarre.

You don’t think the ntsb is going to get the data? Do you think the Ethiopian airline manufacturer is going to correct whatever happened if it was a manufacturer defect?

From everything we've learned so far today, the FAA grounding was the result of two new findings: 1) new satellite data and 2) evidence from the crash site on how the aircraft was configured. The FAA basically stated that the two accidents are very similar. In other words, MCAS was probably at fault again, which I don't understand completely. Why were the flaps retracted so early into the flight (which let MCAS do its thing)? How is it possible that the crew, which apparently completed additional training after the Lion Air accident, failed to follow the procedure to disengage MCAS? Is the training that bad, i.e., not as rigorous as it should have been?

hivue wrote:

Trin wrote:

What does that even mean??

Read this to find out --

https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/media/ ... _Order.pdf

I wish. All it said was:

"On March 13th 2019, the investigation of the ET302 crash developed new information from the wreckage concerning the aircraft's configuration just after takeoff...."

So that doesn't tell us anything. I'd be surprised if anything would tell them anything from the images of the crater/lack of large sections of fuselage.

(EDIT: I stand corrected. I have come to understand that they may have found something that indicated to them flap position. Although I fail to see how flap position in the wreckage is indicative of flap position as a variable throughout the entire (short) flight.)

From the basis for the FAA order:

...On March 13, 2019, the investigation of the ET302 crash developed new information from the wreckage concerning the aircraft's configuration just after takeoff that, taken together with newly refined data from satellite-based tracking tracking of the aircraft's flight path, indicates some similarities between the ET302 and JT610 accidents that warrant further investigation of the possibility of a shared cause for the two incidents that needs to be better understood and addressed.

Source: https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/media/ ... _Order.pdf

I know they have first made the order and then cooked up the basis, but what could be aircraft's configuration discovered from the wreckage that would be basis for the similarity?

Trin wrote:

hivue wrote:

Trin wrote:

What does that even mean??

Read this to find out --

https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/media/ ... _Order.pdf

I wish. All it said was:

"On March 13th 2019, the investigation of the ET302 crash developed new information from the wreckage concerning the aircraft's configuration just after takeoff...."

So that doesn't tell us anything. I'd be surprised if anything would tell them anything from the images of the crater/lack of large sections of fuselage.

(EDIT: I stand corrected. I have come to understand that they may have found something that indicated to them flap position. Although I fail to see how flap position in the wreckage is indicative of flap position as a variable throughout the entire (short) flight.)

If the flaps were retracted it can mean that potentially MCAS kicked in.

I wasn't satisfied with the FR24 charts I had seen because:
1. the x-axis was by data point and not true time interval
2. most of them put several data series that had vastly different number ranges on the same chart, which reduced the "resolution" of the y-axis.

So I made a chart that used true time intervals on the x-axis (seconds elapsed since airborne). This makes it easier to look for time interval patterns. Also, I plotted the Pressure Altitude relative to 7200 ft (which is the first Pressure Altitude reported after airborne). That fits it on the chart better and also gives a good approximation for altitude gained since takeoff. Finally, I used a secondary y-axis for ground speed so you can see the resolution better.

Some observations I had:

• Vertical speed already dropped between 7-10 seconds after airborne, and did not recover until the 20-25 second mark.
• Ground speed increased very steadily, which seems to indicate no engine problems? (Ground Speed should be accurate even if the airspeed sensors on the plane were unreliable, since the Ground Speed is based on GPS).
• I looked for 10 second Vertical Speed decrease intervals. It does look like there could be some at 51-61s, 72-82s, 91-101s. But the Vertical Speed decreases started before 51s. And there were also additional decrease intervals afterwards that were not 10 seconds.

from the Washington Post:

"On March 13, 2019, the investigation of the [Ethiopian Airlines] crash developed new information from the wreckage concerning the aircraft’s configuration just after takeoff that, taken together with newly refined data from satellite-based tracking of the aircraft’s flight path, indicates some similarities between the” Ethiopia and Indonesia crashes, according to the order."

"new information from the wreckage concerning the aircraft’s configuration just after takeoff"

Of course the other countries didn't wait for such information before grounding

I think it would not have hurt Boeing to request the grounding before such information; they would have looked good to be proactively emphasizing safety regardless of the final outcome.

Trin wrote:

I wish. All it said was:

"On March 13th 2019, the investigation of the ET302 crash developed new information from the wreckage concerning the aircraft's configuration just after takeoff...."

So that doesn't tell us anything. I'd be surprised if anything would tell them anything from the images of the crater/lack of large sections of fuselage.

(EDIT: I stand corrected. I have come to understand that they may have found something that indicated to them flap position. Although I fail to see how flap position in the wreckage is indicative of flap position as a variable throughout the entire (short) flight.)

Maybe they found the Jackscrew. If they found the nut fullstop nose-down, it`s pretty much a giveaway that MCAS played a big part in this accident too. I tried to find it on the images available, but it`s probably buried.

o0OOO0oChris wrote:

Trin wrote:

I wish. All it said was:

"On March 13th 2019, the investigation of the ET302 crash developed new information from the wreckage concerning the aircraft's configuration just after takeoff...."

So that doesn't tell us anything. I'd be surprised if anything would tell them anything from the images of the crater/lack of large sections of fuselage.

(EDIT: I stand corrected. I have come to understand that they may have found something that indicated to them flap position. Although I fail to see how flap position in the wreckage is indicative of flap position as a variable throughout the entire (short) flight.)

Maybe they found the Jackscrew. If they found the nut fullstop nose-down, it`s pretty much a giveaway that MCAS played a big part in this accident too. I tried to find it on the images available, but it`s probably buried.

And if that is the case then the pilots that were supposedly trained after Lion Air incident on the MCAS didn't do their job well.
Interesting development.

flybucky wrote:

So I made a chart that used true time intervals on the x-axis (seconds elapsed since airborne). This makes it easier to look for time interval patterns.

Thanks so much for the work you put into the chart.

It's pretty clear something was off since the very beginning.
In the flight preceding the Lion Air crash, the stick shaker activated at 400' AGL and continued the rest of the flight. At that point, the flaps would have still been down, but it's possible that if this happened again in the ET crash, the crew became engaged in debugging the IAS and altitude anomalies and then upon flap retraction MCAS provided the nail in the coffin at low altitude.

gregarious119 wrote:

Seems they have now made the request to BEA in France to read the boxes. Going to great lengths to make sure the NTSB isn't the one to read them.

This is getting completely out of hand, the flight recorders were recovered 2 days ago, they should have been on a bench in a lab being downloaded yesterday, has anyone ever heard of a similar fiasco in the past ?
The immediate priorities should have been to secure the crash site, inform the relatives of the passengers and crew and to appoint an investigation team. As they seem to be having difficulties on the 3rd point, we have to hope that they secured the site and looked after the wreckage in the correct manner.

estorilm wrote:

rideforever wrote:

[*]

ilovelamp wrote:

APA is saying US MAXes have dual, independent AoA vanes, one on each side of the nose just like the Lion Air jets. These vanes are compared to each other and if they don’t compare equally the AoA Disagree message

There is no redundancy with 2 vanes. The only information you get is that they disagree. That's not very helpful. If you have 3 or 4 then you know which ones to use, which to disable and the whole set replaced on the ground. On the hull the fixings could hold dual vanes (of different types), so you have 4. What's the cost : $150 per unit ?
As an engineer I find it highly unintelligent to have only 2, or to use the minimum possible no for mission critical data, with very limited "redundancy".
From memory there are other AoA vanes on the rear of the aircraft used for other purposes. Therefore there are other AoA instruments on the aircraft, not used by either the automated systems, nor by the pilots.
Again wilfully unintelligent.
There is also the possibility of generating an approximate AoA from other instruments. so you have a large volume of data available .... that nobody thinks to use.

Exactly - there's a specific reason for having more than two. Guess who has used three on all aircraft for over 30 years now?

And even that is far from foolproof. You could have 100 and still have weird corner case failures. Not that I am defending a single point of failure system but one thing that people do have to remember is it's not just the cost of the part. It is all the maintenance that comes with adding even more parts. You could put 50 aoa sensors on an aircraft and have an amazing chance of always having good AoA readings, but you'd have to maintain all 50, which would be a nightmare and very costly. 2>1 at least you can see a discrepancy. 3>2 it allows a bit more trust in the system (but still has well-known failure cases that have ACTUALLY happened). 5>3 your odds improve, but you could get into a situation where you have 2+2+1 readings based on specific conditions I could see happen. Realistically you would need around 10 to get to a point where you could call it 5 9s.

BEA has accepted the request to analyze the flight recorders

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ethio ... KKCN1QU2TR

Once again: this thread is about the Ethiopian crash. Separate threads exist for discussion on the grounding of the 737MAX. Political comments belong in the Non Aviation Forum.

Please post to the correct thread/forum!

✈️ atcsundevil

osiris30 wrote:

estorilm wrote:

rideforever wrote:

[*]
There is no redundancy with 2 vanes. The only information you get is that they disagree. That's not very helpful. If you have 3 or 4 then you know which ones to use, which to disable and the whole set replaced on the ground. On the hull the fixings could hold dual vanes (of different types), so you have 4. What's the cost : $150 per unit ?
As an engineer I find it highly unintelligent to have only 2, or to use the minimum possible no for mission critical data, with very limited "redundancy".
From memory there are other AoA vanes on the rear of the aircraft used for other purposes. Therefore there are other AoA instruments on the aircraft, not used by either the automated systems, nor by the pilots.
Again wilfully unintelligent.
There is also the possibility of generating an approximate AoA from other instruments. so you have a large volume of data available .... that nobody thinks to use.

Exactly - there's a specific reason for having more than two. Guess who has used three on all aircraft for over 30 years now?

And even that is far from foolproof. You could have 100 and still have weird corner case failures. Not that I am defending a single point of failure system but one thing that people do have to remember is it's not just the cost of the part. It is all the maintenance that comes with adding even more parts. You could put 50 aoa sensors on an aircraft and have an amazing chance of always having good AoA readings, but you'd have to maintain all 50, which would be a nightmare and very costly. 2>1 at least you can see a discrepancy. 3>2 it allows a bit more trust in the system (but still has well-known failure cases that have ACTUALLY happened). 5>3 your odds improve, but you could get into a situation where you have 2+2+1 readings based on specific conditions I could see happen. Realistically you would need around 10 to get to a point where you could call it 5 9s.

I am quite sure that with 3 vanes we are already well above 5 9s (or failure in less than one in 100,000 flights).

Sensors cannot replace a pilot, this lesson should have been learned years ago (Airbus) and if in fact it was a lack of ability to override a faulty sensor then once again we have engineers (I'm software) thinking they can create a system smarter than the human. It boggles my mind anyone can design a system this bad, I really hope we get good data from this crash and a real understanding of what happened, what failed, and why the override is apparently hard to use.

In the Lion Air JT 610 flight accident, the aircraft was in climb at around 2,150 ft msl FL/UP (2,117’ aal) when MCAS was apparently activated and resulted in a very sudden descent to 1,475’ msl (1,442’ aal), a total 675’ altitude loss, with GS increasing from 260 kn. to 327 kn. This initial descent was arrested around 1,475’ msl. The increase altitude/decrease altitude trend (indicating MCAS active) continued after this initiating event until the accident.

In the Lion Air JT 43 inbound flight to WIII Jakarta (same aircraft reg. no. as flight 610) it was at around 5,425’ msl (5,411’ aal) when MCAS was apparently activated. It then suddenly descended to 4,900’ msl (4,886’ aal), with a total 525’ altitude loss, and GS increasing from 291 kn to 310 kn, before the descent was arrested at this altitude. The flight was then controlled by the crew after this original event and showed no more MCAS behavior.

In the Ethiopian ET 302 accident flight, if the FRadar24 data is correct, there was no sudden, significant drop in altitude as the two Lion Air flights had experienced which would indicate an MCAS initiation. Instead, if the FRadar24 data is correct, the issue after takeoff was a major inability to climb. No MCAS initiation behavior (like the two Lionair flights which incurred sudden 525’-675’altitude loss) seems to have occurred.

Must be that “satellite tracking data” noted by the Canadian Transport Minister today is significantly different data than what FRadar24 (ADS-B) data shows. If it’s not, it is difficult to objectively see an MCAS initiation and immediately following behavior noted with the two Lion Air flights. IMO the data more indicates that the ET 302 aircraft faced highly deficient climb capability (lots of root causes associated with that) from takeoff to end of flight.

In any event, Boeing needs to fix this MCAS/AoA system issue immediately. All just my opinion.

gregarious119 wrote:

Seems they have now made the request to BEA in France to read the boxes. Going to great lengths to make sure the NTSB isn't the one to read them.

NTSB already has Lion Air's boxes, right? I think it's a good thing that the same instance doesn't analyze the two crashes.

flybucky wrote:

I wasn't satisfied with the FR24 charts I had seen because:
1. the x-axis was by data point and not true time interval
2. most of them put several data series that had vastly different number ranges on the same chart, which reduced the "resolution" of the y-axis.

So I made a chart that used true time intervals on the x-axis (seconds elapsed since airborne). This makes it easier to look for time interval patterns. Also, I plotted the Pressure Altitude relative to 7200 ft (which is the first Pressure Altitude reported after airborne). That fits it on the chart better and also gives a good approximation for altitude gained since takeoff. Finally, I used a secondary y-axis for ground speed so you can see the resolution better.

Some observations I had:

• Vertical speed already dropped between 7-10 seconds after airborne, and did not recover until the 20-25 second mark.
• Ground speed increased very steadily, which seems to indicate no engine problems? (Ground Speed should be accurate even if the airspeed sensors on the plane were unreliable, since the Ground Speed is based on GPS).
• I looked for 10 second Vertical Speed decrease intervals. It does look like there could be some at 51-61s, 72-82s, 91-101s. But the Vertical Speed decreases started before 51s. And there were also additional decrease intervals afterwards that were not 10 seconds.

Something was VERY wrong on this flight. IF the FR data is right they rotated at 89kts... Based on what I see in the data they basically took off stalling.