Some of the sentiments expressed here was borderline racist. (badly trained, overworked cluelless third world pilots not even capable to follow a checklist).

One of the worst smear jobs was actually by the New York Times accusing the captain of the Ethiopian plane not having trained in a 787-MAX simulator.

Hello? Wasn't that the whole sales pitch that the plane requires no training at all for certified 787 pilots? In addition the MCAS crash scenario was neither part of the manuals nor of simulator training.

Great smear job, NYT! I'm sure Boeing will thank you with a ton of ads.

This[1] fascinating piece outlines what happened to a US pilot who felt uncomfortable with the minimal training provided and wanted additional simulator training or at least an instructor on his first flight. Spoiler: It was not a great carreer move.

If I sound angry as hell, I am. That Boeing didn't ground the plane after the Lion Air crash (they were busy smearing the airline an the pilots instead) is nothing short of criminal.

What a disgusting company!

[1] https://qz.com/1584233/boeing-737-max-what-happened-when-one...

He also claimed that the system had "artificial stupidity", that was the time when pilots first had the fun of encountering the many Airbus "flight laws".

A big part of this is that the American Airforce train a huge number of pilots to an incredibly high standard who eventually leave the military and become civilian pilots. Any pilot who isn't naturally gifted in the art of flying an aeroplane will be flunked before finishing their training. They are tested in ways that a 200 hour civilian CPL just never will be.

Even the increasing numbers of pilots coming to flying through a civilian tract in the US have a number of benefits. Classically they flew cancelled cheques around the US in beaten up twin engine aircraft in all weathers while building the required number of hours. Even in modern times, due to a culture of GA flying, they've got a lot more opportunities to fly different aircraft types (taildragger, floatplanes, gliders), fly aerobatics etc.

It would be interesting if you have a source of how many civilian pilots are ex-military pilots, as an non-expert I would say that having experience with a fighter plane is not better then having same hours of experience with a civilian plane, it is not like fighter plane experience is much better then other planes when considering you will fly a big commercial plane in the end.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/04/20/the-o...

"A grain of truth" doesn't mean it's provably true. But it's hard to argue that flying a plane load of passengers on autopilot from the same 4 airports for hours on end remotely gives you the same skill level as flying low level, in high performance and often in formation with other aircraft would.

Fine, I'll argue that. Southwest pilots do just that because Southwest is primarily a short haul airline. They do more takeoffs and landings on a daily basis than nearly any other airline and often from relatively small airports. If you're flying for them you're going to routinely practice the most dangerous parts of the flight. IIRC Southwest is less draconian about mandating autopilot usage than many other airlines.

They have a reputation for being aggressive about timing (as my friend put it, you never want to be stuck in front of a Southwest pilot) and yet they have an enviable safety record.

Option C: crew resource management and by extension culture. Take a look at one of (if not the) worst aviation wrecks in history: the Tenerife disaster. A Dutch 747 (KLM) and American 747 (PanAm) collided and became engulfed in a gigantic fireball. The biggest factor was that nobody was willing to speak up or acknowledge in either cockpit that there was uncertainty and an unsafe situation. Yes these are two western countries, but after the wreck western aviation culture changed dramatically as a significant emphasis was put on what amounts to "see something? say something!!" (a.k.a. crew resource management, CRM).

CRM has been very slow to trickle down to, for instance, East Asian airlines where deference to authority has a much stronger hold. Take a look at the Asiana wreck at SFO. Two pilots in the cockpit were repeatedly calling out significant mistakes, but the pilot flying ignored them. Neither of the other pilots took control of the situation and the plane was flown straight into the ground.

Training, as well, seems to be something American pilots are pretty prickly about. After a Continental regional airline (Colgan Air) wrecked the solution was deemed to be requiring more pilot training (despite the fact that experience was NOT the problem in this crash). For all the belly aching about the guy in the left set of the Ethiopian Air jet having only a few hundred hours — up until 2013 the FAA only required 250 hours of experience to get a certificate allowing commercial flight (ATP). The requirement now is 1,500 hours, but it sure doesn't seem like American air travel has become dramatically safer since 2013.

I don't think passion is the right word, but the USA has a much stronger general aviation culture than many other counties. Someone living in America is going to have many more opportunities to fly a civilian plane than someone living in, for instance, South Korea. The military experience may even be detrimental as it's often going to focus on strict hierarchies (see CRM) when this may create safety problems.

Edit: I want to add that Indonesian aviation is notoriously unsafe and most Indonesian airlines have been banned from EU airspace (with some allowed back more recently). Lion Air, in particular, has a bad record of wrecking planes and lots of allegations about falsifying maintenance records. Hell, there is that one Lion Air captain who posts cockpit videos on youtube (including at least one showing some startlingly sloppy behavior). But if you look at flight 610 specifically you'll start to see a lot of things that would put even the best pilots in a bad situation. Even looking at the data from flightaware should've provoked a bit of an "are these pilots REALLY that bad?" response. A certain amount of initial suspicion was warranted, especially since pilot error is an extremely common cause of crashes even in western countries. A more continued drive to vilify the JT610 pilots or excuse Boeing's behavior is, IMO, out of line.

Though from the article it appears that pilots followed all the official procedures,

Here[1]'s a rather sobering read for you what happened to a pilot who tried exactly that.

Spoiler alert: It was not a smart carreer move at that time.

[1] https://qz.com/1584233/boeing-737-max-what-happened-when-one...

In the case where prescribed procedures are followed, and don't work well enough (i.e. you're still stuck in a bad situation that continues to degrade), you're basically asking for experience to manufacturer an alternative on the spot. That's rather like a Hail Mary pass, in terms of logic. It's a 'well maybe maybe not'.

I'm not sure how that progresses the conversation, and yet people on HN keep bringing this up as if it's relevant without actually showing any new dots let alone connecting them. Setting aside hard evidence proving experience is a factor, you don't even have a hypothesis of how it might be a factor.

He had only 200 hours of flight time. Well so fucking what? You have to make the case. It doesn't make its own case. The reason why the U.S. has a higher regulatory requirement for experience is because of Colgan Air 3407, in part, even though the experienced pilot in command showed the same incorrect response to stall warning as the second in command, both of which were contrary to training, and also the training itself was inadequate.

I've got quite a lot more total time experience than the second in command of the Ethiopian airlines pilot. I can't tell you with any meaningful certainty I would have done anything different.

I'd say my life experience is more relevant than my flight hours experience. And my life experience when encountering either human or computer confusion at only 1000 feet above the ground, is to consider it somewhere between incompetency and sabotage. I would not be diagnosing that shit either way, I'd disconnect all of it.

And I would be irate at discovering a form of autopilot (MCAS is a safeguard, or control law) that I was not previously informed of by either my airline, or regulator, or the airplane manufacturer. And in fact, U.S. pilots are pissed at exactly that. Including or even in particular the ones with 1500+ hours.

I also have a fair bit more than 200 hours, and I can't say whether I would have made a smoking hole in the ground or not either. Still, if I were put in that position, I would much rather have an experienced pilot sitting to the right of me.

Having an inexperienced pilot that probably hasn't ever experienced a real emergency is a significant liability when you're trying to troubleshoot something like this without a lot of extra time. In this case, they would have had a better chance of surviving if they had identified that the problem was MCAS before the plane got so wildly out of trim, or they had made the decision to turn the electric trim back on sooner. This is a lot easier if you've got two fully fledged pilots instead of effectively a captain and an apprentice.

Say what you will about the 1500 hour rule, but there has been precisely one fatality in all of U.S. aviation in the ten years since the Colgan flight.

Can we agree on xenophobic and bigoted?

The discussions here provide ample evidence for that.

Coming back to Western European air safety biases: Russian airlines had a bad reputation for many decades in Western Europe. Racially, you cannot get more white/caucasian than Russians.

Introducing race without specific quotes is nonsense.

You even used the word “explicit” yourself...

I'm saying it out right, not 'implying'. Based on your comment history, I think I'm right on all three of those adjectives, though I'm happy to be corrected.

How is it untrustworthy to report these uncontested facts? You are drawing a conclusion that the article does not make, namely that the lack of simulator use was the singular cause of the accident.

It takes some gall to accuse the Times of a false conclusion that happens entirely in your head.

And granted: That was mainly from the headlines, which were also picked up by other publications.

I would remove my comment, but that kills the flow of the thread so I let it stand and apologise for my making the unfounded comment.

I was under the impression (probably not unreasonable if you look at Boeing's reaction in the last few weeks) that the company was actively smearing the pilots and using their press connections to actively do that.

Mea culpa!

And you weren’t entirely incorrect: my assertion in the top post in is thread that Boeing was working on blaming the pilots was based on something I remember reading in either the NYT or Atlantic. But that article was very explicitly saying that it was narrative being pushed by Boeing.

In a rush to put to blame on Boeing everyone seems to have forgotten that Lion Air badly screwed up:

(1) The aircraft exhibited the same failure on its previous flight. Not fixing it before the next flight is a huge maintenance screw up.

(2) That failure and the steps to correct it should have been in the log book and the next pilots should have been keenly aware of the potential issue and how to fix it

(3) The pilots counteracted MCAS some 20 times by using the electronic trim control but never switched over to manual control.

A better designed plane might not have tested the mettle of Lion Air as sternly as this issue did. However, that doesn't change that the fact that when tested the pilots and Lion Air performed terribly.

It wasn't just Boeing defending their plane. Pilots unions also came out and said that they saw no issue with the plane and that their members felt like they could handle any issue.

The Ethiopian pilots turned off the electric trim control, only to have to turn it back on again.

That wasn't the position the Lion Air flight was in.

I don't think there is much debate that the Lion Air flight was recoverable since the pilots on the previous flight recovered from the same issue:

>As the Lion Air crew fought to control their diving Boeing Co. 737 Max 8, they got help from an unexpected source: an off-duty pilot who happened to be riding in the cockpit.

>That extra pilot, who was seated in the cockpit jumpseat, correctly diagnosed the problem and told the crew how to disable a malfunctioning flight-control system and save the plane, according to two people familiar with Indonesia’s investigation.

>The next day, under command of a different crew facing what investigators said was an identical malfunction, the jetliner crashed into the Java Sea killing all 189 aboard.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-19/how-an-ex...

Any incident like this is a chain of events (which in this case started back with the original design decisions). Many links in that chain aren't obvious, and no two chains are identical. Just because the chain was broken in one case doesn't mean it was reasonable to expect it to be broken in all of them.

Similarly, because it was unrecoverable in one situation [based solely on speculation at this point] doesn't mean it was unrecoverable in another.

>Any incident like this is a chain of events (which in this case started back with the original design decisions). Many links in that chain aren't obvious, and no two chains are identical. Just because the chain was broken in one case doesn't mean it was reasonable to expect it to be broken in all of them.

I'll note here that you have at best addressed one of my three points. To add color:

>Airline mechanics tried four times to fix related issues on the plane starting Oct. 26, according to the Indonesia preliminary report.

Do you think that's ok?

>However, the pilots on the harrowing Oct. 28 flight [the flight before the crash] from Bali to Jakarta didn’t mention key issues with the flight after they landed, according to the report.

Do you think that's ok?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-19/how-an-ex...

You're absolutely correct that Lion Air might have had the opportunity to prevent Boeing's design failure from bringing down this plane (this time). That still leaves the biggest share of the blame squarely in Boeing's lap.

I responded to:

>the Lion Air crash (they were busy smearing the airline an the pilots instead)

Which clearly references Lion Air the company.

>You're absolutely correct that Lion Air might have had the opportunity to prevent Boeing's design failure from bringing down this plane (this time). That still leaves the biggest share of the blame squarely in Boeing's lap.

Blame is not a competition and having a more at fault party doesn't excuse your failures. Lion Air failed badly and the pilots didn't take an obvious step to correct their issue. They merit the blame they are getting.

Ah, yep, I misread that (can I blame the typo...? ;) )

My point is that is that it is appropriate to call out Boeing for their attempt at deflecting blame. The pilots apparently did not take an action that _may_ have saved the plane (we now know it may not have). That doesn't change the fact that the issue they failed to correct was a faulty design in the first place, and would have resulted in a crash at some point.

Sure, but that doesn't mean going the other way and deflecting blame from Lion Air and the pilots.

>The pilots apparently did not take an action that _may_ have saved the plane (we now know it may not have).

Disabling electric trim would have absolutely saved the Lion Air flight just like it did when the same issue cropped up on the previous flight. Some speculated (which appears to be incorrect) that the Ethiopian Air flight was in a situation that they couldn't recover from, but the Lion Air flight was not in that situation.

The Lion Air pilots identified that the trim was incorrect and reset it at least 20 times. It's fair to fault them for not coming to the conclusion that the electric trim system was malfunctioning and that they should disable it.

Namely that Boeing didn't even bother to document MCAS, let alone deem it necessary to provide training for purely commercial reasons.

Turns out that their documented emergency procedure also isn't helpful once the plane becomes unstable due to their design fuck-up.

Way to go!

Thank you for your personal attack.

Besides that, I'll just note that you didn't actually address any of my points.

After the Lion Air crash, Boeing basically asserted the plane was perfectly safe, and that the pilots should have followed the runaway trim process - this means turning off the electric motor which moves the trim, and having the pilots move it manually using a wheel provided for the purpose. Boeing has tried to imply that in the midst of an emergency which looks very different from a runaway trim, pilots should have followed this procedure and this was in some way their fault.

The Ethiopian Airlines crash has shown that Boeing was being disingenous. The problem is that turning off the trim motors at this stage of the flight leaves the pilots unable to move the trim fast enough manually before they crash and they are forced to switch on the electric trim - which again allows the MCAS to kick in. When pilots who are fully informed of MCAS still were unable to control the plane following Boeing's procedures then imagine the plight of the Lion Air pilots who recovered from the fault 26 times before crashing but had no idea anything called MCAS even existed. An honest admission by Boeing after the first crash would have prevented the second crash and the loss of further lives.

From my reading, the Lion Air pilots could have disabled electronic trim anytime after those 26 recoveries and been fine. But the Ethiopian Airlines pilots only had 1000' of altitude to recover in, and that wasn't enough. Which leads to the question of why MCAS was triggering at 1000' AGL, since it isn't supposed to activate when flaps are deployed... I don't think MCAS is going to end up being the sole hardware issue on that flight.

If the pilots are reactive or even panicked at the unexpected uncommanded pitch behavior, they may have been doomed right from that moment. The previous flight, Lion Air 34, the pilots likewise did not immediately cutoff autotrim. We have no transcript from that flight either. None of these pilots have been told of, or simulator trained, an MCAS upset scenario. Startle factor is relevant and can cause total cockpit breakdown. The 737 PCU design flaw and subsequent accidents show this. Can problem specific training mitigate crashes? Sure. How would these pilots have received MCAS upset training when they don't even know MCAS exists and the simulators didn't have such an failure option? And should they now be required to have such training? Including simulator training?

As for why MCAS is triggered below 1500' AGL in the Ethiopian Airlines case, that is a very good question. I have not seen the altitude above which MCAS is supposed to apply, and I haven't discovered how that trigger altitude is determined, radar altimeter?

Most of the facts we still don't know.

'Could have' in the purely mechanical "we think this would have been possible and allowed the aircraft to survive" sense, not the "the pilots knew how to do this" sense.

> As for why MCAS is triggered below 1500' AGL in the Ethiopian Airlines case, that is a very good question. I have not seen the altitude above which MCAS is supposed to apply, and I haven't discovered how that trigger altitude is determined, radar altimeter?

It's not altitude limited, but flaps limited - so would have engaged when flaps were retracted sometime after reaching 1000' AGL. (at least, 1000' seems to be the altitude mentioned in the procedure summaries I've seen for other 737 models - things might be different for high altitude takeoffs) And as it turns out, ET-302 reached FL 140 ~5 minutes into the flight, so there goes that theory.

> Most of the facts we still don't know.

And hopefully we'll eventually learn them, and write some new rules with them.

Flaps-up was commanded about a minute after take-off, which seems about right. The AGL altitude of the plane is hard to determine from the graphs as they only list pressure altitude. It's a high airport with, I believe, rising terrain. I'm not sure if the 1000' AGL cited is supposed to be at first MCAS engagement, or the last one, or at some other point in between.

One of the effects of allocating blame is that large swathes of the general public will "switch off" and not ask questions of their politicians, who in turn apply little pressure to improve or advocate for improved standards (which big business and comfortable institutions see as too much government interference).

I can't recall any such incident where it wasn't implied that the it was the pilots fault, implying incompetence. The fact that most of us may have inherent and often unconscious racial biases (black and white and other actually display the exactly the same biases) just makes this play damage control that much easier.

Readers would do well to remember this also applies to all the people who were 100% sure it was MCAS related before the wreckage even stopped smoldering.

Given the obvious similarities between the two incidents (same phase of flight, same apparent pitch control problems, known issue that would result in that behavior, etc), I don't think it was unreasonable for people to point out the likely connection.

I am pretty sure any mistaken criticism of Boeing will be swiftly responded to and corrected at HN or elsewhere by Boeing's PR lackeys.

"First and foremost, our deepest sympathies are with the families and loved ones of those onboard Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302."

and

"Safety is our highest priority as we design, build and support our airplanes."[1]

Yeah, sure! We believe you.

[1] http://www.boeing.com/commercial/737max/737-max-update.page

1. https://www.cnbc.com/id/100869966

But in that case they had a point.

Seniority is super important in Asian culture. You just! don't! criticize! your! superiors! period.

That's extremely diametral for resources management and crew communication in a cockpit.

The first officer may tend to say nothing, even if he believes the plane should pull up in order not to offend the senior person.

That said, Asian airlines learned from this and put a lot of effort to rectify this issue.

That's absolutely no excuse for Boeing's despicable behavior on those last two crashes.

The airlines you mention score lower on 'Safety Rating' due to lack of IOSA certification.

"Registering for IOSA certification and auditing is not mandatory therefore an airline that does not have IOSA certification may have either failed the IOSA audit or alternatively chosen not to participate."

For a budget airline I can see them not participating for cost reasons. Does this make them less safe?

In any case, not being a „budget“ airline that has to cut such costs would seem to fit rather well with my argument that Ethopian is not some gravel-airstrip bush operation flying leftover Sowiet machinery.

just wanted to say I appreciate the imagery. this is exactly how I interpreted US media to be framing Ethiopian

My issue is that a 'safety rating' based on an optional certification is being used to compare airlines as more/less safe.

Why not stick to what I believe to be the universal measures of EU allowed, FAA endorsed and ICAO country audit.

In a wild application of signaling theory, certification may even be a useful signal without regard to the actual substance of that certification, as long as it is expensive. Just like a peacock shows his abundance of resources by wasting some of them on jazzy plumage.[0]

I think you’re sort of sympathizing with the airlines here, who are somewhat pressured into spending that, from their perspective, is wasteful: after all, they know they are doing all that stuff they are getting certified for.

I would say (a) don’t anthromorphize corporations—they may be people, but not ones deserving sympathy. And, (b), certification schemes are one of the many often disregarded frictional costs of a market economy. They are unnecessary only in a mythical benevolent economic system that has so far eluded us.

[0] also a good reason to justify flying only with airlines that offer free peanuts.

I’ll make it a point to retract and apologize on all three forums where I made those comments (two tech and one aviation).

I don’t read the minister’s comments today as unequivocally stating that.

You're the one making the claim that the pilots acted inappropriately. Now you're saying you require evidence contradicting your claim before you retract it?

The aviation minister's comment today does not carry weight in excess of the photographic, factual evidence, IMO. There are too many "loopholes" that she could be exploiting without leaving her statement technically incorrect.

The good thing, such as it is, is that the facts are almost surely going to emerge here. The CVR transcript, FDR dump, and analysis of whether there's a mechanism for the electric trim to run even with the stab trim cutout switches in cutout and whether that can exceed the crew's ability to stop and reverse the trim setting manually will be telling. I do admit that the minister has greater access to that information than you or I do at this time. It is possible, but not decided, that she's had time to review all that information, knows with certainty the crew is blameless, and has chosen to not make a specific enough statement to support that for any number of valid reasons.

But the only way it would end at the total extreme is if they were within 2.5 degrees of max when they re-enabled electric trim and they crashed within 5 seconds. Otherwise, they should have been able to at least get some adjustment.

>Boeing’s anti-stall software on a doomed Ethiopian Airlines jet re-engaged up to four times after the crew initially turned it off due to suspect data from an airflow sensor, two people familiar with the matter have said.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/apr/03/ethiopian-a...

4 cycles should have gotten them to 7-10 degrees away from the extreme. So something else was going on.

That's an interesting possibility, which if they didn't know about it (I don't blame them), they may have felt they had no choice but to go "off checklist" and re-engage the electric trim system. I'd expect that would be in the context of "PF commands nose up pitch trim continuously while PNF engages the trim cutout to normal and monitors."

That's a tougher hand dealt the crew than I previously contemplated and if that's what they did, it's one for which I will owe them a retraction.

This is on page 25 of the report.

was better. sucks cause its not even their fault.

This incident was decidedly not their fault.

The blame lies 100% with Boing.

This event doesn’t not count toward their safety rating.

I wish the article was clearer on what procedures were followed that didn't work. Did the crew follow the runaway stab trim checklist? If so, then that's really bad for Boeing, but I can't find anything specific yet.

I think this jump is unfair. It's easy to say this but the reality of the matter is that all public information we have points to a system that should have been redundant wasn't, a system that was in place (MCAS) was not as well known or understood as it should have been to pilots, and we also know Boeing (just like Volkswagen) made an explicit choice to cheat with the explicit goal of profits. Except in this case Boeing's choice directly led to hundreds of immediate deaths. This last point is why I, personally, think your comment is unfair. You're dismissing Boeing's mistakes but accepting all of the pilot's.

Someone at Boeing in executive ranks, like Volkswagen, needs to go to prison if they are found guilty of neglect. As should the employees of the FAA who approved flightworthiness.

Is it shameful because we suspect that it was an intentional lie on their behalf, or is it shameful even if it was honest opinion of these Boeing representatives at the time?

Exactly this.

> or is it shameful even if it was honest opinion of these Boeing representatives at the time?

It seems fairly obvious Boeing was aware the 737-MAX had some serious faults, but instead of admitting those faults it seems fairly obvious they went out of their way to deflect blame way from their failed aircraft onto the now dead pilots.

If they admit in any way to releasing a known dangerous product they open themselves to massive damages.

When the Lockerbie bombing brought down Pan Am Flight 103, the relatives sued PA AM over those deaths.

In that case a jury found Pan Am was liable for damages because it's poor security procedures had failed to protect the passengers.

I would imagine lawyers would be salivating at the though of suing Boeing over these two disasters in what would appear to be a much easier case to win.

Latent racism may have helped some people believe it was the pilots' fault, but I wouldn't ascribe the actual racism part to Boeing in this case.

I am at least twice as likely to kill my airplane than my airplane is to kill me.

This, however, is mitigated by a regulatory, technological and cultural safety net, which usually corrects such mistakes.

For example: There's an important cultural understanding that pilots admit safety relevant issues, even if they made a mistake in the process and not getting punished for it. The effect is that all involved entities learn from that and correct it in the future.

When something really bad happens pilot error is mostly part of the puzzle, but the bad outcome is a sequence of problems, which lead to catastrophy.

A great example is the worst disaster in civil aviation history ever[1], which ultimately was triggered by the error of a very experienced pilot. But there were a lot of small puzzle pieces, which needed to fall into place for this catastrophy to happen.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster

edit : spello

The process you describe does happen, but IMO, clearly articulating the facts and assigning findings of probable cause (the latter is what you term pointing fingers) is an essential element of that improvement process.

The is a strong safety culture in aviation overall. It’s rare for one isolated mistake to result in a hull loss, but rather is usually a series of issues where the “holes in the Swiss cheese all line up”.

No doubt Boeing and others are going to improve technical and human factors elements from this crash. It doesn’t help anyone in this process to not assign probable cause, IMO.