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Lion Air crash: Investigators say plane was 'not airworthy'

bbc.com

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Re: Lion Air crash: Investigators say plane was 'not airworthy'

#21

Post by chrisseaton »

topmonk wrote: post #4

When I was in Indonesia, about 8 years ago, Lion Air had the ominous badly translated slogan “We make people fly”. They had a bad track record at that time, too. Edit: Apparently they still do, https://mobile.lionair.co.id/

That doesn't sound badly translated, does it? Lots of corporate slogans are that kind of vague phrase. They mean 'fly' as in 'soar', 'achieve', that kind of thing, as well as literally meaning they will fly you to your destination. Could have come from an English company, to my ears, and doesn't sound ominous. I think you're reading too much into it.

Re: Lion Air crash: Investigators say plane was 'not airworthy'

#22

Post by _bear »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #19

>"In our opinion, the plane was no longer airworthy and it should not have continued," he said. The committee's report itself, though, does not spell out that conclusion. Well that's kind of a useless conclusion without the report having anything to back it up. It's really easy to pat yourself on the back and say "yup, wasn't air/road/sea-worthy" in hindsight after there's been an accident. >Pilots tried to correct t…

>This is the million dollar question. Why didn't the pilots turn off the system and fly in "legacy mode" like they would if they were flying the prior revision of the 737.

As a pilot, if my plane is doing something which I don't expect it to - my first thought isn't to disable auto-trim, but to consider why it's doing that. A previous crew did have the issue, and did report the problem. As a pilot, I trust that it has been fixed, so no, it wouldn't be the first thing on my mind.

Re: Lion Air crash: Investigators say plane was 'not airworthy'

#23

Post by cm2187 »

amelius wrote: post #3
londons_explore wrote: post #2

I like the way the news media tries to point at just one party to blame for any incident, and argues about which party should be to blame, when, like any incident, it was probably caused by tens of coinciding factors, and 'blame' really ought to be apportioned to all parties involved.

From the article: > The findings by the National Transport Safety Committee (KNKT) suggest that Lion Air put the plane back into service despite it having had problems on earlier flights. Seems this implies there are at least two parties involved: airline and aircraft manufacturer.

But did these problems caused the crash?

Re: Lion Air crash: Investigators say plane was 'not airworthy'

#24

Post by raihansaputra »

chrisseaton wrote: post #21
topmonk wrote: post #4

When I was in Indonesia, about 8 years ago, Lion Air had the ominous badly translated slogan “We make people fly”. They had a bad track record at that time, too. Edit: Apparently they still do, https://mobile.lionair.co.id/

That doesn't sound badly translated, does it? Lots of corporate slogans are that kind of vague phrase. They mean 'fly' as in 'soar', 'achieve', that kind of thing, as well as literally meaning they will fly you to your destination. Could have come from an English company, to my ears, and doesn't sound ominous. I think you're reading too much into it.

One very negative moment for this slogan was the moment one of their pilots was very audibly high on drugs on the PA before a flight.

Re: Lion Air crash: Investigators say plane was 'not airworthy'

#25

Post by idiot900 »

_archon_ wrote: post #14
unionemployee wrote: post #8

For a time, I instructed airline pilots in simulators. The aircraft I taught had a similar mechanism with a "cutout switch" like this Boeing. Often, even when they knew it was coming, the pilots would fail to immediately shut down the system when given a related emergency situation, similar to this one. After learning more about this crash, I immediately thought of the tens of times I've seen this happen in the simul…

If the aircraft were being piloted manually, this crash wouldn't have happened. The increasing imposition of automation and removing the pilot from the equation was the cause of this crash. Your recommendation is to take this further, rapidly?

Is pilot error more or less of a cause of fatal aircraft incidents than automation gone awry? What does the data say?

Re: Lion Air crash: Investigators say plane was 'not airworthy'

#26

Post by chrisseaton »

raihansaputra wrote: post #24
chrisseaton wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't sound badly translated, does it? Lots of corporate slogans are that kind of vague phrase. They mean 'fly' as in 'soar', 'achieve', that kind of thing, as well as literally meaning they will fly you to your destination. Could have come from an English company, to my ears, and doesn't sound ominous. I think you're reading too much into it.

One very negative moment for this slogan was the moment one of their pilots was very audibly high on drugs on the PA before a flight.

Is ‘flying’ code for being on drugs? Most people don’t know about drug culture and wouldn’t make these kind of connections. I think it’s just an generic marketing phrase.

Re: Lion Air crash: Investigators say plane was 'not airworthy'

#27

Post by god_bless_texas »

idiot900 wrote: post #25
_archon_ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the aircraft were being piloted manually, this crash wouldn't have happened. The increasing imposition of automation and removing the pilot from the equation was the cause of this crash. Your recommendation is to take this further, rapidly?

Is pilot error more or less of a cause of fatal aircraft incidents than automation gone awry? What does the data say?

The FAA thinks that cockpit automation leads to complacency. It's a question on the commercial pilot written test.

Re: Lion Air crash: Investigators say plane was 'not airworthy'

#28

Post by unionemployee »

lmm wrote: post #16
unionemployee wrote: post #8

For a time, I instructed airline pilots in simulators. The aircraft I taught had a similar mechanism with a "cutout switch" like this Boeing. Often, even when they knew it was coming, the pilots would fail to immediately shut down the system when given a related emergency situation, similar to this one. After learning more about this crash, I immediately thought of the tens of times I've seen this happen in the simul…

Trying to "remove the pilot from the equation" is exactly what caused this crash, by giving primacy to this automatic trim adjustment system over the pilot's control inputs. We need to design systems that are more respectful of the pilot's input (in particular, that respond to the pilot's obvious intent rather than requiring the pilot to use some unusual cutout switch to achieve the most basic aeroplane functionality…

I'd consider that even more dangerous. Stick pushers actually activate before the plane stalls. These large aircraft are designed in a way that a full stall could be catastrophic. Stick shaker events (the thing that happens before the stick pusher) happen quite frequently due to pilot inattention. In this case, an accident occurred, however, more frequently, they save lives.

Re: Lion Air crash: Investigators say plane was 'not airworthy'

#29

Post by leetcrew »

unionemployee wrote: post #8

For a time, I instructed airline pilots in simulators. The aircraft I taught had a similar mechanism with a "cutout switch" like this Boeing. Often, even when they knew it was coming, the pilots would fail to immediately shut down the system when given a related emergency situation, similar to this one. After learning more about this crash, I immediately thought of the tens of times I've seen this happen in the simul…

> We need to increase automation and, little by little, continue to remove the pilot from the equation until we have pilotless/single-pilot commercial aircraft.

there seems to be a growing consensus in the self-driving car debate that incremental automation is actually pretty dangerous, or at least much less safe than either fully manual or fully autonomous control, to the point where some consider it irresponsible to sell L3 autonomous vehicles at all. is there a particular reason why planes should be different?

Re: Lion Air crash: Investigators say plane was 'not airworthy'

#30

Post by lmm »

unionemployee wrote: post #28
lmm wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to "remove the pilot from the equation" is exactly what caused this crash, by giving primacy to this automatic trim adjustment system over the pilot's control inputs. We need to design systems that are more respectful of the pilot's input (in particular, that respond to the pilot's obvious intent rather than requiring the pilot to use some unusual cutout switch to achieve the most basic aeroplane functionality…

I'd consider that even more dangerous. Stick pushers actually activate before the plane stalls. These large aircraft are designed in a way that a full stall could be catastrophic. Stick shaker events (the thing that happens before the stick pusher) happen quite frequently due to pilot inattention. In this case, an accident occurred, however, more frequently, they save lives.

A traditional stick pusher is a much better design: the pilot has clear visibility into what's happening, they can see that the plane is pitching down because the stick is being pushed forward. Pilots do make mistakes but so do automated systems; the way forward is to build systems that collaborate with the pilot rather than cutting the pilot out.
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