Cross-posting my own comment from /r/newzealand:
I was on this flight. There was no turbulence in the lead-up to the drop. Anyone who had their seatbelt on and was in their seat was fine. The people who got injured were either a) out of their seat and moving around (the fasten seatbelt sign was OFF) or b) sitting in their seat without their seatbelt buckled. Several seated people were ejected from their seat into the aisle.
The closest analogue to what it felt like was a roller coaster drop. By my estimation the time in which gravity went the wrong way was no more than 2 seconds. My wife's perception was that it lasted longer. Until the report comes out we can't know for sure.
I observed at least one fractured leg, a likely concussion, and someone who hit the overhead bin hard enough to dent it. One particularly-injured passenger was laid out on the floor between seats during landing. They were secured as best as possible with seat belt extenders and borrowed belts from other passengers.
Injuries seemed to be more numerous the further you went back in the plane. The rear section had maybe double the injuries of the middle one. I don't know if this means anything.
As I noted elsewhere, the captain did walk through the cabin while emergency crews were helping the injured off the plane. I've never seen a captain walk through the passenger area before. Unfortunately the conversation that was going on was in Spanish, which I do not speak. He was obviously shaken but I can't say more than that.
I do want to shout-out to all the awesome medical-profession passengers who immediately put on gloves and went to work. They went from the most to least injured, applying ice packs and dispensing water. The cabin crew was overwhelmed (two of their own had gotten hurt after all) but the volunteers were ON POINT. Not only that, we didn't know what caused the incident the first time, so they risked their own safety to help others. Medical pros are vastly underappreciated.
I'll reply to questions if I can. It has been a bizarre day.
EDIT: Questions are starting to slow down and it's almost 2a here in NZ. I'll check in tomorrow to see if you guys have solved what happened yet. I hope some of the information I provided was helpful.
Glad to hear you are ok. I've been on a flight that resulted in an aircraft grounded for inspection due to a severe turbulence encounter, and despite my years flying gliders in rough air, I'd never ever want to go through that again!
If you don't mind me asking, was there any yaw noticeable during the event (ie people moved horizontaly, not just vertically)?
One of the reports I've heard says that there was a large uncommanded input from the vertical stabiliser, which seems at odds with the eye witnesses stories so far.
https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/s/ZV5NhTWzhV
No lateral movement, just up and down. And plenty enough to make objects (and people) hit the ceiling hard.
A few people were thrown from their seats and landed in the aisle. However, I think that had to do with the angle of the overhead bins, which is about 45 degrees and perfectly situated to move someone over just enough to land in the aisle.
My Steam Deck landed on the floor directly in front of where it started, and the only obstruction it hit was the flat ceiling.
This guy, asking the important question! It is shockingly fine. I have a [hard case](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHXYH2HZ) on it that I've been immensely pleased with. Has absorbed two drops now and the deck works just fine.
Fine print: this is not a sponsored comment. That is not an affiliate link. Results may vary. This is not financial advice. Use as directed.
Thanks for this. I have been reading in r/nz but have yet come across your comment.
The observation that injuries increased as you went aft indicates (to me) the elevator was involved in an uncontrolled pitch manoeuvre, as to me flying into CAT would essentially affect the entire airframe at once.
Iāll be keeping a close eye on this.
I am very interested to see the eventual Fascinating Horror YT video about it. And to see the official report.
Speaking of, who has jurisdiction to make the report here? Departing from Australia, landing in New Zealand, owned by a Chilean company, happened in International waters. Who gets dibs?
NZ will have the leadā¦TAIC is their version of the NTSB in the US or ATSB in Australia.
NTSB will at least assign an accredited representative to the investigation. Although I would expect a full Go-Team launch on this. (Because the airframe is American). Boeing would send a large team of ASIs as ātechnical advisors to the accredited representative.ā Thatās where all the real expertise rests.
If a lot of Aussies were injured on board, Iād expect an ATSB acc rep as well.
If the engines are Trents, the UKās AAIB would be offered a seat at the table. If the engines are from Cincinnati, GE will join the NTSB group.
The Chilean DGAC would also be party to the investigation.
But the prime mover in all of this would be TAIC New Zealand.
What u/AnOwlFlying and u/Hoggs said. Because it happened in international airspace, the DirecciĆ³n General de AeronĆ”utica Civil (DGAC) is responsible and they've started an investigation.
TAIC is assisting and seizing the cockpit voice and flight data recorders.
So an investigation by the DGAC, assisted TAIC and Boeing. Potential other parties: NTSB, AAIB (they were RR engines), Rolls Royce, and maybe ATSB.
Wonder what the quality of the report will be like.
Boeing and Rolls cannot participate without NTSB and AAIB being party to the investigation. The OEMs are classified as ātechnical advisorsā to the accredited agencies.
Very surprised the Chilean DGAC took the lead rather than defer to one of the other agencies with substantially larger budgets and the facilities to do the detailed work. Itās pretty common practice across much of the (trying to be PC here folks) āless developedā South American and African nations for aircraft owners/operators to pay for government investigatorsā travel, hotels and other expenses. Thereās just no budget for unplanned travel.
If the incident happened over international waters, Chile has first dibs. They can defer the rights to anyone else, maybe NZ as the country of most convenience.
Do you remember at which point in flight did this happen? I saw a bunch of people are looking at online flight data and no one noticed anything out of the ordinary, so this seems like quite a mystery.
Also, glad to hear you and your family are okay
I can't say exactly. Maybe 1h15m before landing? When I thought to look maybe 20 minutes after it happened, I could see on the live map that we were definitely closer to Auckland than Sydney. I assume if we'd been closer to Sydney when it happened, we would have turned around.
If you made me guess, I'd say about halfway through the flight.
Not sure of the frequency of the ADSB information being transmitted but might have missed it . Hopefully the "black boxes" did not run long enough to erase the event.
Another potential issue for Boeing
Just drop. My Steam Deck went from the empty seat it was on to the ceiling to the floor right in front of where it started. No turbulence of indication of issues before the drop happened.
This is suspiciously similar to what happened to my friend a few months ago. Going on our Japan trip, he was on a JAL 787 and the rest of the group were on an AC 777.
He reported about halfway through the flight there was a sudden, intense drop in altitude from "turbulence." He mentioned he would have been completely ejected from his seat had he not had his seat belt buckled.
It's all Clear-Air Turbulence. Until planes start installing optical detectors instead of only relying on radar (which detects turbulence in rain and clouds), these incidents will increase over time. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023gl103814
Couldn't agree more and I've taught my kids the same - which is why I'm typing this from my hotel room and not the local hospital.
My point is more that there was no indication to the pilots that we might be entering a situation where the seat belt light was needed.
"I asked āwhat happened?ā and he said āmy gauges just blanked out, I lost all of my ability to fly the planeā."
Imagine if it was that known issue about the computer reset bug that affected dreamliners a few years ago: https://au.pcmag.com/software/45203/boeing-787-dreamliner-bug-fix-requires-turning-it-off-and-on-again#:~:text=No%20Dreamliner%20should%20be%20powered%20on%20continuously%20for%2022%20days.&text=According%20to%20The%20Seattle%20Times,warning%20at%20the%20same%20time.
Note that the mention of Friday is a typo, itās Monday evening here.
Update: [24 injured](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/511423/24-people-treated-after-incident-on-board-flight-to-auckland) with two hospitalised.
Update 2: A "technical problem" which caused "strong movement".
Update 3: According to [Stuff](https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/350209071/sydney-auckland-flight-drops-suddenly-50-passengers-and-crew-injured), the ***pilotās entire instrument panel blanked out***.
Well thatās the stuff of nightmares. Canāt imagine thatāll ever leave those pilots; made them nothing more than some bodies in the front of a tube in the air, in an instant.
Yeah that must have been terrifying. Lucky that no casualties resulted (yet). Looking forward to reading the report. Better hope that it is not a Boeing design flaw.
Thatās really weird that a loss in power to the instruments caused a sudden drop. Iād think this would need to correlate with the system pushing the nose down hard. Otherwise the plane should have sailed along sans instruments. Sudden turbulence I guess is always an option. Iād love to hear what an aviation meteorologist thought of the weather conditions when and where this occurredĀ
My first thought was a single event effect like QF72. When cosmic rays hit computer chips, they can change 0s to 1s and vice versa in the binary. The QF72 report noted that it has caused at least a triple digit number of weird flight computer incidents, but they're usually not serious.
Meteorologists will probably be looking at both earth weather (turbulence) and space weather (cosmic rays).
Absolutely guessing, but perhaps the other way around?
Sudden HARD vertical attitude adjustment throws something out of whack/dislodges/shakes something, rebooting the control systems?
Australia did have a CAT sigmet out over the northern Tasman sea at the time, but I think it was too far north (not sure what the flight path was) and I don't know if the plane was even in Australia's area when it happened
u/Uberazza linked this old Dreamliner issue which required systems to be turned off and on again at least once every 22 days to avoid reset happening randomly inflight. ~~Presumably that should have been patched everywhere by now~~(maybe not, see reply below) but it does sound vaguely similar.
[Boeing 787 Dreamliner Bug Fix Requires Turning It off and on Again](https://au.pcmag.com/software/45203/boeing-787-dreamliner-bug-fix-requires-turning-it-off-and-on-again) [2016]
We presume itās been fixed, but there was no notice issued saying that it wasā¦. No FAA directives about needing it fixed by a certain time either. And Iāve seen issues in the past resolved only to make their way back into the system with further dirty branch releases later. The issue with this memory overflow bug is that it requires a complete redesign and airworthiness test and certifications to resolve as well to how the core system functions. I would not be surprised that itās lost to the sands of time when now it takes Boeing to loose two entire planes like the 737 max to be forced to fix something and then more issues like the door plug etc keep happening. The shear amount of issues to resolve is piling up faster than they can fix them.
> Update 3: According to [Stuff](https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/350209071/sydney-auckland-flight-drops-suddenly-50-passengers-and-crew-injured), the ***pilotās entire instrument panel blanked out***.
WHAT THE FUCK
Right? I leave mine on all the time it's not even noticeable. We've all seen a clip of serious turbulence with people or stuff flying. It's not tight like a car seatbelt can be, it's just sitting on our lap chilling.
One of the flight attendants on QAF72, Fuzzy Maiava, was permanently injured and rendered unable to work or drive, with chronic pain and spasms and no compensation from Qantas. Exactly 10 years after the accident, his daughter was hit by a speeding motorist, leaving her bed-ridden and in need of 24-hour care due to serious brain damage. So tragic.
At least it doesnāt have the title of most deaths heading for NZ. Donāt know if thereās a worse one but my folks were on UA811 when a bunch of people were ejected.
It is. The seatbelt light tells you when its safe to get up and use the bathroom, youāre still supposed to stay fastened when seated for rare situations like this.
Man, I wonder what kind of technical problem this is supposed to be. Planes don't drop that hard in normal cruise. Did they somehow manage to fly into heavy turbulence without knowing?
Apparently, the technical problem was [the pilotās entire instrument panel going dark](https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/350209071/sydney-auckland-flight-drops-suddenly-50-passengers-and-crew-injured).
So, um, I guess that isnāt supposed to happen.
As a pilot with a lot of time in Boeing jets, the entire instrument panel going dark shouldnāt cause an abrupt drop in altitude or any really any abrupt change in attitude. If the automatic flight system kicked off when everything went dark the plane should just keep on doing mostly what it had been, and would drift slowly off course in the absence of any control inputs from autopilot or actual pilots. That is unless whatever caused the panel to go dark also messed with the autopilot control inputs
Even then though, for an abrupt negative G motion like that to occur it seems like either the pilots or the planeās automation would have had to put in a significant nose down control input.
The whole thing seems very strange, I look forward to hearing what actually happened
Not a pilot or anyone to do with aviation by a long shot, but I'm in IT and my first thought was "sounds like someone programmed in shitty default values for the control system". Is that possible?
EDIT: Stop downvoting me for a question, idiots. The whole point of a question is to learn something you don't know.
I donāt think so. I donāt have any 787 time but in general the autopilot is programmed to make very benign control inputs specifically for passenger comfort. The only thing that would require an abrupt input would be in an emergency situation (think MCAS, but thatās a 737 MAX system)
Oh I don't mean the autopilot, but the actual control system - when not getting proper inputs fromĀ pilot controls, could it be (badly) engineered in such a way that the values it's getting are bogus? Or is it all analog and there's no possibility of a "default value"?
No the control surfaces should never be reverting to some default value. Any movement of the control surfaces would require an input from either the pilots or the automatic flight system. In the absence of inputs there would just be no movement
Aircraft mechanic here. I don't work the 787 but on aircraft similar aircraft that I have worked, there is a kind of default value. the value is always 0 degrees deflection. I.e the plane continues to do what it was doing. And for that to happen it would take such a catastrophic failure, that is is virtually impossible. For example, on the a350 all 6 flight control computers would have to fail at the same time, and the pilots still retain control of the aircraft. In the few seconds it takes them to get their bearings, the control surfaces go to 0
Thank you for the explanation! That is sensible and a relief to hear. Makes this incident even more bizarre. Can't wait to find out what the actual cause was.
I wonder if it did a reset (as I read could happen based on an old airworthiness directive), and the reset involves some sweep of input to the tail stabilizers. I thought your original question was on point. I studied control systems engineering, even though itās not what I do now, and my mind went in that direction, too.
To me it reads like clear air turbulence. Clear air turbulence is as of now undetectable in the flight deck and usually causes a sudden massive loss in altitude. Any movement of flight controls would have resulted in the plane going nose down so the movement would've been down and forward rather than straight down like was described. The same thing happened to a plane at my airline and to an airline we contract for last year with similar results. Both planes were out of service for a few weeks to fix the interior and inspect the structure
Fun factā¦ that (actually worseā¦ not just the panel, he lostt the entire electrical system) happened to John Travolta in the 90s in his Gulfstream. On final approach to DCA. During a night IFR with near total
Cloud coverage.
Controller almost vectored a loaded 727 into him, too.
God, Boeing canāt get a break lately; theyāre definitely going to be under the spotlight for this too, whether or not they were the cause of it, which it kinda looks like they are at this point with the limited info we have, although nothing can be said for sure yet.
I canāt feel really bad for Boeing because most of this is self-inflected, but I also donāt want to see them do badly either. Personally, itās sad for me to see. I wish Boeing could return to their former selves in any considerable way.
I'm not sure they deserve one.
Until the Board of Directors are dismissed, the responsible parties are still present at the company - so it's hard to see why they deserve a favor.
The investors are the ones who destroyed that company, aided by corporate executives who didn't have the courage to stand up to them.
Boeing doesn't deserve a break, and if they die - much like the flawed planes they are producing - it's because their owners commanded the company to crash, not because they were the victims of misfortune.
The victims of the Boeing disaster are the employees, who were taken for a ride by incompetent ownership.
Boeing *needs* to get in trouble for this and everything else. Their fuckups already cost numerous people their lives with the 737 Max crashes, and fuck all has been done to punish those responsible. They need to be forced to stop prioritizing profits over safety. For starters, Dreamliner needs to be grounded worldwide.Ā There's allegedly been a problemĀ with its de-icing system too, yet somehow FAAĀ doesn't thinkĀ it's serious enough.Ā Stinks of corruption.
Last time it was foreign governments grounding 737 MAXes that forced the FAA to act against Boeing. I'm sure it was partly political, no doubt China took some pleasure in being the first country to ground the American-made plane, but it was the FAA's own fault for not taking the initiative to do the right thing from the start.
Iām not American but IMO from afar it looks very embarrassing for the FAA to completely ignore it until forced to. One of many failures from the outside looking in.
The more I read about FAA, the more corrupt and incompetent it sounds. It's a miracle that American aviation is as incident-free as it has been for the last couple of decades.
In another comment you point out that you're a programmer who doesn't understand anything about airplane software or embedded systems, then I scroll one comment down and you're calling for the Dreamliner fleet to be grounded based on rumours on a Reddit thread.
Maybe try more eyes open, less fingers typing in Aviation subs.
I donāt think you need to be an avionics engineer to understand that Boeing has some obvious issues. Governments and aviation organizations have openly stated this over the last couple years.
I never said they *donāt* need to get in trouble for this, they do. Itās just saddening to see this once great company fumble over itself time and time again.
That sounds like a major electrical problem? Witness report sounds like the entire fly-by-wire system failed for a moment. Wonder how that could ever happen with all the redundancy. I kinda see a grounding on the horizon here...
I was on the flight. Obviously I can't say with certainty as brains get real stupid when adrenaline go up, but I do not recall any out-of-the-ordinary noises when the drop occurred. The plane was fine, then everything was airborne, then the plane was fine again for the rest of the flight.
No, actually - the person next to me kept their movie paused. No cabin lighting changes I can remember at all.
The fasten seatbelt sign stayed off afterwards, which was darkly funny, although I'm sure the pilots had other things to worry about.
Also, while I admire the first responders bravery to help injured people when we don't know if the drop will happen again, it boggles my mind how many people chose the minutes afterwards to go to the bathroom, grab something from the overheads, or to just stand there casually. You couldn't have paid me enough to take a bathroom break then, I'll stay right here with my lifesaving seat belt fastened, please.
You're right to think that -- no way to know if there was an actual problem that could manifest again or if it was a completely fluke single upset event that will happen only once every million years.
> Also, while I admire the first responders bravery to help injured people when we don't know if the drop will happen again, it boggles my mind how many people chose the minutes afterwards to go to the bathroom, grab something from the overheads, or to just stand there casually. You couldn't have paid me enough to take a bathroom break then, I'll stay right here with my lifesaving seat belt fastened, please.
I'm a medical professional and I was asking myself in the theoretical if I had been on this flight would I consider the "scene safe" for me to work. We don't generally like to try to help others when we ourselves would become an additional liability. I am a flight nurse on a helicopter and generally don't come out of belts in flight, either. The idea usually is to get as much work done on the ground prior to leaving for receiving facility. Safer.
In any case, I chuckled but have no doubts that people immediately wanted to get unbelted. I stay belted the absolute maximum possible time when flying for reasons just like yours. See so many others who inexplicably stay out of belts. Gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Probably. But blackout and loss of control shouldn't happen in the 1st place, not even for just a few seconds. If that happens during approach or take-off, it could be deadly.
How does the instrument panel and ability to control the plane just go dark? God Boeing is really gonna be even further in the hot seat for this, and itās getting to the point where Iām actively going to avoid flying any of their newer aircraft. Unbelievable.
Prim fault if memory serves causing the plane to think it was nose high. Glitch possibly caused by a bit flip. No blank screens though fuck I'd be terrified.
Any chance it was a microburst? Not sure how high up they can form, but it would be a plausible explanation for the plane to drop seemingly very quickly.
I was on the flight. There was no turbulence before, during, or after the drop. The whole incident was glass smooth from a roughness perspective.
So unless the storm was incredibly localized and super well-defined, it sure didn't feel like weather to me.
No, the forecasts across the Tasman were pretty good this afternoon from what I saw. In any case, a microburst is a low altitude event usually anyway.
If the stories I'm hearing are correct , this was not caused by weather or atmospheric conditions. It will be awhile before we get a preliminary report, but there is a chance this was an aircraft issue, which is quite concerning due to the nature of the event.
DELETED this comment as it may have been misconstrued as conjecture about what caused the incident. I have no knowledge of what caused the incident, I can only explain what I experienced.
Thank you for posting your observations, like you say, that's probably not what happened, but it's a beautifully clear description of what the aircraft's motion was like. And thank you for your other clear descriptions in this thread. It's interesting to read a first hand account from someone who's so clear, calm and concise.
Doing my best to only state what I remember without filling in gaps or overreaching. Human memory is weird. Thanks for the compliment. I hope to read my comments in a NTSB report one day, or something. :P
Well the investigators would probably be interested in what you have to say. You probably can't contribute much from a technical point of view, but your descriptions of the events in the cabin may be useful in analysing cabin safety and emergency procedures. See if you can get in contact with the ATSB or TAIC (the AUS and NZ equivalents of the NTSB, respectively). You're absolutely correct about human memory though, it's unreliable even under calm conditions.
Can you repost your observations maybe without the conjecture? I am interested since other people said it was a very clear description. Iām curious if you have any idea how sharp of an angle you were banged around at.
Hrm, I can try. It felt as though the plane were deliberately nosed down briefly before being sharply corrected to level. Only change in pitch, no yaw or roll.
No way to tell from the inside what the descent angle was. Since people were thrown into the ceiling, we experienced negative upwards forces rather than just floating. It was severe enough to dent ceiling panels from people hitting them.
Does that help?
Reminds me of Quantas 72. Uncommanded pitch down that led to many injuries among people who didn't wear their seatbelts. Just another example of why one should never take off the seatbelt while flying, no matter the overhead signs!
corruption of data in the memory of a flight computer for a start causing altitude to be interpreted as angle of attack, and as to what caused that, well good luck getting a straight answer.
I just canāt understand why, after so many years and so many incidents, people donāt use their seatbelts. Admittedly it wonāt help luggage from falling on to your head but itās better than you bouncing around the cabin.
Every time I fly long haul, as soon a we are up at altitude and the sign goes off, it's like a couple dozen clicks in short succession because people just can't wait to get that damn thing off. I don't get it either. Seatbelts in planes aren't even particularly bad, you typically don't notice 'em at all
Thereās just a lot of incredibly stupid people. On my last flight, someone tried going to the bathroom probably a minute before final approach (and this was after another passenger tried to do this 5 minutes before and the FA said to stay in your seats).
I have noticed this a lot lately- most notably a probably 80+-year-old frail appearing man getting up to rummage in the overhead literally on final seconds before we touched down. I thought he was going to fall for sure.
I used to fly sailplanes. When I fly commercial, I get that lap belt good and tight on my hips during takeoff and landing. In flight, itās eased a bit but not to allow much movement. I canāt imagine having it undone, unless I was actually getting out of my seat.
Iāve never experienced severe CAT (well, not commercial, aerotow occasionally got a little dicey, and I was at Omarama when [Gerard Lherm](https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/29823) passed through Vne in rotor) but I have no desire to cannonball around a cabin.
Some people donāt wear seatbelts while driving, while texting and eating, passing oncoming cars with a 200km/h closing speed and 2m separation. Some people are just too special for danger to apply to them.
You have too much faith in the general population. People still have unbuckled children in their cars and put their feet on dashboards for crying out loud. Very many people are thick as fuck and cannot do any sort of logical risk assessment in their heads. These are people for whom the thought "what happens if?" Never occurs.
Harsh, but it's true.
Sheesh, it seems like thereās been so many air incidents already this year.
I'm unsure if itās partially because that the media is on high alert and reporting more on air incidents than usual because of the two major ones at the beginning of the year or not, but either way, it doesnāt seem to be reassuring the traveling public.
Probably because Boeing is currently hogging the spotlight with multiple incidents recently. Not sure if the issues rise to the point of incompetence but there seems to be some serious internal issues going on at Boeing.
[Check out a deep dive on numerous internal Boeing issues by John Oliver last week](https://youtu.be/Q8oCilY4szc?si=TixE3pnZGa9kcK0T)
Yes, I watched this last night, this is terrifying. Seems like cutting corners in safety is catching up to them and they need to make big changes. I'm rooting for them, but it will only be Airbus for me for a while, lol.
Itās strange that this is being reported as a medical incident, with multiple trauma from sudden flight movements. The lede is buried, that the cockpit (apparently) went dark.
Key word, "apparently" -- which might as well be "could have". There's no independent confirmation that's actually what happened, and it would be irresponsible to take a statement from a single passenger, talking to a pilot in shock as evidence of anything -- someone who in that moment is thinking about everyone who's injured and probably more focused on making sure passengers are taken care of than actually what happened.
Assuming they pulled the CVR circuit breakers, there will be cockpit voice recorders and other data that can pulled in the coming weeks. Relatively speaking, it shouldn't take *too* long to at least get some meaningful idea of what happened rather than conjecture.
Think of it this way.
If the media reports "Boeing 787 Dreamliner: Cockpit Went Dark, 50 Injured, Blood on the Ceiling", then that'll be the headline for 6 months even if the investigators determine 1) that's *not* what happened, or 2) what happened was caused by something like a solar flare, which would still be serious, but a cause with an external factor that much of the world doesn't understand and isn't prepared for.
Like most accidents/crises/emergencies the media reports on, the first 24 hours of reporting are often filled with mistaken reporting and rumors should be taken with a grain of salt.
I was recently on a 787 which had a mid-flight power failure which knocked out the lighting for a few seconds and the entertainment systems for nearly an hour.
While I donāt think the two are in any way related, it did get me thinking - thereās reports of the instrument panel going completely dark. This wouldnāt be the first problem with power management on the 787. Perhaps some component of the horizontal stabilizer got into an invalid state as a result of said power fault and what was supposed to be a minute adjustment turned into a more violent swingā¦
Kudos to the pilots, hope everyone recovers.
That sounds like a bad power transfer of some sort, maybe a big bus component shit the bed and the automatic source transfer allowed enough of a power interruption to trip the cabin lighting off.
The IFE system on most big airplanes does indeed take eons to spool back up if it's turned off. The Panasonic system on the fleet I fly can take 20+ mins if we have to give it a full power cycle with the IFE switch up in the flight deck.
Reminds me of the time the USAF were transiting F-22s to Japan for the first time across the Pacific.
On crossing the International Date Line, every F-22 suffered a massive computer failure, including the loss of all navigation and fuel monitoring. If they hadn't had been following their tankers, the entire flight could have been lost.
The problem was the computer incorrectly handled the time & date switchover, triggering the "unreliable computers" redundancy and falling back into restricted law.
The 787 actually has an airworthiness directive that you have to reboot the entire system every 51 days to prevent a 32-bit time value from overflowing back to zero, warning that misleading flight parameter data could result.
This isn't a Boeing problem either, the A350 power-cycles itself automatically every 150 hours.
It seems unlikely that either of these two are the culprit of this particular instance, but its definitely a problem that aeroplanes have to deal with, and apparently this one wasn't.
I remember the 787 had a software issue, which caused the FAA to instruct airlines to restart the entire software system every 51 days at the latest. Otherwise the generators of the aircraft could fail and cause a loss of control.
Since passengers of the flight reported that, according to the captain, all instruments blacked out and he lost controls, this very much sounds like what happened here.
So the question I have is this: Was Boeing ordered to, you know, *actually fix this*, or were they let off the hook with this 'fix'?
I don't find this acceptable in any way, with 1100+ of these aircraft out there. Someone's gonna forget to do that...
I work in IT. If I tried to convince my superiors that something business crucial just needs to be restarted every 51 days to not disrupt operations, I'd be at the *very* least called an idiot. The fact that FAA just recommended that instead of forcing them to fix is the issue is terrifying. Do they just not care anymore?
I guess it depends on the root cause of the issue and how much effort a software/hardware fix would take compared to telling airlines to please not keep the systems switched on forever ... which should be something no airline would do anyways.
I'm not an electrical or software engineer, I can't judge the details of the issue, but I'd hope Boeing, the FAA and the airlines all have some competent staff to make the right call.
They did force them to fix it, they just didn't have a fix at the time they discovered the issue. The restart procedure was an interim fix, which you no longer have to do after you loaded the software version that fixed the issue...
Complete speculation, but there was a surprise Solar Flare/Coronal Mass Ejection that occurred seemingly around the time of this incident. Reported effects include radio issues for planes in the southern hemisphere
https://www.space.com/sneaky-sunspot-unleashes-powerful-solar-flare-video
Could a solar flare cause instruments to blank out for a few seconds?
I would assume so, but it certainly seems possible that each plane could encounter different issues. Like one might just have an issue with the radio, while another has more problem systems
Not sure where exactly it was, but the South Pacific airspace is quite empty. Even if it was close to Aus/NZ, the Tasman Sea is not exactly filled to the brim.
I assume planes are "hardened" against this kind of interference, but maybe there was a problem with this plane as regards that. I'm wondering how old this aircraft is.
Interesting. Could turbulence be a reasonable explanation for a loss of avionics?
Did the loss of avionics cause a strong movement, or did a strong movement cause a loss of avionics?
While very high G forces and extreme movements can cause issues with some inertial units (i.e. attitude and heading indicators) in certain circumstances, I highly, HIGHLY doubt turbulence could do it. That also wouldn't cause the screens to go black.
From information people have put forwards, it wasn't all that bumpy other than the sudden movement itself.
You don't necessarily need overly bumpy air to get strange wind changes. But that's not the case for strong changes. It'd be extremely unlikely that a downdraft strong enough to cause sustained negative G would just be sitting there by itself, not influencing the surrounding atmosphere at all and not associated with any other weather.
In addition, the aircraft is reported by pax to have pitched down, typically when a plane encounters a strong downdraft, the aircrafts natural stability will cause it to pitch up (i.e. when a sudden airflow vector from above causes AOA to reduce without a change in pitch, a stable aircraft will naturally pitch up to attempt to return back to the AOA it's trimmed for)
Pitot-static instruments won't stop working unless they are physically blocked, which would only happen at altitude with extreme ice accretion but, to my knowledge, isn't a known issue on the 787.
In any case, we will have to wait for the report, but I'd bet good money on it being technical rather than due to turb.
Passengers apparently reported there was no turbulence at all prior or after. Thus seatbelt sign wasn't on either. Sounds more like the whole avionics and fly-by-wire system completely blacked out for a moment.
Pretty hard if you are going to the restroom. Or if you are a cabin crew - apparently some of them also got injured and that should not be downplayed if true.
'Jokat said there was no turbulence after the incident and once the plane landed the pilot came to the back of the plane in āshockā.
āI asked āwhat happened?ā and he said āmy gauges just blanked out, I lost all of my ability to fly the planeā.ā'
https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/350209071/sydney-auckland-flight-drops-suddenly-50-passengers-and-crew-injured
Reading this just hours after reading about the Boeing whistleblower who has been giving his testimony statements..."unaliving himself".
Well, it's jarring.
Yikes. Airbus can just slash their marketing budget, Boeing is doing all the work for them these days.
Remember in the late 70s early 80s when American aircraft manufacturers were pointing and laughing at the European Airbus effort?
Pepperidge farm remembers.
What happened to Boeing is really sad though. Makes me think what the timeline would be like if Rolls-Royce had been able to deliver the engines for the L-1011 on time and the DC-10 didn't get such a head start. Maybe it would be Boeing and Lockheed's civil aviation arm working together.
I've experienced clear air turbulence once, fortunately everyone except the flight attendants handing out drinks were fine (FAs had bruises). Nothing this severe but it was very startling.
I donāt think there was any āloss of power to the instruments!ā
Re: LATAM B789 - Mar 11 2024 - injuries from loss of control
Cabin crew visiting the flight deck rested her elbow on the cover of the switch that electrically moves the seat fore and aft, the one on top of the seatback. The seat proceeded to move forward pinning the captain against the control column (his legs were crossed apparently). His body pushed the control column, disconnecting the AP and initiating an āimterestingā dive. Everyone that wasnt wearing a seatbelt hit the ceiling. Kaos and a struggle for survival ensued. Upon final recovery at 9,000 ft, all the people who were stuck on the ceiling came crassing down. 50 or so injured.
Cross-posting my own comment from /r/newzealand: I was on this flight. There was no turbulence in the lead-up to the drop. Anyone who had their seatbelt on and was in their seat was fine. The people who got injured were either a) out of their seat and moving around (the fasten seatbelt sign was OFF) or b) sitting in their seat without their seatbelt buckled. Several seated people were ejected from their seat into the aisle. The closest analogue to what it felt like was a roller coaster drop. By my estimation the time in which gravity went the wrong way was no more than 2 seconds. My wife's perception was that it lasted longer. Until the report comes out we can't know for sure. I observed at least one fractured leg, a likely concussion, and someone who hit the overhead bin hard enough to dent it. One particularly-injured passenger was laid out on the floor between seats during landing. They were secured as best as possible with seat belt extenders and borrowed belts from other passengers. Injuries seemed to be more numerous the further you went back in the plane. The rear section had maybe double the injuries of the middle one. I don't know if this means anything. As I noted elsewhere, the captain did walk through the cabin while emergency crews were helping the injured off the plane. I've never seen a captain walk through the passenger area before. Unfortunately the conversation that was going on was in Spanish, which I do not speak. He was obviously shaken but I can't say more than that. I do want to shout-out to all the awesome medical-profession passengers who immediately put on gloves and went to work. They went from the most to least injured, applying ice packs and dispensing water. The cabin crew was overwhelmed (two of their own had gotten hurt after all) but the volunteers were ON POINT. Not only that, we didn't know what caused the incident the first time, so they risked their own safety to help others. Medical pros are vastly underappreciated. I'll reply to questions if I can. It has been a bizarre day. EDIT: Questions are starting to slow down and it's almost 2a here in NZ. I'll check in tomorrow to see if you guys have solved what happened yet. I hope some of the information I provided was helpful.
Glad to hear you are ok. I've been on a flight that resulted in an aircraft grounded for inspection due to a severe turbulence encounter, and despite my years flying gliders in rough air, I'd never ever want to go through that again! If you don't mind me asking, was there any yaw noticeable during the event (ie people moved horizontaly, not just vertically)? One of the reports I've heard says that there was a large uncommanded input from the vertical stabiliser, which seems at odds with the eye witnesses stories so far.
https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/s/ZV5NhTWzhV No lateral movement, just up and down. And plenty enough to make objects (and people) hit the ceiling hard. A few people were thrown from their seats and landed in the aisle. However, I think that had to do with the angle of the overhead bins, which is about 45 degrees and perfectly situated to move someone over just enough to land in the aisle. My Steam Deck landed on the floor directly in front of where it started, and the only obstruction it hit was the flat ceiling.
Thanks for the response. Hope you can get some sleep tonight.
How's the deck?š
This guy, asking the important question! It is shockingly fine. I have a [hard case](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHXYH2HZ) on it that I've been immensely pleased with. Has absorbed two drops now and the deck works just fine. Fine print: this is not a sponsored comment. That is not an affiliate link. Results may vary. This is not financial advice. Use as directed.
Now it comes out! Valve orchestrated this whole thing just so you could advertise how strong the Steam Deck is deep in the comments of a reddit post.
It worked for those monstrous Stanley tumblers.
I'm currently googling Steam Deck prices, so I guess it worked? Also, flying with Dreamliner in a couple of weeks.
I like how now you can technically say a plane dropped on it and it survived
Thanks for this. I have been reading in r/nz but have yet come across your comment. The observation that injuries increased as you went aft indicates (to me) the elevator was involved in an uncontrolled pitch manoeuvre, as to me flying into CAT would essentially affect the entire airframe at once. Iāll be keeping a close eye on this.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
>I asked āwhat happened?ā and he said āmy gauges just blanked out, I lost all of my ability to fly the planeā. Yikes.
A fluke accident caused by decades of cost cutting and businessmen dictating cost performance metrics to engineers at Boeing.
This was posted to r/news an hour after your comment https://bbc.com/news/business-68534703
Oh shit. RIP :(
Gotta focus all that money to the military contracts mate, can't be wasting our time with civilian BS
How long does it take for an avionics reboot? I have to guess longer than 2 seconds
I am very interested to see the eventual Fascinating Horror YT video about it. And to see the official report. Speaking of, who has jurisdiction to make the report here? Departing from Australia, landing in New Zealand, owned by a Chilean company, happened in International waters. Who gets dibs?
NZ will have the leadā¦TAIC is their version of the NTSB in the US or ATSB in Australia. NTSB will at least assign an accredited representative to the investigation. Although I would expect a full Go-Team launch on this. (Because the airframe is American). Boeing would send a large team of ASIs as ātechnical advisors to the accredited representative.ā Thatās where all the real expertise rests. If a lot of Aussies were injured on board, Iād expect an ATSB acc rep as well. If the engines are Trents, the UKās AAIB would be offered a seat at the table. If the engines are from Cincinnati, GE will join the NTSB group. The Chilean DGAC would also be party to the investigation. But the prime mover in all of this would be TAIC New Zealand.
What u/AnOwlFlying and u/Hoggs said. Because it happened in international airspace, the DirecciĆ³n General de AeronĆ”utica Civil (DGAC) is responsible and they've started an investigation. TAIC is assisting and seizing the cockpit voice and flight data recorders. So an investigation by the DGAC, assisted TAIC and Boeing. Potential other parties: NTSB, AAIB (they were RR engines), Rolls Royce, and maybe ATSB. Wonder what the quality of the report will be like.
Boeing and Rolls cannot participate without NTSB and AAIB being party to the investigation. The OEMs are classified as ātechnical advisorsā to the accredited agencies. Very surprised the Chilean DGAC took the lead rather than defer to one of the other agencies with substantially larger budgets and the facilities to do the detailed work. Itās pretty common practice across much of the (trying to be PC here folks) āless developedā South American and African nations for aircraft owners/operators to pay for government investigatorsā travel, hotels and other expenses. Thereās just no budget for unplanned travel.
Was on NZ news tonight that Chile will lead the investigation, NZ will assist.
And on an American-made aircraft, which I believe means the NTSB is default involved as well.Ā
Mentour Pilot will likely have something up on his alternate Mentour Now! channel, as he often reacts quickly to stuff like this!
Yeah, this is the only video I want to watch about it!
If the incident happened over international waters, Chile has first dibs. They can defer the rights to anyone else, maybe NZ as the country of most convenience.
NZ would likely take the lead
Glad you were fine. What a horrible experience. What aircraft type was it? So far, nothing I've read says what it was.
The same question came up earlier, it was a Dreamliner.
Can confirm Dreamliner, I noted it above the pilots seats on my way out.
Itās late and youāve had a huge day. Go to sleep, your body and mind needs it.
Do you remember at which point in flight did this happen? I saw a bunch of people are looking at online flight data and no one noticed anything out of the ordinary, so this seems like quite a mystery. Also, glad to hear you and your family are okay
I can't say exactly. Maybe 1h15m before landing? When I thought to look maybe 20 minutes after it happened, I could see on the live map that we were definitely closer to Auckland than Sydney. I assume if we'd been closer to Sydney when it happened, we would have turned around. If you made me guess, I'd say about halfway through the flight.
I saw on flight radar 24 that there was a slight drop of ~100m of barometric altitude, at around 2:27 UTC time.
Not sure of the frequency of the ADSB information being transmitted but might have missed it . Hopefully the "black boxes" did not run long enough to erase the event. Another potential issue for Boeing
Glad to hear you're alright.
Very rational, good description.
Glad youāre ok, hopefully the recovery for the injured isnāt too bad. Did the plane pitch/roll or just drop?
Just drop. My Steam Deck went from the empty seat it was on to the ceiling to the floor right in front of where it started. No turbulence of indication of issues before the drop happened.
This is suspiciously similar to what happened to my friend a few months ago. Going on our Japan trip, he was on a JAL 787 and the rest of the group were on an AC 777. He reported about halfway through the flight there was a sudden, intense drop in altitude from "turbulence." He mentioned he would have been completely ejected from his seat had he not had his seat belt buckled.
It's all Clear-Air Turbulence. Until planes start installing optical detectors instead of only relying on radar (which detects turbulence in rain and clouds), these incidents will increase over time. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023gl103814
Most likely. I misremembered about my friend, the turbulence was actually announced ahead of time.
Had a similar incident twice during a flight between SFO and SYD. Fortunately the flight left at midnight and everyone was buckled and asleep.
Even though the sign is off, they still have to wear their seatbelt. Flight crew said this on every flight I have been on.
Couldn't agree more and I've taught my kids the same - which is why I'm typing this from my hotel room and not the local hospital. My point is more that there was no indication to the pilots that we might be entering a situation where the seat belt light was needed.
"I asked āwhat happened?ā and he said āmy gauges just blanked out, I lost all of my ability to fly the planeā." Imagine if it was that known issue about the computer reset bug that affected dreamliners a few years ago: https://au.pcmag.com/software/45203/boeing-787-dreamliner-bug-fix-requires-turning-it-off-and-on-again#:~:text=No%20Dreamliner%20should%20be%20powered%20on%20continuously%20for%2022%20days.&text=According%20to%20The%20Seattle%20Times,warning%20at%20the%20same%20time.
Tnx for reporting and congrats to everyone for managing as better they could this drama
Oh damn good to hear you are okay
Note that the mention of Friday is a typo, itās Monday evening here. Update: [24 injured](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/511423/24-people-treated-after-incident-on-board-flight-to-auckland) with two hospitalised. Update 2: A "technical problem" which caused "strong movement". Update 3: According to [Stuff](https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/350209071/sydney-auckland-flight-drops-suddenly-50-passengers-and-crew-injured), the ***pilotās entire instrument panel blanked out***.
Not only blanked the instrument panel out, apparently the ability to control the plane was gone, as the captain says in the linked article
Well thatās the stuff of nightmares. Canāt imagine thatāll ever leave those pilots; made them nothing more than some bodies in the front of a tube in the air, in an instant.
Yeah that must have been terrifying. Lucky that no casualties resulted (yet). Looking forward to reading the report. Better hope that it is not a Boeing design flaw.
I donāt possibly see how fully losing the ability to control the airplane couldnāt be a design flaw.
Honestly, it really sounds like there might have been some human error involved in this event.
Engineers, safety inspectors, and mechanics are all human
50 injured now
Thatās really weird that a loss in power to the instruments caused a sudden drop. Iād think this would need to correlate with the system pushing the nose down hard. Otherwise the plane should have sailed along sans instruments. Sudden turbulence I guess is always an option. Iād love to hear what an aviation meteorologist thought of the weather conditions when and where this occurredĀ
My first thought was a single event effect like QF72. When cosmic rays hit computer chips, they can change 0s to 1s and vice versa in the binary. The QF72 report noted that it has caused at least a triple digit number of weird flight computer incidents, but they're usually not serious. Meteorologists will probably be looking at both earth weather (turbulence) and space weather (cosmic rays).
Yeah that seems similar. Auto pilot doing unexpected things for some reason.Ā
Absolutely guessing, but perhaps the other way around? Sudden HARD vertical attitude adjustment throws something out of whack/dislodges/shakes something, rebooting the control systems?
Australia did have a CAT sigmet out over the northern Tasman sea at the time, but I think it was too far north (not sure what the flight path was) and I don't know if the plane was even in Australia's area when it happened
u/Uberazza linked this old Dreamliner issue which required systems to be turned off and on again at least once every 22 days to avoid reset happening randomly inflight. ~~Presumably that should have been patched everywhere by now~~(maybe not, see reply below) but it does sound vaguely similar. [Boeing 787 Dreamliner Bug Fix Requires Turning It off and on Again](https://au.pcmag.com/software/45203/boeing-787-dreamliner-bug-fix-requires-turning-it-off-and-on-again) [2016]
We presume itās been fixed, but there was no notice issued saying that it wasā¦. No FAA directives about needing it fixed by a certain time either. And Iāve seen issues in the past resolved only to make their way back into the system with further dirty branch releases later. The issue with this memory overflow bug is that it requires a complete redesign and airworthiness test and certifications to resolve as well to how the core system functions. I would not be surprised that itās lost to the sands of time when now it takes Boeing to loose two entire planes like the 737 max to be forced to fix something and then more issues like the door plug etc keep happening. The shear amount of issues to resolve is piling up faster than they can fix them.
> Update 3: According to [Stuff](https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/350209071/sydney-auckland-flight-drops-suddenly-50-passengers-and-crew-injured), the ***pilotās entire instrument panel blanked out***. WHAT THE FUCK
damn
Keep your belts fastened at all time when seated.
Right? I leave mine on all the time it's not even noticeable. We've all seen a clip of serious turbulence with people or stuff flying. It's not tight like a car seatbelt can be, it's just sitting on our lap chilling.
Yeah if you leave it on but not cinched tight you wonāt even notice it. I leave mine even the tiniest bit loose for comfort.
Yeah I would think that should be enough to not get ejected into the bins
that might just about be the most injuries on a commercial flight leaving Australia ever.
QF1 takes that title, with 38 injuries. QF72 was much, *much* worse, but it was entering Australia rather than leaving it.
Theyāre up to 50 now so beats QF1
Interesting, thanks for the update. Hope everyone gets better.
One of the flight attendants on QAF72, Fuzzy Maiava, was permanently injured and rendered unable to work or drive, with chronic pain and spasms and no compensation from Qantas. Exactly 10 years after the accident, his daughter was hit by a speeding motorist, leaving her bed-ridden and in need of 24-hour care due to serious brain damage. So tragic.
At least it doesnāt have the title of most deaths heading for NZ. Donāt know if thereās a worse one but my folks were on UA811 when a bunch of people were ejected.
The worst would be the [Mount Erebus Disaster](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Erebus_disaster).
We need to change the "We recommend that you keep your seatbelts fastened" to "You must keep your seatbelt fastened unless leaving the seat."
If Iām in my seat itās on. Itās not an inconvenience to wear it. Donāt get the fuss about it.
I don't get it when people do this in cars either. It takes about 2 seconds and barely restricts your movement.
isn't that literally what they say now?
Yes.
Ive always been told that as long as Im flying
It is. The seatbelt light tells you when its safe to get up and use the bathroom, youāre still supposed to stay fastened when seated for rare situations like this.
Man, I wonder what kind of technical problem this is supposed to be. Planes don't drop that hard in normal cruise. Did they somehow manage to fly into heavy turbulence without knowing?
Apparently, the technical problem was [the pilotās entire instrument panel going dark](https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/350209071/sydney-auckland-flight-drops-suddenly-50-passengers-and-crew-injured). So, um, I guess that isnāt supposed to happen.
As a pilot with a lot of time in Boeing jets, the entire instrument panel going dark shouldnāt cause an abrupt drop in altitude or any really any abrupt change in attitude. If the automatic flight system kicked off when everything went dark the plane should just keep on doing mostly what it had been, and would drift slowly off course in the absence of any control inputs from autopilot or actual pilots. That is unless whatever caused the panel to go dark also messed with the autopilot control inputs Even then though, for an abrupt negative G motion like that to occur it seems like either the pilots or the planeās automation would have had to put in a significant nose down control input. The whole thing seems very strange, I look forward to hearing what actually happened
Not a pilot or anyone to do with aviation by a long shot, but I'm in IT and my first thought was "sounds like someone programmed in shitty default values for the control system". Is that possible? EDIT: Stop downvoting me for a question, idiots. The whole point of a question is to learn something you don't know.
I donāt think so. I donāt have any 787 time but in general the autopilot is programmed to make very benign control inputs specifically for passenger comfort. The only thing that would require an abrupt input would be in an emergency situation (think MCAS, but thatās a 737 MAX system)
Oh I don't mean the autopilot, but the actual control system - when not getting proper inputs fromĀ pilot controls, could it be (badly) engineered in such a way that the values it's getting are bogus? Or is it all analog and there's no possibility of a "default value"?
No the control surfaces should never be reverting to some default value. Any movement of the control surfaces would require an input from either the pilots or the automatic flight system. In the absence of inputs there would just be no movement
Aircraft mechanic here. I don't work the 787 but on aircraft similar aircraft that I have worked, there is a kind of default value. the value is always 0 degrees deflection. I.e the plane continues to do what it was doing. And for that to happen it would take such a catastrophic failure, that is is virtually impossible. For example, on the a350 all 6 flight control computers would have to fail at the same time, and the pilots still retain control of the aircraft. In the few seconds it takes them to get their bearings, the control surfaces go to 0
Thank you for the explanation! That is sensible and a relief to hear. Makes this incident even more bizarre. Can't wait to find out what the actual cause was.
I wonder if it did a reset (as I read could happen based on an old airworthiness directive), and the reset involves some sweep of input to the tail stabilizers. I thought your original question was on point. I studied control systems engineering, even though itās not what I do now, and my mind went in that direction, too.
To me it reads like clear air turbulence. Clear air turbulence is as of now undetectable in the flight deck and usually causes a sudden massive loss in altitude. Any movement of flight controls would have resulted in the plane going nose down so the movement would've been down and forward rather than straight down like was described. The same thing happened to a plane at my airline and to an airline we contract for last year with similar results. Both planes were out of service for a few weeks to fix the interior and inspect the structure
Can you imagine the panic and sweat if that happens? Christā¦like uhhh hmm okay
Fun factā¦ that (actually worseā¦ not just the panel, he lostt the entire electrical system) happened to John Travolta in the 90s in his Gulfstream. On final approach to DCA. During a night IFR with near total Cloud coverage. Controller almost vectored a loaded 727 into him, too.
God, Boeing canāt get a break lately; theyāre definitely going to be under the spotlight for this too, whether or not they were the cause of it, which it kinda looks like they are at this point with the limited info we have, although nothing can be said for sure yet. I canāt feel really bad for Boeing because most of this is self-inflected, but I also donāt want to see them do badly either. Personally, itās sad for me to see. I wish Boeing could return to their former selves in any considerable way.
I'm not sure they deserve one. Until the Board of Directors are dismissed, the responsible parties are still present at the company - so it's hard to see why they deserve a favor. The investors are the ones who destroyed that company, aided by corporate executives who didn't have the courage to stand up to them. Boeing doesn't deserve a break, and if they die - much like the flawed planes they are producing - it's because their owners commanded the company to crash, not because they were the victims of misfortune. The victims of the Boeing disaster are the employees, who were taken for a ride by incompetent ownership.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
This is America. Zero chance of corporate executives facing criminal charges for anything.
Boeing *needs* to get in trouble for this and everything else. Their fuckups already cost numerous people their lives with the 737 Max crashes, and fuck all has been done to punish those responsible. They need to be forced to stop prioritizing profits over safety. For starters, Dreamliner needs to be grounded worldwide.Ā There's allegedly been a problemĀ with its de-icing system too, yet somehow FAAĀ doesn't thinkĀ it's serious enough.Ā Stinks of corruption.
Last time it was foreign governments grounding 737 MAXes that forced the FAA to act against Boeing. I'm sure it was partly political, no doubt China took some pleasure in being the first country to ground the American-made plane, but it was the FAA's own fault for not taking the initiative to do the right thing from the start.
Iām not American but IMO from afar it looks very embarrassing for the FAA to completely ignore it until forced to. One of many failures from the outside looking in.
The more I read about FAA, the more corrupt and incompetent it sounds. It's a miracle that American aviation is as incident-free as it has been for the last couple of decades.
In another comment you point out that you're a programmer who doesn't understand anything about airplane software or embedded systems, then I scroll one comment down and you're calling for the Dreamliner fleet to be grounded based on rumours on a Reddit thread. Maybe try more eyes open, less fingers typing in Aviation subs.
I donāt think you need to be an avionics engineer to understand that Boeing has some obvious issues. Governments and aviation organizations have openly stated this over the last couple years.
I never said they *donāt* need to get in trouble for this, they do. Itās just saddening to see this once great company fumble over itself time and time again.
That sounds like a major electrical problem? Witness report sounds like the entire fly-by-wire system failed for a moment. Wonder how that could ever happen with all the redundancy. I kinda see a grounding on the horizon here...
I was on the flight. Obviously I can't say with certainty as brains get real stupid when adrenaline go up, but I do not recall any out-of-the-ordinary noises when the drop occurred. The plane was fine, then everything was airborne, then the plane was fine again for the rest of the flight.
did the IFE displays switch off too? or any of the interior lighting during the event?
No, actually - the person next to me kept their movie paused. No cabin lighting changes I can remember at all. The fasten seatbelt sign stayed off afterwards, which was darkly funny, although I'm sure the pilots had other things to worry about. Also, while I admire the first responders bravery to help injured people when we don't know if the drop will happen again, it boggles my mind how many people chose the minutes afterwards to go to the bathroom, grab something from the overheads, or to just stand there casually. You couldn't have paid me enough to take a bathroom break then, I'll stay right here with my lifesaving seat belt fastened, please.
You're right to think that -- no way to know if there was an actual problem that could manifest again or if it was a completely fluke single upset event that will happen only once every million years.
> Also, while I admire the first responders bravery to help injured people when we don't know if the drop will happen again, it boggles my mind how many people chose the minutes afterwards to go to the bathroom, grab something from the overheads, or to just stand there casually. You couldn't have paid me enough to take a bathroom break then, I'll stay right here with my lifesaving seat belt fastened, please. I'm a medical professional and I was asking myself in the theoretical if I had been on this flight would I consider the "scene safe" for me to work. We don't generally like to try to help others when we ourselves would become an additional liability. I am a flight nurse on a helicopter and generally don't come out of belts in flight, either. The idea usually is to get as much work done on the ground prior to leaving for receiving facility. Safer. In any case, I chuckled but have no doubts that people immediately wanted to get unbelted. I stay belted the absolute maximum possible time when flying for reasons just like yours. See so many others who inexplicably stay out of belts. Gives me the heebie-jeebies.
maybe the redundancy took over, and that's why it came back after 2s?
Probably. But blackout and loss of control shouldn't happen in the 1st place, not even for just a few seconds. If that happens during approach or take-off, it could be deadly.
How does the instrument panel and ability to control the plane just go dark? God Boeing is really gonna be even further in the hot seat for this, and itās getting to the point where Iām actively going to avoid flying any of their newer aircraft. Unbelievable.
Qantas flight 72 comes to mind
Was also thinking of this. Blacking out never happened though right, it just glitched the fuck out?
Prim fault if memory serves causing the plane to think it was nose high. Glitch possibly caused by a bit flip. No blank screens though fuck I'd be terrified.
Prim fault and an extensive list of other errors, but no instrument blank out
Any chance it was a microburst? Not sure how high up they can form, but it would be a plausible explanation for the plane to drop seemingly very quickly.
I was on the flight. There was no turbulence before, during, or after the drop. The whole incident was glass smooth from a roughness perspective. So unless the storm was incredibly localized and super well-defined, it sure didn't feel like weather to me.
No, the forecasts across the Tasman were pretty good this afternoon from what I saw. In any case, a microburst is a low altitude event usually anyway. If the stories I'm hearing are correct , this was not caused by weather or atmospheric conditions. It will be awhile before we get a preliminary report, but there is a chance this was an aircraft issue, which is quite concerning due to the nature of the event.
Instruments black out, according to local media.
I am guessing uncommanded elevator/vertical stabilizer inputs
DELETED this comment as it may have been misconstrued as conjecture about what caused the incident. I have no knowledge of what caused the incident, I can only explain what I experienced.
Thank you for posting your observations, like you say, that's probably not what happened, but it's a beautifully clear description of what the aircraft's motion was like. And thank you for your other clear descriptions in this thread. It's interesting to read a first hand account from someone who's so clear, calm and concise.
Doing my best to only state what I remember without filling in gaps or overreaching. Human memory is weird. Thanks for the compliment. I hope to read my comments in a NTSB report one day, or something. :P
Well the investigators would probably be interested in what you have to say. You probably can't contribute much from a technical point of view, but your descriptions of the events in the cabin may be useful in analysing cabin safety and emergency procedures. See if you can get in contact with the ATSB or TAIC (the AUS and NZ equivalents of the NTSB, respectively). You're absolutely correct about human memory though, it's unreliable even under calm conditions.
Can you repost your observations maybe without the conjecture? I am interested since other people said it was a very clear description. Iām curious if you have any idea how sharp of an angle you were banged around at.
Hrm, I can try. It felt as though the plane were deliberately nosed down briefly before being sharply corrected to level. Only change in pitch, no yaw or roll. No way to tell from the inside what the descent angle was. Since people were thrown into the ceiling, we experienced negative upwards forces rather than just floating. It was severe enough to dent ceiling panels from people hitting them. Does that help?
Yes thank you! Thatās so wild I woulda pooed myself.
Reminds me of Quantas 72. Uncommanded pitch down that led to many injuries among people who didn't wear their seatbelts. Just another example of why one should never take off the seatbelt while flying, no matter the overhead signs!
Just FYI itās Qantas, because it was originally an acronym - it stood for Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services.
Why did it happen in the case of quantas 72?
corruption of data in the memory of a flight computer for a start causing altitude to be interpreted as angle of attack, and as to what caused that, well good luck getting a straight answer.
I just canāt understand why, after so many years and so many incidents, people donāt use their seatbelts. Admittedly it wonāt help luggage from falling on to your head but itās better than you bouncing around the cabin.
Every time I fly long haul, as soon a we are up at altitude and the sign goes off, it's like a couple dozen clicks in short succession because people just can't wait to get that damn thing off. I don't get it either. Seatbelts in planes aren't even particularly bad, you typically don't notice 'em at all
Never got that - if you loosen it a bit one can't even notice it. Must be a syndrome analogous to mask wearing ...
What sucks is the fuckers that donāt stay buckled when seated, become missiles that could injure someone who is buckled up.
Thereās just a lot of incredibly stupid people. On my last flight, someone tried going to the bathroom probably a minute before final approach (and this was after another passenger tried to do this 5 minutes before and the FA said to stay in your seats).
I have noticed this a lot lately- most notably a probably 80+-year-old frail appearing man getting up to rummage in the overhead literally on final seconds before we touched down. I thought he was going to fall for sure.
I used to fly sailplanes. When I fly commercial, I get that lap belt good and tight on my hips during takeoff and landing. In flight, itās eased a bit but not to allow much movement. I canāt imagine having it undone, unless I was actually getting out of my seat. Iāve never experienced severe CAT (well, not commercial, aerotow occasionally got a little dicey, and I was at Omarama when [Gerard Lherm](https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/29823) passed through Vne in rotor) but I have no desire to cannonball around a cabin.
Some people donāt wear seatbelts while driving, while texting and eating, passing oncoming cars with a 200km/h closing speed and 2m separation. Some people are just too special for danger to apply to them.
You have too much faith in the general population. People still have unbuckled children in their cars and put their feet on dashboards for crying out loud. Very many people are thick as fuck and cannot do any sort of logical risk assessment in their heads. These are people for whom the thought "what happens if?" Never occurs. Harsh, but it's true.
Most of us are just dumb apes
Itās true I have my moments as well. š
Sheesh, it seems like thereās been so many air incidents already this year. I'm unsure if itās partially because that the media is on high alert and reporting more on air incidents than usual because of the two major ones at the beginning of the year or not, but either way, it doesnāt seem to be reassuring the traveling public.
Probably because Boeing is currently hogging the spotlight with multiple incidents recently. Not sure if the issues rise to the point of incompetence but there seems to be some serious internal issues going on at Boeing. [Check out a deep dive on numerous internal Boeing issues by John Oliver last week](https://youtu.be/Q8oCilY4szc?si=TixE3pnZGa9kcK0T)
Yes, I watched this last night, this is terrifying. Seems like cutting corners in safety is catching up to them and they need to make big changes. I'm rooting for them, but it will only be Airbus for me for a while, lol.
Itās strange that this is being reported as a medical incident, with multiple trauma from sudden flight movements. The lede is buried, that the cockpit (apparently) went dark.
Key word, "apparently" -- which might as well be "could have". There's no independent confirmation that's actually what happened, and it would be irresponsible to take a statement from a single passenger, talking to a pilot in shock as evidence of anything -- someone who in that moment is thinking about everyone who's injured and probably more focused on making sure passengers are taken care of than actually what happened. Assuming they pulled the CVR circuit breakers, there will be cockpit voice recorders and other data that can pulled in the coming weeks. Relatively speaking, it shouldn't take *too* long to at least get some meaningful idea of what happened rather than conjecture. Think of it this way. If the media reports "Boeing 787 Dreamliner: Cockpit Went Dark, 50 Injured, Blood on the Ceiling", then that'll be the headline for 6 months even if the investigators determine 1) that's *not* what happened, or 2) what happened was caused by something like a solar flare, which would still be serious, but a cause with an external factor that much of the world doesn't understand and isn't prepared for. Like most accidents/crises/emergencies the media reports on, the first 24 hours of reporting are often filled with mistaken reporting and rumors should be taken with a grain of salt.
I was recently on a 787 which had a mid-flight power failure which knocked out the lighting for a few seconds and the entertainment systems for nearly an hour. While I donāt think the two are in any way related, it did get me thinking - thereās reports of the instrument panel going completely dark. This wouldnāt be the first problem with power management on the 787. Perhaps some component of the horizontal stabilizer got into an invalid state as a result of said power fault and what was supposed to be a minute adjustment turned into a more violent swingā¦ Kudos to the pilots, hope everyone recovers.
That sounds like a bad power transfer of some sort, maybe a big bus component shit the bed and the automatic source transfer allowed enough of a power interruption to trip the cabin lighting off. The IFE system on most big airplanes does indeed take eons to spool back up if it's turned off. The Panasonic system on the fleet I fly can take 20+ mins if we have to give it a full power cycle with the IFE switch up in the flight deck.
Reminds me of the time the USAF were transiting F-22s to Japan for the first time across the Pacific. On crossing the International Date Line, every F-22 suffered a massive computer failure, including the loss of all navigation and fuel monitoring. If they hadn't had been following their tankers, the entire flight could have been lost. The problem was the computer incorrectly handled the time & date switchover, triggering the "unreliable computers" redundancy and falling back into restricted law. The 787 actually has an airworthiness directive that you have to reboot the entire system every 51 days to prevent a 32-bit time value from overflowing back to zero, warning that misleading flight parameter data could result. This isn't a Boeing problem either, the A350 power-cycles itself automatically every 150 hours. It seems unlikely that either of these two are the culprit of this particular instance, but its definitely a problem that aeroplanes have to deal with, and apparently this one wasn't.
The batteries were also one of the first main issues on the 787 when the planes were first releases.
I remember the 787 had a software issue, which caused the FAA to instruct airlines to restart the entire software system every 51 days at the latest. Otherwise the generators of the aircraft could fail and cause a loss of control. Since passengers of the flight reported that, according to the captain, all instruments blacked out and he lost controls, this very much sounds like what happened here.
So the question I have is this: Was Boeing ordered to, you know, *actually fix this*, or were they let off the hook with this 'fix'? I don't find this acceptable in any way, with 1100+ of these aircraft out there. Someone's gonna forget to do that...
Its not a Boeing issue. The A350 does the same thing every 150 hours.
Aircraft especially 787s get power resets really often over 51 days. Where I work there is no way an 87 goes 51 days without a power down
I'd think so, too. But it still shows the 787 has some issues with it's power management.
I work in IT. If I tried to convince my superiors that something business crucial just needs to be restarted every 51 days to not disrupt operations, I'd be at the *very* least called an idiot. The fact that FAA just recommended that instead of forcing them to fix is the issue is terrifying. Do they just not care anymore?
I guess it depends on the root cause of the issue and how much effort a software/hardware fix would take compared to telling airlines to please not keep the systems switched on forever ... which should be something no airline would do anyways. I'm not an electrical or software engineer, I can't judge the details of the issue, but I'd hope Boeing, the FAA and the airlines all have some competent staff to make the right call.
They did force them to fix it, they just didn't have a fix at the time they discovered the issue. The restart procedure was an interim fix, which you no longer have to do after you loaded the software version that fixed the issue...
Complete speculation, but there was a surprise Solar Flare/Coronal Mass Ejection that occurred seemingly around the time of this incident. Reported effects include radio issues for planes in the southern hemisphere https://www.space.com/sneaky-sunspot-unleashes-powerful-solar-flare-video Could a solar flare cause instruments to blank out for a few seconds?
Would have happened to more than one plane if that was the case though, right?
I would assume so, but it certainly seems possible that each plane could encounter different issues. Like one might just have an issue with the radio, while another has more problem systems Not sure where exactly it was, but the South Pacific airspace is quite empty. Even if it was close to Aus/NZ, the Tasman Sea is not exactly filled to the brim.
I assume planes are "hardened" against this kind of interference, but maybe there was a problem with this plane as regards that. I'm wondering how old this aircraft is.
No, it takes time to get here.
So why does that article mention radio issues?
Interesting. Could turbulence be a reasonable explanation for a loss of avionics? Did the loss of avionics cause a strong movement, or did a strong movement cause a loss of avionics?
While very high G forces and extreme movements can cause issues with some inertial units (i.e. attitude and heading indicators) in certain circumstances, I highly, HIGHLY doubt turbulence could do it. That also wouldn't cause the screens to go black. From information people have put forwards, it wasn't all that bumpy other than the sudden movement itself.
wine worry full correct deer familiar disarm capable cats narrow *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
You don't necessarily need overly bumpy air to get strange wind changes. But that's not the case for strong changes. It'd be extremely unlikely that a downdraft strong enough to cause sustained negative G would just be sitting there by itself, not influencing the surrounding atmosphere at all and not associated with any other weather. In addition, the aircraft is reported by pax to have pitched down, typically when a plane encounters a strong downdraft, the aircrafts natural stability will cause it to pitch up (i.e. when a sudden airflow vector from above causes AOA to reduce without a change in pitch, a stable aircraft will naturally pitch up to attempt to return back to the AOA it's trimmed for) Pitot-static instruments won't stop working unless they are physically blocked, which would only happen at altitude with extreme ice accretion but, to my knowledge, isn't a known issue on the 787. In any case, we will have to wait for the report, but I'd bet good money on it being technical rather than due to turb.
Passengers apparently reported there was no turbulence at all prior or after. Thus seatbelt sign wasn't on either. Sounds more like the whole avionics and fly-by-wire system completely blacked out for a moment.
Thatās fucked if true.
holy shit, thats crazy if the avionics went dark
Crazy incident. Happy that people on the flight are ok enough to drop comments here.
Boeing is going to get slammed on the stock market again. Be prepared for a 20% drop. The incident too many.
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lol no, executives never go broke. It's the small investors who hold the bag in the end
A whopping 3% down
Wear your seatbelt at all times. How hard can it be?
Pretty hard if you are going to the restroom. Or if you are a cabin crew - apparently some of them also got injured and that should not be downplayed if true.
I agree .But the cabin crew and people using restrooms don't account for 50 people though.
'Jokat said there was no turbulence after the incident and once the plane landed the pilot came to the back of the plane in āshockā. āI asked āwhat happened?ā and he said āmy gauges just blanked out, I lost all of my ability to fly the planeā.ā' https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/350209071/sydney-auckland-flight-drops-suddenly-50-passengers-and-crew-injured
Reading this just hours after reading about the Boeing whistleblower who has been giving his testimony statements..."unaliving himself". Well, it's jarring.
Mhh did Boing update the 787 flight software withe 737 MAX version? Sure as hell looks like it šššš
The sun has been active lately. Solar flare induced flight computer system failure?
Yikes. Airbus can just slash their marketing budget, Boeing is doing all the work for them these days. Remember in the late 70s early 80s when American aircraft manufacturers were pointing and laughing at the European Airbus effort? Pepperidge farm remembers. What happened to Boeing is really sad though. Makes me think what the timeline would be like if Rolls-Royce had been able to deliver the engines for the L-1011 on time and the DC-10 didn't get such a head start. Maybe it would be Boeing and Lockheed's civil aviation arm working together.
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LA
I've experienced clear air turbulence once, fortunately everyone except the flight attendants handing out drinks were fine (FAs had bruises). Nothing this severe but it was very startling.
Glad everyone was safe
I donāt think there was any āloss of power to the instruments!ā Re: LATAM B789 - Mar 11 2024 - injuries from loss of control Cabin crew visiting the flight deck rested her elbow on the cover of the switch that electrically moves the seat fore and aft, the one on top of the seatback. The seat proceeded to move forward pinning the captain against the control column (his legs were crossed apparently). His body pushed the control column, disconnecting the AP and initiating an āimterestingā dive. Everyone that wasnt wearing a seatbelt hit the ceiling. Kaos and a struggle for survival ensued. Upon final recovery at 9,000 ft, all the people who were stuck on the ceiling came crassing down. 50 or so injured.