There is no case in the recent history of commercial aviation where within the first year of introducing a new model jet there have been two serious fatal accidents involving that model. But that is now the record of the Boeing 737 MAX-8, the newest version of the most widely used single-aisle jet in the world.
The crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 shortly after taking off from Addis Ababa occurred little more than four months after the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 in Indonesia. A total of 346 people died in the two crashes, 157 in Ethiopia and 189 in Indonesia.
Eight Americans, 18 Canadians, and passengers from at least 35 countries died in the crash of Flight 302, bound for Nairobi, Kenya.
A conclusive explanation for the Ethiopian crash cannot be reached without recovery of the data from the airplane’s black box. And, even though there are striking similarities between the two disasters, it is too soon to conclude that the cause was exactly the same.
Nonetheless it must be of great concern that at a time when the rate of fatal air crashes has been reduced to record low levels two such catastrophes can occur involving a new model jet that has only recently joined airline fleets: the Lion Air 737 was delivered in August 2018 and the Ethiopian 737 in November 2018.
The most pressing question for investigators is whether the Ethiopian pilots confronted the same sudden emergency that doomed the Lion Air flight.
Within a few minutes of takeoff the Lion Air pilots encountered a problem that made it difficult to control the climb. Due to a faulty instrument, the 737’s automatic flight controls system detected an aerodynamic stall and forced down the airplane’s nose to correct it.
In fact, the jet was nowhere near to stall speed and for the rest of what was only an 11-minute flight the pilots struggled to overcome the automated commands that continued to force down the nose. They lost that struggle and the jet nosedived into the Java Sea.
The Ethiopian 737 was in the air for far less time, around six minutes. But in that time the captain, like the Lion Air captain, reported difficulties and requested a return to the airport. Unlike the Lion Air flight there is no evidence that the Ethiopian crew was able to maintain altitude and begin to make a turn back toward the runway – the jet’s end was very sudden