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Ethiopian Airlines Crew Followed Procedures Before Boeing Max Crash, Early Report Says (latimes.com)
The pilots of a doomed Ethiopian Airlines jet followed all of Boeing's recommended procedures when the plane started to nose dive but still couldn't save it, according to findings from a preliminary report released Thursday by the Ethiopian government. From a report: The plane crashed just six minutes after taking off from Addis Ababa, killing all 157 people on board. The report, based on flight data and cockpit voice recorders on the Boeing 737 Max 8, was not released in full. Boeing declined to comment pending its review of the report on the March 10 crash. The Max 8 has been under scrutiny since a Lion Air flight crashed off the coast of Indonesia under similar circumstances in October. Thursday's revelations raise questions about repeated assertions by Boeing and U.S. regulators that pilots could regain control in some emergencies by following steps that include turning off an anti-stall system designed specifically for the Max, known by its acronym, MCAS. Investigators are looking into the role of MCAS, whose functions include automatically lowering the plane's nose to prevent an aerodynamic stall. The Max has been grounded worldwide pending a software fix that Boeing is rolling out, which still needs to be approved by the Federal Aviation Administration and other regulators. Further reading: Flawed Analysis, Failed Oversight: How Boeing, FAA Certified the Suspect 737 MAX Flight Control System.
I'd like to RTFA, but there's no link to it. There's no link to the source of the quotation.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Perhaps the FAA Administrator who made these changes should be forced to resign. This administration has had enough turnover that the President should be capable of appointing new leadership quickly.
The administrator of the FAA at the time of the certification of the 737 Max was Michael Heurta, who was appointed by President Obama. He took the position in December of 2011 and held it until January 2018. The 737 Max was certified in March of 2017.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
It's a shame that the market position of Boeing and Airbus has very little to do with capitalism and everything to do with cronyism.
You say that like "cronyism" sprang up all by itself from the vacuum. Cronyism is the expected result of the operation of a capitalist economy without effective and strong oversight, the result of which operation is always and invariably capitalism taking over politics, democratic or otherwise. The economic mechanisms are also well understood by the economic theory: when investing in bribes and government subversion creates better returns than investing in production, a capitalist will invest in bribery and not in production. This case is a perfect illustration of the phenomenon - it was a lot more effective for Boeing to subvert the certification process than to ensure quality aircraft design. Boeing boss even had the temerity to call Trump and ask that grounding of the dangerous planes be delayed for PR reasons.
The result of the right-wing(nut) policies of oversight removal in the US are well known. Corporations have for a long time had a say over politics that the ordinary citizens don't. Even science says so:
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.
The worst part is that US is exporting this model worldwide, damaging and weakening democratic governments all over the place.
Pilot error, and a hair raising one at that
Simultaneous overspeed and stall warnings (making the pilots believe they were in a high speed stall). Stall warning that shut up at low speed (below 60 kts) but came back on precisely when the pilots were temporarily taking the correct action, making them believe that pushing the stick was the wrong thing to do. Pilots that cannot feel what the other pilot is doing with the stick. With all the simultaneous warnings and inconsistent indications, they had no idea what information to trust anymore. Sure, with perfect hindsight it's easy to see what they did wrong, but it wasn't as clear cut as some seem to believe.
Ah, I see, you are a conspiracy nut. The envelope protection saved almost all lifes back then when the pilot actively tried to kill everyone by stalling the aircraft. Without the protection the plane would have fallen from the sky like a bloody brick, not slowly gliding on the top of the trees.
They were actually trying to demonstrate the stall protection, by flying extremely slowly right at the edge of the stall (which no pilot would ever attempt in a regular plane). The big problem was that the engines did not spool up as quickly as the pilots had expected. The conspiracy theory is about why the engines took so long to spool up: some say they got into ground idle due to a programming error, some say it was because the pilots had pulled certain circuit breakers, some say flight data recorder info was falsified, etc... I have never really dug in to the whole story, but the theories are not as nutty as they would seem at first sight.
The crew applied full power and the pilot attempted to climb. However, the elevators did not respond to the pilot's commands, because the A320's computer system engaged its "alpha protection" mode (meant to prevent the aircraft from entering a stall).
Which was exactly the right action. Stalling would've been much, much worse and that's what would've happened if the computer hadn't saved the day to the extent that it could be saved. The aircraft did not have the speed to climb so all they would've managed to do was to gain a little altitude, loose all their speed and then fall like a brick. This argument has been done to death.
The Speaker of the House was Dennis Hastert (R–Illinois). The change which greatly expanded delegated certification was mandated by Congress, not the FAA. It was a part of HR 2115 "Vision 100--Century of Aviation Reauthorization Act" in 2003. Refer to section 227 - DESIGN ORGANIZATION CERTIFICATES. https://www.congress.gov/bill/...
Pilot error, and a hair raising one at that
Simultaneous overspeed and stall warnings (making the pilots believe they were in a high speed stall). Stall warning that shut up at low speed (below 60 kts) but came back on precisely when the pilots were temporarily taking the correct action, making them believe that pushing the stick was the wrong thing to do. Pilots that cannot feel what the other pilot is doing with the stick. With all the simultaneous warnings and inconsistent indications, they had no idea what information to trust anymore. Sure, with perfect hindsight it's easy to see what they did wrong, but it wasn't as clear cut as some seem to believe.
First off, it's AF447 and not 443.
There was no overspeed warning. The reason is quite simple: the first thing the pilot did when the autopilot disconnected was to pull on the stick. As any pilot will know, that will lower the speed. They never got it back.
The stall warning sounded at this point, correctly, as a response to the pilot's commands. It's only after that the FBW disconnected, and the stall warning stopped.
When it did resume, it's not like the pilot tried many times to push the nose down, triggering the stall warning as a result, as you seem to believe. The stall warning sounded for a whole minute during which the pilot flying kept increasing the nose up attitude. That's right at the top of the flying 101 don'ts. And all this while the alarm was screaming "don't do this".
So, basically, the plane entered a stall _because_ of unnecessary pilot actions, and stayed in stall _despite_ a constant alarm from the computer.
There's a valuable lesson here about the necessity of practising the basics of flying - when the computer can't deal. There's another one about managing panic: it still took 4 minutes for the plane to crash - there is time to think.
Blaming the computer, or Airbus, is just the one that won't actually help with anything.
Ah, I see, you are a conspiracy nut. The envelope protection saved almost all lifes back then when the pilot actively tried to kill everyone by stalling the aircraft. Without the protection the plane would have fallen from the sky like a bloody brick, not slowly gliding on the top of the trees.
They were actually trying to demonstrate the stall protection, by flying extremely slowly right at the edge of the stall (which no pilot would ever attempt in a regular plane). The big problem was that the engines did not spool up as quickly as the pilots had expected. The conspiracy theory is about why the engines took so long to spool up: some say they got into ground idle due to a programming error, some say it was because the pilots had pulled certain circuit breakers, some say flight data recorder info was falsified, etc... I have never really dug in to the whole story, but the theories are not as nutty as they would seem at first sight.
No they were actually trying to show the plane to a public that was quite incapable of understanding what "stall protection" means, during an airshow at an airport too small for the A320 to operate from (and not in Paris, as you seem to believe). Black boxes and a concurring audio analysis show that the engines spooled up as per spec. If the pilots "expected" them to do so faster, that's their mistake. In any case, while the 10m slow flyby might still have worked out, the nail in the coffin appears to be that the pilots didn't see the forest beyond the runway.