Ace's link is well written, but they don't cut the pilots enough slack. Boeing think crews should have their tiny brains protected from a simple program like MCAS, yet should be able to put up with the chaos of the two fatal flights. Even
gums has said words to the effect, 'I don't suppose I would have known what was going on in those first minutes.'
Just what let them allow the wheels to spin for as long as they did? And why the taps open for the entire flight? So odd.
This is from
airman1900 long link - the testing by invited pilots to try the new software. The started off with the original software. This shouts that the corrective drills and handling is not a free lunch.
Pilots for three U.S. air carriers tell Aviation Week that during their sim training they had never been exposed to extreme and continuous AOA indication errors, they’ve not experienced AOA induced airspeed and altitude deviations on PFDs and have not had to deal with continuous stall-warning stickshaker distractions. They also note that they have never been required to fly the aircraft from the point at which a runaway stab trim incident occurred all the way to landing using only the manual trim wheels. “We’re just checking boxes for the FAA,” says one Seattle-based pilot.
Back to
Gordon's graph of the flight and the probability of three vanes failing. On the ET 302 I am persuaded that there's a high probability that there were two separate kinds of fault, if not three, counting the previous day to the Lion air. Years of electronics fault-finding has me trying to make some connection to all three, but it does sound like the first two could be electronic, and the ET 302 a vane detachment. Yes, the heater current is a strong argument.
What is puzzling is the push on the columns near the end. Yes, there's a negative g reading and its at the moment the left AoA vane or inner workings, spins to a new point. Bad negative g after that, poor souls. But if it's a sharp push forward on the controls ~ 1 g through 0 to ~ - 3 or more, g and AoA follows sharply and the shaker turns off with the pulse of g. A very good indicator that the vane unit is still rotating and sending signals. But why that particular shove on the poles? They were not gifted with much altitude.
Another bee in my bonnet is the burst of Fuel Flow on the Lion Air. It's unprecedented since the takeoff. There's one other large burst, but not like the last moments before the sudden sawing and then diving.
What were they trying to achieve with that? Could it possibly be connected as to why the PF in the 302 had a lot of power on. Could it have been keeping the nose up? Or at least making him think it was? It's these little things that are nagging at me.. Certainly, on the Lion Air, the nose went skyward.
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