- ACCIDENT DETAILS
Date: March 10, 2019
Time: 0844
Location: Bishoftu, Ethiopia
Operator: Ethiopian Airlines
Flight #: 302
Route: Addis Ababa - Nairobi
AC Type: Boeing 737 Max 8
Registration: ET-AVJ
cn / ln: 63450/7243
Aboard: 157   (passengers:149  crew:8)
Fatalities: 157   (passengers:149  crew:8)
Ground: 0
Summary: The internationally scheduled airliner crashed 6 minutes after taking off from Addis Ababa-Bole Airport. The pilot sent out a distress call and was given clearance to return to the airport. The crash site, some 31 miles southeast of the airport, contained a smoky crater with small pieces of wreckage. When the 737 Max 8 was designed, it necessitated placing the engines more forward. This gave the plane a tendency to be nose heavy. To compensate for this, the MCAS system was written into the software. No one was told of this, not the pilots or airlines and did not appear in any manual. The MCAS was activated by the angle-of-attack sensor. The system only depended on one angle-of-attack sensor. If the angle-of attack sensor sensed a nose down attitude, it would adjust the trim and bring the plane to level flight. On the accident plane, the angle-of-attack sensor was faulty and gave false readings which caused the plane to pitch up. It also caused incorrect airspeed and altitude readings. The pilot tried to correct the nose-up attitude, but the system kept pushing the nose up. Eventually the plane’s stall speed was reached, and the plane went into a dive and crashed. A simple disconnect of the stabilizer trim would have solved the problem.
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