Another brand new 737 Max crashes
 

Horrifying and scary that now two of these birds have crashed. This look at first to be pretty similar to the Lion Air one, but I thought they had figured out a fix for that.

I left Boeing many years ago after 12 great years, and I still have enormous pride in the people and products associated with that place. This is absolutely devastating to the people who work there, and there will be a lot of folks working around the clock to figure this mess out. I wish them well.

I think Boeing may have a problem on their hands. It may not be that the plane is defective, in and of itself, but I would postulate that some pilots aren’t sufficiently well trained to operate it. I once met a pilot that spent part of his career over in the Middle East attempting to train other pilots and he indicated to me that there were some countries where the culture was such that the pilots had some noticeable limitations on their abilities. His opinion was that it didn’t matter how much time you spent with them, they simply would fail to grasp certain things.

I tend to agree with JR. I don’t think it’s coincidental that both crashes have been in the hands of airlines operating out of countries with questionable safety histories. BUT, it still raises some very serious questions that need to be answered ASAP. Particularly considering that both crashes seem to have occurred in the same phase of flight and under similar conditions.

How many of these planes are flying? Should they ground them?

I had lunch yesterday with a buddy who is a pilot for SW. They've grounded a large chunk of theirs.

Really? I thought I had seen a tweet from SW that indicated they were happy with theirs. I think they have added an AOA indicator to their jets, to give pilots some additional input when things go wrong.

Awful tragic horrible event but Antonis Mavropoulos was late and didn't make the flight! :eek:

https://au.news.yahoo.com/lucky-day-running-two-minutes-late-fateful-ethiopian-flight-spares-mans-life-042200312.html?fbclid=IwAR2Bu3uj_mTpnpQVgkUf73Sa-AdeCqhol4yaqlRFUTLdF0hyZISe0QfCZak

That's totally believable for me as a Greek friend of mine is always running late.

The 787 Dreamliner has issues with it's Rolls Royce Trent 1000 engines (being fixed - Exposing the base material to low-cycle fatigue, the thermal barrier coating on the IP turbine blades was eroded prematurely by “hot corrosion” caused by high atmospheric sulfur due to polluting industries around large Asia-Pacific cities.), so I looked up the 737 Max.

CFM International LEAP
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFM_International_LEAP
I'm not an expert on this, but can spot patterns pretty quickly and know how to use Google. My best guess is that it's a combination of poor piloting as suggested, and as it pertains to interfacing with this new engine technology.

Perhaps they spooled it up or down too quickly and those flexing blades did some kind of weird oscillation - we will have to wait and see.

No point in guessing now.

https://au.news.yahoo.com/lucky-day-running-two-minutes-late-fateful-ethiopian-flight-spares-mans-life-042200312.html?fbclid=IwAR2Bu3uj_mTpnpQVgkUf73Sa-AdeCqhol4yaqlRFUTLdF0hyZISe0QfCZak
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/320670435959833388/
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d2/cf...178d2f0009.jpg

Article on the Nov 2018 crash.
New Questions Swirl Over Boeing on Updated 737 Model That Crashed
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/world/asia/boeing-737-indonesia-crash.html

March 10, 2019
Boeing in Crisis After Second 737 Max Crash in Months
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-10/china-asks-local-airlines-to-ground-boeing-737-max-caijing-says
Video above says one more 737 crash and it's tied with the Comet for the worst introduction of a new airliner.

"If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going..." to live?

Obviously a point to point issue.


(ducking)

My first thought was that anti-stall system. One of my "friends of a friend" is an airline pilot, flying the 737 Max. He said they were cruising along in level flight, all trimmed out and just normal flight when the noise started to point down because of the anti-stall system. He had read the manuals, and instantly knew, pull the breaker for that system. Bam, the airplane was acting normal. He of course wrote up the incident. He also said his co-pilot was a "buy the book" guy and the procedure at the time was not to pull the breaker. This was before the first crash. Now the procedure it to pull the breaker, but at the if his time his co-pilot had been in command, they would not have pulled the breaker.

Glen...I believe the two that crashed did so minutes after takeoff, not yet leveled off and cruising along.

Thanks for the information.

Eye whiteness reports such as the one previously posted about a fire are notoriously inaccurate.

..................angle-of-attack sensor..............is this active on take offs and landings or just during level cruise flight?

https://au.news.yahoo.com/lucky-day-running-two-minutes-late-fateful-ethiopian-flight-spares-mans-life-042200312.html?fbclid=IwAR2Bu3uj_mTpnpQVgkUf73Sa-AdeCqhol4yaqlRFUTLdF0hyZISe0QfCZak

Yea, I know. The point is that the system can go nuts even in level flight. The airplane I mentions was cruising at 30,000 feet so they had room.

If the pilot of the crashed aircraft were not fast on pulling the breaker, they hit the ground in seconds. It is 100% total speculation on my part. The investigations will figure it out with the voice and data recorders. Lawsuits will fly, something will get fixed.

I have presided over two fatal military accidents...best to let the professionals do their job.

Even video is often a false narrative.

Speculation at this time is ill advised.

From the limited data that is known at this point, this plane didn’t significantly gain altitude after take off, although it had plenty of air speed. The pilot had reported issues that make me think the sensors were telling him something different about his airspeed than reality.

The captain had a decent number of hours, but was fairly new in this type and I think his type training occurred after the Lion Air crash. The first officer had relatively low hours.

Completely agree. Let's not turn this into the Covington kid.

For sure. The pros will figure out what really happened, and how to avoid it happening again if it is indeed a system problem.

Time will tell.

Seems like pilots in third world countries are like the drivers of cars in third world countries.

I have a lot of stories.

The CNO of the Saudi Navy was particularly interested in the UAS I was developing because he said: "We don't grow pilots very well - and when we do they jump to the airlines at the first opportunity..."

I was in Riyadh at the time briefing my programs for their Naval upgrade initiatives.

I still have nightmares about the UAE Huey pilots getting deck qual'ed when I was an Airboss:eek:

One of the local PCA members was an instructor for the AWACS aircraft at Tinker AFB. He had a Saudi prince as a student. My buddy said the prince was the stereotype prince. All his life he had been given everything without working for it. They prince was incompetent and could not really pass the course. My friend failed the prince. Pressure came from the state department to pass the prince regardless. He refused, to sign his name to a passing grad for the prince. He was "asked" to retire, and he did. He said that prince should never be allowed in any cockpit except a rubber raft at a pool.

I read that there were some 350 in service, so it's odd that this is only occurring in 3rd world countries. Now if this were to happen in Europe or here, I would be concerned.

Didn't the A320 have similar issues when it was first introduced?

Having left just two years ago, I still have a lot of friends there. I spoke with a couple of them last night. "Devastated", or "heartbroken" does not begin to describe their mood. Their feeling of responsibility, in some way (even if it proves they are not), are very deep and very real. The shock wave this is sending through the company can only be appreciated by guys who have had the privilege to work with these fine people.

My experiences, of course, did not include fatal accidents. There had to be something left to repair for us to be called. Even at that, with some of the more severe damage we repaired, the speculation from outside the industry, from the news, self-proclained internet "experts", google happy little cretins, and what not never proved to be accurate or helpful in the least. It's time for everyone to just take a step back and let the real professionals get to the bottom of this.

Here are some pretty level-headed comments from a guy with a good deal of experience:

“All we know is this plane hit the ground and right before that, the radio transmission is they wanted to return to the field," said Aviation analyst John Nance, former airline pilot and U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel. "And there was no explanation of why."

“When you look at these two accidents, they are wildly dissimilar, even though we know very little about this one at this point," Nance said. "In the first accident, Lion Air, the pilots were inadequately trained."

He added, “the accident at Lion Air -- basically two switches that every guy should know how to sweep off and these guys did not have the training that bears no resemblance to what happened here."

At this point, Nance says he doesn’t see any red flags about this particular type of plane the MAX 8.

“But, we have to watch as the accident investigation develops because maybe something will show up. I don’t see any earmarks of a failure of the airplane at this point,” said Nance.

So where does someplace like Ethiopian Airlines get their pilots? And please don't tell me retired Ethiopian Air Force pilots.

On all the 737 variants the procedure for any runaway trim issue, which the MAX anti-stall system uses, is to pull the breaker. Not that the pilots always know that it uses the trim.

I am sure in time we will find out what the problem was in this case.

Could be an opportunity coming up to pick up some Boeing stock at an advantageous price.

Other than that - I have nothing to add......except sadness of the lost souls......

Do helicopters have a reverse on them?

Just asking because the Arabs in Dearborn, MI like to drive cars 30 mph backwards down residential streets. It's insane what they do with a car, and something in the air is inconceivable to me.

EDIT:
Has anyone asked the ground crew why the plane fell out of the air?

They seem to know everything, just ask one of them.

EDIT-2:
EDIT-3:
Prayers answered.

There's a world wide shortage of pilots so I'm guessing there are "allowances" made to keep planes in the sky.

Don't be an ******* in this thread, too.

That's George's style. He's a racist turd & doesn't know when to shut up.

Same to you.

And an idiot just put his turd in the punch bowl.

People died, show some class.

George talking about class... lol

Accident investigations are fascinating, ad hoc campaigns...talent brought together to solve a problem.

When I was at the Sikorsky Factory, a CH-53E was doing what is called a "Compass Rose": High, 250' agl hover, doing pedal turns and comparing the aircraft electronic compass read out against a calibrated compass positioned above the factory. I did hundreds of them in H-60's.

Something happened and the 53E ate itself up, literally, killing all four on board. Video and synopsis here:

https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=56026

I was geobatching at the time and was a roommate of one of the pilots that was killed.

We figured it out and prevented further issues, one engineer from Cherry Point in particular was instrumental in the investigation - she was incredible.

So, mourn, think, let the smart folks figure it out and make the necessary changes to either procedures or hardware or both.

Your mantra.

Prayers for all involved, at this point, is all most of us can do.

Hopefully the root cause can be found, and over come with repair and training.

I say training, because ..stuff happens. Read about the Gimli Glider. Teaser..can a large jet lose engines, glide to a safe landing? Proper training....

Speculation is what we are best at.

Agree with all who have posted to give this time, I know a few who have worked accident investigation and it is a laborious task that takes months.

Interesting development on this story, China has halted operation of the Max 8 with their airlines pending the results of an investigation. Probably based more on perception and politics than anything else, but still interesting.

Is the CH53 as awful as it is depicted? There is a movie coming out called "Who Killed Lt Van Dorn?" that suggests it's a real death trap.

And I heard this morning that American announced they have great confidence in that plane and were not planning to ground them. Hmmm.