Post: #1

https://www.foxnews.com/world/ethiopian-...obal-grief

Didn't see a thread on this but I thought it might be relevant in the community. There was a plane crash yesterday from Ethiopan Airlines that seems to have killed all 157 passengers from about 35 different countries. The plane was going from Ethiopia to Kenya.

The more relevant piece of info here is that the plane model was a Boeing 737-8 Max. For those following the Lion Air crash a few months ago, this is the same exact plane model.

I feel like Lion Air might've been downplayed a little myself, but with this one following it up with all the first world news outlets following first world deaths a bit closer and this being a repeat incident with Boeing, this in my opinion is about to get a lot more global attention.

Post: #2

I have an upcoming long-distance flight and this kind of stuff scares me, despite knowing that air travel is usually very safe.

Post: #3

I suspect a failure of the stick pusher. The stick pusher is a system that when an aerodynamic stall is detected it manually forces the nose down and is difficult to overpower. You can deactivate it but finding the switch quickly is no easy task.

Post: #4

Ethiopian is relatively safe by African standards, but outside of a couple of the major carriers (Tunisian, Royal Air Maroc, South African) you're taking your life in your hands when you board an airliner in Africa. Many of them are not even permitted in European airspace.

The 737 is one of, if not the most popular airliners ever. The 8-Max is a next generation iteration of the type with many modifications, but I'd be surprised if it came down to equipment failure or malfunction.

Post: #5

(03-10-2019 07:05 PM)ed pluribus unum Wrote:  Ethiopian is relatively safe by African standards, but outside of a couple of the major carriers (Tunisian, Royal Air Maroc, South African) you're taking your life in your hands when you board an airliner in Africa. Many of them are not even permitted in European airspace.

The 737 is one of, if not the most popular airliners ever. The 8-Max is a next generation iteration of the type with many modifications, but I'd be surprised if it came down to equipment failure or malfunction.

This is what I thought about Lion Air but I don't think we should be blaming the airline here. The same model has failed with two different airlines. These were both new models. The 737 has been world famous and a popular sell, but I think it's clear something is up with the 8-max models that got rolled out in 2018. Ethiopian Airlines is a star alliance member to add to that point. Easy to sell it for Lion Air, not so much when you have both that and EA crashing planes with the same model.

(03-10-2019 06:45 PM)TigerMandingo Wrote:  I have an upcoming long-distance flight and this kind of stuff scares me, despite knowing that air travel is usually very safe.

If anything, just double check to see if your flight has a Boeing 737 plane model. If not, should be some relief there. If you think about it, car crashes are much more likely to happen.

Post: #6

Ethiopian and Lion Air are two different animals. Thailand's struggles with ICAO compliance are long-running.

Boeing may end up eating some truly rancid crow over their early attempt to blame Lion Air on pilot error. There are thousands of 737 MAX aircraft on order and if passengers end up scared of them and airlines end up with a bitter taste in their mouth toward Boeing's handling of it, it will be a disaster with political fallout. Boeing is by far one of the largest exporters in the United States.

EDIT: Caijing magazine is reporting that the Chinese government is grounding 737 MAX aircraft.

http://m.caijing.com.cn/api/show?contentid=4568915
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...ijing-says

Post: #7

(03-10-2019 06:57 PM)RIslander Wrote:  I suspect a failure of the stick pusher. The stick pusher is a system that when an aerodynamic stall is detected it manually forces the nose down and is difficult to overpower. You can deactivate it but finding the switch quickly is no easy task.

My first thought too. That was also partially the cause of the recent LionAir crash. Will be interesting how Boeing will handle it. They might have to ground the MAX fleet until they can provide a fix.

Post: #8

The plane was almost brand new. Let's wait to see who was on board. Maybe someone was interested in having that plane down.

Post: #9

This hits home for me. I had family at airports in the vicinity. I think Boeing has been somewhat lax in their response to the Lion Air crash. I fly Southwest quite a bit, they have some in their fleet. I'm also flying on an international flight on the MAX 8... oh boy.

Post: #10

(03-10-2019 06:45 PM)TigerMandingo Wrote:  I have an upcoming long-distance flight and this kind of stuff scares me, despite knowing that air travel is usually very safe.

Tiger, the key to a safe flight is to NOT BE NERVOUS. The vibes from nervous passengers can create a small resonance that can suddenly grow and build up critical stress in the aluminum structure of the cabin, resulting in catastrophic failure. Try not to think about it, and once again, DON'T BE NERVOUS. The worse that can happen to you is to survive a crash over the ocean, where you would die in agony from a combination of your injuries, hypothermia, and gradual dismemberment from hungry sharks. But chances are, if there is a midair crash, you will probably die on the spot, so you don't have to worry too much about the worst case scenario where you're barely floating in the cold dark waters getting torn apart.

So once again, DON'T BE NERVOUS and you'll be OK. After all, you and I know that air travel is very safe, USUALLY.

Post: #11

(03-10-2019 08:28 PM)lex the impaler Wrote:  This hits home for me. I had family at airports in the vicinity. I think Boeing has been somewhat lax in their response to the Lion Air crash. I fly Southwest quite a bit, they have some in their fleet. I'm also flying on an international flight on the MAX 8... oh boy.

I will probably be flying on a 737 this summer, too. It is scary, however.....

The odds of dying on any given flight are one in seven million. I repeat: one in seven million.

China has grounded these planes, and Boeing is no doubt shitting bricks rapidly attempting to figure out wtf is going on.

Disturbing, yes. Anything to prevent anyone from flying, and enjoying the knowledge that there is a 99.9999% chance of a save arrival, no.

I have read stories of pretty severe turbulence, where planes literally nose dived multiple times during the flight. Yet they are so well engineered, and the pilots so skilled, it's like they have some sort of magical ability to just never go down.

Post: #12

I only have a few hours in the Max but I have several thousand hours in other 737 variants. I'm currently inactive so I haven't been briefed on the results of the Lion Air investigation. Having said that, my best guess is that there was an equipment malfunction that may have been mishandled by the pilots. The max has a trim compensating system that is slightly different to the other models but if it goes awry it's easily handled by an experienced crew. You should feel very safe flying in a 737 in N America and W Europe (and Japan, according to some of my friends). Other parts of the world have different standards.

Post: #13

There's no way that two identical tragedies in such a short period of time are the airlines' fault. I will make sure to avoid flying with any Boeing 737-800 model in the future. RIP poor passengers.

Post: #14

Apparently the Lion Air one was related to the angle of attack sensor:wrong information generated spurious signals to incorrectly retrim the horizontal stabilizer, is what I'm told.

Not sure if this is an issue that would extend to the whole fleet or just a problem with that one aircraft.

Post: #15

2 planes of the same model going down in similar circumstances. Yeah I'm sure those planes are not going anywhere until they've found out why. They dont want a third. I'm sure the PR department for Boeing is saying everything is fine but behind the scenes they are probably scrambling to find out if it is a big fuck up on the software side.

Post: #16

Standards for avionic product qualification are very high. But from a statistical standpoint, you can't test a complete new airplane model to full six sigma extent.
So what is left, is to construct the plane in a way that the plane and it's parts and subsystems are statistically safe. Subsystems you can test to death with accelerated test conditions. The final confirmation of a correct calculation for the whole plane would only come after deploying the airplane.
I guess, Boeing can't build 100 or 1000 new planes just for qualification of a new model, and let all of them land a 1000 times.
Quite sure Boeing and Airbus always assemble a team of engineers to do a in-depth analysis of what happened, if the crash wasn't suicide by plane crash.
The engineers most familiar with the new MAX model won't have a relaxed time the coming months.

Post: #17

Don't you worry, guys, the Boeing MAX is safe.
It happens the plane was shoot down, electronically hijacked or brought down in whatever way someone wanted to. It happens that the United Nations had at least 19 officials on the Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed Sunday morning, some of whom were en route to a major environmental conference in Nairobi, Kenya.
I told you so.

Post: #18

Interestingly, eyewitnesses claim they saw smoke pouring out of the back of the aircraft as it came down. That doesn't seem consistent with the known MCAS problem.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/11/world...iopia.html

Here's the real conspiracy:

China has deliberately taken the lead in grounding them not because of a genuine belief in a safety issue, but because it's an easy headshot in the trade war. Escalate the scare and force airlines worldwide to follow suit or else look like they don't take safety seriously.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/...story.html

China's competitor to the 737 MAX, the Comac C919, has struggled, purportedly because nobody trusts Chinese manufacturing practices or their handling of accident investigations. Now China can say "LOL, at least we're not Boeing".

Post: #19

(03-11-2019 10:08 AM)Luvianka Wrote:  Don't you worry, guys, the Boeing MAX is safe.
It happens the plane was shoot down, electronically hijacked or brought down in whatever way someone wanted to. It happens that the United Nations had at least 19 officials on the Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed Sunday morning, some of whom were en route to a major environmental conference in Nairobi, Kenya.
I told you so.

Were they about to testify that Clinton uses plastic instead of paper? What?

Post: #20

(03-10-2019 11:56 PM)911 Wrote:  

(03-10-2019 06:45 PM)TigerMandingo Wrote:  I have an upcoming long-distance flight and this kind of stuff scares me, despite knowing that air travel is usually very safe.

Tiger, the key to a safe flight is to NOT BE NERVOUS. The vibes from nervous passengers can create a small resonance that can suddenly grow and build up critical stress in the aluminum structure of the cabin, resulting in catastrophic failure. Try not to think about it, and once again, DON'T BE NERVOUS. The worse that can happen to you is to survive a crash over the ocean, where you would die in agony from a combination of your injuries, hypothermia, and gradual dismemberment from hungry sharks. But chances are, if there is a midair crash, you will probably die on the spot, so you don't have to worry too much about the worst case scenario where you're barely floating in the cold dark waters getting torn apart.

So once again, DON'T BE NERVOUS and you'll be OK. After all, you and I know that air travel is very safe, USUALLY.

(03-11-2019 10:24 AM)Jetset Wrote:  ...
Here's the real conspiracy:

China has deliberately taken the lead in grounding them not because of a genuine belief in a safety issue, but because it's an easy headshot in the trade war. Escalate the scare and force airlines worldwide to follow suit or else look like they don't take safety seriously.
...

Yeah that makes sense. That's one of those stories you start to read and know right where it's going.

Post: #21

(03-11-2019 12:57 AM)Duke Main Wrote:  I only have a few hours in the Max but I have several thousand hours in other 737 variants. I'm currently inactive so I haven't been briefed on the results of the Lion Air investigation. Having said that, my best guess is that there was an equipment malfunction that may have been mishandled by the pilots. The max has a trim compensating system that is slightly different to the other models but if it goes awry it's easily handled by an experienced crew. You should feel very safe flying in a 737 in N America and W Europe (and Japan, according to some of my friends). Other parts of the world have different standards.

So how exactly are they able to fix or shut down the trim system?
It seems like the best course of action would be to the eliminate this sensor because it is forcing the plane into an accelerated nose dive into the ground. Very scary stuff!

Post: #22

There was another 737 non-MAX model issue in Huston just now, no death thankfully.

The FAA, which is monitoring the investigation into the crash of Ethiopian Air flight ET302, is now looking into an incident involving another Boeing 737, which is a generation prior to the 737 MAX, after United Airlines flight 1168 reported engine trouble during a turbulent landing in Houston. The flight declared an emergency as it was coming in for a landing when it suddenly began experiencing engine trouble.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-1...adly-crash

Post: #23

(03-11-2019 10:24 AM)Jetset Wrote:  Interestingly, eyewitnesses claim they saw smoke pouring out of the back of the aircraft as it came down. That doesn't seem consistent with the known MCAS problem.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/11/world...iopia.html

Here's the real conspiracy:

China has deliberately taken the lead in grounding them not because of a genuine belief in a safety issue, but because it's an easy headshot in the trade war. Escalate the scare and force airlines worldwide to follow suit or else look like they don't take safety seriously.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/...story.html

China's competitor to the 737 MAX, the Comac C919, has struggled, purportedly because nobody trusts Chinese manufacturing practices or their handling of accident investigations. Now China can say "LOL, at least we're not Boeing".

You summed up my thoughts exactly. When I first heard China was the first to start grounding, I knew that it was really just their perfect excuse to get leverage in the trade war. But, it doesn't mean I don't agree with the idea of grounding the 737-8's, but you just know this can be used for other motivations and was handed on a silver platter.

One unrelated note, I noticed Southwest Airlines has a lot of stake in Boeing as one of the bigger customers. I know a few people that fly Southwest regularly and keep up with news surrounding the company. One of them told me that Southwest has had a higher number of flight cancellations than usual the last few months and that union maintenance is going through intense negotiations with the company. I'm beginning to wonder if those issues and 737-8 Max fleet are connected, with Southwest maybe having more foresight to see a potential tragedy in the works and deal with the above as a result.

Post: #24

(03-11-2019 10:56 AM)yankeetravels Wrote:  

(03-11-2019 10:24 AM)Jetset Wrote:  Interestingly, eyewitnesses claim they saw smoke pouring out of the back of the aircraft as it came down. That doesn't seem consistent with the known MCAS problem.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/11/world...iopia.html

Here's the real conspiracy:

China has deliberately taken the lead in grounding them not because of a genuine belief in a safety issue, but because it's an easy headshot in the trade war. Escalate the scare and force airlines worldwide to follow suit or else look like they don't take safety seriously.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/...story.html

China's competitor to the 737 MAX, the Comac C919, has struggled, purportedly because nobody trusts Chinese manufacturing practices or their handling of accident investigations. Now China can say "LOL, at least we're not Boeing".

You summed up my thoughts exactly. When I first heard China was the first to start grounding, I knew that it was really just their perfect excuse to get leverage in the trade war. But, it doesn't mean I don't agree with the idea of grounding the 737-8's, but you just know this can be used for other motivations and was handed on a silver platter.

One unrelated note, I noticed Southwest Airlines has a lot of stake in Boeing as one of the bigger customers. I know a few people that fly Southwest regularly and keep up with news surrounding the company. One of them told me that Southwest has had a higher number of flight cancellations than usual the last few months and that union maintenance is going through intense negotiations with the company. I'm beginning to wonder if those issues and 737-8 Max fleet are connected, with Southwest maybe having more foresight to see a potential tragedy in the works and deal with the above as a result.

The majority of their fleet is old, they’re not doing much maintenance on a brand new or one/2 year old Max. It’s their fleet of decades old airframes that are probably giving those poor mechanics fits trying to keep up with the workload.

Post: #25

That sucks. Fly Dubai uses the 800's to and from Africa and Afghanistan. Hopefully their pilots are more experienced than some of these others.

With the pilot shortage worldwide, companies are hiring pilots with 0 turbine time. Some of the emerging countries are getting fresh pilots because they can't hold on to theirs. The big boys feed off the little companies like the regionals feed the legacy carriers here in the USA.

More and more countries are grounding their 800 max planes. I've read about 2 others so far. The feds are in deep with Boeing. I read of secretary of defense did 30+ years with the company. Dont expect the FAA to do anything soon.

I think 3 is a trend. I think the western world has more experienced pilots and better training. We should be straight.