It was a fairly new Boeing 737 Max 8.

“…The plane’s “black box” of flight data and cockpit voice recorder had been found, Ethiopian Airlines said. An airline official, however, told The Associated Press that the box was partially damaged and “we will see what we can retrieve from it.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity for lack of authorization to speak to the media…”

https://apnews.com/6471a2f101f043348009df50ac75c688

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:
It was a fairly new Boeing 737 Max 8.

Same plane that was recently involved in the Lion Air crash in Indonesia. I think I'll avoid flying on those jets for the time being until they get this figured out. Lucky for me, Delta doesn't seem to have any of them in its fleet.

There are suggestions that the cause may have been the same as in the recent crash of Lion Air 610 in Indonesia, another MAX 8.

ETA: What Balzé said.

Interested to see if it's a design problem, or a 3rd World Country maintenance problem.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
Interested to see if it's a design problem, or a 3rd World Country maintenance problem.

Wasn't the Ethiopian plane practically brand new?

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
Interested to see if it's a design problem, or a 3rd World Country maintenance problem.

The Ethiopian jet was brand new. It was delivered to the airline just this past October or November 2018.

Just because it was brand new doesn't mean it didn't break or come with a flaw.

quote:

Originally posted by Shaql:
Just because it was brand new doesn't mean it didn't break or come with a flaw.

Of course, but that wasn't the point of why it was mentioned that it was brand new.

I’m guessing the crash is going to be related to not disengaging a malfunctioning automated system. The two crashes seem very similar. Is it possible that pilot’s aren’t up to speed on the latest updates on the new models?

Don't those planes come with some new system for preventing stalls? If speed goes down, the autopilot automatically drops the nose. I believe the Lion Air's sensors had some maintenance history, and pilots were fighting to keep the plane up.

In this new incident, they're saying the vertical speed was "unstable". If again the pitot tubes were reading too low, the pilots would have to fight their own airplane to keep the nose up.

Perhaps unlucky but the 737 has been involved in a lot of incidents from being hijacked, shot down, having the top half rip off, multiple mechanical failures etc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...lving_the_Boeing_737

quote:

Originally posted by kkina:
Don't those planes come with some new system for preventing stalls? If speed goes down, the autopilot automatically drops the nose. I believe the Lion Air's speed sensors had some maintenance history, and pilots were fighting to keep the plane up.

In this new incident, they're saying the vertical speed was "unstable". If again the pitot tubes were reading too low, the pilots would have to fight their own airplane to keep the nose up.

My rudimentary understanding though is that the system is easily disabled or overcome as long as the pilots are properly trained in how to do so. But like I said, my understanding is only based on what I've recently read on the two crashes and nothing else. That and I'm a frequent watcher of Air Disasters on the Smithonian Channel, so I'm sort of an expert...

Avoiding stalls is not rocket surgery. If a system requires the pilots to be aware and trained to disengage it to avoid crashes, then it is, by definition, a FLAWED SYSTEM, ....an error....a design flaw....broken...inadequate....and should be immediately recalled and fixed, all plane grounded.

quote:

Originally posted by Rightwire:
Perhaps unlucky but the 737 has been involved in a lot of incidents from being hijacked, shot down, having the top half rip off, multiple mechanical failures etc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...lving_the_Boeing_737

They (737's) are the all time best selling plane, made in various configurations over many decades. Based on the number of miles flown they are considered very safe and reliable.
The recent 2 crashes sound like a design flaw in this particular new model or a remarkable coincidence.

November, 2018...

Boeing failed to communicate with 737 Max operators new procedures for addressing cases in which the airplane’s automatic stall prevention system commands the nose of the airplane downward, potentially resulting the kind of steep dive that appears to have led to the fatal crash of Lion Air Flight 610, according to pilot union officials quoted by the Wall Street Journal.

Full article


More here

quote:

Originally posted by Crom:

If a system requires the pilots to be aware and trained to disengage it to avoid crashes, then it is, by definition, a FLAWED SYSTEM, ....an error....a design flaw....broken...inadequate....and should be immediately recalled and fixed, all plane grounded.

Really?

Failure of an electrical / electronic component can and will happen. It is not possible to foresee every possible failure or combination of failures. We train pilots to deal with these situations.

Example: Electric pitch trim can fail in a "runaway" mode, causing the airplane to pitch nose-up or nose-down. When I taught in the American Bonanza Society's Pilot Proficiency Program, part of the pre-flight checklist was to have the client point out every possible way to dis-engage the autopilot and pitch trim system. There were five ways to do this in my V-Tail, any one of which would take the autopilot out of the picture and allow the pilot to hand-fly the airplane without fighting a malfunctioning autopilot.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
Really?

Failure of an electrical / electronic component can and will happen.......

Yes, "anything" can happen. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough.
I should have said something like "If a system requires the pilots to be aware and trained to disengage it to avoid crashes as a standard part of takeoff procedure because the system frequently miscalculates
...."

and:

quote:

Example: Electric pitch trim can fail in a "runaway" mode....

It "can fail"....but if it is a common occurrence it is a "flawed system".

Every single time you have flown commercial aviation, regardless of airframe, there are systems that in a non normal (emergency) scenario systems will be deactivated. That is beyond normal.

As for the two crashes they are tragic. They bear deep investigation to ensure the cause is known. Jumping to conclusions without information is silly. Stupid even.

I have been flying at a major for 20 years. Never once lost airspeed indications. It happens but rarely. To have two third world countries have the same malfunction is not necessarily indicative of the airplane being flawed. Lion Air is a good example. They apparently flew a broken airplane numerous events without fixing it. Apparently till they found the crew that couldn’t solve the problem. That is tragic. It is criminal if true. The investigation will end up in that vicinity believe.

This last crash looks similar. Loss of airspeed followed by a series of increasingly dangerous vertical deviations.

Here’s the problem. There has been a procedure for this problem in the Boeing books forever. There is a also a procedure for loss of airspeed.

The rumor on this last event is that the First Officer had around 200 hours. Total or in type I’m not sure. I suspect his qualifications were minimal. Events like these are very challenging due to startle factor. Training becomes crucial. If they chased a wildly and inaccurately fluctuating airspeed they were doomed. No easy way to say that.

The FAA may or may not ground these. If they do it might be purely cautionary so that more details can be gathered.

To reiterate, these systems don’t fail often. Using two third world countries having issues doesn’t make it a problem. Brand new airplanes still need qualified maintenance and aircrew. Bit of hysteria going on here imo.

Let’s actually get the information before we start making decisions. American airlines have been flying this aircraft for at least 18 months without any real issues. Two airlines that only have a handful of them have produced two horrible crashes. That needs to be input into the equation.

Flying to Tel Aviv in a couple of weeks on United

List of all airlines using these

https://www.boeing.com/commercial/737max/#/customers

quote:

Originally posted by Rightwire:
Perhaps unlucky but the 737 has been involved in a lot of incidents from being hijacked, shot down, having the top half rip off, multiple mechanical failures etc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...lving_the_Boeing_737

It would be interesting to see the accidents per hours or miles flown compared to other aircraft. There are a whole lot of 737s out there and they fly a lot.