National Post (National Edition)
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Stakes high for Boeing after Max8 crashes
Once again, an almost brand new Boeing 737 Max 8 crashes not long after takeoff as it flies erratically and pilots ask to return to the airport.
The crash Sunday morning of a jetliner in Ethiopia bears unmistakable similarities to the Oct. 29 tragedy off the coast of Indonesia involving the same model, prompting questions about whether a design issue that arose during the earlier accident could be to blame.
At the same time, the preliminary data suggests there may be significant differences as well.
China ordered its carriers to ground all 96 of its 737 Max jets, while Indonesia said it would also halt flights after Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 went down in a field shortly after takeoff Sunday, killing all 157 people on board.
The stakes for Boeing and one of its most popular models are enormous. But veteran crash investigators and the airline say there’s too little data to draw a direct tie between the two at this stage of the investigation.
Flight ET302 took off from Addis Ababa about a little before 8:40 a.m. local time and went down about six minutes later, killing all 157 aboard, according to a statement from the company. Its crew had reported an unspecified problem and asked to return to the airport, airline chief executive Tewolde Gebre Mariam said.
The plane’s initial flight track was very unusual at a time when airliners typ- ically climb steadily to get safely away from terrain and to reach altitudes where engines burn more efficiently.
Instead, it twice descended briefly during the first two and a half minutes after liftoff, according to tracking data provided by Flightradar24.com.
The plane’s “vertical speed was unstable after take off,” the company said in a tweet.
“You want to keep the airplane climbing, even during flap retraction, to get it away from the ground,” said John Cox, president of Safety Operating Systems and a former airline pilot who participated in dozens of crash investigations.
“That’s what makes the descent so unusual. That is something the investigators would want to look at.”
He cautioned against drawing conclusions how-
AT THIS POINT, IT’S JUST TOO EARLY (TO DRAW CONCLUSIONS).
ever. “At this point, it’s just too early,” he said.
The Ethiopian plane’s unusual descents are what have triggered comparisons to the earlier accident involving a Max 8 operated by Indonesia’s Lion Air.
That plane dipped dozens of times as pilots fought to control an automated safety feature that was trying to push down its nose.
Ho w e v e r, data from Flightradar24 suggests that the first time the Ethiopian plane lost altitude was too low for the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System to have activated, said Roger Cox, a former investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board who was also an airline pilot.
The Ethiopian plane had climbed about 900 feet when it stopped its ascent and dropped a few hundred feet, according to Flightradar24.
At that stage, the pilots would have been gaining speed and only just beginning the process of withdrawing the plane’s flaps, panels at the rear of the wings that are extended during takeoff to add lift, Cox said.
That makes it unlikely that the pilots were fighting the same issue as the Lion Air crew, Cox said. Boeing designed MCAS to activate only after the flaps are retracted.
Because the Ethiopian plane was apparently out of range, the flight track doesn’t include the last few minutes of the flight, including its final dive. Photos of the wreckage indicate it hit at a high speed.
Investigators have recovered the cockpit voice and flight-data recorders, Ethiopian Airlines said Monday, a significant step forward in piecing together what happened.
Lion Air Flight 610 dove into the Java Sea in October about 11 minutes after takeoff as pilots struggled to handle a malfunction that prompted MCAS to repeatedly command a dive. All 189 people aboard died.
While Indonesian investigators have identified multiple failures of the airline’s maintenance and raised questions about the pilots’ actions, one of the factors under review in the investigation is Boeing’s design. The Federal Aviation Administration is working with the Chicagobased planemaker on a possible software change to reduce the chances that such a failure could cause an accident in the future.
The Boeing single-aisle model, revamped with larger engines, is the latest version of a jetliner that has formed the backbone of global fleets for five decades.