All eyes are on the investigation of the black box from Ethiopian Airways flight ET 302, currently being analyzed by officials in France. What has yet to be determined is whether the cause of Sunday’s crash is related to Boeing 737 Max’s maneuvering characteristics augmentation system, or MCAS, which was implicated in the investigation into the Oct. 2018 Lion Air crash in Indonesia. The system is designed to nudge the nose of the plane down to prevent it from stalling when necessary. It does this automatically, based on the aircraft’s angle of attack (AOA) data, or the angle of the aircraft’s wing relative to the flight path. However, in the event of a faulty AOA reading, the system will nudge the plane downward unnecessarily, and could eventually cause it to crash. As reported by the New York Times, a software fix for the system was promised by the end of 2018. After this week’s crash, it’s being promised for April. But according to reports, the Lion Air plane did not have an optional feature installed in the aircraft—one that Boeing doesn’t provide as a standard feature and costs additional money to install—which would have alerted crew that the AOA readings were erroneous and likely to trigger the MCAS system unnecessarily. That’s because Boeing and the FAA didn’t require what was called the “AOA DISAGREE” alert be installed for safe operation of the 737 Max. Reuters reported in November that several airlines, including American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Canada’s WestJet, SilkAir and flydubai, had the alert installed before the Lion Air crash. It’s unclear whether Ethiopian Airlines did. Separate from the alert, some have also asked why Boeing didn’t provide more training to pilots so that they would know how to counteract the MCAS system if necessary. As Jon Ostrower of The Air Current wrote about the investigation into the Lion Air flight, the aircraft’s “angle of attack sensors were disagreeing by 20 degrees as the aircraft taxied for takeoff. A warning light that would have alerted the crew to the disagreement was not part of the added cost-optional package of equipment on Lion Air’s 737 Max aircraft. A guardrail wasn’t in place. Once the aircraft was airborne, the erroneous angle of attack data collided with apparently unprepared crew with tragic consequences as the MCAS system repeatedly activated, driving the jet’s nose into a fatal dive.” A professor Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University told Reuters after the Lion Air crash in November that, “In retrospect, clearly it would have been wise to include the warning as standard equipment and fully inform and train operators on MCAS.” The professor, Clint Balogm, added that he expected to see “this warning included in future MAX production and retrofitted into already delivered MAX aircraft.” Update: An FAA spokesman responded to Quartz’s questions about why it did not require the “AOA Disagree” alarm feature as a standard safety feature on the Boeing 737 Max 8, but rather allowed it to be an optional add-on with a statement saying, “The FAA’s aircraft certification processes are well established and have consistently produced safe aircraft designs. The 737-MAX certification program followed the FAA’s standard certification process.” Boeing, when reached by Quartz, declined to comment. Read more of Quartz’s coverage of the Boeing 737 Max crisis.<doc-sep>The Boeing 737 Max – the fastest-selling airliner ever and the heart of Boeing’s business – has been grounded worldwide since March. A worldwide first, the grounding is the direct consequence of two Boeing 737 Max crashes in which a total of 346 passengers and crew members died. Both occurred shortly after take-off, and the similarities between the two catastrophes raised fundamental questions about the aircraft’s safety. It was grounded by nation after nation, with only Canada and the United States holding out. Finally, they too halted flights on March 13. A boycott by travelers, a cancellation of orders, and demands for compensation by airlines could have disastrous consequences for the Seattle-based manufacturer. It also raises questions about the ever-increasing sophistication of cockpit technology. Narrow-body jet with a long history The 737 is a narrow-body, twin-jet airliner with a long history. It entered service in 1968 and over the decades, Boeing has built and sold more than 10,000, making it the best-selling airliner in history. The 737 Max, first delivered in 2017, is the fourth generation and with 370 deliveries and 5,011 more on order, it represents 64% of Boeing’s production over the next 14 years. In 2011, the company made the world’s biggest ever single sale of commercial aircraft, when Indonesia’s Lion Air committed to buy 201 Boeing 737 Max and 29 Boeing 737-900 ER for a total of $22 billion. Boeing started development of what would be the 737 Max after American Airlines, a long-time customer, opted for Airbus in July 2011. To match the energy efficiency of the 737’s direct competitor, the A320neo, Boeing decided to improve the design and placement of the 737’s engines, increasing their size and positioning them higher and further forward. The new aerodynamics and lighter materials cut fuel consumption by 14%, but also required new stability control systems and other significant changes. The 737 Max is available in four configurations, the most popular of which are the Max 8 and 9, with 210 and 220 passengers, respectively. To speed getting the aircraft to market and into the air, Boeing’s strategy was to make the new versions similar enough to the previous ones that pilots didn’t need to be retrained. While this made sense as a commercial strategy, some pilots complained that the new embedded systems made the 737 Max a completely different aircraft to fly. Separate crashes, similar circumstances The first fatal 737 Max crash took place on October 29, 2018. Lion Air flight JT610 left Jakarta for Pangkai Pinang under ideal conditions. The plane was brand new and the weather good. After 11 minutes, however, the pilots reported technical problems and attempted to turn back, but in vain. The plane could not gain altitude, nosedived, and plunged into the Java Sea less than 15 minutes after take-off. All 189 passengers and crew died. The second crash occurred on March 10, 2019. That day, Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 took off from Addis Ababa, heading for Nairobi. The plane was delivered a year earlier and given a technical check just a month before. The pilot was highly experienced, having flown more than 8,000 hours. Six minutes after take-off, however, he reported technical difficulties and asked to turn back. The request was granted, but the plane disappeared from radar. The death toll was 157, including 35 different nationalities. An entire UN delegation of 19 people perished. Tony Karumba/AFP Suspicions of sensor and software malfunctions Given the similarity of the two crashes, aviation experts consider them unlikely to be a coincidence – there had to have been a genuine, serious cause, and one could call into question certain aspects of the 737 Max’s design. Indeed, a 2018 report by US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) indicates that incidence sensors, also called angle of attack (AOA) sensors, designed to avoid stall, are suspected of being defective on at least 246 737 Max around the globe. The information provided by these sensors, whose purpose is to stabilize the plane, may mistakenly cause it to nosedive. In fall 2018, US 737 Max pilots registered their concerns in a NASA database about an autopilot anomaly that could cause the plane to nosedive. There were also complaints that the plane’s instruction manual was “inadequate and almost criminally insufficient”. In the case of the two 737 Max 8 crashes, the “maneuvering characteristics augmentation system” (MCAS) is suspected of having failed. The preliminary report on the Lion Air crash states that the pilot was unable to overcome an automatic nose-down command triggered more than 20 times. A similar malfunction happening the day before on the same plane, yet many pilots were unaware that it could occur even when the plane is flown manually. A note issued by Boeing to airlines operating the 737 Max provides guidance in the event of failure of the new safety system – the correct behavior being simply to disable it. In response to continued concerns, Boeing responded announcing a patch for the MCAS. On March 11, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenberg defended the 737 Max and attempted to defuse speculation about its integrity and inherent safety. The following day, the FAA issued a statement asserting that the Max 8 and 9 were both airworthy. Paradoxically, the FAA simultaneously demanded that Boeing make changes to the MCAS by April at the latest. US airlines such as Southwest, United and American initially decided to continue using their 60 Boeing 737 Max, stating their confidence in the plane. With more than 370 examples in service as of February 2019, tens of thousands of passengers travelled on the 737 Max every day, and many were increasingly concerned. There were reports of travelers attempting to change or cancel trips when they found out they would be flying on one, sometimes refusing to board. Hashtags such as #GroundBoeing737 began to spread on Twitter. On Monday, March 11, a number of countries announced that they would immediately ban 737 Max flights, including Ethiopia, Indonesia, and China. India did so the same day, a move that affected at least two carriers with a total of 18 planes.<doc-sep>Boeing Co. BA 4.53% is making an extensive change to the flight-control system in the 737 MAX aircraft involved in October’s Lion Air crash in Indonesia, going beyond what many industry officials familiar with the discussions had anticipated. The change was in the works before a second plane of the same model crashed in Africa last weekend—and comes as world-wide unease about the 737 MAX’s safety grows. The change would mark a major shift from how Boeing originally designed a stall-prevention feature in the aircraft, which were first delivered to airlines in 2017. U.S. aviation regulators are expected to mandate the change by the end of April. Boeing publicly released details about the planned 737 MAX software update on its website late Monday. An investigation has been launched after an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashed shortly after takeoff on Sunday, killing all on board. WSJ aerospace reporter Robert Wall discusses the possible focus of the investigation, and more. Photo: Getty Images A company spokesman confirmed the update would use feeds from multiple sensors in the MAX’s stall-prevention system—instead of the current reliance on a single sensor. The change was prompted by preliminary results from the Indonesian crash investigation indicating that erroneous data from a single sensor, which measures the angle of the plane’s nose, caused the stall-prevention system to misfire. Then, a series of events put the aircraft into a dangerous dive. Focus on the update has taken on greater urgency as aviation regulators and airlines around the world have grounded their MAX fleets, following the Ethiopian crash over the weekend—despite no links being made between the two crashes by investigators. The MAX software change is expected to take about an hour for each plane, a Boeing spokesman said Tuesday. He declined to offer other details about how the system would weigh the multiple data inputs. “For the past several months and in the aftermath of Lion Air Flight 610, Boeing has been developing a flight control software enhancement for the 737 MAX, designed to make an already safe aircraft even safer,” Boeing said late Monday in a statement. The FAA has decided to allow the 737 MAX to continue flying, a break with counterparts in countries including the U.K., Australia and Singapore, which grounded the model in recent days. The investigation into the Oct. 29 Lion Air crash is continuing, but has focused on the stall-prevention system, apparent maintenance lapses and potential pilot error. Investigators have revealed little about the circumstances leading up to the Ethiopian crash, but have found cockpit voice and data recorders. When the plane was first designed, engineers determined that using a single sensor—measuring what is technically known as the angle of attack—would be simpler and was in line with the plane maker’s long-held philosophy to keep pilots at the center of cockpit control, a person familiar with the matter said. That earlier design of the system, known as MCAS, has puzzled some pilots and safety experts, who wondered why the system didn’t rely on multiple feeds. Mike Michaelis, chairman of the safety committee at American Airlines Group Inc.’s pilot union, welcomed news of the coming Boeing software fix. “That’s the way it should have been in the first place,” he said. The software change also offered reassurance to concerned MAX passengers on at least one U.S. flight Tuesday. “Everyone’s just happy that something was going to be done,” Peter McGuinness, chief commercial and marketing officer at yogurt maker Chobani and who flew from New York to Chicago on Tuesday on an American Airlines 737 MAX 8. He described himself “very concerned, so much so that I am taking a regional jet on the way back.” An American spokesman said the airline continues to believe the MAX is safe and pilots are well-trained to operate the aircraft. Southwest Airlines Co. and United Continental Holdings Inc. also operate MAX planes. In the wake of the Lion Air crash, Boeing and the FAA emphasized that an existing procedure allows pilots to disable the MAX stall-prevention system when flying the airplane. U.S. airlines and unions have since expressed confidence in their pilots to safely operate the airplane. A software fix to the MCAS flight-control feature by the FAA and Boeing had been expected early in January, but discussions between regulators and the plane maker dragged on, partly over differences of opinion about technical and engineering issues, according to people familiar with the details. Officials from various parts of Boeing and the FAA had differing views about how extensive the fix should be. U.S. officials have said the federal government’s recent shutdown also halted work on the fix for five weeks. The FAA concluded the delay was acceptable because its experts agreed with Boeing that there was no imminent safety threat, according to one person briefed on the discussions. The FAA also determined that steps taken after the Lion Air crash to inform pilots world-wide about the system’s operation were adequate to alleviate hazards. Since the 737 MAX is a derivative of an earlier model, certification rules allowed regulators to give the plane maker credit for the safety record of those earlier planes. And to some extent, government and industry officials have said, government scrutiny of certain systems typically is less intense for derivatives than for brand-new designs. With design work on the original 737 planes dating back some five decades, “there is no other jet in the world that has so many derivatives over such a long period of time,” according to John Cox, an industry consultant and former senior safety official for North America’s largest pilots union. Boeing also told the FAA it had extensive experience with the reliability of the same type of sensors on other models, according to industry officials familiar with the details, and that using multiple sensors to feed the flight-control system would have been more complex. A Boeing spokesman declined to comment about discussions with regulators. The anticipated fix also will limit the extent of the flight-control system’s downward push on the plane’s nose. And it will rely more on technical safeguards than memorized pilot responses if the system misfires.<doc-sep>Shocking details have emerged about crashed Lion Air 610. Black box data revealed the last four flights all had an airspeed indicator problem. The data came to light as the budget airline was undergoing a special audit for it’s poor record. Shocking details have emerged about crashed Lion Air 610. Black box data revealed the last four flights all had an airspeed indicator problem. The data came to light as the bu... Pilots on the doomed Lion Air flight were frantically flicking through the plane’s manual to try to understand why it was lurching downwards in the final moments before it crashed, according to people familiar with the chilling cockpit voice recordings. Investigators are still working to figure out why the Boeing MAX 8 crashed into the Java Sea off Indonesia in October, killing 189 people. The incident has again come under the spotlight as investigators search for possible links between it and last week’s similar crash of an Ethiopian Airlines plane that killed 157 people. The similarity of both crashes has raised serious safety questions about Boeing’s 737 MAX aircraft, which has now been grounded worldwide. Investigators into the Lion Air crash are looking at a computer system on the MAX 8 jet and how data from a faulty sensor caused it to send the plane into a dive. They are also looking at whether the Lion Air pilots had enough training to respond appropriately to the emergency. In what is the first time the contents of the Lion Air’s cockpit voice recorders have been made public, three sources told Reuters the captain asked the first officer to check the plane’s handbook in the final minutes before the plane plunged into the Java Sea after a short and erratic flight. According to Reuters’ report, the captain was at the control of the near brand-new plane when it took off from Jakarta. After two minutes, the first officer reported a “flight control problem” to air traffic control. The captain asked the first officer to check the quick reference handbook that contained checklists for abnormal events, the first source told Reuters. For the next nine minutes, “the jet warned pilots it was in a stall and pushed the nose down in response”, according to the report. The captain tried to get the plane to climb upwards, but the jet’s computer system kept pushing the nose down. It appeared the system was incorrectly sensing a stall. On a plane, trim adjusts an aircraft’s control surfaces to keep it flying straight and level. “They didn’t seem to know the trim was moving down,” the third source told Reuters. “They thought only about airspeed and altitude. That was the only thing they talked about.” The pilots — the captain, 31, and the first officer, 41 — remained calm for most of the flight. It was right before the crash the captain asked the first officer to check the manual as he struggled to control the plane. “It is like a test where there are 100 questions, and when the time is up you have only answered 75,” the third source said. “So you panic. It is a time-out condition.” In the last seconds before the plane plunged into the water, killing everyone on board, the Indian-born captain was silent, and the first officer, from Indonesia, said “Allahu Akbar”, or “God is greatest”. Lion Air and Boeing have not commented on Reuters’ report.<doc-sep>
The pilots of a Lion Air Boeing 737 Max 8 plane that crashed in October desperately read an emergency handbook in an attempt to find a way to control the plane before its fatal accident, new evidence indicates. Both the captain and the first officer scoured the handbook to try to control the plane but were unable to and crashed into the sea, sources familiar with the contents of the cockpit voice recordings told Reuters. The investigation into the crash has taken on new significance since the fatal crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max 8 plane last week. The pilots of the doomed Lion Air flight that crashed into the Java Sea last October frantically searched the aircraft's manual to try to find a way to keep the plane under control before the crash, cockpit voice recordings show. The first officer reported a "flight control problem" two minutes into the flight, and the captain then asked him to check a handbook that contained procedures for abnormal events, the recordings showed, according to a report from Reuters. The Boeing 737 Max 8 plane then spent nine minutes pushing its nose down, with the first officer unable to control the plane, as the captain desperately searched the handbook for a solution. The plane then crashed into the sea, killing all 189 people on board. Shoes of passengers of Lion Air flight JT610 were laid out at the Tanjung Priok port in Jakarta, Indonesia. REUTERS/Beawiharta Three sources discussed the contents of the plane's cockpit voice recorder with Reuters, in the first time that such information, which is part of an ongoing investigation into the crash, has been made public. The investigation has taken on new significance after an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 crashed on March 10, killing all 157 people on board. The French air-accident investigation agency BEA said the two crashes showed "clear similarities," and Boeing is introducing a software upgrade to its new anti-stall system that has come under scrutiny after the two crashes. The preliminary report into the Lion Air crash mentioned the Boeing system as well as other factors, including the airline's maintenance. A source told Reuters that someone mentioned the plane's airspeed on the cockpit voice recording, and a second source said one of the plane's indicators showed a problem on the captain's display but not the first officer's. Rescue workers with part of the plane's wreckage showing the Lion Air logo. REUTERS/Stringer The preliminary report showed that the plane's computer kept pushing the nose of the plane down using the trim system, which is a system that usually adjusts the aircraft to keep it on course. A source told Reuters that the trim system was not mentioned in the recording, just the airspeed and altitude of the plane. "They didn't seem to know the trim was moving down," the source said. A crew that flew the same plane the evening before had the same problem with the plane's nose but ran through three checklists to solve the problem, the preliminary report showed. The plane was treated on the ground, and the report says the previous crew believed the issue was resolved. A Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft. Boeing Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that an off-duty pilot riding in the cockpit of that flight fixed a malfunction that allowed the plane to land safely.