Conflicting "truths" about the 737MAX crashes.

[schmitt trigger]

In every worldwide newsworthy event, there will be as a matter of course, conflicting views on the event. This is hardly surprising.

But I firmly believe that there are always a pair of truths on every story, much like a coin's two different sides.

The 737MAX crashes will of course follow this trend. I've tried to read as much as possible in an effort to figure it out what really happened. But it is difficult to assign responsibility.

Some news will blame it on a greedy, unfocused airplane manufacturer. That deliberately cut corners in an effort to beat a rival. And then hid those decisions from the pilots which fly these beasts.
But others will blame it on the pilots, or to phrase it more accurately, their lack of "airmanship", that sixth sense developed by seasoned pilots. Airmanship is acquired by careful vetting, continuous training, and of course flying for a company on a strong safety corporate culture.

I can't say I am any closer to making up my mind. This is a really complex subject.

What is clear to me is that, to borrow the words of one of the authors: "You’re looking to an example of late stage capitalism, the byzantine process by which investment capital becomes completely abstracted from basic protocols of production and oversight".

In plain English, as long as the ever increasing financial metrics are met, everything else be damned. Both the aircraft manufacturers and the air carriers suffer from hyper capitalism.

Here are a sample pair of diverging articles, which summarize both positions:

https://newrepublic.com/article/154944/boeing-737-max-investigation-indonesia-lion-air-ethiopian-airlines-managerial-revolution

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-crashes.html?searchResultPosition=1

[Sal Ammoniac]

I think the problems are many-fold. From cost-cutting by the airlines to reduced pilot training.

I don't think competition between Boeing and Airbus has much to do with it. Boeing has always had competition--Convair, Lockheed, Douglas.

Pilot training is way different now than it used to be. In the old days, most airline pilots were former military pilots who had thousands of hours of airtime in real airplanes (bombers, transports, etc). Nowadays many airline pilots don't have military training. They learn to "fly" in simulators and have very little time flying real planes (if any) when they're hired by an airline.

[windsmurf]

I didn't think that the articles diverged in opinion.  They just presented failures at numerous points, from development of the plane, to "fast-track" approvals, to lack of pilot training, lack of proper maintenance procedures, etc.  They all contributed to the crashes. 

[Nusa]

I think the problems are many-fold. From cost-cutting by the airlines to reduced pilot training.

I don't think competition between Boeing and Airbus has much to do with it. Boeing has always had competition--Convair, Lockheed, Douglas.

Pilot training is way different now than it used to be. In the old days, most airline pilots were former military pilots who had thousands of hours of airtime in real airplanes (bombers, transports, etc). Nowadays many airline pilots don't have military training. They learn to "fly" in simulators and have very little time flying real planes (if any) when they're hired by an airline.

Do 5 minutes of research. Airlines aren't going to touch, never mind train, a pilot with less than 1500 hours of actual flying experience. And even after training they will start out in the right seat, not the pilot in command.

At least in the USA. I can't speak for airlines in other countries.

[windsmurf]

Juan Brown defends the pilots who were thrown under the bus in the OP's linked article https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-crashes.html?searchResultPosition=1

[tooki]

I think the problems are many-fold. From cost-cutting by the airlines to reduced pilot training.

I don’t think there’s any evidence of reduced pilot training. The media’s portrayal of “OMG iPads instead of training” are ignoring that there have always been notices and updates delivered as text material. I think it’s quite reasonable to say that pilots today are actually much better trained than in the past. Every crash where pilot error is a major factor, they’ve changed industry training. (For example, pilots are now trained in “cockpit resource management”, where every role in an emergency is predefined, so every crew member knows exactly what they’re responsibility is in that situation. Contrast that with the past, where multiple crashes resulted from emergencies where some critical flight duty was forgotten because everyone assumed someone else was doing it. Or because of conflicts of personality/seniority.) Similarly, we now train pilots for equipment failures that we didn’t in the past.

Pilot training is way different now than it used to be. In the old days, most airline pilots were former military pilots who had thousands of hours of airtime in real airplanes (bombers, transports, etc). Nowadays many airline pilots don't have military training.

I don’t think there’s ever been a time when most airline pilots were former military. Commercial aviation grew in lockstep with military aviation, so there’s always been churn between the two worlds.

They learn to "fly" in simulators and have very little time flying real planes (if any) when they're hired by an airline.

Nonsense. First of all, simulators aren’t worthless, as you imply. They’re essential to training many emergency situations. But as Nusa said, you can’t get hired like that. You cannot get a pilot’s license on simulators, and you most certainly can’t get a common carrier license (license to fly for an airline) that way. You need to accrue lots and lots of flight time in real aircraft.

In some countries, like Switzerland, airlines do hire people one could teeeechnically call “inexperienced pilots”, insofar as they have their own training programs, so they hire as trainees people who aren’t pilots at all — yet. But of course they’re not piloting passenger aircraft at that point.

[Nusa]

Pilot training is way different now than it used to be. In the old days, most airline pilots were former military pilots who had thousands of hours of airtime in real airplanes (bombers, transports, etc). Nowadays many airline pilots don't have military training.

I don’t think there’s ever been a time when most airline pilots were former military. Commercial aviation grew in lockstep with military aviation, so there’s always been churn between the two worlds.

Actually, he was right on that one. Once upon a time, about 80% of US airline pilots came from the military. These days, its about 30%.

[tooki]

That high?! Ok, that is a bit surprising to me.

[SiliconWizard]

If so, that's probably a specificity of the US. Certainly not the case in most of Europe AFAIK.

[Nusa]

It makes sense, if you think about it. The 600 or so DC-3's that existed before WW2 were mostly appropriated for military use plus they built another 15,000(!) DC-3's and variants (C-47, etc) during the war years. And pilots got trained to fly them. After the war, ALL the airlines were flying surplus DC-3's with a huge pool of mustered out military pilots to draw on, most of them young enough to spend long careers as civilian pilots. Which means they dominated the pilot labor pool up into the 1970's and transitioned into the jet age during the late 1950's (707, DC-8) and 1960's (727, 737, DC-9).

[coppice]

They learn to "fly" in simulators and have very little time flying real planes (if any) when they're hired by an airline.

Nonsense. First of all, simulators aren’t worthless, as you imply. They’re essential to training many emergency situations. But as Nusa said, you can’t get hired like that. You cannot get a pilot’s license on simulators, and you most certainly can’t get a common carrier license (license to fly for an airline) that way. You need to accrue lots and lots of flight time in real aircraft.

Simulators are so important that even the most experienced airline pilots have to spend regular time in simulators. Its the only way to keep them well prepared for emergencies. Simulators and real planes work together to prepare new pilots to fly. However, experienced pilots can now be qualified for new aircraft types purely on simulators. Perhaps this is where some people get the idea that pilots can fully train on simulators.

[coppice]

That high?! Ok, that is a bit surprising to me.

Its all down to costs. It costs a lot to get a new pilot ready to fly a commerical airliner. There are lots of quite young people leaving airforce pilot service. Combine these two, and the commercial world takes all the experienced airforce people they can. So, if the current figure is that 30% of commercial pilots had a previous airforce career, that means airlines can fill only 30% of their vacancies from the military.

[AG6QR]

Do 5 minutes of research. Airlines aren't going to touch, never mind train, a pilot with less than 1500 hours of actual flying experience. And even after training they will start out in the right seat, not the pilot in command.

At least in the USA. I can't speak for airlines in other countries.

Well, the accidents didn't happen in the USA, and I think you may be on the verge of understanding why that is the case.

Read the NY Times article in the link in the first post.  LionAir doesn't require 1500 hours of actual flying experience before hiring pilots.  It's not reasonable to get that many hours in four months.

This spring, I drove an hour west of the Jakarta airport to a compound known as Lion City. There, ... batches of pilot recruits sit through up to six months of initial ground school before moving on to four to five months of flight training in Cessna 172s, followed by guaranteed jobs as co-pilots for the Lion Air Group. The pedagogical approach is that of a production line, with no accommodation for creativity or the unexpected. The tuition is $60,000. About 150 to 200 students pass through every year. The completion rate for the flight training is an astonishing 95 percent.

Another interesting accident to read about is Asiana flight 214, a crash at SFO during "severe clear" weather, when ATC gave the pilots an approach to a runway that had an inoperative glide slope transmitter.  Both ATC and the pilots knew it was inoperative.  It never occurred to ATC that an experienced airline crew would have trouble hand-flying a visual approach in clear weather.  But the pilots had very little experience flying an approach without relying on the glide slope, and they landed short, crashing into the seawall.  They could have declined ATC's clearance and requested an approach to a runway with a working glides slope transmitter, but they didn't.  There is a clear cultural divide of expectations here.

Back to the 737, I can see the point of the NYT article, but I can also see the point of those who say Boeing messed up.  A system that relies on only one error-prone sensor should never be given enough control authority to bring down an airliner. There is more than enough blame to go around here.

I do believe that the 737 is getting great scrutiny, and when it takes to the sky again, it will be among the safest planes in the world.  Especially when flown by first-rate pilots.

[schmitt trigger]

My grandfather had a saying: If you learn something from a mistake, then the cost of that mistake is halved.
This is true as long as the lesson from the mistake prevents you from committing the same mistake again.

What I find a little disturbing with these accidents, is that it appears that the emphasis is on blaming someone else instead of learning from them.

[SiliconWizard]

My grandfather had a saying: If you learn something from a mistake, then the cost of that mistake is halved.
This is true as long as the lesson from the mistake prevents you from committing the same mistake again.

What I find a little disturbing with these accidents, is that it appears that the emphasis is on blaming someone else instead of learning from them.

It may appear so to the general public, and especially here with the Boeing affair, which is an entangled mess, but what you said above is actually, and fortunately, what happens after MOST airplanes accidents. The main outcome of the analysis are actions to take so that it never happens again, and it has worked reasonably well ever since we fly airplanes and run official independent investigations. The trials are a separate thing, and their outcomes don't always match the lessons we learned from a given accident.

Take the AF447 crash for instance, which is actually kind of the opposite of what you said. 10 years after, court has decided to drop all charges for both Airbus and Air France. This may appear unfair, especially to the families of victims, but this just shows that what you said is fortunately not always true. Because in this case, even if the case was finally dismissed, and so no blame was put, ACTIONS have been taken shortly after the investigation gave its conclusions, many years ago. They have improved both the pitot tubes, and the pilot trainings. And so far, it didn't happen again with an Airbus plane flown by Air France AFAIK. So we can say that lessons were taken, and things improved, while keeping the quest for blames at a far distance.

[Nerull]

Do 5 minutes of research. Airlines aren't going to touch, never mind train, a pilot with less than 1500 hours of actual flying experience. And even after training they will start out in the right seat, not the pilot in command.

At least in the USA. I can't speak for airlines in other countries.

Well, the accidents didn't happen in the USA, and I think you may be on the verge of understanding why that is the case.

Read the NY Times article in the link in the first post.  LionAir doesn't require 1500 hours of actual flying experience before hiring pilots.  It's not reasonable to get that many hours in four months.

This spring, I drove an hour west of the Jakarta airport to a compound known as Lion City. There, ... batches of pilot recruits sit through up to six months of initial ground school before moving on to four to five months of flight training in Cessna 172s, followed by guaranteed jobs as co-pilots for the Lion Air Group. The pedagogical approach is that of a production line, with no accommodation for creativity or the unexpected. The tuition is $60,000. About 150 to 200 students pass through every year. The completion rate for the flight training is an astonishing 95 percent.

Another interesting accident to read about is Asiana flight 214, a crash at SFO during "severe clear" weather, when ATC gave the pilots an approach to a runway that had an inoperative glide slope transmitter.  Both ATC and the pilots knew it was inoperative.  It never occurred to ATC that an experienced airline crew would have trouble hand-flying a visual approach in clear weather.  But the pilots had very little experience flying an approach without relying on the glide slope, and they landed short, crashing into the seawall.  They could have declined ATC's clearance and requested an approach to a runway with a working glides slope transmitter, but they didn't.  There is a clear cultural divide of expectations here.

Back to the 737, I can see the point of the NYT article, but I can also see the point of those who say Boeing messed up.  A system that relies on only one error-prone sensor should never be given enough control authority to bring down an airliner. There is more than enough blame to go around here.

I do believe that the 737 is getting great scrutiny, and when it takes to the sky again, it will be among the safest planes in the world.  Especially when flown by first-rate pilots.

So, how would a US pilot deal with a system that takes control away from them and which they were never informed was on the plane and lacked any means of being disabled quickly?

"Oh it could never happen because our pilots are *better*" is the same sort of magical thinking that lead to these crashes in the first place. It's easy to blame the pilots, and then we can pat ourselves on the back and don't have to consider the possibility that we  designed a shit airplane. Because, of course, no real pilot would have let those planes crash. Real pilots have magic, plane saving powers.

Oh, and the lack of a retraining requirement for the new system: The request of those american airlines you're so sure this couldn't happen to. They didn't train their pilots either.

[AG6QR]

So, how would a US pilot deal with a system that takes control away from them and which they were never informed was on the plane and lacked any means of being disabled quickly?

MCAS could be quickly disabled by any one of three actions:

• Flip the trim switches to cutout, like one would do for a runaway trim situation, which they all train for.
• Lower the flaps
• Turn on the Autopilot

You are correct that Boeing didn't document MCAS for the pilots, and for that, they deserve a lot of blame.  Typically, pilots wouldn't have any way of knowing that turning on the autopilot would disable the thing that was pitching the nose down.  But they would have heard and seen the trim motors kicking in to rotate the trim wheels, at the same time they saw the nose pitching down, and that should have provided a good hint that setting the trim switches to cutout would stop the nose-down trimming.  The first LionAir crew figured this out on their own, and then continued the flight and landed safely, but unfortunately, they didn't report it, so they left it to the next crew to discover on their own -- with tragic results.  That failure to report is something I can't understand.

There's also a good principle of airmanship that says, "If something bad happens right after a configuration change, the first thing to try is to undo the configuration change to restore the plane to normal flight while you diagnose the problem."  MCAS only activates when the flaps are all the way up. They saw a sudden nose-down pitch change right after bringing the flaps fully up.  One of the first actions should have been to return the flaps to the previous setting where the plane was flying well.


I'm not saying that Boeing's hands are clean on this matter.  Boeing screwed up, and deserves to take blame for these accidents.  They had a number of chances to avoid the problem, but they made very poor decisions every time.  However, the flight crews also had opportunities to avoid the accidents.

[Electro Detective]

Flight junkie cheapskates demanding 'cheaper than cheap' air prices

+ shareholder pressured airlines cutting maintenance costs (and who knows what else  ) to 'compete'
whilst attempting unsustainable 'growth' profits to appease their mental asylum candidate owners

= Conflicting 'truths' when half assed seviced, fatigued air bound metal, and ignorant passengers and employer stressed flight staff hit the ground dramatically. 


This is what happens and will continue to happen, when unscrupulous bean counters infiltrate the flight industry,
turning over a fast dollar catering to flight junkie cheapskates demanding 'cheaper than cheap' air prices,
wishful thinking fools who believe plane disasters only happen to other people...    > 

See you all at the next similar post in a few weeks time