Todos
← Back to Squawk list
US aviation officials think a bird strike was factor in 737 Max crash
U.S. aviation officials believe a bird strike may have led to the deadly crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max in March, according to a person familiar with the matter. Boeing shares were up 1.3% in morning trading. The fast-selling Boeing 737 Max airplanes have been grounded since shortly after that accident, which came less than five months after a similar crash in Indonesia. Together, the two crashes killed 346 people. Crash investigators have indicated that bad sensor data triggered… (www.cnbc.com) Más...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
I'll get blasted for this. The data showed that AOA was reading correctly, then suddenly went to the limit. That triggered the incident. Could a bird striking an AOA sensor do this? Possible. Should it cause a crash? No. Just like pitot icing should not cause a crash. Surely this must have been taken into consideration during the design. Reading the comments, I think people are saying they are blaming everything on a bird. I look at it as a clue as to what might have happened, should have been known as a possibility during design, and therefore puts more blame on the design.
Agree, the incorrect data from the AoA input started the sequence of events. This invalid input in itself should not have escalated into the critical event that it became. The bird strike scenario is one of many possible causes for the invalid data, but possibly the best case scenario for Boeing. It seems like a leak / speculation to help the share price rather than informed knowledge from the investigation. Actually a bird strike was my initial thought, but then I read about other more serious possibilities. In the Ethiopian case it seems unlikely that a faulty AoA vane was the cause, although this does seem to be a line of enquiry for the Lion Air investigation. Another scenario is that it was an electromechanical failure downstream of the sensor. The data released appears to suggest an instantaneous change in the AoA position. Intuition suggests that a bird strike would lead to a gradual change in position and maybe not a steady value. An alternative view is a change in value of one bit in the digital representation of the analogue AoA value. This hypothesis is explained nicely by Simon on Aviation Herald. What could cause an intermittent fluctuation in a data value? Maybe that is where the investigators need to analyse the infamous swarm which is rumoured to plague Boeing built aircraft. This leads to another area of concern, that of the alleged failings in quality control at certain manufacturing facilities. When it comes to ungrounding, signing off an act of God (aka bird strike) might be much quicker and less costly than a fleet wide inspection of all flight control wiring and replacement / rework of damaged wiring and components. The later should certainly affect the bottom line for Boeing and the fall in share price potentially reversing the modest gains due to the bird strike story.
Sorry, swarm should be swarf, the little bits of metal shavings left over from drilling, machining or self tapping fixtures, most likely behind panels from fitout in-situ. IOS doesn’t recognise this term! ð¤
"according to a person familiar with the matter" ROFL, is that the best they can do?
This bs is the exact reason nobody wanted the US near this investigation. Boeing still very willing to not accept fault for a bad airplane and training. Unacceptable
Some BS for Wall Street. +1.3%