Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Carriers, Ethiopian Airlines Halt Use of Boeing 737 MAX 8 Aircraft After Crash (reuters.com)
China's aviation regulator today grounded nearly 100 Boeing Co 737 MAX 8 aircraft operated by its airlines, more than a quarter of the global fleet of the jets, after a deadly crash of one of the planes in Ethiopia. From a report: However, a U.S. official said it was unclear what information the Chinese regulator was acting on because the investigation of Sunday's crash, the second involving the latest version of the narrowbody jet, was in the early stages. Speaking on condition of anonymity as the topic is sensitive, the U.S. official said there were no plans to follow suit, as the jet had a stellar safety record in the United States and there was a lack of information on what caused the Ethiopian crash.
I'm going out in a limb here but maybe they were acting on the information that another one had crashed.
when last I checked, a "lack of information" is a great reason to avoid something dangerous. Actually, it might be the one and only and best reason to avoid anything dangerous -- from bicycles to bungee jumping. Get informed first. And if you thought you were informed, and suddenly you discover that you aren't informed because you can't explain something that happened, well then, avoid again until you become informed again.
In other words, let someone else run the tests. That's exactly what test-pilots are for.
Ethiopia is predominantly Christian.
Except we do have information. One has gone through accident investigation that hasn't been published yet, but has been completed and was serious enough that 2 advisories have been issued. It would appear as though there actually is a problem in these aircraft. Both crashed during takeoff. Both had problems with vertical ascension. One had a specific advisory on instruments used during ascending.
You're right it'll remain somewhat speculative until both incidents have gone through a complete review, but there are already indications pointing to systemic issues rather than just pure coincidence.
The ground search (well, digging into the ground) has located both FDR (Flight Data Recorder) and CVR (Cockpit Voice Recorder) for the crashed aircraft, which should help greatly in determining what the problem was/ is.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
YouTube: Mentour Pilot
Of course it may be a coincidence. But it is an extremely low probability coincidence.
Let's be clear. The 737-NG and A320 family both have total fatal hull loss rates of less than 1 in 10,000 aircraft years in operation. This is generous and includes all accidents: terrorists, captain suicide, mechanical issue, and pilot error.
The DC-10 - recognized as having a fatal design flaw with its cargo door and widely recognized as a "dangerous" airliner at the time - took 1,600 aircraft flight years before suffering two fatal accidents.
The 737 MAX 8 has had 2 hull losses in less than 300 flight years of operation. That is nearly 70 times higher than the 737-NG and A320 family.
The likelihood of the 737 MAX having the same ultimate failure probability as the 737NG and A320 and having two fatal hull loss accidents in only 300 flight years is something on the order of 1 in a 1000.
Even if the ET302 flight is boiled down to "pilot error" (like the Lion Air flight), that is just an excuse. If the ET302 had the same failure mode as the Lion Air flight, then the fact that you have two separate incidents with a loss of control (shortly after takeoff, meaning less room for root cause analysis, checklists, etc) is a design flaw. Full stop. Whether or not a pilot could recover is not relevant; an airframe should not be constantly testing pilots with unexpected loss of control.
It is still "safe" to fly a 737 MAX 8 relative to most other daily activities. You probably won't die if you fly on one. That said, relative to aviation standards and safety records that we have achieved in the past 50 years, the 737 MAX 8 - today, at least - appears like a veritable statistical death trap.
The Chinese response is the most appropriate, especially since they are not blinded by the fear of damaging profit margins for Boeing. The fact that at least 2 incidents with "unknown" cause involve the same aircraft means its continued use while the cause is unknown is a risk. China recognizes it as an avoidable risk, which it is in reality.
Could be muslim terrorists. Both crashed from heavily predominant Muslim countries.
Time for a Goodwin's Law 2.0: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of somebody blaming Islamic terrorists or Muslims in general approaches 1."
If I recall, the previous crash has been linked to a bad angle of attack sensor. This sensor is only used by a new stall protection feature in the 737 Max. When it fails, the stall protection algorithm thinks the plane is stuck in a nose up orientation, and tries to force the nose down... into the ground.
There are several things that should happen:
1. Interim corrective action. Disable stall protection on all 737 Max aircraft.
2. Quality control investigation into the angle of attack sensor reliability.
3. Implement diagnostic algorithms into the control strategy to detect failed angle of attack sensors automatically. A failed sensor should disable the stall protection feature automatically, and alert the pilot.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Computers should never have the last say in flying an airliner.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Not so fast there AC..
The speculation is that this is a human factors problem too, where some automated system is messing with the pitch controls in weird ways when presented with sensor failures. Where you can mitigate this problem with pilot training (Hey, when this happens, turn of the stall prevention system) there may also be a pilot manual omission issue too. If that's true, the pilots are properly trained per the documentation provided, so the base cause is really the pilot manual omits some important information, so they didn't have a chance to get trained.
So, I'd not be so fast to blame the pilots, or their training. It could be that it's not their fault.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Regardless how good or bad this particular model may be, one has to remember that neither of the companies involved in the recent crashes is a paradigm to follow when it comes to aircraft maintenance.
Ethiopian's MRO is FAA and EASA certified for B757, B767, B777; FAA only for 737, 787, Q400 and MD11, and EASA only for 73NG, and is Boeing and Bombardier accredited. It is also Africa's largest airline. It has a good reputation.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/world/asia/lion-air-plane-crash-pilots.html
to summarise: we added a few lines of code that the pilots don't know about to make the plane do something the pilots have no idea the plane might decide to try and do: ie, depending on input from one little sensor, the computer might try and shove the nose into the ground.
And the "you couldn't make this bit up" bit in the article:: on previous planes without this new software, if you felt the nose was being shoved into the ground for some unknown reason, you could (wait for it, wait for it) "pull back on the stick", and that would do what pulling back on the stick has done in aeroplanes like forever, i.e. bring the nose up (in this case, by disabling any mad sensors/sensor readings).
(If I were the one conscious person on a plane, having to fly it, that is the single thing I would know to try to do.)
But not any more - with this new feature, *that method of escape has been removed*.
- We're going to crash!
- Pull back on the stick!
- Computer says no!
No. A crashing plane is having no trouble descending.
Right, you can be sure of that.
We should continue to blame China for everything wrong on this planet, that will for sure Make America Great Again.
Over 150 people just died, which is 3 Chernobyls. This means that aviation is a dead-end technology that cannot possibly be made safe at reasonable levels of cost. Germany takes the lead, mothballing all civilian aircraft now in use. From now on, Germans will use their rail network to carry domestic traffic. For international travel, Germany will build a new fleet of ships, wind powered and made of sustainable tree derived materials.
The US will take a more measured approach. No new planes will be ordered, but airlines will continue to operate with existing craft until they age out, whereupon they will be replaced by buses. The UK will do the same, but will order one more aircraft from China, specially designed with 12 engines and parachutes for each passenger, to cost GBP 10 billion and be delivered in 2025.
My point was that this was NOT in the fine manuals, so reading them wouldn't help... It was added in August of last year, which was AFTER the crash in Indonesia.
So I'm not blaming the pilots at all, I'm saying they didn't receive the necessary information for the safe operation of the aircraft with the new system installed, likely never experienced the problem in the simulator during their training. It may be that the aircraft was airworthy and controllable, but if you don't know what to do, haven't been trained to do it, It's hard to blame the pilots for not being able to deal with the problem.
I'm also pointing towards the maintenance staff's training and the aircraft's maintenance procedure documentation. This new feature wasn't well documented there either and the Indonesian aircraft experienced multiple issues with this system, which in hindsight where likely indicators of a failing sensor, but the maintenance crews never fixed the problem, their diagnosis procedures didn't find the pending fault, so they put the aircraft back into service..
So, RTFM wouldn't have produced a different result. The information just wasn't in there.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Two early crashes in a new plane with somewhat similar circumstances is mighty suspicious and certainly warrants waiting for solid details from the investigation.