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Comment by CydeWeys | Hacker News Reader

Their response would have worked to return to level flight in non-MAX variants of the plane, though. Regardless of what the manual or checklist says, they had years of experience flying 737s that behaved in a specific way, they developed an unconscious/intuitive mental model of the plane based on those behaviors (that is faster and quicker to react than consulting checklists), and then a significant and deadly change was made to those behaviors and not communicated to them for cost-cutting reasons.

There's clearly a problem on Boeing's end here.

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From the article:

"Older 737s had another way of addressing certain problems with the stabilizers: Pulling back on the yoke, or control column, one of which sits immediately in front of both the captain and the first officer, would cut off electronic control of the stabilizers, allowing the pilots to control them manually.

That feature was disabled on the Max when M.C.A.S. was activated — another change that pilots were unlikely to have been aware of. After the crash, Boeing told airlines that when M.C.A.S. is activated, as it appeared to have been on the Lion Air flight, pulling back on the control column will not stop so-called stabilizer runaway."

If the above is true, it's near criminal that Boeing didn't notify pilots about the change. It's also not just about following checklists but understanding the systems of the aircraft.

There's a Faustian bargain made by accepting so much abstraction from the true nature of an airplane by using software, and yet also that abstraction is not absolute. Pilots are made responsible for knowing all of the aircraft's behaviors, with full abstraction (normal mode), as well as partial abstractions (error and failure modes, of which there can be quite a few for a specific made/model, many of which must be inferred rather than being clearly displayed). If pilots get confused, however complicated and unintuitive the system behavior, they are blamed.

The more "piloting" computers are doing, it seems appropriate that they will be increasingly, properly, accused of the equivalent of "pilot error". And yet here is Boeing, taking more and more piloting responsibility, while still blaming the pilots when that doesn't work out. It's a deification of engineering: when things go properly and safely, praise engineering; when things fail, blame the pilots.

The point is that their response may have worked for this particular fault, but would not have worked in general. There is a reason that there are more procedures than "pull back on the stick" - pilots do not know what the fault is.

> they developed an unconscious/intuitive mental model of the plane

If the plane has a fault, it's frequently not going to behave like their unconscious model says it should. In the happy case, rely on your intuition. In the unhappy case, when things are working as they should, follow the emergency procedure.

Sorr, but this is a little like saying "follow standard procedure to put the landing gear down. If that procedure doesn't work, repeat your intuitive action over and over until hopefully the landing gear goes down." No - follow the emergency procedure in place for landing gear fails to descend.

> not communicated to them for cost-cutting reasons

Take it up with the FAA and the airlines?

> Take it up with the FAA and the airlines?

Sure. It's not just Boeings fault. I believe the FAA will course correct from this and probably all changes to flight controls will need to be reported to pilots. More lessons written in blood.

It's still more Boeing's fault than anyone else's though. They were the ones who made this change and then tried to hide it to the fullest extent possible, so that it wouldn't trigger mandatory retraining.

> and then tried to hide it to the fullest extent possible

I haven't seen any evidence of this. It's definitely not supported by this NYTimes article.

Do you have a source?

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