Ethiopian airliner down in Africa
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Flight radar seems to show the flight ending 20 odd miles due E of Addis on flat high plateau terrain at 280Kts having apparently barely achieved 500ft agl in all that distance.
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MCAS
MCAS is operational only on flaps up and autpilot off I believe. Is that likely to be consistent with the last known (FR24) altitude/speed etc?
Would a potential AOA sensor error be known prior to selecting flaps up?
Nothing implied, just a query.
Would a potential AOA sensor error be known prior to selecting flaps up?
Nothing implied, just a query.
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If the same faulty system crashed two planes within the first two years of its existence, then grounding the planes until the issue is fixed does not seem premature to me.
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Picture just received shows a crater with nothing bigger than 2 feet, I can't confirm the origin of the picture at this stage, it might show up here shortly though.
Edit: It's on avherald.
Edit: It's on avherald.
I guess so. And FR even sais themselfs they don't have good coverage in the area. So it is widely premature to define the crash site next to the last FR position. The exact position of the crash site will be quite important to what happened in between, if anything.
At this stage of an accident there is ALWAYS a lot of confusing information, that is normal. The US Travelwarnings will probably also make for some hot air by the news outlets, we should be aware of that. Until more is known, all of this is speculation. Read it or leave it...
At this stage of an accident there is ALWAYS a lot of confusing information, that is normal. The US Travelwarnings will probably also make for some hot air by the news outlets, we should be aware of that. Until more is known, all of this is speculation. Read it or leave it...
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Was the correct Perf data entered into the FMC? As trees get bigger, the temptation to pull back more, despite insufficient power, becomes enormous, hence many of these things ending in a stall/spin situation. Then there’s that MCAS “unpublicized” feature. This explains it well:
https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-s...em-mcas-jt610/
If, meaning IF, they had insufficient power and pulled back a bit too much, right into the MCAS zone of operation, which would definitely not help right then, well, there are a couple of potential links in the old chain. Or Swiss cheese holes. I’m surprised that a thing that moves your trim around when you’re in a bad corner of the envelope could
be deemed as too much information for the pilots, hence not make it into the manual.
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When the aircraft are so new and Boeing admitted to omitting information after the previous crash then I don't think it's premature at all. Concorde was grounded after decades even though the crash was nothing to do with the craft.
short flights long nights
Is the above picture the crash site?
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There are 370 MAXes in operation, 99% of them are less than 2 years old. So the loss of 2 aircraft is alarming, loss of 2 aircraft in the same phase of flight (and not the most dangerous phase statistically speaking) is even more alarming. But obviously no one will ground the fleet without sufficient evidence...
short flights long nights
There is nothing left. From that picture it looks like it must have gone straight in at high speed!!
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So they never got to 10,500, hence no turn. Where FR shows the flight ending and Bishoftu are NOT the same place. It has a “density altitude” feel to it. You know, the guy who shoots a moose and loads it into his Piper Cub, grossly overloading it, on a hot and high day. He gets just enough juice to lift off in ground effect but is never able to climb out of it. Trees getting bigger....
Was the correct Perf data entered into the FMC? As trees get bigger, the temptation to pull back more, despite insufficient power, becomes enormous, hence many of these things ending in a stall/spin situation. Then there’s that MCAS “unpublicized” feature. This explains it well:
https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-s...em-mcas-jt610/
If, meaning IF, they had insufficient power and pulled back a bit too much, right into the MCAS zone of operation, which would definitely not help right then, well, there are a couple of potential links in the old chain. Or Swiss cheese holes. I’m surprised that a thing that moves your trim around when you’re in a bad corner of the envelope could
be deemed as too much information for the pilots, hence not make it into the manual.
Judging by the FR24 raw data their forward speed kept increasing, which does not point to any performance problems.
The question is why they couldn’t convert to forward speed into altitude.
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Ethiopian
Trundling around africa I’d rather fly KQ/SAA/RAM/THY before ET.
Personally I would wait a while before blaming the aircraft. It’s also possible it was something more akin to human (pilot/ground handling/security/ATC) error.
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This is a very sad day for one of the most respected airlines in Africa. What few images that have emerged from the crash site so far show an impact crater without a scattered debris field. The crater contains lots of small debris indicating a very high energy impact from a very steep trajectory. So far indications are that the aircraft was intact at impact.
From the ADS-B numbers above this looks more like an unreliable airspeed event than a trim runaway. The aircraft hardly climbed at all before striking high ground at a very high speed.
From the ADS-B numbers above this looks more like an unreliable airspeed event than a trim runaway. The aircraft hardly climbed at all before striking high ground at a very high speed.
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Looks like:
- a long takeoff roll (normal at high altitudes);
- a reduction in vertical speed as accelerating for flap retraction (approximate 250 kts groundspeed shows this);
- then a sharp altitude loss and speed gain (could be similar to previous MCAS or AOA issue)
Time will tell...
