Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

It's ridiculous that pilots are still expected to attempt to calculate glide distance and airport in their head, and they almost always get it wrong.

Many private planes with modern avionics now have an auto-level button on the AP that very reliably recovers from a dive or other unusual attitudes. Airlines typically don't and it's clear that the simple (and very easy to program) button could have saved many lives.

That's probably not an easy thing with a computer undoing your work every few seconds and fighting you for control.

And they did try to correct the trim before moving to 2.

5:40:00 AND (here automatic nose down) activates for 9 seconds, computer trimming from 4.60 to 2.1 units, crew trying to counteract by pitching up.

5:40:14 Pilot begins adjusting trim up. Gets to 2.4 units.

5:40:22 AND activates yet again (7s), also pushing trim all the way down to 0.4 units. DON'T SINK warning and PULL UP.

5:40:29 Captain asks the First-Officer to trim up with him. They reach 2.3 units (9s). This interrupts AND.

5:40:38 stab trim cut-out

5:40:43 AND activates again, but at least now it leaves the stabilizer alone.

All in they did fine, considering all this happened in 40 seconds. They regained control of the aircraft and now have time to asses what even happened.

However they still have to apply up to 100lbs of force to keep the nose somewhat pointed up. Only at times when both of them are actually pulling on the stick does the plane gain altitude. On top of that they're getting a MASTER CAUTION "anti-ice left alpha vane", adding to their workload. In the next three minutes they're discussing the warnings they're getting, informing ATC of their problem, and are trying to manually trim the plane (which doesn't work). I'd imagine their arms are getting tired.

So the understandable next step is to switch stab trim cut out back to normal, then trying to correct the trim further.

5:43:11 stab trim back to normal, followed by some short manual electric trim inputs

5:43:21 AND triggers yet again (5s), stab to 1.0 units. Within the first 3.5s the aircraft pitches -8° down, descent rate increases to -5,000 ft/min.

If they had caught and interrupted the AND/flipped stab trim back immediately, maybe this could've been saved. But since the computer got to do its thing for a few seconds, it's pretty much too late to do anything. The pilots are applying up to 180lbs of force, which accomplishes nothing. The plane keeps pitching further down.

5:43:44 Plane impacts the ground at an angle of 40° nose down.

That whole timeline was 3 minutes, 44 seconds.

The only way you can reasonably expect a human to deal with a situation like that, which requires a quick response, is if you train them for it. You don't just give a vague warning, a bunch of steps with three IFs attached, and hope for the best.

More complete, interim, report: https://reports.aviation-safety.net/2019/20190310-0_B38M_ET-...

I can see why it they wouldn't have recalled it in the first 40s of that situation. However they got the situation stabilized to a point where they could've kept going for a while and maybe came up with a better plan of action before attempting to correct the trim again (which is what ultimately doomed the flight).

> Having the trim start running again every few seconds is EXACTLY WHY there's a trim cutout switch. A few seconds is enough time to hit the thumb trim switches right on the column under your thumb, and the then hit the cutoff switch which is right there on the center console.

Which is kind of leaving the territory of the AD. The way I'm reading it, it advises to leave the switch set to cutout for the remainder of the flight. They'd have had to come up with that approach (or an approach that would have enabled manual trim) on their own once they had the aircraft flying somewhat straight without immediate danger. Their main mistake may have been to not take more time to assess their situation when they had the chance and not fully grasping the danger of leaving that switch on normal for even the 5s it took the plane to become unrecoverable at the end.

But all those factors pale in the face of inadequate training and the fact that there could hardly be a more dangerous problem with an aircraft than it - out of nowhere - entering an uncontrollable nosedive if the pilots don't properly respond within seconds. I'd maybe rate complete loss of control/"wings fell off" higher.

I still have trouble blaming the pilots because - with the benefit of hindsight - I would have expected such crashes to happen as much as they did, maybe more. The aviation industry generally avoids expected mistakes that result in loss of life and someone was bound to make this one.

> I take a contrarian opinion on this, the price of a flight in the US outside of major hubs is egregious. Especially during peak times or holidays.

Highly-engineered tubes that fly 10km above the ground at very high speeds, have absolutely amazing reliability and long-term safety, and can navigate all over the world are, unsurprisingly, very expensive. But people still want to hop in one and pay less than a train ticket.