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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.
Found it. It's from the LA Times.
https://www.latimes.com/busine...
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Here the article from BBC.com
Yeah, some the articles don't really give the necessary details. The one I found that really discussed it is this.
Basically it is possible for the MCAS, in combination with other things, to put the airplane in a situation that is not easily recoverable without turning the system that the MCAS is part of back on. This is because the system that bypasses the MCAS isn't strong enough to turn the tail back to the right position. But when the electrical stabilizer system is turned back on, the MCAS just kicks in again and puts it right back in nose-down. There are ways to work it out but they require "non-checklist actions" as the article says. There is no way pilots can figure this out in less than a minute while the MCAS is driving them into the ground. So basically the whole idea that "they could just switch it off" only works in some circumstances. So now we see that it appears even the instructions to pilots were not properly tested.
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
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 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/...