8 ms·

Totally agree. Some of the sentiments expressed here was borderline racist. (badly trained, overworked cluelless third world pilots not even capable to follow

• swiley 8y ago
  You really shouldn’t ever trust the NYT. They haven’t been trustworthy for a while.
  • matt4077 8y ago
    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.
    • CaptainZapp 8y ago
      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!
      • matt4077 8y ago
        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.
• agmiller 8y ago
  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".
  • simion314 8y ago
    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.
    • VBprogrammer 8y ago
      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.
      • simion314 8y ago
        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.
• treis 8y ago
  >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.
  • CaptainZapp 8y ago
    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!
    • treis 8y ago
      >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.
      • Rooster61 8y ago
        He didn't attack you personally. He attacked your action, which was smearing the pilots (which is indeed disgusting).
  • 8y ago
• Yetanfou 8y ago
  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.
  • CaptainZapp 8y ago
    Fine. Not racism then. Can we agree on xenophobic and bigoted? The discussions here provide ample evidence for that.
  • calcifer 8y ago
    "I don't see colour, it's not about race" said the white Western European guy...
    • mr_overalls 8y ago
      You impugn one type of bias while openly indulging in another. But this is acceptable in many circles today, so I suppose your comment will be upvoted.
    • fcbaker 8y ago
      That is not what the comment said. The comment said "stop talking about race all the time", which is literally what Morgan Freeman (black) also said. Coming back to Western European air safety biases: Russian airlines had a bad reputation for many decades in Western Europe. Racially, you cannot get more white/caucasian than Russians. Introducing race without specific quotes is nonsense.
• something40 8y ago
  > One of the worst smear jobs was actually by the New York Times accusing the captain of the Ethiopian plane not having trained in a 787-MAX simulator. One should remember that one of the primary purposes is not simply information, but also misinformation. This is normally done to protect the large sacred cow institutions that make up society.
• cameldrv 8y ago
  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.
  • cmurf 8y ago
    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.
    • cameldrv 8y ago
      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.