Boeing
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FILE PHOTO: Ethiopian police officers walk past the debris of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 plane crash, near the town of Bishoftu, near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia March 12, 2019. REUTERS/Baz Ratner/File Photo
April 5, 2019
JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia will send two investigators to Ethiopia to assist in a probe and exchange data on two fatal crashes of Boeing 737 MAX jets since October, the head of the country’s air safety agency told Reuters on Friday.
Boeing’s top-selling airplane has been grounded worldwide since a March 10 disaster in Ethiopia killed 157 people, five months after a Lion Air 737 MAX crashed in Indonesia, killing 189 people on board.
Indonesian investigators will travel to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on April 15, said Soerjanto Tjahjono, head of the National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT).
“They will help in assisting Ethiopia. We will study the data to assess whether there are similarities or whether there is any new information from the accident,” Tjahjono said by telephone.
A preliminary report on the Ethiopian Airlines’ crash showed on Thursday that the doomed jet traveled at an excessive speed and was forced downwards by a wrongly-triggered automation system as pilots wrestled to regain control.
Tjahjono said it was too early to draw any conclusions from the Ethiopian report or determine any links between the crashes because it contained factual data without analysis.
“We have already observed some similarities…but we cannot determine them exactly until after our investigators go to Ethiopia when we will conduct a joint investigation,” he said.
The two Indonesian investigators would sign an agreement on their role under an International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) protocol, he said.
A preliminary report into the crash of the Lion Air 737 MAX in Indonesia suggested pilots lost control after grappling with the MCAS software, a new automated anti-stall feature that repeatedly lowered the nose based on a faulty sensor data.
(Reporting by Tabita Diela; Writing by Ed Davies; Editing by Darren Schuettler)
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FILE PHOTO: A SilkAir Boeing 737 Max 8 plane (behind) sits on the tarmac near a hangar after suspended operations for all Boeing 737 Max 8 planes, at Changi Airport in Singapore, March 12, 2018. REUTERS/Edgar Su/File Photo
April 5, 2019
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – The Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore on Friday said that it would participate in a technical review panel on the Boeing Co 737 MAX jet led by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The FAA said on Wednesday that it is forming an international team to review the safety of the Boeing 737 MAX, which was grounded after two fatal crashes since October.
(Reporting by Jamie Freed; Editing by David Goodman)
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FILE PHOTO: Workers cover the cockpit window of a Jet Airways aircraft parked at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Mumbai, India, March 26, 2019. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas/File Photo
April 5, 2019
By Aditya Kalra and Aditi Shah
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Lessors to India’s Jet Airways Ltd are planning to ask the country’s aviation regulator to de-register many more planes leased to the airline, three sources told Reuters, signaling that a planned bailout of the troubled carrier is failing to assuage their concerns.
About six of Jet’s lessors are likely to apply to India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to de-register up to 15 of the grounded planes, over the next 10 days, said one of the sources with direct knowledge of the situation.
Once a plane is de-registered, the lessors are free to take them out of the country and lease them to other airlines.
While some lessors have already taken a few planes out of India after a mutual agreement with Jet, sources have told Reuters, the latest series of applications to the DGCA would be on a non-consensual basis.
Jet did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jet, India’s oldest private carrier now controlled by its lenders, has had to ground more than three-quarters of its fleet of 119 planes, many due to non-payment to lessors, leading to hundreds of flight cancellations.
Avolon, one of the world’s biggest aircraft lessors, on Thursday applied to the DGCA to take two of its planes placed with Jet outside of India, making it the first to pull planes out on a non-consensual basis.
About 100 of Jet’s 119 mainly Boeing Co planes are leased by companies such as Avolon, GE Capital Aviation Services (GECAS) and Aercap Holdings. It was not immediately clear which of the lessors were planning to apply for de-registration in the coming days.
(Editing by Martin Howell)
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FILE PHOTO: Ethiopian police officers walk past the debris of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 plane crash, near the town of Bishoftu, near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia March 12, 2019. REUTERS/Baz Ratner/File Photo
April 5, 2019
By Tim Hepher, Eric M. Johnson and Jamie Freed
PARIS/SEATTLE/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Minutes after take-off, the pilots of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX were caught in a bad situation.
A key sensor had been wrecked, possibly by a bird strike. As soon as they retracted the landing gear, flaps and slats, it began to feed faulty data into the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), designed to prevent stalls.
Flying faster than recommended, the crew struggled with MCAS. But the high speed made it nearly impossible to use the controls to pull the nose up.
Moments later, the Boeing Co jet hit the ground, killing all 157 people onboard after six minutes of flight.
Ethiopian authorities said on Thursday that the pilots followed all the correct procedures in trying to keep MCAS from sending the plane into a fatal dive.
But the full picture of what happened in the cockpit of Flight 302 on March 10 is emerging from a preliminary report and a newly released data plot showing how crew and technology interacted.
The airline’s youngest-ever captain, a 29-year-old with an impressive 8,100 hours flying time, and his rookie 25-year-old co-pilot may have made a crucial mistake by leaving the engines at full take-off power, according to data and other pilots.
By the end, the aircraft was traveling at 500 knots (575 mph, 926 kph), far beyond its design limits.
That and some other potential missteps may have left them unable to fight flawed Boeing software that eventually sent the jet into an uncontrollable dive, experts said after studying the data.
“Power being left in take-off power while leveling off at that speed is not a normal procedure,” said one U.S. pilot, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media. “I can’t imagine a scenario where you’d need to do that.”
The Ethiopian Airlines crash, and another in Indonesia five months earlier, have left the world’s largest planemaker in crisis as its top-selling jetliner is grounded worldwide, and Ethiopia scrambling to protect one of Africa’s most successful companies.
Boeing is working on a software fix for MCAS and extra pilot training, which its chief executive, Dennis Muilenburg, said would prevent similar events from happening again.
BIRD STRIKE
Sources who reviewed the crash data said the problems started barely 12 seconds after take-off.
A sudden data spike suggests a bird hit the plane as it was taking off and sheared away a vital airflow sensor.
As with the Lion Air crash in Indonesia, the damaged ‘angle of attack’ sensor, which tells pilots what angle the aircraft has relative to its forward movement, may have set off a volatile chain of events.
In both cases, the faulty sensor tricked the plane’s computer into thinking the nose was too high and the aircraft was about to stall, or lose lift. The anti-stall MCAS software then pushed the nose down forcefully with the aircraft’s “trim” system, normally used to maintain level flight.
The first time the MCAS software kicked in, the Ethiopian Airlines pilots quickly countered the movement by flicking switches under their thumbs – they had recognized the movements as the same type all flight crews had been warned about after the Lion Air flight.
But data suggest they did not hold the buttons down long enough to fully counteract the computer’s movements. At that point, they were a mere 3,000 feet above the airport, so low that a new warning – a computerized voice saying “don’t sink” – sounded in the cabin.
When MCAS triggered again, the jetliner’s trim was set to push the nose down at almost the maximum level, while the control yoke noisily vibrated with another stall warning called a “stick shaker.”
This time, the pilots countered MCAS more effectively. But when they turned off the system – as they were instructed to do by Boeing and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the wake of the Lion Air disaster – the nose was still pointed downward, leaving the jetliner vulnerable.
The combination of excess speed and cutting off the system while the plane was still leaning downwards meant up to 50 pounds of force would be needed to move the control column, and moving the manual trim wheels was impossible.
‘PULL UP, PULL UP’
The captain called out “pull up” three times. The co-pilot reported problems to air traffic control.
In the meantime, the aircraft’s speed remained abnormally high.
The bird strike and loss of airflow data would have affected airspeed information too. In such cases, pilots know to turn off automatic engine settlings and control thrust manually.
But the report says “the throttles did not move,” without elaborating. Data confirms the engines stayed at nearly full power. Other 737 pilots say that made the crew’s job tougher by making the controls much harder to move.
Some experienced pilots said there were an array of stressful factors sapping the pilots’ attention, which Muilenburg addressed on Thursday.
“As pilots have told us, erroneous activation of the MCAS function can add to what is already a high-workload environment,” Muilenburg said. “It’s our responsibility to eliminate this risk. We own it and we know how to do it.”
Among the distractions was a “clacker” warning telling the pilots their aircraft was going too fast.
As the nose gradually fell, the pilots turned to a last-resort device to adjust the plane’s trim.
The captain asked the young co-pilot to try to trim the plane manually using a wheel in the center console to lift the nose and make it easier to recover from the dive.
But it was too hard to move the wheel. Both men then tried to pitch the nose up together. The captain, according to the report, said it was not enough.
MCAS RE-ACTIVATES
In a possible last-ditch attempt to level the plane, data suggests the pilots turned MCAS-related systems back on. That would also reactivate the electric trim system, and perhaps make it easier for the pilots to force the reluctant nose higher.
Reactivating MCAS is contrary to advice issued by Boeing and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration after Lion Air. The report did not address that.
The pilots managed to lift the nose slightly using the electric thumb switches on their control yokes. But data suggest they may have flicked the switches too gingerly.
With its power restored, a final MCAS nose-down command kicked in, eventually pushing the nose down to a 40 degree angle at an airspeed of up to 500 knots, far beyond the plane’s operating limits.
As the 737 MAX plunged, G-forces turned negative, pulling occupants out of their seats and possibly inducing a feeling of weightlessness as the plane hurtled toward the ground.
Just six minutes after take off, the plane crashed into a field.
(Additional reporting by Jason Neely in Addis Ababa, Tracy Rucinski in Chicago, David Shepardson in Washington, Allison Lampert in Montreal; Editing by Gerry Doyle)
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FILE PHOTO: Employees walk by the end of a 737 Max aircraft at the Boeing factory in Renton, Washington, U.S., March 27, 2019. REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson/File Photo
April 5, 2019
(Reuters) – Fitch Ratings said on Friday the impact on the airline industry in Asia from the grounding of Boeing 737 Max jets has been muted so far but may worsen in the second quarter of 2019.
Boeing’s top-selling aircraft has been grounded worldwide since the March 10 Ethiopian Airlines disaster, which killed 157 people, and came just five months after a Lion Air crash in Indonesia that killed 189.
The grounding of the model has had a limited impact on the fares and performances of airlines in most markets due to seasonally low demand in the first quarter, Fitch said in its report.
It added that there is limited flexibility for airlines to switch to alternatives from Airbus or Boeing.
The Indian aviation market, however, has seen a sharp rise in air fares in the recent months due to tight supply, partly worsened by the suspension of the 737 MAX, Fitch said.
A preliminary report in the Ethiopian crash on Thursday showed that the doomed 737 MAX jet hit excessive speed and was forced downwards by a wrongly-triggered automation system as pilots wrestled to regain control.
(Reporting by Gaurika Juneja and Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)
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FILE PHOTO -American civil aviation and Boeing investigators search through the debris at the scene of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 plane crash, near the town of Bishoftu, southeast of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia March 12, 2019. REUTERS/Baz Ratner/File Photo
April 4, 2019
By Jamie Freed
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s insistence that its pilots followed procedures when their Boeing Co 737 MAX nosedived before a deadly crash, and Boeing’s recent declaration that a new software fix makes a “safe plane safer,” have set the stage for a lengthy fight over the roles of technology and crew in recent 737 MAX crashes.
After a deadly Lion Air crash in October, Boeing and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration told airlines what to do in the event that an erroneous sensor reading fooled the jet into thinking it was in a stall and pushed the nose down.
The Ethiopian Airlines pilots initially followed the advice to shut off the MCAS anti-stall system but later reversed the command counter to guidance at a time when they were traveling beyond maximum operating speeds, according to data contained in a preliminary report released on Thursday and experts on the jet.
WHAT ARE THE PROPER PROCEDURES?
If MCAS misfires, forcing the nose down in a maneuver similar to a condition that pilots know as runaway trim, pilots are supposed to hit two cut-out switches at the plane’s center console to turn off power to the electric trim system.
Under normal circumstances, trim is used to keep an aircraft flying level, but the MCAS makes automated nose-down movements.
Data from the Ethiopian Airlines flight indicates the aircraft was flying nose-heavy and not in a “neutral” attitude when pilots hit the stabilizer cutout switches to disable the MCAS system, the preliminary report showed.
That would make the situation harder to manage, possibly accounting for their decision to turn the system back on.
Boeing’s checklist for pilots tells them to “control airplane pitch attitude manually with control column and main electric trim as needed” before hitting cut-out switches and turning to a rarely used manual wheel to keep the plane’s nose in the proper position. It does not describe a specific trim setting for the pilots to achieve.
WOULD THE PROCEDURES WORK?
Experts are questioning whether the procedures outlined after the Lion Air crash were comprehensive enough to ensure pilots could recover from a real-life cockpit emergency with several distractions at a low altitude shortly after take-off rather than in a pre-planned simulator ride.
A 737 MAX pilot said the resistance on the control yoke would be about four times normal and it could take a few dozen turns of the manual wheel to return the nose to the proper position, depending on the alignment when the switches were cut.
The preliminary report indicates the pilots tried to move their wheels together but were unable to raise the nose much at all by doing so.
“It appears the flight crew reactivated electric trim,” former Boeing engineer Peter Lemme said. “But they only made a very small nose up adjustment – I would have expected them to immediately and without stopping move the stabilizer back into trim. The last MCAS command comes 5 seconds after their last manual trim command.”
WHY COULDN’T THEY RAISE THE NOSE MANUALLY?
The proper response to MCAS emergencies, Leeham Co analyst Bjorn Fehrm said, is to correct the dangerous nose-down “trim” using electronic thumb switches, then turn off MCAS and trim manually with the wheel.
But if the aircraft is going too fast, those electronic switches may not be effective, European regulators said in a 2016 memo. And failing to fully fix the trim before MCAS is deactivated can make it physically impossible for pilots to control the plane, Fehrm said.
Under normal circumstances, trim is used to keep an aircraft flying level.
At speeds up to 250 knots (288 mph) pilots can stabilize trim with the manual wheel. But when the speed rises towards 300 knots and higher, the wheel becomes impossible to turn as air rushing over control surfaces makes them harder to move, Fehrm said.
At the time when both pilots were unable to move the wheel, they were traveling at over 340 knots, the maximum operating speed of the airplane and clacker alarms were sounding. By the end of the fatal flight they had reached 500 knots.
WHY WAS THE ETHIOPIAN JET GOING SO FAST?
The plane’s engines were at 94 percent thrust on take-off and remained there for the rest of the flight.
That is consistent with the pilots leaving the thrust setting in take-off mode throughout, aviation experts said.
The 737’s air data computer also uses angle-of-attack (AOA) information to adjust airspeed readings. If it mistakenly thinks the angle of attack is high, it can trigger pilot warnings that airspeed and altitude data are unreliable on one of the pilot’s controls, according to former Boeing engineer Peter Lemme.
That leads to an unreliable airspeed checklist which involves turning off the autothrottle as well as setting engine thrust to 75 percent. The runaway stabilizer checklist to shut off MCAS also says to turn off autothrottle.
However, according to the flight data recorder, the pilots never reduced the thrust from 94 percent.
“The report does not address information about unreliable airspeed procedures which should be considered because they had erratic airspeed,” said Greg Feith, a former senior air safety investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.
(Reporting by Jamie Freed; additional reporting by Tim Hepher in Paris, Eric M. Johnson in Seattle and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Gerry Doyle and Alexandra Hudson)
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FILE PHOTO – Ethiopian Federal policemen stand at the scene of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 plane crash, near the town of Bishoftu, southeast of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia March 11, 2019. REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri/File Photo
April 4, 2019
By Jason Neely
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia Airlines’ doomed 737 MAX jet hit excessive speed and was forced downwards by a wrongly-triggered automation system as pilots wrestled to regain control, a preliminary report into the crash that has shaken the aviation world showed on Thursday.
Three times the captain Yared Getachew cried “pull up”, before the Boeing plane plunged into a field six minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa last month, killing all 157 passengers and crew, said the report by Ethiopian investigators.
The disaster – and parallels with another 737 MAX crash in Indonesia where 189 people died last October – has led to the grounding of Boeing’s flagship model.
It has also brought uncomfortable scrutiny over new software, pilot training and regulatory rigor.
While the Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority’s Accident Prevention and Investigation Bureau had a remit to investigate rather than blame, it implicitly pointed the finger at Boeing by defending the pilots, recommending the U.S. company fix its control systems, and saying regulators must be certain before allowing the MAX back in the air.
“The crew performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer but was not able to control the aircraft,” Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges told a news conference.
“Since repetitive uncommanded aircraft nose down conditions are noticed … it is recommended that the aircraft control system shall be reviewed by the manufacturer.”
Boeing, the world’s biggest planemaker and one of the United States’ most important exporters with a $500 billion order book for the MAX, says a new software fix for its anti-stall system will enable pilots to always override if necessary.
According to the report by the Ethiopian investigators, an alarm indicating excess speed was heard on the cockpit voice reporter as the jet reached 500 knots (575 miles per hour) – well above operational limits.
FRAGMENTS IN A CRATER
The plane had faulty “angle of attack” sensor readings, its nose was pushed down automatically, and the crew lost control despite following recommended instructions, it said.
“Most of the wreckage was found buried in the ground,” the report said, indicating the strength of the impact on an arid field in an agricultural zone. No bodies were recovered, only charred fragments among the debris in a crater.
Boeing has seen billions wiped off its market value since the crash, but its shares actually rose 2.4 percent on Thursday. Morgan Stanley said the report of flight control problems, which Boeing was already trying to fix, meant a “worst case scenario” of a new cause was probably off the table.
Families of the victims, regulators and travelers around the world have been waiting to find out to what extent Boeing technology or the pilots’ actions played a role.
A final report is due within a year.
The preliminary report into the Lion Air disaster in Indonesia suggested pilots also lost control after grappling with so-called MCAS software, a new automated anti-stall feature that repeatedly lowered the nose based on faulty sensor data.
“It had to take a second disaster to wake up the major players to pay attention to something that could’ve been resolved after the first disaster,” said one woman, who lost her father in the Ethiopian crash, asking not to be named.
“Whatever the issues were, they better be 110 percent sure about their resolution, otherwise the 157 lives lost would have been for nothing if something like this happens again. This is a lesson to not take shortcuts in order to try and save bucks.”
“PROFITS OVER SAFETY”?
U.S. regulator the Federal Aviation Administration, under fire for its certification of the MAX, cautioned the inquiry was not over. “As we learn more about the accident and findings become available, we will take appropriate action,” it said.
Boeing may press to know how crew members responded to problems triggered by the faulty data. Questions on whether the pilots had leveled out the plane before disengaging MCAS and how many times MCAS activated were not answered at the news conference in Addis Ababa that lasted about 40 minutes.
The New York Times quoted Dagmawit as saying pilots turned MCAS off and on, which is not the step recommended in published Boeing procedures telling crew to leave it off once disabled.
With bereaved families angry and confused, relatives of one woman killed in the Ethiopian crash filed the first lawsuit on behalf of a U.S. victim in Chicago.
The complaint accused Boeing of putting “profits over safety” and also targeted Rosemount Aerospace, the manufacturer of the angle of attack sensor.
U.S. consumer activist Ralph Nader, whose niece died in Ethiopia, called for consumers to boycott the MAX.
Pilots around the world were watching closely too.
“If the preliminary report from the Ethiopian authorities is accurate, the pilots quickly identified the malfunction and applied the manufacturer’s checklist,” said Captain Jason Goldberg, spokesman for Allied Pilots Association, which represents American Airlines pilots.
“Following this checklist did not appear to allow the pilots to regain control of the aircraft.”
(Reporting by Jason Neely in Addis Ababa, Eric Johnson in Seattle, Katharine Houreld and Maggie Fick in Nairobi, Tim Hepher in Paris, Jamie Freed in Singapore, Tracy Rusinski in Chicago, David Shepardson in Washington; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
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FILE PHOTO: The Airbus logo is pictured at Airbus headquarters in Blagnac near Toulouse, France, March 20, 2019. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo
April 4, 2019
PARIS (Reuters) – Airbus suffered more cancellations than orders by end-March, leaving the European company with a bleak first quarter after its five-year winning streak in the race for jetliner orders against U.S rival Boeing ended last year.
Airbus said on Thursday it had won 62 gross orders during the first three months of 2019 but some 120 cancellations left it with a negative net order figure of 58. Deliveries stood at 162 including 134 single aisle planes and 22 A350s.
Earlier this month, Colombian airline Avianca canceled an order of 17 Airbus A320 Neo aircraft and delayed deliveries on 35 others, according to a securities filing.
(Reporting by Matthias Blamont; Editing by Sarah White)
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FILE PHOTO: The Boeing logo is seen at their headquarters in Chicago, in this April 24, 2013 file photo. REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo/File Photo
April 4, 2019
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FILE PHOTO – Airplane engine parts are seen at the scene of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 plane crash, near the town of Bishoftu, southeast of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia March 11, 2019. REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri/File Photo
April 4, 2019
PARIS/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Pilots of an Ethiopian Airlines jet involved in a deadly crash cut out an electric trim system while the plane’s nose was down and were unable to stabilise the aircraft manually, prompting them to reverse the action, a preliminary report into the accident said.
The Boeing 737 MAX hit an airspeed as high as 500 knots (575 miles per hour), well above its operational limits, before cockpit data recordings stopped as the plane crashed on March 10 killing all passengers and crew, the report published on Thursday said.
(Reporting by Tim Hepher and Jamie Freed; Writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
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