Yesterday I saw a male village weaver committing a felony. Well, being male comes with responsibilities. As a male you are born to look for and after females, protect your colonies and offspring, instill logic into young ones and other rowdy males and above all carry your seeds and distribute them. Except for determining the gender of the offspring there is no other exception in birds. Male village weavers are responsible for selecting a perfect perching place for an entire colony just like humans. By perfect, they need to look for a secure tree, a large one of course because a small one will mean fewer nests and with fewer females and therefore fewer females. As you know, female weavers are as jealous of their co-wives as humans and of course the male needs a tree that is close to where he can fetch all the grass he will use to build all those remarkable nests for each one. It is in all male animals’ DNA and perhaps chromosome number 23 that a man should avoid conflict between two females that he is taking to bed. The male can fight other males, no problem with that but care should be taken when it comes to women fighting. For this particular weaverbird, it was in the middle of South C. The sight of those two nests made my heart to sink. I mean, the Nairobi national park is not far away from where the tree is. In south C, that tree is susceptible to pruning and one day, an idiot will climb the tree with a machete and cut down a few brunches and the poor colony will have to either relocate or let go to a few guys. Don’t even think of relocating. You don’t want to be a male weaverbird when it comes to relocating. If it is tough for human beings, it must be hell for birds.
We can argue that with two nests the bird is a young guy and perhaps a rookie in this and will learn it the hard way. Maybe but the hard way will be tough for an entire colony. Imagine when and not if the colony becomes large enough and it starts filling our neighborhood with some morning glory tunes, one of my lazy neighbors could one day pull that string that I see people in power saws and the chain of that freaking machine will start moving then the machine will be placed at an angle across the stem and bark of that tree and within a few minutes the whole colony will be on the floor with the trees. I know, that it is not human to such stuff but at times I also feel that my Somali neighbors do a lot of things that boggles my mind, leave a lone not being human. I cannot imagine the future of that colony. The bird is just a ‘boy’ and it has no experience in these stuff. If it was raising its family in the Nairobi National Park, the risk would only be a few brunches making meals for giraffes occasionally but that is lower than a human being or perhaps a land grabber faking ownership with a bulldozer or excavator.
If you have come this far with reading this item, please don’t stop here. I know that Kenyans are poor readers but what I have also found out is poor reading culture makes us less creative and less experienced in some aspects of life. Talking of experience, you will not believe what went through just before the crash of flight 302 Ethiopian Airlines. While the media and almost everyone was quick to point out the MCAS, I pointed out the extremely powerful CFM engines - If you have been to a 737-400 and a 737-8(Max) simulator or even flown one or even flown in both, you know why I put my bet on the engines. The preliminary crash report shows much more than these. While it clearly shows how powerful the MCAs is, it also shows that the pilots were inexperienced when it came to handling such a case. We can argue about that.
The flight took off at 05:38:34 universal or Zulu time if you like. The flap angle was 5 degrees and a stabilizer setting of 5.6 units. This is normal during takeoff. 10 seconds after takeoff, the left and right Angle of attack indicators (AOA) disagreed. Not by 1 or 10 degrees; by as high as 63 degrees. It looks like the left one was defective because at some point is shows that the angle of attack was at 74.5 degrees while the right AOA reached a maximum of 15 degrees. Of course the left stick shaker activated. For those who don’t understand the Max or Aviation terms, the angle of attack is the angle at which the nose of the aircraft is pitching to the sky or the ground with respect to the general flow of air passing across the fuselage of the aircraft. Common logic dictates that if it is high, the aircraft is climbing high into the sky. This is not always true because aircrafts also need a high angle of attack during touch down but can you imagine a 74.5 degrees angle of attack? That is extremely steep and a stall is imminent in such a case. The MCAs gets its reading from these AOAs and comes into action when the auto-pilot in not engaged, a high angle of attack with a low airspeed and auto-thrust is engaged and other conditions are met. The first three are key though. The problem is the MCAs gets values from only one AOA, for this case the left one and it looked like it was giving wrong data.
The autopilot was engaged at about 50 ft radio altitude and about 24 seconds into the flight and immediately the first autopilot warning was recorded. At 05:39:01 and about 630 ft radio altitude, a second autopilot warning is recorded. They contacted the radar 6 seconds later with a ‘reported SHALA 2A departure crossing 8400 ft and climbing FL 320’ report. At 05:39:42, Level Change mode was engaged. The selected altitude was 32000 ft. Shortly after the mode change, the selected airspeed was set to 238 kt.
At 05:39:45, Captain requested flaps up and First-Officer acknowledged. One second later, flap handle moved from 5 to 0 degrees and flaps retraction began. Now, the autopilot disengaged at 05:39:55. It is still not clear what caused that. Two seconds later, the Captain advised the first officer to maintain runway heading because they were having some flight control problems. This is pretty standard. At 05:40:03 the GPWS “DON’T SINK” alert went off. What went on from here was frequent trimming by the MCAS, electric trimming by the captain and first officer and at some point, the first officer tried to manually trim and said it was hard. Of course it was because the aircraft was barely at 13000 ft and the engines were at 94% thrust plus the jackscrew must have moved to the extreme end of the trim. At 05:41:20, the right overspeed clacker was recorded on CVR.
Considering that the First-Officer called out “stab trim cut-out” two times and both the captain and the first officer confirmed at 05:40:35, it is unclear why the aircraft could still trim through the MCAS and the manual Electric trim from the yokes. I am really poor at explaining things but the preliminary report is free for download.
This whole thing cements my thought that the crew was not well versed with such an emergency but the MCAS could not even be tamed by the stub cut out. All along, the engines were in close to full thrust and the worst mistake was they left the auto thrust engaged so the MCAS could not be overridden. Above all, if you try to read reports on all Ethiopian airlines crashes you will not be surprised. Their pilots at one time landed a wet leased 767 in a very tiny airport in Arusha due to poor communication with the control tower.
I remember at one time my dad telling me that at 125 flight hours, I would find it very hard to get to a reputable airline or even be trustworthy with handling anyone’s aircraft. In fact, he insisted that I should just quit and pursue something else. He was right because I believe that the same mistake he saw in Kenya airways was what Ethiopian Airlines committed: fishing out a rookie from their academy and putting him in a new aircraft after very few hours in the simulator. The first officer had 256 flight hours in the entire 737 with only 56 in the Max. I don’t want to blame it on the pilots, I will also not call that incompetence but they just didn’t know how to tame the beast. There are unconfirmed reports that some pilots in some airlines have had similar encounters and have known how to override the MCAS. It is even said that in the Lion Air flight that had crashed, there was a pilot who was allowed into the cabin by the crew that had previously flown the same aircraft and the first thing he did was tell them how to override the MCAS. Let’s wait for the full report.
How I wish that Village weaver could learn a thing or two from that report.
