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Pilot error is always assumed for pilots of all races. The French pilot who was allegedly responsible for crashing an Airbus during a flyover for an air show fought decades for clearing his name.

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".

But in this case the pilots and airlines were accused to be a lower tier then the american pilots. So on top of the regular accusations if this would have been an american airplane the third world country accusations were added on top as an extra.

There was definitely an air of superiority of American pilots. The problem is that there is a grain of truth to it.

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.

So, do you know as a fact that plots in other countries are less passionate or have less training?

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.

Apparently somewhere around 30% if this is to be believed.

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.

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.

Sure, but southwest already has US pilots, many of them ex-military, who have all of the advantages I've mentioned.

So, do you know as a fact that plots in other countries are less passionate or have less training?

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.

It is hard to imagine how any 737 pilot would be unaware of the problem and resulting Boeing advice given the massive amount of attention this has reviewed. Regardless of training issues I find it hard to believe that any pilot would be so indifferent as to ignore this.

So you blame the pilot that he is not training itself in the new hidden changes of the airplane? Isn't Boeing duty to create the checklists/procedures for the possible issue ? or we let this work for the pilots internet forums?

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

Of course it is Boeing and airlines responsibility. But if for some reason that training was absent I would expect pilot to seek the information themselves. To suggest otherwise is an insult to their intelligence and professionalism. Of course pilots are going to take an interest in crashes on the aeroplane they fly! Particularly when it is the biggest aviation story in years. Porbably something that they discuss regularly with other pilots. That is why I think the poor training angle is implausible for this particular issue and just prejudice.

But if for some reason that training was absent I would expect pilot to seek the information themselves.

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...

I was just having this discussion with my team yesterday. Easier to blame the pilot when they are dead. I use to believe most NTSB reports and that most errors were pilot errors. Probably true, but probably not as high either.

The first officer on that flight was extremely inexperienced. He only had 200 hours of total flight time. In the U.S., you need 1500 to sit in the right seat of an airliner in scheduled service. While I would not put the blame on the pilots for the accident, it's impossible to know if it might have turned out differently had there been two experienced pilots in the cockpit.

There were two experienced pilots in Lion Air 610.

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.

As I said, I would not put the blame on the pilots. That is clear. Boeing made an unsafe airplane. Airline safety is a layered thing though. Even if it's Boeing's fault, it's possible that the pilots could have recovered, even though it looks like recovery is not necessarily easy.

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.

Please stop looking for racism in each and every aspect of public discourse, it does way more harm than it has the potential to do good. The harm lies in the ever larger focus on things which have the potential to divide people, be they race or sex or gender or religion or any other section. In this case there may have been a suggestion of the pilots having undergone less rigorous training and the aircraft being maintained at a lower standard than would be the case for 1st world airlines. These things may be true or they may not be, the airline safety records are among the potential ways to ascertain the veracity of such statements. This has nothing whatsoever to do with race so it does not make sense to try to draw this in as a factor unless someone made explicit claims in that direction. I have not seen any such claims, if you can point at them - and I do mean explicit claims, not so-called 'dog whistles' as those are subjective - please do so, otherwise keep race out of this discussion.

Fine. Not racism then.

Can we agree on xenophobic and bigoted?

The discussions here provide ample evidence for that.

Just check the bottom of this threat with “show all comments” enabled in your preferences.

I think a lot of people still have this idea that everyone in Africa is poor. The reality is that Africa has flagship carriers that are as old and prestigious as those found in the West and that the African economy is booming.

You really shouldn’t ever trust the NYT. They haven’t been trustworthy for a while.

Their report merely states that a simulator was available, and that the crew did not train it it. It even includes the fact that Boeing did not consider such training necessary.

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.

My bad. It was me drawing the conclusion.

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!

Thanks for having the grace of changing your mind.

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.

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

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.

I think it's pretty disgusting that you're still smearing the Lion Air Pilots despite all the facts that came to light after the Ethiopian crash.

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!

>I think it's pretty disgusting that you're still smearing the Lion Air Pilots despite all the facts that came to light after the Ethiopian crash.

Thank you for your personal attack.

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

He didn't attack you personally. He attacked your action, which was smearing the pilots (which is indeed disgusting).

As we have now learned, switching to the manual control is useless when the aircraft is in this condition (high speed, stab down, elevator up).

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

>As we have now learned, switching to the manual control is useless when the aircraft is in this condition (high speed, stab down, elevator up).

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...

It was recoverable in a similar situation. That does not mean it was recoverable in both situations.

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.

>It was recoverable in a similar situation. That does not mean it was recoverable in both situations.

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...

The original comment you were replying to referenced Boeing's smear of the pilots, not Lion Air the company. The pilots would have no knowledge of the first two items on your list (the ones I did not address, as they weren't relevant to the comment you were replying to).

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.

>The original comment you were replying to referenced Boeing's smear of the pilots, not Lion Air the company.

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.

> Which clearly references Lion Air the company.

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.

>My point is that is that it is appropriate to call out Boeing for their attempt at deflecting blame.

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.

Slight correction, they turned off the stab trim and tried to manually re-trim the plane, but the aerodynamic loading on the stabilizer was so great that they couldn't turn the trim wheel by hand. So, sadly, they re-engaged the stab trim and began to use the switches to trim up, but the MCAS came back 5 seconds later, trimmed down again, and flew them into the ground.