Talk:Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302

Updates Needed

We've been having a productive discussion on the 737 MAX talk page and it was pointed out that the articles for the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines accident flights may also need some important updates to acknowledge the most up-to-date and accurate information.

Most importantly for this article, I think the "Accident" section must be updated to remove the continuous referrals to the plane "diving" or continuously "losing altitude". The flight recorder data very clearly shows that the plane steadily climbing until the final seconds. (Altitude is the very top chart with red and blue lines):

[1]https://avherald.com/img/ethiopian_b38m_et-avj_190310_7.jpg

I think it is also important to modify the information in the article to accurately reflect the NTSB's most recent assessment of the accident, which clearly states the errors made by the pilots and details omissions made by Ethiopian Airlines [2]https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Documents/US%20comments%20ET302%20Report%20March%202022.pdf

There are also some portions of the article that do not make sense from a technical standpoint. For example, in the 4th paragraph of the "Accident" section it says "because the stabilizer was located opposite to the elevator, strong aerodynamic forces were acting on it." I'm not sure what this is meant to convey; the aerodynamic forces acting on the stabilizer were very high because the plane was overspeeding at low altitude. 2603:6080:5A07:C24C:2826:EC6A:8140:2117 (talk) 02:21, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

@Danners430 This has been here with no reply for two months. We reached a consensus on the inclusion of the phrase "pilot error" in the main 737 MAX article after a long discussion and I see no reason that this article should avoid it.

- There were pilots

- There were standard procedures to follow in the event of a trim runaway

- The pilots did not properly follow the standard procedures

The most basic way of describing this is "pilot error". The tone of this article as well as the Lion Air 610 article must be updated to reflect the results of official accident investigations, instead of the opinions of journalists who wrote their articles before any investigations were even concluded. Rob Roilen (talk) 14:08, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

And that's absolutely fine. The edit you are pushing however is nothing to do with the above - it's adding unecessary detail to the infobox. As per @Aviationwikiflight's edit summary - "Trim summary; leave causes in article per project consensus". The infobox is for concise and short information - the article has plenty of space for expansion. Danners430 (talk) 14:30, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

See the entry of Summary in Template:Infobox aircraft occurrence#Parameters.

As stated: Brief summary of the occurrence. State the fate of the aircraft, if not obvious from the title (e.g. crashed, disappeared etc) and any relevant circumstances. Accident causes are often several and complex: they should be left for the article body. Cherry-picking some of them for the summary (e.g. pilot error) is likely to breach neutrality.

If you want to see the discussion regarding the decision to leave causes in the article body, here it is. Aviationwikiflight (talk) 14:57, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Expanding Reports

Per requests over at the Boeing 737 MAX talk page, I have expanded upon the NTSB and BEA reports. There's quite a bit more information that could be added, but I feel these changes are sufficient in detailing the MCAS malfunction and subsequent pilot errors which contributed to the crash. Please let me know what further changes will be made. I will look at expanding the Lion Air Flight 610 article later.

StalkerFishy (talk) 00:02, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree that description of the NTSB and BEA analysis should be included in each accident article (Lion, Ethiopian). I would mention that the relative amount of text should avoid becoming unbalanced toward the NTSB/BEA opinions in comparison to description of the official findings by the investigating agencies of Indonesia and Ethiopia. Currently, in this article (Ethiopian), quite a bit more text now describes the NTSB/BEA findings than the official Ethiopian findings. Another thing to consider: the Infobox summary. It is true that secondary sources use "pilot error" in describing the NTSB/BEA analysis. The official Indonesian/Ethiopian findings make no mention of pilot error, or equivalent terminology, and I don't believe any secondary source uses that phrase, or equivalent, to describe their findings. I think it is problematic to use "pilot error" in the Infobox, because that communicates, inaccurately, that it was officially determined as a cause. Of course, the Infobox cannot contain an extended description that distinguishes between the official findings, and the opinions of NTSB/BEA. Information definitely should be included in the body of the article, where space allows, explaining the official findings, which almost exclusively blame Boeing, as compared to the opinions about pilot error by NTSB/BEA. DonFB (talk) 08:18, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the recs! I can expand upon the ECAA findings if you want more text, but the NTSB and BEA reports are in response to that document and detail its omissions and errors. We could divide the section up into an "ECAA Findings" and "NTSB and BEA Findings" or "NTSB and BEA Criticisms of the ECAA Report" or "Conflicting ECAA and NTSB/BEA Findings", similar to the Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907 page.

Pilot error may not explicitly be stated, but the NTSB and BEA documents clearly say the aircraft was recoverable following the existing procedures, and that both pilots were recently trained on those procedures but failed to abide by them. Pilot error is obviously the standard way to describe human deficiencies, but we could very well change the infobox from pilot error to "pilot inaction" or "improper checklist procedures" if we want to treat pilot error as a protected term. We could also remove that section of the infobox, which is uncommon but there a few other articles without it. Although this secondary source does clearly use the term pilot error in describing the NTSB and BEA reports. [3]https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/final-report-on-boeing-737-max-crash-disputed-agencies-note-pilot-error-as-a-factor/

The NTSB/BEA reports are just as much opinion as the ECAA report is.

StalkerFishy (talk) 17:17, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

At present, the Investigation section has extended quotations from NTSB/BEA, compared to ECAA, from which plenty of added quotations could be included for balance, although I'm not sure that's the best approach. NTSB/BEA contains: "phases 4 and 5 of the accident scenario", which is not very meaningful to readers without adding more explanation. More use of editor-written text, based on secondary sources, could help achieve better balance, rather than depending on long chunks quoted from the govt reports. A separate subsection as you suggest could be useful. I'm mostly interested in not having the NTSB/BEA text overwhelm the ECAA text. The Infobox might just say "Loss of control" without trying to explain the causes, like the Gol article only says collision and puts the explanation in the body. DonFB (talk) 21:02, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Agreed that the extended quotations in the section make it a bit clunky. I'll eventually get around to further expanding the sources, and making it more editor-written. I've updated the infobox to remove pilot error pending a consensus, and have changed it to just "loss of aircraft control".

StalkerFishy (talk) 22:07, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Please note that I have created a discussion on whether "MCAS error" should be included in the summaries of this accident

See Talk:Boeing 737 MAX#"MCAS error" in summary field of accidents. Cutlass^Ciera 21:48, 15 December 2024 (UTC)