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> Interesting tidbit: after the second crash, the Ethiopian authorities decided to send the black box to Europe for analysis, apparently not trusting US investi

> Interesting tidbit: after the second crash, the Ethiopian authorities decided to send the black box to Europe for analysis, apparently not trusting US investigators with the data. William Langeweische [0] describes lack of airmanship as contributing to the 737 Max crashes and cites another reason for distrust: "In the case of the Ethiopian investigation, we have an airline and an investigative body that historically have not been able to isolate themselves from the country’s dysfunctional political life." "After the cockpit voice recorder was dug out of the wreckage, it was shielded from the N.T.S.B. and whisked to Paris. There, for reasons unknown, French accident investigators agreed to download its contents in private onto a drive for an immediate return to Addis Ababa, where the information remains mostly locked away today and has been withheld in full form from any outside observers." [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-crashes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-c...

sanj 7y ago
That whole article read as some weird neo-colonial piece, blaming other countries training processes rather than a badly designed aircraft.
- HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
  It is very rare that any accident has a single cause.
- briandear 7y ago
  Should those training processes not be blamed? After all, it wasn’t Southwest Airlines that crashed and the sketchy founder of Lion Air certainly didn’t have safety as a core value.
  - HarryHirsch 7y ago
    The weird remarks about Ethiopia were quite out of place, Ethiopian Airlines has an excellent safety record. It's also telling that Ted Cruz insisted very quickly after the second crash that the MAX be grounded, it would be have very bad for his career if one had crashed in Dallas and he had declared them safe.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  Training is an issue, because the pilots had at their fingertips the means to recover from the malfunction (turning off the stab trim via the cutoff switches).
  - ncallaway 7y ago
    This doesn't strike me as correct. The plane was traveling fast enough that the strain on the air control surfaces meant pilots weren't able to manually trim the plane back into alignment. The only way to overcome those forces was to use the electronic motors to adjust the alignment of the rear stabilizer trim. However, those motors also are disabled with the stab trim cutoff switches. After the fact simulations confirmed that such forces could well have prevented manual control. See prior discussion and news articles here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19573893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19573893 and https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeings-emergency-procedure-for-737-max-may-have-failed-on-ethiopian-flight/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boein...
  - cmurf 7y ago
    There's no evidence MCAS upset looks exactly like runaway trim in every case, most cases, some cases, or these specific cases. This is a supposition made only by Boeing, and repeated by others. What has since been demonstrated is it's possible for MCAS upset to result in a mistrim significant enough the pilots can't recover in time if they're at a low enough altitude. So I reject the categorical claim they could have recovered with the flip of a switch. Further to that point, the preliminary report on ET302 shows they did turn stabilizer trim switches to cutoff, and yet they couldn't move trim manually, likely due to mistrim forces. The logical reason why they turned stabilizer trim back on is it was the only way to get electric motor assisted trim to try and get out of the mistrim. But MCAS immediately triggered again resulting in greater than 20 degrees nose down, and negative G forces by the pilots - it was impossible to recover from that. The final act of MCAS, had it been a human pilot, for sure would be considered a saboteur, it's that ridiculous of a reaction under any circumstance, even had the airplane angle of attack been great enough to trigger MCAS it was a gross overreaction, at low altitude, commanding a path steeply below the horizon, and incompatible with survival.
briandear 7y ago
This is not an insignificant point. MCAS was flawed, no question. As a pilot of an airplane with enhanced stability control, I have found that anything that tries to “help” by nose down or nose up during times of unusual flight attitudes is unwelcome and honestly scares the hell out of me when the autopilot kicks on and overrides my inputs. Disengaging the autopilot works for a moment, then it kicks back on: the solution is to pull the breaker when that happens. Granted, in my case, I was attempting to intentionally stall the airplane during familiarization training in a Cessna T206. However, an autopilot with “stability protection” can theoretically fly you into the ground if you aren’t trained correctly. So I am not a fan of the airplane trying to “protect” the pilot by taking over control. However, reacting to system anomalies is a critical part of training. Meaning knowing how and when to react to such situations is fundamental to flying the airplane. If we stipulate the MCAS system was faulty, that still doesn’t relieve the pilots of responsibility. The Ethiopian copilot only had 300 total flight hours — so it’s fair to say that copilot wasn’t experienced with flying in general, let alone type-specific experience in an airliner. Since the captain would have been flying the airplane, the copilot would have been the one running through the checklists. Airliners require two pilots for a reason; that copilot had no business being right seat in a technologically advanced airplane. Both pilots specifically failed to follow the procedures. First, they didn’t adjust the throttle at all during the event — throttle remained at climb power throughout, secondly, they re-engaged MCAS because while they pulled the horizontal stabilizer trim cutout switches correctly, they failed to realize that they had to use the manual trim wheels since the electric yoke-mounted trim would be inoperative at that point. Yes, MCAS was deficient, however, 90% of aviation training is learning how to respond when things go wrong. Complaining about one issue while ignoring the other is disingenuous. Good pilots wouldn’t have crashed that plane. There is a reason that airline pilots in the US must have 1500 flight hours before being allowed in the right seat; there is a reason that airliner crashes in the US are so exceedingly rare. The 737 Max incident revealed plenty about Boeing and system design, but it also shined a light on the effects of substandard pilot qualification in places like Indonesia and Ethiopia. Considering the US flew the 737 Max vastly more than anyone else, a broken airplane would have statistically resulted in a US crash, yet the two crashes we did have were with airlines from countries with debatable pilot qualification processes. Attempting to obscure the cockpit voice recorders from public view and giving them to France (home of Airbus it might be added,) means that Ethiopia had something to hide regarding their pilots’ actions. If it was clearly 100% “Boeing’s fault,” then Ethiopia would want all data surrounding the crash to be on the front page of every newspaper if only to bolster their case that their pilots weren’t at fault. But instead, they hide the data. Why hide supposedly exculpatory evidence? Because it wasn’t exculpatory at all. I get it, MCAS bad. But those passengers would still be alive if it weren’t for bad pilots. Given that Ethiopian Airlines is a crown jewel of the country and a vital marketing tool of the country, it’s clear why they wanted to hide any hint that pilots of the flag carrier were questionable.
the_duke 7y ago
I'm looking for a aviation thread where this article was discussed, but I can't find it right now. But it was heavily criticised. Just from a cursory reading you can see many cases of subtle and not so subtle language choices that show a heavy bias and a string of one-sided arguments.
- gshubert17 7y ago
  >I'm looking for a aviation thread where this article was discussed, but I can't find it right now. HN has this flagged thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21004683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21004683
cmurf 7y ago
A contrary opinion. https://christinenegroni.com/irony-of-pilot-laying-blame-on-pilots-in-boeing-737-max-disasters/ https://christinenegroni.com/irony-of-pilot-laying-blame-on-... Does he consider airmanship lacking in the USAir 427 crash, or in Colgan Air 3407? Both cases pilots pulled back on the yoke the entire time making recovery impossible, exactly contrary to all of their training. He's dismissive of "startle factor" in Air France 447 as well, as in, he doesn't even bring it up or any of the other factors in the final report, he just dings pilots as lacking airmanship.

sanj 7y ago

That whole article read as some weird neo-colonial piece, blaming other countries training processes rather than a badly designed aircraft.

HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
It is very rare that any accident has a single cause.
briandear 7y ago
Should those training processes not be blamed? After all, it wasn’t Southwest Airlines that crashed and the sketchy founder of Lion Air certainly didn’t have safety as a core value.
- HarryHirsch 7y ago
  The weird remarks about Ethiopia were quite out of place, Ethiopian Airlines has an excellent safety record. It's also telling that Ted Cruz insisted very quickly after the second crash that the MAX be grounded, it would be have very bad for his career if one had crashed in Dallas and he had declared them safe.
WalterBright 7y ago
Training is an issue, because the pilots had at their fingertips the means to recover from the malfunction (turning off the stab trim via the cutoff switches).
- ncallaway 7y ago
  This doesn't strike me as correct. The plane was traveling fast enough that the strain on the air control surfaces meant pilots weren't able to manually trim the plane back into alignment. The only way to overcome those forces was to use the electronic motors to adjust the alignment of the rear stabilizer trim. However, those motors also are disabled with the stab trim cutoff switches. After the fact simulations confirmed that such forces could well have prevented manual control. See prior discussion and news articles here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19573893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19573893 and https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeings-emergency-procedure-for-737-max-may-have-failed-on-ethiopian-flight/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boein...
- cmurf 7y ago
  There's no evidence MCAS upset looks exactly like runaway trim in every case, most cases, some cases, or these specific cases. This is a supposition made only by Boeing, and repeated by others. What has since been demonstrated is it's possible for MCAS upset to result in a mistrim significant enough the pilots can't recover in time if they're at a low enough altitude. So I reject the categorical claim they could have recovered with the flip of a switch. Further to that point, the preliminary report on ET302 shows they did turn stabilizer trim switches to cutoff, and yet they couldn't move trim manually, likely due to mistrim forces. The logical reason why they turned stabilizer trim back on is it was the only way to get electric motor assisted trim to try and get out of the mistrim. But MCAS immediately triggered again resulting in greater than 20 degrees nose down, and negative G forces by the pilots - it was impossible to recover from that. The final act of MCAS, had it been a human pilot, for sure would be considered a saboteur, it's that ridiculous of a reaction under any circumstance, even had the airplane angle of attack been great enough to trigger MCAS it was a gross overreaction, at low altitude, commanding a path steeply below the horizon, and incompatible with survival.

briandear 7y ago

This is not an insignificant point. MCAS was flawed, no question. As a pilot of an airplane with enhanced stability control, I have found that anything that tries to “help” by nose down or nose up during times of unusual flight attitudes is unwelcome and honestly scares the hell out of me when the autopilot kicks on and overrides my inputs. Disengaging the autopilot works for a moment, then it kicks back on: the solution is to pull the breaker when that happens. Granted, in my case, I was attempting to intentionally stall the airplane during familiarization training in a Cessna T206. However, an autopilot with “stability protection” can theoretically fly you into the ground if you aren’t trained correctly. So I am not a fan of the airplane trying to “protect” the pilot by taking over control. However, reacting to system anomalies is a critical part of training. Meaning knowing how and when to react to such situations is fundamental to flying the airplane. If we stipulate the MCAS system was faulty, that still doesn’t relieve the pilots of responsibility. The Ethiopian copilot only had 300 total flight hours — so it’s fair to say that copilot wasn’t experienced with flying in general, let alone type-specific experience in an airliner. Since the captain would have been flying the airplane, the copilot would have been the one running through the checklists. Airliners require two pilots for a reason; that copilot had no business being right seat in a technologically advanced airplane. Both pilots specifically failed to follow the procedures. First, they didn’t adjust the throttle at all during the event — throttle remained at climb power throughout, secondly, they re-engaged MCAS because while they pulled the horizontal stabilizer trim cutout switches correctly, they failed to realize that they had to use the manual trim wheels since the electric yoke-mounted trim would be inoperative at that point. Yes, MCAS was deficient, however, 90% of aviation training is learning how to respond when things go wrong. Complaining about one issue while ignoring the other is disingenuous. Good pilots wouldn’t have crashed that plane. There is a reason that airline pilots in the US must have 1500 flight hours before being allowed in the right seat; there is a reason that airliner crashes in the US are so exceedingly rare. The 737 Max incident revealed plenty about Boeing and system design, but it also shined a light on the effects of substandard pilot qualification in places like Indonesia and Ethiopia. Considering the US flew the 737 Max vastly more than anyone else, a broken airplane would have statistically resulted in a US crash, yet the two crashes we did have were with airlines from countries with debatable pilot qualification processes. Attempting to obscure the cockpit voice recorders from public view and giving them to France (home of Airbus it might be added,) means that Ethiopia had something to hide regarding their pilots’ actions. If it was clearly 100% “Boeing’s fault,” then Ethiopia would want all data surrounding the crash to be on the front page of every newspaper if only to bolster their case that their pilots weren’t at fault. But instead, they hide the data. Why hide supposedly exculpatory evidence? Because it wasn’t exculpatory at all. I get it, MCAS bad. But those passengers would still be alive if it weren’t for bad pilots. Given that Ethiopian Airlines is a crown jewel of the country and a vital marketing tool of the country, it’s clear why they wanted to hide any hint that pilots of the flag carrier were questionable.

the_duke 7y ago

I'm looking for a aviation thread where this article was discussed, but I can't find it right now. But it was heavily criticised. Just from a cursory reading you can see many cases of subtle and not so subtle language choices that show a heavy bias and a string of one-sided arguments.

gshubert17 7y ago
>I'm looking for a aviation thread where this article was discussed, but I can't find it right now. HN has this flagged thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21004683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21004683

cmurf 7y ago

A contrary opinion. https://christinenegroni.com/irony-of-pilot-laying-blame-on-pilots-in-boeing-737-max-disasters/ https://christinenegroni.com/irony-of-pilot-laying-blame-on-... Does he consider airmanship lacking in the USAir 427 crash, or in Colgan Air 3407? Both cases pilots pulled back on the yoke the entire time making recovery impossible, exactly contrary to all of their training. He's dismissive of "startle factor" in Air France 447 as well, as in, he doesn't even bring it up or any of the other factors in the final report, he just dings pilots as lacking airmanship.