PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Ethiopian airliner down in Africa
View Single Post
Old 9th Apr 2019, 05:33
  #3681 (permalink)  
threemiles
 
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: btw SAMAR and TOSPA
Posts: 566
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Originally Posted by gmx
Well, it was cut out by the pilots. They had the option to re-trim the aircraft using electric trim before hitting the cutout. I believe this "option" occurred to the crew close to the end when they re-enabled the electric trim but their attempts to re-trim with the column switches was unsuccessful (either through pilot error or malfunction). Had they done this earlier, right before they activated the STAB TRIM CUTOUT, they would have been in a very similar situation to the pre-accident LionAir flight -- a trimmed, stable aircraft, with AP disconnected, and stick shaker going off on PF side.

A couple of points, one made a few posts back.

Firstly, it seems the lessons from the pre-accident LionAir flight and the subsequent accident flight were not learned well enough. As far as we know, the MCAS issue that occurs as a result of PF-side erroneous AoA signal is completely survivable by the crew taking the correct course of action. It seems that the correct course of action wasn't spelled out clearly enough for the ET302 crew, or it was not drummed into them methodically enough. That's a further failing of the airline industry following the initial accident.

Secondly, it has been remarked here on numerous occasions that it is extremely rare for a transport crew to encounter a stick shaker alert. Had the pre-accident LionAir B737 been grounded following that flight, and had the ET302 crew leveled the aircraft before disabling the electric trim and subsequently managed to land, that would have been two flights with PF-side stick shaker active for the duration of those flights. That would suggest a systemic issue, but it does not appear to have received the same attention as the MCAS response.
Of course, they could have done so, this and that. But they elected to start a 30 degrees bank manual flown turn at 340 kIAS without the ability to pull or trim ANU. Whatever dictated them to turn.

With regard to lessons learnt from Lionair: an Emergency AD is a quite ultimate document. If that is not well thought through and written by lawyers there is not much room left.
threemiles is offline