4 ms·

> Why isn't that enough to disable MCAS From what I understand it did but it would reengage again. It's the reason why the Lion Air flight lasted longer in the

> Why isn't that enough to disable MCAS From what I understand it did but it would reengage again. It's the reason why the Lion Air flight lasted longer in the air than Ethiopian, because the pilots in that case kept hitting the trim and buying themselves 40-60 seconds each time

oflannabhra 8y ago
Yep, and on top of that the 737 MAX did not require retraining for pilots (cost savings for Boeing and airlines) and Boeing did not provide documentation to pilots that MCAS would re-engage after a short timeout. Pilots use the term "ahead of the plane" to describe being in a state where they understand exactly how a plane and its systems will respond to inputs (including theirs). MCAS (and lack of training) resulted in pilots being "behind the plane", which meant they could not regain control over the plane and ultimately crashed.
briandear 8y ago
They could have disabled the whole thing if they simply followed the standard runaway trim procedure. A system malfunction should appear to a pilot the same way a runaway trim wheel appears. The result is that there is runaway trim checklist—and a procedure to work around it. You turn off the electric trim and go to a manual reversion. It’s something every 737 pilot trains for. Here’s some discussion about this from 2009: https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=761011 https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=761011 Even if the cause is an MCAS failure, the way that failure presents in the cockpit follows the same procedures as runaway trim: which means to me that the Ethiopian and Lion Air pilots were simply under-trained. The 200 total hours of the Ethiopian first officer supports that assertion. In the US, a first officer has a 1500 hour requirement: having a 200 hour pilot in the cockpit can’t be ignored as a contributing cause especially since following the standard checklists would have saved the plane— if the first officer would have known to consult those checklists. In the US, you can’t even fly Cessnas commercially with 200 hours and this first officer was copiloting a modern 737.
- amanaplanacanal 8y ago
  > A system malfunction should appear to a pilot the same way a runaway trim wheel appears. I thought the problem here was that it doesn't appear the same.
  - crooked-v 8y ago
    From what I understand, runaway trim looks like a continuous change, where runaway MCAS is intermittent changes every 5 seconds with longer delays if a pilot just touched the throttle trim controls.
- cjbprime 8y ago
  > In the US, you can’t even fly Cessnas commercially with 200 hours and this first officer was copiloting a modern 737. To be fair, it's not clear that the time someone would spend flying a Cessna between their 200-1500 hours in the US is actually helping them become a better 737 first officer..
- anthonybsd 8y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/world/asia/ethiopia-crash-boeing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/world/asia/ethiopia-crash... Ah yes implying those weird "African" airlines cannot compare to the supreme training of the US ones. You closet racism is pretty self evident.

oflannabhra 8y ago

Yep, and on top of that the 737 MAX did not require retraining for pilots (cost savings for Boeing and airlines) and Boeing did not provide documentation to pilots that MCAS would re-engage after a short timeout. Pilots use the term "ahead of the plane" to describe being in a state where they understand exactly how a plane and its systems will respond to inputs (including theirs). MCAS (and lack of training) resulted in pilots being "behind the plane", which meant they could not regain control over the plane and ultimately crashed.

briandear 8y ago

They could have disabled the whole thing if they simply followed the standard runaway trim procedure. A system malfunction should appear to a pilot the same way a runaway trim wheel appears. The result is that there is runaway trim checklist—and a procedure to work around it. You turn off the electric trim and go to a manual reversion. It’s something every 737 pilot trains for. Here’s some discussion about this from 2009: https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=761011 https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=761011 Even if the cause is an MCAS failure, the way that failure presents in the cockpit follows the same procedures as runaway trim: which means to me that the Ethiopian and Lion Air pilots were simply under-trained. The 200 total hours of the Ethiopian first officer supports that assertion. In the US, a first officer has a 1500 hour requirement: having a 200 hour pilot in the cockpit can’t be ignored as a contributing cause especially since following the standard checklists would have saved the plane— if the first officer would have known to consult those checklists. In the US, you can’t even fly Cessnas commercially with 200 hours and this first officer was copiloting a modern 737.

amanaplanacanal 8y ago
> A system malfunction should appear to a pilot the same way a runaway trim wheel appears. I thought the problem here was that it doesn't appear the same.
- crooked-v 8y ago
  From what I understand, runaway trim looks like a continuous change, where runaway MCAS is intermittent changes every 5 seconds with longer delays if a pilot just touched the throttle trim controls.
cjbprime 8y ago
> In the US, you can’t even fly Cessnas commercially with 200 hours and this first officer was copiloting a modern 737. To be fair, it's not clear that the time someone would spend flying a Cessna between their 200-1500 hours in the US is actually helping them become a better 737 first officer..
anthonybsd 8y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/world/asia/ethiopia-crash-boeing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/world/asia/ethiopia-crash... Ah yes implying those weird "African" airlines cannot compare to the supreme training of the US ones. You closet racism is pretty self evident.