4 ms·
Didn't they actually blame the pilots initially?
by mtgx 6y ago
Didn't they actually blame the pilots initially?
- dataflow 6y agoYeah. But at least initially maybe things were still unclear to some folks. Why are they still ignoring the root cause now?
- Gibbon1 6y agoThe criticism of the pilots on HN was hella racist.
- Majestic121 6y agoCan you substantiate this statement ?
- Gibbon1 6y agoSure go back an read the threads after the first and second crashes and half the people were blaming the pilots being incompetent because they were Indian and Indonesian. And then same for the second crash. Specifically saying that the planes were safe in the hands of American and European pilots. It was very disgusting all around.
- _ph_ 6y agoBlanket statements are certainly inappropriate, but as it happens, some months later it came to the public, that over half of the pilots in Pakistan had not passed the proper tests for their license. The Airbus crash in Karachi was entirely due to incompetent flying, like way to high approach speed and not checking whether the wheels were down.
- selimthegrim 6y agoWhile the approach controllers share some blame too, it turns out that Pakistan CAA had recently changed the test scheme and a lot of pilots fully qualified under the old regime hadn’t taken the new set of exams which used to be optional
- JasonFruit 6y agoI remember the criticism of flight training in Asian airlines occasionally verging on racism, but the basic criticism is valid: Asian airlines are faced with market pressures that do not allow them to train pilots adequately, and many don't know how to fly an airplane apart from a checklist; their understanding of piloting is in marginal cases frighteningly superficial.
- alwayseasy 6y agoTo be honest that's their default position in every crash.
- _ph_ 6y agoA quick correct pilot action would have prevented both accidents. The whole reason that MCAS, even in its previous certainly faulty version, was approved was the fact, that there is always the possibility for the pilot to stop a runaway stabilizer by using the cut-off switches. Which was done only just before the second crash, but to late and they were flying too fast, so they struggled to manually correct the trim. While the accidents were certainly caused by MCAS activating in error, there was at least a chance of preventing them.