Ethiopian ET302 Crash.

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Originally Posted by MolaKule
Most pilots that I know of who sense a problem will kill any automation by quickly hitting the Cutoff Switches so they gain control of the airplane, and only afterwords will they attempt to resolve any automation conflicts. I.e., Fly first and then resolve.

This is worth repeating.
 
Originally Posted by madRiver
Good luck to Boeing on spinning in this one into a positive result for this variant of 737.

It's not their job to spin anything, it's their job to prove that this aircraft is as safe and reliable as they say it is. The 737 is the most popular airplane ever made for a reason. Airlines don't need a positive spin on this to want to own it.
 
Originally Posted by PimTac
Captain Sullenberger has chimed in.
Sullenberger? Not many people know he himself didn't follow the most fundamental aircrew training principle that any pilot, from Cessna's to A380's, should perform: Follow target airspeed. ... in his famous ditching on the Hudson. (Look at the data for that incident, and you'll see he ignored the Green Dot airspeed target, basic and fundamental for piloting.) He almost stalled his Airbus A320 and killed everyone on board.

Sullenberger is one of those elite pilots, sure, this is true. A great guy too, played by Hanks well, granted. .... Yet, if he is complaining about Lion Air or Ethiopian aircrews not recoginizing runaway stab pitch trim & flipping the cutout switches, then he should fully address his own behavior in a panicked, weird, novel, new, situaiton in the air that he utterly failed at.

So precious:
Sully: "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." --- So, Sully, if a person as saintly as you claim to be, with all your experience, can't even target the correct airspeed in a panicked situaion, why not recognize how the human brain really works in panic situations instead of playing this "I'm superior and an 'apprentice' is dirt" game?
 
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Originally Posted by oil_film_movies
Originally Posted by PimTac
Captain Sullenberger has chimed in.
Sullenberger? Not many people know he himself didn't follow the most fundamental aircrew training principle that any pilot, from Cessna's to A380's, should perform: Follow target airspeed. ... in his famous ditching on the Hudson. (Look at the data for that incident, and you'll see he ignored the Green Dot airspeed target, basic and fundamental for piloting.) He almost stalled his Airbus A320 and killed everyone on board.

Sullenberger is one of those elite pilots, sure, this is true. A great guy too, played by Hanks well, granted. .... Yet, if he is complaining about Lion Air or Ethiopian aircrews not recoginizing runaway stab pitch trim & flipping the cutout switches, then he should fully address his own behavior in a panicked, weird, novel, new, situaiton in the air that he utterly failed at.

So precious:
Sully: "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." --- So, Sully, if a person as saintly as you claim to be, with all your experience, can't even target the correct airspeed in a panicked situaion, why not recognize how the human brain really works in panic situations instead of playing this "I'm superior and an 'apprentice' is dirt" game?




I am not involved in aviation other than a passenger so I am not in a position to judge.

I assume you are a pilot? That gives you the background to make judgement on someone when you were not there?
 
Originally Posted by oil_film_movies
Originally Posted by PimTac
I assume you are a pilot? That gives you the background to make judgement on someone when you were not there?
I'm a pilot, aerospace engineer, and have worked in Human Factors at times.
I don't have to be a pilot or any other "expert" to recognize the fundamental problem of airmanship in Sully's own flying: He was under airspeed in a panic situation. For him to be going there is like Elizabeth Warren getting upset & commenting on the current college admission's fraud scandal (which she did, and it was funneee...
lol.gif
).

On Sully's bad airmanship: pprune: "FDR data indicated that the airplane was below green dot speed and at VLS or slightly less for most of the descent, and
about 15 to 19 knots below VLS during the last 200 feet."
-- I looked at the Flight Data Recorder plots myself. .... I know, off topic, but when somebody brings up Sully's opinion on airmanship and training, its way off that he doesn't address the real issue which is confused humans in novel situations, like his own near-death experience when he was very close to stalling, despite his long years of ego-building experience.






Okay I will give you that then.
 
The thing to remember about all this finger-pointing at the 737Max8 pilots: Don't pontificate on the noble virtue of being a great pilot. Taken as a system, we try to design the flight control system (software) to work well with flawed pilot decisions, at least minimizing the possibility of bad decisions creating fatal crashes as this did. Remember all the pilots who forgot to lower the landing gear upon landing?
The difference between Sully's airspeed errors and these 737Max8 pilot's errors is that Sullys was basic, where the 737 pilots had to recognize trim problems in an automated system & remember to flip the switches. That proves humans are capable of a wide range of errors in novel emergency situations.
 
Maybe because he was close to stall speed and AOA is why Sully's plane didn't disenegrate upon landing. Don't forget Sully was a fighter pilot. He knew stated limits had margins built into them. Exploiting those limits is probably why all his passengers weren't fatilities. I have to credit the guy that did the near impossible rather than some Monday morning armchair quarterback.

And Sully nailed it. Putting a third world pilot (and there is a difference) with 200 hours in charge of an airliner is asking for many more of these incidents. Yeah, there appears to be a problem with the aircraft, but not one that qualified pilots cannot overcome.

Please tell us you aren't an Embry Riddle aero grad, and your pilot hours aren't in a Cessna 172. I really did like your comment on the Massachusetts senator though.
 
Regardless of hours or Country of origin I see a routine flight for pilots who understands the systems... you will always have your prime pilots like Sully and then you will always have mere stick actuators... its up to the pilot to be fully qualified before tackling PIC...
 
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Originally Posted by oil_film_movies
Originally Posted by PimTac
Captain Sullenberger has chimed in.
Sullenberger? Not many people know he himself didn't follow the most fundamental aircrew training principle that any pilot, from Cessna's to A380's, should perform: Follow target airspeed. ... in his famous ditching on the Hudson. (Look at the data for that incident, and you'll see he ignored the Green Dot airspeed target, basic and fundamental for piloting.) He almost stalled his Airbus A320 and killed everyone on board.

Sullenberger is one of those elite pilots, sure, this is true. A great guy too, played by Hanks well, granted. .... Yet, if he is complaining about Lion Air or Ethiopian aircrews not recoginizing runaway stab pitch trim & flipping the cutout switches, then he should fully address his own behavior in a panicked, weird, novel, new, situaiton in the air that he utterly failed at.

So precious:
Sully: "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." --- So, Sully, if a person as saintly as you claim to be, with all your experience, can't even target the correct airspeed in a panicked situaion, why not recognize how the human brain really works in panic situations instead of playing this "I'm superior and an 'apprentice' is dirt" game?


I think your point is ridiculous. Sully "failed" to maintain the proper airspeed? When? What's your source?

Who are you to criticize his performance?

What flying experience do you have? How many hours in the A-320?
 
Originally Posted by Mr Nice
Probably lots of customers will cancel their 737 Max orders and buy Airbus.


Doubt it.

When the DC-10 was grounded, there weren't a bunch of cancellations.

When the 787 was grounded, there weren't a bunch of cancellations.

And the 787 has over 1,000 back orders right now...

Buying an airplane isn't like buying a car. You buy the training, the logistics support, the interiors, the engines, etc. That means that you can't change fleet decisions easily. Once you've made the long-lead investment in support structure, it will be very, very expensive to switch.

United, for example, has 14 MAX airplanes, but has already spent over $100 million in buying training capacity (simulators alone are $25 million each, and you have to build the building to house them).

Many airlines have bought the MAX to keep training costs down. The MAX requires only a short (few days) differences training for a current 737 pilot. That saves six figures per pilot over a full transition/qualification course.

And ordering an A-320 NEO right now puts you at the end of the queue - you can get one several years from now, maybe, where your MAX delivery is already scheduled.
 
Originally Posted by Astro14
Originally Posted by Mr Nice
Probably lots of customers will cancel their 737 Max orders and buy Airbus.


Doubt it.

And ordering an A-320 NEO right now puts you at the end of the queue - you can get one several years from now, maybe, where your MAX delivery is already scheduled.


This^^
The A320 neo and the 737 MAX are functionally equivalent and both are their makers volume leaders by a considerable margin.
There is far more demand for aircraft in this space than in any larger or smaller capacity segment of the airliner market.
All of the airlines that have these aircraft ordered need them urgently for either fleet replacements or for growth or both.
The bottom line is that no airline can afford to turn its back on an existing order for either since the current delivery backlog for both is measured in years.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with this iteration of this venerable Boeing design and whatever issues emerge will be quickly and cheaply resolved.
People also have short memories and the current hysteria over the MAX will be forgotten in no time at all when people next shop a flight.
 
Originally Posted by Astro14
I think your point is ridiculous. Sully "failed" to maintain the proper airspeed? When? What's your source?
FDR plots, of course. Its all been public for a long time. Surprised I have to tell you that. Weird response. .... Still whining? Read the NTSB report before taking swipes at the truth. Geeez.

Originally Posted by Astro14
Who are you to criticize his performance?
Lots of other pilots & flight control engineers have. Its obvious basic airmanship says to fly the right airspeed.

Originally Posted by Astro14
What flying experience do you have? How many hours in the A-320?
Plenty enough to know one should fly airspeed. You don't need an A320 to understand and use speed-on-pitch basic fundamental techniques and Green Dot. Wow, you're in weird attack mode today. Chill & think a little.
 
Originally Posted by fdcg27
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with this iteration of this venerable Boeing design and whatever issues emerge will be quickly and cheaply resolved. .. People also have short memories and the current hysteria over the MAX will be forgotten in no time at all when people next shop a flight.
That is true. While the use of stab pitch trim in high-alpha stall conditions due to the big forward engines makes me a bit design-queasy as a flight controls engineer, it can and will be solved by the correct use of AoA vane redundancy (with other sources) which I, and many people I've worked with, would have lobbied for or just insisted on doing, possibly against the wishes of some Vice President somewhere.
 
The terms "speed" and "stall" are often conjoined but really shouldn't be. All wings stall at a certain angle of attack without regard to airspeed, although airspeed does play a role in when that stalling angle of attack is reached. The slower an aircraft flies, the greater the angle of attack required to maintain the necessary amount of lift.
The real question here is what control regime the A320 was in when ditched into the river.
In Normal Law, the aircraft will not allow a stalling angle of attack to be reached regardless of how hard the pilot flying pulls the sidestick back, so the pilot need not be too concerned about speed.
In Alternate Law, direct mode is activated in pitch, so there is no stall envelope protection.
In Direct Law, the aircraft will do exactly what the pilot commands and so can be stalled, rolled onto its back or whatever.
The mode in which this A320 was operating does matter, so I'd not be so quick to dismiss the efforts of the pilot flying to bring about a successful ditching and since he was experienced in the type, he probably knew what he needed to make himself aware of and what he could safely ignore.
His focus would have been upon the forced landing site and not precise speed control.
 
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