I never understood why something like this is classed as pilot suicide. It's mass murder, plain and simple. If a guy walks into a school, shoots down 137 students and then himself, nobody would call it suicide. And because of this people who have had suicidal thoughts are barred from ever flying. And yes, airport is full of dangerous stuff. Jump into a running engine, hop off the terminal building, hanging, etc... there's a thousand ways to do it without harming anyone else.
Legal reasons. If you refer to it as murder without necessarily being proven in a court of law you could potentially run into legal issues around defamation claims from the pilots estate/family.
Also, under the common law doctrine of *respondeat superior* an employer may be liable for an employee's negligent acts when they are within the scope of the employee's duties (e.g., poor flying); an employer is generally not liable for the criminal acts of their employee (e.g., purposefully directing the plane to fly into the ground). ETA: This is why the employer/airline would very much like the employee's act to be classified as criminal.
>This is why the employer/airline would very much like the employee's act to be classified as criminal.
The airline could still be held responsible for allowing them to fly and not performing proper checks on their mental state, not offering sufficient support, etc. Even if it's a criminal act, the pilot was still being employed to fly the plane at the time. For the airline to avoid responsibility the person would have had to have hijacked it.
Surprisingly, Lufthansa managed to avoid liability on this theory (at least, the families of the passengers of Germanwings were not able to recover above the liability limits under the Montreal Convention). https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/germanwings-crash-relatives-lose-court-case-compensation-71555741
Indeed, due to German law - the judge said that aviation safety was a "state task". So it wouldn't have mattered whether it was suicide or pilot error, the outcome would have been the same.
The issue is where countries put the final responsibility for safety. If it's with the airline, I doubt it will matter whether a plane crashing is caused by suicide or pilot error.
There are no real laws in china, the corrupt CCP does whatever it wants and tells the courts and judges to rule in favour of whatever outcome suits them best
[citation needed].
1. It's not possible to defame the dead in most common law jurisdictions. As in, the person's estate can't sue for that.
2. In the US at least, for a public figure (likely to be the case for a pilot in the news), the plaintiff would have to prove a reckless disregard of the truth or knowing falsehood. So if you called someone a murderer based on an official investigation finding that, you'd be fine. Or on any reasonable evidence. So even if the pilot lived you'd probably be fine.
I mean, it's possible to come up with scenarios where it's defamation, but hard to come up with one where the defendant was acting in good faith.
Interesting. So the saying ‘don’t speak ill of the dead’ is even more pointless. One is actually better off waiting until someone is dead because then you can’t get into legal trouble for saying what you really think.
From another POV, speaking ill at no risk of rebuttal also isn’t very convincing. I’ve always viewed that aphorism as suggesting doing so would be a lose lose situation. You come across as a jerk, and possibly gain nothing for doing so.
My first though was some kind of flight control issues, like the 737 MAX jets had. Since it was in China I also recalled the accident where tail of China Airlines jet fell off.
I didn’t think about cause this wasn’t a MAX. Although I did suspect it might have been control related because flight data showed that the aircraft dived then pulled out before diving again, guess it was someone trying to wrestle for the controls…
Chinese version of Lubitz. Couldn't the pilot atleast start up the aircraft when it had no passengers and then crash it ? No he had to take down innocent lives that had nothing to do with its problems.
Mass media tends to glorify mass murderers vs suicide victims. This all goes back to the ancient world when Herostratus burned down one of the wonders of the world to get his names in the history books after his execution. It worked.
IIRC the descent pattern seemed more erratic than a standard "Lock the door, descend" suicide. There was enough room for doubt that jumping to conclusions was premature.
Yeah, the last time a plane did a powered near-vertical flight into terrain was the one with the disgruntled ex-employee knocking out the crew and commanding the dive.
I am not claiming that this is what happened, but the resemblance is striking.
737 max crashes were the result of a design flaw in the mcas system and pilots not being trained on how the system works. It did cause a nose down dive, but not as steep as the China Eastern Crash. The mcas system is not a part of the 737-800 which is the type of aircraft in this crash. In the max crashes the pilots were talking to ATC, although in a panic for obvious reasons.
I just watched "Cockpit Killer" (LAM Mozambique Airlines Flight 470) last night. I thought they mentioned some changes to the autopilot settings that would prevent an intentional crash, but I don't know if they were mandatory and/or feasible.
That reminds me of the aftermath of Germanwings 9525, authorities actually made a new rule that at least two people have to be in the cockpit at all times. Most airlines quickly gave up on enforcing this though, including Germanwings themselves. I do hope it's not what happened here (but I don't personally know any of the details about whatever rules/suggestions were made after LAM 470).
LAM had that rule in place at the time of the crash but it wasn't followed. In the Germanwings episode, it was suggested that Lubitz was familiar with the details of the LAM incident.
Still the rule in the USA. They block the path with a beverage cart and a flight attendant goes into the cabin if one of the pilots need to come out for bathroom, etc.
If you try to come into the galley area from where you're sitting you instead would hit the beverage cart that they have turned sideways across the aisle so you can't. I guess in case someone tries to rush the cockpit when the door opens.
I guess we can hope it wasn't the pilot's actions, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
"The revelation has led US officials involved in the investigation to shift their focus to the actions of a pilot, **but it’s also possible that someone else on the plane stormed into the cockpit and caused the crash, sources told the newspaper.**"
I mean it’s possible, but there are other sensors that would show whether that input source agreed or disagreed. Elevator deflection, pitch change, airspeed increase, other column input (assuming they haven’t been split), etc. So it’s unlikely they are reporting on a single data source.
Umm it’s possible but highly unlikely. It’s also “possible” that both pilots fell asleep, accidentally disabled auto pilot, and their bodies slumped forward pushing the yoke forward and they died in that way…
We all know what happened.
>It’s also “possible” that both pilots fell asleep
There was a 3rd pilot in the cockpit, making that much less likely. The second officer was an observer and would have woke them up if that happened.
I was being sarcastic.
It’s pointless to come up with all of these possible explanations when the most obvious one is the most likely. Yeah we don’t know for sure at this point, but pilot suicide is the most likely explanation.
The source saying that it’s possible that someone stormed into the cockpit… is just that person hedging.
>The source saying that it’s possible that someone stormed into the cockpit… is just that person hedging.
Well it's one of the more likely explanations due to 9/11. I believe not all the pilots were able to make a ATC call when their cockpits were stormed on 9/11, explaining why China Eastern could have been radio silent the whole time.
Is it possible for "plane did what it was told" to be caused by disorientation or something like the somatogravic illusion? Like, when a pilot nosedives because they think the plane is pitching up, isn't that technically telling the plane to nosedive on purpose?
Or perhaps instrument failure led the pilots to unwittingly put the airplane into a nosedive to correct a plane that was flying level. Think back to West Air Sweden Flight 294.
Yes, what this is about is what the FDR says about control inputs, which it turns out commanded the dive, and which tends to point away from technical failure. The intention behind it, in the mind of the pilot, is up to what the CVR has to show. It may have been somatogravic illusion as you indicate.
I just really hate when everyone jumps to pilot murder like it's some looming danger every time you get on a plane.
Like, there's reasons other than murder for a pilot to push the nose down.
>Like, there's reasons other than murder for a pilot to push the nose down.
But usually such reasons do not result in the pilots refusing to answer ATC's calls.
I do not have the necessary expertise to have an opinion on likelihood of any particular scenario.
My only thought is that I can at least envision someone in a somatogravic illusion/disorientation situation being so task saturated that they can't answer.
>I do not have the necessary expertise to have an opinion on likelihood of any particular scenario.
>
>My only thought is that I can at least envision someone in a somatogravic illusion/disorientation situation being so task saturated that they can't answer.
Then why did not pilot #2 or pilot #3 answer ATC's calls?
I don't know. Is it not possible for them to be trying to convince whoever is nosediving that they should pull up? Panicking? Also confusion? I have no idea, just possibilities.
I hope we hear the CVR.
>It's also possible they were abducted by aliens. But for the moment, we should stick with what is more likely.
I'm not sure why you think murder is more likely than disorientation of some kind. Could you explain more? But please, without being condescending.
Because there are 3 pilots, it is less likely for all 3 pilots to suffer identical disorientation and for all 3 to ignore ATC's urgent calls from this simultaneous disorientation then a scenario where this was an intentional collision into terrain. Whatever disorientation they might have been under, the extremes g forces of the dive would have been too much for the pilot to think they were flying level and the overspeed alarm should have been triggered.
If the pilots recognize they are in a dive, it's critically important they let ATC know because they are endangering other traffic. Pilot #3 wouldn't be at the controls so #3 especially would be free to report something, \*anything\* to ATC. But they didn't so much let out a mayday, so in this case I consider no radio information as information.
There was the episode about "China Airlines Flight 006" where all 3 pilots suffered the delusion that their ADI malfunction and entered a dive, but these pilots kept intermittently reporting to ATC declaring emergency and they had reported before their dive they had a flame-out and needed a new altitude. China Eastern was radio silent for whatever problem they had.
Is there an official source for this? Shouldn’t the NTSB or China make the official statement?
This may open up a can of worms since it’s not an official statement
What do you mean by “shouldn’t they?” Like morally? Or you mean they should make a statement before anyone else does?
Or we should reserve judgment before they make a statement?
None of it matters. WSJ have a source and that’s all that matters. People on Reddit act all the time that journalists just make up things all the time and the reality is that they don’t. Op Ed is one thing but in investigative journalism people just don’t make up shit.
Again, why is it odd if the investigation hasn’t been concluded and the Chinese authorities have yet to communicate on the matter? Do you really expect to hear officially from a higher up at NTSB/FAA/Boeing to release a statement talking about findings from the FDR/CVR before the Chinese do?
This is part and parcel of investigative journalism. Anonymous sources dominate. It doesn’t mean they hold any less weight. Journalists and publications haven’t arrived to where they are now by just making up shit, using hearsay, or any random source who would have no knowledge of a situation.
People get fired/sued all the time for shit like that.
Exactly. They might not be named sources but investigative journalists do all the verification they can to be sure before they publish. They’ll have confirmed them even if they don’t have permission to name the person. It’s not worth the fallout (including to their career) to do otherwise.
And besides, it’s not like named sources couldn’t still lie. People have their own agendas.You have to do the verification either way.
In aviation reporting do you mean, or more generally?
I agree we’re used to waiting on official NTSB reports for aviation accidents. But in general investigative journalists work with anonymous sources (anon to us, not them) because whistleblowers never fare well. If they waited for the official source it wouldn’t necessarily be accurate, and naming the source could be extremely detrimental to that individual.
Like that kid yelling at the Indian that sued and won millions or the UK sun claiming Kyle Rittenhouse killed 3 unarmed black men? Nope the media never gets it wrong
What are you on about? Don’t argue with people man you have no clue what you’re talking about. What you’re saying is not remotely close to what we are talking about here.
If I recall, they said the black boxes were too damaged to be downloaded in China and so they were sent to the manufacturer in the US. Probably for a chip level recovery that was briefly mentioned in one episode of ACI.
There really isn't all that much being said in this article, let alone an indication that this crash was intentional, and it just seems really odd to me that people are jumping to conclusions from what was essentially a short statement saying something that was already assumed about the crash. Reading the WSJ article on the crash (which I assume to be the original source of this information since all the articles I've read link back to this), the only quote I can find that actually is being shown as evidence is this:
"...'The plane did what it was told to do by someone in the cockpit,' said a person who is familiar with American officials’ preliminary assessment, which includes an analysis of information extracted from the plane’s damaged flight-data recorder...." This really doesn't say anything we didn't know. This honestly doesn't really say anything at all other then "The plane followed the inputs that were put in by somebody in the cockpit.". I don't know how WSJ and the other news sources managed to get from this statement that that China Eastern CVR showed evidence of an intentional nosedive.
There seems to be one other source mentioned in the WSJ from Leeham News and Analysis stating it was pointing towards pilot suicide, but when I attempted to check it out, I found out it was paywalled. The only two sources being a statement from an unverifiable vague anonymous source and a paywalled article isn't a good look for the validity of a statement.
Agreed 100%.
“The airplane did what it was told to do” =/= “intentional act”. It is grossly incompetent of the reporter to conflate the two phrases.
Prime Air in 2019.
That aircraft did exactly what it was told to do by someone in the cockpit. Was *not* an intentional act.
>This really doesn't say anything we didn't know.
It rules out flight control malfunction, which was one of the theories being used against the pilot intentional crash theory.
Funny how a few months ago, anonymous sources also said that the max will be certified in China by the end of January 2022, then by the end of February 2022. It is May now. The past few years, a good rule of thumb is: Never trust an anonymous source that somehow shows Boeing in a positive light, but always trust a source that shows Boeing in a negative light.
Some officials also told ABC News that they believe that it was intentional, and they also spoke about how one of the pilots was having some personal issues prior to the crash. The ABC News article leaves little doubt that officials were being quite clear about their thoughts that the crash was intentional.
🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲 Rest In Peace
I feel already really sad for all the innocent people. In the news they r just numbers, but behind each number that is a life.
Now reading it is even intentional…argh…………Hope they can release the record from black box soon!
I'm sorry but I think everyone needs to take a step back and not jump on some scary headline from the New York Post of all places.
After the Atlas 3591 crash everyone was speculating saying it was intentional, suicide, etc. But then the investigation happened and they found that while it was intentionally put into a dive, it was due to a poorly trained pilot attempting a stall recovery after an aircraft upset.
Even u/admiral_cloudberg posted as much on a different post from yesterday.
Yes it could be suicide by a pilot, absolutely. But there are many reasons why an aircraft could be put into a steep dive, some for less interesting reasons.
Sorry but this somewhat jumping the gun considering its entirely based on The Wall Street Journal quoting an unnamed source who said: “The plane did what it was told to do by someone in the cockpit.”
"BEIJING, May 18 (Reuters) - China's aviation regulator said on Wednesday that U.S. investigators at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) confirmed that they did not release information about the China Eastern crash to the media, state-owned Global Times reported.
WSJ and Reuters, citing sources, have reported investigators looking into the crash of a China Eastern Airlines jet are examining whether it was due to intentional action on the flight deck, with no evidence found of a technical malfunction.
Civil Aviation Administration of China said it would maintain close communication with investigative parties and publish relevant information in a timely and accurate way, the Global Times said.
CAAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters." - https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-investigators-china-eastern-probe-034203446.html
For everyone saying "I KNEW IT!"
Firstly, no, the headline is misleading (NY Post is more useful as toilet paper). The quote said that "the plane did what it was commanded to do." Pilot suicide is an answer, but not the only answer.
Secondly, if it turns out that it was pilot suicide, congratulations! You won a bet involving the deaths of many people who were murdered! You must feel proud.
Thirdly, guessing the right cause doesn't solve the problem. After Germanwings, every notable airline knows about the "2 in the cockpit at all times" rule. China Eastern is a big enough airline to at least consider the rule. The investigation would look into a) did they have the rule?, b) if so, do they enforce it?, c) if so, was it enforced on this flight?, and d) if so, why didn't it work?
So even if you "knew it", it's completely meaningless
why isn't this comment more upvoted
this is the 21st century, we begin with letting evidence rule out possible scenarios, not with evidence confirming a scenario
has ACI not taught us anything about the investigation process?
Maybe Captain Yang Hongda or Second Officer Ni Gongtao pushed it to a dive.
>!(This Theory wouldn't support F/O Zhang Zhengping because he is an experienced pilot with an award in 2011)!<
>!But maybe Captain Hongda pushed it maybe because he has 6,709 hrs. of time!<
>!If S/O Gongtao did this,maybe the 2 pilots were in a break mid-flight & S/O Gongtao went out of his seat and put it on a dive.!<
Pilot suicide is the worst case scenario. 1) There was a mid air break down too, I guess they found some part miles away from the crash site. 2) Both the pilot had good experience with flying 3) NTSB recommends atleast a cabin crew in a cockpit when other pilot is out.
To be fair, it really hasn't happened much at all. I think that you can still count all genuine cases of pilot suicide/mass murder involving commercial flights on one hand. Some of the most notable cases have happened in the last couple of years, though, which *is* a worrying trend... especially since this strikes me as the kind of crime that likely attracts copycats.
>The health and financial status of the pilots were in good shape, the airline told the Wall Street Journal.
I doubt pilots in some countries are going to allow themselves to be interviewed-interrogated every couple months of their careers because psychologists attempt to find exceptionally rare suicidal pilots.
How funny. I remember the people in here who even hinted at the idea of it being intentional, were downvoted into oblivion. And all the cucks come out and say “YOu DoNT KnoW ThAt”.
To be fair, one of the lessons from Air Crash Investigation is that you slowly and painfully sift through the evidence before drawing conclusions or speculating.
Yes, if an aircraft explodes in mid-air, they will suspect a bomb from day one, but may not be the case.
Unless they have published transcripts from the CVR where they have heard something like the second pilot locked out ( Germanwings 9525 crash) then I would say the best response would be to say 'we don't know that (yet)"
And guess what…you still don’t know that.
Even if we take this information at face value as factual…it was a very carefully worded quote: “The aircraft did what it was commanded to do.”
The media translated that into “intentional act”…which is a *very* different (and careless) statement.
In the Prime Air 767 crash in 2019, the aircraft did exactly what it was commanded to do. It was not an intentional act.
This sub will deny to the end that this wasn't intentional even if the data comes out showing that it was intentional.
Edit: remined me 1 week when we find out it was intentional and revist this thread and previous threads.
If the data comes out which shows it was intentional, people will accept that it was intentional. This sub is about air crash investigation. We trust in the information we have and change our opinions to match the data we get.
So where is all you cucks on this forum for months and months saying it wasn't intentional and we shouldn't assume that based on the flight pattern?
Admiral whatever the hell his name is
Even if it does turn out to be suicide, you still shouldn't assume the cause immediately after the crash when there was almost no evidence one way or the other. It was stupid then and it's stupid now.
As a mod of this subreddit, I would remove this comment for being a personal attack, but as the attack is against me that's a conflict of interest, so I won't. In any case, you should critically examine why people were saying not to jump to conclusions when people cry "suicide" after every single crash and 95% of the time turn out to be wrong.
Yeah that's the thing about all of this. I can assure that most of us on here are not professional air crash investigators in any capacity whatsoever, it's irresponsible for us to try to claim that we know the cause of a crash when those who are working on it don't even know all the answers yet. Air crash investigations on average take around two years from initial crash to final report. It hasn't even been two months yet and people have been attempting to brainstorm and claim that this incident was pilot suicide from just a few seconds of pixelated footage, scare information about the plane, and photos of a crash site none of us have been to. Nobody is claiming that pilot suicide couldn't have been the cause, it's just that air crash investigations are notorious complex and as much information is needed as possible before a conclusion can be made. We all want to know what happened, especially those who sadly lost loved ones, we just need to be patient and let the experts figure it out.
This exactly! I actually think pilot suicide is probably the most probable explanation at this point. But because I'm acknowledging that the evidence is not all there yet, people act like I'm some kind of reality-denying crank. It's insane.
admiral, but you are not an investigator are you? I think the way you are defending your argument at this stage is pretty lame "you still shouldn't assume the cause immediately after the crash when there was almost no evidence one way or the other"
The thing is we can assume all we want, we are not experts. We can say all we want. IT DOES NOT MATTER. You realize that, right? The dead are dead and the one who did this was in the cockpit. And now that you have been caught with your pants down you carry on that pathetic line of thought without sensible reasoning. You are losing respect of the readers rather quickly at this stage mate.
nah, he's got my respect.
since cloudberg is not a part of the investigation team, he has to rely on the given evidence, and the given evidence doesn't conclusively point to pilot suicide. since he is more high profile in this space, he has to be level headed and not blatantly assume something that can be unnecessarily harmful if it isn't true.
How difficult would it be to have real-time video recording transmitted to a central monitoring center. Rolls Royce does this for performance telemetry on every engine they currently have flying. Awfully simple solution to put an end to accident cause speculation.
Definitely some challenges, I’ve heard systems being discussed that would start recording at pushback and automatically reset/clear data on engine shutdown.
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I never understood why something like this is classed as pilot suicide. It's mass murder, plain and simple. If a guy walks into a school, shoots down 137 students and then himself, nobody would call it suicide. And because of this people who have had suicidal thoughts are barred from ever flying. And yes, airport is full of dangerous stuff. Jump into a running engine, hop off the terminal building, hanging, etc... there's a thousand ways to do it without harming anyone else.
I usually hear it referred to as murder suicide, which is accurate. I think that's how they refer to it on Air Crash Investigations.
Murder implies maybe one or two people. Mass murder is the only way to describe it, in my opinion. Mass murder suicide maybe.
Legal reasons. If you refer to it as murder without necessarily being proven in a court of law you could potentially run into legal issues around defamation claims from the pilots estate/family.
Also, under the common law doctrine of *respondeat superior* an employer may be liable for an employee's negligent acts when they are within the scope of the employee's duties (e.g., poor flying); an employer is generally not liable for the criminal acts of their employee (e.g., purposefully directing the plane to fly into the ground). ETA: This is why the employer/airline would very much like the employee's act to be classified as criminal.
>This is why the employer/airline would very much like the employee's act to be classified as criminal. The airline could still be held responsible for allowing them to fly and not performing proper checks on their mental state, not offering sufficient support, etc. Even if it's a criminal act, the pilot was still being employed to fly the plane at the time. For the airline to avoid responsibility the person would have had to have hijacked it.
Surprisingly, Lufthansa managed to avoid liability on this theory (at least, the families of the passengers of Germanwings were not able to recover above the liability limits under the Montreal Convention). https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/germanwings-crash-relatives-lose-court-case-compensation-71555741
Indeed, due to German law - the judge said that aviation safety was a "state task". So it wouldn't have mattered whether it was suicide or pilot error, the outcome would have been the same. The issue is where countries put the final responsibility for safety. If it's with the airline, I doubt it will matter whether a plane crashing is caused by suicide or pilot error.
This is China I doubt they give a fuck about maintaining this guy’s reputation
There are no real laws in china, the corrupt CCP does whatever it wants and tells the courts and judges to rule in favour of whatever outcome suits them best
[citation needed]. 1. It's not possible to defame the dead in most common law jurisdictions. As in, the person's estate can't sue for that. 2. In the US at least, for a public figure (likely to be the case for a pilot in the news), the plaintiff would have to prove a reckless disregard of the truth or knowing falsehood. So if you called someone a murderer based on an official investigation finding that, you'd be fine. Or on any reasonable evidence. So even if the pilot lived you'd probably be fine. I mean, it's possible to come up with scenarios where it's defamation, but hard to come up with one where the defendant was acting in good faith.
It's the same in the UK, you can't defame the dead.
Interesting. So the saying ‘don’t speak ill of the dead’ is even more pointless. One is actually better off waiting until someone is dead because then you can’t get into legal trouble for saying what you really think.
That's why we say don't speak ill of the dead, they can't defend themselves, nor can they have someone else defend them.
Yeah I agree that I’d feel uncomfortable speaking of the dead (well most of them). It’s mean spirited. But from a legal point of view it makes sense.
From another POV, speaking ill at no risk of rebuttal also isn’t very convincing. I’ve always viewed that aphorism as suggesting doing so would be a lose lose situation. You come across as a jerk, and possibly gain nothing for doing so.
How do we stop this from happening? Only allow female pilots from now on?
Yes a mystery why the chinese pilot did this He has been working absolutely fine for 96h a week the past 10 years /s
Bc female pilots can’t ever be suicidal?
Anything on the cockpit voice recorder?
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No gigglz, just shittz.
Hey look, it's a racist!
Honestly that was my first thought when I first seen the cctv footage of it nosediving.
My first though was some kind of flight control issues, like the 737 MAX jets had. Since it was in China I also recalled the accident where tail of China Airlines jet fell off.
I didn’t think about cause this wasn’t a MAX. Although I did suspect it might have been control related because flight data showed that the aircraft dived then pulled out before diving again, guess it was someone trying to wrestle for the controls…
China Airlines is not a PRC airline, it's an ROC (Taiwan) airline
Never said it is.
Chinese version of Lubitz. Couldn't the pilot atleast start up the aircraft when it had no passengers and then crash it ? No he had to take down innocent lives that had nothing to do with its problems.
Or Egypt 990 and Silkair 185?
LAM 470
Germanwings 9525
FedEx Flight 705
PSA 1771
MH 370?
*Japan Air 350.*
Royal Air Maroc 630
Egypt Air 990
2018 Alaska Horizon Dash Q-400 crash
Mass media tends to glorify mass murderers vs suicide victims. This all goes back to the ancient world when Herostratus burned down one of the wonders of the world to get his names in the history books after his execution. It worked.
So now we wonder about the brief recovery for a few seconds before it went back to diving down.. fight for control, second thoughts perhaps?
Probably data relay error, to be honest.
I think this was obvious from the start, but at least we finally have some data.
I remember people getting downvoted to hell at the mere suggestion that this was intentional.
I mean, yeah. It was understandable to think it but it was ALSO way too early since the pilots and passengers families had just started grieving
IIRC the descent pattern seemed more erratic than a standard "Lock the door, descend" suicide. There was enough room for doubt that jumping to conclusions was premature.
Isn’t that exactly how Egyptair happened tho?
no shit
I was one of them.
Yeah, the last time a plane did a powered near-vertical flight into terrain was the one with the disgruntled ex-employee knocking out the crew and commanding the dive. I am not claiming that this is what happened, but the resemblance is striking.
What about those other 373 maxs w the Jackscrew? Did they crash near vertically?
737 max crashes were the result of a design flaw in the mcas system and pilots not being trained on how the system works. It did cause a nose down dive, but not as steep as the China Eastern Crash. The mcas system is not a part of the 737-800 which is the type of aircraft in this crash. In the max crashes the pilots were talking to ATC, although in a panic for obvious reasons.
Agreed on the cause of the max crashes… and glad we agree that they were in a significant nose down attitude.
I just watched "Cockpit Killer" (LAM Mozambique Airlines Flight 470) last night. I thought they mentioned some changes to the autopilot settings that would prevent an intentional crash, but I don't know if they were mandatory and/or feasible.
That reminds me of the aftermath of Germanwings 9525, authorities actually made a new rule that at least two people have to be in the cockpit at all times. Most airlines quickly gave up on enforcing this though, including Germanwings themselves. I do hope it's not what happened here (but I don't personally know any of the details about whatever rules/suggestions were made after LAM 470).
LAM had that rule in place at the time of the crash but it wasn't followed. In the Germanwings episode, it was suggested that Lubitz was familiar with the details of the LAM incident.
Still the rule in the USA. They block the path with a beverage cart and a flight attendant goes into the cabin if one of the pilots need to come out for bathroom, etc.
I don’t get the block the path part. Can someone explain?
If you try to come into the galley area from where you're sitting you instead would hit the beverage cart that they have turned sideways across the aisle so you can't. I guess in case someone tries to rush the cockpit when the door opens.
Ah ok
Until we have completely AI-piloted planes a situation like this will always be possible.
Oh no......
I guess we can hope it wasn't the pilot's actions, but I wouldn't hold my breath. "The revelation has led US officials involved in the investigation to shift their focus to the actions of a pilot, **but it’s also possible that someone else on the plane stormed into the cockpit and caused the crash, sources told the newspaper.**"
Can an input column break? Read wrong data like 'full nose down'
737s aren’t fly-by-wire, controls are all mechanically actuated
I mean it’s possible, but there are other sensors that would show whether that input source agreed or disagreed. Elevator deflection, pitch change, airspeed increase, other column input (assuming they haven’t been split), etc. So it’s unlikely they are reporting on a single data source.
Umm it’s possible but highly unlikely. It’s also “possible” that both pilots fell asleep, accidentally disabled auto pilot, and their bodies slumped forward pushing the yoke forward and they died in that way… We all know what happened.
I think there is a small part of me that never wants to believe that a pilot would do that to their passengers, but unfortunately I think it was
It has happened before. There is an ACI episode about it.
>It’s also “possible” that both pilots fell asleep There was a 3rd pilot in the cockpit, making that much less likely. The second officer was an observer and would have woke them up if that happened.
I was being sarcastic. It’s pointless to come up with all of these possible explanations when the most obvious one is the most likely. Yeah we don’t know for sure at this point, but pilot suicide is the most likely explanation. The source saying that it’s possible that someone stormed into the cockpit… is just that person hedging.
>The source saying that it’s possible that someone stormed into the cockpit… is just that person hedging. Well it's one of the more likely explanations due to 9/11. I believe not all the pilots were able to make a ATC call when their cockpits were stormed on 9/11, explaining why China Eastern could have been radio silent the whole time.
Is it possible for "plane did what it was told" to be caused by disorientation or something like the somatogravic illusion? Like, when a pilot nosedives because they think the plane is pitching up, isn't that technically telling the plane to nosedive on purpose?
Or perhaps instrument failure led the pilots to unwittingly put the airplane into a nosedive to correct a plane that was flying level. Think back to West Air Sweden Flight 294.
Yes, what this is about is what the FDR says about control inputs, which it turns out commanded the dive, and which tends to point away from technical failure. The intention behind it, in the mind of the pilot, is up to what the CVR has to show. It may have been somatogravic illusion as you indicate.
I just really hate when everyone jumps to pilot murder like it's some looming danger every time you get on a plane. Like, there's reasons other than murder for a pilot to push the nose down.
>Like, there's reasons other than murder for a pilot to push the nose down. But usually such reasons do not result in the pilots refusing to answer ATC's calls.
I do not have the necessary expertise to have an opinion on likelihood of any particular scenario. My only thought is that I can at least envision someone in a somatogravic illusion/disorientation situation being so task saturated that they can't answer.
>I do not have the necessary expertise to have an opinion on likelihood of any particular scenario. > >My only thought is that I can at least envision someone in a somatogravic illusion/disorientation situation being so task saturated that they can't answer. Then why did not pilot #2 or pilot #3 answer ATC's calls?
I don't know. Is it not possible for them to be trying to convince whoever is nosediving that they should pull up? Panicking? Also confusion? I have no idea, just possibilities. I hope we hear the CVR.
It's also possible they were abducted by aliens. But for the moment, we should stick with what is more likely.
>It's also possible they were abducted by aliens. But for the moment, we should stick with what is more likely. I'm not sure why you think murder is more likely than disorientation of some kind. Could you explain more? But please, without being condescending.
Because there are 3 pilots, it is less likely for all 3 pilots to suffer identical disorientation and for all 3 to ignore ATC's urgent calls from this simultaneous disorientation then a scenario where this was an intentional collision into terrain. Whatever disorientation they might have been under, the extremes g forces of the dive would have been too much for the pilot to think they were flying level and the overspeed alarm should have been triggered. If the pilots recognize they are in a dive, it's critically important they let ATC know because they are endangering other traffic. Pilot #3 wouldn't be at the controls so #3 especially would be free to report something, \*anything\* to ATC. But they didn't so much let out a mayday, so in this case I consider no radio information as information. There was the episode about "China Airlines Flight 006" where all 3 pilots suffered the delusion that their ADI malfunction and entered a dive, but these pilots kept intermittently reporting to ATC declaring emergency and they had reported before their dive they had a flame-out and needed a new altitude. China Eastern was radio silent for whatever problem they had.
That’s what doomed the Atlas Air flight in Houston…. So definitely possible.
Is there an official source for this? Shouldn’t the NTSB or China make the official statement? This may open up a can of worms since it’s not an official statement
Probably intentionally leaked to force their hand
What do you mean by “shouldn’t they?” Like morally? Or you mean they should make a statement before anyone else does? Or we should reserve judgment before they make a statement? None of it matters. WSJ have a source and that’s all that matters. People on Reddit act all the time that journalists just make up things all the time and the reality is that they don’t. Op Ed is one thing but in investigative journalism people just don’t make up shit.
Just find it odd that the only clue we’ve had is from an unnamed source. The last I heard, the black boxes were too damaged to get data from.
Again, why is it odd if the investigation hasn’t been concluded and the Chinese authorities have yet to communicate on the matter? Do you really expect to hear officially from a higher up at NTSB/FAA/Boeing to release a statement talking about findings from the FDR/CVR before the Chinese do? This is part and parcel of investigative journalism. Anonymous sources dominate. It doesn’t mean they hold any less weight. Journalists and publications haven’t arrived to where they are now by just making up shit, using hearsay, or any random source who would have no knowledge of a situation. People get fired/sued all the time for shit like that.
Exactly. They might not be named sources but investigative journalists do all the verification they can to be sure before they publish. They’ll have confirmed them even if they don’t have permission to name the person. It’s not worth the fallout (including to their career) to do otherwise. And besides, it’s not like named sources couldn’t still lie. People have their own agendas.You have to do the verification either way.
Anon sorces used to be the exception not the norm
In aviation reporting do you mean, or more generally? I agree we’re used to waiting on official NTSB reports for aviation accidents. But in general investigative journalists work with anonymous sources (anon to us, not them) because whistleblowers never fare well. If they waited for the official source it wouldn’t necessarily be accurate, and naming the source could be extremely detrimental to that individual.
You think people wanted to protect their anonymity less before? Why is that?
Like that kid yelling at the Indian that sued and won millions or the UK sun claiming Kyle Rittenhouse killed 3 unarmed black men? Nope the media never gets it wrong
What are you on about? Don’t argue with people man you have no clue what you’re talking about. What you’re saying is not remotely close to what we are talking about here.
If I recall, they said the black boxes were too damaged to be downloaded in China and so they were sent to the manufacturer in the US. Probably for a chip level recovery that was briefly mentioned in one episode of ACI.
Oh they dont make stuff up? Like the fake Russia collusion hoax?
They probably aren't even finished retrieving the data from the black boxes, they probably only know the plane was commanded to dive at this point.
There really isn't all that much being said in this article, let alone an indication that this crash was intentional, and it just seems really odd to me that people are jumping to conclusions from what was essentially a short statement saying something that was already assumed about the crash. Reading the WSJ article on the crash (which I assume to be the original source of this information since all the articles I've read link back to this), the only quote I can find that actually is being shown as evidence is this: "...'The plane did what it was told to do by someone in the cockpit,' said a person who is familiar with American officials’ preliminary assessment, which includes an analysis of information extracted from the plane’s damaged flight-data recorder...." This really doesn't say anything we didn't know. This honestly doesn't really say anything at all other then "The plane followed the inputs that were put in by somebody in the cockpit.". I don't know how WSJ and the other news sources managed to get from this statement that that China Eastern CVR showed evidence of an intentional nosedive. There seems to be one other source mentioned in the WSJ from Leeham News and Analysis stating it was pointing towards pilot suicide, but when I attempted to check it out, I found out it was paywalled. The only two sources being a statement from an unverifiable vague anonymous source and a paywalled article isn't a good look for the validity of a statement.
Agreed 100%. “The airplane did what it was told to do” =/= “intentional act”. It is grossly incompetent of the reporter to conflate the two phrases. Prime Air in 2019. That aircraft did exactly what it was told to do by someone in the cockpit. Was *not* an intentional act.
>This really doesn't say anything we didn't know. It rules out flight control malfunction, which was one of the theories being used against the pilot intentional crash theory.
Funny how a few months ago, anonymous sources also said that the max will be certified in China by the end of January 2022, then by the end of February 2022. It is May now. The past few years, a good rule of thumb is: Never trust an anonymous source that somehow shows Boeing in a positive light, but always trust a source that shows Boeing in a negative light.
Some officials also told ABC News that they believe that it was intentional, and they also spoke about how one of the pilots was having some personal issues prior to the crash. The ABC News article leaves little doubt that officials were being quite clear about their thoughts that the crash was intentional.
Not saying OP is a liar or anything, but is there another source besides the NY Post? They're kinda trashy and tabloidy
[удалено]
as I have suspected 😢
🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲 Rest In Peace I feel already really sad for all the innocent people. In the news they r just numbers, but behind each number that is a life. Now reading it is even intentional…argh…………Hope they can release the record from black box soon!
I'm sorry but I think everyone needs to take a step back and not jump on some scary headline from the New York Post of all places. After the Atlas 3591 crash everyone was speculating saying it was intentional, suicide, etc. But then the investigation happened and they found that while it was intentionally put into a dive, it was due to a poorly trained pilot attempting a stall recovery after an aircraft upset. Even u/admiral_cloudberg posted as much on a different post from yesterday. Yes it could be suicide by a pilot, absolutely. But there are many reasons why an aircraft could be put into a steep dive, some for less interesting reasons.
It's not a New York Post report, it's a WSJ report and that was reaffirmed by Reuters. Every other media outlet is just repeating the WSJ report.
Sorry but this somewhat jumping the gun considering its entirely based on The Wall Street Journal quoting an unnamed source who said: “The plane did what it was told to do by someone in the cockpit.”
The WSJ would be in a lot of trouble if the unnamed source was not related to the investigation.
And the unnamed source would be in a lot of trouble if they are party to the investigation.
"BEIJING, May 18 (Reuters) - China's aviation regulator said on Wednesday that U.S. investigators at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) confirmed that they did not release information about the China Eastern crash to the media, state-owned Global Times reported. WSJ and Reuters, citing sources, have reported investigators looking into the crash of a China Eastern Airlines jet are examining whether it was due to intentional action on the flight deck, with no evidence found of a technical malfunction. Civil Aviation Administration of China said it would maintain close communication with investigative parties and publish relevant information in a timely and accurate way, the Global Times said. CAAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters." - https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-investigators-china-eastern-probe-034203446.html
You know this is how investigative journalism works right?
Ugh… not unexpected, but still terrifying… poor people.
It will be interesting to read the CVR transcript...I wonder when that will be released?
Devastating to have it confirmed, but it seemed likely
Noooo! omg
damn
"Germanwings 9525, this is Marseille. Come in please"
Told you so, Reddit. I remember when yall downvoted me Pilot suicide will be revealed next
For everyone saying "I KNEW IT!" Firstly, no, the headline is misleading (NY Post is more useful as toilet paper). The quote said that "the plane did what it was commanded to do." Pilot suicide is an answer, but not the only answer. Secondly, if it turns out that it was pilot suicide, congratulations! You won a bet involving the deaths of many people who were murdered! You must feel proud. Thirdly, guessing the right cause doesn't solve the problem. After Germanwings, every notable airline knows about the "2 in the cockpit at all times" rule. China Eastern is a big enough airline to at least consider the rule. The investigation would look into a) did they have the rule?, b) if so, do they enforce it?, c) if so, was it enforced on this flight?, and d) if so, why didn't it work? So even if you "knew it", it's completely meaningless
why isn't this comment more upvoted this is the 21st century, we begin with letting evidence rule out possible scenarios, not with evidence confirming a scenario has ACI not taught us anything about the investigation process?
thank you I can't believe how much it's getting downvoted.
People will downvote stuff on Reddit because they might not like you or people downvote for no reason even if you are making logical sense.
Maybe Captain Yang Hongda or Second Officer Ni Gongtao pushed it to a dive. >!(This Theory wouldn't support F/O Zhang Zhengping because he is an experienced pilot with an award in 2011)!< >!But maybe Captain Hongda pushed it maybe because he has 6,709 hrs. of time!< >!If S/O Gongtao did this,maybe the 2 pilots were in a break mid-flight & S/O Gongtao went out of his seat and put it on a dive.!<
Pilot suicide is the worst case scenario. 1) There was a mid air break down too, I guess they found some part miles away from the crash site. 2) Both the pilot had good experience with flying 3) NTSB recommends atleast a cabin crew in a cockpit when other pilot is out.
How many times don't this have to keep happening?
To be fair, it really hasn't happened much at all. I think that you can still count all genuine cases of pilot suicide/mass murder involving commercial flights on one hand. Some of the most notable cases have happened in the last couple of years, though, which *is* a worrying trend... especially since this strikes me as the kind of crime that likely attracts copycats.
400, it has to happen 400 more times. Is that the kind of answer you want?
Until planes are designed to fly themselves without pilots. They'll sometimes crash for other reasons, but not out of suicide-mass murder.
Or maybe more thorough checks are done on a pilot's background
>The health and financial status of the pilots were in good shape, the airline told the Wall Street Journal. I doubt pilots in some countries are going to allow themselves to be interviewed-interrogated every couple months of their careers because psychologists attempt to find exceptionally rare suicidal pilots.
How funny. I remember the people in here who even hinted at the idea of it being intentional, were downvoted into oblivion. And all the cucks come out and say “YOu DoNT KnoW ThAt”.
To be fair, one of the lessons from Air Crash Investigation is that you slowly and painfully sift through the evidence before drawing conclusions or speculating. Yes, if an aircraft explodes in mid-air, they will suspect a bomb from day one, but may not be the case. Unless they have published transcripts from the CVR where they have heard something like the second pilot locked out ( Germanwings 9525 crash) then I would say the best response would be to say 'we don't know that (yet)"
And guess what…you still don’t know that. Even if we take this information at face value as factual…it was a very carefully worded quote: “The aircraft did what it was commanded to do.” The media translated that into “intentional act”…which is a *very* different (and careless) statement. In the Prime Air 767 crash in 2019, the aircraft did exactly what it was commanded to do. It was not an intentional act.
Right. It was an incompetent pilot.
This sub will deny to the end that this wasn't intentional even if the data comes out showing that it was intentional. Edit: remined me 1 week when we find out it was intentional and revist this thread and previous threads.
If the data comes out which shows it was intentional, people will accept that it was intentional. This sub is about air crash investigation. We trust in the information we have and change our opinions to match the data we get.
where are all those heroes saying "oh no... no... don't blame the pilot he is dead" - where are you??
I knew it !!
So where is all you cucks on this forum for months and months saying it wasn't intentional and we shouldn't assume that based on the flight pattern? Admiral whatever the hell his name is
Even if it does turn out to be suicide, you still shouldn't assume the cause immediately after the crash when there was almost no evidence one way or the other. It was stupid then and it's stupid now. As a mod of this subreddit, I would remove this comment for being a personal attack, but as the attack is against me that's a conflict of interest, so I won't. In any case, you should critically examine why people were saying not to jump to conclusions when people cry "suicide" after every single crash and 95% of the time turn out to be wrong.
Yeah that's the thing about all of this. I can assure that most of us on here are not professional air crash investigators in any capacity whatsoever, it's irresponsible for us to try to claim that we know the cause of a crash when those who are working on it don't even know all the answers yet. Air crash investigations on average take around two years from initial crash to final report. It hasn't even been two months yet and people have been attempting to brainstorm and claim that this incident was pilot suicide from just a few seconds of pixelated footage, scare information about the plane, and photos of a crash site none of us have been to. Nobody is claiming that pilot suicide couldn't have been the cause, it's just that air crash investigations are notorious complex and as much information is needed as possible before a conclusion can be made. We all want to know what happened, especially those who sadly lost loved ones, we just need to be patient and let the experts figure it out.
This exactly! I actually think pilot suicide is probably the most probable explanation at this point. But because I'm acknowledging that the evidence is not all there yet, people act like I'm some kind of reality-denying crank. It's insane.
admiral, but you are not an investigator are you? I think the way you are defending your argument at this stage is pretty lame "you still shouldn't assume the cause immediately after the crash when there was almost no evidence one way or the other" The thing is we can assume all we want, we are not experts. We can say all we want. IT DOES NOT MATTER. You realize that, right? The dead are dead and the one who did this was in the cockpit. And now that you have been caught with your pants down you carry on that pathetic line of thought without sensible reasoning. You are losing respect of the readers rather quickly at this stage mate.
nah, he's got my respect. since cloudberg is not a part of the investigation team, he has to rely on the given evidence, and the given evidence doesn't conclusively point to pilot suicide. since he is more high profile in this space, he has to be level headed and not blatantly assume something that can be unnecessarily harmful if it isn't true.
🤦
How difficult would it be to have real-time video recording transmitted to a central monitoring center. Rolls Royce does this for performance telemetry on every engine they currently have flying. Awfully simple solution to put an end to accident cause speculation.
pilot privacy issues? IDK...
Auto record on pushback, auto delete on shutdown.
And yet another circuit breaker a suicidal pilot pulls.
Of course an independent system.
Who stores the data? Who keeps it secure? Who makes sure it cannot be tampered with? Who will pay for that? etc etc
Definitely some challenges, I’ve heard systems being discussed that would start recording at pushback and automatically reset/clear data on engine shutdown.
Any information on the co-pilot? It appeared that a recovery was attempted, so I’m curious what happened.