In congressional testimony yesterday at the House Aviation subcommittee, several congressmen in their statements and questioning blamed pilots at Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines for the crashes, even making the extreme statements that US trained pilots could have handled the situation. In an excellent Seattle Times article, Dominic Gates cites why that isn’t true, and the Washington Post labeled label administration statements as “jingoism” with respect to third world country pilots.
Apparently many of the congressmen were influenced by a report prepared for an institutional investor with significant Boeing shareholdings written by Don McGregor and Vaughn Cordle. That report apparently echoes the Boeing
company line that a series of events caused the crashes, and that pilot error was the primary cause of the accidents. However, simulator testing, as reported by Gates, has shown their conclusions to be dubious, as even experienced pilots could not recover from the MCAS commands.
Analysis
Aviation is an increasingly international business. It is quite clear that the 737 MAX had a fatal flaw in its flight control system caused by the MCAS software that relied on only one sensor (an unconscionable error with no redundancy) and moved the trim beyond the intended deflection by a factor of four, and repeated its actions making it increasingly more difficult for pilots to recover the aircraft. Compounding the technical flaws on the airplane, Boeing was not transparent with respect to the system and how it worked and did not even reveal the existence of the MCAS system to airlines and pilots prior to the Indonesian crash. One cannot be well trained if one is unaware of the system.
In congressional testimony yesterday at the House Aviation subcommittee, several congressmen in their statements and questioning blamed pilots at Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines for the crashes, even making the extreme statements that US trained pilots could have handled the situation. In an excellent Seattle Times article, Dominic Gates cites why that isn’t true, and the Washington Post labeled label administration statements as “jingoism” with respect to third world country pilots.
Apparently many of the congressmen were influenced by a report prepared for an institutional investor with significant Boeing shareholdings written by Don McGregor and Vaughn Cordle. That report apparently echoes the Boeing company line that a series of events caused the crashes, and that pilot error was the primary cause of the accidents. However, simulator testing, as reported by Gates, has shown their conclusions to be dubious, as even experienced pilots could not recover from the MCAS commands.
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