
Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 on the Day Before Deadly Crash - erict15
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-19/how-an-extra-man-in-cockpit-saved-a-737-max-that-later-crashed
======
gok
> That extra pilot, who was seated in the cockpit jumpseat, correctly
> diagnosed the problem and told the crew how to disable a malfunctioning
> flight-control system and save the plane, according to two people familiar
> with Indonesia’s investigation.

> The presence of a third pilot in the cockpit wasn’t contained in Indonesia’s
> National Transportation Safety Committee’s Nov. 28 report on the crash and
> hasn’t previously been reported.

So the NTSC explicitly chose to exclude this and then two whistleblowers went
to Bloomberg? That is fucking wild.

~~~
Someone1234
It didn't need to be included in the preliminary report since it is
contextual/background information.

They did include in the report that on a previous flight the same sensor error
occurred and the pilots resolved it by disabling auto-trim. The fact there was
a third pilot there is definitely interesting, but they didn't make anyone
less safe by not including it in the report.

There's no bombshell here. Previous problems were well known/reported before
today.

~~~
zaphirplane
This is very important, as it shows the ratio of pilots aware of the
mitigation is low, and/or the stress of fighting with the the computer makes
you forget you training amendments

Edited to add it’s a training amendment

~~~
arcticbull
It's a single data point / anecdote. These investigations are incredibly
thorough, precise, and authoritative so it makes sense they'd seek to exclude
that kind of information until they knew for sure.

~~~
tomnm
> It's a single data point / anecdote.

A single data point is still a data point.

~~~
TomMarius
An irrelevant one in this case. This report needs to find out the
technical/training/... reason, not why the other pilot needed a ride. I'm sure
they'd have included it if they wanted to recommend having three pilots on
every flight.

------
spricket
The fact that "AoA disagree" light and logic was an optional feature seems
criminal enough to me. A sensor with no failover unless you pay for an option.
Who the hell thought this was a good idea or approved it? WTF!

500 people are already dead. Boeing should be brought to the coals. It
probably takes longer to go through the checklist than it does for everyone to
die.

I promise if the audio recordings are ever released from CVR they will be
absolutely damning. Pilots trying to make it through a loss of control
checklist as they dive to their doom. A lot of those checklists have 50+
steps. Imagine trying to make it through that while fighting the plane and
descending at over 3x "maximum design descent rate".

I'm sure the fucking alarms we're blaring and pilots cursing the system
carrying them toward certain death.

~~~
tntn
The checklist in question has three steps. Step two is "move stab trim to
cutout," which disables automatic systems that adjust the stabilizer. The
pilots in lion air had ~10 minutes to do this.

It is extremely unlikely that the pilots were trying to work through the
checklist. More likely they simply did not know what to do.

~~~
spricket
This doesn't make jive with disaster being averted by a third pilot. Assuming
the third was totally dedicated to checklist vs preventing the plane from
diving, it was only his insight that stopped the plane from going down.

The MCAS system apparently increased downward trim without any speed
considerations, to over 2.5 degrees in 10 seconds. I don't have the full
flight control details but it sure sounds like pilots would lose control
within minutes at most. In the LionAir crash the pilot reported control
problems and asked to return to airport within 3 minutes, and they slammed
into the ocean in 12.

Not sure where you're getting this info but I'm more than sure they knew
something was wrong in the last 2 minutes (while they were heading into the
earth at almost the speed of sound).

You really think they have ten minutes to react when by then everyone on
LionAir was doomed to die?

~~~
fegul
This "human" factor was also characterized in the movie Sully when it was
apparent that just a few extra seconds for pilots to process the issue made
all the difference between landing safely at a nearby airport vs. landing in
the Hudson River.

------
flashman
So a single point of failure (malfunctioning sensor) can engage the horizontal
stabilizer without notifying pilots, in a way that the control yoke can't
override.

What the hell did Boeing think was going to happen?

~~~
jimktrains2
Do we have a confirmed source that it can't be override by pilot input? My
understanding was that using the stick could overcome it with other control
surfaces and that the controls for trim can be set/reset by the pilot.

I think Boeing has handled the aftermath (and much of the lead up since the
release of the plane) very, very poorly. I, as a layman to aviation, am not
willing to bet that Boeing knew the true likelihood of a problem and didn't
tell anyone or had a whistle blower over it.

However, if the issue with a non-redundant hydraulic value in the original 737
didn't teach us the lesson, this should: no matter the likelihood of failure,
safety critical systems should always be redundant.

(Also, Boeing didn't handle that original issue very well either.)

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>safety critical systems should always be redundant.

That's east to say from an armchair but on an aircraft everything is "safety
critical" to some extent and you have to choose what gets redundancy.
Something where without it you can't fly the plane sure, that make sense. The
argument for considering MCAS, a system which is not necessary to fly the
plane safely, to be "safety critical" is much weaker. The Lion Air crash
wouldn't have happened had the pilots disabled MCAS instead of fighting it
into the drink.

~~~
ajxs
I'm fairly certain that the characteristic "If this component malfunctions
loss of life is one potential outcome" is a solid case for the component
actually being safety critical. The pilots would never have needed to disable
MCAS had it not malfunctioned in this manner. I'm not sure what redundancy has
to do with this, but clearly there was a failure in a safety-critical system.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>I'm fairly certain that the characteristic "If this component malfunctions
loss of life is one potential outcome" is a solid case for the component
actually being safety critical.

The same thing can be said for literally tons of components on a plane. You
can't have them all be redundant. At some point you have to pick and choose. A
sensor for an obviously supplemental feature seems like a pretty obvious one
to choose not to be redundant.

>I'm not sure what redundancy has to do with this,

I think the part in the GP comment where he/she state that "no matter the
likelihood of failure, safety critical systems should always be redundant" has
something to do with it.

~~~
chrisseaton
> You can't have them all be redundant.

Why not?

~~~
RandomTisk
Redundant wings? Fuselage? Just 2 obvious examples, back to my armchair.

~~~
chrisseaton
Those are silly examples and clearly not what anyone meant in terms of
components.

~~~
tim333
Also there is a kind of redundancy in the wings say by making the internal
structure much stronger than generally needed. You can have a fracture in one
part without the wings falling off.

~~~
logfromblammo
There is also much more wing than is strictly needed to keep the plane aloft
and stable. They're optimized for low fuel consumption at a design-specified
cruising altitude and speed, with variable geometry, so they can still take
off and land at lower speeds near ground level.

From a certain perspective, the flaps give the plane redundant wings. One pair
for low and slow, and another pair for high and fast.

------
jquery
Runaway trim is supposed to be part of the "memory checklist" for pilots. The
symptoms of MCAS are the same as runaway trim and the fix is the same (which
is why Boeing didn't feel like extra pilot training was needed), so I'm
curious to see the most recent investigation and hear the black box voice
recorder. Did they not know they were dealing with runaway trim? Did they
think it was something else? Did they forget the memory checklist? Was there
not enough height to deal with runaway trim regardless? Were the symptoms
different than runaway trim, confusing the pilots?

The black boxes will be very illuminating on this respect, especially since we
never recovered the Lion Air black box voice recorder.

~~~
ricardobeat
> [MCAS] it’s not stopped by the pilot pulling the yoke, which for normal trim
> from the autopilot or runaway manual trim triggers trim hold sensors

This implies that 'normal' runaway trim can be stopped by pulling the control
yoke. Maybe pilots simply have no idea what is going on once they realise that
action has no effect with the MCAS?

~~~
inferiorhuman
_This implies that 'normal' runaway trim can be stopped by pulling the control
yoke. _

Pulling on the yoke will only stop the 737's computers from moving the
stabilizer __IF __it 's the speed trim system (STS) that's moving the
stabilizer. Otherwise the yoke is intended to adjust the elevator not the
stabilizer

------
raihansaputra
There's a thread on twitter with a pretty good analysis of what's happening
with 737MAX. The 'Swiss Cheese' model here starts from its redesign by Boeing.

[https://twitter.com/trevorsumner/status/1106934362531155974](https://twitter.com/trevorsumner/status/1106934362531155974)

~~~
tluyben2
From all I read; this including the optional disagree indicator, I still say
Boeing is should be held responsible for this: all point to economic reasons
which means they decided these things and fully knew the potential
consequences.

------
torqueTorrent
The saddest thing, as many HN users should know all to well, is that there can
be no excuse for automated systems like airliners to experience catastrophic
failure and loss of life, if only due to the availability and application of
modern SDLC principles and CI/CD etc.

Smoke testing could have been performed such that all possible combinations of
transducer input could be considered and evaluated thoroughly for closed-loop
effect at runtime.

These types of integration tests should have been performed repeatedly,
seemingly endlessly in the quest for bugs and analysis of the full spectrum of
runtime results and effects.

In my experience in the software industry, I've always done this for
applications that have infinitely more trivial effect and results than an
airliner at altitude containing hundreds of souls.

One potential counterpart to the seemingly infinite greed we see exponentially
increasing could be the old adage that karma is a bitch.

~~~
philpem
Speaking as someone who's done this (though not on a something as big as an
airliner!)

Yes, you can test control loops -- you can even turn it into a unit test. At
least in theory.

The problem is that to do the test you need either a working, physical system
or a good model. So if you're making a shutdown valve for a chemical plant,
you need a physical build of that control valve. Even on that scale, you're
talking about something that could potentially fill an engineering lab, be
quite noisy and have a considerable amount of stored pneumatic or hydraulic
energy. It's possible, but not exactly practical.

The alternative is to model the system, but now the question changes: how can
you be certain that your model is accurate and models all the variables? Say
your valve is slower when it's cold and you don't model that -- now you have a
false positive result ("it works" \-- but nobody realised that "temperature"
was a dependent variable).

So you take the middle ground - you can have the test jig for a week, so you
record the inputs and outputs for a week under varying software conditions.
But those recordings are only valid for that specific timing -- if you change
the software and change the timing (maybe you move the trim motor slower), you
get a model change and a false positive or negative.

It's certainly possible, but it's only possible with a good sized team, and
supportive management who realise that the test is absolutely necessary.

~~~
SamuelAdams
> It's certainly possible, but it's only possible with a good sized team, and
> supportive management who realise that the test is absolutely necessary.

Agreed. According to other sources [1], management rushed the development work
so they could come out ahead of one of their competitors.

"But several FAA technical experts said in interviews that as certification
proceeded, managers prodded them to speed the process. Development of the MAX
was lagging nine months behind the rival Airbus A320neo. Time was of the
essence for Boeing."

[1]: [https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-
aerospace/faile...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-
aerospace/failed-certification-faa-missed-safety-issues-in-the-737-max-system-
implicated-in-the-lion-air-crash/)

------
xvf22
An extra set of eyes saved them, it's a shame that there wasn't any way for
them to include a reminder in the next crews flight plans.

~~~
sundvor
It is pretty shocking this wasn't noted as a serious incident needing
investigation before more flights were undertaken.

------
amanzi
There's a really good "The Daily" podcast (~20 minutes) about these crashes
that answers a lot of the questions on this page.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/podcasts/the-
daily/boeing...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/podcasts/the-
daily/boeing-737-max-ethiopia-crash.html)

------
logfromblammo
A machine that relies on sensors has two ways to detect when a sensor has
failed: another sensor, or human observer input.

I don't know how avionics hardware engineers do it, but in this neighborhood
of the Internet, we don't trust inputs, and especially human user inputs.
Because every unverified, unsanitized input is an attack vector for bringing
down our software and the system it runs on.

From what I have seen, the MCAS in the crashed planes relies on a single
sensor--the AOA vane in the nose--and was almost solely responsible for
catastrophic loss of altitude. This model of passenger jet has a paid upgrade
option to add a second sensor, with disagreement detection.

My question is why don't the yoke inputs from the pilots count as disagreement
with the AOA sensor? If the yoke is consistently counteracting the action of
the MCAS, why can't it disable itself automatically and illuminate a light to
indicate it has failed?

I'm guessing the pilots would have more time to search through manuals in-
flight to clear the fault and re-enable the system than they would trying to
disable it while it's stubbornly trying to crash the plane due to a single
point of failure.

It's not hard to adopt the defensive mindset that your users (or your
professional testers) are maliciously trying to destroy your beautiful program
with a combination of stupidity and cleverly designed unanticipated inputs.
When hardware gets involved, one can personify Entropy as a being that is
trying to destroy everything you love and kill you.

How would Entropy take down a plane and kill all passengers? How about it
freezes the AOA sensor in the "nose is at +90 degrees pitch" position? How do
we defend against that attack vector? Pilot training? Oops! Entropy also made
them forget that page out of thousands of possible pages of procedural
training during the critical seconds they needed to remember it. The only way
to fight Entropy is by making random events more independent, rather than
causally linked in a failure cascade.

I don't think this course towards blaming Boeing's _lack of documentation and
/or pilot training_ is helpful. I don't think there's any option for Boeing
but to immediately recall and retrofit all aircraft to the multiple AOA-sensor
option, at their expense, and refund every airline that actually paid extra
for it.

------
fjfaase
I am almost sure that some engineer of Boeing has noticed that there was a
major design flaw with the function of the MCAS, but that he was overruled by
a less technical (and probably younger) superior.

~~~
kkarakk
more likely the flaw was noted but it would be more expensive to redesign than
to eat the cost of whatever lawsuit they'd be hit with

------
CivBase
> A malfunctioning sensor is believed to have tricked the Lion Air plane’s
> computers into thinking it needed to automatically bring the nose down to
> avoid a stall.

That is ridiculous logic to implement in a "safety" system. An automated
system should never cause a plane to dive unless it also knows that it has
enough altitude to safely do so - much less in a way that makes it difficult
for pilots to override.

~~~
proaralyst
Given the system assumed it was in stall, which means loss of altitude anyway,
surely it's safer in general to go nose-down to avoid the stall? At least then
you have a chance of recovery, which you don't in a stall. (Except of course,
going nose-down.)

~~~
CivBase
If you don't have enough altitude to afford going nose-down, let the pilot
handle it. If your system can't come up with a safe solution, do not override
the pilot's controls in favor of a dangerous solution.

A computer should never assume it knows better than a pilot. A computer is
only as good as the data it gets and the software it runs. Sensors fail. Data
gets corrupted. In the current state of the industry, software bugs are
inevitable.

Airplane software is supposed to help pilots, not hinder them. In light of
these events, I'm thinking twice about wanting a self-driving car in the near
future.

~~~
cmurf
Elsewhere I've read MCAS does take altitude into account, as well as flaps,
i.e. it's only active above a certain altitude, and only when flaps are
retracted. So... yeah, we don't have the full story. And also in another
thread, it's reported from the flight prior to Lion Air 610 (same plane) there
were airspeed and altitude disagreements. I'm not at all clear from available
reporting whether airspeed, altitude, and angle of attack were inconsistent,
if that was a source of either autopilot confusion, and then pilot confusion,
whether pilots did set stabilizer trim to cutoff and when and whether it was
too late.

I'm a pilot (former CFII) and the whole automation fail danger strikes me as
terrible. John Q Public says "I want the automation to override the pilot's
mistakes!" What? OK fine. What about Asiana Airlines Flight 214 where the
pilot advanced throttles, an explicit intent input, and yet autothrottles were
set so the automation said nope. And then John Q Public are all, well the
pilot should have KNOWN!

It's like it's a game where the pilot is only there as the last resort to be
blamed if they too fail, even after a sequence of automation failures.
Automation betraying pilots at low altitude is in my view functionally
equivalent to an in-flight breakup. And automation in the cockpit mentality in
the face of failures has been, for 20+years, "add another button, add another
feature, add another routine" to tack on all the others.

And yes this absolutely makes me think of autonomous driving as total b.s.
Airplanes are in a standardized system, with far bigger budgets for automation
and yet we still have to fall back to human pilots for routine procedures like
parking, taxiing, VFR approaches and landings, and telling the automation
literally every detail it needs to do, ATC communication. It's ripe for end to
end automation and yet we still don't do that. Driving cars is wildly more
complicated for automation: non-standard streets, paint, signage, laws,
pedestrian behavior, bicycles, cars still driven by humans, weather - haha.
Sounds nice, great idea, keep trying, but it's complete bullshit.

------
cmurf
Jump pilot would have had a natural line of sight too the trim wheel, and may
have seen it move "unscheduled" at the same time as the nose down. This might
have given him a unique suspicion of auto trim.

I expect this will be included in the accident report. Hopefully NTSB will
conduct their own first hand interview with this pilot. (I can't think of why
they wouldn't.)

------
reasonablemann
Is it possible for Boeing engineers to lose their professional status as a
result of this situation?

~~~
LeifCarrotson
The fault doesn't lie with the engineers who built the system...not to mention
I would be very surprised if they were professionally certified.

It lies with the managers who wrote the specification that said that for
business reasons the new plane must not require any additional training or
type certifications, and cut costs by implementing the required systems with a
non-redundant sensor.

~~~
8note
that sounds like the engineers are at fault for not refusing to stamp the
thing.

~~~
dentemple
The ones at fault at the people at the FAA who let Boeing certify their own
planes.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Everyone involved can share the fault.

Unfortunately, correctly apportioning all of the blame won’t bring back the
souls lost.

~~~
magduf
No, but the whole point in assigning blame and severely punishing people found
to be at-fault is to prevent things from happening again.

If we just let these people off scot-free, then you can count on more similar
things happening.

------
samfisher83
Suprised they don't have a lessons learned portal. Would have saved some
lives.

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
Can you imagine if the public saw how often planes were close to disaster?

~~~
inamberclad
Don't confuse apathy with unavailability. The public (and it sounds like you
as well) just doesn't look. Here's NASA's safety database:
[https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/](https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/)

------
ratsimihah
It's one thing to memorize things, it's another thing to be able to use that
knowledge in the right context and situation, particularly when under panic.

------
abbadadda
What are the odds this is completely fabricated by Boeing? Not saying I think
this, but if it was a movie and this was a cover-up, this would be a great
plot twist. I suppose I'm maybe just a little jaded from all the fake news
these days.

~~~
jagthebeetle
There's a difference between jaded and cynical :) Not that I know the answer
to your question any better. We'll have to wait for the HBO documentary.

To play devil's advocate anyway, as someone who has not been following this
actively, I find this article to cement the idea in this reader's mind that a
Boeing malfunction is involved in all three incidents. Is this even
conclusively established? Would Boeing want this spin at this point?

The suggestion that an extra brain might randomly have averted two multi-fatal
crashes and that this error mode has occurred at least three times seems like
it would be a bit pyrrhic for the PR people at this juncture, no?

------
fxfan
The MIC is too powerful and influential over both parties.

While I can sometimes like trump for not submitting to anybody - even he bows
to MIC

------
shiven
From my point-of-view, two opinion points:

1\. I am glad that 737 MAX has been grounded. May it stay that way, globally,
until this issue is provably resolved.

2\. The entire Boeing chain of management that resulted in these crashes
should be publicly flogged, their remuneration & benefits clawed back &
subject to a mandatory minimum prison sentence.

Who the hell am I kidding! Neither is very likely to happen in the present day
US. Carry on then, I guess. Just make sure to sign your Last Will & Testament
before taking that next flight.

~~~
rvolkan
What happens if your #2 is applied to doctors, car/ship manufacturers, food
producers, grocery stores, house builders, taxis, restaurants, software
engineers, medical device producers and so on? Every profession caused
accidental deaths.

"Legal action" against bad decisions is a must. However, _mandatory_ prison
sentence for accidents is a terrible idea.

~~~
kunkurus
If Boeing knowingly exposed the passengers to the risk of injury it's criminal
negligence and usually the punishment is imprisonment:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_negligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_negligence)

~~~
rvolkan
Exactly my point. Imprisonment should come into play when the accidents are
proven to be caused by Boeing's negligence.

~~~
ibejoeb
Is it negligence or just a bad design? Who decides? The thing is starting to
look like Boeing thought that MCAS failure was similar to and corrected by the
same procedure as runaway trim. Time will tell if that is the case, but if it
does, should the pilots be posthumously tried for negligence?

------
pimlottc
The headline is really confusing; I thought I was perhaps reading it wrong,
but it's sort of impossible to read correctly until you realize they are
talking about a separate incident than the well-known crash.

It would have been clearer if they had written something simpler, like "Lion
Air 737 Nearly Crashed One Day Before Deadly Accident"

~~~
foobarbecue
I still can't tell if it says whether or was actually the same individual
aircraft.

~~~
RyJones
Same aircraft

------
nateabele
> _[T]hey got help from an unexpected source: an off-duty pilot who happened
> to be riding in the cockpit. That extra pilot, who was seated in the cockpit
> jumpseat [...]_

Am I missing something here? Isn't it _normal_ for off-duty pilots to ride in
the jump-seat?

~~~
koolba
Riding dead head as a pilot is normal. They do it all the time to get back
home or wherever their next flight is from.

Being in the right place, and happening to know exactly how to deal with what
would otherwise kill the pilot and all the passengers, is incredibly
fortunate.

~~~
ruytlm
I suppose similar in terms of the right place a the right time would be the
QF32 incident[0], where by chance there were two additional pilots in the
cockpit; a check captain, and a supervising check captain who was training
that check captain.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_32](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_32)

~~~
inferiorhuman
More to the point, this reflects positively on Lion Air because it means that
the pilots in the forward facing seats properly took advice into account. This
is good crew resource management.

Check out the Asiana crash at SFO for an example of where CRM failed hard. The
pilot flying in that case was told by the other two pilots in the cockpit how
to avoid the crash and he STILL flew a perfectly serviceable plane into the
ground in perfect weather on an extremely easy visual approach.

~~~
twblalock
> More to the point, this reflects positively on Lion Air because it means
> that the pilots in the forward facing seats properly took advice into
> account. This is good crew resource management.

It's good the pilots took advice -- but they should not have needed that
advice because they should have been trained to operate the system properly.

The whole thing reflects very poorly overall:

\- The pilots were not trained properly on the new system, and a third pilot
who happened to be hitching a ride had to tell them how to operate the plane.

\- The plane was allowed to fly again the next day despite the malfunction,
none of the pilots flying it were properly trained, and everybody died.

\- The incident was not reported properly at the time, nor was it reported
after the same plane had crashed the next day.

~~~
inferiorhuman
_The pilots were not trained properly on the new system_

It's hard to train for something that doesn't exist according to Boeing

 _The plane was allowed to fly again the next day despite the malfunction_

The plane was serviced between flights, and assuming that Lion Air actually
did what they claimed, Lion Air maintenance followed the Boeing instructions
by the book.

 _The incident was not reported properly at the time_

The malfunction was written up in the maintenance log and the issues were
addressed. Unfortunately because Boeing refused to disclose the existence of
MCAS the pilots wrote it up both as what they saw (EFS non-op, IAS disagree),
and if memory serves, they also suspected the one algorithm they knew about
(STS)[1].

1:
[https://www.pprune.org/showthread.php?p=10295557](https://www.pprune.org/showthread.php?p=10295557)

~~~
twblalock
> It's hard to train for something that doesn't exist according to Boeing

From the article:

> The so-called dead-head pilot on the earlier flight from Bali to Jakarta
> told the crew to cut power to the motor driving the nose down, according to
> the people familiar, part of a checklist that all pilots are required to
> memorize.

Clearly only one of the pilots memorized the checklist, but they were all
required to do so. Presumably the pilots who crashed the plane the next day
didn't memorize it either.

~~~
inferiorhuman
_Clearly only one of the pilots memorized the checklist_

I've already posted the checklist. If you've memorized the checklist you'd
know that it says to stop if the trimming stops once you hit the push buttons
on the yoke. MCAS stops trimming when you manually input opposite trim (and
you can see this on the black box graphs from the preliminary report).

------
briandear
> The Indonesia safety committee report said the plane had had multiple
> failures on previous flights and hadn’t been properly repaired.

Lots of blame for Boeing, but the real criminals are Lion Air who apparently
don’t know how to maintain airplanes. Compare their safety record with
Southwest Airlines. Lion Air shouldn’t be allowed to fly.

------
twblalock
It also seems like this was not properly reported to safety agencies at the
time, nor was it reported when that plane crashed in a subsequent flight.

Say what you will about Boeing, but this could have been avoided if the
airline had better safety practices. Every pilot on that plane should have
been trained on the new system. And the malfunction, if reported properly,
should have caused that particular plane to be grounded for a mechanical
inspection. Instead it flew again and hundreds of people died because they
weren’t lucky enough to have one of the pilots who was trained properly.

~~~
inferiorhuman
_Every pilot on that plane should have been trained on the new system._

How is that supposed to work when Boeing didn't inform any of the airlines of
this system?

~~~
twblalock
Boeing did inform them. Otherwise how would the third pilot have known what to
do when he saved the plane?

~~~
tyingq
Various pilot unions aren't mincing words. Here's one quote:

 _" This is the first description you, as 737 pilots, have seen,” the message
from the pilots association at American reads. “It is not in the American
Airlines 737 Flight Manual … nor is there a description in the Boeing FCOM
(Flight Crew Operations Manual). It will be soon.”_

It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that the jumpseat rider made an educated
guess based on some prior experience. Aided by the fact that he didn't have
other things to do besides observing.

~~~
inferiorhuman
_It doesn 't seem unreasonable to me that the jumpseat rider made an educated
guess based on some prior experience. Aided by the fact that he didn't have
other things to do besides observing. _

Or he went back into the cabin and pulled out a copy of the FCOM to do some
emergency diagnostic work.

[https://www.grid.id/read/04966850/deretan-kejanggalan-
yang-d...](https://www.grid.id/read/04966850/deretan-kejanggalan-yang-
dirasakan-penumpang-jt-610-rute-denpasar-jakarta-sebelum-pesawat-lion-air-
jatuh-pada-senin-pagi)

~~~
tyingq
The "runaway stabilizer trim" section. Which didn't mention MCAS at all at the
time. So, if you guess correctly, you can find the right procedure.

