SINGAPORE (Mar 18): The response to the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302, which killed all 157 people on board about six minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa, was swift. Aviation authorities across the globe, including those in Singapore, have grounded the Boeing 737 Max aircraft.
Investigators are still determining the cause of the crash, uncomfortably similar to that of Lion Air Flight 610, which nosedived into the Java Sea 12 minutes after take-off last October. Notably both aircraft were newly delivered 737 Max 8s that crashed shortly after take-off, prior to which their pilots reported flight problems and requested to turn back.
Investigators and safety experts have cautioned against prematurely linking the two incidents, but aviation authorities have suspended flight operations of the 737 Max. Airlines will be working to manage the gap in capacity left by the aircraft’s being out of service. But, perhaps more significantly, the reputation of the aircraft’s manufacturer, The Boeing Co, is on the line as it fights to defend the aircraft’s reputation of safety and the modification to the flight controls that is now under scrutiny.
The 737 Max is the latest variant of the Boeing 737, the commercial aircraft beloved of airlines flying short, point-to-point routes. It is the best-selling aircraft in Boeing’s history. The jets are deployed on roughly 8,500 flights weekly worldwide; in March last year, the 10,000th 737 rolled off the Boeing production line. Since the 737 Max variant’s launch in 2011, there have been nearly 4,700 orders from more than 100 customers worldwide, including Singapore Airlines (SIA) subsidiary SilkAir.
Yet, since the Lion Air crash in October, there have been questions about the aircraft’s manoeuvring characteristics augmentation system (MCAS), which was new to the aircraft family. The 737 Max was thought to have been a hurried response to the new fuel-efficient A320neo that Airbus had launched months earlier. To obtain better fuel efficiency, the 737 Max needed larger engines, which were mounted higher and farther forward on the wing. This could cause the aircraft to tilt nose up. The MCAS was to prevent the plane’s nose from getting too high, which would cause a stall, using data from the angle-of-attack sensor located at the front of the plane. In the case of the Lion Air crash, a preliminary report found that the aircraft had faulty angle-of-attack data.
Pilots and other industry insiders have raised concerns that they were given no additional training on MCAS nor informed about it. According to Boeing, pilots trained on the 737s would not have problems dealing with an emergency caused by erroneous data from the sensors. In any case, on Nov 7, about a week after the Lion Air crash, Boeing issued a bulletin to airlines reminding pilots on how to handle the aircraft in the event of such an emergency.
To be sure, aircraft manufacturers are no strangers to issues arising from new aircraft, particularly as they are pressured to push the envelope with more advanced technology that promises operators better returns. In the case of Boeing, its 787 Dreamliner jets were grounded in January 2013 shortly after being delivered to its first customers in Japan on account of the aircraft’s lithium-ion batteries overheating and catching fire. The batteries were chosen for being lighter than the traditional nickel-based batteries.
For now, the impact of the 737 Max’s being taken out of service appears to be manageable for SilkAir. The airline has six of the aircraft, flying to 12 destinations, including Kuala Lumpur, Kathmandu and Hiroshima. The remainder of its 737 fleet comprises 17 of the earlier iteration, the 737NG. Sources in the industry believe SIA has the ability to manage the capacity. While SilkAir announced cancelled flights between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, SIA mounted two supplementary flights to the Malaysian city, from March 13 to 15.
SIA has declined to disclose whether the controversy surrounding the 737 Max will cause it to change the scheduled delivery of the rest of the 31 737 Max planes on order from Boeing.
The flight data recorders from Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302 are being dispatched to France for analysis, whereas the final report on the Lion Air crash is expected to come out only towards year-end. Meanwhile, on March 13, Boeing quietly unveiled its 777-9 aircraft — the first in the new 777X family — which will be subjected to a battery of tests before its maiden flight.
