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Comment by treis | Hacker News Reader

>Boeing’s response to the accidents was to blame the pilots, there is precedent for this word in this situation.

Your cite says Boeing said:

>The actions of the pilots played a role in the chain of events that caused the crashes

Which isn't blaming them and is factually correct in both crashes. The Lion Air pilots didn't disable electric trim and the Ethiopian air ones turned it back on. Those actions played a role in the crashes. Whether that makes the pilots responsible and at fault for the crash is a separate question.

>If you want to fix the problem, you must know what the problem is.

And, again, the problem (among other problems) was that the designer of the aircraft made assumptions about pilots that were incorrect.

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Don’t forget the pilot of the previous LA607 flight was able to recover successfully. Other pilot crew had more flight time, thus more experience. Look at NTSB crash data, experienced crews have a higher chance of lower fatalities in an accident. Why? Because these pilots understand their vehicle like the back of their hand. A 5000+ hour pilot has deep knowledge, for instance, of the hydraulic system of the plane and will try to e.g drop flaps to squeak out extra fluid in an emergency. Is this a good thing? Maybe. Probably. Is it sustainable? Like managing a growing server farm manually, probably not.

Planes are going to get dumber, but there will be a lot more connected planes for remote troubleshooting/control

What type of process could be used to make sure that their experience and knowledge gets back into the mainline product?

How about Boeing stops taking cost saving measures that end up throwing unnecessary curve balls at otherwise well trained pilots?

At the end of the day, this is the foundation of the problem.

But airbus has had that design philosophy since inception. The joke is a Boeing will tell you it thinks an engine has failed and ask if you want to shutdown, an airbus will tell you it thinks an engine has failed and will shutdown the engine for you. Which approach is correct? Depends on the situation but pilots will debate this everyday like emacs and vi

I think MCAS represents a change for Boeing where it will start doing things without asking.

> Is it sustainable? Like managing a growing server farm manually, probably not.

Sustainable for what exactly? Being good enough to handle complex emergency procedures?

There will always be a more experience subset of pilots plus new ones coming in. They have the benefit of having two pilots (sometimes more) so they can even off the average experience in the cockpit.

Although newbie co-pilots have contributed to crashes in the past as well.

The pilot of LNI043 did NOT recover successfully. He failed, the first officer failed. It was a jump pilot who recognized the issue and the solution. Also the MCAS upset in LNI043 was no where near as aggressive as LNI610 or ET302.

Literally no one disputes the importance of experience. But you keep throwing it out as relevant to LNI610 and ET302 without any explanation or causal connection. In the case of Colgan Air 3407, the two pilots had 5500+ hours of experience between them, each well over the current ATP experience of 1500 hours total time requirement, and yet the captain inexplicably, likely due to startle factor, pulled back on the yoke contrary to his training, and made the stall worse and the airplane unrecoverable. Who cares if 5000+ hour pilots know to drop flaps in an emergency if they get startled in a stall and make the stall worse by pulling back on the yoke!

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