Originally Posted by
Tomaski
Normal takeoff profile would consist of a relatively steep climb followed by a slight power reduction from takeoff thrust to climb thrust with decrease in climb rate to accelerrate and retract the flaps followed by an increase climb once climb speed was achieved. There is a tendency for the 737 to sink during flap retraction which needs to be countered with appropriate control inputs. If the Captain was not used to hand flying through the clean up phase and was distracted by the stick shaker it is entirely possibly that he was tardy with making the appropriate control inputs to keep from sinking. As far as the overweight question Im sure that is one of things that the investigation will look at but it does not appear that the aircraft was underperforming.
Why do you say that it does not appear that the aircraft was underperforming? There was no "steep climb followed by a slight power reduction from takeoff thrust to climb thrust." There was no steep climb at all and what minimal power reduction there was took place later. It took over a minute to reach around 1,400' agl.
Look at the comparisons of radar profiles Reuters published after the ET302 crash (I'm not allowed to post URL's yet so Google "ethiopian airlines reuters graphics"). The accident aircraft climbed at a much shallower rate than three of the four other flights out of Addis Ababa headed for Nairobi on March 7-8 (and also the Lion Air accident flight), and the one that had a similarly shallow climb profile had to delay its southbound turn until after it passed Yerer Mountain (perhaps that flight was overloaded too).
Did you look at the DFDR graphs in the Preliminary Report? You didn't respond to the point about the abrupt pitch up immediately upon take-off. Is it normal to have abrupt back pressure on the yoke, resulting in pitch up to 18-19 degrees followed immediately by abrupt forward pressure on the yoke? Isn't that at least suggestive of an underperforming airplane that barely made it off the ground before the end of the runway?
Nor did you respond to my weight calculations. Do you think 167 lbs./pax (including carry on) is reasonable? That is the Ethiopian AIB's position. What do you expect will change between the Preliminary Report and the Final Report? Would you agree to fly an airplane that is more than 2,000 lbs. over RTOW?
To be clear, I'm not accusing the crew of doing anything wrong during the take off and climb out. I'm suggesting that the airplane was overloaded, was not climbing normally, and that resulted in the captain requesting continued runway heading and announcing flight control problems before MCAS activated (as observed by Bend alot). I'm also asking whether that (rather than task saturation or tunnel vision) might explain the crew maintaining take off power throughout the flight.