Model Airplanes

Flight 302 — a two-hour shuttle between two of the busiest capitals in East Africa — was carrying passengers from at least four continents. The dead included 32 Kenyans, 18 Canadians, nine Ethiopians, eight each from the United States, China and Italy, and seven from Britain, the airline said. The French Foreign Ministry said nine of its citizens were aboard.

The passengers also reportedly included delegates traveling to Nairobi for a weeklong United Nations Environment Assembly that was scheduled to start on Monday.

[Read more about who the victims were and where they were from.]

While the cause of the crash was unclear, the disaster is certain to raise more doubts about the safety of the 737 Max 8, one of Boeing’s fastest-selling airplanes.

The plane, delivered to Ethiopian Airlines in November, was new, just like the Lion Air airplane that plunged nose down into the Java Sea last October, minutes after taking off from Jakarta, the Indonesian capital.

Flight 302 took off in good weather, but its vertical speed became unstable right after takeoff, fluctuating wildly, according to data published by FlightRadar24 on Twitter. In the first three minutes of flight, the vertical speed varied from zero feet per minute per hour to 1,472 to minus 1,920 — unusual during ascent.

“During takeoff, one would expect sustained positive vertical speed indications,” Ian Petchenik, a spokesman for FlightRadar24, said in an

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/world/africa/ethiopian-airlines-plane-crash.html

The F.A.A. hasn’t taken that kind of step on a fleet of aircraft since 2013, when it ordered Boeing 787s to stop flying temporarily after a problem with the plane’s battery system was identified.

The agency, which certified the latest version of Boeing’s best-selling jet as airworthy in 2017, has not taken that step with the Max 8 despite mounting questions about the plane’s safety record.

Boeing issued a statement late Monday night saying that for the past several months, in the aftermath of the crash of Lion Air Flight 610, the company has been developing a “flight control software enhancement for the 737 MAX, designed to make an already safe aircraft even safer.” According to the company, it has been working with the F.A.A. to roll out the software updates across the 737 MAX fleet in the coming weeks.

Airline workers in the U.S. express concern

The Association of Flight Attendants sent a letter to the F.A.A. calling for a review of the Max 8. “We need help from the regulators when the entire world is looking at two catastrophic incidents that happened on the same aircraft type within five months of each other,” said Sara Nelson, the president of the flight attendants’ union. “Our system is so safe that these things don’t happen today. That is why people are questioning what is going on here.”

Pilots also raised questions. “We’re very

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/11/world/boeing-737-max-air-crash-ethiopia.html

Mail-order homes sold by Sears, Roebuck and Co. in the early 20th century have proven more durable and enduring than the company itself.

Sears declared bankruptcy late last year, and most stores operated by the venerable retailer have closed. But thousands of Sears homes, sold through catalogs between 1908 and the early 1940s, still stand across the country, hundreds of them in central Ohio.

“I’m an old-house fan,” said Martin Granneman, the owner of a Sears kit house built in 1927 on McNaughten Road.

Granneman and his wife, Julia, bought the house in 1993.

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“When this property came available, I knew it was a Sears house,” Mr. Granneman, 50, said.

“I’m from North Ridgeville (Ohio), and there are several Sears houses there that have the same footprint as ours.”

He identified the house as a Sears “Vallonia” bungalow by the model’s picture in a reproduction of an antique Sears home catalog, he said.

Cindy Catanzaro, who lives in Springfield, maintains the website searshousesinohio.wordpress.com.

Catanzaro has used property records and other resources to identify more than 200 probable Sears houses in Franklin County.

She got hooked on the topic after she bought a small home in Springfield that she later learned was a Sears house, she said.

“So I began researching and found out there was another one across the street, then another down the street. It just snowballed.”

“When I ran out of houses to find in Clark County, I expanded” to find Sears houses all over

Article source: https://www.dispatch.com/entertainmentlife/20190310/sears-kit-homes-still-standing-in-neighborhoods-throughout-central-ohio