Indonesia Looks Into Possible Sensor Problems in Boeing Max 8

@N.G. Krishnan I am in 100% agreement here. As a retired pilot with a major U.S. airline I can speak volumes about all the automation that has taken over our aircraft systems. The real issue is not the automation, in and of itself, but the pilot management of this automation. Lack of understanding of what the automation is or is not doing in any particular flight mode can be fatal. Case in point, the Asiana 777 accident in San Francisco in 2013. This crew did not realize the auto throttles were not in a speed mode, meaning the throttles would not adjust to maintain a set speed. And, this would have clearly annunciated on a section of one of their displays in the autothrottle section, the word HOLD, in white. With the throttles at idle, the aircraft kept slowing, 30 knots below their target speed......and nobody noticed till it was too late. I have flown aircraft with Stick Pushers, which is what was added to the 737 MAX series. However, these pushers cease to function once the angle of attack is decreased and a stall is averted. Hopefully, we will find out what occurred here.

The FAA is a US agency We don’t dictate to other nations how they run their governments (other than via invasion)

@Paul However, the FAA can restrict an airline from flying into U.S. airspace if it is deemed unsafe.

@sob: I totally disagree. These following sample incidents are good enough to show that an American is as fallible as any other human. “American Defence Logistics Agency (DLA) sent four nose-cone fuse assemblies to Taiwan in August 2006 instead of four replacement battery packs for use in Taiwan's fleet of UH-1 Huey helicopters”. “On August 29, 2007, six AGM-129 ACM cruise missiles, each loaded with a W80-1variable yield nuclear warhead, were mistakenly loaded onto a United States Air Force (USAF) B-52H heavy bomber at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and transported to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. The nuclear warheads in the missiles were supposed to have been removed before the missiles were taken from their storage bunker. The missiles with the nuclear warheads were not reported missing, and remained mounted to the aircraft at both Minot and Barksdale for 36 hours. During this period, the warheads were not protected by the various mandatory security precautions for nuclear weapons”.

@MC, there's a term describing speculations of why things go wrong - conspiracy theories and armchair quarterbacks.

@jules Too early to state that. Please remember, huge production bottlenecks and much work done out of sequence at the build location. We always have to wait for the NTSB (or equivalent) to state the "most likely cause." Plenty of new airplanes have been delivered with significant flaws.

@JEM And so does every company. But why the perhaps excessive reliance on automation? Do modern-day pilots really require that much assistance?

@Northwoods Cynic I'm a commercial pilot. The "excessive reliance" on automation is overstated and the public's perception of this is exacerbated by a lack of understanding. Pilots are always in control of the aircraft even if an autopilot is manipulating the controls -- think of an autopilot as a tool the pilots control the aircraft with. Many automation systems are advanced and capable, but they primarily exist to reduce workload so pilots can complete more tasks than in the past (e.g. tracking and analyzing weather, using advanced navigation techniques, planning arrivals into dynamic terminal areas, etc.). Many of us still opt to hand fly for extended periods of time, and many aircraft flying today do not have autopilot systems installed (mostly older aircraft). So, to answer your question, modern day pilots do not require that much assistance. I think that there may be a cultural problem: in the US, emphasis is placed on the importance of being in command of the aircraft and doing whatever is required to stay safe -- even breaking rules or going against air traffic control instructions in an emergency. I am not sure if the pilots of this aircraft were trained in a similar culture. Aviation is plagued by a never ending sea of arm-chair experts who claim that pilots are "just there in case something goes wrong" which is absolutely not the case. We are there to fly the aircraft, and whether or not an autopilot is on does not change the fact that we are in control.

If you're flying airplanes commercially without autopilots you're either flying 4 seat cessnas or something that was built in the 40s. Hand flying is strongly discouraged in the real world of the airlines, the machine does a much better job than any pilot. Usually autopilot on immediately after TO about 500 feet and stays on until short final. Very short final. In Europe they do zero/zero landings, without human intervention. The pilot drives it to the gate.

@Prairie Populist. Something to keep in mind as autonomous vehicles - cars, planes, buses - are breathlessly promoted by tech-besotted advocates.

@Prairie Populist The issues seem related to pitot tubes recording air speed. I am not even an engineer but it just seems a complete redesign of this part is needed.

@Prairie Populist At about 30-35 years ago there was similar accident-Niki Lauda's Lauda Air.It was also Boening.Niki Lauda proved that the accident had been caused by inappropriate system response.Boening then made repairs.

@David C. Clarke. Power is added - if necessary - after nose-down. Stalls aren't usually the result of *too much* power. (Sorry to be pedantic but it matters.)

@Mike "Any competent 737 pilot knows the approximate power setting for straight and level flight." This is really the key to me. At full power and level flight (as indicated by several classes of flight instruments), the plane is not stalling, no matter what the stall detection systems are telling you. This leaves open, of course, the question of whether those stall detection systems were able to override the command inputs of the pilots, at least until those systems were disabled.

@Atlant Schmidt At full power in level flight the aircraft might exceed its operating limits. In a 737 it's between 45-55% of N1. And in a Boeing the automation can't override the pilot - that's Airbus that thinks the machine is smarter than the guy flying it. That's why I say, if it ain't Boeing, I ain't going.

@MR Have you flown an Airbus? Because you are completely wrong. I flew the A-320 for 7 years and I could hand fly it like a Cessna 172. Yes, it has envelope protection. But by selecting several buttons on the overhead I could disable that too. The line between automation in Boeing and Airbus designs has gotten very blurry. I used to be a Boeing guy but I’ll take an Airbus over Boeing any day. The 737 production line should have been closed after the -800. It’s a 50 year old airframe......enough.

@Chris Not challenging you just seeking clarification: why did it not work this way when the French crew failed to take control of their Airbus plane over the Atlantic as it did the same thing? I would think they were well trained on a plane their government helped to build.

@JEM I read somewhere that the ill-fated Air France crew had not received sufficient training in “hand-flying” at night, at high altitude. We seem to be over-reliant on automation. Not good!

@JEM The AF crew were flying at night and I think in weather. Looking out the cockpit windows wasn't going to provide any information. The plane was at an altitude where minimum speed and critical mach, recommend maximum speed were almost the same. The correct response wasn't obvious; as I recall from reading the translated summary of the report, one crew member was pulling the controls back , so not to exceed the critical mach; and the other was pushing the nose down to prevent a stall. the controls are not mechanically connected. The correct response, as we sit in an armchair, was putting the nose down. a retired airline pilot used to remind me, "the pilot is the first to arrive at every accident."

@Skywarrior Good point. Those skills seem to be shriveling in the face of ever-increasing reliance on automation.

@J Darby Training of the pilot is done according to the manual, that I believe was the point. When bad information is given the pilot is to take action, not allow the plane to crash.

@vulcanalex Thanks, good point, makes sense. Looks like mine was a dumb comment.

Good point. The time to read the manual is not in extremis. Who’s on the fight deck? Are they aviators or systems operators lacking skill? Early indications are of bungled maintenance but pilot error seems likely. Probably a combination of the two. Take-offs and landings are most dangerous and the major gun for error most slim. Consider: Had the Southwest PIC who saved her flight encountered this problem, would we be mourning the loss of 189 souls? Perhaps, but I doubt it.

@W More likely for our airlines pilots are very capable, unlike most drivers, not to mention the airways are controlled unlike streets and highways.

Ever drive behind a airline pilot? I did for forty years on the service roads into DFW airport. Whenever the guy in front of me was all over the road, invariably after passing the driver had 4 stripes on his shoulder. Also, never lend your little non autopilot equipped airplane to a airline pilot, they tend to flare at fifty feet and do a full stall landing.

I had a pilot that refused a airplane because of a non airworthy deferred item. When I told dispatch, they must have called the chief pilot. Soon thereafter the captain was called to the phone. He then meekly returned to the cockpit and departed. I can only assume he was given the choice of flying the trip or being sent home. This was at AA. This was not a airworthiness deferral. MELs exist for a reason.

Too soon to tell. It’s premature to assign cause and highly presumptive American maintenance would make it all good. The Boeing notice to aviators discusses a devilish sequence of events leading to disaster. In other words, hope your pilot’s good. Thinking back to Air France creaming into the Atlantic some years back, the disaster speaks to the issue of having aviators in the cockpit v. bus drivers. Sadly, the guys on the flight deck in this case may have fallen into the latter category. Regardless, souls were lost. May they Rest In Peace.

I think that the conclusion that it's the airline's fault, while the investigation is ongoing, that this would never happen in the US, and not to fly in "Third World" Countries is insulting and quite blind. I'm an aeronautical engineer in what you might qualify as a Third World Country (Spain, some Americans do). In these type of accidents the cause is always a combination of factors with infinitesimal probability. I'm right now in South East Asia, an area I highly recommend visiting of what you define as the "Third World". I'm flying regularly and I haven't sent anything in the security protocols that I've found worrisome (granted, I've not gone through every bit of paper). The ASEAN security and maintenance protocols almost match one on one the European and American. My last comment, IMO "Third World" is an extremely derogatory term that puts countries in a hierarchy of which I am very critical. I would accept this term maybe (emphasis on maybe) from the highly developed, social- security-for-all, no-guns, Scandinavian countries.

Gee, you figured it all out from thousands of miles away. I'm impressed.

@Paulie ...care to elaborate?

@Nino Guess what - in this case, what you have a hard time believing is exactly what happened. In these planes, the auto trim system - which continues to operate when the autopilot is off -- automatically makes a nose-down adjustment to the horizontal stabilizer if it determines, as a result of angle-of-attack data (among other data) that a stall is imminent. In this case, an angle-of-attack sensor apparently was defective. Although the pilot can counteract this by pulling back on the yoke, an exceptional degree of force is needed. And the auto trim system will repeat the nose-down adjustment every 10 seconds unless the pilot in all the confusion is able to figure out what the problem is and disable the auto trim. Read Boeing's bulletin and you'll see.

Assuming the Pilot in Command has the aviators skills and capabilities to maintain situational awareness to recognize the peril sufficient to disengage the autopilot in time remains to be seen. You point is well-taken. I

@Michael So, if you're flying an airplane with no airspeed indicator, and the plane keeps going into automatic stall recovery, forcing the nose violently downward, you say it would be easy as pie to land, eh? How dare those pilots not have enough stick-and-rudder skills. Mr. No-Brainer would have known what to do.

@Michael Uncommanded dive at low altitude and not able to recover from in time my guess.

I agree. Automation has made pilots unable to manually fly the plane in emergency situations. A plane should be grounded until a thorough investagw has been conducted after any emergency.

@george just curious- when was that? Garuda is the one Indonesian airline with a pretty good reputation. I've had nothing but good experiences flying with them.