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Comment by prostoalex | Hacker News Reader

While you may end up being entirely correct, it is too early to start finger-pointing before the investigations are finished.

Neither Lion nor Ethiopian had stellar safety records, e.g.

* https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/22/world/asia/lion-air-crash...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_accidents_a...

The training hours should also be looked in the context of the total hours flown on that specific model - a pilot who just sat through the short training session would have a different perspective than a pilot who sat through the same training session but has also flown the plane for hundreds of hours.

It's also not a brand new airplane - it's a modification of 737, so the training is transitional. It's not like Boeing took a freshly minted Cessna 152 pilot, gave them a 2-hour seminar, and type-rated them for the 737 Max.

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Nonsense.

Ethiopian airlines is rated Category 1 by the FAA and can thus fly direct to the US and they are a member of the star alliance.

Just because they are the largest carrier in Africa does not imply dubious safety or maintenance.

They had a 200 hour pilot flying in the right seat of the crashed airplane. Star Alliance or not, who in the hell defends a low-time student pilot flying right seat in an airliner? In the US, that would be illegal as a first officer has a 1500 hour requirement along with significant multi-engine turbine training. That copilot wouldn’t even have enough hours for a commercial certificate, let alone ATP.

You conveniently forgot to mention that the captain of the flight was highly experienced with 8'000 hours of flight time.

We don't know which pilot was the flying pilot on this takeoff.

That should not be relevant at all.

During the critical phases of flying both pilots will be engaged with the operation. While it's true that the first officer may execute the take-off the captain will be at the controls, alert and ready to intervene at any time.

Later during cruising the responsibilities may be split. For example: The captain may deal with administrative stuff while the first officer is actually flying the plane.

Especially since the crew knew that the plane can potentially behave in an erratic manner you can bet on the fact that an experienced captain is standing by and observing very closely what's happening.

Source: I had the oportunity to sit in the cockpit during an entire (short haul) flight, when that was still possible. Both pilots were always engaged during all critical periods of the flight and very specifically during take off and landing. Even when the first officer executed the operations.

As a sidenote: It's not like driving a bus up there. Both pilots were focused, concentrated and busy during the entire flight (this may be somewhat different on a long haul flight ).

It is relevant because MCAS is tied to the AOA sensor on the side of the active flight computer. Even if the Captain intervened, he may not have thought to switch flight computers to rule out a malfunctioning AOA sensor.

I'm well aware of cockpit procedure; my brother is a 30-year captain, now retired and our family has been flying since before I was born. One of my earliest memories is of using the barf bag in a 172 while my father was shooting landings.

Let's assume it was the FO. Do you think the captain was just watching it all play out as the plane lost altitude?

You are aware of the MCAS being tied to the single sensor on the side of the active flight computer?

I'm not interested in arguing for the sake of disagreeing : to refresh the context of this thread, here's a recap of the thread root:

>> They had a 200 hour pilot flying in the right seat of the crashed airplane. Star Alliance or not, who in the hell defends a low-time student pilot flying right seat in an airliner?

8000 hours on type? Or 8000 hours on safari tourist drops. He was only 28 years old. The sums barely add up, and only then as an exceptional case

I refer to Patrick Smith as my source[1]

The captain of the doomed flight ET302, Yared Getachew, was a graduate of the highly competitive Ethiopian Airlines Aviation Academy, and had more than 8,000 flight hours — a respectable total. “Yared was a great person and a great pilot. Well prepared,” a former Ethiopian Airlines training captain told me.

Doesn't sound as if he acquired his 8000 + hours on a crop duster.

In addition: Your statement that he was 28 doesn't quite jibe with what the NYT has to say about him[2]

By the time he was 29, Yared Getachew was the youngest captain at Ethiopian Airlines. Despite his relative youth, he had spent a decade with the carrier, eventually piloting wide-body jets that crossed continents and oceans.

[1] http://www.askthepilot.com/ethiopian-737max-crash/

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/business/ethiopian-airlin...

@CaptainZapp

Thanks for that information. I was having trouble crediting a 28 year old with 8,000 flight hours...

That said, it's very likely a big chunk of that wasn't on 737s, or even large commercial jets.

200 or 20 000 hour doesn't matter because the pilot called back the airport that he has issues taking off. This indicate a problem with plane, anything that happened after might a pilot mistake but 100% you have confirmed plane issue.

> They had a 200 hour pilot flying in the right seat of the crashed airplane. Star Alliance or not, who in the hell defends a low-time student pilot flying right seat in an airliner?

So do European airlines and they have great safety records.

FWIW Malcolm Gladwell's business bestseller Outliers: The Story of Success has a chapter devoted to explaining the superior safety record of American major airlines compared to foreign carriers: "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes". Gladwell comes to the conclusion that foreigners are unsafe because they are ... foreign. They have a strange and defective culture that prevents the first officer (copilot) from speaking up and pointing out problems to the captain. If only everyone were American, the world would be a better and safer place. This article explores an alternative explanation: foreign airlines do comparatively poorly because their first officers have almost no pilot-in-command experience.

https://philip.greenspun.com/flying/foreign-airline-safety

Rather important is that it was in fact considered to have substantially different enough behavior to warrant a required type rating for pilots, obviated due to the software abstraction provided by MCAS. However, this abstraction is effectively disabled when setting stabilizer trim to cutoff which is one of the later steps in the normal troubleshooting sequence. OK? So the airplane is in an emergency situation, with a flight characteristic normalizing software routine disabled, thereby making it possible for the airplane to exhibit the very behavior that pilots were never informed of, never trained for, and not required to have a type rating for, that MCAS existed for in the first place.

I think that's quite a lot more relevant than airline safety records. Ethiopian Airlines has a good recent safety record anyway. And the outcry, upon MCAS being publicly revealed, among the U.S. pilot community I also think demonstrates important relative concern.

And, quite a concerning story about U.S. 737 MAX pilots using the anonymous aviation safety reporting system to communicate their concerns, whether instead of or because of the normal channels for doing so.

https://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2019/03/12/boei...

And the relevant HN link https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19373216

> It's not like Boeing took a freshly minted Cessna 152 pilot, gave them a 2-hour seminar, and type-rated them for the 737 Max

This ASRS report almost makes it sound like that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19374386

The author of that ASRS report almost surely holds an ATP, a 737 type rating, and has passed the -MAX differences training.

That's quite a stretch from a 4-cylinder single engine, 110mph prop plane transition.

What is with this argument? Why the hell is it "carry on business as usual until we nail down exact causes" why is it not OMG two goddamn planes (brand fucking new of the same type) fell out of the sky under similar circumstances better ground them until we nail down exact causes. Like the longer the fucking mystery goes on the longer these death bombs stay in the air? That is an idiotic argument.

There are always things going on in the background. Boeing is a major US company so the FAA may be more reluctant to ground them.

For most countries "better safe than sorry" was an easy option. At the end of the day its airliners who are left holding the bag, but with some logistical wizardry everyone can still go on holiday.

There was just no reason for China, Singapore, the UK and the EU not to ground these planes. The airline industry has to deal with public perception.

> The airline industry has to deal with public perception.

Yes and I think that is what is at stake here as well. The airline industry at the end of the day is an industry. We forget that sometimes because it feels like a monopolistic or oligarlistic industry, but we are their customers, and if people start demanding that they not ride a 737 Max, and start to refuse to purchase routes that are serviced by a 737 Max, you'll see some changes really quick. I for one have told every loved one, and every person I know that travels frequently to not board these planes, and they agree as well. I additionally informed my boss and clients that if they need me to fly, it will absolutely under no circumstances be on a 737Max. I am 100% certain I am not alone in this.

I'll just leave this here:

https://seminyaktimes.com/woman-allegedly-invited-into-lion-...

http://www.aviationnews-online.com/airline/lion-air-pilots-s...

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_accidents_a...

Oh cool 5 events in the last 23 years. That sounds like a stellar safety record to me.

What other airlines are you comparing it to?

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