The FAA has lost all credibility on issuing safety certification on any aircraft and it should be replaced with a proper international safety certification organisation before any of Boeing's aircraft are allowed back into the sky

or was it a dragon with a blonde pilot???

Agree, the incorrect data from the AoA input started the sequence of events. This invalid input in itself should not have escalated into the critical event that it became. The bird strike scenario is one of many possible causes for the invalid data, but possibly the best case scenario for Boeing. It seems like a leak / speculation to help the share price rather than informed knowledge from the investigation. Actually a bird strike was my initial thought, but then I read about other more serious possibilities. In the Ethiopian case it seems unlikely that a faulty AoA vane was the cause, although this does seem to be a line of enquiry for the Lion Air investigation. Another scenario is that it was an electromechanical failure downstream of the sensor. The data released appears to suggest an instantaneous change in the AoA position. Intuition suggests that a bird strike would lead to a gradual change in position and maybe not a steady value. An alternative view is a change in value of one bit in the digital representation of the analogue AoA value. This hypothesis is explained nicely by Simon on Aviation Herald. What could cause an intermittent fluctuation in a data value? Maybe that is where the investigators need to analyse the infamous swarm which is rumoured to plague Boeing built aircraft. This leads to another area of concern, that of the alleged failings in quality control at certain manufacturing facilities. When it comes to ungrounding, signing off an act of God (aka bird strike) might be much quicker and less costly than a fleet wide inspection of all flight control wiring and replacement / rework of damaged wiring and components. The later should certainly affect the bottom line for Boeing and the fall in share price potentially reversing the modest gains due to the bird strike story.

It does sound very unlikely in this situation. But, it is possible.

folding wings is the stupidest thing for an airliner. i wouls never step foot on an 777x. and never on a 737max.

Most pilots know when they have a bird strike. Happens everyday. That a hapless bird hit the sensor and didn't get sucked into an engine, very weird. No word if bird parts were found in the engines, nor if the word "bird" is mentioned in the the cockpit recorder. Time will tell.

Sorry for the apparent misinformation on the altitude of the aircraft. I still think a bird strike is a misdirect.

I believe Ethiopian was only about 1,000 feet AGL when this occurred. HAAB (Bole International) Elevation is 7,625 feet AMSL.

very true.

In the Lion Air case the AoA vane was replaced. The crash occurred on the 2nd flight after replacement. It seems that the investigators recovered the “faulty” sensor and also have the one that was removed from the aircraft. No word yet on the results of the analysis of these components. If the one removed from the aircraft is found to be fault free, it could have much bigger implications on the airworthiness of the aircraft.

I believe this was already answered early in the Lion Air investigation / speculation. It was said that the computerised troubleshooting process was inconclusive and stopped as soon as one anomaly was found. It did not continue to verify the correct operation of the whole system, but assumed that replacement of one component resolves the fault. It is also unclear why replacement of the AoA vane did not include full calibration and testing of the system. I believe the conclusion of this part of the investigation was that the aircraft should have been grounded due to the failure to resolve a serious fault in a critical flight system. Further it was unfortunate that due to a programming error the AoA sensor disagree light fitted to the 737NG was disabled in the MAX, unless the customer had purchased the option of display of AoA values which was offers as an extra cost add-on not chosen by most airlines. This omission was allegedly known by Boeing, but withheld to be fixed in a later software update.

Good point. I would not be one to answer that!

Really? You again? Please. Find another occupation.