Ethiopian Airlines flight to Nairobi crashes with 'no survivors' of 157 people aboard

Caporegime
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I remembered that too, it is what came to mind.

That is what made me think of Creighton.

As I recall,
it wasn't the plane that was the problem. The crash occurred because the pilot let his kid fly the plane and who ended up fighting the safety systems that would otherwise have corrected the situation had he just let go of everything and let the plane fly itself.

I will have to see if I can rummage it out and re read it. (I am, to the consternation of my GF, one of those people who never gets rid of books, so I know I have it somewhere :p )

That actually happened pretty much:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_593
 
Associate
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One of the victims in the Ethiopian crash was a niece of a gentleman called Ralph Nader , I think Boeing will regret making this design of aircraft at a great cost to themselves.
 
Caporegime
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Boeing has finally admitted that they are responsible for the crashes.

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(Source).
 
Soldato
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Highly embarrassing for Boeing. I am sure airbus will be secretly enjoying the marketing aspect of this, I can see a lot of orders changing hands.
In fairness it's not like airbus has never had an automation system crash a plane either, but yeah this is bad for Boeing as it happened twice and it was apparently caused (at least partially) by a design mistake that should have been caught.


Its quite likely I'll be proved wrong but I'm really struggling to believe that despite toggling the main electric trim and autopilot trim switches to render both systems inoperative (according to the emergency procedure), the MCAS system continued to trim forward and push the nose down.
One of the problems is that the emergency procedure from Boeing was to turn the MCAS off and on again, the problem there is, the MCAS drops the nose by 2deg, they reset the system, the system then zeros itself on startup at 2deg, it then tries to drop the nose by 2deg but it's now actually at 4deg and the pilots don't have enough pitch control to pull that back up.
 
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Caporegime
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At the end of the day this will still be pilot error. They may try and pin the blame on the aircraft but if its built to spec and the pilots just haven't been trained properly on its characteristics then it's still pilot error.

I guarantee the fleet being grounded by those airlines is also cover to get as many pilots back in the simulator to train them to spec. Airlines are trying to cover their asses and shoddy practices once again.


So dont make a thread then. Because 99% if not 100% of those posting are just giving there opinion nothing more.

Bit ridiculous to be honest. But that's fine I'm happy with my comment and when the news comes out il either eat my words or tell you all to get ******.

You all make out the the airlines dont have an agenda in this.. hilarious.
Feeling a bit of a muppet now I trust?

Enjoy your word meal. :rolleyes:
 
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Optional safety features. If that doesn’t make you shudder I don’t know what will.

The problem with this is that it really is'nt true, in the sense that the system Boeing is adding as a standard fit now, in all likelyhood, would not have made any difference to the outcome of the two crashes. It just means that an additional amber 'AoA' text would appear on the PFD amongst a myriad of other warnings and alarms. Given the training they had, it is unlikely they would have connected this warning to what was actually happening. Remember, MCAS was hidden from flight crews because it would have incurred additional training costs.

Boeing have a number of optional extras, off the top of my head:

Brake temperature indicators
Flight control position indicators
Heads up display
CAT3 Autopilot (enabling single engine autoland)

There are probably many others. All of which, with the right training, can inprove a crew's situational awareness. The lack of which does not degrade the safety of a given flight.

The problem with the 'optional safety features' narrative is that is detracts from the real issue.

- Lack of proper training for flight crews.
The training to convert from the 737NG to 737Max consisted of a 45 minute powerpoint presentation - it is increasingly the opinion of the people who fly it that is should have been a 4 hour full flight simulator session, as a minimum. It appears that as part of the 'fix', we are all going to have to do another 45 minute powerpoint presentation.

- The aircraft should never have been certified in the first place
This is the biggy. My mind is boggling right now as more infomation comes out.

And just for thought:

The list price of a B737Max is approx. $120,000,000
The cost of putting 5 crews in a full flight simulator (very approx, back of a fag packet calculation) : $20,000

About 0.02% of the cost of the aeroplane.
 
Caporegime
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The problem with this is that it really is'nt true, in the sense that the system Boeing is adding as a standard fit now, in all likelyhood, would not have made any difference to the outcome of the two crashes. It just means that an additional amber 'AoA' text would appear on the PFD amongst a myriad of other warnings and alarms. Given the training they had, it is unlikely they would have connected this warning to what was actually happening. Remember, MCAS was hidden from flight crews because it would have incurred additional training costs.

Boeing have a number of optional extras, off the top of my head:

Brake temperature indicators
Flight control position indicators
Heads up display
CAT3 Autopilot (enabling single engine autoland)

There are probably many others. All of which, with the right training, can inprove a crew's situational awareness. The lack of which does not degrade the safety of a given flight.

The problem with the 'optional safety features' narrative is that is detracts from the real issue.

- Lack of proper training for flight crews.
The training to convert from the 737NG to 737Max consisted of a 45 minute powerpoint presentation - it is increasingly the opinion of the people who fly it that is should have been a 4 hour full flight simulator session, as a minimum. It appears that as part of the 'fix', we are all going to have to do another 45 minute powerpoint presentation.


- The aircraft should never have been certified in the first place
This is the biggy. My mind is boggling right now as more infomation comes out.

And just for thought:

The list price of a B737Max is approx. $120,000,000
The cost of putting 5 crews in a full flight simulator (very approx, back of a fag packet calculation) : $20,000

About 0.02% of the cost of the aeroplane.
Scary and staggering to read this re training, never mind the cost of the training you’d think this would be mandatory!

Although from what I’ve read, the crew were fully trained and followed all the correct procedures in trying to correct the issue.
 
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Although from what I’ve read, the crew were fully trained and followed all the correct procedures in trying to correct the issue.

The jury is still out on that, with incidents of this nature politics comes into play as well. I struggling to see how MCAS could have engaged if they had correctly disengaged the main electric trim and autoplit trim. I could however be wrong - if I am then, wow! Boeing have been astonishingly negligent. My mind would be even more boggled.

As an aside, I don't want the above to read as a criticism of the pilots involved, they were faced with a very confusing, disorientating situation.
 
Caporegime
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The jury is still out on that, with incidents of this nature politics comes into play as well. I struggling to see how MCAS could have engaged if they had correctly disengaged the main electric trim and autoplit trim. I could however be wrong - if I am then, wow! Boeing have been astonishingly negligent. My mind would be even more boggled.

As an aside, I don't want the above to read as a criticism of the pilots involved, they were faced with a very confusing, disorientating situation.
I was taking my opinion from here - http://www.askthepilot.com/ethiopian-737max-crash/ -
The latest reports are saying that the pilots of the doomed Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX did, in fact, activate the plane’s pitch trim disconnect switches in a frantic attempt to regain control. Engaging this pair of switches, mounted on the center console near the thrust levers, should have killed power to entire automatic pitch trim system, including MCAS, allowing the pilots to maintain a normal flightpath using manual trim and elevator. It appears, however, that this was ineffective. Either MCAS did not fully disengage, or the pilots were otherwise unable to ascertain the proper amount of manual trim input (see reader comment by Stephen Owades, below). Either way, unable to regain control manually, they reengaged the trim system — which only made matters worse.

I don’t think anybody (other than an idiot) would try to imply blame on the pilots here, it seems to me they were in an impossible and confusing situation and they did all they could to try to rectify it.


What I find mad is the surge in Boeing stock price amid all of this!

With signs of progress in the investigation and an apparent fix coming soon, the markets will be reflecting this in their usual manner,Boeing’s stock price has been in free fall, this is just a correction I’d suggest - capitalism has no empathy with regard to tragedies unfortunately.
 
Associate
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I suspect they were unable to trim back manually fast enough. The electric trim is a lot faster than pulling the handles out and manually winding the trim wheels backward. The final accident report will suggest whether it would have been possible to do so. It also suggests they re-engaged the system thus causing the problem to re-occur. They could, in theory, use the electric trim to overide MCAS then disengage the whole trim system once they have the trim approximately where they want it. This is broadly speaking what the abnormal procedure calls for. However they would have had very little time to figure this out with a whole range of failures going on around them.

Edited to add: If they had been properly trained they would have known that extending the flaps to 1, a very simple thing to do, would have made the whole problem go away. MCAS is disabled with flaps extended (as far is I'm aware, but is very likely - official infomation about this is sparse).

Pilots in my company who flew the Max regulary were retracting flaps later than normal to limit their exposure to an MCAS event like this at low level.

I flew the Max rarely and at the time of the second crash was not aware of this.
 
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