Ethiopian Plane Crash
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I doubt it reengaged, its just that they were travelling so fast at that point and the trim was max down, that the elevator could not overcome it and the effort to manually trim at that speed and altitude is beyond most peoples physical strength...
Bad News For Boeing: Preliminary Report Shows Anti-Stall Software Sealed Flight ET302's Fate
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by Tyler Durden
Wed, 04/03/2019 - 08:06
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Thought it hasn't been publicly released yet, a preliminary report on the circumstances that caused flight ET302 to plunge out of the sky just minutes after takeoff was completed earlier this week, and some of the details have leaked to Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. And for Boeing shareholders, the findings aren't pretty.
Appearing to contradict Boeing's insistence that procedures for deactivating its MCAS anti-stall software were widely disseminated, and that pilots at airlines around the world had been trained on these procedures, WSJ reported that the pilots of ET302 successfully switched off MCAS as they struggled to right the plane after the software had automatically tipped its nose down. As they struggled to right the plane, the pilots ended up reactivating the software, while trying a few other steps from their training, before the plane began its final plunge toward a field outside Addis Ababa, where the ensuing crash killed all 157 people on board.
Boeing
Though the pilots deviated from Boeing's emergency checklist as they tried to right the plane, investigators surmised that they gave up on the procedures after they failed to right the plane. But when MCAS reengaged, whether intentionally, or on accident, it pushed the nose of the plane lower once again.
The pilots on Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 initially reacted to the emergency by shutting off power to electric motors driven by the automated system, these people said, but then appear to have re-engaged the system to cope with a persistent steep nose-down angle. It wasn’t immediately clear why the pilots turned the automated system back on instead of continuing to follow Boeing’s standard emergency checklist, but government and industry officials said the likely reason would have been because manual controls to raise the nose didn’t achieve the desired results.
After first cranking a manual wheel in the cockpit that controls the same movable surfaces on the plane’s tail that MCAS had affected, the pilots turned electric power back on, one of these people said. They began to use electric switches to try to raise the plane’s nose, according to these people. But the electric power also reactivated MCAS, allowing it to continue its strong downward commands, the people said.
Reuters, which was also the recipient of leaks from investigators, offered a slightly different version of events. It reported that MCAS was reengaged four times as pilots scrambled to right the plane, and that investigators were looking into the possibility that the software might have reengaged without prompting from the pilots.
After the Lion Air crash that killed 189 people back in October, Boeing and the FAA published a bulletin reminding pilots to follow the emergency procedures to deactivate the software if a faulty sensor - like the one that is believed to have contributed to the Lion Air crash - feeds erroneous data to the system.
The data show the pilots maneuvered the plane back upward twice before deactivating the software. But between the two reports, one detail is made abundantly clear. The software's reengagement is what doomed everybody aboard. That is an unequivocally bad look for Boeing, which has been deflecting questions about the software's bugs, and gaps in the dissemination of its training materials, while working on an update that the company says will make the software less reliant on automated systems.
If they did disable it it was to use the electric trim as they physically could not trim the plane. Its possible the electric trim was unable to overcome at that speed as well, or that MCAS just nose dived them at that point. In either case that plane is flawed. Not sure if they can fix it with software only. It may even raise questions about the older 737 NG
It's a 60 year old design that's been fucked with so many times that what they have on their hands now is a virtual flying Frankenstein.
Boeing did not want to invest the time and money into designing a modern plane that would meet the needs of today's market and so they kept perverting the 737's original engineering and fundamentally altered the plane to do what it was never meant to do.
I would never feel comfortable getting on a 737 now.
I don't care what anyone from Boeing says with respect to the bugs being all worked out. No thanks. You fly in it, I'll pick a different plane if at all possible.
Boeing did not want to invest the time and money into designing a modern plane that would meet the needs of today's market and so they kept perverting the 737's original engineering and fundamentally altered the plane to do what it was never meant to do.
I would never feel comfortable getting on a 737 now.
I don't care what anyone from Boeing says with respect to the bugs being all worked out. No thanks. You fly in it, I'll pick a different plane if at all possible.
What you're saying is simply not true and constantly parroting it it doesn't make it true. It's been pointed out how long lived airframes can be. Some designs will be closing in on 100 years of service before they're retired. There's also hundreds of articles written about the MAX's problem, and not one of them says it is an airframe problem.
You want another example of a long lived airframe? Take a look at how many times the McDonnell Douglas DC9 was stretched and reengined. That plane still lives on in active service as the 717, and is one of the safest planes to fly on.
An extreme example of a "Frankenstein" airframe is the Aero Commander turboprop with high wing mounted engines which the Isreali's redesigned into a mid winged jet called the Westwind with tail mounted engines that had a successful run from 1951 to 1987.
It's been established the 737 airframe is sound and that they live long lives. All signs are pointing to a software problem.
5,000 Max 8's have been sold. You're going to have a hard time NOT flying on one.
FYI, you'd be hard pressed finding a modern airliner that can fly without any computer control.
I'm not saying Boeing isn't at fault. They definitely are, as is the FAA, but these crashes were caused by complacency, faulty software and poor oversight, which will doom ANY airframe.
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There are 7,000 737NG's flying and they started flying 20 years ago.
Entire airlines are built around this aircraft.
They are safe.
I know there are lots of them I don't think they are as safe as an A320 or Cseries/A220
You got to be kidding me.
As of 2002, a 737 takes off or lands every 5.5 seconds in the world. There are 1,000 737's in the air at all times and somehow you think that a plane that has less than 60 built and has only been flying revenue since 2016 is safer than a plane that has carried 6.1 billion passengers and flown 43.8 billion miles and made 82 million flights?
Give your head a shake.
You are not an engineer.
You can fly a thousand planes on a thousand flights and it does not make you an aeronautical engineer.
Are you familiar with the term, "bastardized"? Because that's what the issue is.
You simply cannot fundamentally change any structural design without impacts. And fyi, I have never claimed it was a structural failure, what I have claimed is that by altering the structure or airframe to accommodate today's market, Boeing had to employ much larger engines. (This is a fact.) In order to accommodate such larger engines on a frame that was never meant for these substantially larger and more powerful engines they have had to move the engine mounts much further forward, and higher which has so altered the centre of gravity of the plane and so fundamentally changed its flight characteristics that the plane became unflyable and they have had to come up with work-arounds to be able to fly it. (This is also a fact and there are many articles written about it.) Enter MCAS which started out with one set of parameters and ended up so far removed from that it was a completely different animal. And yes, there are several articles written about this issue too. Originally, MCAS was designed to rotate the horizontal stabilizer 0.5 degrees in the event that the plane's computers believed the plane was in danger of stalling. That is what the FAA was told and approved. It ended up not being able to compensate enough for the engineering issues associated with the larger engines and Boeing increased the rotation limit by 400 percent to again, work around the issues of the geometry of the plane. Thing is, Boeing never told the FAA. So it begs the question, why? Why did the parameters need to be changed? Why didn't Boeing tell the FAA?
If anyone keeps parroting the narrative that "it's OK, you can get away with it because..." , it's you mon ami.
Fyi, 5000 maxs have been ordered. Not sold. Orders can be cancelled. Happens all the time. Especially if the damn things keep diving itself into the ground.
As to "designs closing in on 100 years" as you have claimed. Let's see, in 1918, we were flying Sopwith Camels. For the life of me, I can't remember the last time I flew in a Sopwith Camel. Or for that matter a DC-3, or a DC9. I flew did fly on an L1011 though....... Back in 1976.
Yes I do, because most accidents are due to pilot error or weather and the A220 has envelope control while the 737 does not.
Ethiopian Airlines crew 'followed rules, unable to control jet'
Pilots followed procedure when Boeing jet repeatedly nosedived before crash, minister says, unveiling official report.
5 hours ago
Ethiopian Airlines crew 'followed rules, unable to control jet'
Transport minister Dagmawit Moges addresses a news conference on the preliminary report on the crash [Tiksa Negeri/Reuters]
The crew of an Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed last month repeatedly followed procedures recommended by Boeing, but were unable to regain control of the jet, the Ethiopian transport minister has said.
Dagmawit Moges made the announcement at a press conference on Thursday as she unveiled the results of the preliminary probe into the crash, which killed all 157 people on board
"The crew performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer but was not able to control the aircraft," Dagmawit said, citing data from the Boeing 737 MAX 8's recorders.
She said the report recommends "the aircraft flight control system shall be reviewed by the manufacturer."
"Aviation authorities shall verify that the review of the aircraft flight control system has been adequately addressed by the manufacturer before the release of the aircraft for operations".
Dagmawit did not make specific reference to the automatic anti-stalling system which has been implicated in the crash but did mention a "repetitive nose-down" movement of the aircraft.
The Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) is designed to automatically lower the aircraft's nose if it detects a stall or loss of airspeed.
David Learmount, consulting editor for Flight Global, told Al Jazeera it was not clear what triggered the nose-down, but said that "the crew reacted quite correctly by carrying out a drill that has been prescribed if this occurs and isolated this system that was trying to push the nose down."
Speaking from London, he added: "But having done that, they then found that one of the control systems that they have for pulling the nose back up again simply wouldn't perform for them."
'Recover trust'
The jet crashed on March 10 shortly after takeoff from Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. It was the second crash of a 737 MAX 8 within five months, following a Lion Air crash in Indonesia in October last year.
Following the latest crash, Max jets have been grounded worldwide pending a software fix that Boeing is rolling out, which has yet to receive approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other regulators.
Learmount said the crash has been "terribly harmful" for Boeing's reputation.
"Boeing has probably one of the strongest brand names in the world and has for a very long time produced a lot of superb aircraft - both military and civilian," he said.
"So Boeing really has to work very fast to recover trust because this will end up being like a cancer if it can't sort it out rapidly."
Dagmawit did not give details of what happened in the cockpit during the fateful final minutes of the flight but said takeoff "appeared very normal" and that all the crew had the requisite qualifications to operate the jet.
The head of the accident investigation bureau, Amdiye Ayalew, said the full probe would take six months to a year, but that there had been no sign of "foreign object damage" to the aircraft.
"Within this one year we'll analyse whether other problems are existing on this aircraft," he said.
Tewolde GebreMariam, the head of Ethiopian Airlines, said he was "very proud" of the efforts of the pilots in trying to stop their jet from crashing.
The FAA said in a statement that it is continuing to work towards a full understanding of what happened and will take appropriate action as findings become available.
Pilots followed procedure when Boeing jet repeatedly nosedived before crash, minister says, unveiling official report.
5 hours ago
Ethiopian Airlines crew 'followed rules, unable to control jet'
Transport minister Dagmawit Moges addresses a news conference on the preliminary report on the crash [Tiksa Negeri/Reuters]
The crew of an Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed last month repeatedly followed procedures recommended by Boeing, but were unable to regain control of the jet, the Ethiopian transport minister has said.
Dagmawit Moges made the announcement at a press conference on Thursday as she unveiled the results of the preliminary probe into the crash, which killed all 157 people on board
"The crew performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer but was not able to control the aircraft," Dagmawit said, citing data from the Boeing 737 MAX 8's recorders.
She said the report recommends "the aircraft flight control system shall be reviewed by the manufacturer."
"Aviation authorities shall verify that the review of the aircraft flight control system has been adequately addressed by the manufacturer before the release of the aircraft for operations".
Dagmawit did not make specific reference to the automatic anti-stalling system which has been implicated in the crash but did mention a "repetitive nose-down" movement of the aircraft.
The Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) is designed to automatically lower the aircraft's nose if it detects a stall or loss of airspeed.
David Learmount, consulting editor for Flight Global, told Al Jazeera it was not clear what triggered the nose-down, but said that "the crew reacted quite correctly by carrying out a drill that has been prescribed if this occurs and isolated this system that was trying to push the nose down."
Speaking from London, he added: "But having done that, they then found that one of the control systems that they have for pulling the nose back up again simply wouldn't perform for them."
'Recover trust'
The jet crashed on March 10 shortly after takeoff from Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. It was the second crash of a 737 MAX 8 within five months, following a Lion Air crash in Indonesia in October last year.
Following the latest crash, Max jets have been grounded worldwide pending a software fix that Boeing is rolling out, which has yet to receive approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other regulators.
Learmount said the crash has been "terribly harmful" for Boeing's reputation.
"Boeing has probably one of the strongest brand names in the world and has for a very long time produced a lot of superb aircraft - both military and civilian," he said.
"So Boeing really has to work very fast to recover trust because this will end up being like a cancer if it can't sort it out rapidly."
Dagmawit did not give details of what happened in the cockpit during the fateful final minutes of the flight but said takeoff "appeared very normal" and that all the crew had the requisite qualifications to operate the jet.
The head of the accident investigation bureau, Amdiye Ayalew, said the full probe would take six months to a year, but that there had been no sign of "foreign object damage" to the aircraft.
"Within this one year we'll analyse whether other problems are existing on this aircraft," he said.
Tewolde GebreMariam, the head of Ethiopian Airlines, said he was "very proud" of the efforts of the pilots in trying to stop their jet from crashing.
The FAA said in a statement that it is continuing to work towards a full understanding of what happened and will take appropriate action as findings become available.
Then everything is good. Hurrah. Screw the victims of corporate greed and carry on.
The A220 has no track record. There is no data to substantiate your claim.
I got news for you. A220's will be involved in crashes despite the envelope control.
Technology is a double edged sword. The pilots flying the A220's will also generally be less experienced than the 737 pilots. The larger the airframe, the higher the likelihood the experience level of the pilots will be greater. That's what pilots do. They start off on small airframes, build time and then move to larger airframes that pay more.
I'm not parroting anything. I am stating the fact that every successful airliner has been stretched or re engined multiple times. All manufacturers will continue to do so with a successful aircraft. Chances are excellent almost every airliner you have flown in is a "Frankenstein" creation. Some aircraft will even have a huge hole chopped into the side of their airframe altering their structure to be converted to a freighter after their passenger hauling lives.You are not an engineer.
You can fly a thousand planes on a thousand flights and it does not make you an aeronautical engineer.
Are you familiar with the term, "bastardized"? Because that's what the issue is.
You simply cannot fundamentally change any structural design without impacts. And fyi, I have never claimed it was a structural failure, what I have claimed is that by altering the structure or airframe to accommodate today's market, Boeing had to employ much larger engines. (This is a fact.) In order to accommodate such larger engines on a frame that was never meant for these substantially larger and more powerful engines they have had to move the engine mounts much further forward, and higher which has so altered the centre of gravity of the plane and so fundamentally changed its flight characteristics that the plane became unflyable and they have had to come up with work-arounds to be able to fly it. (This is also a fact and there are many articles written about it.) Enter MCAS which started out with one set of parameters and ended up so far removed from that it was a completely different animal. And yes, there are several articles written about this issue too. Originally, MCAS was designed to rotate the horizontal stabilizer 0.5 degrees in the event that the plane's computers believed the plane was in danger of stalling. That is what the FAA was told and approved. It ended up not being able to compensate enough for the engineering issues associated with the larger engines and Boeing increased the rotation limit by 400 percent to again, work around the issues of the geometry of the plane. Thing is, Boeing never told the FAA. So it begs the question, why? Why did the parameters need to be changed? Why didn't Boeing tell the FAA?
If anyone keeps parroting the narrative that "it's OK, you can get away with it because..." , it's you mon ami.
Fyi, 5000 maxs have been ordered. Not sold. Orders can be cancelled. Happens all the time. Especially if the damn things keep diving itself into the ground.
As to "designs closing in on 100 years" as you have claimed. Let's see, in 1918, we were flying Sopwith Camels. For the life of me, I can't remember the last time I flew in a Sopwith Camel. Or for that matter a DC-3, or a DC9. I flew did fly on an L1011 though....... Back in 1976.
I said some airframes will be closing in on 100 years before they are retired. This is correct. The DC3 came out in 1935. There are hundreds of DC3's still flying revenue flights with no suitable replacements for them, so they will be closing in on 100 years before they see retirement. First flight of the Lockheed Hercules was in 1954. They are still in production with no suitable replacement. That's another design that will be closing in on 100 years from it's introduction.
Just because you haven't flown on certain aircraft doesn't mean there aren't hundreds, or in the case of the Hercules, thousands of a modernized very old design still flying that will hit the century mark that are safely flying around the world.
Any time an aircraft is stretched or gets different engines, it's flight envelope changes, not just the 737. Take a look at the Bombardier Q400 vs the first Dash 8 100. There's no way a plane that is almost twice the length of the original with different engines has the same flight envelope.
Thousands of MAX's have been ordered, and thousands will be delivered because Boeing will fix the software and sensor problem . Entire airlines are built around the 737. There will be no mass cancellations of this airframe because almost all redesigned and new airliners have teething problems in their first few years of service, and unfortunately, people die because of it. It's not right, but that's what happens. The fatally designed cargo door on the early DC10's did not prevent 400 aircraft being sold and its further development into the MD11, of which 200 were sold.
Both Boeing and the FAA are guilty of releasing an aircraft with software and sensor problems and like it or not, Boeing, the FAA and the 737 will survive.
My opinion (and it's worth nothing) is that the 737 max is a plane with a design flaw with a software bolt-on made to cover it up and make the damn thing fly.
They are asking an aircraft to do something it was never designed to do because it's all Boeing has in its catalog. The 787 was their last new design (and I've flown on it and thought it was a great plane), but it's proven to be too big for the market. Too many empty seats and airlines don't like that. Airlines want sold out flights, and the 737 is the ONLY thing Boeing has going for it right here and right now that meets market demand and it's 60 years old. (BTW, they have not manufactured a DC-3 since the 1950's right. So the original design is a solid design and it has not been fucked with and bastardized. And the Herc, well, that's a military transport plane right? Did you ever consider that comparing the design of the Herc to a Boeing 737 is not the same thing, it's an entirely different animal, ergo, your comparison is a false equivalence.)
The whole issue with the 737 has now become a criminal investigation. The FBI is looking into the certification of the plane.
If the FBI was smart, they would look into who was pushing who at Boeing to make the 737 into something it was never intended to be. My guess is (as I have previously posted) that the beancounters at Boeing wanted a new sexy plane to meet market demand and they wanted it yesterday. I would bet dollars to doughnuts that the Engineers were told by the beancounters to make the 737 fit the bill and no more technical baffle-talk about the laws of physics and all such nonsense. Stop being a road block. I GUARANTEE that concerns were raised by the Engineers and those concerns were ignored or those raising those concerns were told to shut the fuck up.
And again, there is no reason that orders can't be cancelled. If people refuse to fly in the 737 because they fear, well, DYING due to "teething problems" as you so eloquently put it, then orders will be cancelled and this plane will go the way of the do-do bird. (And I recall the DC10 had a bad habit of crashing a couple of times due to main rotor failures which essentially sawed off the tail mid flight. Back then, flying on the DC10 was akin to "taking your chances". It was so bad that no-one wanted to fly in it and orders dried up and yes, they did rename it the MD11. Not that that mattered since nobody bought it either. And remind me what happened to McDonnell Douglas' civilian aircraft division after that? Oh yeah that's right, they closed shop.
You know what they say, statistics are just that until it happens to you, and then it's a guarantee.
Yes, and the Avro Lancaster designed by Sir Roy Chadwick in the 1930's is still flying too.
And seeing that plane fly still brings tears to my eyes.
But it's never been fucked with has it.
Where are you getting your facts?
The Lancaster has been "fucked" with multiple times.
It ended its service life as the Shackelton which had a long life, flying until 1991. Pretty good for an aircraft that had been "fucked" with by being stretched, re engined and changed from a taildragger to tricycle gear.
The B52 is still in ACTIVE service.
It's been re engined once, and plans are underway to have it re engined again to take it to the end of it's life. It's flight envelope has also changed because of add on chin sensors and a shorter tail on later versions. The plane is scheduled to fly until the 2030's. The plane will be in active service for 80 years.
Face the facts. Every successful aircraft has been "fucked" with by your definition.
