17 ms·

My Letter to the Editor of New York Times Magazine

666 points by kaboro 7y ago

IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
Langewiesche is a terrific writer, but it does seem like the overwhelming majority of people in the business consider his take on the 737MAX to be misguided. Reading his article, I got the impression that he has a certain idealised image of what a pilot should be like. One that I have also noticed quite a few people here on HN seem to be rather fond of. Namely: that being a pilot should not just be someone's job, but their calling. To use a weird phrase I once saw here, they are supposed to be "fixed-wing enthusiasts". There also seems to be a certain, somewhat outdated, concept of masculinity at play here. And, of course, combining these expectations with stereotypes of African and Asian companies (and people) initially led many to the conclusion that these pilots were either incompetent ("because of a lack of calories in early childhood" to quote one line of reasoning I saw (luckily not here)) or incapable of independent thinking. Never mind that at least one of the captains was trained in the US. These ideas couldn't be farther from how the system is actually evolving, and how it should be: Flying needs to be boring. If your pilot has a chance to become a hero, the system has already failed. The goal must be a system of technology, institutions, curricula, etc. that makes it perfectly safe to trust any decent high school student to become a competent(-enough) pilot. Candidates with a sense for adventure should be screened out, because flying an airliner is dreadfully boring, and a volatile personality will soon find a way to make it more exciting (drinking, usually). And planes should become more and more automated. Software and design errors tend to occur just once. Humans tend to make mistakes, even repeatedly, even with the best training. The 737MAX disaster is a terrible outlier that shouldn't obfuscate the fact that in the last 50 years or so, airline fatalities have dropped by an order of magnitude, even thought miles traveled have increased by a similar magnitude. Combining the two: air travel today is 50 to 100x safer than it was in the golden age of piloting so many seem to glorify.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  If flying becomes boring, it becomes a tedious job that requires a lot of mental fortitude to slog through. Boring jobs are dangerous, because human beings don’t do boring very well. And I think we’ve already reached that point in aviation, as much of the work has been offloaded to automated systems, making it easy for attention to doze elsewhere, and making transitions to where manual intervention is unexpectedly required even more difficult. It’s the same with self driving cars: the only safe options seem to be no automation and all automation since humans simply don’t do boring very well.
  - darawk 7y ago
    This is a very strange perspective to me. Clearly making flying boring has tremendously reduced the number of incidents. Certainly it's true that making something boring will increase the incident rate...but what's overwhelmingly clear from the data is that the reduction in incidents from all that automation dwarfs that effect.
    - mpweiher 7y ago
      The problem is that both statements are true. Yes, we want flying to be as boring as possible, and yes making flying this boring has been the result of the amazing success of making flying safe. Yes, with flying so boring, when something exciting does happen it's in many senses more of a problem. This is a, maybe the fundamental dilemma in aviation safety today. Part of the solution is lots and lots of simulator training. Which of course is a problem when the manufacturer claims that there is no need for simulator training, because everything is exactly the same.
      - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        Boring for the passenger doesn’t mean boring for the pilot. A bus driver has to drive the bus, it’s routine yet never the same thing, their day goes by pretty fast. Compare to someone watching over an automated train...it’s just time they spend twiddling their thumbs, time crawls, they get really bored. Flying is becoming less like flying a bus and more like supervising an automated train, and that is what is dangerous. When something unusual happens, the pilots are surprised and unable to adjust quickly, because unusual isn’t usual. Of course, if unusual happens all the time, or is too out of the norm, you are pretty screwed, exciting is more dangerous than boring, but it doesn’t make boring less dangerous.
        mantap 7y ago
        Pilots still have a lot to do, they must monitor the radios, the weather, fuel, etc. Since plenty of accidents have been caused by not paying attention to these things, I don't think you can say that having more time to do them is a bad thing. If there is a lack of manual flying ability it is entirely due to culture and not the aircraft. Pilots can and do turn off the autopilot if they want to practice, and most landings are done manually because it is softer.
- briandear 7y ago
  > Never mind that at least one of the captains was trained in the US. Point of fact, that captain did initial private pilot training in San Carlos in Cessnas — his airline training was at the airline. “US trained” in this context is similar to a doctor being “US trained” because he did an undergraduate degree in the US but his medical degree somewhere else.
- plemer 7y ago
  >If your pilot has a chance to become a hero, the system has already failed. Very well said.
  - bwilli123 7y ago
    Isn’t that question also true for any large Corporation?
- endymi0n 7y ago
  Exactly this. The Langewiesche legacy goes back to his father Wolfgang Langewiesche, who is also a terrific writer, incidentally about probably still the best book about flying fixed wings, Stick and Rudder (1936). But flying has moved on a lot since then. Although I also appreciate "The story of Mel", computing has moved on so far from moving some bits and bytes on a drum memory, that I absolutely prefer someone writing readable code today to someone who produces unreadable, but performant code (spare a few niches of inner loop optimization). The same goes for flying back now and then. When there's not just "Stick and Rudder" in a modern airplane, but caring for massively diverse aspects such as ATC, passenger air quality, airspace control or fuel optimization, I don't need specialists. I need competent generalists. Of course it makes for a nice hero story if a pilot just makes it to the runway because they took an airliner into a forward slip like the Gimli Glider, but the point is that they absolutely should not have to. Humans are not meant for sensing to fly. The average VFR pilot loses not just orientation, but control over the airplane an average of around 178 seconds (!) after going into a cloud. We need less heroes and more engineers who can build reliable automated safety systems.
  - tialaramex 7y ago
    (Explanation for anybody who isn't a pilot or up to their nose in this stuff:) VFR is Visual Flight Rules, meaning the pilot's training and the paperwork qualifying them to fly is only for when you can see where you're going. The other case is IFR Instrument Flight Rules, which means you need to learn to ignore your brain's guess as to where it is and how it's moving and trust the (redundant but not necessarily infallible) instruments to tell you what's happening. You still look outside the plane, because there might be something important to see (e.g. geese!) but you mostly are scanning your instruments, seeking confirmation that everything continues to be good, the instruments don't disagree with each other or with the pilot's understanding of what's supposed to be happening. VFR qualified pilots are not supposed to go near clouds at all. The exact distances vary depending on where the plane is exactly (low, slow flying planes get to be closer than higher, fast moving planes) but the general principle is that you need to stay so far from all clouds that you can easily see anything coming out of a cloud and avoid it entirely, since under VFR you are relying primarily on what you can see. Unfortunately they sometimes stray into clouds, and 178 seconds isn't very long. Obviously the people flying a Max will all be IFR qualified (the commercial pilot licensing doesn't have a VFR option) but the parent's point is true anyway - we are already training pilots not to try to fly by instinct because humans do not have appropriate instincts for flying, we are earthbound.
- x220 7y ago
  >There also seems to be a certain, somewhat outdated, concept of masculinity at play here. Jesus Christ. If "airplane mastery" is what we call outdated masculinity, I really worry for what else is left in store for our rotting culture. Is it outdated to expect competence? Sully demands competence from pilots and careful design from manufacturers. That should go without saying. >And, of course, combining these expectations with stereotypes of African and Asian companies (and people) These stereotypes were correct because of cultural norms. In certain cultures it's wrong to correct your superior, even if his mistake will crash your plane.
- reacweb 7y ago
  Flying is boring when everything works well. I remember a story from a friend, a pilot of an airline that was going to sell all its aircraft of a model. 6 month before the sell, the preventive maintenance was reduced to only the legal minimum. In each flight during this 6 month, my friend has encountered technical issues (sometimes as severe as a broken reactor). IMHO, the role of a pilot is to keep a cool head to analyze faults with sometimes slight symptoms and find the right answers occasionally in opposition to the manual. That's also why I want the pilot to be in the same aircraft as me (no remote piloting).
- PopeDotNinja 7y ago
  My takeaway from the letter is that pilots should be at the top of there game at all times, and one shouldn't be cheap when building an airplane. Blaming pilots for a shoddy aircraft is weak sauce, and Sulli wantd us to know that.
- xNal 7y ago
  This is completely wrong. If you watch air crash investigation, the majority of pilots who saved planes under extreme circumstances were fixed wing enthusiasts, often flew small planes or gliders for fun. Especially in situations like the MAX crashes you need a feeling for the aircraft. I'm astonished what this has to do with masculinity, which is of course not outdated (watch who women date ...).
- mcguire 7y ago
  "Namely: that being a pilot should not just be someone's job, but their calling. To use a weird phrase I once saw here, they are supposed to be "fixed-wing enthusiasts"." Rotary-wing enthusiasts are just crazy. Everybody knows that.
ablation 7y ago
Worth noting that Langewiesche wrote a book about Sullenberger’s infamous flight on the Hudson. Not a critical one, but they do have a previous relationship at least of some sort.
- starpilot 7y ago
  Calling it "infamous" is a bit critical, isn't it? "Famous" would make more sense.
  - ablation 7y ago
    Not in my opinion. But entirely up to you how you take it.
    - starpilot 7y ago
      Well, I like to follow the rules of English, so that's how I take it. https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/infamous-vs-famous https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/infamous-vs-fa...
      - ablation 7y ago
        Whatever blows your hair back, bud.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    Definitely famous. He became an instant hero. The plane's role was less positive, but at least it didn't sink. The performance of the ferry crews who did the rescue should never be neglected. Union-mandated emergency training was carried out perfectly.
harry8 7y ago
Wow he didn't miss. It's a good example of an interesting change in our information dissemination dynamic. 30 years ago he would have been waving his arms trying to get other news organisations to run a counter-story and then be subject to having quotes taken out of context and having his thoughts filtered through the story the journalist was trying to write or that the editor thought was more compelling. Giving everyone the best possible motives, which was frequently reasonable, it had serious issues. Now he writes the letter. Publishes it himself very cheaply. Then allows it to be read by a very large number of people directly, un-edited. There are many of examples of this kind of thing nowadays (and it's easy to see it doesn't always work too). When it does work the world is just a little bit better.
- gowld 7y ago
  The NYT had a Letters to the Editor section 30 years ago, just like the one that published today's letter.
  - blowski 7y ago
    The letter wouldn't necessarily be published, and it would likely still be edited. By having his own place to publish, we do know exactly what his words are.
hlms 7y ago
Sully's the man. His description of the experience of piloting in a crisis and analysis of the design and regulatory issues reminds me of Sidney Dekker and 'Safety Differently': http://sidneydekker.com/ http://sidneydekker.com/
- aussiegeek 7y ago
  Interesting story: Sully actually lost a copy of one of Sidney Dekker's books in the forced water landing that he'd borrowed form the library.
starpilot 7y ago
Pilots do cause a lot of issues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot-induced_oscillation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot-induced_oscillation It's the aeronautical engineer's version of PEBKAC.
- nostromo 7y ago
  If a model of car occasionally drives itself into oncoming traffic, "Drivers also cause some accidents" would be a pretty ridiculous response.
  - czzr 7y ago
    Amusingly, that is exactly the response in every Tesla thread on HN.
- phnofive 7y ago
  That’s not in dispute, nor the point of this letter.
phnofive 7y ago
The article to which this letter is in response: https://archive.is/Rf4Yj https://archive.is/Rf4Yj
rswail 7y ago
Blaming the user is a pernicious problem in UX engineering, especially when a feature is introduced not for the actual users, but the executives making the purchasing decisions. MCAS was an economics driven decision by Boeing to be able to sell it as a "no cost" upgrade to existing 737 fleets. "You get all this and you don't need to retrain your people" The entire concept of the 737 MAX was flawed, marketing an inherently unstable aircraft with a patched undocumented system to control that instability. Then, incredibly, making the safety indicators an optional extra was criminal. The FAA is also liable for regulatory capture and handing over its responsibilities the actual organization it is supposed to be supervising. Ultimately, it's an example of what happens when MBA execs, convinced that they can run "any business" take over from a rigourous engineering culture. The Harvard (and other) Business Schools have a lot to be blamed for.
- rosege 7y ago
  If you haven't seen it you should check out John Oliver's bit on Harvard's MBA ethics pledge from when he was on The Daily Show. Here's a link that isnt region locked - http://dailybail.com/home/the-daily-show-enlists-a-prison-coach-to-encourage-harvard-m.html http://dailybail.com/home/the-daily-show-enlists-a-prison-co...
- PuffinBlue 7y ago
  > marketing an inherently unstable aircraft The 737 Max is not an inherently unstable aircraft and to say so grossly misunderstands the term and what MCAS was doing. MCAS existed to make an inherently stable aircraft handle in the same was as previous 737 generations. Design changes had forced the addition of this system in order to retain the same type rating because those design changes caused the aircraft to handle differently to previous generations. MCAS was about keeping the same type rating and the same handling characteristics. It had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with 'inherent instability' - the 737 Max is an inherently stable aircraft without MCAS. Continuing to spread misinformation about what MCAS is and the 737 Max stability is detrimental to the discussion. EDIT - There is clearly a lot of misunderstand about the terms 'stable' and 'unstable'. These has a defined meaning in aircraft handling. I encourage you to educate yourselves on the term, on what stability actually is in relation to this discussion. https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/3-types-of-static-and-dynamic-stability-in-aircraft/ https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/3-types... The 737 Max is a stable aircraft. The 737 Max without MCAS activated is a stable aircraft. It is an inherently stable design. The 737 Max can and was flown without MCAS activated (even by the same aircraft as crashed, the pilots of the previous flight pulled the stabiliser cut out switches and went to manual trim control). It is a stable aircraft.
ec109685 7y ago
The worst thing about these accidents is the pilots never encountered the situation in simulators. For non-lethal failures, tech companies do extensive game day testing to practice failure conditions and engineers responses. The fact that it wasn't done in this case because the failure was too expensive, unlikely to occur and the new plane wasn’t different enough was a huge failure on Boeing’s and the FAA.
skybrian 7y ago
Aviation accidents are typically about defense-in-depth being undermined (the "swiss cheese model"). The object of an investigation should be to find multiple vulnerabilities that could be fixed, at all levels. Focusing exclusively on one of them to the exclusion of others would be a problem. Sullenberger says the same: "we need to fix all the flaws in the current system — corporate governance, regulatory oversight, aircraft maintenance, and yes, pilot training and experience." But this doesn't mean any particular article can't focus on one problem more than others, so long as they don't claim it's the only problem. Looking at the original article, the clickbait headline (typically not written by the author) pretends we can find a single cause ("What Really Brought Down the Boeing 737 Max?") but the subhead takes it back ("equally guilty"). The article focuses on problems at some airlines, Lion Air in particular, and alleged differences internationally in how airlines approach safety. Apparently that's what the author wanted to focus on? So I guess it comes down to a difference in emphasis?
- rossdavidh 7y ago
  But...the whole concept of the 737 MAX was, "you don't need extensive retraining of your pilots, it's still a 737, and if they can fly a 737 they can fly this with minimal retraining." Otherwise, there was no purpose in designing a plane with this design; if you started from scratch you would put the wings higher up so that the engines would fit in the normal position, and the MCAS wouldn't be necessary. So, "equally guilty"...is equally wrong. If this pilot thinks it's not reasonable to expect a typical 737 pilot to be able to react to an MCAS failure in time, then (given two crashes in the first year of use), he's probably correct.
pulse7 7y ago
That article in New York Times Magazine (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...) seems like a part of the Boeing's PR action to win back the public confidence in 737 MAX...
w-m 7y ago
There was a HN discussion of the Langewiesche article that this letter makes a reply to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21004683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21004683 It made some similar arguments, but also quite a bit of Boeing PR bashing. It got flagged.
axaxs 7y ago
> The MCAS design should never have been approved, not by Boeing, and not by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). This is the line that stuck out to me. Basically, it never occurred to me that the FAA has to approve aircraft designs. And if that assumption is correct, who exactly would the approvers be, and are or can they even be qualified? It feels like they'd just be mostly trusting Boeing's judgment as not to upset the Juggernaut, which seems like a rather useless process.
- inamberclad 7y ago
  The FAA actually does keep engineers on staff, and the aircraft manufacturer will have to explain and demonstrate how their aircraft complies with thousands of different requirements. This is actually one of the larger sub-controversies of the whole MCAS issue; the FAA has been progressively delegating more and more of airworthiness compliance to Boeing's engineers and trusting their results instead of verifying it themselves. With regards to the regulations, they're excruciatingly detailed. I encourage you to read 14 CFR 23, Airworthiness Standards: Normal Category Airplanes, and 14 CFR 25, Airworthiness Standards, Transport Category Airplanes.
yread 7y ago
Am I the only one surprised by the whole professional personal brand management of Sully? Do they also sell mugs with his face? It's not like he is the only person to ever glide with an airliner to a safe landing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airline_flights_that_required_gliding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airline_flights_that_r...
- colinbartlett 7y ago
  He is an author who does speaking and consulting on the basis of his experience. I don’t believe his branding is anything abnormal or differing much from that of prominent software development authors, speakers, and consultants.
  - ken 7y ago
    It might be unique among professional pilots, though.
- coldcode 7y ago
  He is one of very few to glide into a water landing with zero fatalities, and the only one in the middle of one of the world's largest cities.
mpweiher 7y ago
Central point of Sully's letter: These emergencies did not present as a classic runaway stabilizer problem, ... Which flatly contradicts Langewiesche's claim that that is what they presented themself as and therefore should have been handled by any competent pilot. I have to admit I also found the Langewiesche article extremely tendentious and...not sure "racist" is quite the right term, but it certainly felt close to it. Ethopian for example had an excellent reputation and safety record up until the MAX accident, something never mentioned in the article. Instead we learn a lot about Adam air, an airline that went belly up before the 737 MAX program was even started. How that is supposed to be relevant except for a "well, those Indonesiens ..." dismissal is beyond me, and of course there is no connection to Ethopian except, well, darker skinned foreigners. Not a good look, New York Times.
dombili 7y ago
I'm glad Mr. Sullenberger spoke up about this. As some people have pointed out in this thread, Langewiesche is indeed a terrific writer, but the tone of the piece in question was off-putting. For those who're interested, Patrick Smith (aka Ask the Pilot) also wrote a critical piece about the article last month: https://www.askthepilot.com/plane-and-pilot/ https://www.askthepilot.com/plane-and-pilot/
WalterBright 7y ago
> These emergencies did not present as a classic runaway stabilizer problem I find this baffling. The stabilizer was clearly running and dangerously pitching the nose down. The pilots could have safely resolved the situation by: 1. using the electric trim switches to override the runaway trim, which they did 2. then cutting off the stabilizer trim with the cutoff switches, which they did not (1) and (2) are true. See Aviation Week Aug 19.
- salawat 7y ago
  August 19 is 4 months after March. That's a lot of time for details to have finally been worked out about how MCAS actually worked. Also, they did cutoff the electric trim, but had to reenable it in order to try to neutralize already present mistrim. If the switches had been left alone from the NG, where the flight computer could be isolated while maintaining the electric trim controls, they could have been fine. ...Of course, if Boeing had actually mentioned MCAS in training materials, then things may have been different too.
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    Knowledge of MCAS was not required for (1) and (2) to work and be effective. Note that the pilots were already doing (1). And the Stab Trim Cutoff switches are there to cut off the stab trim. Besides, at the time of the Ethiopian crash, the existence of MCAS was well known: https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/boeing-nearing-737-max-fleet-bulletin-on-aoa-warning-after-lion-air-crash/ https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/boeing-nearing-737... Note that the bulletin, sent to all operators of MAX aircraft, is a longer version of (1) and (2) that I mentioned, giving more detail.
    - ncmncm 7y ago
      No. The switches worked differently in the MAX than in the NG. Doing what would work in the NG would not work in the MAX.
      - WalterBright 7y ago
dgudkov 7y ago
This letter is something the modern internet and media are sorely missing - a real expert opinion instead of a flood of "armchair expert" opinions. I would always prefer one opinion of someone who does, over a hundred opinions of those who think.
- ken 7y ago
  OTOH, there's plenty of experts in every field who can and do say "I've been doing this for 30 years, and I know that ..." and then mention something they do which statisticians have since shown isn't effective. Sully is worth listening to here because the facts are on his side, in terms of blaming the victim versus analyzing the system as a whole. Sully is getting a lot of airtime in the media because he's a famous public figure, but a new pilot 6 months out of flight school would be just as correct with the same facts. He's a smart guy who is obviously familiar with the safety research done in his field. His own decades of experience do not constitute research on their own, though.
wankeler 7y ago
Interesting related discussion over on pprune and referencing relevant material: https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/623171-loss-control-flight-flight-crew-training.html https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/623171-loss-control-flig... http://publicapps.caa.co.uk/docs/33/SafetyNotice2019005.pdf http://publicapps.caa.co.uk/docs/33/SafetyNotice2019005.pdf https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=35Zy_rl8WuM&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=35Zy_rl8WuM&feature=youtu.be
justforyou 7y ago
Another reason to steongly consider the Gell-Mann amnesia effect when reading anything from the NYT.
bumby 7y ago
Even if the pilots are partly to blame it indicates a bad design philosophy. The hierarchy of mitigation in safety critical systems is 1. Engineer the hazard out so it no longer becomes possible 2. Use other systems to detect and safe the system (ideally, if it's a software hazard, use non-software mitigation) 3. Procedural or administrative mitigation #3 is by far the least desirable, meaning you only use it as a primary mitigation if the other two are infeasible. If Boeing uses this defense I would want to know why they were not willing to implement the other, better methods, because it would seemingly point to managerial or technical deficiencies
- metalliqaz 7y ago
  The risk wasn't identified in the first place. Remember that the updated MCAS was itself a mitigation.
  - bumby 7y ago
    The risk of MCAS was identified in the system safety analysis (SSA), but they didn't appear to do a thorough job (in hindsight, at least). The biggest mistake to me seems to be the erroneous severity attribute: > Assessed a failure of the system as one level below “catastrophic.” But even that “hazardous” danger level should have precluded activation of the system based on input from a single sensor — and yet that’s how it was designed.[0] [0] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/failed-certification-faa-missed-safety-issues-in-the-737-max-system-implicated-in-the-lion-air-crash/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/faile...
phjesusthatguy3 7y ago
I would suggest changing the title of this HN post. Maybe "The MCAS design should never have been approved" or something to that effect. IMO, the current "My Letter to the Editor of New York Times Magazine" is far too ambiguous.
- iosonofuturista 7y ago
  The title is no good, but maybe a compromise would be "Capt. “Sully” Sullenberger on the 737 MAX". Picking a just a sentence without the context seems to be against the spirit of the no clickbait rules.
mcguire 7y ago
Sullenberger's testimony to the House Committee on Aviation: http://www.sullysullenberger.com/my-testimony-today-before-the-house-subcommittee-on-aviation/ http://www.sullysullenberger.com/my-testimony-today-before-t... And ironically, William Langewiesche (whose reputation for aviation is based, aside from being a pilot himself, on his father, Wolfgang Langewiesche) wrote a book on US Airways 1549: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_by_Wire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_by_Wire
dmtroyer 7y ago
I think a flaw in his letter is that it is printed in all italics. ugh.
ken 7y ago
Not relevant to the content of this letter, but "this age-old aviation canard" in a note about MCAS has got to be the best word choice I've seen all year.

666 points by kaboro 7y ago

Langewiesche is a terrific writer, but it does seem like the overwhelming majority of people in the business consider his take on the 737MAX to be misguided. Reading his article, I got the impression that he has a certain idealised image of what a pilot should be like. One that I have also noticed quite a few people here on HN seem to be rather fond of. Namely: that being a pilot should not just be someone's job, but their calling. To use a weird phrase I once saw here, they are supposed to be "fixed-wing enthusiasts". There also seems to be a certain, somewhat outdated, concept of masculinity at play here. And, of course, combining these expectations with stereotypes of African and Asian companies (and people) initially led many to the conclusion that these pilots were either incompetent ("because of a lack of calories in early childhood" to quote one line of reasoning I saw (luckily not here)) or incapable of independent thinking. Never mind that at least one of the captains was trained in the US. These ideas couldn't be farther from how the system is actually evolving, and how it should be: Flying needs to be boring. If your pilot has a chance to become a hero, the system has already failed. The goal must be a system of technology, institutions, curricula, etc. that makes it perfectly safe to trust any decent high school student to become a competent(-enough) pilot. Candidates with a sense for adventure should be screened out, because flying an airliner is dreadfully boring, and a volatile personality will soon find a way to make it more exciting (drinking, usually). And planes should become more and more automated. Software and design errors tend to occur just once. Humans tend to make mistakes, even repeatedly, even with the best training. The 737MAX disaster is a terrible outlier that shouldn't obfuscate the fact that in the last 50 years or so, airline fatalities have dropped by an order of magnitude, even thought miles traveled have increased by a similar magnitude. Combining the two: air travel today is 50 to 100x safer than it was in the golden age of piloting so many seem to glorify.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago
If flying becomes boring, it becomes a tedious job that requires a lot of mental fortitude to slog through. Boring jobs are dangerous, because human beings don’t do boring very well. And I think we’ve already reached that point in aviation, as much of the work has been offloaded to automated systems, making it easy for attention to doze elsewhere, and making transitions to where manual intervention is unexpectedly required even more difficult. It’s the same with self driving cars: the only safe options seem to be no automation and all automation since humans simply don’t do boring very well.
- darawk 7y ago
  This is a very strange perspective to me. Clearly making flying boring has tremendously reduced the number of incidents. Certainly it's true that making something boring will increase the incident rate...but what's overwhelmingly clear from the data is that the reduction in incidents from all that automation dwarfs that effect.
  - mpweiher 7y ago
    The problem is that both statements are true. Yes, we want flying to be as boring as possible, and yes making flying this boring has been the result of the amazing success of making flying safe. Yes, with flying so boring, when something exciting does happen it's in many senses more of a problem. This is a, maybe the fundamental dilemma in aviation safety today. Part of the solution is lots and lots of simulator training. Which of course is a problem when the manufacturer claims that there is no need for simulator training, because everything is exactly the same.
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      Boring for the passenger doesn’t mean boring for the pilot. A bus driver has to drive the bus, it’s routine yet never the same thing, their day goes by pretty fast. Compare to someone watching over an automated train...it’s just time they spend twiddling their thumbs, time crawls, they get really bored. Flying is becoming less like flying a bus and more like supervising an automated train, and that is what is dangerous. When something unusual happens, the pilots are surprised and unable to adjust quickly, because unusual isn’t usual. Of course, if unusual happens all the time, or is too out of the norm, you are pretty screwed, exciting is more dangerous than boring, but it doesn’t make boring less dangerous.
      - mantap 7y ago
        Pilots still have a lot to do, they must monitor the radios, the weather, fuel, etc. Since plenty of accidents have been caused by not paying attention to these things, I don't think you can say that having more time to do them is a bad thing. If there is a lack of manual flying ability it is entirely due to culture and not the aircraft. Pilots can and do turn off the autopilot if they want to practice, and most landings are done manually because it is softer.
briandear 7y ago
> Never mind that at least one of the captains was trained in the US. Point of fact, that captain did initial private pilot training in San Carlos in Cessnas — his airline training was at the airline. “US trained” in this context is similar to a doctor being “US trained” because he did an undergraduate degree in the US but his medical degree somewhere else.
plemer 7y ago
>If your pilot has a chance to become a hero, the system has already failed. Very well said.
- bwilli123 7y ago
  Isn’t that question also true for any large Corporation?
endymi0n 7y ago
Exactly this. The Langewiesche legacy goes back to his father Wolfgang Langewiesche, who is also a terrific writer, incidentally about probably still the best book about flying fixed wings, Stick and Rudder (1936). But flying has moved on a lot since then. Although I also appreciate "The story of Mel", computing has moved on so far from moving some bits and bytes on a drum memory, that I absolutely prefer someone writing readable code today to someone who produces unreadable, but performant code (spare a few niches of inner loop optimization). The same goes for flying back now and then. When there's not just "Stick and Rudder" in a modern airplane, but caring for massively diverse aspects such as ATC, passenger air quality, airspace control or fuel optimization, I don't need specialists. I need competent generalists. Of course it makes for a nice hero story if a pilot just makes it to the runway because they took an airliner into a forward slip like the Gimli Glider, but the point is that they absolutely should not have to. Humans are not meant for sensing to fly. The average VFR pilot loses not just orientation, but control over the airplane an average of around 178 seconds (!) after going into a cloud. We need less heroes and more engineers who can build reliable automated safety systems.
- tialaramex 7y ago
  (Explanation for anybody who isn't a pilot or up to their nose in this stuff:) VFR is Visual Flight Rules, meaning the pilot's training and the paperwork qualifying them to fly is only for when you can see where you're going. The other case is IFR Instrument Flight Rules, which means you need to learn to ignore your brain's guess as to where it is and how it's moving and trust the (redundant but not necessarily infallible) instruments to tell you what's happening. You still look outside the plane, because there might be something important to see (e.g. geese!) but you mostly are scanning your instruments, seeking confirmation that everything continues to be good, the instruments don't disagree with each other or with the pilot's understanding of what's supposed to be happening. VFR qualified pilots are not supposed to go near clouds at all. The exact distances vary depending on where the plane is exactly (low, slow flying planes get to be closer than higher, fast moving planes) but the general principle is that you need to stay so far from all clouds that you can easily see anything coming out of a cloud and avoid it entirely, since under VFR you are relying primarily on what you can see. Unfortunately they sometimes stray into clouds, and 178 seconds isn't very long. Obviously the people flying a Max will all be IFR qualified (the commercial pilot licensing doesn't have a VFR option) but the parent's point is true anyway - we are already training pilots not to try to fly by instinct because humans do not have appropriate instincts for flying, we are earthbound.
x220 7y ago
>There also seems to be a certain, somewhat outdated, concept of masculinity at play here. Jesus Christ. If "airplane mastery" is what we call outdated masculinity, I really worry for what else is left in store for our rotting culture. Is it outdated to expect competence? Sully demands competence from pilots and careful design from manufacturers. That should go without saying. >And, of course, combining these expectations with stereotypes of African and Asian companies (and people) These stereotypes were correct because of cultural norms. In certain cultures it's wrong to correct your superior, even if his mistake will crash your plane.
reacweb 7y ago
Flying is boring when everything works well. I remember a story from a friend, a pilot of an airline that was going to sell all its aircraft of a model. 6 month before the sell, the preventive maintenance was reduced to only the legal minimum. In each flight during this 6 month, my friend has encountered technical issues (sometimes as severe as a broken reactor). IMHO, the role of a pilot is to keep a cool head to analyze faults with sometimes slight symptoms and find the right answers occasionally in opposition to the manual. That's also why I want the pilot to be in the same aircraft as me (no remote piloting).
PopeDotNinja 7y ago
My takeaway from the letter is that pilots should be at the top of there game at all times, and one shouldn't be cheap when building an airplane. Blaming pilots for a shoddy aircraft is weak sauce, and Sulli wantd us to know that.
xNal 7y ago
This is completely wrong. If you watch air crash investigation, the majority of pilots who saved planes under extreme circumstances were fixed wing enthusiasts, often flew small planes or gliders for fun. Especially in situations like the MAX crashes you need a feeling for the aircraft. I'm astonished what this has to do with masculinity, which is of course not outdated (watch who women date ...).
mcguire 7y ago
"Namely: that being a pilot should not just be someone's job, but their calling. To use a weird phrase I once saw here, they are supposed to be "fixed-wing enthusiasts"." Rotary-wing enthusiasts are just crazy. Everybody knows that.

ablation 7y ago

Worth noting that Langewiesche wrote a book about Sullenberger’s infamous flight on the Hudson. Not a critical one, but they do have a previous relationship at least of some sort.

starpilot 7y ago
Calling it "infamous" is a bit critical, isn't it? "Famous" would make more sense.
- ablation 7y ago
  Not in my opinion. But entirely up to you how you take it.
  - starpilot 7y ago
    Well, I like to follow the rules of English, so that's how I take it. https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/infamous-vs-famous https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/infamous-vs-fa...
    - ablation 7y ago
      Whatever blows your hair back, bud.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  Definitely famous. He became an instant hero. The plane's role was less positive, but at least it didn't sink. The performance of the ferry crews who did the rescue should never be neglected. Union-mandated emergency training was carried out perfectly.

harry8 7y ago

Wow he didn't miss. It's a good example of an interesting change in our information dissemination dynamic. 30 years ago he would have been waving his arms trying to get other news organisations to run a counter-story and then be subject to having quotes taken out of context and having his thoughts filtered through the story the journalist was trying to write or that the editor thought was more compelling. Giving everyone the best possible motives, which was frequently reasonable, it had serious issues. Now he writes the letter. Publishes it himself very cheaply. Then allows it to be read by a very large number of people directly, un-edited. There are many of examples of this kind of thing nowadays (and it's easy to see it doesn't always work too). When it does work the world is just a little bit better.

gowld 7y ago
The NYT had a Letters to the Editor section 30 years ago, just like the one that published today's letter.
- blowski 7y ago
  The letter wouldn't necessarily be published, and it would likely still be edited. By having his own place to publish, we do know exactly what his words are.

hlms 7y ago

Sully's the man. His description of the experience of piloting in a crisis and analysis of the design and regulatory issues reminds me of Sidney Dekker and 'Safety Differently': http://sidneydekker.com/ http://sidneydekker.com/

aussiegeek 7y ago
Interesting story: Sully actually lost a copy of one of Sidney Dekker's books in the forced water landing that he'd borrowed form the library.

starpilot 7y ago

Pilots do cause a lot of issues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot-induced_oscillation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot-induced_oscillation It's the aeronautical engineer's version of PEBKAC.

nostromo 7y ago
If a model of car occasionally drives itself into oncoming traffic, "Drivers also cause some accidents" would be a pretty ridiculous response.
- czzr 7y ago
  Amusingly, that is exactly the response in every Tesla thread on HN.
phnofive 7y ago
That’s not in dispute, nor the point of this letter.

phnofive 7y ago

The article to which this letter is in response: https://archive.is/Rf4Yj https://archive.is/Rf4Yj

rswail 7y ago

Blaming the user is a pernicious problem in UX engineering, especially when a feature is introduced not for the actual users, but the executives making the purchasing decisions. MCAS was an economics driven decision by Boeing to be able to sell it as a "no cost" upgrade to existing 737 fleets. "You get all this and you don't need to retrain your people" The entire concept of the 737 MAX was flawed, marketing an inherently unstable aircraft with a patched undocumented system to control that instability. Then, incredibly, making the safety indicators an optional extra was criminal. The FAA is also liable for regulatory capture and handing over its responsibilities the actual organization it is supposed to be supervising. Ultimately, it's an example of what happens when MBA execs, convinced that they can run "any business" take over from a rigourous engineering culture. The Harvard (and other) Business Schools have a lot to be blamed for.

rosege 7y ago
If you haven't seen it you should check out John Oliver's bit on Harvard's MBA ethics pledge from when he was on The Daily Show. Here's a link that isnt region locked - http://dailybail.com/home/the-daily-show-enlists-a-prison-coach-to-encourage-harvard-m.html http://dailybail.com/home/the-daily-show-enlists-a-prison-co...
PuffinBlue 7y ago
> marketing an inherently unstable aircraft The 737 Max is not an inherently unstable aircraft and to say so grossly misunderstands the term and what MCAS was doing. MCAS existed to make an inherently stable aircraft handle in the same was as previous 737 generations. Design changes had forced the addition of this system in order to retain the same type rating because those design changes caused the aircraft to handle differently to previous generations. MCAS was about keeping the same type rating and the same handling characteristics. It had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with 'inherent instability' - the 737 Max is an inherently stable aircraft without MCAS. Continuing to spread misinformation about what MCAS is and the 737 Max stability is detrimental to the discussion. EDIT - There is clearly a lot of misunderstand about the terms 'stable' and 'unstable'. These has a defined meaning in aircraft handling. I encourage you to educate yourselves on the term, on what stability actually is in relation to this discussion. https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/3-types-of-static-and-dynamic-stability-in-aircraft/ https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/3-types... The 737 Max is a stable aircraft. The 737 Max without MCAS activated is a stable aircraft. It is an inherently stable design. The 737 Max can and was flown without MCAS activated (even by the same aircraft as crashed, the pilots of the previous flight pulled the stabiliser cut out switches and went to manual trim control). It is a stable aircraft.

ec109685 7y ago

The worst thing about these accidents is the pilots never encountered the situation in simulators. For non-lethal failures, tech companies do extensive game day testing to practice failure conditions and engineers responses. The fact that it wasn't done in this case because the failure was too expensive, unlikely to occur and the new plane wasn’t different enough was a huge failure on Boeing’s and the FAA.

skybrian 7y ago

Aviation accidents are typically about defense-in-depth being undermined (the "swiss cheese model"). The object of an investigation should be to find multiple vulnerabilities that could be fixed, at all levels. Focusing exclusively on one of them to the exclusion of others would be a problem. Sullenberger says the same: "we need to fix all the flaws in the current system — corporate governance, regulatory oversight, aircraft maintenance, and yes, pilot training and experience." But this doesn't mean any particular article can't focus on one problem more than others, so long as they don't claim it's the only problem. Looking at the original article, the clickbait headline (typically not written by the author) pretends we can find a single cause ("What Really Brought Down the Boeing 737 Max?") but the subhead takes it back ("equally guilty"). The article focuses on problems at some airlines, Lion Air in particular, and alleged differences internationally in how airlines approach safety. Apparently that's what the author wanted to focus on? So I guess it comes down to a difference in emphasis?

rossdavidh 7y ago
But...the whole concept of the 737 MAX was, "you don't need extensive retraining of your pilots, it's still a 737, and if they can fly a 737 they can fly this with minimal retraining." Otherwise, there was no purpose in designing a plane with this design; if you started from scratch you would put the wings higher up so that the engines would fit in the normal position, and the MCAS wouldn't be necessary. So, "equally guilty"...is equally wrong. If this pilot thinks it's not reasonable to expect a typical 737 pilot to be able to react to an MCAS failure in time, then (given two crashes in the first year of use), he's probably correct.

pulse7 7y ago

That article in New York Times Magazine (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...) seems like a part of the Boeing's PR action to win back the public confidence in 737 MAX...

w-m 7y ago

There was a HN discussion of the Langewiesche article that this letter makes a reply to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21004683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21004683 It made some similar arguments, but also quite a bit of Boeing PR bashing. It got flagged.

axaxs 7y ago

> The MCAS design should never have been approved, not by Boeing, and not by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). This is the line that stuck out to me. Basically, it never occurred to me that the FAA has to approve aircraft designs. And if that assumption is correct, who exactly would the approvers be, and are or can they even be qualified? It feels like they'd just be mostly trusting Boeing's judgment as not to upset the Juggernaut, which seems like a rather useless process.

inamberclad 7y ago
The FAA actually does keep engineers on staff, and the aircraft manufacturer will have to explain and demonstrate how their aircraft complies with thousands of different requirements. This is actually one of the larger sub-controversies of the whole MCAS issue; the FAA has been progressively delegating more and more of airworthiness compliance to Boeing's engineers and trusting their results instead of verifying it themselves. With regards to the regulations, they're excruciatingly detailed. I encourage you to read 14 CFR 23, Airworthiness Standards: Normal Category Airplanes, and 14 CFR 25, Airworthiness Standards, Transport Category Airplanes.

yread 7y ago

Am I the only one surprised by the whole professional personal brand management of Sully? Do they also sell mugs with his face? It's not like he is the only person to ever glide with an airliner to a safe landing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airline_flights_that_required_gliding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airline_flights_that_r...

colinbartlett 7y ago
He is an author who does speaking and consulting on the basis of his experience. I don’t believe his branding is anything abnormal or differing much from that of prominent software development authors, speakers, and consultants.
- ken 7y ago
  It might be unique among professional pilots, though.
coldcode 7y ago
He is one of very few to glide into a water landing with zero fatalities, and the only one in the middle of one of the world's largest cities.

mpweiher 7y ago

Central point of Sully's letter: These emergencies did not present as a classic runaway stabilizer problem, ... Which flatly contradicts Langewiesche's claim that that is what they presented themself as and therefore should have been handled by any competent pilot. I have to admit I also found the Langewiesche article extremely tendentious and...not sure "racist" is quite the right term, but it certainly felt close to it. Ethopian for example had an excellent reputation and safety record up until the MAX accident, something never mentioned in the article. Instead we learn a lot about Adam air, an airline that went belly up before the 737 MAX program was even started. How that is supposed to be relevant except for a "well, those Indonesiens ..." dismissal is beyond me, and of course there is no connection to Ethopian except, well, darker skinned foreigners. Not a good look, New York Times.

dombili 7y ago

I'm glad Mr. Sullenberger spoke up about this. As some people have pointed out in this thread, Langewiesche is indeed a terrific writer, but the tone of the piece in question was off-putting. For those who're interested, Patrick Smith (aka Ask the Pilot) also wrote a critical piece about the article last month: https://www.askthepilot.com/plane-and-pilot/ https://www.askthepilot.com/plane-and-pilot/

WalterBright 7y ago

> These emergencies did not present as a classic runaway stabilizer problem I find this baffling. The stabilizer was clearly running and dangerously pitching the nose down. The pilots could have safely resolved the situation by: 1. using the electric trim switches to override the runaway trim, which they did 2. then cutting off the stabilizer trim with the cutoff switches, which they did not (1) and (2) are true. See Aviation Week Aug 19.

salawat 7y ago
August 19 is 4 months after March. That's a lot of time for details to have finally been worked out about how MCAS actually worked. Also, they did cutoff the electric trim, but had to reenable it in order to try to neutralize already present mistrim. If the switches had been left alone from the NG, where the flight computer could be isolated while maintaining the electric trim controls, they could have been fine. ...Of course, if Boeing had actually mentioned MCAS in training materials, then things may have been different too.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  Knowledge of MCAS was not required for (1) and (2) to work and be effective. Note that the pilots were already doing (1). And the Stab Trim Cutoff switches are there to cut off the stab trim. Besides, at the time of the Ethiopian crash, the existence of MCAS was well known: https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/boeing-nearing-737-max-fleet-bulletin-on-aoa-warning-after-lion-air-crash/ https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/boeing-nearing-737... Note that the bulletin, sent to all operators of MAX aircraft, is a longer version of (1) and (2) that I mentioned, giving more detail.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    No. The switches worked differently in the MAX than in the NG. Doing what would work in the NG would not work in the MAX.
    - WalterBright 7y ago

dgudkov 7y ago

This letter is something the modern internet and media are sorely missing - a real expert opinion instead of a flood of "armchair expert" opinions. I would always prefer one opinion of someone who does, over a hundred opinions of those who think.

ken 7y ago
OTOH, there's plenty of experts in every field who can and do say "I've been doing this for 30 years, and I know that ..." and then mention something they do which statisticians have since shown isn't effective. Sully is worth listening to here because the facts are on his side, in terms of blaming the victim versus analyzing the system as a whole. Sully is getting a lot of airtime in the media because he's a famous public figure, but a new pilot 6 months out of flight school would be just as correct with the same facts. He's a smart guy who is obviously familiar with the safety research done in his field. His own decades of experience do not constitute research on their own, though.

wankeler 7y ago

Interesting related discussion over on pprune and referencing relevant material: https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/623171-loss-control-flight-flight-crew-training.html https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/623171-loss-control-flig... http://publicapps.caa.co.uk/docs/33/SafetyNotice2019005.pdf http://publicapps.caa.co.uk/docs/33/SafetyNotice2019005.pdf https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=35Zy_rl8WuM&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=35Zy_rl8WuM&feature=youtu.be

justforyou 7y ago

Another reason to steongly consider the Gell-Mann amnesia effect when reading anything from the NYT.

bumby 7y ago

Even if the pilots are partly to blame it indicates a bad design philosophy. The hierarchy of mitigation in safety critical systems is 1. Engineer the hazard out so it no longer becomes possible 2. Use other systems to detect and safe the system (ideally, if it's a software hazard, use non-software mitigation) 3. Procedural or administrative mitigation #3 is by far the least desirable, meaning you only use it as a primary mitigation if the other two are infeasible. If Boeing uses this defense I would want to know why they were not willing to implement the other, better methods, because it would seemingly point to managerial or technical deficiencies

metalliqaz 7y ago
The risk wasn't identified in the first place. Remember that the updated MCAS was itself a mitigation.
- bumby 7y ago
  The risk of MCAS was identified in the system safety analysis (SSA), but they didn't appear to do a thorough job (in hindsight, at least). The biggest mistake to me seems to be the erroneous severity attribute: > Assessed a failure of the system as one level below “catastrophic.” But even that “hazardous” danger level should have precluded activation of the system based on input from a single sensor — and yet that’s how it was designed.[0] [0] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/failed-certification-faa-missed-safety-issues-in-the-737-max-system-implicated-in-the-lion-air-crash/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/faile...

phjesusthatguy3 7y ago

I would suggest changing the title of this HN post. Maybe "The MCAS design should never have been approved" or something to that effect. IMO, the current "My Letter to the Editor of New York Times Magazine" is far too ambiguous.

iosonofuturista 7y ago
The title is no good, but maybe a compromise would be "Capt. “Sully” Sullenberger on the 737 MAX". Picking a just a sentence without the context seems to be against the spirit of the no clickbait rules.

mcguire 7y ago

Sullenberger's testimony to the House Committee on Aviation: http://www.sullysullenberger.com/my-testimony-today-before-the-house-subcommittee-on-aviation/ http://www.sullysullenberger.com/my-testimony-today-before-t... And ironically, William Langewiesche (whose reputation for aviation is based, aside from being a pilot himself, on his father, Wolfgang Langewiesche) wrote a book on US Airways 1549: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_by_Wire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_by_Wire

dmtroyer 7y ago

I think a flaw in his letter is that it is printed in all italics. ugh.

ken 7y ago

Not relevant to the content of this letter, but "this age-old aviation canard" in a note about MCAS has got to be the best word choice I've seen all year.