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It's a useful article. But as a pilot and former CFII, I do not agree with Langewiesche's assertion that AF447 was "an exercise in poor airmanship". That's a ca
by cmurf 7y ago
It's a useful article. But as a pilot and former CFII, I do not agree with Langewiesche's assertion that AF447 was "an exercise in poor airmanship". That's a callous disregard for the final report that put blame on Airbus and Air France, for training deficiency, simulator deficiency, and cockpit UI/Ux confusion contributing to the problem of pilot panic.
Is it poor airmanship that resulted in US Air 427? How is what happened on AF447, Lion Air 610, Ethiopian Airlines 302, anything to do with pilot competency and airmanship, while US Air 427 pilots don't get any of that criticism? Is it American pilot versus foreign pilot bias? It would seem so, but it's also a distraction from the question of pilot role: is it really appropriate to consider them the last line of defense as if the airplane and now automated flight systems are capriciously trying to kill everyone at any moment and if the pilot can't intervene that "airmanship" has to be brought into the discussion?
I just think it's a cheap shot. Only from the mistakes of these dead pilots, and a bunch of dead people, is their the concern that leads to fixes from manufacturers. And Langewiesche didn't bother to bring up Boeing's previous track record with 737 defects either, and how unconscionable their intentional misdirection was.
- o-__-o 7y agoas a CFII you are well aware that US has the most strict regulations around livery pilot training requirements. you cannot fly a large jet without 2000+ hours. LA610 and EA302 had copilots with <2000 hours. Boeing even said they need to redesign their planes to account for lesser skilled pilots. sounds like culpability of the foreign government, boeing, airlines, and pilots.. in that order. and yeah pilots will always get the final blame because they're the ones ultimately in control. or, dead (wo)men can't defend themselves.
- cmurf 7y agoI don't understand your point. You throw out a factoid thinking it's relevant, and that it speaks for itself. How is experience related to these two crashes? Only FAR 121 operations require ATP certification, which has a 1500 hour total time experience attached. And that ATP certification requirement follows the Colgan Air 3407 crash, just ten years ago. And the extra time experience probably wouldn't have made any difference in that crash, because the NTSB dinged the captain more than the first officer, and the inadequacy of training overall. It was the captain flying, he was the one apparently startled by the stall warning, and he was the one who did the exact opposite of what his training should have told him. And he met the newer experience and certification requirements already. https://www.flyingmag.com/safety/accident-investigations/aftermath-mystery-colgan-3407/ https://www.flyingmag.com/safety/accident-investigations/aft...
- o-__-o 7y agoI'm going to go on a soapbox here and authoritatively state by correlation that fatal accidents from narrow-body jets where pax have survived have only occurred with pilots with extra time. I don't have any raw data to share to back this up, but I have read enough NTSB reports to see this one nugget of information stand out. And if you want to determine a cause, an obvious and likely to be denounced as a red-herring, is the additional time spent learning the aircraft. Pilots with additional time on the MAX were able to spend more time in the simulator. The previous pilot of LA610 recognized the malfunction and was able to correct. We can't ignore the evidence here. The outcome is very binary. Either we dumb down airplanes so your commander-in-chief can fly one ala an Icon A5 or we continue to keep a minimum of 5000 combined flight time on deck.
- cmurf 7y agoYou keep getting basic facts wrong. A jump pilot on LNI 043 recommended stabilizer trim cutoff, not the flying pilots. That flight also didn't exhibit nearly as aggressive MCAS upset as the crashed flights. The action you credit to LNI 043, is the same action taken by ET302. The MCAS induced mistrim was so quickly severe they could not manually retrim, reenabled electric trim to get assistance to retrim, and in an instant MCAS activated and shoved the nose 20 degrees down. It was so aggressive flight recorder data shows negative G forces. They were literally lifted iff their seats. You have blinders on, fixated on unproven relevance of experience, while being resistant to available facts showing a deadly aircraft design flaw.