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All 157 passengers of an Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 died today, an accident that looks similar to the Indonesian Lion Air crash which caused 189 victims in October 2018.
The Ethiopian Boeing 737, a brand new plane, lost contact six minutes after departure from Bole International Airport; the 737 departing from Jakarta had done the same twelve minutes after taking off.
In both cases the weather was optimal and the pilots were experts. Ethiopian Airlines has a good safety record.
Both planes belong to the MAX variant, which features a "Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System" software to increase safety. Depending on sensor input, such software lowers the nose of the airplane, to prevent stalling. Investigations into the first disaster suggest the pilot might have had trouble with the automatic systems over this issue.
The two black boxes (with cockpit voice and flight data respectively), are likely to be recovered.
Sources:
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/ethiopian-airlines-crash-news-latest-death-toll-addis-ababa-nairobi-boeing-737-max-a8816296.html
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/03/10/second-crash-of-new-boeing-737-max-8-aggravates-safety-concerns/
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday March 11 2019, @06:21PM
From what little I know and have read, the angle-of-attack sensors seem to have problems and get replaced. And pitot tube problems. If the MCAS is getting bad information it might make very bad decisions and nosedive. There's a lot of finger-pointing going on, including whether the pilots knew about the systems and how to disable them. We've now seen several plane crashes caused by some kind of automation that contradicts the pilots.
My point: it needs to be very easy for a pilot to override any autopilot. I'm okay with automation sounding alarms, suggesting corrective measures, but the pilot may know for sure that the automation is making bad decisions and it should not fight the pilots. Also, indicators need to be more prominent. Some crashes have occurred because automation was partially disabled, but the pilots didn't understand this. Both Boeing and Airbus have had these problems and crashes.