One of the aspects of the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max crash which had remained unclear during the investigation was the cause of the original angle-of-attack sensor malfunction that initiated the accident sequence. But the US National Transportation Safety Board argues that a bird-strike, which damaged the angle-of-attack vane, is a more plausible explanation for the sudden change in sensor data. Ethiopian investigators, states the NTSB, omitted “key findings” about the sensor failure in their draft report into the accident. “Instead, those data were fully consistent with previous instances of partial [angle-of-attack] vane separation due to a bird strike,” it adds. The Ethiopian inquiry states that an inspection of departure runway 07R, covering about a quarter of its 12,400ft length, did not locate any bird remains or debris from the vane.

Source: Ethiopian News December 29, 2022 09:58 UTC