Ethiopian Airlines Crash; Another 737 Max

Checkout_my_Six said:
knowledge is key.....not that the situation wasn't a handful....but the jump seat guy knew what to do and instructed them.
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The jumpseat guy was able to see what was going on. It's amazing how big your field of view becomes when you sitting, observing rather than actively flying.

Checkout_my_Six said:
Runaway Stab/trim is a common training item....that should be ingrained from training, not a check list item. I bet even Sluggo knows that....
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Like someone listed below, stabilizer malfunctions are maybe covered once in initial training (after these accidents, it will probably be covered again in a upcoming recurrent). Of the four aircraft I'm typed in, Runaway Stabilizer Trim was a "memory item" for one (and a half) of them (B777). It isn't on the MD-11 or B757. On the B707/KC-135 it wasn't a "Boldface" procedure per se, but since we didn't have a trim brake at the time, crews treated it as such and briefed it as if it were a Boldface procedure.

Checkout_my_Six said:
Most guys know, blind folded, where the stab trim switch/breaker is located....
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Switch, yes. CB... I have no idea. I'd have to look that up.

Tantalum said:
..and not just any pilots, but real skilled pilots who stayed calm and could handle a serious situation. I'm quite sure there is no checklist procedure for what to do when turbine blades go through the wing, some real proper aviation skills were at play there!! that's why we still need a pilot in the cockpit, and not just a system's master or rote checklist reader
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I think I touched on this earlier, and it may be counter-intuitive, but in most abnormals in a big jet, you want the rote checklist reader. What you don't want is one guy to go off script and start playing Tommy Toggleswitch and start creating his own solution to a problem. It's all part of CRM. The works together, off the checklist, as a team to solve the problem. I know that no matter what FO I'm flying with that day, if we have a problem, the checklist is going to be the same. Every time. It's consistent, safe, and predictable. All things that ou want when you are handling a problem. What I don't want is some guy that think he knows better than the checklist and starts going off on his own procedure, or skipping ahead. That's when bad things happen.

Yes, there is the fraction of the percent of the time that you may need to improvise and create a new procedure or go "off script" (ala UA232 or US1549), And for those corner cases, you want a pilot who can think outside the box and problem solve, but for every Sioux City and Hudson River, I can probably find multiple instances where not using the checklist made things worse rather than better.
 
Greg Bockelman said:
99.9999% of the passengers have no clue if they are getting in an Airbus or a Boeing, much less what model.
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:rolleyes:
Hyperbole much?

That then would equate to basically one person in a million or in the US roughly 325 people who do have a clue. I bet there are more than that on this board alone.
 
Greg Bockelman said:
Well, that isn’t exactly the point. It was just a demonstration of how to stop a runaway trim. It’s kind of a parody because you can use your hand to stop it.
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Yes, I know what it was meant to be but it was done as a result of the issues with MCAS so it should have been done nose down. Satire is best when done with as much truth or accuracy as possible. That’s just my opinion and I realize some folks may just be more easily amused.
 
Sluggo63 said:
The jumpseat guy was able to see what was going on. It's amazing how big your field of view becomes when you sitting, observing rather than actively flying.
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And to me that is the biggest takeaway and only certainty to the success of the one flight, not that any of the three pilots on board were that much better than the ones that failed.
 
Tantalum said:
I think the distinction is more fine than that.. at least in my case I believe hours are a good macro level litmus for general experience and "this person has survived this long, and earned this much experience" - but it's definitely not the end all and be all

A 500 hr pilot who does a lot of night and IMC flying and accumulated that time in 2-3 years is going to be much safer than the 1,000 hr guy who took 30 years to earn that and the extent of his flying is weekend VFR sightseeing and lunch trips

I am not saying a 200 hr 737 pilot is necessarily safe, and as everyone on here knows I'm putting 95% of the blame of this accident on the pilots, but I think a bigger topic of issue would be what kind of training are these guys receiving
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I completely agree with you, on all counts. There seem to be two schools of argument against what I'm saying: that hours mean nothing, and then the strawman that I'm trying to say hours mean everything, which is not what I'm saying. And you can have a 5,000-hour ATP who's done nothing but turn knobs for ten years all of the sudden face an emergency and crap the bed, which is what I think happened with Lion Air.
 
LongRoadBob said:
They had a third man. A jump seat, deadheading pilot. I read they too were struggling, but having the extra pair of eyes, hands, and not fighting all the things mentioned by sluggo, he could take a breath and see it.

Oh, and also...what kind of logic is that? If one or two or even more crews, on a GOOD day, manage to not crash we're all good?
You can probably throw a hundred people off a ten story building and I bet one or even two would survive. That doesn't mean its a good idea to hop off a ten story building.
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I think the key in that situation wasn't the third man per se, but rather that the third man happened to know what the hell he was doing. If I'm understanding it correctly, he was from the UK. Furthermore, once the problem was mitigated, the crew elected to continue the flight with the stick shaker going the entire time, rather than turning around and landing back at their point of departure. Which tells me everything I need to know about the competence and judgement of the crew, along with the safety culture of Lion Air (and perhaps all of Indonesian commercial aviation for that matter).
 
Tantalum said:
Did you see the comments? The drive by media got the job done, quite well, before the official findings are out. Mission accomplished.
View attachment 72878


It could be the algorithms on my Google News feed but all I've seen is doom and gloom about automation and Boeing. Ask any average person if they feel comfortable getting on a Boeing and they'll say "oh isn't that the Max thing that the computer crashed? No I'd rather not fly it" - just the comments on any of the article show people on a flaming hysterics
-I am sure the PR machines there are in full crank, but, since they don't actually know the hard causes yet they also have to be careful from a CYA perspective what they put out there. The general media gets away with putting inaccurate, speculative, and bias'd stories out there free of retribution.. companies and private entities aren't awarded that same freedom


Thanks. It was a genuine question, and I received a genuine answer!


I'm pretty sure Boeing execs have flown their products, including the Max 8. Funny to think that a world may exist where Boeing execs would not fly their own product. Reminds me of the Microsoft presentation I saw once (given by Microsoft) and the presenter was using a Macbook Pro. On a serious note, I read somewhere that the original Boeing 747 PW engines were having stall issues.. PW kept saying it was a non issue, so Boeing took the PW folks up and put the plane in a high AoA environment and I think they ended up flaming out something like 3 of the 4 engines to give the PW guys a proper fright. The issues were fixed after this. **I can't find the source, but I swear I saw this story recounted by the test pilots in either a Science, or Smithsonian, or History channel thing on the 747
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The media coverage of this has been abhorrent, and I am not a blame-the-media type. What I find hilarious is the people who are so scared of Boeing automation that they're going to get on Airbus. :rolleyes:
 
Sluggo63 said:
The jumpseat guy was able to see what was going on. It's amazing how big your field of view becomes when you sitting, observing rather than actively flying.
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I even noted this in the little bug smashers we fly. When I was working on my instrument, my CFII had another student at the same stage, and at one point in the training he told us to fly with each other for a couple of weeks then we'd each get back to flying with the CFII.

It's pretty damned amazing how you can detect even the smallest of deviations from GS, the DME arc, altitude, heading, whatever, when you job is to sit in the right seat observe and safety pilot. We hammered each other without mercy those two weeks, and ended up being partners in the Mooney. After getting back with our instructor on an individual basis, it wasn't long until we were both ready for our checkrides.
 
LongRoadBob said:
This is what I would have written, if I were smarter, knew more, and had more experience (or ANY)...
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You’ve posted a couple of times on this thread (and elsewhere) making light of the fact you’re a student pilot. You don’t need to do that, man. Ask your questions. State your opinion. There’s a huge range of experience here, but we’re all pilots, and every one of us is better for the discussion. :)
 
kayoh190 said:
You’ve posted a couple of times on this thread (and elsewhere) making light of the fact you’re a student pilot. You don’t need to do that, man. Ask your questions. State your opinion. There’s a huge range of experience here, but we’re all pilots, and every one of us is better for the discussion. :)
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Ok, got it. And thanks. That quote was just me totally impressed with the writing, clear points, experience behind it, but in general I do tend to point it out too much that I am just a student at the moment.

In other threads too. It’s just making the point that I really respect the experience here, and if I join in about technical flight aspects, it’s not like I think my opinion is backed up by experience, but yeah, I’m 62 have a lot of life and other technical experience, and also my opinions already on checklists (memorize but still refer to the checklist) etc.

Thanks though, I will stop prefacing posts with that from now on :)
 
LongRoadBob said:
And it is looking more and more like Boeing was negligent. Not the pilots fault.
Design and implementation issues.
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Is it "not the pilot's fault" if they could have saved the day with proper action? Remember that if the system acts up, it was because there was already some sensor failure.
 
LongRoadBob said:
And it is looking more and more like Boeing was negligent. Not the pilots fault.
Design and implementation issues.
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I've been led to believe that crashes usually involve a chain of events (known as an "accident chain"), and that breaking any one link in the chain has the potential to prevent the accident.
 
LongRoadBob said:
And it is looking more and more like Boeing was negligent. Not the pilots fault.
Design and implementation issues.
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I don’t think there is anything in this article that convinced me its any closer to knowing whose at fault. Still sounds like a lot of speculation.

Let’s see the FDR data.... Let’s hear what happened in the cockpit. Let’s see the maintenance records of this airframe. Still a lot left to uncover before we bury Boeing as the sole negligent party.

TJ


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Could someone more familiar with 737 operations describe if pulling flaps out at 450agl is normal flight operations? Especially at a high altitude airport? I thought it was flaps five takeoff with flaps 1 for the low speed part of the climb until your cleared to higher.

Taken from:
The final minutes of Ethiopian Airlines’ doomed Boeing 737 MAX - The Wall Street Journal

https://apple.news/A9iJZr4dxTRq4Gsr4J_3dZQ

Something almost immediately went wrong. At 8:39, as the jet reached an altitude of 8,100 feet above sea level, just 450 feet above ground, its nose began to pitch down.

TJ


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I thought MCAS was inhibited with flaps, so this would indeed suggest that the plane was clean.. the system was likely busted before hand, and raising the flaps uninhibited it. Remember on a prior flight it was defective also and they flew all the way with the trim shut off and the stall stick shaker going

Still need not end in fatality though
 
Maybe they forgot to put set flaps for takeoff, and took off flap 0.

Not that I'm speculating, just postulating. ;)
 
Tj1376 said:
Could someone more familiar with 737 operations describe if pulling flaps out at 450agl is normal flight operations? Especially at a high altitude airport? I thought it was flaps five takeoff with flaps 1 for the low speed part of the climb until your cleared to higher.
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We use flaps 1 as standard unless more flap is needed for the conditions. But regardless, there is no situation where we retract the flaps at less than 1000' AGL.
 
LongRoadBob said:
And it is looking more and more like Boeing was negligent. Not the pilots fault.
Design and implementation issues.
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I haven't been able to read that article yet. I posted the link in case someone else could see it.

I'm still waiting for more info. If what others are saying, the system activated at an altitude where flaps should have been extended and inhibited MCAS, what happened? Did the crew retract flaps too early? Did the crew take off with no flaps? Was there a bad sensor that told MCAS flaps were up when they weren't? Was there a fault in MCAS that caused it to activate when everything else told it not to?
 
Tj1376 said:
Could someone more familiar with 737 operations describe if pulling flaps out at 450agl is normal flight operations? Especially at a high altitude airport? I thought it was flaps five takeoff with flaps 1 for the low speed part of the climb until your cleared to higher.
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We use an 800' acceleration altitude for most departures (NADP-2). NADP-1 departures accelerate at 3,000'. At acceleration altitude, you lower the nose and start to accelerate. Flaps are retracted on-schedule but that takes a little bit of time to accelerate while you're still climbing ~1,500 fpm. At that high of an altitude airport the acceleration would be slower.

I couldn't read the article to which you linked as I don't subscribe to the WSJ.

MauleSkinner said:
Maybe they forgot to put set flaps for takeoff, and took off flap 0.
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That has certainly happened before but it would result in a takeoff warning horn from the first application of takeoff power or yet another, completely separate, failure would have prevented the horn (we test the horn on taxi-out).

Matthew said:
What system triggers the stick shaker and why would only one activate?
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There are two AoA vanes, each feeding data to their respective side flight control computer (FCC). The FCC that is being fed an AoA which is at, or near, a stall will activate the stick shaker on it's side (Left>Capt, Right>F/O).
 
Matthew said:
Seems like the common denominator is AOA sensors? (and crew that didn't recognize or react to the MCAS symptoms?)
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Not all Max’s were configured the same; as understand it according to an NYT,

“Boeing previously charged extra for two features in the cockpit: the angle of attack indicator, which showed pilots the readings from the angle of attack sensors; and the disagree light, which notified pilots if the readings from the two sensors were at odds with one another.”

And WSJ:

“Most didn’t have visible cockpit warnings that would have alerted pilots to a malfunctioning sensor...”

So, if you have AOA sensors that disagree, you may not have that information available if your company didn’t buy the option.

But you sure as hell will get the pusher/shaker and MCAS, whether you need it or not.
 
Matthew said:
Seems like the common denominator is AOA sensors? ...
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Apparently, which in itself is odd. Thirty years in airline maintenance from 727’s to 787’s and I can’t recall the last time I replaced a faulty AOA vane, they just don’t fail very often in general.
 
TCABM said:
But you sure as hell will get the pusher/shaker and MCAS, whether you need it or not.
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The 737, unlike some other airliners, does not have a stick-pusher. They all have stick shakers and the MAX have MCAS.

Silvaire said:
Apparently, which in itself is odd. Thirty years in airline maintenance from 727’s to 787’s and I can’t recall the last time I replaced a faulty AOA vane, they just don’t fail very often in general.
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I've had one bad AoA in my airline career going back to 1996 (the first time I flew an airliner with AoA vanes).
 
I doubt they want to release anything and would be willing to bet they have all the answers
 
Was just thinking about some of the up thread discussion about horizontal stabilizer blowback, and how once the airspeed got beyond the envelope the pilots could no longer raise the nose, no matter how hard they may’ve pulled.

So I wondered: if that situation occurred, and stabilizer blowback set in such that the nose dropped, and speed increased, which caused more drop, which led to more speed, and on and on... Is there any action that could save an airplane in that situation?

I know this is some crazy stuff, and the flight crew is probably overwhelmed at this point, but could a plane in this situation be saved by rolling inverted to reduce the descent and maybe gain a little altitude or get the speed back under control? (Crazy negative G notwithstanding) Is there some other action that could get the aircraft slowed to a controllable speed?
 
WillFly4Food said:
Was just thinking about some of the up thread discussion about horizontal stabilizer blowback, and how once the airspeed got beyond the envelope the pilots could no longer raise the nose, no matter how hard they may’ve pulled.

So I wondered: if that situation occurred, and stabilizer blowback set in such that the nose dropped, and speed increased, which caused more drop, which led to more speed, and on and on... Is there any action that could save an airplane in that situation?

I know this is some crazy stuff, and the flight crew is probably overwhelmed at this point, but could a plane in this situation be saved by rolling inverted to reduce the descent and maybe gain a little altitude or get the speed back under control? (Crazy negative G notwithstanding) Is there some other action that could get the aircraft slowed to a controllable speed?
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Lol rolling inverted . . . paging Denzel Washington to the cockpit! I would imagine the critical problem with anything drastic like rolling inverted is the lack altitude they had. I’m sure there are a number of things they could do to slow a descent like deploy spoilers or similar drag-inducing components if this was a problem that occurred at 20K’ AGL instead of 1,500’.
 
WillFly4Food said:
I know this is some crazy stuff, and the flight crew is probably overwhelmed at this point, but could a plane in this situation be saved by rolling inverted to reduce the descent and maybe gain a little altitude or get the speed back under control? (Crazy negative G notwithstanding) Is there some other action that could get the aircraft slowed to a controllable speed?
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Alaska 261 tried that as a last-ditch effort, and were unsuccessful, starting from 18,000 feet.

Ethiopian never got above 1,000. They wouldn't be doing a ballistic roll, because they couldn't get the nose up. I doubt there's much lift from the fuselage at knife edge, even if the pilots knew enough to rudder the nose up. They would get a bit of upward energy from thrust if they did so, but needless to say the 737 lacks an inverted fuel system, so I'm not sure the engines would continue to operate.

The best chance they would have is for one pilot to execute a full 360º roll, and the other to attempt to fix the trim system while they were in the inverted half of the roll. I don't see them making it with any significant time spent inverted, and even just rolling it around might cause a disaster anyway.

I hope some of our 737 pilots ask to try this next time they're in the sim. :D
 
I heard a news report this morning where the pilots turned off the MCAS in an effort to fix the problem, that didn't work, and then they turned it back on again. Maybe thinking it would reset itself.
 
Hmm. An unnamed source that cannot be confirmed. At least according to CNN. Let me know when someone is reporting something concrete.
 
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