Ethiopian Airlines: 'No survivors' on crashed Boeing 737 max

[Eric Janson]

Good article from Capt. "Sully" Sullenberger.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/capt- ... 2019-03-19

The Lion Air accident should have happened a day earlier - new details about the previous flight.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... rlier.html

As I've said earlier we are well past the point that a "Software Fix" is going to be accepted imho.

The entire FAA certification process is under scrutiny - a huge can of worms is about to be opened.

[goldeneagle]

So let me get this straight....a newbie in the right seat (don't know captains experience yet),

I read a report somewhere, dont remember where, capt was 28yrs old and had 8000 hrs on the b737. Not exactly green and/or wet behind the ears with respect to the aircraft.

[telex]

So let me get this straight....a newbie in the right seat (don't know captains experience yet),

I read a report somewhere, dont remember where, capt was 28yrs old and had 8000 hrs on the b737. Not exactly green and/or wet behind the ears with respect to the aircraft.

I believe the Captain had 8000 hours TOTAL, not on type.

From what I have read I am speculating that he was a recent upgrade and new to the type.

[FICU]

I believe the Captain had 8000 hours TOTAL, not on type.

From what I have read I am speculating that he was a recent upgrade and new to the type.

So Boeing issues a notice to all Max 8 operators about MCAS, what it can do and how to deal with it. Ethiopian has a potentially new to type Captain and a puke green F/O. Sure sounds like it was Boeing's fault to me.

Geeez! If true... more holes lining up... maybe they needed a safety pilot like the Lion Air flight that was saved.

[boeingboy]

How is this "new" information? I've been telling you guys forever about the previous Lion air flight. It's all in the report some still wont read.

This sounds like a training issue to me. Lion air was reportedly immediately fixed by a mainline pilot who was clearly trained in uncommanded stab movement procedures (on any aircraft) Now it has to be stressed that these reports have not been verified yet that there was a jumpseater.

Ethiopian had a new to type captain, an FO who knew how to fly C172's and both of them had absolutely no training of any type of how to deal with uncommanded stab trim.

Unbelievable!

[Gino Under]

The ET captain had been flying for 10 years with a total time (reportedly of) 8000 hours. Really? 800 hours a year between your first flight and last landing?
The ET F/O had (reportedly) 200 hours total time. Really? With a straight face? In a real airliner?
Where I come from 200 hours isn’t even enough for a CPL. So how much Max 8 time is in that 200 hours? Scary.
Anyone care to comment on the math?

This is our new reality

Gino

[FICU]

This is our new reality

Yup... very scary and this why you do not put your family on certain airlines.

[ghazanhaider]

I keep hearing that this is a training issue, but to me (single engine private) it is scary to hear that a procedure has to be in the checklist to be performed.

If runaway trim happened in a Bonanza or Seminole, I certainly wont read the checklist before disabling the autopilot first and then manually trimming. Don't airlines depend on a pilot's intuition and understanding of different systems, their impact and how they can be isolated? I.E explain how things work together and what can impact what instead of memorizing checklists for each possible issue?

I know MCAS != AP, but if there's a case of Trims-gone-wild, in 10 minutes of fighting with controls and unable to go through a binder of checklists, wouldn't it normally have occurred to the pilots to (1) try AP, or (2) find trim power and kill it, or switch to DIR law or just anything different?

[FICU]

The stab trim runaway is in a checklist but all actions to stop it are memory items...

Hold the column firmly
Disengage autopilot(if engaged)
Use main(control wheel) electric trim
Disengage autothrottles(if engaged)
-If trim is still running away... stab trim cutout switches to cutout.

If MCAS is active, even if you didn't know about that system, you would intuitively(I hope) use main electric trim nose up to counter the nose down runaway. After you release it if it continues to runaway nose down, your only other course of action would be to cut it out with the cutout switches and trim with the trim wheel itself.

[Gino Under]

As I settle into my comfy couch to listen to CNN and other media outlets (anything from the National Post to the Guardian, including on-line stuff), as I hear/read stuff, I see a rather disturbing situation in aviation safety evolving. Let's start with what I'd consider a fairly serious safety concern and that is the sharing of information.

DISCLAIMER: I have never been an SMS advocate. I am very unlikely to become an SMS advocate anytime soon. It is simply a better-than-nothing administrative system.
NO! I don't fly for any Canadian airline.

The day previous to the Lion Air plunge, a deadheading pilot on a Lion Air flight assisted that crew with an MCAS event. His contribution ended up saving the day. So, with SMS held in such high regard as to being the "answer" for all things aviation safety related, WTF happened here as far as SMS is concerned and letting everybody know what happened. 5 plus months later and we're just getting into the details of this from preliminary accident reports? In the early hours that followed this accident we learned that the previous crew on the accident aircraft had encountered a flight control problem but not a whisper about the saving-the-day actions of a jumpseater (reportedly from another airline) who helped out. Can this be the result of an effective SMS program at Lion Air??? Boeing?? The Indonesian accident investigators? Lion Air maintenance?
Hasn't this airline had a variety of silly accidents and incidents over the past few years? Have we shared or disseminated anything regarding those accidents/incidents other than what's contained in an accident report? Gawd help us!

I imagine B737 8 Max (so I don't get skinned by pedantics) pilots, as we've already learned, were, will, or soon will be trained on the details surrounding the MCAS system. I can also only imagine many airlines saying to their pilots that they will be trained, briefed, whatever, on the next recurrent sim detail. Of course, I'm speculating and I know how some find that notion offensive but, I won't be surprised if something along this line comes out in the post mortem on these two accidents.

Two different issues, a runaway stab and an MCAS event with Boeing saying one NNC will save the day. That NNC is a memory item and therein lies a HF problem. Perhaps not for some but clearly it is for others.

Gino

[rigpiggy]

the latest to come out is that the crew had 3 different airspeeds showing. At this time would not climb thrust,disconnect a/p and stab trim and aim 3degrees up make it fly?

[confusedalot]

As I settle into my comfy couch to listen to CNN and other media outlets (anything from the National Post to the Guardian, including on-line stuff), as I hear/read stuff, I see a rather disturbing situation in aviation safety evolving. Let's start with what I'd consider a fairly serious safety concern and that is the sharing of information.

DISCLAIMER: I have never been an SMS advocate. I am very unlikely to become an SMS advocate anytime soon. It is simply a better-than-nothing administrative system.
NO! I don't fly for any Canadian airline.

The day previous to the Lion Air plunge, a deadheading pilot on a Lion Air flight assisted that crew with an MCAS event. His contribution ended up saving the day. So, with SMS held in such high regard as to being the "answer" for all things aviation safety related, WTF happened here as far as SMS is concerned and letting everybody know what happened. 5 plus months later and we're just getting into the details of this from preliminary accident reports? In the early hours that followed this accident we learned that the previous crew on the accident aircraft had encountered a flight control problem but not a whisper about the saving-the-day actions of a jumpseater (reportedly from another airline) who helped out. Can this be the result of an effective SMS program at Lion Air??? Boeing?? The Indonesian accident investigators? Lion Air maintenance?
Hasn't this airline had a variety of silly accidents and incidents over the past few years? Have we shared or disseminated anything regarding those accidents/incidents other than what's contained in an accident report? Gawd help us!

I imagine B737 8 Max (so I don't get skinned by pedantics) pilots, as we've already learned, were, will, or soon will be trained on the details surrounding the MCAS system. I can also only imagine many airlines saying to their pilots that they will be trained, briefed, whatever, on the next recurrent sim detail. Of course, I'm speculating and I know how some find that notion offensive but, I won't be surprised if something along this line comes out in the post mortem on these two accidents.

Two different issues, a runaway stab and an MCAS event with Boeing saying one NNC will save the day. That NNC is a memory item and therein lies a HF problem. Perhaps not for some but clearly it is for others.

Gino

A little off topic but I have to agree with the SMS viewpoint. Any good safety department, which many/most operators already had before SMS, probably achieved better results than the confusing and heavily subjective new sms mantra. It was mostly a political push from the TC director general of the day that even confused his own staff. Still not sure about his actual motivation, but suspect it had to do with departmental budget cuts. He got the idea from the nuclear industry if I recall correctly.

[goingnowherefast]

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/03/20/poli ... index.html

No mention of if this is going to lift the grounding, or if the MCAS was actually responsible for the Ethiopian crash. Only that there are "similarities".

[C.W.E.]

the latest to come out is that the crew had 3 different airspeeds showing. At this time would not climb thrust,disconnect a/p and stab trim and aim 3degrees up make it fly?

Yes.

It is basic.

Attitude plus power = performance.

[complexintentions]

I'm pretty sure there is no "Unfounded MCAS Activation" checklist, and I know there wasn't at the time of the first crash because no crews even knew MCAS existed. If such a checklist existed, and was trained for at time of delivery, I would agree with you that this is pilot error.

If the trim is trying to kill you what is the best course of action... keep pulling back till you can't anymore or flip 2 switches to cut power to the trim?

There doesn't need to be a MCAS checklist. It uses stab trim. There is an uncommanded stab trim runaway QRC that is all memory actions and it will save your life.

THIS.

This this this this this this this a thousand times this...

And this procedure has been in place for decades before MCAS and Lion Air. But AFTER the Lion Air, you might THINK extra consideration would be given to the trim runaway memory items?! Emphasis on MEMORY ITEMS. (Yes, this could open the door to some confirmation bias which presents its own risks. But GeeZuz you'd think a little critical thought could maybe be applied to mitigate that...?)

And I've heard how "oh it would be a real handful with the stick shaker" and so on and on. Yet apparently the captain had time to be "desperately consulting technical manuals" and the first officer was...praying. Ten minutes is a very long time! Doesn't sound like task saturation to me. More like a complete misidentification of the problem. A bit more understandable with the first accident, given the stop-and-start behaviour of the MCAS trimming, a system whose existence wasn't even yet known. Not as much for a second one...?

A great quote stolen from the "other" forum:

'All' MCAS does is trim down - yes successively and yes intermittently. But the net effect is that the aircraft automatics for some reason are giving me aggressive nose down trim when I am VMC and can see I am at a reasonable speed with engines at normal power and reasonable pitch. NNC for 'runaway' trim says switch off Stab Trim with cut out switches. So do that. ALL I want to do is stop the (&(#%Q!!! trimming down the cut out switches do that - do I really say ahh but it isn't _runaway_ its just trimming down every few seconds??

It is obvious that the designers believed that any pilot with stab trim repeatedly trimming in a way that was hazardous would switch it off. It is apparent that some (even some on here) will not switch the stab trim off as the NNC says runaway and that's not runa.... etc etc. All the way to the ground. Perhaps if the NNC had said (for the pedants) "repeated or continuous uncommanded trimming in one direction" then the Max8 may still have been flying.

In one of the news reports referencing the CVR it mentions they didn't seem to realize the aircraft was trimming itself. Is that big wheel spinning away next to your knee not a clue? It bears repeating: the same conditions on a previous flight was handled as trim runaway (it was a UK captain in the observer seat - draw your own conclusions) and there were no headlines. Funny how FOLLOWING PROCEDURES ALREADY IN PLACE worked, eh? Sorry for shouting but man it's getting painful. No one wants to speak ill of lost colleagues but the apologists are leaving no choice.

Unreliable Airspeed.

This IS one of the more insidious problems in any modern airliner, particularly in IMC conditions if only due to just how many systems are tied to these inputs. But was it not daylight VMC conditions? Regardless, there are stock pitch/thrust settings for any Boeing in this situation. Which are also MEMORY ITEMS.

Disconnect the runaway trim and Fly. The. Airplane.

Oh, I'm not saying Boeing is blameless in all of this. Not at all. Poor system design, lack of transparency, I'm sure other corporate sins will come to light.

But in all of the political posturing (China, EASA) and ass-covering (TC) of the groundings, the far more crucial takeaway should be how this has once again highlighted how pathetically reliant many have become on automation, to the point where when there IS the extremely rare instance of a design flaw the basic skills and thinking just aren't there any more to backstop the safety of the operation. Result? Worldwide hysteria, aided by the wonders of social media. It's sad.

"Once we were recruited and trained for our judgement, now we are selected for our compliance".

Trust nothing and no one.

[FICU]

Totally hit the nail on the head with that post complexintentions!

[Eric Janson]

In one of the news reports referencing the CVR it mentions they didn't seem to realize the aircraft was trimming itself. Is that big wheel spinning away next to your knee not a clue? It bears repeating: the same conditions on a previous flight was handled as trim runaway (it was a UK captain in the observer seat - draw your own conclusions) and there were no headlines. Funny how FOLLOWING PROCEDURES ALREADY IN PLACE worked, eh? Sorry for shouting but man it's getting painful. No one wants to speak ill of lost colleagues but the apologists are leaving no choice.

I suspect the continuous stick-shaker will mask the sound of the trim wheel moving - it's pretty loud on the 737. Anyone able to verify this?

It's also very distracting. It's quite possible the Captain on both accident flights was distracted and trying to focus his attention on the multiple confusing failure messages while trying to manually fly an aircraft that was responding differently than normal. First Officer was frantically trying to find something in the QRH that accounted for the failure messages.

I would suggest the possibility that both Pilots were so task saturated that they didn't notice the trim moving or if they did assumed it was the Speed Trim system.

The fact that the jumpseat occupant on the previous flight bought it to the crew's attention is probably the only thing that prevented the Lion Air crash on this earlier flight.

It's quite possible that the crew was not aware of an issue with the stab trim until they were told - hopefully they are being interviewed.

Full nosedown stab trim cannot be over-ridden by use of elevator. If the stab is full nose down and the cut-out switches are then used it will take 30-40(?) turns of the trim wheel to get the trim back to the point where the aircraft can be flown level. You will lose a lot of height while this is going on.

I believe it's 10 turns/degree of trim - it's been a few years since I flew the 737. Can someone confirm if this is correct?

This kind of failure is nowhere near as simple to handle as some people are suggesting imho.

I'm sure some people will be unpleasantly surprised when they encounter this in the SIM.

[LittleNelly]

“The pilots are also made aware and WELL BRIEFED on the emergency Airworthiness directive issued by the FAA following the Lion Air accident. The Content of the AD has also been WELL INCORPORATED in all pilot training manuals, operational procedures, and working manuals”

DIRECTLY FROM THE MOUTH OF ETHIOPIAN MANAGMENT!

They admit this whole issue is covered in existing approved procedures. Ie Uncommanded stab movement procedures.

IF the pilots followed procedure and disconnected trim and yet the so called killer MCAS computer still wanted to kill them then yes it is Boeing’s fault.

However if it is found the pilots did not disconnect the trim as is per Ethiopian airlines procedure then it is PILOT ERROR!

Ethiopian is now thinking about actual real lawsuits and know Boeing is covered with this. Now they are admitting that they gave those resources to the flight crew. So did the pilots know their aircraft and company procedures? Management says they did. Maybe they are lying and their crews have shitty training and procedures. Either way, it’s not Boeing’s fault.

[complexintentions]

@Eric Janson,

I appreciate your viewpoint and do not mean to diminish the difficulties facing both accident crews. Certainly it is possible the multiple events, particularly something as alarming as the stick shaker could mask the sound of the trim running. Still, if there is any aircraft where it is quite uniquely hard to not notice the trim operating, it's got to be a 737 with those dual trim wheels? I cannot think of a mainstream airliner operating that gives more visible, audible, and tactile feedback of trim operation. And if not, surely the pitch down and increasingly heavy yoke would provide further clues? I mean if the elevators are responding to pitch inputs surely that would lead one to the only remaining pitch surface, the horizontal stabilizer? Never mind if it's some fancy system Boeing grafted onto a Franken37 or just a "regular" trim runaway malfunction.

If I feel ANY flight control operating against my input it is my desperate, immediate first priority to get control back, not hunt for just the right page in the QRH. I can see how the MCAS design would be confusing, operating then stopping repeatedly, especially since Boeing didn't deem pilots worthy of knowing how the damn thing works (or that it existed). But how many cycles of that nonsense would you wait before you cut the thing out of the picture? Are experienced airline pilots really that unaware of the magnitude of control authority of the horizontal stab? Sincere question, not facetious.

Yes, they had several things working against them. But they (2nd crash) also had daylight, altitude, time, and according to Ethiopian, prior knowledge of the 1st accident and AD, working for them.

It really was not my intent to malign the crew or imply that the failure was "simple", but as is probably obvious I do tend to think (pending further information) that it should have been survivable. The fact is was not is very sad for more than one reason.

[Gino Under]

I find it odd that in 2019 some are actually trying to use the relative simplicity of an antiquated aeroplane with, how many memory items? In this day and age? Really?
I'm not convinced that's the reality of HF? The final accident report will likely shed some light on HF issues.
I have experience with the classic and NG but not the 8 MAX. I don't know if Boeing have reduced that number on the MAX.

I look at the regions where these two accidents happened and the confusing element introduced to the crews who clearly must have been confused by what was happening. I'm not convinced that any B737 (fill in the model of your choice) pilot would be surprised by a Stab Trim Runaway either. Another thing I find incredible to some degree, is the flight deck experience gradient of the ET crew.

If these accidents turn out to be accidents that were that easily dealt with, I'm not so sure we'd be looking at two smoking holes.

We'll see.

Gino