Both the Ethiopian aviation authority and the U.S. House of Representatives have unloaded on Boeing this week in dual preliminary reports published just short of the one-year anniversary of the second MAX crash that set its grounding in motion. The Ethiopian report largely exonerated Flight 302’s flight crew while the House report laid out five key investigative themes that included Boeing’s production pressures, faulty assumptions made in development of the MAX, a “culture of concealment” inside Boeing, conflicts of representation and the influence Boeing held over the FAA in the certification process.
Couple of items missed with the House report. Chairman Mr DeFazio needs to re-examine the FAA funding authorization bill calling for more industry designated engineering persons. After all his committee passed that bill. Also how about allowing Boeing to buy out McDonnell-Douglas, creating a monopoly of American airplane companies producing airliners along with the “too big to fail” situation. The hypocrisy from congressional committees running rampant again!
Ethiopian aviation authority has been smoking something. MCAS is bad, no doubt about it. A captain who leaves takeoff power applied to doom is even worse.
That’s also a scary thought. Airbus can’t pick up the slack either. We know how these companies operate and their business models are so fragile with little to no back up plans. That’s the problem with monopolies. When one of two fall, the other carries the burden of the weight without being able to handle it or forsee it.
Well of course the Ethiopians put all the blame on Boeing and not their pilots!. The right seat guy with 361 hours? Give me a break!!! Regardless of the Boeing faulty systems, other pilots with both experience and common sense reacted properly to similar malfunctions.
Odd that the pilots were not fully trained and didn’t respond correctly to runaway trim. Years ago a B52 crashed when the pilot thought they were in a high speed dive and they were stalled with full nose up trim and the wheel yanked aft. I guess you can have lots of training and not understand how an airplane flys.
“…a first officer with 361 total hours and 207 in the B-737, all the MAX variant.”
So, a whopping 154 hours that were NOT in a Boeing? How/where/when did this guy acquire a commercial pilot certificate? Seriously. Sounds like he was put in the right seat of a passenger-carrying commercial airliner, with a grand total of 150 hours of flight experience. Ab Initio uber alles? THAT must have been Boeing’s fault, too.
I find it interesting that the Ethiopian report is totally silent about the fact that the maintenance crew changed out the AOA sensor, which was written up by the previous flight crew who had a similar problem but managed to take corrective action. The maintenance crew installed a different sensor that had been improperly overhauled and failed to test it to see if it was actually working (which it was not). I guess that is Boeing’s fault too.
It is a shame that the comments above will not be reflected to the proper authorities in Congress and FAA for public dissemination. The public NEVER hears the whole story!
No, that was Lion Air. The Ethiopian plane is believed to have been working perfectly until after it became airborne. Then it appears that the AOA vane was struck by either a bird or a piece of debris as the plane climbed through about 50 feet.