Boeing 737 Max 8 Ethiopia Airlines Crash

According to Capt Sully of the Hudson River accident no airline should have put a pilot with only 200 hours in the cockpit. The 1st officer should not be an apprentice position.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/hero-pil...-training-in-wake-of-ethiopian-airlines-crash

In the words of Captain Sully;

It has been reported that the first officer on that flight had only 200 hours of flight experience, a small fraction of the minimum in the U.S., and an absurdly low amount for someone in the cockpit of a jet airliner. We do not yet know what challenges the pilots faced or what they were able to do, but everyone who is entrusted with the lives of passengers and crew by being in a pilot seat of an airliner must be armed with the knowledge, skill, experience, and judgment to be able to handle the unexpected and be the absolute master of the aircraft and all its systems, and of the situation. A cockpit crew must be a team of experts, not a captain and an apprentice. In extreme emergencies, when there is not time for discussion or for the captain to direct every action of the first officer, pilots must be able to intuitively know what to do to work together. They must be able to collaborate wordlessly.

 

"Boeing FAA designated representative?" Can you explain who that would be? The FAA certifies an aircraft Airworthy after they determine it is, not Boeing. If the FAA wrongly certified the 737 Max airworthy the FAA is responsible.

 

I have worked at a couple of aerospace companies. Neither built aircraft. However, there were government and other company representatives that stayed there permanently. I suspect what he is referring to is an FAA representative who had a permanent presence at Boeing.

 

Found some info on FAA designated representatives. The representatives are actually employees of Boeing who have been designated to carryout inspections the FAA is responsible for.

https://www.apnews.com/c6f08e5ff1264d909cd31914dc223f34

For more than six decades, the Federal Aviation Administration has relied on employees of airplane manufacturers to do government-required safetyinspections as planes are being designed or assembled.

But critics say the system, dubbed the “designee program,” is too cozy as company employees do work for an agency charged with keeping the skies safe while being paid by an industry that the FAA is regulating.

 

Me: How come this was not public knowledge?
You: How could it have been? It was information submitted in a database that pilots contribute to
Me:Why do you think that they have a database of pilots complaints?
You:To be able to track problems. Why else?
Me:Who is tracking these problems?
You:Well as the article was referring to US pilots in that part of the article, I'm guessing that it is an FAA database, so I would say the FAA.

Are you saying that the FAA are not capable or allowed to make complaints of aircraft safety public knowledge? A cover up?

 

That looks like a disaster waiting to happen. They generally rotated the representatives periodically so they would not get too cozy.

 

Except the representatives were not FAA employees. The were Boeing employees. How could they not be "cozy" when Boeing was paying their salary? I honestly did not know this was taking place.

 

Less than 6 years ago, the US minimum was 250 hours for any pilot, not just a co-pilot. How does a pilot get experience of flying passenger jets if not through actually flying passenger jets? Just sitting in the cockpit is counted as hours experience even if you don't do anything but chat to the pilot while in the air. You can get 1000 hours experience without flying a passenger jet, fly in a four seater for a start
https://www.thebalancecareers.com/ways-pilots-can-build-flight-time-282889

minimum 200 hours experience for a commercial pilot is not unusual. I don't want to use the word racism (I can't remember the right word) but all I see in this thread are posts attacking foreign third world pilots as if they are inferior

 

I was referring to having government and other company representatives located permanently at our company. They were rotated periodically so they did not get too cozy with our company.

 

A commercial license will not get you into the cockpit of a jet carrying passengers. It takes an ATP or or Air Transport Pilot license or at last that was the way it used to be.

 

I believe also the airlines require a very large number of hours as pilot just to get into the door. I read recently (I think i did) that there is now a need for more pilots so who knows what next the airlines will say they have as minimum requirements.

 

For 6 decades things have worked wonderful. That is over 60 years. Ds have this bee in their bonnet now.

 

Until the Colgan Air crash in Buffalo the minimum for US flight crew was 250 hours. After that it was raised to the current 1500 hours.

 

Let's go to a real Airline Captain for his advice

Captain C.B. Sully Sullenberger
21 hours ago
We do not yet know what caused the tragic crash of Ethiopian 302 that sadly claimed the lives of all passengers and crew, though there are many similarities between this flight and Lion Air 610, in which the design of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 is a factor. It has been obvious since the Lion Air crash that a redesign of the 737 MAX 8 has been urgently needed, yet has still not been done, and the announced proposed fixes do not go far enough. I feel sure that the Ethiopian crew would have tried to do everything they were able to do to avoid the accident. It has been reported that the first officer on that flight had only 200 hours of flight experience, a small fraction of the minimum in the U.S., and an absurdly low amount for someone in the cockpit of a jet airliner. We do not yet know what challenges the pilots faced or what they were able to do, but everyone who is entrusted with the lives of passengers and crew by being in a pilot seat of an airliner must be armed with the knowledge, skill, experience, and judgment to be able to handle the unexpected and be the absolute master of the aircraft and all its systems, and of the situation. A cockpit crew must be a team of experts, not a captain and an apprentice. In extreme emergencies, when there is not time for discussion or for the captain to direct every action of the first officer, pilots must be able to intuitively know what to do to work together. They must be able to collaborate wordlessly. Someone with only 200 hours would not know how to do that or even to do that. Someone with that low amount of time would have only flown in a closely supervised, sterile training environment, not the challenging and often ambiguous real world of operational flying, would likely never have experienced a serious aircraft malfunction, would have seen only one cycle of the seasons of the year as a pilot, one spring with gusty crosswinds, one summer of thunderstorms. If they had learned to fly in a fair-weather clime, they might not even have flown in a cloud. Airlines have a corporate obligation not to put pilots in that position of great responsibility before they are able to be fully ready. While we don’t know what role, if any, pilot experience played in this most recent tragedy, it should always remain a top priority at every airline. Everyone who flies depends upon it. https://nyti.ms/2TCgcfr

 

Oh I see what you mean. I just meant that there was no way for the information to go from the database to public knowledge, but obviously you are asking why the information wasn't made public by authorities. And it is a good question. Perhaps they didn't want to cause a panic?

And the second?

 

The cause of the first crash was the AP engagement. The second plane black boxes have not been fully examined yet but it will be known that the plane AP was engaged moments before the crash (standard procedure for commercial flights following repetitive flight path for that route and I presume that ground control would be notified that AP is engaged). Hence all evidence to date points to the same cause of the crash as the first plane hence as a precautionary measure all Max 8 planes have been grounded

Don't you think that the planes should have been grounded after the first plane crash given that no fix to the known catastrophic fault was carried out?

 

To answer your first question, as of January 2019 350 737 Max 8 have been put into service. They went into service May 2017. Since being put into service 3 accidents took place. The first was due to the AP malfunction. The second was an engine oil pressure issue. And the third is still being researched. These are the stats and clearly the number of successful flights is overwhelming compared to unsuccessful flights. As for your second question, the media is hyping both.

 

It does not mean the airlines hired pilots with just 250 hours.

 

Okay, but how many would have to NOT be successful in order for it to NOT be overwhelming in your opinion?

 

Systems fail. Aircrews should know how to manage inflight emergencies. Apparently the Ethiopia crew may have been fighting the AP as seen by the way the aircraft was flying. Disengaging the AP should have been the first step. The sound of the pilot's voice showed panic. Maybe some airlines should bring back the flight engineer if their pilots aren't capable of understanding how critical flight systems work? As stated earlier the pilots are the last line of defense after the automation fails.

 

It's a fair question and not being a statistician I cannot give an exact number. But in my opinion 3 accidents in 2 years with 350 Max 8 in service does not meet the threshold to ground all aircraft. I once was flying on a C130 when it started to "purpose." The nose was cycling up and down while the aircraft was in AP. The pilots disengaged the AP and we pulled the circuit breaker for the elevator trim tabs. The problem stopped and we continued flying without the AP. Maybe flight engineers should be brought back?

 

LOL! Of course they did, especially at the commuter, regional, & corporate level. Sometimes with less than the minimum with a limited ATP cert. if the airline thinks they'e viable candidates. They'll get them their time elsewhere, and then train them. THEY STILL HIRE AT THE MINIMUM 1500 HOURS including the majors especially when there's pilot shortages like there is now.

 

Pilots should not have to worry that a known fixable catastrophic malfunction can occur at any time - two planes out of 350 crashing in just 6 months due to a known fault is not acceptable. US pilots were pre-warned, foreign pilots were not. The next plane crash could easily have been a US based plane which would have bankrupted Boeing, but foreign airlines - minimum compensation, so no bankruptcy.

 

The military has always provided airlines with candidates with far more than just 250 hours. There was a reason why the minimum hours was changed.

 

If the pilots always had more than the minimum 250 hours then they would not have needed to raise that minimum!