Talk:Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302

Crew Inaction

There are a couple of things missing from this article regarding what the crew did and did not do, number one is that the throttle was never retarded from the takeoff setting, the Captain was overwhelmed with what was happening and the first officer had so little experience he was basically a passenger. Both flight crew missed the fact the throttle was wide open. If the throttle had been retarded and a slower speed maintained, it would have been easy to move the manual trim wheel, if the speed were slow enough for flap extension they could have put the flaps down, this would have disabled activation of the MCAS. If the crew had read anything about how it worked after the first accident they should have know this. The primary cause was a faulty AOA sensor. But any crew I flew with would have reduced the power to as slow as feasible. It gives you more time to think. The crew here was so overwhelmed they missed the power setting entirely. This is addressed by the US NTSB: Overall, the US team concurs with the EAIB's investigation of the MCAS and related systems and the roles that they played in the accident. However, many operational and human performance issues present in this accident were not fully developed as part of the EAIB investigation. These issues include flight crew performance, crew resource management (CRM), task management, and human-machine interface. It is important for the EAIB's final report to provide a thorough discussion of these relevant issues so that all possible safety lessons can be learned. I'll have to look for the final report. Avi8tor (talk) 17:11, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Agree with everything you said. Much of this article is based off of the EAIB report, which has been explicitly refuted in detail by the NTSB and manufacturers of some aircraft components, including Collins Aerospace. The EAIB report is misleading at best and blatantly ignores other established contributing factors. I don't want to nuke this article because it is supported by sources, but the sources do contradict each other.

StalkerFishy (talk) 14:07, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

The article covers NTSB and French comments about crew performance. Speed is also mentioned. Nuking is not needed, but reliably sourced text specifically about pilots' inattention to airplane speed could be a useful addition. DonFB (talk) 21:19, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

These accident reports state the facts, the US NTSB comments on the draft Ethiopian accident report state:

We agree that the uncommanded nose-down inputs from the airplane’s MCAS system should be part of the probable cause for this accident. However, the draft probable cause indicates that the MCAS alone caused the airplane to be “unrecoverable,” and we believe that the probable cause also needs to acknowledge that appropriate crew management of the event, per the procedures that existed at the time, would have allowed the crew to recover the airplane even when faced with the uncommanded nose-down inputs.
We propose that the probable cause in the final report present the following causal factors to fully reflect the circumstances of this accident:
• uncommanded airplane-nose-down inputs from the MCAS due to erroneous AOA values and
• the flight crew’s inadequate use of manual electric trim and management of thrust to maintain airplane control.
In addition, we propose that the following contributing factors be included:
• the operator’s failure to ensure that its flight crews were prepared to properly respond to uncommanded stabilizer trim movement in the manner outlined in Boeing’s flight crew operating manual (FCOM) bulletin and the FAA’s emergency airworthiness directive (AD) (both issued 4 months before the accident) and
• the airplane’s impact with a foreign object, which damaged the AOA sensor and caused the erroneous AOA values.

I think the Ethiopian authorities are more interested in blaming Boeing for the accident and never mention the actions or inexperience of the crew. I think some of the above comments should be included in the article. In most countries you need 200 hours to obtain a commercial pilot license, the co-pilot had 154 hours total when he started flying the 737, it did not mention when he obtained a Commercial pilot license. I find this incredible! Most airlines and companies operating aircraft want at least 1000 hours before they will employ you. In Aviation experience counts. Avi8tor (talk) 08:58, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

At present, the article's "Final report" section shows only a single sentence from the conclusions made by the Ethiopian investigating agency (ECAA). In the "Statements from parties" section, the article also quotes the Ethiopian transport minister saying the crew "performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer but was not able to control the aircraft". The ECAA quote in the Final report section is followed by a longer excerpt from the NTSB findings (four sentences). The French BEA conclusions are next, in two sentences. I think some key phrases from the NTSB are worthwhile, namely: "the flight crew’s inadequate use of manual electric trim and management of thrust"; "The flight crew’s failure to reduce thrust manually and the excessive airspeed that resulted"; and (ECAA) "...omits key findings about the root cause of the AOA erroneous data: damage from impact with a foreign object/bird." If additional NTSB quotations are to be included, we likely should include some additional text from or about the ECAA report, so that we do not create an editorialized imbalance that gives excessive weight to NTSB/BEA compared to ECAA. DonFB (talk) 07:01, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree with DonFB's comments, reading the report, the crew seemed oblivious to the aircraft speed, even ignoring the overspeed warning. If they had reduced thrust and reduced speed it would have allowed manual trim to work easily, it was the high speed that made it difficult to overcome the aerodynamic forces. If you read the accident report from the Lion Air 610, the flight previous to the accident flight had the same problem as the accident flight, but the crew solved the problem and used manual trim and no one was the wiser, the problem was written up for maintenance after the flight but they didn't fix the problem. It was a crew induced accident in Indonesia and in Ethiopia. Avi8tor (talk) 08:43, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Now the final report has been released, I think we can delete the preliminary and interim report. I can go thru this article and update some of the inaccurate newspaper sourced figures that do not agree with the accident report information. For instance it impacted at a computed speed of 500 kn (930 km/h; 580 mph) Avi8tor (talk) 09:46, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't think we need to eliminate whole sections of the article, although some techno-babble could be cut. Nor do we need to spend any time asserting our own opinions about what happened. The question for us to decide, as editors, is how much, if any, of additional NTSB verbiage we should include in the article to accurately reflect the specifics of its position, and if we do that, how much ECAA verbiage to add, in order to avoid an inappropriate imbalance in the article between the U.S. and Ethiopian opinions about the cause. DonFB (talk) 11:15, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

That is something I also recommend. WikiHannibal (talk) 15:08, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree, sounds like a good way to move forward. Avi8tor (talk) 15:15, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

References

Updates Needed

We've been having a productive discussion on the 737 MAX talk page and it was pointed out that the articles for the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines accident flights may also need some important updates to acknowledge the most up-to-date and accurate information.

Most importantly for this article, I think the "Accident" section must be updated to remove the continuous referrals to the plane "diving" or continuously "losing altitude". The flight recorder data very clearly shows that the plane steadily climbing until the final seconds. (Altitude is the very top chart with red and blue lines):

[1]https://avherald.com/img/ethiopian_b38m_et-avj_190310_7.jpg

I think it is also important to modify the information in the article to accurately reflect the NTSB's most recent assessment of the accident, which clearly states the errors made by the pilots and details omissions made by Ethiopian Airlines [2]https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Documents/US%20comments%20ET302%20Report%20March%202022.pdf

There are also some portions of the article that do not make sense from a technical standpoint. For example, in the 4th paragraph of the "Accident" section it says "because the stabilizer was located opposite to the elevator, strong aerodynamic forces were acting on it." I'm not sure what this is meant to convey; the aerodynamic forces acting on the stabilizer were very high because the plane was overspeeding at low altitude. 2603:6080:5A07:C24C:2826:EC6A:8140:2117 (talk) 02:21, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

@Danners430 This has been here with no reply for two months. We reached a consensus on the inclusion of the phrase "pilot error" in the main 737 MAX article after a long discussion and I see no reason that this article should avoid it.

- There were pilots

- There were standard procedures to follow in the event of a trim runaway

- The pilots did not properly follow the standard procedures

The most basic way of describing this is "pilot error". The tone of this article as well as the Lion Air 610 article must be updated to reflect the results of official accident investigations, instead of the opinions of journalists who wrote their articles before any investigations were even concluded. Rob Roilen (talk) 14:08, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

And that's absolutely fine. The edit you are pushing however is nothing to do with the above - it's adding unecessary detail to the infobox. As per @Aviationwikiflight's edit summary - "Trim summary; leave causes in article per project consensus". The infobox is for concise and short information - the article has plenty of space for expansion. Danners430 (talk) 14:30, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

See the entry of Summary in Template:Infobox aircraft occurrence#Parameters.

As stated: Brief summary of the occurrence. State the fate of the aircraft, if not obvious from the title (e.g. crashed, disappeared etc) and any relevant circumstances. Accident causes are often several and complex: they should be left for the article body. Cherry-picking some of them for the summary (e.g. pilot error) is likely to breach neutrality.

If you want to see the discussion regarding the decision to leave causes in the article body, here it is. Aviationwikiflight (talk) 14:57, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Expanding Reports

Per requests over at the Boeing 737 MAX talk page, I have expanded upon the NTSB and BEA reports. There's quite a bit more information that could be added, but I feel these changes are sufficient in detailing the MCAS malfunction and subsequent pilot errors which contributed to the crash. Please let me know what further changes will be made. I will look at expanding the Lion Air Flight 610 article later.

StalkerFishy (talk) 00:02, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree that description of the NTSB and BEA analysis should be included in each accident article (Lion, Ethiopian). I would mention that the relative amount of text should avoid becoming unbalanced toward the NTSB/BEA opinions in comparison to description of the official findings by the investigating agencies of Indonesia and Ethiopia. Currently, in this article (Ethiopian), quite a bit more text now describes the NTSB/BEA findings than the official Ethiopian findings. Another thing to consider: the Infobox summary. It is true that secondary sources use "pilot error" in describing the NTSB/BEA analysis. The official Indonesian/Ethiopian findings make no mention of pilot error, or equivalent terminology, and I don't believe any secondary source uses that phrase, or equivalent, to describe their findings. I think it is problematic to use "pilot error" in the Infobox, because that communicates, inaccurately, that it was officially determined as a cause. Of course, the Infobox cannot contain an extended description that distinguishes between the official findings, and the opinions of NTSB/BEA. Information definitely should be included in the body of the article, where space allows, explaining the official findings, which almost exclusively blame Boeing, as compared to the opinions about pilot error by NTSB/BEA. DonFB (talk) 08:18, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the recs! I can expand upon the ECAA findings if you want more text, but the NTSB and BEA reports are in response to that document and detail its omissions and errors. We could divide the section up into an "ECAA Findings" and "NTSB and BEA Findings" or "NTSB and BEA Criticisms of the ECAA Report" or "Conflicting ECAA and NTSB/BEA Findings", similar to the Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907 page.

Pilot error may not explicitly be stated, but the NTSB and BEA documents clearly say the aircraft was recoverable following the existing procedures, and that both pilots were recently trained on those procedures but failed to abide by them. Pilot error is obviously the standard way to describe human deficiencies, but we could very well change the infobox from pilot error to "pilot inaction" or "improper checklist procedures" if we want to treat pilot error as a protected term. We could also remove that section of the infobox, which is uncommon but there a few other articles without it. Although this secondary source does clearly use the term pilot error in describing the NTSB and BEA reports. [3]https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/final-report-on-boeing-737-max-crash-disputed-agencies-note-pilot-error-as-a-factor/

The NTSB/BEA reports are just as much opinion as the ECAA report is.

StalkerFishy (talk) 17:17, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

At present, the Investigation section has extended quotations from NTSB/BEA, compared to ECAA, from which plenty of added quotations could be included for balance, although I'm not sure that's the best approach. NTSB/BEA contains: "phases 4 and 5 of the accident scenario", which is not very meaningful to readers without adding more explanation. More use of editor-written text, based on secondary sources, could help achieve better balance, rather than depending on long chunks quoted from the govt reports. A separate subsection as you suggest could be useful. I'm mostly interested in not having the NTSB/BEA text overwhelm the ECAA text. The Infobox might just say "Loss of control" without trying to explain the causes, like the Gol article only says collision and puts the explanation in the body. DonFB (talk) 21:02, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Agreed that the extended quotations in the section make it a bit clunky. I'll eventually get around to further expanding the sources, and making it more editor-written. I've updated the infobox to remove pilot error pending a consensus, and have changed it to just "loss of aircraft control".

StalkerFishy (talk) 22:07, 25 February 2024 (UTC)