China Airlines goes down with 132 souls on board

Prayers to the families who just lost loved ones.
 
Gravity and a stall... fat dumb and happy mode can and has gone away on occasion. I don’t know if 737 can spin, prob not. No matter, a total departure is likely gonna wind up in a nearly vert crash, at super high air speeds.

And of course airframe failure.

Sad day...
 
Tools said:
Gravity and a stall... fat dumb and happy mode can and has gone away on occasion. I don’t know if 737 can spin, prob not. No matter, a total departure is likely gonna wind up in a nearly vert crash, at super high air speeds.

And of course airframe failure.

Sad day...
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737 has a stick pusher iirc.

Very sad for the families.
 
Doesn't appear stalled in the section shown in the video. May have been earlier and was too low to recover.
 
flyingron said:
Doesn't appear stalled in the section shown in the video. May have been earlier and was too low to recover.
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I figure at the point the video starts, the plane was damaged beyond any recovery attempt or the pilots had just given up. The dive started at 30,000 feet, and the video is just before impact. No attempt to recover at any point is shown in the flight data. 3 minutes to impact. It would seem like a high-altitude stall situation, but again, why no attempt to recover? Looks like they were in IMC, but I'd guess the 737 has automatic recovery systems at the onset of a stall.

Very odd crash. Did something happen where they flight controls were inoperable for the entire way down?
 
Issues with the elevator / horizontal stabilizer, either control or structural failure. Couldn't tell if plane was trailing smoke or parts.
 
and air france at least attempted to fix it, albeit incorrectly
 
Mtns2Skies said:
GermanWings copycat?
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You'd think there'd be some fight in the flight data, though. If someone is trying to lawn dart me, I'm grabbing the controls and fighting for them.
 
DavidWhite said:
737 has a stick pusher iirc.
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No stick-pusher.

Racerx said:
Second thought was coffin corner.
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Not really a factor in the 737. We're thrust-limited. You'd have to work very hard to get it high enough for the buffet speeds to converge. Looks like their cruise altitude was FL290 at the onset of the event. That would give them very large margins above and below buffet speeds.

Certainly an upset of some kind. No way to know the cause at this point.
 
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Wow

Screenshot_2022-03-21_at_13.17.17_yxvqjw
 
Racerx said:
I was initially thinking of Air France when they stalled over the ocean.
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AF hit flat and that was an Airbus where the two pilots were giving drastically different control input (one full nose up and the other trying to recover from the stall). This only became apparent to the captain when the FO stated he had full nose up. On a 737, this would be readily apparent as the control yokes move together.

Still, there have been times BOTH pilots failed to remember that the way you recover from a stall is to decrease AOA.

Then there was also the MSR990 "Tawakilt ala allah" incident.

I'm still thinking something catastrophic control wise. Even if you were trying to point the thing at the ground, I think that it would hit at more of an angle. Remember the UA 585 pretty much it like that (suspected rudder hard over) and the US 427 (probable rudder hard over) crashes hit near vertical as well.
 
It looks to me like a very determined kamikaze was flying that plane... Is there anything that can break in cruise and cause such a nosedive straight into ground, without any radio communication that we know of?
 
Maintenance induced control system failure? Seems like loss of elevator control could do it.
 
We'll never find out. In this environment china will never let Boeing or the ntsb in. They'll blame the airframe when its probably either maintenance or pilot. We don't know the aircraft history. China air 611 had the improperly repaired tail strike that broke up mid air.
 
flyingron said:
AF hit flat and that was an Airbus where the two pilots were giving drastically different control input (one full nose up and the other trying to recover from the stall). This only became apparent to the captain when the FO stated he had full nose up.
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That's not correct. AF447 impacted nose-high because the pilot-flying was holding full nose-up stick inputs for the majority of the descent. The Captain was never in a control seat during the descent. Nose-down inputs were attempted a couple of times during the descent but the pilots incorrectly believed that they made the situation worse because the stall warning would activate when they pitched down due to the AoA being reduced enough to remove the inhibit from the out-of-range AoA inputs which would normally only occur with a faulty AoA input. None of the three pilots understood that the airplane was stalled.

Remember the UA 585 pretty much it like that (suspected rudder hard over) and the US 427 (probable rudder hard over) crashes hit near vertical as well.
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It's no longer a suspected rudder hard-over. The failure mode of the rudder PCU was discovered, and corrected, twenty years ago.
 
Sifossifoco said:
They did have the time to communicate with ATC, though. The lack of communication may suggest a voluntary maneuver. I would expect that from FL290 they would have had at least the time to say few words. The theory that one of the pilots was in the bathroom and the other went mad is a tempting explanation
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Where does it say there was no ATC communication? I didn't see that anywhere. If I missed it, I apologize.

I think it's way too early to speculate on any cause, but PoA is going to PoA...
 
The wings are briefly visible as it pops out of the cloud deck, as it rolls slightly to a final point. I think I see the rudder - with maybe a flap coming off. But its pretty hard to figure out. With the wings lifting 90 degrees to the pitch angle, the elevators would have to be locked and held in down pitch. It just looks like a terminal velocity fuselage lawn dart in the video, which is horrible for those poor souls. For Boeing to build anything that holds together in this mode of flight, well. . .

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ger-jet-carrying-133-crashes-rural-China.html
 
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Sluggo63 said:
Where does it say there was no ATC communication? I didn't see that anywhere. If I missed it, I apologize.

I think it's way too early to speculate on any cause, but PoA is going to PoA...
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Well, people are gonna be people. Speculation was all one heard around the airport after John Denver and JFK Jr. screwed the pooch.
 
flyingron said:
Still, there have been times BOTH pilots failed to remember that the way you recover from a stall is to decrease AOA.
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If that was it, they decreased it by about 90 degrees too much.
 
Let's go old school on our speculation.

Does anyone remember Northwest 6231 in 1974 - iced pitot tubes - actually I think that was also the Air France issue.
 
Sluggo63 said:
Where does it say there was no ATC communication? I didn't see that anywhere. If I missed it, I apologize.

I think it's way too early to speculate on any cause, but PoA is going to PoA...
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https://nypost.com/2022/03/21/the-moment-china-eastern-boeing-737-nosedives-before-fiery-crash/

"was en route to Guangzhou when it crashed at about 2:30 p.m. local time"
"Contact with the plane was lost at about 2:15 p.m."

It still looks like somebody wasn't talking on the radio for a while before the drop. Like everyone else I am just guessing and speculating, but it does look unusual to have no communication for 15 minutes. I apologize if it doesn't make sense to people with much more experience than me, and I would be very curious to hear the opinion of someone with solid knowledge of 737s.
 
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