Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max crashes killing 157

[Bobby_Batronic 1994]

Again, a complete inability to understand that both Boeing AND the pilots f’d up. That superior airmanship is not required to apply pitch and power, and that actually trimming the plane as you should lowly saves the day. 

 

Remember, MCAS stops with electric trim application. The Lion Air CA retrimmed 21 times before handing control to the FO who never retrimmed and they crashed. The Ethiopian crew quickly turned off the stab trim but then allowed to speed to get so high that there wasn’t a prayer to move the trim position. 

So I’ll type slowly for those who still can’t wrap their heads around this. Boeing f’d. The FAA f’d up. The budget airlines F’d up, and the pilot most certainly F’d up. That’s been stated multiple times by all pilots on this thread. Not that some can seem to remember it. These accidents were incorrectly described as something akin to Star Fleet training. No. They weren’t easy. Bad days in airplanes seldom are.  But you don’t pay pilots to bring their B game. And I wouldn’t step foot on an airliner with a 200 hour guy manning a position. 

[Pato del Muerto 52494]

How did you get your first thousand hours?

[RPM 26320]

44 minutes ago, Bobby_Batronic said:

I wouldn’t step foot on an airliner with a 200 hour guy manning a position. 

How would you know? I have no idea how many hours or the flight record of any crew on any airline I've flown on.

[Bobby_Batronic 1994]

Well, they’ll  have at least 1500 in the US. Many foreign carriers tend to raise guys up, send them to the states to get a bare minimum of training and ratings, and then throw them in the right seat of something big as soon as they get home. 

[Your Mom 4805]

8 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

How did you get your first thousand hours?

My first thousand hours came at the controls of single and twin engine recips, mostly flight instructing. My second thousand hours came in a single-pilot twin Cessna 402 hauling DHL packages, cancelled checks, and dead peoples’ donated eyeballs in the middle of the night. Had my first ”Oh shit nearly killed myself moment” and my first engine failure at that job, not the same events. My 3rd-12th thousand hours were cutting my teeth in a regional jet for an regional airline. Learning to fly a jet with a little over 2300 hours was still like drinking from a firehose.  It was fairly overwhelming sometimes and I was lucky to have some great captains to catch all my rookie mistakes. Got my first job in a big-boy size airplane with 11,700ish hours, 15 years into my career path. I’m currently in the right seat and will be for at least another 4 or 5 years. General luck and the state of the ecomomy and the industry play a huge role in the timing but that’s a pretty typical path in the US.  The military guys I was hired alongside, about half of my class, all had a timeline of at least 10 years or so from O hours to airline pilot  

200 hours is just a scary lack of experience. You could literally get from never-been-in-a-plane to 200 hours in a month and a half.   Ideally you’d like your airline pilots to have experienced an emergency or two before they start hauling people for a living. A 200 hour guy usually hasn’t seen anything... except that one dude from Shaggy who put his Cessna down sans engine in a field a few years ago.  

Edited April 14, 2019 by Your Mom

[Homercles 10205]

It's an interesting topic.  I'm not a pilot or an aviation engineer.  They knew it was wrong, and tried to charge for an added feature to over ride the systems design glitch.  
I'm not sure what inability I have about the veracity of both statements 'splain it to me in Engrish prease.

No. To over ride the glitch, you turned off the automated trim system, which several pilots successfully did. They charged extra for a feature that would help you diagnose why the automated trim was misbehaving.

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

2 minutes ago, Homercles said:

 

No. To over ride the glitch, you turned off the automated trim system, which several pilots successfully did. They charged extra for a feature that would help you diagnose why the automated trim was misbehaving.

 

Not sure that helps me sleep at night any better. They charge extra for a fix that was their doing.  As a member of the flying public all the tech talk is so much white noise. I want to get on a plane, and know that poorly integrated systems aren't in place that pilots need to over ride to keep the plane from nosediving into an Iowa cornfield.

I know I know I know pilots do that all day all over the world.

I know it's an allegedly easy thing to defeat, dive and gain speed (seems intuitive, and one of the first things I was taught when learning to hang glide years ago, maintain. speed, and don't stall.... stalling is very bad).

Hind sight is 20/20 of course, but I think it would have been a more prudent thing to do to just give the safety feature to airlines, and issue a very bold, red letter text safety notice, and urge airlines to provide simulation training to recognize, and deal with the issue created by Boeings poor project management. Hopefully this his one of those case studies that makes the design process better, and flying even safer (the whole ya gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette lesson learned).

 

[NeverMarryAStripper 21906]

It really sucks to be one of the eggs though

[El Diablo 4232]

5 minutes ago, NeverMarryAStripper said:

It really sucks to be one of the eggs though

Chad Briscoe.

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

6 minutes ago, NeverMarryAStripper said:

It really sucks to be one of the eggs though

Gives free range a whole new meaning ...

[Homercles 10205]

Not saying Boeing is blameless by any means, it’s kind of stupid to have an entire system rely on one sensor that has no easy way of flagging it’s generating bad data. They also should have documented MCAS as a system capable of bringing the bird into a severe nose down attitude.

Every airliner has its compromises and design methodologies. There’s strong evidence to support the theory that AF447 wouldn’t have plunged into the Atlantic if it’d had the ‘old’ style of yoke that visually indicated shared control forces. Every accident requires a lot of holes to line up...feel like that point is repeated here over and over in this thread.

It’s a horrible thing that happened but the industry will be safer for it and Boeing, in the long term, will be fine.

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

1 minute ago, Homercles said:

It’s a horrible thing that happened but the industry will be safer for it and Boeing, in the long term, will be fine.

This I agree with, it was a damned expensive lesson learned however.

[tucker 238]

1 hour ago, Homercles said:

It’s a horrible thing that happened but the industry will be safer for it and Boeing, in the long term, will be fine.

 

1 hour ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

This I agree with, it was a damned expensive lesson learned however.

Will we though? It seems like the issue of regulatory capture and incidents of major disaster because of it has only increased in the era of deregulation no matter what. Not to get all CR but I disagree as this is a broader result of the change in attitudes towards regulation. 

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

Just now, tucker said:

 

Will we though? It seems like the issue of regulatory capture and incidents of major disaster because of it has only increased in the era of deregulation no matter what. Not to get all CR but I disagree as this is a broader result of the change in attitudes towards regulation. 

I think they do a pretty good job of post crash investigation and fixes. The history of Aviation is about a better process (usually).

[Homercles 10205]

Will we though? It seems like the issue of regulatory capture and incidents of major disaster because of it has only increased in the era of deregulation no matter what. Not to get all CR but I disagree as this is a broader result of the change in attitudes towards regulation. 

Yes it will. I think the current heavy focus on deregulation is absurd and motivated by wealthy donors to keep the government out of their business. But airlines and manufacturers don’t like to crash, and something this direct will be built into the industries tribal knowledge going forward...and I’m not sure that higher regulation would have worked here anyways, from what I understand the MCAS met the legal requirements...maybe I misunderstood but I don’t believe Boeing was not following the law as written.

[Homercles 10205]

Double

[retread 2951]

1 hour ago, Homercles said:

Every airliner has its compromises and design methodologies. There’s strong evidence to support the theory that AF447 wouldn’t have plunged into the Atlantic if it’d had the ‘old’ style of yoke that visually indicated shared control forces. Every accident requires a lot of holes to line up...feel like that point is repeated here over and over in this thread.

If you have more info, can you explain what this means? Or one of the pilots itt if not. I'm not entirely clear on why Bonin (447) was so disoriented. I know he was getting bad airspeed data, but I'm unclear on what other 'good' readings were available to him in those 4 minutes.

Edited April 14, 2019 by retread

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

3 minutes ago, retread said:

If you have more info, can you explain what this means? Or one of the pilots itt if not. I'm not entirely clear on why Bonin (447) was so disoriented. I know he was getting bad airspeed data, but I'm unclear on what other 'good' readings were available to him in those 4 minutes.

Seems like the article paints a picture of not knowing what the other pilot is doing with his stick, so you have no idea what you're stick movements are actually doing.

It was also pitch black out so there was no visual reference outside the cabin to even have a sense of actual speed.  Gives me a lot of how the fuck do they do that with sub drivers.

[Surly Bevo 24908]

4 minutes ago, retread said:

If you have more info, can you explain what this means? Or one of the pilots itt if not. I'm not entirely clear on why Bonin (447) was so disoriented. I know he was getting bad airspeed data, but I'm unclear on what other 'good' readings were available to him in those 4 minutes.

Airbus has sidestick control (think a joystick).  The two sidesticks did not move in unison, whereas the old style yokes do.  The thought is that if they had the old style yoke it would have been pretty easy for the other pilot to know he was yanking back and said "what the fuck are you doing stalling this motherfucker like this"

[Homercles 10205]

If you have more info, can you explain what this means? Or one of the pilots itt if not. I'm not entirely clear on why Bonin (447) was so disoriented. I know he was getting bad airspeed data, but I'm unclear on what other 'good' readings were available to him in those 4 minutes.

I’m no pilot but I thought it’d be two helpful feedbacks...they’d visually see that the control column was being held back full force, and the pilot in the left seat would have been able to feel/overcome the incorrect inputs immediately instead of having to see the ‘dual input’ indicator while being overwhelmed with a number of caution/warnings.

No one really knows why he wanted to climb so much, but I thought I’d read in the CVR and that article above that he was obsessed with getting above the weather since well before the crash.

[Homercles 10205]

Double again

[Homercles 10205]

The rare triple post

[retread 2951]

^yep.

Bonin def wanted to get up over the storm, and, for whatever reason, he just kept pulling back on the stick. I think the guy in the left seat broke protocol by watching the screen instead of monitoring Bonin's actions. Obv a lot of sensory input that those two had to sort through in a very short period of time.

I'm not a pilot either, so I was curious if there were other dependable readings upon which they could rely during the period when they were getting bad airspeed data.

Airbus design of independent yokes def contributed to disaster.

Edited April 14, 2019 by retread

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

10 minutes ago, retread said:

^yep.

Bonin def wanted to get up over the storm, and, for whatever reason, he just kept pulling back on the stick. I think the guy in the left seat broke protocol by watching the screen instead of monitoring Bonin's actions. Obv a lot of sensory input that those two had to sort through in a very short period of time.

I'm not a pilot either, so I was curious if there were other dependable readings upon which they could rely during the period when they were getting bad airspeed data.

Airbus design of independent yokes def contributed to disaster.

Also the ways crews operated in cockpits., There was a culture of we're all flying the plane so the captains didn't like to act like captains who were dictatorial.  The transcript reads like the co pilot was asking for direction, and the captain seemed aloof.

[retread 2951]

Dubois (captain) apparently spent the previous day w his flight attendant gf and got 1 hour of sleep. No bueno.

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

3 minutes ago, retread said:

Dubois (captain) apparently spent the previous day w his flight attendant gf and got 1 hour of sleep. No bueno.

Yep, definitely played a role.  Kinda hard to police that issue.

[retread 2951]

Gf's not gonna show herself around Rio. What's a guy to do?

[Bobby_Batronic 1994]

11 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

How did you get your first thousand hours?

First 1378 were training and instructing. Flew freight in smaller twins until I had 3800 hours and was hired to fly private jets. Flew private jets until I had 8300 hours and moved to an airliner. Another 2-3 years as an FO on an airliner before upgrade at which point I will likely have 2200 hours in type, and 11000 ish total time. 

[Bobby_Batronic 1994]

33 minutes ago, retread said:

^yep.

Bonin def wanted to get up over the storm, and, for whatever reason, he just kept pulling back on the stick. I think the guy in the left seat broke protocol by watching the screen instead of monitoring Bonin's actions. Obv a lot of sensory input that those two had to sort through in a very short period of time.

I'm not a pilot either, so I was curious if there were other dependable readings upon which they could rely during the period when they were getting bad airspeed data.

Airbus design of independent yokes def contributed to disaster.

Pitch and power. At 35000 feet I know 74ish % N1 and 2-3 degrees of nose up pitch will yield 245  knots and roughly level flight. Subtract 10% N1 for each 10,000 feet of altitude below that. 260ish is normal indicated in cruise.  55% N1 or 1.05 EPR and 2.5 degrees of pitch up will fly down the standard glide slope at a safe approach speed with full flaps all day. Hell, you could do the entire flight in a Lear just flying the AOA gauge and knowing power settings. Airmanship. 

The bus gives aural and visual indications when two pilots are moving the side sticks simultaneously. The aural warning were overridden by other warnings, but the visual ones are on the glare shield directly in front of the pilots, face. The 447 pilots were distracted and confused much like the Ethiopian crew. Stalling an airliner near its operating altitude limit is no small thing and eats up a lot of airspace, but that too was a recoverable, if ugly, situation. 

Edited April 14, 2019 by Bobby_Batronic

[Pato del Muerto 52494]

Thanks for the responses 

[FartingMonk 3606]

13 hours ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Seems like the article paints a picture of not knowing what the other pilot is doing with his stick, so you have no idea what you're stick movements are actually doing.

It was also pitch black out so there was no visual reference outside the cabin to even have a sense of actual speed.  Gives me a lot of how the fuck do they do that with sub drivers.

Sub drivers as in submarines?  No windows man.  You drive purely by instrumentation.  Your course and plot has been mapped out millions of times before you even leave port. 

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

1 hour ago, FartingMonk said:

Sub drivers as in submarines?  No windows man.  You drive purely by instrumentation.  Your course and plot has been mapped out millions of times before you even leave port. 

Interesting. So you never change course in a sub ? I was merely commenting on flying blind, by instrumentation only.

[FartingMonk 3606]

Oh you change course and you hope to hell your instruments and your maps are accurate.  You clear baffles basically check your blind spots but regardless you pray that ocean floor isn't below you or a ship isn't above you.  We almost got sucked into a freighter ship one night 

[Bobby_Batronic 1994]

Laser ring gyros until a new fix can be established on the surface?

[El Diablo 4232]

8 hours ago, FartingMonk said:

Oh you change course and you hope to hell your instruments and your maps are accurate.  You clear baffles basically check your blind spots but regardless you pray that ocean floor isn't below you or a ship isn't above you.  We almost got sucked into a freighter ship one night 

The number of subs that have gotten caught in trawler nets makes for a lengthy list. Or should I say the number of trawlers that have gotten towed around the ocean by a submarine makes for a pretty lengthy list?  

[retread 2951]

8 hours ago, FartingMonk said:

Oh you change course and you hope to hell your instruments and your maps are accurate.  You clear baffles basically check your blind spots but regardless you pray that ocean floor isn't below you or a ship isn't above you.  We almost got sucked into a freighter ship one night 

I would love to hear more details or stories about that. Maybe a new thread if ppl don't want to derail this one...

[JimmyHoffa 1188]

This might be a different thread but since those with hours are actually responding what's the pay breakdown for each-

local prop pilot-

private jet pilot-

discount pilot-

Non US discount pilot-

Non US major-

US major pilot- 

[Braff Zacklin 13567]

On 4/13/2019 at 9:27 PM, Bobby_Batronic said:

So I’ll type slowly for those who still can’t wrap their heads around this. Boeing f’d. The FAA f’d up. The budget airlines F’d up, and the pilot most certainly F’d up. That’s been stated multiple times by all pilots on this thread. Not that some can seem to remember it. These accidents were incorrectly described as something akin to Star Fleet training. No. They weren’t easy. Bad days in airplanes seldom are.  But you don’t pay pilots to bring their B game. And I wouldn’t step foot on an airliner with a 200 hour guy manning a position. 

This is Bobby Bats saying, "Now go home and get your fucking shine box."

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

39 minutes ago, Braff Zacklin said:

This is Bobby Bats saying, "Now go home and get your fucking shine box."

i...is...isn't Billy Batts ......... dead ?

[Southland 35]

2 hours ago, JimmyHoffa said:

This might be a different thread but since those with hours are actually responding what's the pay breakdown for each-

local prop pilot-

private jet pilot-

discount pilot-

Non US discount pilot-

Non US major-

US major pilot- 

I'm not a professional pilot, just an aviation enthusiast, but I have perused the corporate pilot salary survey results in the past. Pay will vary greatly depending upon aircraft type (flying a large Gulfstream will typically pay more than light Cessna CJ series), experience, etc. Here is a site with the 2018 survey results breaking it down for pay by aircraft type for Captain, First Officer, and Chief Pilot.

I'll let the airline guys on here comment on salary by type for the majors and discount carriers.

[Braff Zacklin 13567]

1 hour ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

i...is...isn't Billy Batts ......... dead ?

Bobby Bats is alive and well.

[smokebomb 357]

It is Vice but an interesting overview of the 737 Max issues:

 

[Pasken 1309]

1 hour ago, smokebomb said:

It is Vice but an interesting overview of the 737 Max issues:

 

Liked it until the end when they skimmed over the Ethiopian flight path. They didn't start losing altitude until they turned the system back on which was stupid when they knew it was getting bad information which they would know since only 1 of the columns was shaking and indicating stall. They had overspeed warnings, they should have known they were going way to fast and slowed the plane down so they could manually trim. If you gloss over bad piloting, you're more likely to see the same behavior again.

[The People’s Elbow 707]

15 hours ago, JimmyHoffa said:

This might be a different thread but since those with hours are actually responding what's the pay breakdown for each-

local prop pilot-

private jet pilot-

discount pilot-

Non US discount pilot-

Non US major-

US major pilot- 

local prop pilot- ‘bout tree fiddy

private jet pilot- ‘bout fo’ fiddy

discount pilot- ‘bout fi’ fiddy

Non US discount pilot- ‘bout six fiddy

Non US major- ‘bout se’en fiddy

US major pilot- ‘bout ‘ate fiddy

[MrPhlegm 3413]

There’s lots of things that will kill people if handled incorrectly in an airplane. The Lion Air Crew literally quit trimming the plane until they couldn’t handle it once control was exchanged and they died. The Ethiopian crew initially reacted correctly before doing much of the rest of it wrong. Boeing and friends led them down the primrose path and are going to feel a lot of pain from this episode, but it wasn’t a no win scenario, and some pretty basic airmanship likely saves a bunch of lives. 
The Ethiopian crew in particular had some distractions going on in the form of the stick shaker, but flying the airplane saves the day. Folks can’t wrap their head around that because they still don’t fundamentally understand what is meant by stick the nose somewhere, trimming the force off of it and putting the power at a setting for a desired speed.  And those three things worked just fine in both accidents until the failure to do those things led to an uncontrollable situation.  Literally everyone failed at their juncture of the error chain.   
 

You must work for Arthur Anderson. I had to clean up the mess that those assclowns built when The State of Texas hired them to build some systems and they basically built a giant kludge piece of shit not unlike the max 8 killer kludge.

Fortunately the AA kludge did not kill our clients.

Or maybe you work for IBM who built a system for the Florida welfare dept that did kill people.

Either way you seem stupid.

[MrPhlegm 3413]

Again, a complete inability to understand that both Boeing AND the pilots f’d up. That superior airmanship is not required to apply pitch and power, and that actually trimming the plane as you should lowly saves the day. 
 
Remember, MCAS stops with electric trim application. The Lion Air CA retrimmed 21 times before handing control to the FO who never retrimmed and they crashed. The Ethiopian crew quickly turned off the stab trim but then allowed to speed to get so high that there wasn’t a prayer to move the trim position. 
So I’ll type slowly for those who still can’t wrap their heads around this. Boeing f’d. The FAA f’d up. The budget airlines F’d up, and the pilot most certainly F’d up. That’s been stated multiple times by all pilots on this thread. Not that some can seem to remember it. These accidents were incorrectly described as something akin to Star Fleet training. No. They weren’t easy. Bad days in airplanes seldom are.  But you don’t pay pilots to bring their B game. And I wouldn’t step foot on an airliner with a 200 hour guy manning a position. 

Lulz, BOEING built an utter piece of shit system that was overly complicated and which if subjected to minor a discrepencancy would destroy the aircraft unless an overly complicated procedure was followed to the letter. A competent sane team would not do this.

BOEING built not a HAL system but a Toonces system and put it in charge of of destroying the plane. They did not do this out of ignorance like the builders of The Comet they built it out of greed and hubris.

[phdhorn 6224]

Just crossposted this in the "AA sucks" thread...

American changed our plane in late June from a regular 737 to a 737 MAX 8.  I mean, fucking, really?  Seriously?
What are the chances they'll just dump the flight altogether?  I'd say not bad, probably 24 hours before takeoff.

[Pasken 1309]

58 minutes ago, MrPhlegm said:

 unless an overly complicated procedure was followed to the letter.

How is it on overly complicated procedure? 

[Bobby_Batronic 1994]

1 hour ago, MrPhlegm said:

On 4/13/2019 at 10:27 PM, Bobby_Batronic said:

Read more  

Lulz, BOEING built an utter piece of shit system that was overly complicated and which if subjected to minor a discrepencancy would destroy the aircraft unless an overly complicated procedure was followed to the letter. A competent sane team would not do this.

Flying the airplane is an overly complicated procedure?  The six steps in a stab trim runaway is over complicated? I can post of picture of that if you’d like. You’d probably like to retract that statement after viewing it. 

Talking out of your ass may be why you seem like such an asshole.  

 

Edited April 16, 2019 by Bobby_Batronic

[Bobby_Batronic 1994]

6 minutes ago, Pasken said:

How is it on overly complicated procedure? 

It’s not. He just doesn’t know of what he speaks.