Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 pilots 'could not stop nosedive' • Hacker News Board

Re: Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 pilots 'could not stop nosedive'

#171

Post by jeltz » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 12:55 PM UTC

Slartie wrote: post #44

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #16

There you have it, folks, programmers killing people. No, it wasn't on-purpose, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. This, of course, has been happening for a long time, it's just getting more and more obvious now. I feel strongly that AF 447 was an example. It's important to understand that this is the natural result of two trends. One, software/hardware systems continue to become more and more complex, many time…

I am pretty sure the software here did exactly what it was supposed to do. There was no buffer overrun, no NullPointerException, not any other kind of bug. There was just software that reacted exactly as specified. The problem is: those specifications were bad. It's a bad idea to just rely on one single sensor when you actually have two, it's a bad idea to write software that disengages on manual input counteracting…

I do not think all blame should be removed from the programmers that easily. Programmers should think about the ramification of their code and not just blindly implement bad specifications which will get people killed. Now it is possible that Boeing is such a toxic place that any disagreement is silenced, but I do not think we should automatically give the programmers a pass just because it is a specification issue.

Re: Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 pilots 'could not stop nosedive'

#172

Post by airstrike » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 12:58 PM UTC

matt4077 wrote: post #30

drsim wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with your sentiment on stereotypes, looking at the link your comment seems misleading. The airlines you mention score lower on 'Safety Rating' due to lack of IOSA certification. "Registering for IOSA certification and auditing is not mandatory therefore an airline that does not have IOSA certification may have either failed the IOSA audit or alternatively chosen not to participate." For a budget airline…

Safety incidents in air travel are thankfully low. Therefore, it is impossible to find meaningful differences in that primary data alone. You have to find some proxies, and certification schemes seem at least defensible in that regard. In any case, not being a „budget“ airline that has to cut such costs would seem to fit rather well with my argument that Ethopian is not some gravel-airstrip bush operation flying left…

> not some gravel-airstrip bush operation flying leftover Sowiet machinery.

just wanted to say I appreciate the imagery. this is exactly how I interpreted US media to be framing Ethiopian

Re: Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 pilots 'could not stop nosedive'

#173

Post by matt4077 » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 12:58 PM UTC

antocv wrote: post #141

[flagged]

Somehow your opinion of capitalism is on par with your idea that only Ethiopians fly on Ethopian Airlines.

Re: Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 pilots 'could not stop nosedive'

#174

Post by VBprogrammer » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 12:59 PM UTC

mhandley wrote: post #14

lysp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone have a mirror of that video?

This was posted on PPrune: "Originally Posted by infrequentflyer789 Since this video may not be coming back I'll post a sort of transcript from memory since I was lucky enough to get to watch it. I'll try and just describe what I saw and keep my commentary/speculation to a minimum - in . Bear in mind this is a non-pilot observer's take on it from flaky memory: There is a fair bit of intro talk then the sim. They are…

Incidentally, I was just checking the Lion Air report for something else and noticed that Boeing helpfully suggest neutralising stick forces using the manual electric trim before activating the trim cutout switches.

Re: Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 pilots 'could not stop nosedive'

#175

Post by peteradio » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 12:59 PM UTC

VBprogrammer wrote: post #162

peteradio wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is nobody looking at the manufacturer of the sensor?

If someone connected a big industrial stop switch to a solenoid and pointed that solenoid at the trigger of a rifle aimed at the person pressing the button I don't think you would expect anyone to look particularly hard at the person who manufactured the switch. If it was indeed a bird strike which took out the sensor then they seem to be completely beyond all possible blame. Even if it wasn't I'm sure they could poi…

So you are saying this was probably not spec'd for this criticality? I guess I'm curious for more information on this. Obviously don't blame the sensor manufacturer without cause but why are these things so buggy?

Re: Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 pilots 'could not stop nosedive'

#176

Post by CaptainZapp » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 1:01 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #165

CaptainZapp wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. Some of the sentiments expressed here was borderline racist. (badly trained, overworked cluelless third world pilots not even capable to follow a checklist). One of the worst smear jobs was actually by the New York Times accusing the captain of the Ethiopian plane not having trained in a 787-MAX simulator. Hello? Wasn't that the whole sales pitch that the plane requires no training at all for certified…

>the Lion Air crash (they were busy smearing the airline an the pilots instead) In a rush to put to blame on Boeing everyone seems to have forgotten that Lion Air badly screwed up: (1) The aircraft exhibited the same failure on its previous flight. Not fixing it before the next flight is a huge maintenance screw up. (2) That failure and the steps to correct it should have been in the log book and the next pilots shou…

I think it's pretty disgusting that you're still smearing the Lion Air Pilots despite all the facts that came to light after the Ethiopian crash.

Namely that Boeing didn't even bother to document MCAS, let alone deem it necessary to provide training for purely commercial reasons.

Turns out that their documented emergency procedure also isn't helpful once the plane becomes unstable due to their design fuck-up.

Way to go!

Re: Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 pilots 'could not stop nosedive'

#177

Post by Yetanfou » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 1:01 PM UTC

CaptainZapp wrote: post #122

matt4077 wrote: post #12

I’d love to see those people who accused the airline and crew of being incompetent to apologize in the light of these reports. It was shameful to see Boeing actively encouraging that narrative behind the scenes. Especially considering it plays on racist stereotypes equating „Africa“ with bad training/bad safety record/…. The idea of „dingy third world airline“ was ridiculous on its face, considering how bad a fit fly…

Totally agree. Some of the sentiments expressed here was borderline racist. (badly trained, overworked cluelless third world pilots not even capable to follow a checklist). One of the worst smear jobs was actually by the New York Times accusing the captain of the Ethiopian plane not having trained in a 787-MAX simulator. Hello? Wasn't that the whole sales pitch that the plane requires no training at all for certified…

Please stop looking for racism in each and every aspect of public discourse, it does way more harm than it has the potential to do good. The harm lies in the ever larger focus on things which have the potential to divide people, be they race or sex or gender or religion or any other section. In this case there may have been a suggestion of the pilots having undergone less rigorous training and the aircraft being maintained at a lower standard than would be the case for 1st world airlines. These things may be true or they may not be, the airline safety records are among the potential ways to ascertain the veracity of such statements. This has nothing whatsoever to do with race so it does not make sense to try to draw this in as a factor unless someone made explicit claims in that direction. I have not seen any such claims, if you can point at them - and I do mean explicit claims, not so-called 'dog whistles' as those are subjective - please do so, otherwise keep race out of this discussion.

Re: Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 pilots 'could not stop nosedive'

#178

Post by phire » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 1:02 PM UTC

mhandley wrote: post #7

Will be interesting to see the details when the report is actually public. It does sound like the scenario that Mentourpilot explored in the simulator is close to what happened, namely: Bad AoA probe causes MCAS to trim down, and also to indicate IAS disagree. Pilots increase throttle as per non-normal checklist to reduce the risk of stalling due to unreliable airspeed. Pilots disable electric stabilizer trim, as per…

> Now, from what I understand, appying nose-up electric trim should override MCAS, and so this course of action should be possible.

I'm not so sure. Will have to wait for the final report to be sure, but I feel like the Lion Air flight should have survived if the pilot's trim up commands took priority over MCAS's trim down commands. They were fighting it with trim up commands and they lost. I fail to see how they could have lost this fightunless MCAS takes probity.

I know MCAS activates in 5 second on, 10 second off cycles and I'm getting the impression that the pilots can only trim up during the 10 second gap.

Re: Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 pilots 'could not stop nosedive'

#179

Post by CaptainZapp » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 1:02 PM UTC

Yetanfou wrote: post #177

CaptainZapp wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. Some of the sentiments expressed here was borderline racist. (badly trained, overworked cluelless third world pilots not even capable to follow a checklist). One of the worst smear jobs was actually by the New York Times accusing the captain of the Ethiopian plane not having trained in a 787-MAX simulator. Hello? Wasn't that the whole sales pitch that the plane requires no training at all for certified…

Please stop looking for racism in each and every aspect of public discourse, it does way more harm than it has the potential to do good. The harm lies in the ever larger focus on things which have the potential to divide people, be they race or sex or gender or religion or any other section. In this case there may have been a suggestion of the pilots having undergone less rigorous training and the aircraft being main…

Fine. Not racism then.

Can we agree on xenophobic and bigoted?

The discussions here provide ample evidence for that.

Re: Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 pilots 'could not stop nosedive'

#180

Post by matt4077 » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 1:03 PM UTC

Spare_account wrote: post #21

henrygrew wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't belong in this community

As per HN comment guidelines, it's best not to reply to comments like this and just flag them. The admins are usually quick to respond. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead.

FWIW in this case I appreciate the rather appropriate reply. If such comments simply disappear, it sometimes feels like all that protects HN are the two or three Moderators doing their duty. I feel more reassured by knowing the wider community will not tolerate such behavior. And it also sends a stronger message, one where these people can not delude themselves into thinking they are representative of us, and/or “speaking truth to power”.