
Lion Air crash: Boeing 737 plane crashes in sea off Jakarta - Gigacore
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46014463
======
ronnier
Speed and altitude compared to the previous day. Immediate problems from the
start. Pilot radioed a technical problem. Plane was delivered in August.

[https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-
vbulletin/1151x734/3...](https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-
vbulletin/1151x734/3_c4607b5fa54c9ce9d2ba78abc73c901bc9efc3a4.gif)

(Credit to a comment on Reddit here
[https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/9s9752/indonesian...](https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/9s9752/indonesian_aircraft_missing_off_jakarta/))

~~~
RL_Quine
Note the different scales. They were really floundering and never got up to
anything like their intended altitude. They also continued the crazy-low
altitude for over 5 minutes before final impact.

~~~
village-idiot
The interesting question is going to be: why didn’t the pilot abort the
takeoff? Did the problem become obvious only in flight, or were the warning
signs on the runway before it was too late?

~~~
JshWright
Hmm... Why would that be an interesting question? It seems most likely that
the issue occurred either during the climb out, or after V1 on the runway.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_speeds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_speeds)

~~~
village-idiot
Because if the plane was down on power, the pilot _might_ have had a chance
before he hit V1.

This is obviously speculative, but I’ll be curious to find out what happened.

~~~
JshWright
From the very limited telemetry available, it doesn't look like a power issue,
it looks like a control issue.

It's certainly not impossible that there was an obvious fault before V1, but
it's _way_ down the list of likely scenarios.

~~~
village-idiot
Ah, a control issue would indeed be pretty much impossible to diagnose before
V1. That makes sense.

I have heard of issues that were discoverable before V1. Famously there was
the Russian hockey team that was killed because the pilot was riding the brake
and didn’t abort in time.

------
wiradikusuma
"My airlines is the worst in the world, but you have no choice." — the
founder.

[https://ekonomi.kompas.com/read/2015/02/21/152425026/Rusdi.K...](https://ekonomi.kompas.com/read/2015/02/21/152425026/Rusdi.Kirana.di.Balik.Lion.Air.3.Maskapai.Saya.Paling.Buruk.di.Dunia.tetapi.Anda.Tak.Punya.Pilihan)

(sorry I can't find equivalent story in English)

~~~
chx
That was in 2015 but they completed the IOTA IASA since and that _should_ mean
it's a safe airline.

~~~
gowld
Maybe. Reputation beats certification.

------
angled
fdr wrote on pprune ([https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/614857-indonesian-
aircra...](https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/614857-indonesian-aircraft-
missing-off-jakarta-3.html#53))

""" Hmmm.

ADC/Pitot or load....

P/S, Pitot main issue (alt is more stable than speed > static is OK). Maybe.

OK, the DFDR will be telling, probably as much as the CVR. This plane was in
distress from 300' AMSL, and has every indication of a longitudinal stability
issue, e.g., stick force gradient deal. Immediately, forget about directional
issues, this isnt an engine, TR, asymmetric slat, flap or other issue, look
closely at the loadsheet, and the load control. The ADSB data is indicating an
aircraft with negligible static stability, and that points towards a loading
error, with a CG near neutral point. Should you ever have that happen, it is
not fun; helicopter pilots get laughed at as that is what they are used to
every day, which is why they are generally odd people. If you have an AP, the
plane will do better on AP often than a driver at the wheel. If you have
flaps, get the TE flaps out, or all flaps the Cp is shifted aft. Don't go to
altitude, don't burn CWT gas, move pax fwd if needs be, but mainly, be very
careful with your flight control inputs, planes that are unstable are fun to
fly for very short times. Do not go fast, unless you have an ejector seat. As
an AAI I normally would suggest awaiting data release before sprouting comment
pointedly, but this is already shown in the data. Forget suicide etc, this
plane had pitch instability from the get go.

I have investigated a number of aircraft loading events, and have also been on
the receiving end of 2 of my very own. Have sympathy for the poor flight crew,
unless they were form a flight test background it is unreasonable to critique
their performance. Could an airline train crews to deal with load errors? I
can say that is possible, in fact it is not even hard, and last count, I had
investigated over a dozen events... need to dust off the confuser for an exact
number, but I can recall 12 offhand. Will airlines train crew to handle such
cases? highly unlikely, the industry is not after competency above that
mandated by the regulator.

Load error, possible Pitot.

sad day. """

~~~
coryfklein
Wikipedia tells me that "pitot" refers to the device for measuring airspeed.

Does anybody know what "load" means in this context?

~~~
scrumper
Yes, here it means the distribution of passengers and baggage in the aircraft.
If the center of gravity after loading is too far forward or aft, you can end
up with an aircraft that can take off just fine but then become unflyable.

~~~
drhousejr
wow, thats incredibly scary. Would you only know that once its too late? How
would it be corrected? Again...very scary..

~~~
mrtksn
There's actually a fascinating video if a cargo plane crashing just after a
take off due to large cargo not secured properly and moving and changing the
center of gravity:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M01RmcKsm2k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M01RmcKsm2k)

~~~
graedus
To be a little more descriptive, it's a dashcam video from a vehicle driving
near Bagram Airfield, and you see the plane crash in a way that makes it clear
that the entire crew are killed.

Some more detail from the Wikipedia entry[0]:

"On 2 June 2013, investigators from the Ministry of Transport and Civil
Aviation of Afghanistan confirmed the load shift hypothesis as the starting
point: three armoured vehicles and two mine-sweeping vehicles, totalling 80
tons of weight, had not been properly secured. At least one armoured vehicle
had come loose and rolled backwards against the airplane's rear bulkhead,
damaging the bulkhead. This also crippled key hydraulic systems and damaged
the horizontal stabilizer components - most notably the jackscrew, which
rendered the airplane uncontrollable.[10] Control of the aircraft was
therefore lost, with the abnormal pitch-up rotation, stall, and crash to the
ground ensuing.[1] The damage made it impossible for the crew to regain
control of the aircraft."

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Airlines_Flight_102](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Airlines_Flight_102)

------
mholt
FlightRadar24 has a more detailed chart of the telemetry with a link to the
granular data: "We have processed the granular ADS-B data received from
#JT610. Last signal was received at 23:31:56.030 UTC from -5.81346, 107.12698
at 425 ft AMSL. Final ADS-B data received from the aircraft indicates a high
rate of descent."

[https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1056758281929154565](https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1056758281929154565)

(FlightRadar24: "A word of caution: ADS-B data can be incredibly useful, but
to speculate on a cause at this point would be conjecture. The Flight data
recorder and Cockpit voice recorder will play an important role in the
investigation, as always. #JT610")

------
United857
Given the erratic altitude and speed throughout the entirety of flight, and
the fact the pilots radioed to turn back pretty early on, could it have been
something similar to the Peruvian flight where the static ports were covered,
leading to lack of basic altitude and speed data and causing a crash?

(The other possibility I can think of is icing, but since Indonesia is a
tropical country, and the flight never got above 5000 feet or so, I'm guessing
it wasn't.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroper%C3%BA_Flight_603](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroper%C3%BA_Flight_603)

------
FabHK
FWIW, I find it crude and tactless to show identifiable personal possessions
of the victims. Surprised that the BBC stoops so low.

(Note: a friend of mine personally knew several students on board via AIESEC,
a student organisation. RIP.)

~~~
cyberferret
When MH17 was shot down, an Australian paper published a large picture on the
front page which showed actual dead bodies tangled in the wreckage. No
blurring or obfuscation. You could clearly see a young woman's arm held up as
if to ward off an impact in the foreground. Highly distasteful and
inappropriate IMO.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
MH17 was shot down. Someone actually had to lock an anti-aircraft system onto
a commercial airliner and give the order to fire. I don't disagree with
putting something graphic on the front page in that case. The public deserves
to know what happened and whitewashing it just serves to protect those who
committed that crime. With a purely accidental tragedy I think it's a little
different but not much. I don't see the point in trying to bubble wrap the
world. Shit happens. Sometimes it will be messy and ugly.

~~~
whamlastxmas
Bubble wrapping has a lot of value. There's nothing I can to stop accidental
airplane crashes. It's not healthy for for many people to be surrounded by
negativity and violence. It serves no purpose other than making me feel bad

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Not reporting also limits backlash when preventable things happen. I don't see
running a graphic picture to be substantially different than reporting the
details on that guy the Sauidis sawed up. One man's bubble wrap is another
man's sweeping things under the rug.

------
MarkMc
I regularly travel to Jakarta - and I try to avoid the low-cost Indonesian
airlines like Lion Air because of their very poor safety record. For example,
AirAsia didn't think it needed to give its pilots upset recovery training
until flight 8501 crashed:

 _In the wake of the Air France crash, the [Australian] Civil Aviation Safety
Authority required that pilots receive upset recovery training, although it
was long a standard practice at Australian airlines. The AirAsia Indonesia
crash report said Indonesia 's Director General of Civil Aviation has no such
requirement and neither of the pilots were trained in upset recovery on an
A320._

[https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/why-the-airasia-
cr...](https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/why-the-airasia-crash-report-
should-serve-as-a-wakeup-call-for-travellers-20151202-gld94f.html)

~~~
jpatokal
All things considered -- and remember, these airlines are flying in poor
countries where a lot of the infra for air traffic control, airports etc is
not up to scratch -- AirAsia has a reasonable safety record: the only major
crash suffered by the _entire group_ (not just Indonesia AirAsia) was Flight
8501:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia_AirAsia_Flight_8501](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia_AirAsia_Flight_8501)

Last I checked, AA uses Lufthansa Technik for its maintenance, so there's good
third-party oversight. You can't say the same for Lion Air, which seems to
write off its planes on an alarmingly regular basis:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Air#Incidents_and_acciden...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Air#Incidents_and_accidents)

~~~
camillomiller
I’ve flown multiple times within Vietnam and in Thailand with AirAsia, always
a great experience. I think it’s the Australian-run branch though.

Edit: oh, ok, did some research. There’s no Australian Air Asia, no idea where
I picked that up. Leaving it here in case anyone had the same
misunderstanding.

~~~
eightysixfour
Vietnam Airlines has the most aggressive flight profiles I have ever ridden
on. On my two domestic flights they took off and landed like it was roller
coaster.

------
jey
Aviation Herald entry:
[https://avherald.com/h?article=4bf90724&opt=0](https://avherald.com/h?article=4bf90724&opt=0)

------
eigenvector
Here is a BBC article with more info (and being updated):
[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46014463](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-
asia-46014463)

At present there is no info to indicate that the aircraft type (737 MAX) is
material to the cause of the incident.

~~~
InTheArena
There will be some significant scrutiny on the plane( it’s both a new plane
and a new model of plane) even though lion air has a pretty bad reputation.
The carrier is blacklisted in the EU for example.

International air investigation is usually get things right. Every now and
then politics will interfere, but the process doesn’t change that much based
on carrier and plane..

~~~
glenneroo
_Was_ blacklisted you mean.

From the article: "Established in 1999, it has had issues of safety and poor
management in the past and was banned from flying into European airspace until
2016."

------
unionemployee
[https://www.facebook.com/jaime.oliver.5/videos/1015582303591...](https://www.facebook.com/jaime.oliver.5/videos/10155823035916500/)

------
alexanderMB
This is an eyewitness statement watching the plane arount at 6.25 est time:
1\. The plane was tilting left side that the letter LION was clearly visible.
2\. The nose cockpict was pointing UPWARDS. 3\. There was BLACK SMOKE coming
out from near the wheels. 4\. There was a hole on the plane (?) 5\. The engine
noise was some one not loud and strangely "broken"

What does this tell us if it were true?

Simple: Turbine failure cause by shattered blades!

1\. Any blades fracture would disintegrated the whole engine into pieces at
about 20K RPM. 2.Some of the catastrohic debris might hit the body plane
itself and cause punctured. 3\. The black smoke would confirm such hypothesis,
a hydraulic failure would never cause any smoke. 4\. Pilot tried to balance
the doom plane by pointing the plane upwards but the thrust was not available.
5\. Electrical short circuited cause by the catastrophic turbin blade failure
would make the whole electrical,electronic and hydraulic dead as well. 6\. It
is very likely that only one turbine is remaining but the whole system was
lost to control the descent. 7\. At such low altitude which less than 5000
feet, the estimated 70 ton plane would not have the time to do any meaningful
repair. 8\. Pilot and crew would prioritize saving the plane and passenger
instead of radioing a may day.

------
Gigacore
Boeing's official statement is out - [http://boeing.mediaroom.com/news-
releases-statements?item=13...](http://boeing.mediaroom.com/news-releases-
statements?item=130327)

~~~
downandout
tl;dr: "Sorry about the crash. Please don't contact us".

~~~
FabHK
Well, ICAO rules establish who runs the investigation, namely the civil
aviation authority of the state of occurrence. Other states (state of
registry, operator, manufacture) might participate, or the state of occurrence
might choose to delegate to them. But the official responsibility for the
investigation lies with Indonesia for now.

[https://www.icao.int/about-icao/FAQ/Pages/icao-frequently-
as...](https://www.icao.int/about-icao/FAQ/Pages/icao-frequently-asked-
questions-faq-10.aspx)

~~~
downandout
I didn't say the statement wasn't factually accurate. It's just a little cold,
throwing "thoughts and prayers" [1] in with a statement effectively saying
don't call us, call someone else.

[1] [https://youtu.be/T9SKkd79AjQ?t=52](https://youtu.be/T9SKkd79AjQ?t=52)

~~~
FabHK
Yeah, and I didn't mean to imply that your summary was inaccurate or tone-
deaf; just trying to explain why Boeing basically says "don't call us, call
them".

Your (and Jeselnik's) criticism of the "thoughts and prayers" cliché is apt,
though note one big difference: some of those senators and members of the
house that offer "thoughts and prayers" after yet another fatal shooting take
NRA money and/or actively block anti-gun legislation, while Boeing and Airbus
are genuinely doing all they can to avoid plane crashes, I'd think.

So the aircraft manufacturers are much less cynical and hypocritical in
offering up that cliché than politicians (faint praise, indeed).

EDIT: NRA, not NPR, lol

~~~
xtreme
NRA has donated a maximum of $9,990 to any politician[1], a rather small
amount considering the huge cost of running a campaign. In 2016, the total
political contribution of the NRA was roughly $1.1 million[2]. In the
meantime, gun control proponent Michael Bloomberg alone has contributed $20
million to Democrat senate candidates[3] in 2018 and is planning to contribute
$80 million to house candidates[4] for the midterms. Even if you hate the NRA
and what they stand for, claiming that they are buying up politicians with
money seems far from the truth.

[1]
[https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/toprecips.php?id=d000000082...](https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/toprecips.php?id=d000000082&cycle=2018)

[2]
[https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=d000000082&cy...](https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=d000000082&cycle=2016)

[3] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-
bloomberg/bl...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-
bloomberg/bloomberg-donating-20-million-to-democratic-u-s-senate-candidates-
idUSKCN1MC2XD)

[4] [https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/06/bloomberg-to-
spend-...](https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/06/bloomberg-to-spend-a-
record-80-million/)

------
georgeam
Airliners.net:
[http://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1407217](http://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1407217)

------
NotCamelCase
I wonder how pilots feel reading stuff like this. It must be tough.. As a mere
passenger whose nearest flight will be in ~3 months, I am scared to death.

~~~
cyberferret
As another poster mentioned above - most pilots tend to study accident reports
to file them away in their memory for later possible reference. Any instance
of crew communication breakdown or wrong decision making can happen again, and
knowledge that it _did_ happen before will lessen the chances in the future.

I see a lot of comments on Twitter today along the lines of "What is happening
in aviation these days??", and the answer is really "Nothing really".
Commercial flying is safer than it ever has, and it is telling that an
accident such as this is garnering so much attention because they don't really
happen all that often, so air crashes _seem_ worse because they are not always
in the news as they were decades ago.

You have to consider the fact that these days, at any particular second of any
day, there are more than a million people who are airborne at the same time.
That is a city load of people who are not in contact with the ground at any
given time. Given that - the low number of fatalities is remarkable indeed.

~~~
gowld
That may be true on average or in wealthy countries, but Lion Air has a pretty
bad safety record. The portion of Lion pilots who end up in crashed planes may
be only 1% or something, but still quite high compared to other
airlines/nations.

------
orliesaurus
Oh no :( Condoleances to the familiy of the victims, it's really sad how that
part of the world keeps having really bad plane crashes year after year

~~~
RL_Quine
Given the number of flights that happen every day, the number is really quite
low. Driving has a much higher fatality and injury rate than flying.

~~~
coldtea
Comparing count of flights/drives or per miles travelled?

~~~
robjan
Per passenger mile

~~~
randyrand
I think per hour traveled is the more intuitive/human way of comparing this.

------
bahro
Well this is a pretty heartless way to refer to a disaster involving 188
people. (Title currently: "Lion Air's brand new Boeing 737 MAX8 crashes into
sea")

~~~
dang
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone
says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
United857
[deleted]

~~~
phumbe
One of my other comments on this thread includes a link to data that suggests
that the aircraft's ADS-B transmitter was working until the end. The vertical
speed transmitted by the ADS-B makes in-flight breakup believable, but how
likely is it that the ADS-B would continue transmitting in that case? Not
very, I'd guess.

Fun fact: Flight Levels are really only used at 18000 feet and above. That's
where local barometric pressure is ignored and aircraft use the standard
value. I believe it's a global standard to use local barometric pressure below
18000.

~~~
Stratoscope
> _Fun fact: Flight Levels are really only used at 18000 feet and above. That
> 's where local barometric pressure is ignored and aircraft use the standard
> value. I believe it's a global standard to use local barometric pressure
> below 18000._

I don't know if there are any fun facts in this particular conversation. May
the crash victims rest in peace, and may their families, friends, and
colleagues somehow find peace after this tragedy.

In any case, what you're referring to is the Transition Altitude, where pilots
switch from local altimeter settings to a standard setting of 29.92. In the US
and Canada, this is 18,000 feet, but it varies in other countries. In
Australia, for example, the transition altitude is 10,000 feet. The transition
altitude in any country is supposed to be above the highest elevation of any
point in the country.

That's the theory anyway: the highest elevation in Australia is 7,310 feet,
but the highest elevation in North America is Denali (Mount McKinley) at
20,310 feet - which puts it up in the flight levels.

Leaving that aside, the idea is that when you're flying at lower altitudes,
you not only want to know your altitude relative to other aircraft to avoid
collisions, you also want to know if you will clear any obstacles on the
ground. So you set your altimeter to reflect current local air pressure to get
an accurate altitude above mean sea level, which also lets you determine your
altitude above ground level.

But once you're well clear of any terrain, this isn't helpful. It simplifies
things to have all aircraft use a common altimeter setting, even if it doesn't
truly reflect local conditions. In the Flight Levels, you are no longer
worried about the ground, you're only worried about other aircraft. (And
Denali!)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_level#Transition_altitu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_level#Transition_altitude)

~~~
grkvlt
How does this work in practice, since I can imagine a situation where using
the local air pressure value, altitude is measured at 18k feet - then,
switching to the standard setting of 29.92, it turns out that this converts to
an altitude of 17.5k feet - so, now the system switches back to using the
local air pressure for calculations - and so on... Is there some form of
hysteresis or rounding used, or would this never happen in practice?

~~~
Stratoscope
Interesting observation! You could easily imagine an automated system going
into some kind of oscillation if it didn't handle this properly.

Here is why it doesn't happen: whether you are climbing, descending, or flying
level, you always have a specific target altitude or flight level. This target
determines the setting you use, and you know which kind it is.

For example, you may be flying level at an altitude of 8000 feet and Air
Traffic Control instructs you to "climb and maintain flight level 240"
(roughly 24,000 feet).

You start a gentle climb and then change your altimeter to 29.92 because
you're going up to the flight levels. You don't need to fiddle with the
altimeter when you cross the transition altitude, because the target
altitude/flight level is the only one that counts.

------
himlion
Friend of mine flew for them up until a few years ago. Said it was a total
shitshow.

------
modzu
why is this on hackernews?

"What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting.
That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a
sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual
curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters,
or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-
topic"

~~~
isostatic
Indeed, once the cause is in it may be interesting (things like frozen pitots,
invisible volcanic ash, etc). Until then it's just another speculation into
yet another shoddy carrier crashing.

------
muks
Condolences, but how is this hacker news? There's BBC and CNN for this sort of
stuff.

~~~
laken
Hacker News guidelines are summarized by this statement: "anything that
gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

I'd agree that if it was an article about a Cessna 172 crashing, it wouldn't
belong on Hacker News, but in this case, the interesting fact about this
aircraft accident is that it's a brand new airliner model, one that has never
been in an accident before. Furthermore, we have some basic flight data, so
perhaps a bored hacker might decide to debug what they think happened using
this data.

