Boeing 737 nose dives into ground, Air crash in China

originally posted by: scrounger
I used to be a single engine licensed pilot that was in CAP (civil air patrol)
qualified search/rescue pilot and cadet orientation pilot.

Thanks for the time you gave to the cadets. Our son was a CAP cadet for about 3-4 years. We started a few years after we started homeschooling. If you are lucky to belong to a good flight there is SO much value there for teens. But it takes good senior CAP members to make that happen. He's 23 now and looks back on his time in CAP as one of the best things he's ever done.

Two 737's crashed because of the rudder power control unit. One was US Air Flight 427. I worked that crash. The units were supposed to have been replaced. One problem that China has is counterfeit parts. Another is poor maintaince.

a reply to: tamusan

Flight 427 crashed in Hopewell township. It was a faulty piece of hardware ( a damper )causing the rudders to fail.

It came straight in.

It was single handedly the First and Worse accident I've ever been on. Looked like mannequins everywhere. I'd rather not give to many details about victims.

Had to leave many hoses, hand tools and couple other smaller apparatuses after the initial suppression. FBI, ATF and NTSB needed some of our boots, and bunker gear for the investigators to swab and detect explosive materials to rule out a bomb. ( all was replaced with brand new equipment and bunker gear.).

That was the day people learned we had equipment to build a road to the crash site. And promptly investigated our budget books.

Been meaning to copy the pictures to a computer file for years now. But I still have the negatives, and documents ftom the crash. From the Station 100 Allegheny County Airport Authority's workings.



On subject..
That video is sad. Be some time before we know the cause.

a reply to: Bigburgh

I remember being impressed with how fast you guys built the road. Didn't know there was an investigation. Sounds about right for the area.

I used to hang around with the FAA guys. At the time I was working towards being a crash investigator. I'd started in the 80's at Jacksonville International Airport. The morning after the crash I was contacted and asked if I wanted to work the crash. The guys knew that I was laid off at the time and was available. When I got there we were in Tyvek suits with respirators. We started looking for human remains. When we found something we'd raise our arm and wait for a guy with a pole to come over. He placed the pole by the remains and guys with surveyor's transits would shoot the pole. We also put a board with a number written in grease pencil by the remains and photograph them. Then we put a flag nearby meaning that it had been documented. When we finished with remains, we did the same for pieces of the aircraft. I was there two weeks. That changed my mind about being an investigator. Following year I started school for engineering.

originally posted by: tamusan
a reply to: Tulpa


I just checked and the plane that just nosedived in China is a 737-800 which is the Max.

Not a Max at all. 737 800 series like the 737 900... both are not the Max.
Similar to the This 737- 8

Here's the Max.


Lol.. see the difference? You can't really, well I can't just by looking at the aircraft from a distance.😊

Sometimes you can if you take notice of the engines and the landing gear set up.





Edit: There's A Max 10 now too.

a reply to: LogicalGraphitti

Under Annex 13 of the Chicago Convention (the PRC officially recognized the Convention in 1974), the US has the right to appoint investigators, with advisors to any accident involving aircraft designed or built in the US. That means they can send an NTSB and Boeing representative, with or without advisors.

a reply to: JIMC5499

There were many fire companies there from the surrounding area. Giving support and relief shift for us...THANKS FOR THE HELP BTW👍🏼. County had the Command though we were technically in Beaver not Allegheny.

Yeah that's when we had the earth movers. But that didn't set well with the oversight committee.

I was so young then, I didn't even have a mustache yet. Just dark peach fuzz on my upper lip.

Edit: And a big THANKS to the area fire Auxiliaries for the hot food and water.

originally posted by: Bigburgh
a reply to: JIMC5499

THANKS FOR THE HELP BTW👍🏼.

I was paid quite well for those two weeks, wasn't worth it. Wished it hadn't happened. Going past family members at the hotel, not being allowed to say anything even though you didn't really know anything and swimming in the pool trying to get rid of the smell even though it was in my head.

a reply to: Bigburgh

Easy and quick way to tell the difference is the engine nacelle. If it squashed on the bottom it’s not a MAX. If the engine is completely round it is a MAX.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: LogicalGraphitti

Under Annex 13 of the Chicago Convention (the PRC officially recognized the Convention in 1974), the US has the right to appoint investigators, with advisors to any accident involving aircraft designed or built in the US. That means they can send an NTSB and Boeing representative, with or without advisors.

That's good news Zaph, thanks for commenting. We all know how the PRC dislikes bad press and I can just imagine them trying to sweep things under the rug to avoid bad press. I'm anxious to find out what caused this accident.

originally posted by: LogicalGraphitti

originally posted by: scrounger
so this keeps happening and the powers that are supposed to regulate it (FAA) and ORDER , ENFORCE AND (if needed) PUNSH THOSE WHO BREAK THE RULES/LAWS.

But they dont do they.

scrounger

This happened in China so the FAA has no jurisdiction. They have the CAAC. That said, accidents like this are rare. Each and everyone is diagnosed to find the root cause. I just hope that China lets Boeing participate in this case.

first the aircraft CERTIFICATION is though the FAA initially.
unless the plane was only flown and certified in china that statement technically isnt true

but in any case the aircraft was first certified by the FAA and it flies in US airspace so yes they have jurisdiction to pull its airworthy certificate for a crash in china.

im not so sure its as rare as they claim

remember all the problems that pilots said they reported the last time a crash of this type of plane happened but were ignored?

or the corners that were cut and known but no one in the FAA wanted to deal with?

i hope it was not a flaw of the airplane but i am not holding my breath on it

Scrounger

originally posted by: JourneyAbout

originally posted by: scrounger
I used to be a single engine licensed pilot that was in CAP (civil air patrol)
qualified search/rescue pilot and cadet orientation pilot.

Thanks for the time you gave to the cadets. Our son was a CAP cadet for about 3-4 years. We started a few years after we started homeschooling. If you are lucky to belong to a good flight there is SO much value there for teens. But it takes good senior CAP members to make that happen. He's 23 now and looks back on his time in CAP as one of the best things he's ever done.

thank you for the kind words and the fun your son had.

i was in a unit in Pierre SD and started new one in a town nearby .
we were small so did flying , ground team leader, medic, supply officer (oh the stories there), and command staff.

I do miss those days.

scrounger

a reply to: scrounger

The CAA does their own certifications, sometimes running a shadow certification with the FAA. The FAA can recommend the CAA ground them, or follow any AD that they require for the US, but it’s only a recommendation. Each regulatory agency is only capable of regulating aircraft in their own country. They generally follow the other agencies recommendations, but they aren’t required to.

The FAA can pull the airworthiness certificate for US owned aircraft, but that’s it. They can’t pull any certificate for an aircraft owned by Chinese airlines, and operated in China, unless it’s leased from an American company.

Representatives of Boeing, GE, and the NTSB have arrived on scene.

a reply to: sapien82

This one is a puzzler.

Definite loss of vertical pitch control.

The failure occurred right before the beginning of descent, which is automated at that stage of flight.

Calls to crew went unanswered.

I had read a bad report that they briefly recovered some altitude around 7000 feet so I immediately thought of Alaska 261 which lost control of the horizontal stabilizer on a T-tail aircraft, plunged, leveled off, was fought admirably by the flight crew, and then went total nose down and into the ocean after the stabilizer completely ran away.

Once I learned it was a single plunge I discarded that notion partially.

This plane was only 7 years old. That's still years from the secondary market. Even with 9000 cycles it was still airworthy.

Sudden pitch loss at cruise is very rare. Especially on a fly-by-wire aircraft like the B738.

There's the infamous sudden 737 "rudder hardover" on older models, but that problem was supposedly taken care of and pilots are taught to correct for reversals now.

This feels like sudden loss of airworthiness along those lines though.

But could be anything from an computer glitch elevator failure to a fight in the cockpit.

Hope the data recorders can be recovered.

a reply to: Degradation33

It wasn’t a single descent. They went from 7400-8600 feet at one point before the second dive that resulted in the aircraft hitting the ground.

The 737-800 isn’t fly-by-wire. Boeing didn’t use fly-by-wire until the 777. They use partial fly-by-wire for things like spoilers on the Max, but none of the 737s are fly-by-wire.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Shows you what I know. Got a lot of experience on FSX and watching Air Crash Investigation/Mayday.

I always thought they started playing with Airbus' fly-by-wire at the point when they adapted the new 777 cockpits on the next gen 737's. Thought they brought it over with it.

Good for them.

Okay. So they did recover for a bit.

Then I'm back to an elevator jam or something mechanical in the tail. Hydraulic failure? Pitch control loss.

a reply to: Degradation33



Now I'm leaning heavily towards the elevator deflection or stabilizer jam because they didn't roll. It deflected or jammed past the point of recovery and stayed pushing the nose down.

I fear it's an occurance of the type servo reversal hydraulic failure on UAL 585, only with the elevator. Another counterintuitive hell where all they had to do was push the nose down.

And all animations I'm finding aren't showing a recovery. Conflicting reports.

a reply to: Degradation33

Because they’re not using the raw ADS-B data. The replay, which is what they usually use, doesn’t show all the data. The raw data showed them going from a 13.000 foot per minute decent, to an 8400 foot per minute climb, back to a rapid descent.

could any of those data recorders survive that sort impact? most of that aircraft debris will be 40 feet underground