If you read the accounts of the engineers who work at Boeing, the whole company is systemically fucked. It’s management is pinching pennies to lose dollars with engineers who don’t know what’s happening. They design the testing requirements and conduct the testing for the new aircraft they produce. The corruption is part of the corporate culture. We will see more scandals, it’s only a matter of when.
The pilots of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Air planes that crashed were not very experienced. In fact, the Lion Air pilot, from India, may have been a pay to fly pilot. (I avoid Lion Air at all costs because it has a very bad safety record in a country that is known for poor air line safety. I’d only fly Garuda and then only if there were no other options.) Unfortunately the public may never know how much lack of pilot training, pilot inexperience or pilot error contributed to both 737 Max crashes.
Actually, there is quite a lot of that information publicly available. This article goes into deep detail, but in a way accessible to non-airmen. I highly recommend it!
Don’t worry, I love bashing corporate and engineering as much as the next smug working guy. In these cases however, the airmanship of the pilots was utter trash. Totally disgraceful to the entire profession.
Well, I’ve lived in South East Asia for many years. There, along with other places in Asia and Africa and Eastern Europe, many people think flying in a newer plane (such as those owned by Lion Air or Air Asia, or Ethiopian Airlines in Africa) means one is safe. Yet I’ve also see the growth of the industry and how pilots seem less and less experienced. I’ll take an older Delta, United or Air Canada with seasoned pilots jet any time over the brand new jets flown by 29 or 30 year captains who largely learned their skills on a simulator.
If you read the accounts of the engineers who work at Boeing, the whole company is systemically fucked. It’s management is pinching pennies to lose dollars with engineers who don’t know what’s happening. They design the testing requirements and conduct the testing for the new aircraft they produce. The corruption is part of the corporate culture. We will see more scandals, it’s only a matter of when.
The pilots of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Air planes that crashed were not very experienced. In fact, the Lion Air pilot, from India, may have been a pay to fly pilot. (I avoid Lion Air at all costs because it has a very bad safety record in a country that is known for poor air line safety. I’d only fly Garuda and then only if there were no other options.) Unfortunately the public may never know how much lack of pilot training, pilot inexperience or pilot error contributed to both 737 Max crashes.
Actually, there is quite a lot of that information publicly available. This article goes into deep detail, but in a way accessible to non-airmen. I highly recommend it!
Thanks. I read that article when it came out. It was good to read it again. The whole 737 Max story in and will continue to be unclear.
Don’t worry, I love bashing corporate and engineering as much as the next smug working guy. In these cases however, the airmanship of the pilots was utter trash. Totally disgraceful to the entire profession.
And a damn fine reason to become a racist.
Well, I’ve lived in South East Asia for many years. There, along with other places in Asia and Africa and Eastern Europe, many people think flying in a newer plane (such as those owned by Lion Air or Air Asia, or Ethiopian Airlines in Africa) means one is safe. Yet I’ve also see the growth of the industry and how pilots seem less and less experienced. I’ll take an older Delta, United or Air Canada with seasoned pilots jet any time over the brand new jets flown by 29 or 30 year captains who largely learned their skills on a simulator.