I read a detailed account of that flight and what was going on in the cockpit, but it’s been a while so it’s a bit fuzzy. But my takeaway was that the pilots were getting conflicting and limited information from multiple sources. There was no way they could easily get their bearings.
I think in the transcript it showed the pilot realizing what was really happening at the last minute.
You’re putting words in my mouth I didn’t say. I said they failed to maintain control of the plane. I’ve pointed out they demonstrated they had the means to control the plane and managed to gain 7K feet doing it.
If every pilot who ever made a mistake was deemed incompetent it would ground all the airplanes.
It doesn’t absolve Boeing or shift the blame away from them. There is so much wrong with how they handled it that they will be writing books about it as a teaching tool.
You’ve said many things here. Some of them were nonsensical.
When I bumped this thread to post what I thought was an informative and well-researched article about the cultural problems at Boeing that led to a fatally flawed design decision on the 737 MAX, you inexplicably blasted the article as an “adjective laced opinion piece” that was “factually wrong”.
You then went on in the next post to claim that “As cockpit emergency situations go, this was an easy one to identify and fix”, described how awesomely simple it all was, and concluded by repeating that “It was a simple problem to recognize along with a simple a solution”.
So, while you may not used the words “incompetent pilots” anywhere, you repeatedly emphasized how “simple” the problem was that they failed to fix. Later on you even doubled down on this with the statement “Yes, I’m blaming the pilots.” Your implication could not be more clear, and could not be more wrong.
I’m just trying to keep the facts straight and in perspective here. Again, the issue is not whether some other pilots in some other situation, given perhaps more time or better luck, might have been able to save the flight. The issue is to properly understand and prioritize the deficiencies that must be addressed going forward. Blaming the pilots by trying to stress how allegedly simple the problem was is counterproductive to that goal. No one – not the professional pilots here, or out in the world, not the preliminary accident report, not even Boeing any more – no one agrees with the assertions you’re making.
Yes, I’m saying the crew failed to maintain control of the plane. This is different than saying they’re incompetent.
All 3 crews started out doing exactly what they were supposed to do in an emergency. Fly the plane. This is the number one rule of flight in an emergency and all of them followed it. By their actions they showed they had control of the plane early on.
The method of control was simple. Correct the downward trim with upward trim. Again, all 3 crews did this on initial climb out. There wasn’t some secret trick involved. They re-trimmed with the button on the yoke just as they always do. It’s literally an autonomic response as they pull back on the yoke. That’s what takes the tension off the yoke.
So, if you know it’s an electrical trim issue which is erroneously trimming down and you have control over the electric trim with the pilot and 1st officer yoke switch please explain the complexity of retrimming to a preferred setting and switching to manual? Tell me, in your own words, what is complex about that?
The only argument put forth by anyone was cockpit confusion and there’s a flaw in that argument. The MCAS system would have started engaging the trim with autopilot off and flaps retracted. The stick shake would have gone off soon after along with the AoA out of agreement warning. This would have been very distracting and the most critical point of distraction yet they maintained control of the plane with the normal use of pilot trim to 7000 ft AGL. The crew flew just fine using normal yoke and trim inputs to counter MCAS.
Cockpit confusion is a perfectly legitimate reason for things to spin out of control. But they worked through the worst of it and demonstrated control of the plane so I don’t see how that argument works.
If I had to guess, I’d say they were distracted trying to root cause the errant trim input instead of working directly on the problem of controlling the errant trim.
I’ll be honest, I was shocked when I found out Ethiopia has an airline.
This is all well and good, but it completely fails to dig beyond the surface. It is a “first story”.
This YouTube video tells the story of the Three Mile Island accident. It’s actually a really good video, regardless of whether you get anything out of in terms of other accidents involving humans.
A “first story” is one which states all the facts etc and on the face of it appears to be a perfectly reasonable way to describe an accident. Your description of the Ethiopian accident above is a first story.
There are a number of problems with a first story though. It is told from the point of view of someone who knows the outcome, knows the choices made, and knows the consequences of those choices. From this viewpoint a sequence of events has a simplicity and clarity that is not available to the people “in the moment”.
It is of no value to say someone involved in an accident should have done this or that, or concentrated on one thing over another, or failed to maintain control of the airplane etc etc. It doesn’t lead us to fix the systemic problems that created pilots who couldn’t work through a failure that should have been reasonably straight forward.
Instead we need to try and put ourselves into their shoes and try and work out what information they had available at the time, what biases they had (cultural, training, experience, etc), and why they made the choices they did. They didn’t intend to crash a plane. During the event they presumably made the best decisions they could given the situation as they saw it.
Why? Ethiopia is the most populous landlocked country in the continent of Africa, with a population of 112,000,000.
Yes, but most of those people are black, silly.
Living in the country as I do, I’ve only met one Ethiopian person. Coincidentally, he was (and I assume remains) black. He works in one of my favorite restaurants, an Ethiopean place in Pittsburgh. Damn, I love the cuisine.
/hijack
What is the number one rule of emergencies as a pilot?
If that rule is broken what is it that you need to learn from it?
Apply your answers to the questions I just asked.
You seem blind to number two.
I’m not blind to #2. I was specifically taught to recognize/avoid distractions and focus on rule #1. It wasn’t a casual lesson. It was repeated throughout my flying years.
“Why they didn’t” is useful information but the core lesson is rule #1. There are an infinite number of possible distractions. focusing on the distraction is a problem unto itself.
So you think they weren’t taught that? You don’t think they were given something like the Airbus Golden Rules, number one being “fly”? You think they’ve never heard of Aviate, Navigate, Communicate? You think you are somehow immune to distractions because someone taught you to recognise and avoid distractions but these other guys weren’t taught that? This is a problem. When you think it can’t happen to you because you are somehow different, there is a problem. It is essential that you recognise your own fallibility.
The core lesson is not rule #1, it is why a crew didn’t or couldn’t follow rule #1.
Do you remember that Sioux City DC10 that crashed killing over one hundred people? It seems to me that they failed to maintain control of the aircraft having previously demonstrated adequate control for sometime, they lost the plot and crashed. Those guys mustn’t have had the same instruction Magiver had right? They obviously didn’t follow rule #1 :dubious:.
Moderator Note
I’m not sure if this is just plain racist or if it is basically just calling Ethiopia a technologically backwards country, which is just insulting. Either way, this comment has no business in this type of thread. Do not do this again.
No, I think they failed to maintain the directive.
Didn’t is not the same as couldn’t.
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That’s an odd example of your argument. That flight lost hydraulics. They were using engine differential to steer. That would be in the “couldn’t” category. It was their continued focus on flying that save 185 people.
The crew of this flight had control of the plane and demonstrated it to 7000 feet. At that point they allowed it to trim down to a dangerous angle. It wasn’t a zero to 40 degree event in 1 second. This took time. the effects clearly show on a number of gauges as well as the yoke tension. In aviation terms, it was a long transition away from controlled flight.
While it’s useful to understand why they stopped flying the plane it doesn’t alter the need to fly the plane. It’s absolute. The horse goes in front of the cart.
Exactly! What makes you so certain it was “didn’t” and not “couldn’t”? The information available shows they were trying to fly the plane the whole time.
Yes it lost hydraulics. They demonstrated control up until short finals though didn’t they? So why couldn’t they keep that up until touchdown? Or don’t we care about “why”?
The graph of trim inputs between pilot and MCA shows they had command of trim and used it. It shows large gaps where they should have used it. I didn't say they weren't flying the plane. I said they failed to maintain control of the plane.
At 5:30:25 they stopped trimming up. Between that time and 5:40:15 there were 4 MCAS down trims one of them lasting 15 seconds before they again used up trim. They countered that with 5 seconds of trim which was followed by 11 seconds of MCAS trim. DURING that MCAS trim they countered with about 15 seconds of trim which interrupted the MCAS. This where they shut off electric trim. They struggled with the flight from there on because they shut it off so far out of trim they couldn’t manually retrim without reducing power and taking pressure off the horizontal tail plane with elevator. Not something you want to do pointed 40 deg down.
The crew of the DC-10 never had 3 axis control of the plane after the engine grenaded. The crew of this flight always had 3 axis control of the plane available.
the quote left out the part where the person said, “Granted I suck at flying”.
Unbiased analysis:
1 - We don’t know what happened in the flight sim or why, so we can’t draw conclusions without more data and analysis
2 - Equally, the sim pilot stating that “I suck at flying” does not indicate that MCAS wasn’t a problem in the sim
The only thing the sim anecdote tells us is that it’s possible there was an issue detected in the sim - it’s something worth investigating.