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Report: Lion Air B737 MAX crash could have been avoided
November 30th 2018
Indonesian investigators on Wednesday issued a blunt preliminary report into the fatal crash of a Lion Air B737 MAX 8 last month. Read More » The report said the aircraft should have been declared “unairworthy”, pointing to issues with Lion Air maintenance.
“Why was the airplane flying passengers?” said John Cox, president of consulting investigator, Safety Operating Systems. “There’s some organizational issues within Lion Air,” Cox added. The stricken airliner had experienced technical issues, specifically erroneous angle of attack readings caused by faulty airspeed and altitude indications, on its last four flights before it crashed, but was still declared safe to fly by the airline’s MRO team.
As with most crashes, there is a high likelihood that other factors were also at play. Boeing has been criticized for not clearly communicating the addition of a stall prevention software specific to the new B737 MAX.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an emergency airworthiness directive to owners and operators of Boeing B737 MAX 8 and MAX 9 aircraft.
The emergency ruling was prompted “by analysis performed by the manufacturer showing that if an erroneously high single angle of attack (AOA) sensor input is received by the flight control system, there is a potential for repeated nose-down trim commands of the horizontal stabilizer. This condition, if not addressed, could cause the flight crew to have difficulty controlling the airplane and lead to excessive nose-down attitude, significant altitude loss and possible impact with terrain”, the FAA said.
The directive requires MAX owners and operators to revise the operating procedures of the airplane flight manual (AFM) to provide the flight crew with runaway horizontal stabilizer trim procedures to follow under certain conditions.
