737-800 down in China

Feek · 21 Mar 2022 at 11:11

delta0 said:
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.

200sols · 21 Mar 2022 at 11:15

delta0 said:
I wonder what happened. It was going vertically downwards. Possibly the pilot did it on purpose as I’m not sure what other failure could cause that bar the wings coming off which doesn’t appear to be the case.

Well its happened before, plenty of failures can cause loss of control, the pilots get disorientated and cant recover.

arknor said:
whenever they go straight down or fly into a mountain it's tended to be on purpose.

Where do you get this rubbish from?

Johno please? · 21 Mar 2022 at 11:21

Seeing the crash site just looks like absolutely nothing left a bit like United93

Kenai · 21 Mar 2022 at 11:25

There's a dashcam vid floating about now too, which would appear to be from a different direction to the CCTV clip and the descent appears somewhat less vertical, albeit not much less

Andrew_McP · 21 Mar 2022 at 11:25

It's horrible that my first thoughts when I heard about this was that it's Putin trying to draw China into his war by staging a terrorist incident with the supposed aims of deterring China from helping Russia. I know that's a hard sell, but Putin's proved to be the master of twisted logic. Hope I'm the one with the twisted logic.

robfosters · 21 Mar 2022 at 11:27

FBi7 said:
Oh my goodness, that's truly awful. RIP.

@Feek *FL300, although it could be FL290 being just below the 30000 feet line.

@robfosters think you mean feet per minute there chap. Per second would be an even quicker descent than the one in this incident.

Lol, sorry, a little typo there. I’m so used to typing fps on this forum that it just comes naturally

diamount · 21 Mar 2022 at 11:28

Wow, just seen the footage - the plane is completely vertical in a straight line.

robfosters · 21 Mar 2022 at 11:32

I can’t think of any pilot error that would cause a vertical drop like that. Even somehow shutting the entire plane down would cause it to glide rather than simply plummet.

Suicide or terrorism I’m afraid.

McBain · 21 Mar 2022 at 11:43

- Thats grim.

Kenai · 21 Mar 2022 at 11:44

Suicide or terrorism I think would hold a lot more weight if the descent wasn't occurring almost exactly where it normally starts to descend for landing... that's just a bit too coincidental for the suicide angle IMO, seems far more likely a routine part of the flight has gone wrong as they started to descend.

dowie · 21 Mar 2022 at 11:52

Yup, that was very odd-looking? I guess if you wanted to commit suicide and didn't want much hope of your copilot fighting you then a vertical dive would do.

Very sad

Chuk_Chuk · 21 Mar 2022 at 11:55

Kenai said:
Suicide or terrorism I think would hold a lot more weight if the descent wasn't occurring almost exactly where it normally starts to descend for landing... that's just a bit too coincidental for the suicide angle IMO, seems far more likely a routine part of the flight has gone wrong as they started to descend.

Some context to his post

clipboard02_9b4a0e12408ebb93a7c2b835b47c77a62b4119e5.gif

Source: https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/645805-china-eastern-737-800-mu5735-incident-2.html

delta0 · 21 Mar 2022 at 12:00

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

Yeah I added a note that I have a different view now. If not MCAS there are other antistall systems but not likely to be something that would cause a 30,000ft vertical descent.

delta0 · 21 Mar 2022 at 12:02

Chuk_Chuk said:
Some context to his post

Source: https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/645805-china-eastern-737-800-mu5735-incident-2.html

This is very interesting. I wonder if the autopilot had an issue with an altitude measurement or input value.

Jokester · 21 Mar 2022 at 12:06

Looks to me it's missing it's tail in the video of it coming down, but I would imagine it was breaking up.

Ayahuasca · 21 Mar 2022 at 12:07

Appears to have been a partial recovery in altitude around 7500 feet.

Chuk_Chuk · 21 Mar 2022 at 12:14

Ayahuasca said:
snip

Appears to have been a partial recovery in altitude around 7500 feet.

What are the column headers?

ltron · 21 Mar 2022 at 12:17

Andrew_McP said:
It's horrible that my first thoughts when I heard about this was that it's Putin trying to draw China into his war by staging a terrorist incident with the supposed aims of deterring China from helping Russia. I know that's a hard sell, but Putin's proved to be the master of twisted logic. Hope I'm the one with the twisted logic.

I thought this too.

Feek · 21 Mar 2022 at 12:19

Chuk_Chuk said:
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.

FBi7 · 21 Mar 2022 at 12:35

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

I'm not picking on you today, honest!

This never even entered my head earlier, but the Chinese use the metric system and altitude instructions are given in metres. As per the image above, it's flying at 29100 feet, or, 8900 metres, so technically, it's neither FL300 nor FL290.

Some more info here.