OT: Lion Air brand new 737 crash

[trader_4]

What's up with that? Looks like it may be an airspeed indicator problem followed by the crew being unable to deal with it and fly the plane? Really bizarre on a brand new plane. And unlike the Air France crash off Brazil, this was in daylight and I think relatively clear weather.

Some good questions:

Did the pilots know the plane had a problem with erratic flight the night before and that maintenance had worked on it? Is it standard procedure that the pilots would be informed of any maintenance done, especially for something serious like this?

You'd hope that there would be some judgment made that for serious problems that are supposedly fixed, the plane would be taken for a test flight before loading it with 190 passengers, but I guess $$$ rules.

[gfretwell]

Lion air is banned in the US because they think maintenance is an optional expense. They also scrape pilots from the scum at the bottom of the barrel so mechanical failure vs pilot error is push. As you say, it is probably a recoverable problem that they did not recover from.

[rbowman]

They were banned in Europe for some time too. I think it's back in the bozo bin for them. The plane will fly, Allah willing...

[Rod Speed]

More complicated than that with the roller coaster ride the previous flight got.

Yes to both.

Not anymore.

The owner is actually a xtian.

[gfretwell]

Not according to the FAA

[rbowman]

And the pilots and mechanics?

[Rod Speed]

That's a year old.

[Rod Speed]

The main pilot was an Indian, from New Delhi.

[micky]

First time I heard this I thought they said Ryan Air.

After the crash, passengers on the previous flight said the floor was hot. I wonder if they told anyone. It might have been the catalytic converter.

[devnull]

Or the lead in the 100LL plugged the converter? LOL!

[trader_4]

Latest news is that on the previous flight in, the plane had the same symptoms on climb out. The plane dropped 500 ft, the pilot issued a pan pan stating that he was having trouble with altitude and airspeed and asked for a return to the airport. The airport cleared other traffic, but then apparently the problem subsided and they decided to continue on. But that flight was made at 20000, instead of 35000 apparently indicating that something still wasn't right or the pilots were concerned.

So the plane landed at 11PM, they did maintenance over night and it took off again at 6:30AM. So far they said the maintenance people "followed the Boeing book procedure". Wonder what they did? Possible they followed the flow chart, everything tested OK and nothing was fixed. It also seems inconceivable that a failure in a single airspeed or altitude system component could produce a plane that is unflyable.

The flight profile is weird too, from the data on the flight tracking website, it looks like it was flying at about 300 knots, steady, steady altitude right before the plunge, then it just plunged. If they stalled it, you'd think there would be a decline in airspeed, erratic airspeed, etc. I guess that could have happened so quickly that it wasn't reported back to the ground tracking systems though. Very strange.