737-800 down in China

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A 737 (not a MAX) has come down in China, looks like a complete nosedive after being at FL300 for almost an hour.

There's some footage been posted of the actual aircraft just before it hits the ground but I'm not posting that. The track for the flight shows what happened but obviously not why it happened.



132 people on board, nobody could have survived that

That's a horrible, horrible crash, look at the vertical speed.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-60819760

 

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Actually I think this is MCAS failure again.

And this is why I made a point of saying it was a -800, not a MAX. It doesn't have MCAS.

 

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What are the column headers?

Important ones are the last four which look like altitude, airspeed, heading and vertical speed. The previous two are lat/long.

I stand corrected from my first post, I said FL300, it was at FL290.

Looks like it plummeted from cruise, briefly porpoised at around 7500ft over a ten second period and then straight back down again.

 

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I'm not picking on you today, honest!

You are

I was close enough for this, I always think in flight levels.

 

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airbus

Boeing.

 

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The lack of scorched Earth makes me wonder how much fuel it had left if any.

Enough to descend, land and taxi plus reserve. The reserve should be enough for up to three go arounds plus diversion to another airport. It certainly won’t be anywhere near dry.

 

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As it was on descent and may not have been fuelled up for further flights it could have been on the low side but enough for the flight. It clearly didn’t have as much as other crashes as there is very little charring.

What I've described is basically the minimum that any aircraft carries which is enough for some go arounds and a diversion. There's no way the tanks would be even getting close to empty.

 

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For clarification purposes here are the rules on fueling.

So that pretty much justifies what I've said, probably meaning there's more in the tanks than I actually suggested.

(I've spent many hours working out fuel planning in the past, admittedly in a sim but using real world procedures).

It's just been announced on the wireless that one of the black boxes has been found.

 

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Have they found the flight recorder yet?

It's just been announced on the wireless that one of the black boxes has been found.

 

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Can't say I'm surprised, this never sounded like any mechanical failure at all.

 

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Doesn't wash with me this time. Why wait till near the end of the flight? And there were three pilots on that flight, not the two we've had in previous suicide crashes.

Is there something in the rules that says one isn't allowed to commit suicide at top of descent?

The trace clearly showed that an attempt was made to recover the aircraft at about 7,500ft - Perhaps one pilot was out of the flight deck and the other one tried to take control at that point but was overpowered again.

 

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Are pilots screened through security like passengers are?

I don't know. We do have some commercial pilots here though, this would be interesting to know.

Is it plausible that a physical overpowerment of a co-pilot occurred in the cockpit whilst one of them was locked out?

That's what I think is most likely. It appears to have happened just around ToD so it's possible one nipped out for a wee before descent and the remaining pilot was overpowered by the other. Then perhaps a struggle occurred at 7,500ft where control was briefly regained.

I've not looked too much into this since it happened and I hadn't heard there were three pilots on board. I know that's common on long flights but this was relatively short.

 

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automated planes the only way to be sure it wont happen again.

No, worst possible suggestion. Aeroplanes are quite capable of flying themselves in normal circumstances but just go and watch some of the big jet videos from gusty days, those landings couldn't be handled by automation.

 

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I'm 100% sure that a computer could actually handle those situations better actually

I stand to be corrected but I believe that the crosswind autoland limits are always lower than those which pilots can handle manually.

 

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Because AI will do a better job of anything that humans can do as long as it has access to the information needed, it can be programmed with 100,000 simulations worth of scenarios and know how to react better than humans,

And when that scenario comes up that's never been experienced before or is slightly out of scope and which a pilot is able to deal with but the AI can't, the plane will crash and everyone dies.

 

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There should always be a dog on the flight deck anyway.