Presumes they felt they could trust their instruments under the circumstances of the emergency. Asking ATC for your altitude when you're unsure doesn't seem unreasonable?
> didn't throttle back
I think not throttling back when you have an unreliable airspeed indicator (as these flights did) is actually a checklist item. If you don't know how fast you're going, you don't know how far above stall speed you are.
Anyway, this seems really crappy. Saying that the pilots couldn't deal with runaway trim seems very unfair when MCAS placed them in an aerodynamic situation where the runaway trim procedure doesn't actually work because you can't supply enough physical strength to the trim wheels and you've had to disable the motor because it was behaving maliciously.
It's a disgusting article. There is a tradition of not badmouthing the dead that sometimes reach ridicule levels, where all the dead are saints and heroes. This articles goes unnecessary too much in the other direction before there is a final result of the investigation.
> The same cannot be expected of airline pilots who never fly solo and whose entire experience consists of catering to passengers who flinch in mild turbulence, refer to “air pockets” in cocktail conversation and think they are near death if bank angles exceed 30 degrees. The problem exists for many American and European pilots, too. Unless they make extraordinary efforts — for instance, going out to fly aerobatics, fly sailplanes or wander among the airstrips of backcountry Idaho — they may never develop true airmanship no matter the length of their careers. The worst of them are intimidated by their airplanes and remain so until they retire or die. It is unfortunate that those who die in cockpits tend to take their passengers with them.
Is this paragraph really necessary in an article that discuss the cause of the accident that killed the pilots and the passengers??? There are a few more similar parts, let's pick one more:
> Boeing has grown largely silent, perhaps as much at the request of its sales force as of its lawyers. To point fingers at important clients would risk alienating not only those airlines but others who have been conditioned to buy its airplanes, no matter how incompetent their pilots may be.
This “report” and article based on the report are obvious hit jobs against experienced pilots on behalf of a major defense contractor trying to push the blame off their shoulders. The truth is that the system, both the software and hardware, was faulty and unreliable and the pilots were not informed of its complex problems (many of which Boeing didn’t even know about) and because Boeing wanted avoid having their customers to pay to retrain them in addition to having the FAA recertify the plane.
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[ 1.1 ms ] story [ 27.7 ms ] threadPresumes they felt they could trust their instruments under the circumstances of the emergency. Asking ATC for your altitude when you're unsure doesn't seem unreasonable?
> didn't throttle back
I think not throttling back when you have an unreliable airspeed indicator (as these flights did) is actually a checklist item. If you don't know how fast you're going, you don't know how far above stall speed you are.
Anyway, this seems really crappy. Saying that the pilots couldn't deal with runaway trim seems very unfair when MCAS placed them in an aerodynamic situation where the runaway trim procedure doesn't actually work because you can't supply enough physical strength to the trim wheels and you've had to disable the motor because it was behaving maliciously.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-c...
It's a disgusting article. There is a tradition of not badmouthing the dead that sometimes reach ridicule levels, where all the dead are saints and heroes. This articles goes unnecessary too much in the other direction before there is a final result of the investigation.
> The same cannot be expected of airline pilots who never fly solo and whose entire experience consists of catering to passengers who flinch in mild turbulence, refer to “air pockets” in cocktail conversation and think they are near death if bank angles exceed 30 degrees. The problem exists for many American and European pilots, too. Unless they make extraordinary efforts — for instance, going out to fly aerobatics, fly sailplanes or wander among the airstrips of backcountry Idaho — they may never develop true airmanship no matter the length of their careers. The worst of them are intimidated by their airplanes and remain so until they retire or die. It is unfortunate that those who die in cockpits tend to take their passengers with them.
Is this paragraph really necessary in an article that discuss the cause of the accident that killed the pilots and the passengers??? There are a few more similar parts, let's pick one more:
> Boeing has grown largely silent, perhaps as much at the request of its sales force as of its lawyers. To point fingers at important clients would risk alienating not only those airlines but others who have been conditioned to buy its airplanes, no matter how incompetent their pilots may be.