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Nabiel Haniff

Ethopian Airlines Crashed - Another 737Max

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Ethiopian plane smoked, shuddered before deadly plunge

GARA-BOKKA: The Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed killing 157 people was making a strange rattling noise and trailed smoke and debris as it swerved above a field of panicked cows before hitting earth, according to witnesses.

Flight 302 took off from the Ethiopian capital on Sunday morning bound for Nairobi with passengers from more than 30 countries. All on board the Boeing 737 Max 8 died.

The pilot had requested permission to return, saying he was having problems – but it was too late.

 

Half a dozen witnesses interviewed by Reuters in the farmland where the plane came down reported smoke billowing out behind, while four of them also described a loud sound.

“It was a loud rattling sound. Like straining and shaking metal,” said Turn Buzuna, a 26-year-old housewife and farmer who lives about 300 meters (328 yards) from the crash site.

“Everyone says they have never heard that kind of sound from a plane and they are under a flight path,” she added.

Malka Galato, 47, a barley and wheat farmer whose field the plane crashed in, also described smoke and sparks from the back. “The plane was very close to the ground and it made a turn… Cows that were grazing in the fields ran in panic,” he said.

Tamirat Abera, 25, was walking past the field at the time. He said the plane turned sharply, trailing white smoke and items like clothes and papers, then crashed about 300 meters away.

“It tried to climb but it failed and went down nose first,” he said. “There was fire and white smoke which then turned black.”

As the plane had only just taken off, it was loaded with fuel.

At the site, Red Cross workers in masks sifted gently through victims’ belongings. Children’s books – Dr Seuss’s “Oh The Thinks You Can Think” and “Anne of Green Gables” – lay near a French-English dictionary burnt along one edge.

A woman’s brown handbag, the bottom burnt, lay open next to an empty bottle of perfume.

The aircraft was broken into small pieces, the largest among them a wheel and a dented engine. The debris was spread over land roughly the size of two football fields.

Investigators found two black box recorders on Monday, which will help piece together the plane’s final minutes.

“When it was hovering, fire was following its tail, then it tried to lift its nose,” said another witness, Gadisa Benti. “When it passed over our house, the nose pointed down and the tail raised up. It went straight to the ground with its nose, it then exploded.”

Local resident Nigusu Tesema helped gather victims’ scattered identity papers to hand to police.

 

“We are shocked and saddened,” he said.

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Well, those pro Boeing guys will always downplay this incident.

Well some blind fan boy-ism is always present - they argue that the Max should not be grounded despite two crashes and the loss of 350+ lives. At the same time, they are shouting for PW engined A320Neos to be grounded even though none has crashed so far.

 

Boeing blamed Lion Air for the previous crash and did not work too hard to fix the issues found so far. Now that there is a second crash, they cannot simply dismiss it as another "user problem" again.

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Australia's CASA just announced that they too are banning 737 Max into their airspace (like CAAS did). This will only affect FJ as MI is already grounded. Seems like the dominoes are falling - really puts pressure on the FAA and EASA now.

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MI's KUL-SIN route has been badly affected. Following taken from SQtalk forum:

 

FLIGHT CANCELLATIONS FOR 13MAR19:

MI324 from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, departure 0920hrs, arrival 1020hrs

MI323 from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore, departure 1105hrs, arrival 1215hrs

MI326 from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, departure 1015hrs, arrival 1105hrs

MI325 from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore, departure 1155hrs, arrival 1300hrs

MI328 from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, departure 1250hrs, arrival 1350hrs

MI327 from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore, departure 1435hrs, arrival 1535hrs

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Supplementary flights will be mounted by Singapore Airlines between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur in view of the situation:

SQ108 from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, departure 1250hrs, arrival 1350hrs

SQ109 from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore, departure 1435hrs, arrival 1535hrs

Edited by Robert

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Off topic : can an airline claim compensation for revenue loss if it is proved that there is design flaw by the manufacturer, or the airline has to bear all the revenue loss ?

Edited by Kee Hooi Yen

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Off topic : can an airline claim compensation for revenue loss if it is proved that there is design flaw by the manufacturer, or the airline has to bear all the revenue loss ?

Yes they can. They need to prove it in court though,since it is not US FAA the one grounding those plane.

 

This will be another big bill Boeing need to foot after 787 debacle, if proven true.

 

God, please hopefully 77X does not have same issues as 737max and 787. 425 pax!! Boeing moves from one bowl of hot soup to another...

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Yes they can. They need to prove it in court though,since it is not US FAA the one grounding those plane.

 

This will be another big bill Boeing need to foot after 787 debacle, if proven true.

 

God, please hopefully 77X does not have same issues as 737max and 787. 425 pax!! Boeing moves from one bowl of hot soup to another...

 

Luckily not even one of the many 787s had fallen from the sky....

 

Then again, Airbus is no angel.

Edited by S V Choong

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Luckily not even one of the many 787s had fallen from the sky....

Boeing has a lot to thank ANA and JAL for that. If it wasn't for them grounding the 787, the FAA was still sleeping!

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The flying public should also be aware that American Airlines’ Boeing 737 Max planes are unique. After the loss of Lion Air Flight 610, Boeing disclosed that the MCAS can be triggered by a single erroneous Angle of Attack (AOA) event. The two dozen 737 Max aircraft in the American Airlines fleet are the only ones equipped with two AOA displays, one for each pilot, providing an extra layer of awareness and warning.

 

https://www.alliedpilots.org/News/ID/6769/Allied-Pilots-Association-Remains-Confident-in-Boeing-737-Max

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I don't think so, given that the FAA should & would know better seeing as they're the ones who certified it, and has a conduit to the investigation via the NTSB.

 

 

 

That was Boeing’s chief executive, a frequent visitor to Trump properties, phoning Trump with a plea not to ground both the 737 Max 8 and Max 9.

That corporations make safety decisions for Trump (himself a failed airline owner) isn’t surprising. The acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration is formerly of American Airlines and of the Aerospace Industries Association, of which Boeing is a prominent member. Trump is expected to nominate a former Delta Air Lines executive for the top FAA job. His acting defense secretary is a former Boeing executive.
Nobody yet knows whether the Ethiopian Airlines crash had the same cause as October’s similar Lion Air crash in the Java Sea near Indonesia. But, clearly, the procedural fix circulated by the FAA in November was inadequate, and a Boeing software update, which government officials planned for January, never came. The Wall Street Journal reported that the delay was caused, in part, by the government shutdown. The corporate FAA chief denies this, but the pilots’ union had warned that the shutdown suspended safety oversight.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-is-what-happens-when-corporations-run-the-government/2019/03/15/fb2c354e-4736-11e9-90f0-0ccfeec87a61_story.html?utm_term=.6f192dc017f3

Edited by KK Lee

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