Sandeep1

As I said earlier, it wasn't what he was saying but how he was saying it. He was condescending and dismissive toward posters (yes, several) who believed that something felt off about this whole thing and believed that pilot suicide was going to be the eventual conclusion. What exactly do posters need to keep an open mind about? As you said above, we are not investigators, nobody is consulting us. We are posting our opinions as to what we think happened.

dhuey

You and I made the same guess on pilot sabotage, and LarryJ disagreed with both of us on the most likely cause. I never thought he was the slightest bit dismissive or condescending toward either of us. He simply disagreed with us.

EmailKid

While I probably have not read the entire thread, and probably don't remember many early posts, with all due respect, I have followed LarryJ's posts for years, and don't believe that there were condescending posts.

And I don't have the time to search to see if there are any.

MSPeconomist

I asked the same question earlier, and in fact earlier by less than ten posts and about five hours.

Lomapaseo

Well a lack of a public answer is like fertilizer on a garden of weeds
I'm patient, I will wait.

\I really can't accept yet, interpretations based on what other countries have regulated since this was an interior flight in China

Sigwx

As with LarryJ, I too won’t be foolish enough to accept as definitive fact a leak from a headline grabbing, ‘exclusive’ addicted industry.
Anyone who has attended an airline command course will no doubt have sat through a module or lecture on the media, their methods and practices.

I have observed and remained silent, the report is what is needed and patience until it arrives. One thing that has bugged me is the interpretation of the data from that Flightradar24 post on social media outlets.

In my interpretation of a few lines of data collected by hobbyists which is not as valid or official (if you will) as that which will have been captured by the FDRs, there is an anomaly in those believing the data and ‘leak’ point in one direction alone.

Put simply ‘if’ a recovery was attempted and had actually started to work, there would be an associated increase in ground speed, as transitioning through level flight will see the kinetic energy of the aircraft propelling it across the surface of the earth, thus increasing ground speed. Throughout the entire event the ground speed only decreases. Given the aircraft will be accelerating throughout the dive it is likely it entered the transonic speed range. A known altimetry error is nick named ‘transonic jump’. The increase in altitude data over a 40 second period could possibly have been due to this phenomenon. Remember that ADS isn’t a second by second narration, there is lag and their our plenty of other errors with LOS limitations between transmission and reception. It is just a snap shot and not definitive data.

We don’t know, we don’t have the data the investigation team do, as LarryJ has pointed out, there are still plenty of competing theories.

dhuey

“The plane did what it was told to do by someone in the cockpit,” said a person who is familiar with American officials’ preliminary assessment, which includes an analysis of information extracted from the plane’s damaged flight-data recorder.

-- The above is from the Wall Street Journal article. It's possible that the paper's source is incorrect regarding the American officials' preliminary assessment. It's also possible that the preliminary assessment is incorrect. I wouldn't bet on either of those two possibilities. The WSJ is a highly-regarded news organization, and by all indications they have a knowledgeable insider as a source.

Lomapaseo

First off I don't have any first hand or even second have knowledge about this accident. But I have been close enough to others, including interviews with the WSJ to understand the possible flow of information..
My belief is that no one close to knowing was involved with the WSJ. Instead it was probably overheard or beer conversations among friends that hinted at a strong likelihood (opinion) Subsequently this third hand, often as a reliable expert to the WSJ offered it as 2nd hand knowledge thus filling a gap in the status.

For myself I would never ask a direct source in a investigation , preferring instead to only offer explanations and not official facts..

I pretty much get what I want from parsing the expertise in forums like this.

Dave510

We all know American officials are impartial, non-political entities with an impeccable history, such as their handling of the 737 MAX.

dhuey

That's a sweeping implicit knock on American officials involved in aviation. Have the officials involved in crash investigations ever succumbed to political pressure to conclude or not conclude anything regarding the cause(s) of commercial airliner crashes? I can't think of any examples of that. From everything I've seen, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is held in high-regard, globally.

ETA: Regarding the 737 MAX, the NTSB concluded that the Federal Aviation Administration needed to make multiple changes to its design-safety assessments. It was anything but a politically-motivated defense of a U.S. aircraft manufacturer: NTSB Issues 7 Safety Recommendations to FAA related to Ongoing Lion Air, Ethiopian Airlines Crash Investigations

Dave510

What's the general time frame for these investigations to be completed? And why would any party to the investigation, who has any sense of responsibility at all, be leaking what they THINK caused the crash, merely 2 months into the investigation, and when they're not even the relevant party.

Also, has any crash investigators actually come forward, or is this just based on WSJ's hearsay?

dhuey

I believe others mentioned above that the time frame is something like one year from the crash, give or take. I don't know.

As for why anyone would leak this information, there are any number of reasons -- we can only guess. The WSJ reporter and the editor involved surely looked closely at who the source was, and how they claimed to have access to a preliminary assessment. They made a judgment that this source was sufficiently reliable to run the story, and without naming their source.

To be sure, it might turn out that this source was mistaken or even lying. That would eventually come out, and it would be very embarrassing to the WSJ. I'm betting it won't happen, and that this will prove to be an accurate report of the NTSB's preliminary assessment.

Sigwx

American Airlines 965 which crashed in Cali, Columbia also did exactly what “someone in the cockpit” told the aircraft to do. It did it perfectly.

Any media outlet is able to present their version of the truth to fit their own aims. We either ascribe to their point of view/argument, or we do not.

not trying to disagree, merely point out that there are plenty of examples of aircraft doing exactly what they are told to do, not always does that mean there was nefarious intent.


In response to questions over time scales, it all depends on the complexity of the investigation. It takes as long as it takes.

mtofell

Agree but it seems most times there's a faulty part involved which leads the pilots to "tell the plane" to do something incorrect (the MAX 8 might even fit this). Unless I missed it, there hasn't been a single problem identified with the plane. Of course, we're dealing with the Chinese government so they could be withholding things.

dhuey

From the WSJ article: "Also underpinning the American officials’ assessment, this person said: Chinese authorities, who are leading the investigation, so far haven’t flagged any mechanical or flight-control problems with the plane involved in the March 21 crash in southern China."

The AA 965 pilots found themselves in the wrong valley as the approached the airport for landing. They realized their mistake too late to avoid slamming into a high mountain range. Hard to see any relevance of that here. Can you think of any non-nefarious reason why a pilot on this flight would have put the plane into a nearly-vertical nose dive?