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0 pointspoof1317y ago0 comments

From the article:

"Older 737s had another way of addressing certain problems with the stabilizers: Pulling back on the yoke, or control column, one of which sits immediately in front of both the captain and the first officer, would cut off electronic control of the stabilizers, allowing the pilots to control them manually.

That feature was disabled on the Max when M.C.A.S. was activated — another change that pilots were unlikely to have been aware of. After the crash, Boeing told airlines that when M.C.A.S. is activated, as it appeared to have been on the Lion Air flight, pulling back on the control column will not stop so-called stabilizer runaway."

If the above is true, it's near criminal that Boeing didn't notify pilots about the change. It's also not just about following checklists but understanding the systems of the aircraft.

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cmurf7y ago

There's a Faustian bargain made by accepting so much abstraction from the true nature of an airplane by using software, and yet also that abstraction is not absolute. Pilots are made responsible for knowing all of the aircraft's behaviors, with full abstraction (normal mode), as well as partial abstractions (error and failure modes, of which there can be quite a few for a specific made/model, many of which must be inferred rather than being clearly displayed). If pilots get confused, however complicated and unintuitive the system behavior, they are blamed.

The more "piloting" computers are doing, it seems appropriate that they will be increasingly, properly, accused of the equivalent of "pilot error". And yet here is Boeing, taking more and more piloting responsibility, while still blaming the pilots when that doesn't work out. It's a deification of engineering: when things go properly and safely, praise engineering; when things fail, blame the pilots.

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