Ethiopia crash

[StChalky 10]

BBC news has the following article just published, stating some Chinese local carriers have been ordered to ground their 737 Max 8 jets, and Ethiopian has done likewise: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47519929

[ErichB 3,643]

Really unfortunate for Ethiopian Airlines -  this time with more fatal consequences.  I remember when the 787 was first launched they were one of the launch customers.  They flew one into Heathrow and those infamous 1st gen batteries combusted and burnt their aircraft in the aft section.    But Ethiopian Airlines is certainly one of the African airline success stories, with the most modern fleet

New generation technology always brings risks , because that's the way it is. Best wait for investigations than knee jerk the conclusions - and I certainly would take with a pinch of salt anything published by mainstream media.- their commentary on anything relating to aviation is less trustworthy than Mystic Meg's crystal ball

Edited March 11, 2019 by ErichB

[John_Cillis 2,406]

One thing interesting to me in general is I did not realize how many MAX jets were out there already, I guess it has been certified for some time.  In general, I feel a jet, if an engine failure occurs, should give immediately the pilot full authority over the jet, disabling electronic aids like autopilots etc....  I do not know if the MAX jet has a system that overrides the pilot or not, so I am not commenting on the accident so much as wondering what two accidents to the newest jets in the world may be happening, when so many older jets we should hear about falling out of the sky.  I hate to see accidents where the aircraft mfr is at fault alone because of the problems it can cause in a competitive marketplace.  If these accidents were happening to Airbuses, or Tupelovs, or Embraer, I would be worried if they were happening in a string. 

Or maybe, it is just that accidents are so rare that the newest kid on the block like the MAX in an airframe flown so much worldwide is more likely to appear in an accident.  I am just not good at guessing the cause of accidents, like the jack screw accident that happened to one of the MD series, I never would have expected an aircraft to have that challenge.  It was also claimed, although I do not know whether it was verified, that two 737-400 crashes in the US had a sudden roll in common due to full control surface deflection (do not recall whether it was rudder or elevator).

Hopefully this accident will show us something, if it is some design or training issue, or some other unforeseen issue.  It is very rare that accidents get written off to the unexplained, outside of the old Bermuda triangle stories...

John

[jon b 2,047]

19 hours ago, Anders Bermann said:

... I read an article from a British Airways pilot, who said that in some parts of Africa, pilots needed to agree on flight-levels, altitude and navigation / heading, by talking directly to each other - simply because of lacking or missing ATC coverage.

 

(Oh, boy - I probably stuck my head in a hornets-nest here...)

There are countries and regions that you would overfly where there is a flight information service only rather than a full ATC service and so ultimately it would be up to crews to broadcast their positions and co ordinate with each other for separation. For many of these countries it would not be economically viable to set up full ATC, you may actually only be in there airspace for less than 10 minutes for example.

Ive not flown down to Africa for 7 or 8 years now but I believe with the advent of ADS and CPDLC South Africa were starting to handle ATC for large parts of Africa for traffic coming down from Europe.

[Peter Webber 339]

4 hours ago, ErichB said:

 Best wait for investigations than knee jerk the conclusions - and I certainly would take with a pinch of salt anything published by mainstream media.- their commentary on anything relating to aviation is less trustworthy than Mystic Meg's crystal ball

Agree. Remember the initial UK tabloid reporting of LaMia 2933? "Hero pilot dumped fuel before plane crashed into hillside" (or words to that effect).

[Chock 17,769]

On 3/10/2019 at 12:11 PM, zmak said:

Planes a few years old shouldn't be falling out of the sky

Ironically, the opposite is true. It tends to be the older ones which have had all the kinks ironed out which don't fall out of the sky.

Look at the A320 when that first showed up; it had loads of problems in being so new and pushing technological boundaries. DC-10s, same story - needed a redesign. deHavilland Comet also. Boeing 707, same story, MD-11 same, and so on.

Like the saying goes, never buy the Mark 1 of anything (except the Mazda MX-5, definitely buy the Mark 1 of that).

[Ray Proudfoot 8,954]

5 hours ago, jon b said:

There are countries and regions that you would overfly where there is a flight information service only rather than a full ATC service and so ultimately it would be up to crews to broadcast their positions and co ordinate with each other for separation. 

Ive not flown down to Africa for 7 or 8 years now but I believe with the advent of ADS and CPDLC South Africa were starting to handle ATC for large parts of Africa for traffic coming down from Europe.

Hi Jon, I’ve flown to South Africa twice. Once in 2008 and again in 2011. Returning courtesy of BA in 2008 we overflew Libya and I can still remember all the lights in the desert and thinking this would not be a good time for an emergency to be declared with Gadafi being in full lunatic mode at the time. 😜

The second time was Dubai to Durban and sitting on the right side I can remember looking down on Mogadishu. An even worse location to have an emergency! 😳

Fortunately both flights were without incident but there are some scary places in the world you’re only a few miles away from.

[threexgreen 3,139]

10 hours ago, ErichB said:

and I certainly would take with a pinch of salt anything published by mainstream media.- their commentary on anything relating to aviation is less trustworthy than Mystic Meg's crystal ball

I read the Aviation Herald exclusively when it comes to aviation incidents/accidents, when media are reporting an incident my first reaction is to go to AvHerald and read up on what actually happened. Just don't read the comments, they are full of...

Some more mainstream media sites can't even use correct photos, showing pictures of random airplane crashes. One was even showing Asiana SFO accident photos on their report of Sunday's disaster.

Edited March 11, 2019 by threegreen

[IUBrian 151]

I’m curious for the perspective of professional pilots who’ve had an opportunity to look at the admittedly rough flight data of this flight on a couple of points - 

One, one of the points I heard made regarding the Lion Air crash is that regardless of the new MCAS system in the Max, the procedure for an auto trim problem would be exactly the same in the Max as it would be in an older model - MCAS mat be new, but the procedure for addressing the problem Lion Air encountered was not.

The other thing that I curious about is MCAS is only supposed to be active when the flaps are retracted; it seems clear that would likely have been the case with Lion Air based upon speed and altitude, but based on what I’ve seen so far it doesn’t seem as if this Max was that far into its flight before it began exhibiting problems. 

I understand this is speculation but given the wealth of knowledge in this forum I find the educated speculation intriguing. We all understand it’s speculation based upon limited and perhaps inaccurate information, but twice in these forums, with Flight 370 and the Asiana San Francisco crash, the educated speculation in these forums was ahead of the curve in terms of what the actual conclusions turned out to be.

[HighBypass 2,339]

One question I have is why where an excavator and wheeled loader disturbing the crash site so soon after the crash? Or at least that's the way it appeared to me from the footage shown on the BBC...?

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I read a summary of airlines that have the 737Max and I believe all US domestic airlines fully stand behind the aircraft.  I hate to be a conspiracy theorist and I do not blame China for the crash but one thing is obvious--China is angry about our tariffs despite their stealing of our intellectual property thru nefarious corporate mergers and contracts.  China threatened retaliation, and now a reputed air superiority power that knows how to investigate air crashes and airworthiness, that wants their own product in the third world, is grounding their fleet.

I just have more faith in our airlines in the US and their word than the intent of China--not their people mind you, but their economic agenda as it may be to crush us with cheap competition, including airliners made with US technology stolen from the US.  And please do not ask me to prove that, if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck.....  These two crashes have happened in areas where China wants to make inroads and if there is a cause, I blame it likely, since I feel terrorism has been ruled out, on faulty ground maintenance or possibly terrorism in the form of deliberate sabotage.  If it is the latter I hope there is heck to pay, and if I am wrong I will pay heck for being so gladly.  I would rather err about China because I do believe in free trade as our world's path to peace, even lifting of sanctions if they have not worked against countries that were our allies or tried to make friends with us.

One sad thing about air accidents is that personal views (which is what our opinions are on Avsim) will have a political tone as we question Why? and How can we be progressive in keeping this from happening again to any aircraft mfr as countries like Japan, Russia and China try to create a global climate of cooperation in the next gen of airliners after the 737Max and Airbus A350 and 787...

John

[IAhawkeyeDDS 158]

Makes for some interesting day trading opportunities....

 

[Bobsk8 12,728]

Bottom line is the black box should give the cause, and pretty quickly. If runway trim is the problem, then the two recent crashes are most likely related, and the FAA will probably ground the fleet. From what I have read, it looks like altitude was erratic and the aircraft took a steep nose dive. I believe that is what happened on the first crash. 

Edited March 11, 2019 by Bobsk8

[John_Cillis 2,406]

17 minutes ago, IAhawkeyeDDS said:

Makes for some interesting day trading opportunities....

 

In 1987 I met Bill Gates.  I met him just the day before the big stock market crash and I have messaged him since to remind him that I knew him when he was worth a billion one day, and "only" 750 million the next.  That is why I do not by stock, because I am not Bill and he knows it, nor do I want to have his wealth to spend, because one would have to have a full time staff as he and his wife do just to spend what one cannot spend in 100 lifetimes.  He was and is such a kind person, his staff gave me Visual Basic for free because they were low on Windows 3.x programmers back then two years later after a small DOS program I wrote went viral, kind of sort of. 

I wrote my first program, a shareware program called CDBase, but I distributed it via the old BBS's or AOL, cannot remember which, because the web as we know it had not taken off in those days.  I wrote it in DOS and rewrote it in VB and used the same database so my DOS users could upgrade to my win program and not have to re input all their data.  As windows systems grew more powerful, the program, written before my learning of SQL, grew incredibly fast due to the Random Access file I created for it, just one was all I needed.  The secret to Random Access file programming is when the file gets big it gets inefficient and it cannot be just simply resized.  A well written random access file program stays efficient by marking deleted records as deleted internally without removing the records--you simply re write them with new data in sequence if you add new data.

I still have the source sitting on my computer I built 20 years ago, in my ex wife's closet, but I do not remember the password to my OS and would have to pay someone, a tech's worst nightmare, lol, to get the data I need from that drive....  But I have the code "up here" n my head so one day I may just release it again as a standalone DOS program for Win 10 and beyond.  It was unique because in addition to searching by music artist name, it could search by media type (CD/MP3, Vinyl, or Cassette -- 8 track excluded, LOL)...

I digress but sometimes it helps to have a distraction in discussions about air disasters and their physical and market aftermath. 

We need to remember that Boeing can take care of itself, and as we all do, the more important thing is that souls were lost...

 

[Holdit 551]

8 hours ago, Chock said:

Ironically, the opposite is true. It tends to be the older ones which have had all the kinks ironed out which don't fall out of the sky.

Look at the A320 when that first showed up; it had loads of problems in being so new and pushing technological boundaries. DC-10s, same story - needed a redesign. deHavilland Comet also. Boeing 707, same story, MD-11 same, and so on.

Like the saying goes, never buy the Mark 1 of anything (except the Mazda MX-5, definitely buy the Mark 1 of that).

I learned to drive in a Mk 1 Ford Fiesta. Great little car. 

When air accidents occur now I prefer to let the speculation go in one ear and out the other. For example, after Air France 447 the talk was all about thunderstorms and turbulence knocking an airliner out of the sky. The investigation showed that no, it was a pilot stick-and-rudder error. The Manx Air crash at Cork some gave rise to talk of the prevailing fog and the pilot trying to land a third time when he should have diverted. Lo and behold the investigation showed that the cause was the engines delivering unequal amounts of power, the throttles being managed by the PNF, and maintenance being one of those things the slipped through the cracksc because Manx Air was a Virtual Airline (not as the term tends to be understood around here ). It sold the tickets, but didn't actually have any aircraft, or ...er...pilots.

So to the speculation I say, "yeah maybe" and "we'll see".

 

Edited March 12, 2019 by Holdit