The Disaster Plane | Boeing 737 MAX - What Went Wrong? | Free Documentary

[Music] every time you get on a plane to go on holiday or away on business you trust it's going to be safe but in March 2019 that just didn't happen seven Britain are among the dead after a plane crash shortly after takeoff this morning in Ethiopia the Ethiopian Airlines flight from Adis Ababa to Nairobi and Kenya came down just minutes into the journey there are no reported survivors fling's brand new plane promised to be the future of commercial flying the 77 Max was met with a huge amount of H but then the unthinkable happened men terrain terrain oh up a plane crash not just once in Indonesia in October 2018 there was something wrong with the aircraft but twice another crash 5 months later when it happened again in Ethiopia I was simply astonished another Max really it was just quite simply the biggest story in the world at that very moment it left a total of 346 people dead it could be you it could be your loved ones they allowed the plane to fly and eventually it it killed our family members money is not our issue we want the safety we want someone to be held responsible they want to know what happened because they want to know if it's safe to get back on the plane how did the world's biggest plane company plunge from Triumph to disaster and who was responsible they throw every legal Talent they can get at a case and so when you're up against Boeing you fight are you working for free from now on till you can cure this problem these people's relatives are not coming back they're gone Bowen failed our families you killed those people when you decided that you were not going to ground those [Music] planes in March 2019 a plane crash in Ethiopia killed all 157 people on board nine Britain were among the dead a vigil in Washington DC 6 months after the tragedy was an opportunity for all the victim's families to keep the story in the public eye families from 35 nations were United in their grief Clarice Moore mourned the loss of her 24-year-old daughter Danielle we want Justice we want answer we we don't want the plane to be on the air because it could be you it could be your loved ones and I wondering America where is the justice for us I am having nightmare every single day did she call for me did she know that she's dying Canadian Paul in jog lost five members of his family while all your lives moved on for the last 6 months um our lives the lives of the families of the victims my life has not moved an age I remember my wife Carol my son Ryan my two daughters today this happened to me I don't know how to live this life anymore I want to remind you all that you could be in this position American Michael stumo lost his 24-year-old daughter samama those who made the decisions that killed our family members should not be making decisions [Music] now and here in Hull 55-year-old Joseph waaka leaves his three children one grandchild and wife Jane Joseph waaka was born in Kenya but raised his family in East Yorkshire when I opened the Wardrobe it's like he is just here now and he's going to come and pull out one of these coats trying to to digest the fact that the arms that Lifted Me Up When I was a little girl put me over his shoulders so I could see things I wanted to see um chest i' lay my head on and I'm like looking for all of that and it's [Music] missing once families had identified I remember the overwhelming emotion that was in the air once pictures began to be placed on coffins and then you could see the impact my dad was between four children it was him there was Ryan and then there was a 9-month-old a 6-year-old an 8-year-old their mom their Grandma Row in front of them people husbands children wives you could hear these whales and you could see people falling collapsing under emotion um it was really really difficult for all the families worldwide loss is tinged with anger but this was not the first time a similar tragedy with another 737 Max had happened just 5 months earlier last October in Indonesia line airflight 610 crashed into the Java sea 12 minutes after takeoff in Jakarta all 189 passengers and crew were killed 5 months later the Ethiopia disaster brought the death toll to 346 now other families want to know what went wrong with the aircraft and why did it crash a second time it's inexcusable that people have had to die to not ground a plane to say let's make sure it's safe there is no need for it it should have never happened the families have focused their anger on the Boeing Corporation the world's largest Aerospace company and leading manufacturer of commercial airlines God bless you may God bless the United States of America and God bless Boeing thank you thank you everybody but Boeing is now a company in crisis because of a single aircraft the 737 Max it was going to be the jewel in their Crown launched in 2011 with a price tag of $100 million a plane it promised huge profits 2,000 had been ordered ahead of the first flight and after production started 20 planes were being made a month ryion a ordered 135 and British Airways parent company signed a letter of intent for 200 part of this collaboration the Chinese government and Boeing are announcing orders and commitments for 300 airplanes the Boeing 73 7 Max became the fastest selling plane in Boeing's history with nearly 4,700 orders from more than 100 customers worldwide the 737 Max was met with a huge amount of hype this was the future this is going to be the aircraft that was going to be flying around for the next 20 30 years it's the 14th and the latest model of the Boeing 737 an airliner that takes off somewhere on Earth every 3 seconds one in 10 of all short Hall flights from the UK are on a 737 the max was slated to take their place but now two of them have crashed it was a public relations disaster for Boeing's Flagship brand when something like that goes wrong and significantly wrong the very technology that you pride yourself on is falling out of the sky this is a massive meltdown that has to be managed the man at the helm was Boeing's CEO Dennis mullenberg he is pretty universally regarded as a Boy Scout as a very very intelligent engineer one of the smartest CEOs that the company has ever had he's also regarded as someone who has a little bit of difficulty speaking publicly who hasn't been terrifically capable when showing emotion when showing sympathy um and who has at times been overly optimistic about the plane's return to service and about the company's role in the aftermath of the Lion Air crash mullenberg made hardly any public statements about the Boeing Max other Boeing officials were left to comment instead we're providing our technical support to the Indonesian investigating authorities but under the I protocols we can't comment or provide any comment or speculation on the cause of the accident it's a classic corporate response you know how tight can we keep a lid on this and how do we appease the [Music] mood 3 days after the crash Boeing weren't saying much but the wreckage might the recovered flight data recorder would reveal the secrets of what really went wrong it could prove to be Boeing's worst nightmare one person monitoring every development is Aviation negligence lawyer Mary skavo a thorn in Boeing side for more than 20 years she's now suing them on behalf of 10 plane crash families Boeing we have a huge law firm and where one lawyer could do a hearing Boeing will send six we always tell our clients that as far as we can push it for as long as they're willing we will keep doing Discovery and uncovering the facts when you're up against Boeing you fight skavo is building a case that the max should have been grounded after the first crash one month later in November 2018 the Indonesian authorities published their initial report data from the flight recorder revealed a terrifying insight into the flight's final moments we can see what the pilots would be experiencing is literally a battle for their and their passengers lives terrain terrain oh P up up it was just a matter of time as these planes were flying around you know over the heads of the citizens of the world it truly was a a ticking Time Bomb PCH down I can't [Music] recover the Boeing 737 first took to the skies in 1967 newest arrival in the Boeing family of airliners the 737 attracts a crowd the stubby twin jet job is designed for short hops up to 1300 Mi its engines with 14,000 lb of thrust can move the ship to a cruising speed of 580 mph carrying 101 passengers a new Queen of the [Music] Skies 14 models later the max was build by Boeing as the best 737 ever made and one of them was lion airflight [Music] 610 on the 29th of October 2018 it was scheduled for a flight across the Java sea 12 minutes after takeoff everyone on board was dead so what went wrong [Music] these Pilots have 19,000 flight hours between them I can he you in a simulator they're going to try and copy the Fatal Lion Air flight to experience firsthand how the Boeing 737 Max crashed victim's family lawyer Mary skavo is also interpreting the crash data from the Indonesian authorities initial report published in November 2018 okay take off checks complete okay go okay takeoff thrust is set check air speeds Al te from the data that we see that's been released so far it starts out as a normal feeling normal looking flight all the lines are nice and smooth and everything is going according to plan V1 rotate an the ice okay got anti ice but as soon as they're Airborne things start to go wrong speed trim fail these alarms warn that the plane is climbing too steep speed fail check you got uh left Alpha vein Master caution okay thank you but the takeoff is normal so the pilots conclude it's just a glitch so it's a false warning confirmed false false star warning on your side that mine hey thank you flaps up flaps up speed check when they take off the flaps something very startling happens and that is their aircraft pushes the nose down the captain Fights Back by pulling up the nose but as soon as he stops the plane's fault escalates it pushes the nose down down down the pilot trim it up down up 24 times in the next 6 minutes we can see what the pilots would be experiencing is literally a battle for their and their passengers lives Tri me forward again all the Wayward and assist the passengers would have felt this disconcerting and unlike anything they had felt before of the plane going up and down up and down pping through the air instead of flying sink right sink the Dives become steeper and steeper the plane impossible to control slowly pitching up speed building sink get it'll recover it'll recover and out their window they would have seen with every nose down position the the water rushing up towards them as it got closer and closer terrain terrain oh they never knew what was fighting them don't sink don't sink come pitch up come I can't recover I can't recover terrain terrain pull up the simulator Pilots are shocked by the readings from their experiment do we have that registered speeded impact in excess of 20,000 ft a minute speed do you agree no a lot more than 400 a lot more than 400 knots yeah and every ounce of muscle power that we both had would not allow us to recover the situation yeah there's no way no uh once it was fall down and we were pitched down you could not recover the Boeing Max crashed into the ocean at 500 mil per hour what was the mysterious force that led the aircraft to crash Pilot Flying an aircraft unaware of something lurking in that aircraft that might make his life very difficult and possibly kill him uh no pilot is going to be happy about that the safety of Boeing's brand new plane was in question and nobody had any idea what killed 189 passengers and crew as soon as Lion Air happened this aircraft should have been grounded the fact it wasn't would have tragic consequences it really escapes the understanding of my my mind um why the planes were not grounded so what caused the max to fall out of the sky the answer May lie in the competition between two giant companies Boeing and arch rival Airbus the Rivalry between Airbus uh and it's it's 320 family and the Boeing 737 have been intense and have gone on literally for decades so each time one tries to get uh an advantage a competitive advantage in range and operating cost in weight wherever they can get it um they will take that and the other one is then forced into a followup in 2016 Airbus stole a march with their state-of-the-art plane the A320 Neo it was designed as a new super fuele efficient plane with minimal need for pilot retraining it became the fastest selling commercial jet in history Boeing hoped their upgraded 737 with its biggest ever engines would take it [Music] on but the engine was just too big to fit in the original location so Boeing Engineers moved them higher and further forward on the wing the 737 Max was born however moving the engines meant the max handled differently in certain circumstances to the old 737 requiring potentially extra costly training there have been a wide number of variations on the 737 in each case there have been Evolutions some of which required simulator training and some did not but when the the airlines are operating the airplane they want to operate it interchangeably with the same Crews that utilize the same procedures so that that minimizes the cost of training and doesn't have a a requirement of it being treated as a separate Fleet and the new design even with its potential handling differences needed to be approved by the US regulator the Federal Aviation Administration but one ex FAA engineer is talking on camera for the first time about safety concerns one of their design goals was no training and that was a demand any 737 pilot that was qualified to be in the flight deck of a 737 NG you'd be qualified to fly the Max and some of the people at the FAA myself included questions Boeing's wisdom on that we were urged to find a way to make this new process work so yeah that was a major thing right from the get-go Boeing is one of the most powerful well-connected companies in the United States they have an enormous presence in Washington DC that derives from the fact that the company can single-handedly sway the American economy Boeing needed the max to be approved as rapidly as possible possible as each passing day gave their main competitor Airbus a commercial Advantage so Boeing came up with a solution to correct the plane's potential handling differences they were going to put into the flight control computers the couple lines of code to compensate for this and they described how it was going to work the software's name was maneuvering characteristics augmentation system otherwise known as mcass mcass was designed as a safety feature for certain rare flight conditions if it thought the plane's nose was too high it had the power to push it back down it would base its decision on this sensor if that sensor failed it could give mcass incorrect data to act on extra safety features that helped Pilots identify a faulty sensor were an optional extra that Airlines had to to pay for my ears are tuned to certain things certain failures that make the hair on the back of my neck stand up if you will my concern was what happened if it failed with the new software installed Boeing and the FAA decided Pilots would need no more than 2 hours of crossover training in accordance with internationally required standards but Boeing failed to tell the pilots about the installation of the new mcass software at a certain point this creature that's been installed on the planes is is going to react and it did and it was only a matter of time the initial Lion Air report indicated a number of issues including the sensor connected to mcass being faulty this means mcass was exposed to inaccurate data and could mistakenly put the plane's nose down on the day the report was published Boeing held a meeting but concerned members of the Allied Pilots Association one of their members recorded this we deserve to know on our airplanes we flat out the Sur to know what is on our airplanes no one has yet concluded that the sole cause of this was dysfunction of here um mcass is a control law which it's it's in the flight control system so it's just a little bit of software in the flight control system these guys didn't even know the damn system was on the airplane anybody else and that's that's the previous crew did and they went through the same training they they knew they had an MC they knew they had a stabilizer cut off and that's all that matters but even though Pilots now Vi about mcass it wouldn't be enough to stop another [Music] disaster November 2018 in the aftermath of the initial report on the LI air crash by the Indonesian authorities it emerged that Boeing's brand new 737 Max had a new piece of software Pilots weren't aware of as the news started coming out people were shocked shocked that there was a system that nobody had heard of and shocked that there was a system on which Pilots were not trained because they're the ones you're going to count on to save the play onboard software known as mcass have been implicated in the Fatal dive pitching down okay speed it triggered every 15 seconds driving down the aircraft's nose ter upull up plunged into the Java sea in the weeks leading up to the crash report Boeing's stock price plummeted and they faced an even worst case scenario that the 737 Max might be judged unsafe to fly to ground an airplane is is a absolutely major event it has an economic ripple effect that can be catastrophic Boeing does not want this to happen it is the worst case scenario for them there is an absolute will to try and sort this out and quickly gain confidence Boeing needed to regain control of the narrative on the 737 Max they released a statement that said the 7 37 Max is as safe as any airplane that has ever flown the skies adding Boeing is taking every measure to fully understand all aspects of this accident Boeing also focused on a new fact in the report the very same plane suffered the same fault the day before the crash but the pilots performed a key procedure and rescued the flight however the pilots of Flight 610 then failed to do the same thing that statement was clearly crafted to get the world thinking Well yeah if this other pilot could do it what was wrong with you some suspect that Boeing's statement diverted attention away from the plane and onto the pilots very cold-hearted it's very detached from the emotion of the crisis it is a survival exercise for a large corporate with a huge stock value it is as brutal as [Music] that Boeing implied the pilots could have saved Flight 610 by executing a standard emergency procedure common to all 737s I switched both of these switches to off like that and that removes all the electrical power from the electric trim motor the motor is what mcass uses to force the plane's nose down by moving moving the stabilizer when it happens without the Pilot's input it's called Runaway trim switching the motor off means Pilots can now bring the nose up manually instead now you can see by winding the trim Wheel by hand it's going to be much slower it's quite a lot of wine according to Boeing every 737 pilot should know how to handle runaway trim there's only one guaranteed way to make that stop and that is stabilizer trim cutout switches cutout on the line air accident they never turned those switches off they never went to cut out so what might prevented the pilots from Doom pull up they are expected to identify it as a runaway way trim they can't hear it because of the the noise level and the the activation of the stick Shaker terrain terrain all of a sudden your plane is nose diving but you've got all kinds of warnings going off in the cockpit it's a caffin there's there's a huge amount of noise in this cockpit so they were confused mcast was sort of a secret I mean Boeing knew about it but the pilots flying the air aircraft didn't know about it it should have been in the pilot manual [Music] 8 days after the Lion Air crash Boeing issued a notice to all 737 Max Airlines the next day the Federal Aviation Administration did the same the instruction was clear hit the switches and live or fail to react and die you know they can't blame the passengers they weren't F flying the plane so they have to find somebody blame the max continued flying and for Boeing it was back to business as usual over the next 3 months Boeing's stock price Rose to an all-time high 4 months later passengers were still flying on 8,673 7 max flights a week in the United States Europe and a [Music] Africa Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 took off from ble International Airport in Addis Ababa Bound for Nairobi there were 157 people on board including Joseph whitea 6 minutes after takeoff all of them were were [Music] dead such was the force of the impact there was virtually nothing left of flight 302 but a large hole in the ground in the aftermath Joseph Whitaker's family traveled to the scene of the [Music] disaster I remember like when we came out of the car the first thing that we saw was a child shoe um bright pink and Spider-Man swimming shorts I remember seeing ripped jeans which sort of resembled the Deep kind of denim that Dad was wearing and I was wondering could it be Joseph's wife Jane was filmed by her son on his phone Mom what are your thoughts [Music] I just think it's very overwhelming and very weird to go and see where our belove ended yes like for for me it's like where he was more or less Bard after seeing all those damage fuselage and small things from the luggage yeah it tells me that he must [Music] haveing I didn't ever ever ever imagine a life without him I didn't ever imagine that when I call [Music] himoun this stuff doesn't happen to people like us it never happens to people like us you see it I remember the first plane crash that happened with Lion Air and it was just like oh bless them I pray for all the families that are affected um and then when it's you it's like these things actually [Music] happen it was a Ed mcass had again played a part you could see it right away I mean everyone could see that this system had kicked off again and was forcing the nose down the airplane that they had lost control of the airplane and the airplane ends up near vertical that that let us know right then that we had another event similar to lioner Boeing issued a statement the day after the eth ethopian crash which still called the 737 Max a safe aircraft but Regulators outside the US started to ground the plane it took the FAA 3 days to follow suit Mr mullenberg the CEO of Boeing was calling president Trump he called him twice first to you know back the plane than to later to recommend its grounding so you had the highest level of the US government engaged on the issue and it was just quite simply the biggest story in the world at that very moment but if you are Boe you have some God complex that you are bigger than anything else and your brand is better than anybody else and your technology is better than everybody else and this is an anomaly that you will fix do not want those planes on the ground the American president was left with no option we're going to be issuing an emergency order of prohibition to ground all flights of the 737 Max 8 and the 737 Max 9 with Boeing in the ultimate crisis CEO Dennis mullenberg addressed the public via a corporate video as the facts from the accident become available and we understand the necessary next steps we're taking AC to fully reassure Airlines and their passengers of the safety of the 737 Max we regret the ongoing challenges the grounding has caused for our customers and the flying public we're also committed to making safe airplanes even safer that should just reflect what their priority is in that to me he's saying that we regret the profit that has been lost with a grounding of our 737 Max unlike lionaire the pilots of the Ethiopian plane knew about mcass and how to respond the crew performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer but was not able to control thecraft and the initial report published one month after the crash agreed so if the pilots had been told how to disable C then why did 157 people [Music] die the second crash of a Boeing Max in 5 months had shocked the world the question was how could it have happened [Music] [Applause] again from inside the flight simulator expert instructors are trying to reconstruct the tragedy Mary skavo identifies key moments from data in the Ethiopian authorities initial report published in April 2019 [Music] up hell now we have seems like a normal flight on a normal day but soon thereafter something happens moments after takeoff a suspected bird strike destroys the sensor connected to mcass on the nose of the plane Pilots don't know it but mcass has just commandeered their plane without the sensor mcast doesn't have the right data and mistakenly forces the nose down okay you're losing altitude your 1,600 AGL M Pilots try to counteract it with a nose up command Okay pitch up with me mcass immediately again attacked the flight and put the nose down once again caution terrain up please for 35 seconds the pilots try and regain control of the [Music] aircraft the pilots remember the correct emergency procedure and they followed the guidance put out by boing in the FAA to use a cutout trim switches and turn the electric trim off okay step trim cut out switches cut out okay step trim cut switches cut out mcass is disabled B trim please okay bang [Music] trim unable but now they're trying to manually trim the nose back up5 Knots I can barely move the trim but we see that the pitch trim is not responding as it needs to to save this flight oh very difficult very very difficult keep trying they're too late boing assumed that Pilots would hit the switches within 4 seconds underestimating real world reaction times they're now fighting against massive Air Forces on the plane stabilizer and they're pulling mightily you can see all these efforts to pull the nose up sink right sink right and it takes a huge amount of human Force the humans just don't have to overcome a full nose down trim position and there's nothing more that they can do and they have to try to save this flight so in desperation they turn the electric trim back on all right start Tri colous wish is normal it's a last throw of the dice an mcass is back in the cockpit and in control B up please B up please mcast came in made another nose down input and sent the plane into a deadly dive pitching down up ter ter pull up she won't clim ter Terin pull up up it's one year to the day since the first crash of the Boeing Max in Indonesia and 7 months since Ethiopia at the time of this program the final report into the Ethiopian crash is yet to be published the tides of American Justice may be turning in favor of the victim's families they gather in Washington DC joined by their lawyers at last they have a chance to confront Boeing chief executive Dennis mullenberg he's to be held to account by a furious Congress Mr J mberg you said you're accountable what does accountability mean are you taking a cut and pay are you working for free from now on till you can cure this problem these people's relatives are not coming back they're gone your salary is still on is anybody at Boeing taking a cut or working for free to try to rectify this problem it's not about the money for me that's not why I came are you giving up any money Congressman my uh board will conduct a comprehensive review that's so you're saying you're not giving up any compensation at all you're continuing to work and make $30 million a year after this horrific two accidents that caused all these people's relatives to go to disappear to die you're not taking a cut and pay at all Congressman again our board will make those determinations you're not accountable then you're saying the board's accountable Congressman I am accountable sir when should you have grounded This Plane congresswoman we we've asked oursel that question many many times and uh if we uh if we knew back then uh what we know now we would have grounded right after the first accident if we could have saved one life we we would have done it mullenberg has been subjected to over 7 hours of question but for the families his answers are too little too late the fact that uh the planes were not grounded after 189 people died uh I feel that uh you know they he ought to take responsibility over the deaths of 346 people and he needs to say that unequivocally you have to own that responsibility so no matter how long what it takes us I will be there because I did not get the answer that I want and I think that's very disrespectful the fight here is to keep the plane grounded until we're satisfied Mary sko's case against Boeing continues my clients are going to win their lawsuit they will have their victory in the United States it has to be a monetary Victory it has to be an award of money and they're large but the large verdict still doesn't give them what they want they want their lives back with their loved ones and that will never come and in the meantime a heavily redesigned Boeing Max is being ready to fly again the final report into the Lion Air Crash by the Indonesian authorities identified a series of contributory factors on mcass it said that the design and certification of this feature was inadequate and the flight manual and training did not include information about mcast among other factors the sensor was faulty and other Pilots had not fully reported problems there's a question of whether people will fly on the plane but I think they will I mean you know people have short memories um you know Regulators are being extreme ex thorough with this um and so you know I think that ultimately people will get back on the max um the question of whether Boeing will recover fully from the damage that's been done to its reputation worldwide I think it's an open question in a statement Boeing said safety is always our first priority Boeing's pilot training for the max was in line with FAA and international standards the FAA considered mcast during Mac certification and concluded that it met all certification and regulatory requirements the appropriate flight crew response to uncommanded trim regardless of cause is contained in existing procedures and Boeing has discussed mcass flight control functionality with more than 60 Airline operators at conferences globally since 2016 to acknowledge there are multiple factors involved in an accident is not to assign blame and that is not where we are focused industry and government must properly understand and assess all contributing factors to these tragedies to ensure that all appropriate measures are taken in response Boeing has developed an mcast software update to provide additional layers of protection and Boeing is updating crew manuals and pilot training designed to ensure every pilot has all of the information they need to fly the 737 Mac safely Boeing continues to work with independent experts the FAA and other Regulatory Agencies worldwide on the certification of the software update and training program to safely return the 737 Max to service this tragedy is a perfect demonstration of what's wrong with the world that we live in the Silver Lining and all of this would be the amazing family members that have lost their loved ones that are like crumbling pillars for each other we are a community bound together by needless loss and it's okay to feel this way we can have a conversation where I can say to them it's never going to be the same but it's going to be okay you know I love all of them dearly but every time we speak to each other there's almost a hesitation where you're like you know I shouldn't need to be having this conversation with you this should have never happened [Music]

Channel: Free Documentary

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Id: Q8Ky7_YLxdc

Length: 46min 48sec (2808 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 24 2024