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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: 1) by Luke on Tuesday March 12 2019, @02:45AM (1 child)
Hold up, as yet there are no particular pointers [yet] towards this being an MCAS issue, or there being any contributory problem with this aircraft.
Whilst it could yet be the case that MCAS has some input I'd suggest you might want to also consider the crew experience as a possible factor (subject to confirmation of posted data purported to be from Ethiopian Airlines).
In most countries a pilot cannot fly commercially without first obtaining a Commercial Pilots License (CPL), this generally takes ~200hrs of flight time - much of which is training flights - and many hours of ground school. It's been said that the First Officer in ET301 had just 200 hours and although unclear whether this was 'on type', or total time. If it's true then, coupled with a Captain who was also reasonably new to his position, it may be that this wasn't the best combination to deal with any untoward events...
As with many disasters it's rarely just one specific thing that's the direct cause, usually it's an accumulation of several factors or events that eventually lead to the failure or crash. At this point the detail is very sketchy so to leap to the conclusion that MCAS is the only factor - without even any confirmation or real detail yet on Lion Air - isn't necessarily supported by the present facts, few as they are.
I would expect those that investigate the crash to consider all evidence openly and without bias, in particular they shouldn't [won't] be inclined to groupthink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink [wikipedia.org] around MCAS, because it could be something else, or several things together.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Tuesday March 12 2019, @10:00AM
Granted (maybe). There are, however, multiple similarities with Lion Air given what we know from reported ATC comms and FR24 data - all of which should be taken with same pinch of salt as reports of low hours pilots until confirmation.
* apparent difficulties in pitch control shortly after takeoff (FR24 altitude / vertical speed data - some of which looks eerily similar to the Lion Air flight)
* pilots reported unreliable airspeed indication
* pilots reported flight control difficulties
* pilots requested return, turned back (or started to)
* followed by high speed impact