I actually think this is the training these days. The pilots are there to monitor the systems and not really fly the plane. Totally agree here. I really think in this case, they just ran out of time. It takes a while to diagnose what is going wrong and realize that you need to take over control of the airplane. At the same time, I have seen enough of these Mayday episodes to know that in many cases, pilots trust the computers too much and are reluctant to take over. Dare I also say that crews from different countries also behave differently. People born in countries where governments have lots of authority tend to listen to the chain of command, which in this case would be the airplane, and just let it do what its supposed to do. People born in the west tend to think more for themselves and question any authority, so I think they would take over the airplane sooner. Huge speculation on my part of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if this played a role as well.
How the US government blindly protects one of its own in face of overwhelming evidence of safety concerns and with no regards to public safety when it's supposed to be for the people in this case is quite shameful. A better short would be on the Boeing stock directly. I am no engineer but from what I read, it looks like it's a design flaw in the autopilot to nosedive too much when taking off. The more experienced and astute pilots might be able to disconnect the autopilot in time to overcome the issue https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...ty-concerns-before-ethiopia-crash/3145393002/ but I suspect the younger and less experienced (even with high number of flight hours) pilots might not have been able to disconnect the autopilot in time or some of the planes, such as the plane in the Lion Air crash in last October and the current Ethiopian Airline one, might not have even provided proper mechanisms to disconnect the autopilot in time which is possibly another design flaw. Just talking out of my a** here, of course all would be confirmed with the final result of the investigation but nevertheless there would be losses even major losses for Boeing if it is found that there is inherent design flaws with the plane. I just feel so sorry for the people, all the good people including children who have died in those 2 crashes. RIP. Boeing should be compensating the families and the loved ones of each of the 189 victims from the Lion Air crash and the 157 victims of the current crash. Right now Boeing would be just compensating the airlines for the cost of the plane and the lost revenue due to the grounding but the biggest loss is the passenger and crew lives!!
Apparently there was no new simulators for the new Boeing 737 max series planes. Because they are essentially the existing 737 planes remodeled so Boeing didn't bother producing new simulators for the new max 8 or 9 planes and instead just had pilots train on the original 737 simulators. And the flight manual was extremely inadequate in explaining the new planes too. https://news.vice.com/en_us/article...imulators-for-boeing-737-max-8-pilot-training. Lack of training? Yeah I would think so. And from the article, "In November, after the Lion Air crash, the Wall Street Journal reported that Boeing has acknowledged that in unusual circumstances this system can lead to the plane taking a steep dive — and didn’t warn pilots about the risk. “The company had decided against disclosing more details to cockpit crews due to concerns about inundating average pilots with too much information — and significantly more technical data — than they needed or could digest,” a Boeing official told the Wall Street Journal." Yeah we all think pilots are all too stupid to understand too technical of data of how planes work even though majority of them have spent their whole life flying planes and many of them since teenager times, so we just won't tell them and let them get a pleasant surprise when they are flying the plane during those "unusual circumstances". This is essentially what Boeing is saying and it sounds like major lawsuits to me. Software design flaw + lack of training = 2 catastrophic crashes. Good buy on the puts. And a mental note to myself: NEVER fly with brand new model of planes for which pilots were never provided a flight simulator. More research would be needed to be done now before booking airline tickets.
Agree with everything you said. The question is under what circumstances does this happen? If it happened twice, for these two crashes, that is relatively such a small number when you count all the take-offs around the world since these new models began flying. There are possibly a few more instances, those where the pilots disabled the autopilot, but its still such a small number. Of course even 1 occurrence is too many when you consider the plane should be doing everything it can to stay in the air, but it will be very interesting to see the circumstances under which the plane would do something like.
Yeah 189 + 157 = 346 people still died from those two crashes. I dunno if the families and the loved ones of those 346 people who perished would think it's "such a small number". Besides, would you want to step onto a Boeing 737 max 8 or 9 plane knowing what happened and what could happen in those "circumstances"? That's the ultimate question.
Its actually extremely common for modern aircraft to be marginally stable (I actually did my graduate work in non-linear/adaptive control systems for aircraft/missiles), but the fact that a single subsystem failure can result in a crash is unthinkable. I have a hard time believing that Boeing didn't simulate there control system extensively (even if a pilot wasn't in the loop)....thats what we do in aerospace....run billions of monte carlo simulations. I think there is a lot of mis-information/noise out there right now... people are piling onto the software/autopilot issue thing, but I just have my doubts. I actually suspect a mechanical failure in the elevators, triggered by inadequately trained pilots fighting the autopilot, sub-par maintenance, and perhaps a mechanical defect. Perhaps these airlines should wait to engage autopilot above 10,000 feet? Or....the autopilot should just ignore the pilot.
I did exactly the opposite, I'm long Boeing. Even if, and it's a massive if at this point, this is a design flaw in Boeing's software, it's not like they have to go back to the drawing board and redesign and rebuild every aircraft, the cost of fixing this is relatively low. And the hit the stock is taking far exceeds the long term reputation cost, in my opinion. And please folks, it's not the auto pilot that's even suspected as an issue here! Sorry, former professional pilot rant, but like a few other things I've heard people opining on when they don't have any background in it....if you didn't even realize that there are safety and stability systems on an aircraft that are completely different systems from the autopilot systems, let alone how those two systems work together, then it's probably best not to even begin to form an opinion based on what you (don't) know about this particular class of mishap! And let's not even get started on how many mishaps with an "obvious" cause ended up, after careful investigation, being the result of something else entirely. I took a jet engine mishap investigation course and that point alone was the main theme they drilled into us throughout the course. And I saw the result first-hand in mishaps I unfortunately had more first-hand knowledge of. End rant.
Oh yes I forgot we have a former pilot in our ranks. Would be interested to hear your opinion of what do you think happened based on what we know so far. Yes there might be other "safety and stability systems on an aircraft that are completely different systems from the autopilot systems", but none of them kicked in or worked obviously otherwise the planes wouldn't have crashed! So it's still a design flaw. LOL All we know right now from the logged pilots complaints with the FAA and the last communication from the doomed pilots to the control tower that those pilots were all trying to override the autopilot system. If it was working properly, why would they want to override it or report that there is something wrong with the flight control? Whether this is a design/software issue or a training issue, Boeing would be responsible in one way or another and that's going to affect its stock price negatively even if the error might be easy to correct. Its long-term reputation would be damaged. I mean it made a plane that produced two crashes that killed 346 people!! That's going to stay in people's mind for some time to come. The only way that Boeing's stock goes up is if they do an out-of-this-world PR and major discount and kick-backs to entice people to continue to buy their planes. Better call Saul!!
Given that the pilot is the one who's going to be using that "control system", it should be important to include the pilot in the loop, don't you think? And actually train the pilot on how to use it exactly instead of having them still practice on the old model? Well if they engage autopilots during take-off that means it is the correct procedure. If it is no longer advisable to do that with these Max 8 or 9 planes, then it would've been nice that pilots are actually advised to do that, either through a new flight simulator (which Boeing still has not provided btw) or a well-written manual?