Another 737-8 MAX plunges down with no surviors

Maybe it's time to ground all 737 MAX aircraft, or just stop flying them in protest!

 

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-10/ethiopian-airlines-flight-crashes-6-minutes-after-takeoff-160-killed

 

 

A Boeing 737 MAX 8 owned by Ethiopian Airlines seemingly dropped out of the sky on Sunday not far from the Addis Abba airport where it took off on a flight to Nairobi, Kenya, killing nearly 160 passengers and crew (there were no survivors) and raising serious questions about the jet model's safety.

 

https://apnews.com/537d562d9fd94cbd86e708dbb2ed3a55

 

 

It was not clear what caused the plane to go down in clear weather. The pilot sent out a distress call and was given clearance to return to the airport, the airline’s CEO told reporters.

 

 

The Boeing 737-8 MAX operated by Ethiopian Airlines was the same model as a Lion Air jet that plunged into the Java Sea in October just minutes after taking off from Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital. That crash killed 189 people.

 

The broken MCAS is an perfect example of how dangerous automation and relying on computer scripts can be, hidden undocumented features running inside the computer, no obvious way to disable it, that's exactly where everything's going with mobile phones, the whole android OS is designed in a way applications are meant to be just sleeping in background activated at will and are doing things behind your back.

Says there was an intense fire as the aircraft hit the ground, so does that mean it was already on fire? The vertical speed was also unstable after take-off.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-47513508

For the current crash it is too early to speculate, but on the Indonesia crash I feel this article might have some merit: https://slate.com/technology/2019/03/ethiopian-air-crash-where-did-boeing-go-wrong-with-the-737-max.html

 

There is a case to make the larger engines changed the natural balance of the 737, but of course we cannot know if it has anything at all to do with teh Ethiopian crash, could be completely unrelated.

 

I fly a lot (as a passenger) and I must confess I would feel very uneasy to board a 737 MAX today. We need more clarity.

This article gives a pretty good description of whats going on with this MCAS system...

 

https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/what-is-the-boeing-737-max-maneuvering-characteristics-augmentation-system-mcas-jt610/

More drama. Turkish and Norwegian 737 MAX 8 are Returning To Base mid-flight.

 

 

 

Norwegian's 737's are grounded. Maybe thats why?

 

Edit: 737 MAX 8 is now grounded in Europe. Boeing still has full confidence in their A/C. :D

 

It's a disaster!

Edited March 12, 2019 by Svend_Dellepude

Nope, would not fly on one. The “hidden/undocumented features” scares the sh!t out of me.

 

The pilots MUST know how the controls work, without any magical mystical shenanigans going on.

 

RIP everyone who died.

Yea I do not understand Boeing's argument that the pilots don't need to know about the MCAS's automatic trim thing. You'd think "plane's flight control system can spontaneously change trim, use your own trim input to disengage" would be really important for the pilot to know...

Maybe it's time to ground all 737 MAX aircraft, or just stop flying them in protest!

 

 

The broken MCAS is an perfect example of how dangerous automation and relying on computer scripts can be, hidden undocumented features running inside the computer, no obvious way to disable it, that's exactly where everything's going with mobile phones, the whole android OS is designed in a way applications are meant to be just sleeping in background activated at will and are doing things behind your back.

 

 

Na it's pretty obvious what to do. Below the throttles there are two switches that will fix any runaway trim issues, labeled "Stab Trim Cut Out." Pretty self explanatory... not to mention the electric trim switch will inhibit the auto trim for several seconds or so to figure out what is going on and flip the cutout switches and use the hand crank to trim manually.

 

 

 

I fly the Max 8 pretty frequently outta KMIA to KLGA and KJFK, it's a pretty nice plane, you hardly know you aren't flying and NG besides the extra screens and a few missing lights and switches. I know the back is a little more cramped with the aft lavs so it's pretty obvious to the pax and FA's :D

 

 

 

Now, not to knock Ethiopian or anything but the FAA mandated extra training in the US for just this type of malfunction with the MCAS, which I did back in December. I got no clue what kinda training they do in Africa beyond what a few buddies have told me from flying there...it's not flattering. Maybe they didn't do that at Ethiopian yet or something for some reason.

 

 

 

This knee jerk reaction isn't necessary until we have the facts of the accident in...but you know the media now a days, why wait for those. If it's something else structural or another type of flight control issue sure, ground them all but if it turns out to be similar to the Lion Air issue, it's not some unrecoverable software bug that's gonna drop you out of the sky.

This article gives a pretty good description of whats going on with this MCAS system...

 

https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/what-is-the-boeing-737-max-maneuvering-characteristics-augmentation-system-mcas-jt610/

 

 

Wow...

I though everybody was overreacting, as usual.

Now I'm not sure anymore...

 

 

Edit: I see I cross-posted with Cool-Hand. It seems that the article was also going a bit overboard with the alleged secrecy by Boeing. If the FAA required additional training, then that doesn't match with sentences in the article like "the company (Boeing) has decided against disclosing more details" and similar statements.

Edited March 13, 2019 by Zius

The FAA didn’t mandate training until after the first crash. They approved the design and considered that, from the pilot’s POV, it was fundamentally the same.

 

I don’t know if the two cutoff switches were installed OEM, or after the first crash. There are US pilots reports about wonky/odd control inputs.

 

African aviation is somewhat lacking in current safety standards, imho...but this seems to be a problem with the design.

The cutoff switches were there from the very first 737-100 till today. Regarding Ethiopian Airlines, this is one of the very few airlines from Africa which is up to the safety standards European airlines have. The cause is yet far away from known, so I do not see how you draw the design fault conclusion.

Current reporting has it that the Ethiopian aircraft had vertical excursions after takeoff , and the president of the airline referred to "flight control issues" .

There is an arab saying that "trust comes on foot and leaves on a horse". Boeing is learning the hard way that in this age trust leaves by plane instead!

 

It is not overreacting but just sensible caution to ground the planes until we know more after 350 people die in the span of 4 months.

Well, Trump issued an executive order to ground all of them (at least in the US), on top of Boeing and FAA coming to an agreement for this extraordinary measure.

 

 

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6805505/Trump-grounds-Boeing-737-Max-planes-effectively-immediately-crash.html

 

 

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-13/faa-alone-world-canada-orders-grounding-boeing-737-max-8s

 

 

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8632905/boeing-737-max-planes-grounded-airport-delays-travel-chaos-ethiopia-crash/

 

 

Edited March 14, 2019 by Worrazen