Not just the 737: Angle-of-attack sensors have had problems
WASHINGTON — In 2014, Lufthansa flight 1829 took off from Bilbao, Spain, and was ascending normally when the plane’s nose unexpectedly dropped. The plane — an Airbus A321 with 109 passengers on board — began to fall. The co-pilot tried to raise the nose with his controls. The plane pointed down even further. He tried again. Nothing, according to a report by German investigators.
As the Lufthansa plane fell from 31,000 feet, the captain pulled back on his stick as hard as he could. The nose finally responded. But he struggled to hold the plane level.
A call to a ground crew determined that the plane’s angle-of-attack sensors — which detect whether the wings have enough lift to keep flying — must have been malfunctioning, causing the Airbus’s anti-stall software to force the plane’s nose down. The pilots turned off the problematic unit and continued the flight. Aviation authorities in Europe and the United States eventually ordered the replacement of angle-of-attack sensors on many Airbus models.
Today, aviation experts say, the angle-of-attack sensor on Boeing jets will get fresh scrutiny after two Boeing 737 MAX airplanes crashed, in Ethiopia last week and in Indonesia in October.
Crash investigators have raised concerns about the role of the sensor — a device used on virtually every commercial flight — in the October crash of Lion Air flight 610. There are concerns it may have sent the wrong signals to new software on the flight that automatically dips the plane’s nose to prevent a stall.
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