Var AF447 en generalprøve for MAX havariene? - Curt Lewis

 

Boeing: By my airplane; it can`t stall! (Red.)

WAS AIR FRANCE 447 THE DRESS REHEARSAL FOR THE BOEING MAX CRASHES?  A Commentary  By Roger Rapoport Senior Editor  In the thirteen years since Air France 447 was lost for 22 months in the South Atlantic, French prosecutors, the families of the 228 people who died,, Airbus, and the airline have engaged in a dramatic legal battle that impacts all who fly. Located by a Woods Hole Oceanographic led team 22 months after the June 1, 2009 tragedy, this crash has already reshaped flight training and airline safety practices.   Today pilots are routinely trained on how to prevent the kind of aerodynamic stall that took down Air France 447. Unfortunately new training in the wake of one tragedy does not necessarily rule out other kinds of automation surprises on state-of-the-art jets sold on the premise that they can’t stall.  In numerous interviews after the 2009 crash of that Rio-Paris Airbus 330, aviation safety experts told me that it was only a matter of time until there would be a similar disaster.  In a sense Air France 447 was the dress rehearsal for the 2018 and 2019 Boeing 737 MAX tragedies in Ethiopia and China that took 346 lives. In all three cases the pilots did not have the requisite training to deal with the emergency situation they were forced into.   The larger problem surrounding these events is the industry’s questionable continuation bias toward automation without adding badly needed training.   For example Boeing was so confident in the new unproven MCAS automation system introduced on the 737 MAX that it promised customers no additional pilot training was required to fly this redesigned aircraft. In the case of major customer Southwest Airline, the company promised a $1 million per aircraft payment if the FAA decided to mandate training on this new MCAS automation that was not even explained to flight crews. After more than 300 conversations with the airline, the manufacturer, the father and brother of two of the Air France 447 pilots, officials from regulatory agencies, the scientists who uncovered the plane and many academic experts, I’ve learned that aircraft safety systems can’t be designed in a vacuum. They must be integrated into the design itself.   Putting computers together and trying to understand all the interactions can quickly become complicated. Even when each computer is working as designed there is no guarantee that the system will be fail safe. The hubris of aircraft designers who have zero flight time can contribute to this unjustified bias against pilots. The problem, as MIT’s Dr. Nancy Leveson has pointed out, centers around interaction between all these different computers and human operators trying to control the outcome. All too often the computers and the humans don’t understand what the other “controllers” are doing. Bad things can happen quickly and spiral out of control. Fortunately this French manslaughter case focuses on all the key issues that impact the future of aviation safety. In particular the hard work of the families of the victims through the Entraide et solidarité AF447 has defeated the libelous myth that this accident was all the fault of three experienced pilots with more than 20,000 previous hours of successful flight time.  Both Airbus and Air France had ample warning from many flight crews that the pitot tubes providing airspeed data critical to Airbus 330 flight automation were failing in high altitude icing conditions.  The plane operating as Air France 447 was scheduled to have its problematic pitots replaced after landing in Paris on June 1, 2009. If those new pitots had been installed in Brazil it is probable that the crash would not have happened. Although Air France and Airbus had been discussing numerous reports of high altitude pitot failure they did not elect to ground the 330 fleet and replace the problem pitots before allowing these aircraft to resume operation. Air France saw the problem as a maintenance issue, not a critical flight safety challenge. Today pilots flying both these Airbus and Boeing jets are required to complete the additional training both companies originally insisted wasn’t necessary. Is it possible that overconfidence in flight automation while ignoring the need for more pilot training could lead to similar kinds of accidents in the future? The aviation experts and pilots I’ve spoken with agree with Dr. Leveson and other experts agree that automation alone can not solve every flight problem. This is one of the reasons why the march toward single pilot jets with ground staff handling the duties of the copilot is questionable. In all likelihood the trial balloon could be freight carriers. The problem with this approach is that it makes the false assumption that pilots are merely bus drivers who don’t need backup crew..   The decision of some major carriers such as Virgin Atlantic and Frontier to hire people with zero flight experience for pilot training appears to be a quick fix. IT is aimed at people who want to pay $90,000 or more to train and find out if they will be hired to fly in the cockpit’s right seat. Replacing experienced pilots with these newcomers assumes that beginner’s luck is a substitute for the expertise that led to the successful emergency landing of US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson.  It took two veteran pilots with more than 40 years of combined flight experience to save that flight in minutes. There is no substitute for this kind of training and experience. Delicate hand flying was critical to that emergency situation.  What’s at stake during the Paris manslaughter trial is the future of pilot training. A not guilty verdict for the defendants will validate the premise that the AF 447 pilots were their own worst enemies because they failed to stop an untrained for aerodynamic stall. A guilty verdict will tell the industry that more and better pilot training is the best way to prevent the automation surprises that led to the Airbus 330 and Boeing 737 Max crashes.   Roger Rapoport is the coauthor of Angle of Attack: Air France 447 and The Future of Aviation Safety and Grounded: How to Solve the Aviation Crisis. (lexographicpress.com). He is also the producer of the award winning feature film Pilot Error https://vimeo.com/ondemand/piloterror/117084584 https://www.rogerrapoport.com/latest-writings