He’s changed his ‘assessment’ quite a bit but still no retraction or apology.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus...8798adc77e0f16
The Lion Air B737 Max crash of October 29 had warning bells and red flags all over it because of ongoing technical problems with the aircraft.
During the flight on October 26, the captain had no speed or altitude information on his PFD (primary flight display). The same occurred on the flight of October 27. On the flight of October 28 after takeoff from Bali, the captain’s stall warning stick shaker activated on rotation. The captain handed control to the co-pilot while troubleshooting the problem.
On flap retraction, they had three automatic nose-down trim occurrences. He declared an emergency and over the next several minutes ran three non-normal checklists in the order of “airspeed unreliable”; “altitude disagree” and “runaway stabiliser” which has the final item, “stab (stabiliser) trim” switches to “cut off”. This solved the automatic nose-down trim events. The captain then told ATC the problem was solved and the co-pilot flew the rest of the flight to Jakarta using manual trim (no autopilot) with the captain’s stick shaker activated.
The technical log entries post flight apparently did not give a clear picture to the incoming October 29 captain of the full extent of what he was to endure. The position of the horizontal stabiliser (STAB) is always set at a negative angle in relation to the wing so as to supply a downforce to keep the aircraft in trim –_balanced so that the pilot has little or no pitch control column pressure from the elevator, which is hinged at the back of the STAB.
I have examined at length the DFDR (digital flight data recorder) traces of the Lion Air fatal flight of October 29, and they paint a damning and tragic picture of what unfolded.
On rotation for takeoff the captain’s stall warning stick shaker activated and remained active for the whole 12-minute flight. Call this takeoff time “0”.
At 0 plus 2 minutes at an altitude of 2150 feet, the flap was retracted and followed by 10 seconds of automatic MCAS nose-down trim (AND). This was followed by manually activated nose-up trim (ANU) while holding the control column back to give up elevator.
At 0 plus 3 minutes, the flaps were extended to 5 degrees and the AND stopped.
At 0 plus 5 minutes the flaps were retracted and the AND ran for 10 seconds and was countered by pilot ANU.
For the next 6 minutes there were over 20 automatic AND, each time followed by a pilot ANU. At 0 plus 11 minutes there were 4 AND, each followed by a very small manual ANU correction until the horizontal stabiliser had full nose-down trim and entered a dive which full nose-up elevator could not prevent.
0 plus 12 minutes end DFDR traces as the aircraft crashed.
It is obvious the captain was totally befuddled by the events occurring. He failed to identify what was happening to the extent that he fought against the automatic nose-down trim instead of disabling it with the stab-trim cut-off switches near the throttle quadrant.
Stabiliser trim motors are designed to reduce load with brief activation. To be running almost continuously, down and up, for over 6 minutes may have brought the electric motors close to seizure.
The cockpit voice recorder is needed to paint a fuller picture of this tragic event and the search is continuing at the moment. It is obvious that this flight should never have been allowed to happen.