Chinese Airliner Crashes With 132 Aboard in Country's South (engadget.com) 123
A China Eastern Boeing 737-800 with 132 people on board crashed in a remote mountainous area of southern China on Monday, officials said, setting off a forest fire visible from space in the country's worst air disaster in nearly a decade. From a report: More than seven hours after communication was lost with the plane, there was still no word of survivors. The Civil Aviation Administration of China said in a statement the crash occurred near the city of Wuzhou in the Guangxi region. The flight was traveling from Kunming in the southwestern province of Yunnan to the industrial center of Guangzhou along the east coast, it added. Villagers were first to arrive at the forested area where the plane went down, sparking a blaze big enough to be seen on NASA satellite images. Hundreds of rescue workers were swiftly dispatched from Guangxi and neighboring Guangdong province. State media reported all 737-800s in China Eastern's fleet were ordered grounded, while broadcaster CCTV said the airliner had set up nine teams to deal with aircraft disposal, accident investigation, family assistance and other pressing matters.
Link issue (Score:4, Informative)
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**Applying System Updates 1 of 109, please do not turn off your aircraft**
Not the MAX (Score:4, Interesting)
The airplane in question is a 737-800, not the MAX. The plane basically went straight down into the ground. MCAS would have caused a rollercoaster pattern because the system only activates for a few seconds at a time. I can't even imagine what would cause a plane in cruise to dive straight down like that.
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Like planes everywhere, there are probably a handful of counterfeit parts involved. With lower airline revenues the last couple years and scarcer availability of everything, they may have looked outside of their usual vendors for replacement parts for repairs and maintenance.
But with planes being so relatively safe most of the time, it seems that pilots are less well trained on what to do when systems malfunction - or at least don't recall it during tense situations. Like how the 737 MAX crashes where the
Re: Not the MAX (Score:1)
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By flipping the stabilizer trim switches to off. You don't even have to understand why it's happening. Just figure out that it's an automated response that shouldn't happen. From the preliminary crash report of the Lion Air 737 Max:
pilots encountered problems involving the AoA as well as the pitot tube used to measure airspeed. In a flight in the same plane the day before, to Jakarta, the pilot experienced many of the same symptoms as the pilots on flight JT610: the stick shaker activated during rotation, an indicated airspeed warning alert appeared, and the aircraft began automatically pushing the aircraft nose down.
The pilot, after determining that his flight display system was malfunctioning, ran a runaway stabilizer non-normal checklist which led to the MCAS being disconnected when the stabilizer trim switches were turned off. The copilot flew the rest of the flight using manual controls and without autopilot.
That Jakarta flight was using an angle of attack sensor that had been replaced after the previous Lion Air flight to Denpasar experienced problems. {snip} However, it is not clear whether the pilot communicated that he ran a runaway stabilizer non-normal checklist during the flight, which might have alerted the airline’s engineering staff that there was still a problem.
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It was documented nowhere in the aircraft manual.
Lies! /s It was actually written out in the glossary of terms, at least in the FCOM I managed to find for it... but definitely void of further description.
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The hidden issue with the MAX was the lack of adequate pilot training. Nothing I say is meant to vindicate or defend Boeing. But much of the growth are in foreign low-cost airlines that save money on maintenance and pilot training. (An improper activation of MCAS would mimic a runaway trim, which is a condition that all pilots are supposed to recognize right away, and the solution is the same: turn off the automatic stabilizer trim.)
The MAX crash on Lion Air was caused by a defective AOA sensor. The part wa
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I agree that any sort of system like this should require a consensus of multiple sensors and that they cheaped out. But I also think the existing training was plenty - it just served as a very obvious illustration that there's a huge difference from one pilot to the next on their actual understanding. As you said, it should have been recognized right away.
I still fault them for the sensor problem. Once the sensor system became used for something as potentially lethal as MCAS, they should have redesigned
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Awww, come on guys, it's so simple maybe you need a refresher course.
It's all ball bearings nowadays.
Re: Not the MAX (Score:2)
I once saw a video of a bus driver in China swerving off a bridge via the drivers actions with no apparent cause. The general conclusion is that an unsettling passenger was hassling them and caused a mental break.
We always talk about human error but lesser discussed is malice. Chinese people are under extreme pressure. Maybe it was bad Mantainence but we can't rule out the most extreme...
I live in China, so I see first hand of the radical pivots adults can make here and overall mental health is deeply deval
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Any idea where all that mental pressure is coming from?
Donald Trump, obviously.
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Gaokao. Google it. It's a good microcosm of how Chinese society works as a whole, because everyone goes through it, spends their entire youth preparing for it, and it decides what opportunities in life are open to them.
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Gaokao. Google it. It's a good microcosm of how Chinese society works as a whole, because everyone goes through it, spends their entire youth preparing for it, and it decides what opportunities in life are open to them.
So basically it's like the SAT but in Chinese [wikipedia.org]? Or is this the Chinese mainland equivalent of qualifying for the Ivy League?
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No. Similarities begin and end with "it's a test at the end of basic education". It's a life changing event that you must cram 12 hours a day from the time you're a little child to the day of the event, and something that decides your future path for the rest of your life because it'll decide everything from where you are allowed to live to how you will be allowed to live.
Because it's a fundamentally different system of life. That's why I recommend googling the test and how it actually functions within the
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Can you decide where you live in Japan and South Korea? Can you move to live elsewhere freely without specific permit from the government, getting which has both public and secret criteria one of which is typically income/education level?
Just one of countless fundamental differences.
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It's the opposite. Throughout much of human history in many regions, leadership decided where ordinary people were allowed to live. Serfdom was a thing.
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"Hukou". I don't know as much about this because it's harder to get people to talk about it.
I would like to believe there was some way it made sense but this can also effect marriage, where your kids can study, Without getting it from your family. My girlfriend and I have been on the rocks a bit and she went totally blitz shit crazy last night by saying she will steal it so we can get married in secret (I didn't even know how to deal with that). Traditionally a baby born out of wedlock also basically had no
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That moment when Chinabot goes really off the rails with random throwaways.
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It is probably more common in most all Asian cultures. I would quickly expand some on the things Luckyo suggests because I think he does make it sound a bit absurd saying kids are studying 12 hours a day k-12 for it. Especially in the primary grades there is some concern but not the same push as the last three years in high school.
You first need to start understanding a few things about Asia, these cultures are collectivistic which means our families serve a huge rule in telling us what we should do. More s
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I agree with most of what you said, except that little bit about "common in most all Asian cultures". I think there are at least five different types of "Asian" cultures, one reason why I don't think we should be using generic terms like Asian or Asian-American.
Most people in Europe speak an Indo-European language, write with a Greek-based alphabet, and even if non-religious, are at least familiar with Christian customs and concepts (Christmas and Easter, although the dates of celebration might differ).
Ther
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This is all fair and the distinction you make is great but I think we could even dive a bit deeper. The Japanese and South Korean cultures are heavily influences by western culture and while still might have some of the xenophobic cultural tendencies of the East Asia nations, their cultural traditions have been shifted because of politics. Even Vietnam is a special case and while I have never been there I always thought they would hate Americans but I was told they actually hate Chinese more because of how
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Are you sure?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Also, worth checking:
https://apnews.com/article/49a... [apnews.com]
Re:Not the MAX (Score:5, Interesting)
The only examples of commercial passenger aircraft nose diving into the ground like that which I am aware of involve catastrophic failures of the control surfaces. Either the surface itself gets jammed or the thing controlling it (hydraulics in this case, I believe) fails and the cabin crew become unable to control the aircraft.
Deliberate murder-suicide is a possibility too. Hopefully the black box survived.
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The only examples of commercial passenger aircraft nose diving into the ground like that which I am aware of involve catastrophic failures of the control surfaces.
Nah, it can't happen that way. That was deliberate.
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There have been examples of aircraft entering vertical dives due to control surface failure before.
Actually there is another explanation, which would be a mid-air collision. Since it doesn't look like there were other debris from the video, i.e. it didn't break up in the air, I don't think a collision or bomb is very likely.
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There have been examples of aircraft entering vertical dives due to control surface failure before.
Examples?
Anything's, possible, obviously, but you'd have to lose control of every single control surface and they'd all have to be locked in a very particular position to maintain a perfect vertical line like we see in that video. The engine power would probably have to be set just right, too.
Not gonna happen in practice. Those things have multiple redundant circuits and are designed to fail gracefully.
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All the 737 MAX issues were due to an undocumented function, that was misrepresented to the FAA, and had a single point of failure (lack of redundant angle of attack sensors).
If you want a non-737 example, Alaska Airline Flight 261 is a go
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Not sure that I would trust CAAC to do the job decently, but if they can recover the black box, then issue would be solved.
BTW, it was NOT in a straight dive, but actually did a slight roller coaster around 10K'. Looked like a recovery that then failed.
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It can, for a variety of reasons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Its hard to have that sort of pilot error when the plane is on autopilot and at cruise level. I'm going for a deliberate act.
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I'm going for not blindly speculating about an incident with little information. But you do you armchair pilot.
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Keep polishing your halo then.
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Oh really?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Many things can happen, and did happen in the past, as you could see.
Now, you might be right, but by chance rather than knowledge.
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And which part of that was pilot error exactly?
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Was it Brazil where air traffic controllers put a jumbo on a near-collision with a business jet that saw the jumbo plunge into the ground after part of the wing was sliced off?
Ah, yes, here it is:
6. Gol Transportes Aereos Flight 1907 and Embraer Legacy business jet – This accident involved a Boeing 737-8EH of the Gol Transportes Aereos en route for Rio de Janeiro from Manaus, Brazil which on 29 September 2006 collided in mid-air with an Embraer Legacy business jet while above the Brazilian state of Ma
Black box (Score:2)
Hopefully the black box survived.
Could we make the plane out of black box material?
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Aside from it making the aircraft too heavy to fly, the stuff inside the box has to be able to survive much greater forces than a human body can withstand. So it wouldn't really help, even if the airframe remained intact all the people inside wouldn't.
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Very slow, not much capacity or range. And also, don't fly.
Re: Black box (Score:2)
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And also, don't fly.
Not entirely correct. Russian tank turrets fly exceptionally well once hit by a Javelin.
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I can't even imagine what would cause a plane in cruise to dive straight down like that.
I can: the pilot deliberately pushed the nose down. Also, I can imagine that certain hardware failures might have a similar effect e.g. if they lost the horizontal stabiliser.
I'm not saying that any of these were the cause in this case: I don't know.
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No one knows at this point. It's far too early to tell. Accident report will make for interesting reading. Even if someone manages to get a better video or image of aircraft in the final stages before crash and it's actually missing parts or entirety of horizontal stabilizer as you suggest, that won't tell us much. Because aircraft in that kind of nosedive from cruise altitude of 10km and up would have gone past Vmax quite a while ago and would be in process of losing large chunks of empennage from too much
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There was a recent event where pilots were flying in clouds and became disorientated. They ended up doing a corkscrew dive, thinking they were flying straight and level... maybe thinking the controls were acting up slightly.
You only have to do a barrel roll to know that you can be upside down and it feels like right side up. A barrel roll straight down would feel even more comfortable.
That's how USAir 427 went down. (Score:2)
It's actually how USAir Flight 427 [wikipedia.org] went down (cgi videos on the wiki page), due to a rudder malfunction. Coincidentally it was also a Boeing 437 with 132 passengers! The older generation though, the rudder was redesigned so it can't be the same issue I expect.
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News reports are suggesting similarities with the Airbus suicide, but I wouldn't put a whole lot of stock in that without more data. The question is, since the aircraft dropped into a nosedive, will the flight recorders be intact? (If they find bits of tape, they could - in principle - stick those together and try to figure out electronically the order of events. But if it's on semiconductors, I'm not sure if there'll be anything readable.)
The question then becomes one of how do you get the data to survive?
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If they find bits of tape ...
Flight recorders haven't used tape in a long time.
They use solid-state flash storage. They are built to withstand 3200G, 1100C for 30 minutes, and pressures equal to 6000-meter submersion.
A "black box" is orange, not black.
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Don't seem to recall using the phrase "black box", and as "black box" is the phrase used, rather than "orange box", it would have been correct anyway. Still, thank you for something I didn't ask for or want. I'm sure I have a use for it somewhere.
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If they find bits of tape
It's a relatively new airplane (737-800). It's going to be digital recordings.
Solid state memory used in such recorders has a much greater chance of surviving a serious crash than old mag tape technology.
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Not if there aren't any big pieces. This looks like a very high speed collision.
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They have recovered digital recorders buried 20 feet or more in the ground by the force of the crash that were easily readable.
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I can't even imagine what would cause a plane in cruise to dive straight down like that.
I can. The pilot deciding to commit suicide and taking the passengers with them. Just push the rudder down and aim straight for the ground would explain the 90 degree dive.
actual link with video (Score:4, Informative)
New York Post [nypost.com] has a good story on it, with video. The plane looks like it was in a very near-vertical dive.
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It can't. That was intentional.
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Except there was an attempt to recover, according to the FlightTracker data. The plane plunged, rose back up to the correct level and then plunged a final time. That doesn't sound like a suicidal pilot, although I suppose if there was a fight in the cockpit then it might.
Re:actual link with video (Score:5, Informative)
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My thought too, ala ASA0261 back at the end of January 2000
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The collision below would probably have resulted in the 737 plunging into the ground in the same way. It's the only other scenario I can think of, although I suppose it's just possible that an autopilot malfunction could have done it.
6. Gol Transportes Aereos Flight 1907 and Embraer Legacy business jet – This accident involved a Boeing 737-8EH of the Gol Transportes Aereos en route for Rio de Janeiro from Manaus, Brazil which on 29 September 2006 collided in mid-air with an Embraer Legacy business jet
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It's a tabloid owned by Fox, what did you expect?
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Never forget: if there's a paywall, the content is their product. if not, YOU are their product.
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What we never forget is that Slashdot is full of smart tech nerds who are almost simultaneously too stupid to understand the concept of secondary source income and lump the entire function of a large organisation into designating one specific thing the "product".
Your UID is low enough that you should have an IQ of an old school Slashdotter, how did you let yourself get reduced to a meme generator?
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However, it 'descended' damn fast. [flightradar24.com]
Seen from space? (Score:2)
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The link actually goes to '//guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers' before you arrive there.
Welcome to slashdot.
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Blue screens can't be seen from space.
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Also, link still goes to Win11 story ...
To be fair, it's a story about a crash.
Comment removed (Score:3)
So that is 220 Kph or 136 Mph (Score:2)
It is more than a city block every 2 seconds.
Might as well have stated it in Olympic swimming pools or Football pitches. Why do people do that? It is not something everyone can relate to.
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reporters write based on a standardized script, like CSRs.
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Usain Bolts (Score:2)
Picture Usain Bolt running the 100m in 9.58 seconds.
Now picture the plane just above Usain Bolt as he runs the the 100m. Let's pretend that it's flying in a circle around his straight track, with a diameter of 100m and a circumference of 314m. If they both start at the same point (the plane gets a rolling start), the Boeing will be 44m away from completing its second lap as Mr Bolt finishes his dash.
I wanted to do a completely sarcastic comparison resulting in (x) number of Usain Bolts, but got interested i
Boeing Engineering? (Score:2)
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A dive, a recover, followed by another dive would be suggestive of a mechanical failure, suicidal pilots wouldn't try to recover.
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"Boeing Engineering" is not one guy (Score:2)
Any crash involving a Boeing plane should be assumed to be a Boeing Engineering issue until proven otherwise.
"Boeing Engineering" isn't a singular eternal entity. Engineering is made up of people, and there have been many different managers, directors, QA teams that have come and gone over the years. Consider:
737-800 launch date: September 5, 1994
737-MAX launch date: May 22, 2017
It's unlikely that the problems plaguing the 737-MAX program also affected the 737-800, given how long the 737-800s have been flying without an incident resulting from poor engineering.
Re: Boeing Engineering? (Score:2)
Conspiracy theorists will say it was China (Score:1)
Trying to push their new plane by devaluing Boeing in their market.
is the video real? (Score:1)
The New York post's video from china shows a plane nose diving but I immediately wondered about it's validity... https://nypost.com/2022/03/21/... [nypost.com]
A few questions:
1. why does the plane just disappear at the end? The camera movement still happens which indicates it wasn't just paused.
2. why don't we see something - a flash, fireball, smoke, etc. If they had this much recorded why not the rest?
Now I'm getting all conspiracy paranoid.
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Just a wild guess: the camera is positioned dozens of altitude feet above the impact site?
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There is also another video from a different location.
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Thanks, wasn't aware of this.
USSR China Attack Winner = NONE (Score:2)
USSR China Attack Winner = NONE
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none = MAD aka Mutually Assured Destruction