Breaking news: Ethiopian Airlines flight has crashed on way to Nairobi

[Evan]

You say the pilots were put into a disorienting situation (yes I know there were other words but bear with me). Flying into a cloud is disorienting... many many accidents over the years have proved that. Yet competent instrument-rated pilots can handle flying into clouds without crashing... millions of successful flights over the years have proven that. Competency is a thing, and can affect the outcome of many situations, especially in aviation. And to quote a wise ex-coworker of mine, "competency varies".

Indeed it does, which is why it can't be the sole redundancy for a single point failure of a system that interferes with flight control. And flying into a cloud is not disorienting in the way that having the plane robotically fight you is.

A "typical emergency"... what exactly is that?

One that isn't unheard of, trim runaway for instance.

You mention another trim runaway incident that ended up with dead aviators, presumably to prove the point that runaway trim kills people.

No, I provided that as an example of how a manageable emergency can become a fatal one if the crew is overwhelmed and distracted with systems issues.

The bottom line is I am not going to say the aircraft is 100% to blame in an emergency situation the pilots were trained to handle.

The pilots cannot be expected to handle a situation until they can understand it. The aircraft was not behaving in the same manner as a trim runaway. Because it wasn't a trim runaway.

The bottom line is this: despite the legions of shoddy airman flying 737NG's over two decades, none has ever crashed from a trim runaway, and they do happen. Yet, in the first year of service, two B737-MAX's crashed from an MCAS runaway. The airplane design is to blame for that.

100%

[Gabriel]

Okay I'm a little slow and realized your light bulb analogy was probably meant in the "Swiss cheese" sense, that if any one factor were not present the accident would not happen.

But I think that analogy is kind of like saying that in a bank robbery, the bank and the robber are both 100% at fault because if neither was present, the robbery would not have happened. If you go out and survey 100 people on the street, I doubt you're going to find one that feels the bank was 100% at fault. You might find a few that think it was 10% at fault because it had a poorly-maintained security system or something like that, and I think that kind of reasoning has value because it allows you to compare the magnitude of each factor and respond appropriately.

Take my UA232 example... IMHO saying the engine failure and the pilots are both 100% responsible for the deaths that occurred is absurd. The engine failure clearly was the proximate cause of the crash, a lot of resources were dedicated to diagnosing that problem and preventing it from recurring, and IMHO a lot of benefit was derived from that. Putting an equal amount of resources into trying to train every pilot to perform as well as or better than Al Haynes and company would be a fool's errand. Mostly in the sense that trying to teach them to fly an aircraft severely damaged in a very edge-case way would divert resources from training them to deal with much more likely scenarios. Trim runaway, for example.

Ok, but it's not the same in this case. Here Boeing, the FAA, the pilots, the airlines and the local authorities ALL screwed up big time and their screw-up (not their mere existence) was NECESSARY for these accidents to happen. In the UA232 case, the pilots did not screw up, in fact their action was key in the outcome of having survivors (and a lot of them) in what, under normal circumstances, should have been a crater in the ground with no recognizable body remains. But in the MAX accidents, the system should not have been so fault-intolerant and the fault, once it happened, should not have been much more than an annoyance.

Note that I said blame (or you can say responsibility or accountability), you don't have any less when you share some.
But liability can be shared and split.

[Gabriel]

The pilots cannot be expected to handle a situation until they can understand it. The aircraft was not behaving in the same manner as a trim runaway. Because it wasn't a trim runaway.

We are getting into semantics here, but it as a trim runaway, and not much different from other trim runaways. The trim runs like crazy in one direction you trim back with the thumb switch and the trim responds but then when you let go on the trim switch it starts trimming again on its own.

[3WE]

...as a trim runaway, and not much different from other trim runaways...

Disconcur on “not much different”

I think it was you that said “stall warning with pitch over” might have been the APPARENT MAJOR PROBLEM, with Boeing sharing near ZERO information to pilots on this INSIDIOUS, poorly redundant, and easily mechanically binding system.

With ‘traditional’ trim runaways the distractions that you are stalling and have several OTHER problems are absent and the big wheel is much more obvious. I know you don’t think stall management is important...

[Evan]

We are getting into semantics here, but it as a trim runaway, and not much different from other trim runaways. The trim runs like crazy in one direction you trim back with the thumb switch and the trim responds but then when you let go on the trim switch it starts trimming again on its own.

No....

[Gabriel]

Disconcur on “not much different”

I think it was you that said “stall warning with pitch over” might have been the APPARENT MAJOR PROBLEM, with Boeing sharing near ZERO information to pilots on this INSIDIOUS, poorly redundant, and easily mechanically binding system.[/COLOR]

Yes, I said that, but then I reminded myself that they had the stick shaker (on one side only) since rotation, after which they climbed for a couple of minutes and retracted the flaps (not something you would do if stall was a concern). Only then the MCAS kicked in and both crews responded by pulling up and nose-up trim. I think they had decided long ago that the sticshaker was a false warning.

[3WE]

Yes, I said that, but then I reminded myself that they had the stick shaker (on one side only) since rotation, after which they climbed for a couple of minutes and retracted the flaps (not something you would do if stall was a concern). Only then the MCAS kicked in and both crews responded by pulling up and nose-up trim. I think they had decided long ago that the sticshaker was a false warning.

Noted (in a literal sense).

[flashcrash]

The pilots cannot be expected to handle a situation until they can understand it.

Indeed. NTSB is now on record saying that the crews in the fatal crashes "did not react in the ways Boeing and the FAA assumed they would".

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49846510

[Evan]

Indeed. NTSB is now on record saying that the crews in the fatal crashes "did not react in the ways Boeing and the FAA assumed they would".

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49846510

That reveals an enormous lack of vision.

[TeeVee]

That reveals an enormous lack of vision.

or, human-ness

[elaw]

That reveals an enormous lack of vision.

Which is mind-boggling, because if there's one thing the FAA is known for, it's vision!

[Evan]

or, human-ness

Or a philosophy of convenience. What if the dominant sensor fails? Eh, the pilots will take care of it... they'll sort it out...

Boeing had a good ride with that. Sure they killed some people here and there, like at Schiphol with a similar lack of redundancy issue, but nobody seemed to see past the pilot error, which was conveniently written off as bad piloting. But it was bound to end badly. Pilots do suffer from human-ness. You can't put them in a flying blender of shit and expect them to reliably sort it out. And now it seems that Boeing has finally reached that conclusion.

Who needs vision when you have tragedy to show you the way.

[LH-B744]

Or a philosophy of convenience. What if the dominant sensor fails? Eh, the pilots will take care of it... they'll sort it out...

Boeing had a good ride with that. Sure they killed some people here and there, like at Schiphol with a similar lack of redundancy issue, but nobody seemed to see past the pilot error, which was conveniently written off as bad piloting. But it was bound to end badly. Pilots do suffer from human-ness. You can't put them in a flying blender of shit and expect them to reliably sort it out. And now it seems that Boeing has finally reached that conclusion.

Who needs vision when you have tragedy to show you the way.

Still IATA-Code ET # 302.

After more than six months we have reached the stadium of philosophy. And I can fully understand that. Aviation is not free of philosophy if you ask me.
Do you sometimes feel that F/Os and Flight Captains in everyday passenger aviation are used to determine if a totally altered a/c version still is safe?

I don't know if that's true for the Boeing 737 Max-8 which we are talking about here. But I'm old enough to say where this philosophy already totally failed.

Habsheim, 1988.

Again, a totally new type of aircraft. Again 'tested' with 130 passengers on board (!). And again, it ended in a disaster.

Has someone learned during the last 31 years?

PS: I can say what I've learned from Habsheim. I only watched it on TV, Thank God I was not there. A flight is only good with enough time for preparation. And The French BEA (Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses pour la sécurité de l’aviation civile - there must be a reason why there is this abbreviation) by then found out that the Flight Captain was not really well prepared for Habsheim.

But why on Earth he didn't take his time to learn everything about Habsheim, a tiny airstrip which he never in his life visited before, that's a question which he probably is not even able to answer today. By then he was 44 years old. Is there somebody who can bring a 44 year old Flight Captain in a hurry? Someone like the CEO of an airline?

I know a German airline where the difference between an Aviation enthusiast and the CEO is only 12 years. So, almost impossible that this CEO would make useless pressure. Plus he is an experienced A320 Flight Captain..

[LH-B744]

Now, I've learned that the Flight Captain of ET # 302 was 29 years old when he died.

As Evan said, passage airlines will always be prone to human-ness. And as Habsheim shows, even 44 years in life do not protect us from a fatal mistake.

But is a 29 year old Flight Captain rather prone to .. let's say bad decisions which are outside his influence, than let's say with 39?

We'll never know. He died in March 2019. Born 1990? Damn, so young.

--

PS: One last thought for this Friday Morning. If I had been killed in a car or in an aircraft at the age 29, I would've never become a jetphotos forum member!
I was 30.8 years old, almost 31, when I joined this forum.
...

[Evan]

Soon, if industry has its way, we will have flying taxis. They will either be piloted or automonous. If piloted, they will have to be designed with the pilot as the final line of defense rather than the first, and with ample systems redundancy to ensure it never gets that far. This is because the industry will demand such a large number of 'pilots' (at gig economy wages) that vetting them, training them, checkriding them and recurrently training them would, if even possible on this scale, sink their business model. The problem is in the numbers.

The same issue on a lesser scale and to a lesser degree already exists in the low cost airline industry. Therefore, airframers must also design their airframes with the pilot as the final line of defense rather than the first, and with ample systems redundancy to ensure it never gets that far. This is not the age of aviation that BoeingBobby grew up in, where safely flying the DC-3 depended entirely on the pilot's skills and judgement. Nor it is the age of pre-deregulation or the age of free snacks and dignity. This is the race-to-the-bottom age. This is the expand-into-developing-world-markets age. This is the age of, as one young woman put it last week, fairy tales about endless industrial growth. Pilot quality obviously cannot keep pace with this expansion. So, obviously, we must either curtail this growth or produce aircraft that require lower (but still adequate) pilot expectations, ideally both.

Airbus recognized this in the 1980's. Of course, so did Boeing. But, while Airbus took steps to somewhat address it, Boeing clung to an anachronistic philosophy, essentially handing off the responsibility for pilot error and system failures almost entirely to the operators and their pilots. Both need to go further if industry intends to remain in their current business model. More protections must be introduced (we've discussed a few potentially viable ones on this forum). The reality is a remarkable rise in systems reliability and a troubling decline in average pilot quality. Where we place our trust must be determined with that reality in mind.

But one thing is clearly obvious: Boeing cannot design a 21st century airliner that entirely depends on a crew to sort out and safely contain the failure scenario seen in these two crashes. Not in this age. Not in this market. Boeing knew this. Boeing knew this.