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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.
They find out that some completely different bug causes the MCAS override to stay on even if you shut it off.
Either that or that it is susceptible to external control.
So, to summarize:
1. Boeing self-certified that pilots certified in type did not require additional training. (Prior to the recent deregulation, they weren't allowed to self-certify.)
2. Pilots had to break out the manual during an emergency to properly control a system they were not trained to use.
3. The system either did not disengage properly, or else it reengaged automatically, contrary to well-established norms for this aircraft type.
Boeing screwed up, but it also happened because of relaxed oversight. The previous level of oversight seems more appropriate.
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.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
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
The word "Report" has such an authoritative tone. According to the report...
And then you read who wrote the report. Of course they would conclude that their country, their people, their pilots were not at fault.
You see this legal positioning stuff play out over and over.
And all you can do is try to backpedal and say, no, the Ethiopian government isn't a reliable authority on the correct operation of a Boeing airplane. Then the argument goes to, well then who is?
should have bought AirBus
AF 443.
The Paris Air Show lawnmower, AF 296 (And in that one, investigators allegedly altered blackbox data to frame the pilot because heavens no, we can't have FBW impuned in the international spotlight after crashing 1 of 3 at the world's biggest airshow. Vive la France!)
The sad truth is that now Boeing is just as shitty as Airbus, because Boeing now behaves like McDonnel Douglas did. Why? It's Douglas "leadership" that took over Boeing post-merger, and now Boeing is accountant-driven, not engineer-driven. Anytime you subjugate engineering to the beancounters this happens.
I am so dissapointed with Boeing ever since the slippage started on the 787. The rollout for that one was of an empty shell, unlike all other rollouts before it. Shameful. Live it up, shareholders, live it up, your short-term greed fucked up what was America's best, most visible product.
Maybe it's time to buy Sukhoi. Or maybe Lockheed can be persuaded, they've not built any jetliners since the L1011.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
The AD which went out after the Lion Air Crash said disable the MCAS using cutoff switches. What it did not consider is that if the plane is already nose down then the aerodynamic forces are too strong to use the manual wheels to make it nose up. The AD should have specified use your electric trim yoke switches to make the trim up and then cut out the electric trim so MCAS cannot make it nose down again.
Also why is the MCAS triggering 6 minutes into a flight. Takeoff by definition is close to stall. It should be off during takeoff. If this plane cannot takeoff without MCAS then this plane is not safe. This is not a fighter jet where the pilot can eject if the software screws up or the plane goes unstable.
**Life is too short to be serious**
I was in the Navy aboard an aircraft carrier. I worked on the avionics but never serviced or knew about the anti-stall systems.
That said, I do not recall two blades on either side of the nose cones.
It sounds clunky to me. Shit that sticks out is subject to damage. Apparently, the two blades could be out of sync. There is a "double-vote yes," system that indicates when the blades are not reporting the same conditions, and a "disagree," warning light Boeing apparently provided as an "in-app," purchase.
Small-revenue airlines did not opt for the expansion pack and didn't get the fucking memo as to how to deal with a cray cray "AI" system that can fly the goddam plane better than a human.
"Stall," has a well-established definition and whatever method of detection works on other airlines is not the one Boeing uses.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
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.
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.