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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: 5, Informative) by legont on Tuesday March 12 2019, @12:01AM
The issue here is that Boeing used new more economical engines, which are bigger. They did not fit under the wing where engines used to be so Boeing moved them forward. That introduced very undesirable flight characteristics such as a sudden departure stall and similar. Basically, under certain conditions, the airplane becomes unstable and hard to fly. Boeing "fixed" this problem using software that is supposedly never allows the airplane to get into those dangerous conditions. That software fails to address all the situations. Also, as with any software, it can't reliably work when sensors are faulty.
That was a simplified version, mind you. The bottom line is that the airplane was intentionally made less safe to save money. It is not fixable. We'll have to accept the aditional risk.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.