Lion Air Flight JT-610

[Jacob]

Lion Air Flight JT-610 crashed yesterday in Indonesia shortly after takeoff, killing all 188 on board.

It will be interesting to see what the cause of this crash was. The plane was a Boeing 737-8 MAX and had only been in service 2 months. Quite unusual for a crash like this to be on a brand new plane.

It also peaks my interest because I fly Southwest a lot for both work and personal travel, and they are getting a lot of 737-8 MAXs over the next few years.

 

[maroonedinhsv]

News reported that it some sort of "technical issue" reported on its prior flight.

 

[warneagle]

Apparently the pilots requested to return to the airport prior to the crash, so there may have been a technical problem of some sort that they recognized but couldn't recover from in time. Not encouraging on a brand new airplane.

 

[Jacob]

This is a bad, bad, bad look for Boeing, particularly if it is found that this system contributed to the crash. It is remarkable that they added something like this and didn't inform anybody.

Boeing Withheld Information on 737 Model, According to Safety Experts and Others

 

[Jacob]

Apparently the pilots requested to return to the airport prior to the crash, so there may have been a technical problem of some sort that they recognized but couldn't recover from in time. Not encouraging on a brand new airplane.

Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302 crashed today, killing all 157 onboard.

Once again, pilots reported issues and requested to return to the airport shortly before crashing.

This was another Boeing 737-MAX, same as the Lion Air crash that this thread was originally about.

Boeing appears to have a big problem with this plane.

 

[WesL]

This didn't take long. To be honest I don't blame them either. @Jacob you are right on, there is a major issue with this plane.

 

[Jacob]

This didn't take long. To be honest I don't blame them either. @Jacob you are right on, there is a major issue with this plane.

Lot of countries around the world joining in on grounding the MAX 8s in their fleet. So far you have

China
Singapore
Australia
South Korea
Indonesia
United Kingdom

Some other airlines have grounded theirs as well.

Southwest has the biggest US fleet of them, followed by American. Neither have changed operations so far.

 

[warneagle]

I know it’s bad optics for a domestic manufacturer but I think US airlines need to follow suit. They did it with the DC-10 in 1979 after the crash in Chicago.

 

[warneagle]

Ireland just suspended 737 MAX operations as well.

Edit: so have Germany and France, per NBC.

 

[WesL]

Here is a live map of all the 737-MAX8 aircraft currently in the skies...

https://flightaware.com/live/aircrafttype/B38M

 

[warneagle]

Here’s a list (that’s being continuously updated I think) of every country that’s grounded the 737 MAX: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/03/bans-boeing-737-max-rolled-world-190312134422968.html

 

[warneagle]

They’ve been banned from the airspace of the entire EU. India has banned them as well. Basically the only major operators left are the US and Canada.

 

[Jacob]

Things continue to look worse for Boeing in this. At least twice in the last year US pilots had similar experiences to what brought down the Lion Air crash and (assuming it was the same) the Ethiopian plane. Fortunately they were able to disengage the autopilot/MACS system and didn't crash.

For one U.S. incident in November 2018, a commercial airline pilot reported that during takeoff, the autopilot was engaged and "within two to three seconds the aircraft pitched nose down," in a manner steep enough to trigger the plane's warning system, which sounded "Don't sink, don't sink!"
After the autopilot was disengaged, the plane climbed as normal, according to the report.

A couple quotes from pilots in this article reflect extremely poorly on Boeing. At this point I think it is quite irresponsible for American and Canadian carriers to not have already grounded their fleets.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/12/pilots-boeing-737-1266090

 

[WesL]

Fox News reporting " Trump: We are issuing an emergency to ground Boeing 737 MAX 8 and MAX 9 jets"




Edit- Added CBS News tweet with video.