Tensions over how to characterize the results of an investigation into an Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max crash two years ago have prompted U.S. investigators to consider taking the unusual step of issuing separate comments with their own findings, according to people familiar with the research.
Ethiopia’s Accident Investigation Bureau said Wednesday it plans to release a final report on the Boeing Co. jet crash. in the “near future” after closures to contain the Covid-19 pandemic hampered investigation.
The work is in the final stages, according to the Ministry of Transport in a statement on its Facebook page on Wednesday, without giving a date for publication. The update coincided with the two-year anniversary of the Ethiopian Airlines air disaster on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, which killed all 157 people on board.
In the background, there is disagreement over the findings of the report, said two people familiar with the activity behind the scenes. They asked not to be called while discussing the highly sensitive talks between the two nations.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board has been concerned about the actions of the pilots during the deadly flight and how jet systems should be described, one of the people said.
The Ethiopian report was still being discussed between local investigators and external stakeholders, said a third-person with knowledge of the issue in Ethiopia who also asked not to be identified.
Calls and messages outside normal working hours to Ethiopian researchers from the Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority and the Ministry of Transport requesting comments were not immediately answered.
A relative lands on his face while crying at the crash site of Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on March 14, 2019. [File: Tiksa Negeri/Reuters]
The NTSB continues to work with Ethiopian researchers “to help them complete the investigation, which includes reviewing their final report and providing our feedback,” the U.S. agency said in a statement. “In accordance with the provisions of Annex 13 of the International Civil Aviation Organization, all investigative information will be published by the Ethiopian authorities.”
Annex 13 regulates the interaction of nations during international research. ICAO is an arm of the United Nations.
There have been at least some disagreements for months between Ethiopian officials and U.S. investigators in Ethiopia had been prepared to conclude the cause of the crash a year ago, but suspended the publication of those results after the objections from the United States and France, Bloomberg reported.
The interim report issued in 2020 focused on Boeing’s design and contained little in the analysis of the pilots ’actions, and it needed to be addressed, people said at the time.
The crash followed another fatal crash of the 737 Max in Indonesia less than five months earlier and caused regulators to attack the model worldwide and bring Boeing into crisis. Since then, the American aircraft manufacturer has made revisions to the model and addressed safety issues, and the jet had been authorized to return to the skies in the domestic market late last year.
While regulators in the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates and others have followed suit, others are more cautious. China, one of Boeing’s major markets, still has security concerns and said this month that it is awaiting the findings of the Ethiopian spacecraft.
There is no doubt that Boeing’s design of a flight control feature known as the Maneuvering Feature Augmentation System will be at the center of the cause of the Ethiopian crash.
After a malfunction, the MCAS system began to descend through the nose of the aircraft repeatedly. The design had no redundancy and Boeing could not determine how the pilots would react during the chaos it created, as numerous investigations failed.
Coffins of Ethiopian passengers and crew members are organized during a memorial service for the victims of the plane crash of Flight ET 302 at Selassie Church in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on March 17, 2019 [File: Maheder Haileselassie/Reuters]
However, it appears that the Ethiopian pilots also took several erroneous steps that aggravated the failure, which allowed their speed to be too high and made no manual adjustments that could have stopped the dives, according to preliminary data released by Ethiopia.
It was possible to deactivate the MCAS by turning two switches in the cockpit in a procedure that was repeatedly punctured to pilots around the world. A crew aboard a Lion Air flight to Indonesia successfully followed these steps after encountering an identical failure the night before the same plane crashed off the coast of Jakarta.
Ethiopian pilots followed the same steps initially, but reactivated MCAS and lost control, according to preliminary data.
ICAO analyzes 13 allow nations involved in an accident investigation in another country to present the equivalent of a dissenting opinion, but it is unusual and often indicates tensions about how the investigation was conducted.
Accident in Indonesia
One such rare case occurred after the crash of a SilkAir Singapore Pte Ltd flight to Indonesia in 1997, which mysteriously sank from 10,671 meters into a river, killing 104 on board. .
Three years later, Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee issued a report saying it could not find what caused the crash.
The U.S. NTSB, which had been involved because the Boeing 737 was built in the United States, submitted a 49-page comment that said the most likely explanation was a captain’s suicide. The dive coincided with the fact that a pilot was doing it intentionally, it looked like both crash-proof recorders on the plane had been turned off and no evidence of mechanical malfunction was found, the NTSB said.
It is not uncommon for research agencies to disagree on the nuances of a report in the months leading up to publication, but these differences are often resolved through debate and rarely break into the public eye.
Meanwhile, the families of the crash victims were holding a series of events on Wednesday to commemorate the second anniversary. Representatives met with Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg in Washington to protest in front of a Boeing office in nearby Virginia and plan to hold an hour-long vigil outside the Federal Administration offices in Washington. ‘United States Aviation