Disregarding your choice of words, which I believe is unfortunate, we all agree that you need both things to fail (engineering and training) for most accidents to happen.

I also believe that the adequate level of engineering in this particular problem would have been a lot cheaper to achieve than adequate level of training for pilots. I mean, which is more understandable to you:

1) Assume that the new plane is not going to try to kill you (pilot) in a new way nobody explained you beforehand, (that was pilot error)
2) Assume that no crew is going to be "too easily overwhelmed" if the new system you designed, which is susceptible to failure as every other thing in the world, tries to kill them in a brand new way that you decide not to explain or mitigate beforehand. (that was boeing error)

In a news conference in Addis Ababa, Ms Dagmawit (Ethiop.Transport Minister) said: "The crew performed all the procedures repeatedly [that were] provided by the manufacturer but were not able to control the aircraft." Her comments were based on a preliminary report into the crash, which has not been published yet, but could be released by the end of the week.

+

The preliminary report said:

• The aircraft had a valid certificate of air worthiness.*
• The crew had a licence and qualifications to conduct the flight.*
• The takeoff appeared very normal.*
• Pilots performed the necessary procedures, as provided by the manufacturer, "repeatedly" to bring the flight under control.But was not able to control the aircraft.*
• Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 experienced “repetitive uncommanded aircraft nose-down conditions” which "continued for the remainder of the flight” before the crash.
• Boeing urged to review aircraft flight control system relating to control of the plane by accident investigators.

[Note A0283 - the lines with an asterix * were the literal words used by her during the press conference.]

The Ethiopian authorities did not attribute blame in their preliminary report and did not give detailed analysis of the flight.

Following the Ethiopian disaster, Max jets have been grounded worldwide pending a software fix that Boeing is rolling out, which must still receive approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other regulators.

Boeing is now being investigated by the US Justice Department, the Transportation Department's inspector general, and congressional committees.

Investigations are also looking into the role of the Federal Aviation Administration in the US, which certified the Max in 2017 and refused to ground the jets after the crash back in October.

The FAA said in a statement it was continuing to work towards understanding what happened.

That's fair. I'll chase up a reference. Regardless, your characterisation of the FDR (that pilot-trim-up was involved in a losing tug-of-war with MCAS-trim-down) is incorrect. It is only the final 4 MCAS-commanded-nose-down trim commands that result in increasing nose-down attitude. The previous 21 such MCAS-commanded-nose-down trim commands are fully counteracted by the flight crew resulting in essentially level flight at 5000 feet for 6 continuous minutes.

I think it is also important to note that both MAX crashes happened during day/VMC flight. I cannot imagine what it might be like to experience the same symptoms at night in IMC conditions.

Your overall description of JT610 is correct, but the airspeed was relatively low, so it may be premature to judge if electric trim would have had the same effects at speeds > 250kts, when both speed trim and horizontal stabiliser loading come into play.

FDR trace:

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....fd8beea7fb.jpg

gmx The transition from captain to co-pilot is when the last four nose-up trim commands become short blips, instead of the long activation earlier in the FDR.

Thanks Gordon. Any help on the transfer of control from PF to FO at the time the aircraft attitude starts to go south ?

Last year my first ever real in-flight incident was in my CAP-10, flying downwind 1000ft AGL in the circuit. The electric trim ran away to the end stop and suddenly I was pointing at the ground, After pooing myself, I worked out what it was quite quickly and returned the trim to neutral, where it promptly ran away to the end stop again. So I recentralised it, and disabled it. Problem solved, although had to land without flaps.
Gave me a real heart thumping moment until it was sorted.
The stick forces even in my small plane were quite high.
At the next opportunity I went up to 5000 ft and had a practice while slowly moving the trim to its end stops to see if the plane was controllable, which it was. Uncomfortable, but controllable.

I don't think anybody should second guess what the pilots should and should not have done, or did and didn't do, until the full report is made public and we can see the facts.

I think Boeing will have a lot to answer to with explanations and money before these planes are certified for flight again. And then you have the public relations problem of getting bums on seats again.

Fair point, I should have written crews were overwhelmed instead of too easily overwhelmed. Nonetheless, despite all the stress and confusion that was surely occuring, the "only thing" that was happening is that the airplane was trimming nose down. According to Boeing this can be overriden with the electric trim switch and I have not seen any proof yet that this isn't the case. As I already wrote in an earlier post it is just very puzzling to me why a pilot would let his/her aircraft get to an extreme nose down state if it is possible to counter this with electric trimming. We obviously need more information to be able to understand what truly happened.

Anyone consider the old "pitch for airspeed" and how counter intuitive slowing down might have seemed?

This^^^.

Not one word more is necessary. Thanks.

Not quite the only thing - also Stick Shaker, elevator feel shift, IAS disagree and ALT disagree to deal with.

Regardless, there is a simple way of proving whether an average crew will be overwhelmed - test it in the sim. During the likely extent of the MAX grounding there must be enough NG/MAX crew getting a sim check anyway to give you a large dataset to be sure.

If the average crew is overwhelmed, either the system isn't safe or the training isn't good enough, or both. If the average crews cope just fine, then these crashes are just pilot error, nothing to fix, move along...

Of course, the industry can't do that because sims that can replicate mcas are rare as rocking horse sh*t outside of Boeing itself, because they aren't needed, because you can learn all you need to know about the MAX from an NG sim. All except how not to crash.

Referring to the same post Isn't there a report by an AA pilot concerning MCAS causing problems in the safety reporting database (can't remember the name of it just now)?

I have repeatedly suggested that excessive airspeed may have played a role, particularly based on the ADS-B data for the ET302 crash. Given the simultaneous stick shaker and other warnings, reducing speed may not have been the first choice, and was certainly not on any checklists.

The downside of reducing thrust with underslung engines, is that this reduction produces a slight nose down pitch. It is unlikely that a reduction in speed would have been sufficient in the time available, given the low altitude and 'point of no return' reached by ET302

Sim pilots also put Sully plane back on a runway.

In this and many other scenarios, figuring out what to do is a lot more challenge than doing it. That sim test is worth nothing if you know which specific failure is going to happen at your specific flight.

Preliminary Report
 

http://www.ecaa.gov.et/documents/204...8-d7af1ee17f3e

- GY

CNN say they have a copy of the preliminary Report - see their website - and have quoted some interesting facts.

Hi Gordon,
Your post surprises me a bit. I can't see that I suggested a checklist for AoA disagree here...

FDR ET302
 

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....0f8dd5ed20.jpg

Quite simply the LionAir data does not establish that it is possible to win the battle between Electric Trim and MCAS (particularly if time is of the essence). With combined opposing authority it may only have have a marginal effect on trim. While that may be sufficient to maintain control if the trim is close to optimum it may not be enough if the trim is already way off. Like you say, the data on Ethiopian has not been released yet. However, the published information on the LionAir incidents is not sufficient to draw firm conclusions. I will concede that in the LionAir incident it would appear to be the case that the situation could have been resolved by acting sooner; as in the previous flight. It is not clear that the same is true in the Ethiopian accident. It also may be of some importance that the situation developed at a later stage in the previous LionAir flight. Despite reading most of what is available, I still have more questions than there are answers. In the LionAir incident (crash) stick-shaker started at the beginning of the take-off roll... it is a stage that puts particular stress on the crew to properly interpret and react.