Lack of Training. The 737 Max story continues

I've published a couple of items on the 737 Max, the most recent one being here:

The Aerodrome: 737 Max Grounded and Technology as "Too Complicate...: Yesterday I wrote about the 737 Max and the efforts to ground them globally in this post here: Pushing Pause on the Boeing 737 Panic. ...

In my first post, I noted this:

Most nations, including nations that put in a lot of flight time, don't train anywhere near to the American standard.  American private pilots have knowledge that vastly exceeds the knowledge of many pilots that step into lesser commercial roles elsewhere, and American commercial pilots are not only second to none, there's no comparison everywhere.

This morning on the news, the news was noting the same thing, including in an interview by a Canadian commercial pilot.

The Lion Air pilot, age 29, who was at the helm of the recently crashed 737 Max in Ethiopia had 8,000 hours total experience. 

His co-pilot?  200 hours.

200.

There's no way that second chair would have been occupied by a pilot with so little experience in the US or Canada.  One experienced pilot stated that this was like putting a 13 year old in the co-pilots seat.

We don't know the cause of the crash yet.

But these pilots weren't experienced the way that American pilots were. The co-pilot shouldn't have been in the second chair at all.

737 Max Grounded and Technology as "Too Complicated".

Yesterday I wrote about the 737 Max and the efforts to ground them globally in this post here:

Pushing Pause on the Boeing 737 Panic.

Boeing 737 undergoing testing at the Natrona County airport a couple of years ago.

Two Boeing 737 Max's have crashed in the last month or so, the most recent in Ethiopia where it resulted in tragic loss of life.

After I wrote that, they were in fact grounded.

We still, of course, don't know what occurred.  There's anecdotal evidence, but only that, that there may be a problem with some of the automated features.  Or not.

It's important to acknowledge that we still don't know and there's a lot of things that could be occurring here, and one of them could be a couple of things that are being missed in the press or that people simply don't want to address.

I touched on one of those yesterday, politics.  Politics inform our views in all sorts of ways of course, and they can creep in here whether we mean for them to or not.  And by politics the politics of there being really only two companies on earth left that make large commercial aircraft, Boeing and Airbus.  The Europeans were quick to shut down the flights of the 737 Max to the extent that flights in the air had to turn around, which is flat out absurd.  A knowledgeable person later told me that a European aviation commenter claimed that part of the problem with the 737 Max is that Boeing is too close to the FAA, which is ironic in my view as I wonder if the hearts of the Europeans aren't a bit too close to Airbus.

Another issue was raised by President Donald Trump.

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT. I see it all the time in many products. Always seeking to go one unnecessary step further, when often old and simpler is far better. Split second decisions are....

112K

8:00 AM - Mar 12, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

62.7K people are talking about this

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

....needed, and the complexity creates danger. All of this for great cost yet very little gain. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want Albert Einstein to be my pilot. I want great flying professionals that are allowed to easily and quickly take control of a plane!

79K

8:12 AM - Mar 12, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

41.6K people are talking about this

Now, I'm frankly doubt that our President has the knowledge necessary to comment on aviation.  I'm not a pilot (I don't even like to be a passenger on an airplane, something ironic for a person who obviously likes airplanes themselves), but I'm pretty sure I know more about airplanes than Donald Trump and I'm not qualified to really go too far in my statements.  But this is becoming a common view and I've heard versions of this comment before, from other people.

Are they too complicated to fly?  Well, a person can debate that.  The real debate, however, is not if they are too complicated, really, but too automated. And that's a different thing entirely.

Modern aircarft are by and large the safest they've ever been, and part of that is due to technology. Technological advances have made modern commercial aircraft far more safe than any aircraft in prior eras, it's a simple fact.  Risks that passengers accepted in prior eras routinely would never be accepted now. 

For example, the Fokker Tri Motor, which was a legendary early passenger airplane that's still widely regarded, was at first built with all wooden frame.  It was the snapping of the wooden wings of such a Fokker that resulted in the death of Knut Rockney and his fellow travelers in 1931.

Fokker F-10.  It had an all wooden frame.

Now, if you've flown, you've seen those wings flex. Would you feel safe in a wooden framed passenger plane?

I could go on and on about various older aircraft that were widely used that we'd be horrified to be in today, but the point is clear.  Airplanes are safer than ever, and technology is part of the reason for that.

But with that technology has come the inevitable computer override, to some degree of, pilot decisions.  A lot is now going on in all kids of aircraft due to computerization.  And computers fail or make errors.

The irony here is that the Airbus is more computer controlled than the 737 Max, I'm told.  Indeed, it flat out overrides pilot commands in some instances. The Boeing 737 Max was designed so that the pilot can control over the computer.  The Airbus is more like a modern AirTrain.  It feels free to basically tell the pilot, "no sir, I don't think so".

There could indeed be a problem with that, in all sorts of ways, at some point.  If there is, we should really pause as we're about to take that same path with automobiles.  Indeed, we already are.

And the drivers of cars are a lot less technologically adept as a rule than pilots are.  Indeed, as noted earlier American pilots are much more adept in every fashion than those of other nations, and perhaps that plays into this as well.

At any rate, no answers right now.  Hopefully no financial disaster for Boeing as well, which wouldn't serve the interest of the travelling public.

Pushing Pause on the Boeing 737 Panic.

Boeing 737 undergoing testing at the Natrona County airport a couple of years ago.

Two Boeing 737 Max's have crashed in the last month or so, the most recent in Ethiopia where it resulted in tragic loss of life.

There's no denying that.

And that definitely needs to be looked into.

I'm not an air crash examiner by any means, and I don't really know enough to comment on this story. But then, neither do you, or any of those, outside learned air agencies perhaps.

So some things to keep in mind.

The 737 basic design goes back to 1967.  The 737 Max is simply the most updated, although certainly very updated, version of that old air frame.  People panicking over 737s should realize that just because its a 737, doesn't mean its a 737 Max.

And just because there's been two crash in close proximity in time doesn't mean there's anything actually wrong with the plane, actually.  Both airplanes that crashed were in foreign use and while the airlines that had them will no doubt maintain that their pilots are amongst the very best in the world, frankly if the pilot isn't an American pilot, they aren't.

Most nations, including nations that put in a lot of flight time, don't train anywhere near to the American standard.  American private pilots have knowledge that vastly exceeds the knowledge of many pilots that step into lesser commercial roles elsewhere, and American commercial pilots are not only second to none, there's no comparison everywhere.

Beyond that, the nature of reporting tends to dog pile on, but not evenly.  If the Russian airline Aeroflot was subject to the same standards nobody would ever get on a Russian airplane, but it isn't.  Aeroflot has had five times the number of deaths than any other airline in the world, with over 8,000 people losing their lives on their planes since they first started flying. And this in an airline that no doubt uses a lot of former military pilots who ought to know what they are doing.

Five times.

Finally, the number of manufacturers of aircraft have dwindled to an unstable few.  When commercial aviation got rolling the number of competing companies was vast.  Even at the start of the jet age that was still true.  Now, in the Western world we're down to Boeing and Airbus.

Airbus is a pan European aircraft manufacturer that competes neck and neck against Boeing, the sole American commercial aviation manufacturer.  Hurting Boeing, even accidentally, helps Airbus.  It's notable that European aviation agencies were very quick to ground Boeing.

Indeed, European bans were such that Boeing 737 Max's in the air had to re route and not land at European airports.  And that's just flat out dumb.   Safety would have required them to allow them to land at their destination, not re route.

Now, I'm not saying that European actions were calculated to hurt Boeing.  But I am cognizant that its always hard not to keep your home close to you in some fashion when problems break out.

Lawsuits and overreaction have driven the costs of private aircraft so high that only the wealthy can afford them and very few are made.  Overreaction could kill off American commercial manufacturing and certainly will hurt it.  A little prudential judgment may be in order.

Boeing 737 Max, Natrona County International Airport.

 

 This is the new Boeing 737 Max, Boeing's new narrow-body airliner which is the fourth generation of the venerable Boeing 737.  This example was at the Natrona County International Airport undergoing some testing at this famously windy airport featuring very long runways.