zoom321 wrote:

Boeing is more concerned with how the share price will react tomorrow than grounding & fixing 737Max.

What exactly are they going to fix in that grounding that would've prevented this crash?

Oh wait, you can't tell us that... because you (nor anyone else) knows what caused it, or what even primarily contributed to the cause.
Yet you're calling for a grounding, and chastising a corporation for doing exactly what a corporation was meant to do: uphold fiduciary duties to its owners.

Brilliant.

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/artic ... 37-456488/

Loss of the Ethiopian AirlinesBoeing 737 Max 8, just a few minutes after take-off, is unlikely to allay disquiet over the re-engined type which emerged during the probe into a Lion AirMax 8 accident.


Meteorological data from Addis Ababa around the time of the accident indicates good visibility and no adverse weather conditions.

Gesendet von meinem SM-G950F mit Tapatalk

I think a difference with the Lion Air crash is that there might be quite a few Europeans in this flight.

If Boeing does not do anything, maybe the EU should ban the 737Max from flying in Europe as a preventive measure.

MD80Ttail wrote:

-or- let’s ground Lion Air and Ethiopian Airways until the crash can be figured out. Makes more sense. They have crashed a whole lot of planes and killed a lot of people so until we know just ground them.

They have? Really...

United Airlines have had more incidents and deaths than ET in the same timeframe, Lion has had one major crash in 16 years of operation. Heck, KLM caused more deaths in One accident than Lion and ET together have in their lifetime.

https://t.co/Qo2lqSMxPO

The crash crater, absolutely nothing left of the aircraft. Very high speed impact.

Seems I dont know how to attach images directly, see link.

Again just ground Ethiopian and Lion Air. Looking at crash percentages that’s a better argument than grounding the Max. (Sarcasm). But that’s essentially the argument pro grounding folks are making. Why don’t they make the argument to ground the airlines. Even better ground all flights in Africa and Indonesia. That’s where the problem lies. We haven’t had a first world Max crash. The US hasn’t had a pax plane crash in over 10 years and I can’t even remember the last mainline plane to crash.

MCAS strikes again?

This is...deeply disturbing. It's one thing to have an electronic system that aids an already stable aircraft...but the MAX8 seems to be the commercial equivalent of a military aircraft with relaxed stability...the difference being the MAX8 has been released to commercial airlines with either a breakdown in training, manufacturing, engineering or all of the above.

Bottom line? This is bad.

I make no bones about my passion for Airbus aircraft and I fly the A320 commercially. It has had its share of issues too...but the MCAS issue is poorly documented, poorly understood and above all, the stability of the aircraft has seemingly been undermined by the larger. LEAP and more forward mounting. At least the A320 can revert to manual law and is still stable...that doesn't appear to be the case for the 737MAX.

SteinarN wrote:

https://t.co/Qo2lqSMxPO

The crash crater, absolutely nothing left of the aircraft. Very high speed impact.

Seems I dont know how to attach images directly, see link.

Here is the photo



https://twitter.com/AirportWebcams/stat ... 97026?s=20

Wow. That’s surreal. Must have been near vertical dive. Horrible.

The clues so far to what happened:

- Unstable vertical speed. While climbing it lost around 500ft of elevation before climbing again and eventually crashed.
- It was a high energy crash as the photo suggests.

Sorry this happened

For the aircraft to create a crater like this I would say it is safe to assume the aircraft must at some point have reached a height AGL of significantly more than a couple hundred feet. I would say more like several thousands feet AGL.

KL785 wrote:

Seems consistent to me.

Apart from the altitude issue, that's with the speed? Close to 400 kts less than 1000 ft AGL seems excessive.

That is an interesting point. The Lionair went pretty fast too, as they got a stall warning and probably wanted to add more margine to stall speed be on the safe side as the stick shaker went off.
Maybe not a MCAS-event, but false stall warnings. The Lionair had the stall warning going from liftoff, the MCAS problem only kicked in when the flaps where retracted. at 1000 feet agl, wouldn`t the flaps still be down, so no MCAS problems? Ok, 400knots is probably not the speed to have flaps still down.

But at a high elevation airfield with high ambient temps, if you get stick shakers, you probably hesitate to climb further, as climbing is not a good idea if you are in a potential stall approaching flight regime and you are running the unreliable airspeed checklist?

So it could be like this: bad AOA-unit/pitots, stall warning at takeoff from high alt airport, cautious to climb running UAS checklist, adding speed to migitate the potential stall issue and approaching high terrain without willing to climb due to stall warnings?

AV Herald had some photos and info up as well....

I can't find it right now but has there been any comparison of the radar data from both the Lionair and ET accidents? It's a tad creepy that this plane took its first flight on the day the LionAir plane crashed.

Do we have any info what the flight was communicating to ATC? Apologies if I missed that the thread is moving fast.

log0008 wrote:

FR24 knows when an aircraft is on the ground and reports it as 0 feet not if you were to take it as AGL the graph would say the aircraft went from 0 to 8000ft in less than 1 minute, completely impossible.

Actually to put this to bed, according to the raw data it went from 0 to 7200ft in less than 2 seconds. As someone else stated, we're looking at a smoothened plot, as the display is designed to cater to a flight of 1-17hrs.

How could this be CFIT if the plane flew 6 minutes at 1000ft AGL? Unless I'm getting something mixed up regarding the data we have it certainly looks like some kind of problem existed that prevented the aircraft from climbing a lot.

As for all the speculations, the Lion Air crash really has a similar profile, however it's way too early to tell if it's similar in nature or not. Also ET409, which was mentioned several times above, happened at night and near a major storm. This accident happened in daylight during what seems like good weather. Once again this accident happened just a couple of hours ago, so all the speculation is 100% unfounded.

Just heard on NYC news radio that there were no survivors. ✝

The photo above looks a bit strange to me. Just few hours after the crash it should be damn hot to stand there. Also I don’t see any fire or smoke.

[threeid][/threeid]

Finn350 wrote:

There are 350 Boeing 737 MAX delivered as of January 31, 2019. Even if this crash is MCAS related, grounding the fleet will be a difficult decision for the FAA. There is a procedure how to recover the aircraft from the MCAS fault, not to mention the huge inconvenience the grounding would cause to the travelling public.

40 years ago, the FAA did just that with the DC-10, with 138 grounded in the USA after AA191 crashed.

A320FlyGuy wrote:

MCAS strikes again?

This is...deeply disturbing. It's one thing to have an electronic system that aids an already stable aircraft...but the MAX8 seems to be the commercial equivalent of a military aircraft with relaxed stability...the difference being the MAX8 has been released to commercial airlines with either a breakdown in training, manufacturing, engineering or all of the above.

Bottom line? This is bad.

I make no bones about my passion for Airbus aircraft and I fly the A320 commercially. It has had its share of issues too...but the MCAS issue is poorly documented, poorly understood and above all, the stability of the aircraft has seemingly been undermined by the larger. LEAP and more forward mounting. At least the A320 can revert to manual law and is still stable...that doesn't appear to be the case for the 737MAX.

Those are exactly my thoughts.
(And before I get ridiculed, I have been involved in aviation for more than thirty years including piloting - my profile is years old and has not been updated).

I was also thinking that inherent stability managed by software is more akin to the fighter jet world. It does worry me that an airliner uses software to mask some level of instability and this clearly was a significant factor in the loss of the Lion Air B738Max a few months ago.

Today's accident is also very worrying. The data already available, in particular vertical speed and altitude show abnormal fluctuations from very shortly after take off. It appears to me at this early stage that the crew were dealing with a control issue. Weather and visibility were good and it was daylight, so I don't see similarities with the ETH BEY B738 crash where crew had loss of situational awareness in IMC and at night..

So JT610 made it 13 minutes in flight, and this one (ET302) made it - maybe 3 minutes? The other ET crash (ET409) took place minutes after crash as well - determined later to be pilot error.

While two MAX crashes in just a few months is really bad news, we will need to at least await CVR and FDR readouts (hopefully, despite the massive disintegration of that aircraft, the CVR and FDR were not damaged) before making claims that the MAX is a doomed aircraft.That being said, the initial optics don't look good and I can imagine there are some conference rooms in full freakout mode in Chicago and Seattle today.

Who will lead the investigation on this one? Does the Ethiopian government have a fully capable civil investigation authority or will they rely on the French or EU or US for significant assistant? Obviously, NTSB will assist as the engines were US origin (I believe) and the frame was US origin.

Condolences to all on board, their families and friends.

dmsolovyev wrote:

The photo above looks a bit strange to me. Just few hours after the crash it should be damn hot to stand there. Also I don’t see any fire or smoke.

And no safety/emergency personnel. Just a guy in a suit pulling out a piece of debris

First is offering my condolences to all the families involved. It must be a horrible feeling to receive informing you about a death due to a airplane crash.

Second is we can speculate all we want but until more information is given we can't play the blame game yet. No need to be so harsh at this time. I'm really hoping it's still not the MCAS issue but that still remains to be seen. Weather could have been a factor as well again we don't know.

RIP to all the passengers involved.

Well I'm with the other "over reactors" when I say I won't be riding on a max any time soon. In our modern world of high technology and safe air travel, there is serious doubt as to the design of this aircraft. It is far too coincidental to have two crashes on two brand new aircraft this close together. I'm just glad I didn't buy Boeing stock any time recently.

If nothing else, the MAX is earning itself an unfortunate reputation.

LAX772LR wrote:

RB211trent wrote:

then to read after two seemingly similar fatal accidents on the 737MAX people believe grounding is jumping the gun. Unbelievable.

What's unbelievable is such idiotic levels of assumption are taken even remotely seriously.

Repeat after me:
You... Don't... Yet... Know... What... Caused... This... Crash.

You can't even say what the primary contribution (human, mechanical, aeronatical, combination) was on the most *basic* level, yet.

But you want to ground a worldwide fleet?

You... Don't... Yet... Know... What... Caused... This... Crash.

That would actually be the main reason for a grounding.

The B737 Max has EGPWS, so you'd have terrain warnings all over the place.
If it was CFIT, there should at least be an attempt to steeply climb away.

Whether to ground pending a preliminary identification of the cause; or not, is not an easy decision to make.
In the one hand you hold financial losses in the dozens of millions scattered over many operators, in the other you hold the risk of another accident with loss of another 150 potential lives and a PR nightmare.

So I think that a grounding should be suggested by authorities, but the decision left with operators and their respective insurance companies.

Statistics are an important part of assessing an aircraft type's certification, especially with types that have a lot of grandfathering such as the MAX. Grandfathering is based on statistical evidence. Statistics are also the basis for calculating insurance premiums.

At the moment, there is only questionnable information about the flight, and statistical data pointing to an exceptionally high accident rate, with the other statistical data being of an accident caused by a design issue.

If I were a MAX operator with some margin to take a small hit, I would ground my fleet until a readout of the CVR and FDR give a good idea of the cause. The PR risk is just too high.

This is the silliest thread I have seen in a long time.

You have an aircraft take off, climb apparently-slowly, go into mountainous terrain, be at an altitude reported to be thisclose to the terrain height, and crash. Members use FR24 as some sort of authoritative source where provider itself admits it's missing several important minutes of the flight, and all they can come up with is MCAS (which likely would have been inhibited here), and pronounce the MAX "unsafe"?

How about engine failure?

Four pages and nobody mentions engine failure as a possible reason the thing had problems climbing?

Ethiopian is one of the very-best carriers in Africa, but they aren't Delta Air Lines. And even if they were, even seemingly-talented, trained crews make mistakes. Look at the United 747 incident in San Francisco in 1998 which could just as easily have turned into one of the worst accidents ever for an American flag carrier. Remember that one? Engine problems at takeoff shake the airframe so hard that the crew is actually concerned about structural integrity. The crew shuts the engine down. FO flies the flight director rather than the engine-out protocol. Fails to put in proper rudder, so aircraft is so severely out-of-trim that it's barely-climbing on the three remaining engines. And it's headed for San Bruno mountain, with antennas on it. The bunkies are screaming at the FO, and the captain does not initially take control. Finally, as they are really going to hit the mountain, the captain takes control, makes the right control inputs, and the aircraft starts climbing and clears the obstructions by about the height of my girlfriend.

So: unusual mechanical issue, unexpectedly-incompetent response by PF, arguably-mediocre CRM, numerous other mistakes, and what should have been a story of a disconcertingly-violent engine issue** became a story of one of the worst US near-accidents in decades.

And we haven't even begun to analyze the effect of winds over mountains, even for a transport-category aircraft like the 737.

So I think we should turn away from just assuming that the MAX is unsafe because of MCAS or some other secret problem with the design, and instead consider more-typical potential causes.

**(a person in the know at UA at the time made the comment that the crew was seriously concerned by the violence of the engine compressor stalls to the point that they were concerned about the structural integrity of the aircraft, something they had never experienced in their careers).

aemoreira1981 wrote:

[threeid][/threeid]

Finn350 wrote:

There are 350 Boeing 737 MAX delivered as of January 31, 2019. Even if this crash is MCAS related, grounding the fleet will be a difficult decision for the FAA. There is a procedure how to recover the aircraft from the MCAS fault, not to mention the huge inconvenience the grounding would cause to the travelling public.

40 years ago, the FAA did just that with the DC-10, with 138 grounded in the USA after AA191 crashed.

And don't forget that grounding was unique because not only was the DC-10 grounded in the US and all countries that accept FAA certification data but the FAA enacted a special condition banning the DC-10 from US airspace. If this happens with the MAX (which could happen...) it will certainly be a smear on Boeing...2 new aircraft programs with groundings within 2 years of EIS... certainly unprecedented for a company known for engineering excellence.

I find it weird the CEO of Ethiopian Airlines can stand in the middle of an active investigation area...

smokeybandit wrote:

dmsolovyev wrote:

The photo above looks a bit strange to me. Just few hours after the crash it should be damn hot to stand there. Also I don’t see any fire or smoke.

And no safety/emergency personnel. Just a guy in a suit pulling out a piece of debris

That guy is ET's CEO. The photo is clearly staged and I find it to be extremely distasteful in this time of distress.

“In a press conference the Ethiopian Airlines CEO stated that the pilot of #ET302 reported difficulties with the aircraft to ATC. He was given clearance to return to the airport.“

https://twitter.com/aviationsafety/stat ... 07104?s=21

mjoelnir wrote:

LAX772LR wrote:

RB211trent wrote:

then to read after two seemingly similar fatal accidents on the 737MAX people believe grounding is jumping the gun. Unbelievable.

What's unbelievable is such idiotic levels of assumption are taken even remotely seriously.

Repeat after me:
You... Don't... Yet... Know... What... Caused... This... Crash.

You can't even say what the primary contribution (human, mechanical, aeronatical, combination) was on the most *basic* level, yet.

But you want to ground a worldwide fleet?

You... Don't... Yet... Know... What... Caused... This... Crash.

That would actually be the main reason for a grounding.

So by that reasoning, every aircraft type that has an accident should be automatically grounded until the cause of the accident has been determined. There is logic hiding there somewhere.

UNCONFIRMED: Ethiopian Airlines CEO: “Pilots reported difficulties and asked for permission to turn back to Addis Ababa”

wjcandee wrote:

)

How about engine failure?

It's possible....but the aircraft should have more than enough power to handle an engine failure at altitude

The bottom line is that at this point, it's all conjecture and we are not going to get answers for quite some time.

mjoelnir wrote:

You... Don't... Yet... Know... What... Caused... This... Crash.

That would actually be the main reason for a grounding.

If not knowing what caused the crash is the main reason for grounding, then I guess we better ground all 767s. One crashed two weeks ago and we don’t have the first idea yet what caused it.

We don’t officially know what caused MH370 to disappear. Better ground all 777s too.

When the Air France A330 crashed in the Atlantic, we should have grounded all A330s for the couple of years it took to find the black boxes and determine what happened with that plane.

The fact is, with very few exceptions, whenever a plane crashes (and it has literally only been a few hours since this one crashed), nobody knows what caused it. So, grounding a type (or an airline or whatever) because of a crash with an unknown cause would basically mean planes would almost never fly.

awthompson wrote:

A320FlyGuy wrote:

MCAS strikes again?

Those are exactly my thoughts.

MCAS does not bite on its own.
MCAS was instrumental in turning another issue from a distraction into a catastrophic outcome.

Does the MAX have a cabling or general electronic systems problem?

A320FlyGuy wrote:

aemoreira1981 wrote:

[threeid][/threeid]

Finn350 wrote:

There are 350 Boeing 737 MAX delivered as of January 31, 2019. Even if this crash is MCAS related, grounding the fleet will be a difficult decision for the FAA. There is a procedure how to recover the aircraft from the MCAS fault, not to mention the huge inconvenience the grounding would cause to the travelling public.

40 years ago, the FAA did just that with the DC-10, with 138 grounded in the USA after AA191 crashed.

And don't forget that grounding was unique because not only was the DC-10 grounded in the US and all countries that accept FAA certification data but the FAA enacted a special condition banning the DC-10 from US airspace. If this happens with the MAX (which could happen...) it will certainly be a smear on Boeing...2 new aircraft programs with groundings within 2 years of EIS... certainly unprecedented for a company known for engineering excellence.

The 787 never crashed and no one remembers the initial problems. This is very bad no way around it. The best analogy would be the L188 Electra in 1959-60. There is no telling how bad this could be for Boeing.

wjcandee wrote:

This is the silliest thread I have seen in a long time.

You have an aircraft take off, climb apparently-slowly, go into mountainous terrain, be at an altitude reported to be thisclose to the terrain height, and crash. Members use FR24 as some sort of authoritative source where provider itself admits it's missing several important minutes of the flight, and all they can come up with is MCAS (which likely would have been inhibited here), and pronounce the MAX "unsafe"?

How about engine failure?

Four pages and nobody mentions engine failure as a possible reason the thing had problems climbing?

Well if you trust the data it was going 400kn at a low altitude so the engines were not preventing a climb.

From what I can see, we need to disregard the graphical representation of the flight. It is indeed smoothed out as it exists for the purpose of looking at the profile of longer flights.

Looking alone at the data table for the short period that it is available, the aircraft only climbed 1400ft (above the runway) in the first three minutes after take off.
The vertical speed was all over the place. I cannot see how this could have been purely a crew issue in daylight and in good weather / visibility.

The airport is 7625ft above sea level so performance would be impaired for this reason but not to such an extent.

What other issue could explain this other than a control issue or perhaps an engine failure at or shortly after take off.
It appears to me that something untoward took the crew's attention very early in the flight.

hOMSaR wrote:

mjoelnir wrote:

You... Don't... Yet... Know... What... Caused... This... Crash.

That would actually be the main reason for a grounding.

If not knowing what caused the crash is the main reason for grounding, then I guess we better ground all 767s. One crashed two weeks ago and we don’t have the first idea yet what caused it.

We don’t officially know what caused MH370 to disappear. Better ground all 777s too.

When the Air France A330 crashed in the Atlantic, we should have grounded all A330s for the couple of years it took to find the black boxes and determine what happened with that plane.

The fact is, with very few exceptions, whenever a plane crashes (and it has literally only been a few hours since this one crashed), nobody knows what caused it. So, grounding a type (or an airline or whatever) because of a crash with an unknown cause would basically mean planes would almost never fly.

With AF447 we had the ACARS data, that was enough to suspect a pitot probe issue, and ADs were issued to have the probes replaced on the whole fleet. I don't remember the timeline, but that was long before the wreck was found.

Let's also not forget that - unfortunately thanks to Lion Air - MCAS is a known entity now. Every MAX pilot should have flaps 1 and/or trim disengage switches as a memory item if fighting a nose up persistence situation.

But referring to the MAX CG: does it have Post-Stall flight characteristics that are more catastrophic/irrecoverable than other frames?

A320FlyGuy wrote:

wjcandee wrote:

)

How about engine failure?

It's possible....but the aircraft should have more than enough power to handle an engine failure at altitude

Didya not read the rest of my post?

C'mon. Takeoff from a hot, high-altitude airport with a well-loaded aircraft (admittedly for a 2-hour flight, so not max fuel). Engine failure if not handled properly could certainly be the cause of this.

Not saying it is. Saying that the sole focus on the differences in the MAX8 is stupid.

It could also be any distracting event, mismanaged by crappy CRM.

The point is that it is waaaaay too early to speculate about this. We don't even have liveatc to get a sense of the communications from the aircraft. For all we know, the pilots specified what the problem was. So we should chill.

What if the plane was simply overloaded and overweight? What would that explain?

zoom321 wrote:

Boeing is more concerned with how the share price will react tomorrow than grounding & fixing 737Max.

The two are strongly related.

If Boeing knew of a systemic issue that could occur a third time, grounding the fleet would probably be the best option for the share price in the long run. Letting aircraft crash while you know it's your fault would hurt the company tremendously.

Now, I don't think Boeing actually knows what happened here, so they won't do anything before a bit more information is available.

jupiter2 wrote:

mjoelnir wrote:

LAX772LR wrote:

What's unbelievable is such idiotic levels of assumption are taken even remotely seriously.

Repeat after me:
You... Don't... Yet... Know... What... Caused... This... Crash.

You can't even say what the primary contribution (human, mechanical, aeronatical, combination) was on the most *basic* level, yet.

But you want to ground a worldwide fleet?

You... Don't... Yet... Know... What... Caused... This... Crash.

That would actually be the main reason for a grounding.

So by that reasoning, every aircraft type that has an accident should be automatically grounded until the cause of the accident has been determined. There is logic hiding there somewhere.

A new type with a limited number of aircraft delivered having its second accident in a relative short span of time,

Grounding is exactly done when you do not know the cause of the accidents.

Horrible news indeed a sad day for everyone...

I'll wait until we get 8 to 9 pages into this topic before another A.netter posts a quote from some official news source now officially confirming (for the 100th time) exact same previous information of how many perished and that there were no survivors. That way they can feel important their post makes it official.

smokeybandit wrote:

dmsolovyev wrote:

The photo above looks a bit strange to me. Just few hours after the crash it should be damn hot to stand there. Also I don’t see any fire or smoke.

And no safety/emergency personnel. Just a guy in a suit pulling out a piece of debris

There are other photos:


https://bilder.bild.de/fotos-skaliert/d ... 0.bild.jpg