A normal flight (https://flightaware.com/live/flight/QFA804) goes up smoothly. This one very much does not, and the patterns shown bear a resemblance to a layman like me to the published flight patterns of the Lion Air flight.
Note the very steep climb on this flight also. Who knows what that means.
People who know way more than I do, please step in!
The actual time to reach 6 km was around 6.5 minutes in the "typical flight" and around 5 minutes in the "test flight", as can be seen by scaling both graphs to the same proportions. (I've done it quickly with Paint here: https://i.imgur.com/IZyYoCl.png)
Is that 1.5 minute difference really that high? Honest question, I really don't know anything about this topic.
EDIT: Sorry, this should have been a reply to @rkagerer's comment.
But no doubt they would be flight testing the reputed MCAS changes at this time so it’s a reasonable guess.
I'm just... gonna go back to my office job, I think.
WHY has not Boeing turned every single aircraft of theirs into a drone-capable device?
They should have a person, like we have with air traffic control, sitting monitoring all planes in flight, but that person is sitting in a pit on the ground.
They have to monitor X number of craft - and in the event of any anomolous data.... be ready to take over control of the machine in the air.
Imagine if all pilots had a life sensor on them, and should they fail - control of the craft auto switches to ground control.
We can already kill millions of people with dron pilots in nevada. Why not make drone pilots fly airliners.
Heck, in a few years - you just need a few technicians in the cock pit to be sure there are not physical issues - and let the ground pilots do all the work - but the air pilots can take over if the ground connection is lost...
With planes you could argue that the additional complexity of implementing something like this would be a safety liability in itself. It's not 100% clear what problem it would solve. On the other hand, plenty of people would pay to not have to do the driving themselves.
Pay disabled people to GTA 5 you home....
(aside: japanese cafes are employing disabled-driven robots....)
1. Lack of low-latency communication. The Ethiopian Airlines crash flight occurred when flightradar24 couldn’t see the plane. Two-way communication is even harder than just receiving transponder signals.
2. How, exactly, is a random Boeing employee going to help? They’re thrown into a situation in which sensors are faulty and they can’t see out the windshield.
It is very rare for crashes to occur because the pilots both become incapacitated. I do remember a crash that occurred because the pilots allowed the cabin to become depressurized and failed to diagnose the problem. Eventually everyone, including the pilots, fell unconscious and the plane circled on autopilot until it ran out of fuel.
“Data released by the Sweden-based service suggested the aircraft had climbed almost 1,000 feet after taking off from Addis Ababa, a hot and high-altitude airport whose thinner air requires extra effort from an aircraft's engines.” https://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFKBN1QR07Z
Reduced air density just means the engines don't produce as much power and the wings don't generate as much lift; a double-whammy of lower available engine thrust and greater speed required for the same takeoff roll.
I don't think it is anymore - not with noise abatement rules. You can take off in X meters with 100% throttle, or 2X with 80% - but the runway is 4X meters, so you takeoff with reduced throttle to make things quieter for the neighbors.