The actual cause of AF447 was the inability of the flight crew to recognize a stall caused by iced up pitot tubes giving a unreliable airspeed indication. Between 2008-9 there were 9 incidents on ASR’s of temp loss of airspeed indications on AF 330/340 fleets. After the crash there were 6 more instances that weren’t on ASR’s. An AD was put out to swap the tubes but that was prior to the crash.

Afterwards....no grounding happened despite multiple airlines reporting faulty airspeed indications on that plane.

So...no problem with that model? Yeah....ok.

Right....but how many of those A330/340's crashed? There were also known mitigation procedures promulgated for A330 crews at least to understand the possible presentation of an iced pitot probe on the planes avionics and how to deal with it.

Haven’t they already run the scenario with other crews and the result was invariably the same? Even with the best Kernals with the straightest ties and highest sick banks would have struggled.

Perhaps that’s the problem :rolleyes:

We also have a unreliable airspeed and trim runaway checklists. In fact, we ran unreliable airspeed in the sim last year....

Well, no. The iced up pitot caused all sorts of havoc but it didn't cause the crash. If the crew had done nothing they would still be alive. It was the pilot pulling back for the next 3 minutes or so that caused the crash.

Because they had unreliable airspeed. And didn’t realize it. Which was caused by....iced up tubes.

To be fair, the situations were different.

In the Airbus A330 iced pilot tube situation, you did not need to change the aircraft state to recover. You just needed to hold the current pitch and power setting and eventually the airspeed would return. In the 737 MAX MCAS scenerio, you need to make a prompt and active response, and the situation would never resolve over time. Moreover, the 737 MAX MCAS scenarios all happened at low altitude, whereas the A330 incidents were in cruise.

You can leave flaps in and MCAS stops activating. In the case of Ethiopian they raised the flaps around 200’ AGL. I’ve never seen them at 0° below around 1500’ AGL. Don’t know if that’s their policy or not to raise them that low to the ground.

Still doesn’t change the fact that multiple airlines reported issues with the pitot tubes and the plane wasn’t grounded 1 day.

Not saying the MAX didn’t deserve to be grounded. Just that it seems to be more political now between the various certifying agencies. The FAA shouldn’t care what the EU wants. Just that the aircraft meets US standards and is safe to fly over Toledo. Doesn’t matter what any of us thinks anyway....the things are paperweights until at least Oct.