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Hmm I don't think it's as black and white as just blaming airbus. The pilots literally flew a perfectly flying plane straight into the ocean. And they had plent

• marcosdumay 5mo ago
  There were other near accidents before due to the exact same problem, the problem was well understood, and the changes needed to solve it was known. Air France didn't implement them and Airbus didn't require them because of money. They thought the chance of it causing a real accident was low and decided to risk it. Despite there being known near accidents already. And yes, "[the pilots] training should have been better" is part of the things that put both companies at fault. It's not the pilots fault that their training didn't cover it.
  • Svip 5mo ago
    > Airbus didn't require them because of money I am pretty confident that aircraft manufacturers themselves cannot require these things, only regulators can. The FAA in particular used to lean heavily on budget constraints for airlines (who would also push back against expensive upgrades); but I am sure the same applies to EASA and other regulators as well.
    • iepathos 5mo ago
      That's right, Airbus is responsible for the faulty equipment onboard, not pilot training. Air France is responsible for its pilots' operational training and recurrent training.
      • ktallett 5mo ago
        It's not that black and white. Airbus will be responsible for educating Air France too and giving appropriate training. These planes are not purchased by Air France without significant documentation and access to support.
        • iepathos 5mo ago
          Ahh good to know, thanks for clarifying.
    • etiennebausson 5mo ago
      They should be able to recall a plane for a safety flaw. In which case they have to pay for the upgrade themselves. If the airline doesn't comply afterward, it would be on them. But they didn't issue a recall, so they wouldn't have to pay for the fix, an over 200 people paid the price instead. At least, that's how I read the blame distribution.
      • ktallett 5mo ago
        Do we want airlines that only put in fixes for safety issues once they are forced to?
        • WalterBright 5mo ago
          Fixes have to go through the FAA, which can be difficult, bureaucratic and very expensive.
          • ktallett 5mo ago
            Well yes of course they have to be checked by a regulator, but you should still have the thought of, we must do this, no matter the cost as safety matters above everything else in this industry.
            • AnthonyMouse 5mo ago
              > you should still have the thought of, we must do this, no matter the cost as safety matters above everything else in this industry. This premise implies that if you could prevent one plane crash for $10 trillion dollars then you should do it, but then ordinary people wouldn't be able to afford air travel. In reality they do have to consider the cost and then do the things that are justified based on the cost and the risk. Which means that high regulatory costs compromise safety because the more it costs to make a change that improves safety, the fewer of those changes can be implemented for an amount of money that can be justified by the risk.
            • WalterBright 5mo ago
    • delusional 5mo ago
      Separating "regulators" and "manufacturers" in such distinct categories is overly simplistic, I'm afraid. As we saw with the whole Boeing debacle, the manufacturers are the experts on what they build, and we expect them to give clear, levelheaded, and honest guidance to operators and regulators. That also means they must have some responsibility for the outcomes of that guidance. Having a separate regulator, which does no building themselves, somehow maintain a separate team of independent experts is a fools errand. We should of course have independent evaluators, but the people building the thing are the experts on the thing.
      • _DeadFred_ 5mo ago
        It's a challenging problem. Going back to when I was in aerospace even just with the FAA we had FAA west and FAA east, and they were treated as different entities within our company because they had such different approaches/understanding and then the EASA which was from our experience a protectionist entity that would look for gotchas on American competitors and not a neutral safety focused party and refused to recognized treaty obligated acceptance of FAA certification (and it was a big issue that the US refused to step in on our behalf and require the treaty be followed because the US authorities put safety first even though the US had agreed we were safe and had demonstrated it).
      • wolvoleo 5mo ago
        > Having a separate regulator, which does no building themselves, somehow maintain a separate team of independent experts is a fools errand. We should of course have independent evaluators, but the people building the thing are the experts on the thing. Well they have to. Boeing showed what happens if they are not experts and they leave everything to the manufacturer. They'll just lie and scheme and even get away with it.
    • marcosdumay 5mo ago
      The manufacturers literally write the manual. The regulators only approve or reject it. And yes, EASA approved it too.
  • raverbashing 5mo ago
    As much as I understand the culture of blameless post-mortems and the fact that people in that cockpit don't get the benefit of hindsight, maybe those other companies didn't have an accident because they followed procedure (which was a simple one) Yes there were UX factors. Yes training could be better. Yes distractions happen But if I'm going to blame the companies I'm going to blame them on putting someone inexperienced and probably who did not have the right mindset in navigating the profession. And meanwhile companies waste time in making automations on top of manual processes that make things even more complicated
  • foldr 5mo ago
    >There were other near accidents before due to the exact same problem, the problem was well understood, and the changes needed to solve it was known. Could you be more specific here? The article doesn't even say which problem Airbus are considered to be criminally liable for.
    • marcosdumay 5mo ago
      The plane was prone to lose its airspeed sensors on some weather conditions.
• mrnicegu 5mo ago
  Yes, an autonomous plane would have worked so much better. Can’t wait for AI to replace stupid apes.
  • anonymars 5mo ago
    A crash instigated by failure in software automation inputs would have been better handled by full AI software automation?
    • brabel 5mo ago
      I actually think that is likely. Humans in these conditions have to make decisions under immense stress. Machines don’t, they just need to be able to understand that sensors may fail and are not completely reliable all the time. Though they would need lots of different input , just like humans, to be able to call out which part of its input is flawed.
      • WalterBright 5mo ago
        There are always unanticipated conditions not accounted for in the automation. That's where pilot training comes in.
      • anonymars 5mo ago
        Even the basic stall warning couldn't understand the situation given the faulty inputs
• 404mm 5mo ago
  Is this the crash where the pilot failed to recognize the airspeed sensors had frozen up and he stalled the plane? I could see how this was an Air France fault since the pilot was not properly trained or experienced to fly this plane in these conditions. Not sure why Airbus is responsible.
  • NooneAtAll3 5mo ago
    it's the crash where pushing nose of the plane down (correct enough-altitude stall response) caused alarms to activate, while pulling nose up caused alarms to silence no wonder airbus was found guilty
    • bombcar 5mo ago
      Airbus kind of embodies the "trust the computer" mentality; and if you're going to do that the computer damn hell better be right all the time - it must not have "backwards" failure modes. Boeing, in similar situations "in the past" would just sound a "computer is giving the fuck up, fly this pig dog" bell and leave it to the pilots to figure it out.
      • actionfromafar 5mo ago
        You made me laugh out loud! Very well put.
      • steveBK123 5mo ago
        As a computer person the airbus approach (and Boeing adopting some aspects of this in the max8) is terrifying
        • tavavex 5mo ago
          Comparing Boeing's compliance hack and Airbus' system that's pushing 40 years now is very questionable. Airbus planes don't get in the way of flying, and there's extensive procedures and redundancies for everything that could go wrong. It's a proven system, and events like these are the exception proving the rule, especially since there was also a human factor here. As another computer person, I'd trust aviation more than any other field, especially when it doesn't involve the modern US. Computers can't be perfect, but they can be almost always good at integrating and helping humans that remain in control. Advocates against including any fly-by-wire or computerization in aircraft at all fail to consider all the accidents that said computerization has helped avoid. Putting a billion steam gauges and blinking lights in front of pilots and asking them to correlate and understand everything themselves is actually not simpler, easier or safer.
• mlinhares 5mo ago
  Such an incredible write up, the piece about the importance of flying less technological planes to get a "sense" of what flying really is hits like a brick, specially in the world of LLMs producing code. How do you get this "sense" of writing code and building systems by yourself if all you do is instruct some agent to do it? Are we all going to be like Bonin in the future where we just don't understand anything outside of the agent box? This is both terrifying and sad.
  • deepsun 5mo ago
    Novella "Profession" by Isaac Asimov.
    • riffraff 5mo ago
      "Profession" is often cited with regard to LLMs, but honestly, in reminded more of (and scared by) "The Feeling of Power".
  • cladopa 5mo ago
    Actually there are more planes flying today than ever and the number of accidents is very very low, thanks to technological planes and protocols that lean from mistakes. So low in fact that the majority of the recent "accidents" look like suicides from the pilots. The pilots know exactly what they are doing when crashing the planes.
    • thrownthatway 5mo ago
      Boooo!
  • ottobonn 5mo ago
    I'm a software engineer and recently got my pilot's license, and the training for the pilot's license increased my (already-high) respect for the aviation profession. All pilots learn to fly basic airplanes and have to do everything by hand (often on paper, but an iPad is allowed) to show they know the basics. The result is that by the time you work up to more advanced planes you have climbed the ladder of abstraction and know what underpins the automation. The other piece of the picture is that pilots acknowledge that their skills are perishable, and they have to commit to ongoing training. This would be analogous to writing code by hand and getting a licensed engineer to sign off on your currency periodically even if you use LLMs for work.
• clickety_clack 5mo ago
  It reads exactly like "Ironies of Automation" by Bainbridge would predict.
• pdpi 5mo ago
  > Hmm I don't think it's as black and white as just blaming airbus. Then it’s a good thing they didn’t. Both Airbus and Air France were found guilty, and poor pilot training was specifically called out as a reason why Air France was considered guilty. It’s in the article.
  • krig 5mo ago
    --dangerously-skip-reading-the-article
    • swores 5mo ago
      I mean, one doesn't even need to read the article to learn that the blame went to both companies - it's even in the title here on HN.
• deleted 5mo ago
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