Because the "system warnings", such as they were, were woefully inadequate. Unless I'm mistaken, there was never an audible "Airspeed!" warning, as there obviously should have been, nor a properly visible warning like a flashing light. You know, something that might actually get your attention. You've got the slowly rising "barber pole", which is barely noticeable, and apparently you have a teeny tiny ultra-thin frame around the speed indicator that is about a millimeter thick and is almost invisible, and flashes imperceptibly from gray to white when the speed is too low. (White? Not red or orange? Since when is *_white_* an emergency color???) These design deficiencies also contributed to the Asiana Flight 214 crash at SFO in 2013, which was also the result of low airspeed. I used to think highly of Boeing, but in recent years I've really had to reconsider my opinion.
It's bonkers for a flight to have 3 pilots in the cockpit and not a single one paid attention to the instruments.. Especially considering the 3rd pilot was there specifically for that.. They did their final approach checklist/configuration too late, unsure as to why it was delayed. Possibly they were too comfortable and trusted the systems too much? Every pilot should always remember: Aviate, Navigate, Communicate. But, as far as the plane itself, everything in a plane has redundancy, taken with a grain of salt.. how come there was no connection between the radio alt and the first officers display?
Most pilots recognized and solved the problem. But I like what Sully said about this type of thing. "Pilots should never be expected to compensate for flawed design." If there is a system that repeatedly fails to give accurate data to the pilot, that sounds like flawed design to me.
It is a flawed design if you are fortunate to walk away , then you have the right to not fly an aircraft with such a flaw. May cost you money but you still have your life
@Opterongeek Which Warners are those? There was Jack Warner. Aside from producing films he appeared in films in the 1950s. He was in the 1951 version of "Scrooge," with Alistair Sim, that was based on Dickens's _A Christmas Carole._ Just a random factoid there for you. I am a font of useless info. Just ask and I will give you more. You never know when you might need them and trivia night or something. 😸🤯😁
Unsurprisingly there is a bit of a parallel here, coming from the nuclear power industry. The partial core meltdown that occurred at TMI, was due to a few primary factors. Without going into the engineering weeds, we'll just put it simply. The operators in the Control Room, released too much water from the primary coolant system and partially exposed the reactor core. This caused the still hot reactor core to overheat and begin to melt. A set of valves designed to keep the reactor coolant system from becoming over-pressurized, had a design flaw. They were notorious for sticking partially open after being operated, as seen by many routine tests of them. Also, the valves had a poor system for indicating their position in the Control Room, that was also seen on a number of occasions to indicate shut, when in fact they were just a little bit open still. The water from these valves when released was directed into a tank inside the Reactor Containment Building. For an unknown reason, the engineers designing this system only provided temperature gauges downstream of these valves. Other tanks in the plant were generally provided with some sort of level indication and most importantly the PRESSURE in the tank. During the accident sequence, the operators became concerned with overfilling the reactor coolant system and causing its pressure to increase, perhaps dangerously. They elected to open these valves to release the excess water in the system. Once the operators saw indications that the coolant levels were properly restored, they shut these valves. Unknown to them, a set of the valves failed to fully close, yet in the control room they indicated shut. The operators observed the downstream pressure indication and it seemingly returned to a near-normal temperature. The operator training program has intensive instruction in thermodynamics and the behavior of system pressure and temperatures during both normal and emergency conditions. However there was a flaw in the training manuals, and they did not provide an explanation for the relationship of pressure and temperature in this particular system. It's function was much different than other systems in the plant and therefore the indications during operation were also much different. This condition composed of these three or so factors, led to the real disaster. The parallel I see is that we have systems with known deficiencies, but instead of modifying their design and installing more adequate indications to the control room, they chose to rely on the operators identifying and reacting properly to the issues should they arise. Then DID and the poor SOBs in the Control Room relying on their flawed training didn't notice the loss of water for some hours, triggering the core partial meltdown.
@@777Maranatha he never said anything about the people, of course this is above all a tragic event. What he said is that the episode was more interesting than the others.
@@777MaranathaIt is a captivating puzzle *_and_* a tragic loss of life. Both not only can but need to coexist. What do you think motivates the air crash investigators? They are the very people who, by being captivated to solve a puzzle, are ultimately trying to prevent loss of life to plane crashes. Now, the difference between us watching and commenting on this and the air crash investigators is only in that they trained to become ones and are doing it as their jobs, but when it comes to interest, why would we be any different than them? We are not. Things can be both fascinating and tragic, and you need to learn that because emotions aren't black and white.
I am a pilot although now retired. Automated systems need to communicate with the pilot as would a co-pilot. Frankly, although clearly these pilots contributed to the problem, the aircraft is autonomously configuring itself without clearly communicating its actions to the pilots. I suggest verbal (spoken) messages as well as some simplified form of screen display. Overall, in the attempt to make aircraft smarter, and safer, the automatic systems are operating in a counter-intuitive mode from the pilot's perspective. There needs to be a complete rethink on how pilots and aircraft avionic systems interact.
@@jp.1543 That's what the pilots are for. The normal procedure in the cockpit is: One pilot makes a configuration change and calls out that change, and the second pilot _verifies_ that the change was made, so there would be no difference in procedure aside from a clarification of whose responsibility it is to verify changes the computer makes. I'm honestly kind of surprised this isn't already how things operate.
From an automation perspective I'm surprised that no redundancy was built into this system. In the space shuttle as well as other aircraft, multiple CPU's are used as safety to protect against faults. In this case if the altimeters don't agree the computer should have allowed the pilots to select the functioning altimeter and have the computer ignore the faulty one. Of course they would also have to program a notification to ensure the plane didn't get stuck on this mode after repair, but it's surprised me with both altitude and airspeed that aircraft computers have only relied on the Captain's side.
@@jp.1543 Having the aircraft's electronics communicate verbally is not the same as an indicators on a panel or system alarms. A pilot can easily be overwhelmed by information and the computer should be seeking to distill the warnings into something the pilots can quickly and easily digest. In addition, when we give computers the 'smarts' to autonomously play with power settings we invite potential catastrophe - at the very least the computers should be clearly enunciating what they are doing to the pilot(s). Humans perform poorly when bombarded by information and having the aircraft make its own decisions, without properly and clearly informing the pilots, only compounds the problem. What is annoying, as a programmer and hardware designer, is that flight control systems could perform in a way that is far more compatible with how humans function.
@@TheLegoMasterMan100 ---- Hadn't thought of it before, but relative to the rest of the aircraft, a CPU is cheap. I don't know what they'd have to connect it to ... I think there are something like two miles of wiring in an airplane, maybe more.
What up with multiple airlines from several countries highlighting widespread - 2,500 - incidents of failed radio altimeters and not being penalized or scrambling to improve that component?! Wtf...
It's Boeing again!! It is really suspicious that most of these deaths are caused by Boeing. Boeing killed every whisleblower who speaks against them. Something disturbing about Boeing, it's like it was made with many dysfunctional problems as part of the depopulation plan!!!!
I find that baffling, too. If Boeing had received 2500 reports and even THEY couldn't find the problem, shouldn't they have redesigned the system? Sounds extremely irresponsible to me.
The basics like airspeed should have a voice warning not just a little red changing of a box around airspeed instrument that can go unnoticed. To many crashes could have been prevented.
Yes it should say throttle down or throttle up if needed. But at the same time there have been instances where there has been other computer malfunctions and it's telling them to do one thing such as pull up low terrain and there's not even terrain. So what do they do about that then??
There is a shaker on the flight control column to tell the pilots of things like this.... This flaw was KNOWN to exist on several of the 800 series 737's.... Those planes s hould have been grounded.... Until Boeing and Rockwell/Collins identified & repaired the problems... According to this video, Boeing and Rockwell-Collins did not feel that the inop radio altimeter was a bad enough problem to ground these planes.... I thought that the Radio altimeters are serious enough items to be on the MEL's....
The bodies of the three cockpit crew members were the last to be removed from the plane, around 20:00 that evening, because the cockpit had to be examined before it could be cut open to get to these crew members. Also, some of the survivors say that at least one of the pilots was alive after the crash.
I remember the news video the captain waving his hand. Surely he was badly injured but was alive. Contrary to the commentary in this video it took ages Dutch responders to arrive to crash site
That means boing inform every Airport that don't save the Pilot, as they could tell the true reason of crashing Airplane, it maybe systematic crash as maybe some important political person on board.
Regardless of all the other things stated here, this is yet another example of Boeing designing the avionics so that vital flight and control systems rely on the input from ONE Side (ala MCAS and the AOA transmitters on LionAir 610 and Ethiopian 302). In any decently designed system, the Flight Control Computers should compare the information from BOTH sides, and if there is a substantial discrepancy, that system is disabled and the pilots are required to fly the aircraft manually. In this case, the differing radar altimeter readings would remove the computer's authority to control the auto-throttle.
There’s only one radio altimeter, and a barometric one. They just feed different displays. If they disagree then any automation that relies on either sensor should likewise be disabled accompanied by a visual/audio warning. Why you’d continue running any automated process after it was known that a sensor failed is beyond me. The single AOA sensor feeding MCAS with the Max was a political decision not an engineering one. If they’d used 2 sensors then it would’ve required manual reconciliation in case of failure, which would’ve necessitated training the pilots specifically for the Max, in which case pilots couldn’t just use their old type rating, in which case they’d lose out on money.
Boeing did a poo (and had plenty of good reasons to, though safety was not one of them), but they fixed it. I don't get why every still hates on the 737 MAX - it's a great plane.
I disagree! The real problem is why was the altimeter constantly failing? It should never be acceptable to replace the same components several times in a short period of time. As a retired software engineer it was my job to figure out the root cause of a failure and fix it. In this accident, the root failure was the altimeter.
The root cause is often irrelevant, and you should have remembered that; fixing the root cause is often expense when put next to a functioning workaround, and in this case, there was such a workaround. It only became an issue when the function of the workaround was compromised because of an incorrectly performed procedure. IT is a failed human endeavor.
no... we been landing planes in IMC for 50 years. radio altimeters are a new luxury... the root cause is the pilot monitoring, wasn't. there are reasons that there is a pilot monitoring, there is a reason you need to be stabilised on approach 1000ft AGL. they ignored all the warnings, didnt follow procedure and missed everything
@@PhycoKrusk expense? to get an altimeter to work reliably? in a supposedly super hitech airplane? an airplane that otherwise does not how high it's flying? Lets work around it? lol
@@mg-by7uu I'm not disagreeing, but that's the nature of any highly computerized system; if something doesn't work right, someone will find a way to make it work, even if that doesn't actually correct the problem. _Every_ computerized system is like this, and they are like this because they have grown so large and so complex that it's basically impossible to actually fix anything; _everything_ is a workaround.
@jaomircourtar1501 I see two problems. The pilots were not fully aware that the captains radio altimeter controls the autothrottle Under normal circumstances. the pilot monitoring would be monitoring the instruments. He was under training for landing and no one was assigned the monitoring role. I would have expected the third pilot to have been assigned this role, but did his seating position give him a clear view of the instruments.???
Yup, Boeing was right. One altimeter failed to indicate the altitude. Three pilots failed to monitor the airspeed. The airplane stalled due to insufficient airspeed. The airplane crashed. You think the airplane crashed because the altimeter failed. Obviously this stuff is too complicated for you to understand.
@@petep.2092 Yeah, if the pilots were smarter they could've overcome the faulty equipment. But if the equipment wasn't junk they wouldn't have needed to
Boeing always says "There's no issue, the pilot should be able to identify and resolve the issue". Instead of saying "lets resolve the issue so pilots don't have to cover for the failing aircraft system". Boeing has a poor track record of implementing autopilot behavior without still needing pilot implementation. More recently with the 800MAX was to hide aircraft flaws, auto configuration to push for non-cert requirements.
Is Boeing flying the airplane or the pilot? When I drive my boat with the autopilot on, do you think I trust my life to that autopilot system? I know if one sensor failed, the damn boat would steer itself into the nearest rock jetty. Many boats has been lost due to autopilot systems. Do yo blame the pilots or captains or do you blame the boat?
@@ahndeux Either the Pilot or the plane can be at fault, or even both combined. Human, being imperfect will eventually make mistakes and shouldn't be expected to cover for a known mechanical fault that could be prevented. I don't think it's right for manufacturers of any type of vehicle to place blame on issues caused by known mechanical failures that shouldn't exist. Sure sometimes human pilots make dumb mistakes but expecting humans to never mess up, will cause deaths. -In summary, manufacturers shouldn't be allowed to forward blame to pilots for the "manufacturers" known problems. In this situation Boeing would say 9 of 10 pilots caught the issue in time, and this time the pilot was at fault. But Just because pilots catch an issue doesn't make the issue OK. I'm not singling out Boeing, all aircraft manufactures have pushed aircraft to the production line and blamed the user for mishandling. I'm actually a fan of Boeing and hate Airbus joystick control and greater automation. I think the pilots needs more control ability. Despite how great Boeing has been, they have recently been letting safety slip.
@@mrdan2898 Wait a minute. Its not a design failure. The radar altimeter is known to have failed so it gave bad data. A system that was designed to take in inputs to automate the control of an airplane is being fed KNOWINGLY BAD data. How is this related to blaming the pilots by the aircraft manufacturer? In reality, pilots should FLY the airplanes manually and not rely on AUTOMATED SYSTEMS which are prone to failures or respond incorrectly due to bad data. The real SAFETY issue it he pilots has been relying too much on autopilots and other automated flying software and that is a MISTAKE.
@@ahndeux I agree with you that Pilots rely on automation too much as a result often forget how to manually fly the plane when issues arris. That's a known issue. Supposedly the airlines touch up, retrain pilots but I don't have any confidence in this.
@@mrdan2898 Almost every accident shown in these videos are because pilots are depending too much on software and automated system as opposed to flying the airplane itself. If your life depends on these systems, you better know how it works and which sensors it uses to run the systems.
"Are airplanes becoming too complex?" (38:52). The answer is yes. As others have noted, you have to be able to actually fly without the bells and whistles, but the fact that aircraft technology has gone so far as to make the aircraft unflyable without it makes the issue. Boeing should have taken most of the hit for this, since they had awareness of this problem and with multiple complaints of the exact same problem, there should have been a PRESUMPTION that an accident was BOUND to happen and should have either trouble shot the problem down to every available circuit and solder joint or redesigned it entirely. This problem is going to show itself in the concept of self driving cars and trucks. Ummm....no. Absolutely not.
Maybe they should go back to the days of having a flight engineer to monitor all the increasingly complex systems and let the pilots concentrate on flying the plane.
@@johncantwell8216 Another trained hand in the cockpit to take workload off the pilots would help. But that would also be another salary for the airlines to pay, so I doubt flight engineers will return. The Air Force still uses them on many planes for a reason.
You are right about the F/E's not returning: in addition to their salaries and cost of training, a row of seats would have to be removed to accommodate their workstation. Maybe better air-to-ground telemetry could be developed so the status of the onboard systems could be more accurately monitored from the ground, and the pilots advised in real time on how to deal with certain problems.@@lawv804
Holly smoke, I am a student pilot and I know to keep a keen eye on the airspeed indicator when on approach. My peepers are outside but I manage to be able to get in some quick peeks at the airspeed indicator. Most important instrument in the airplane for me.
There are women who can ride Harleys & fly planes very well, but if you drive enuf you will find the majority of women cannot even drive a car let alone ride a MC or fly a plane. They just dont have the aptitude. And its frustrating! We are THE FEW.
Being an old avionics technician, I would like to say that when changing components ("black boxes", antennas, etc.) more than twice doesn't fix a problem it's time to look elsewhere. Over a 21 year period I ran into just about every kind of trouble imaginable but never had one I couldn't fix. I'm disappointed in the techs working on these aircraft. I admit that none of the aircraft on which I worked had any automated flight control systems except autopilot.
@@stratrat57 I go back to F-86H, C-119C, & C-121G&C then C-130A&B. Ah, the days of vacuum tubes when real troubleshooting was required. I was ANG tech.
Of all the airline accident documentaries, yours are the best. Content agrees with writing and accompanying visual. The shows are literate and intelligent, and it's a joy to watch the professionalism. You rule; Sincerely, 86 yo never retired editor.a
@@gamingmaniactv5050Airplane fueling works in such a way that they should never get to very low fuel. That in itself would've been an emergency. Also, as they said here at some point during the video when the investigation started - the plane had *_plenty_* of fuel. They were lucky really more than anything else because it seems the impact didn't burst the tanks
@@sharoncassell9358That would be fun! I used to always joke about that. Like "Hey, let's watch a plane crash movie while flying aboard an airplane!" Awesome!
Wow, this is one I haven’t seen or heard mentioned before. I agree with Mica, people don’t think like robots, and there has to be more training of these new technological developments and especially the older pilots, since they learned to maneuver a bird in a different manner.
Um, she didn't say "more training" at all. She said, "So what we have to do is design automation to work with people in a way that keeps them more actively, cognitively involved and in the loop, and not just monitoring a piece of automation to say, 'Is it doing what it's supposed to be doing?'" Also, maneuvering was not an issue in this case, it was about failing to monitor the progress of the flight.
Boeing seems to have had a tendency to design systems that depend on a single source of information, even when multiple sources are available. If the primary radio altimeter deviates significantly from both the secondary radio altimeter and the pressure-based altimeter, it should never be allowed to keep feeding that faulty information to the autothrottle. It should either have switched to the secondary radio altimeter or disabled the autothrottle completely (with a nice fat warning to the pilots). The fact that they later made the exact same mistake by linking the MCAS system on the MAX to a single angle-of-attack sensor is downright infuriating.
Is it just me, or does Boeing have a disturbing history or either deceiving the pilot, or taking away pilot control.... and then claiming that it's not an issue?
@@aspiringcaptain Yup. This is the second (or third?) Mayday I've seen where the autopilot's malfunction caused/played a role in crashing the plane, and all of them have been Boeing... Despite the fact that Airbus is meant to be the one relying more on automation...
@@alex15095 And set up to not mist. KAM, Kerosene - AntiMisting. The product of an extensive R&D campaign in the sixties or seventies. Like gasoline, it's not the liquid that goes boom, it's the gas.
@@NobleSuitGThe plane literally...crashed...because of the inaccurate radio/radar altimeter readings. That's what this whole episode was about. But sure, it's 100% accurate😂
What he's trying to say is that the pressure altimeter is approximating the altitude and will never tell you how far above ground you are except flying above the sea, where as the radio altimeter will tell you exactly how many feet above ground level you are if it is operable.
Unless you don’t have trained licenced Engineers with enough experience …. the world is running out of these responsible men because off ? Reducing Maintenance Costs 😮
The 737 has had a few crashes lately. Two of them involving 737 MAX planes which killed 346 people and now this terrifying incident involving an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 that lost a part of its fuselage just after takeoff from Portland, Oregon. What happened to Boeing??
When you're flying in an airplane going at 300+ knots per hour, every issue is dangerous. However, the main issue I see is that pilots are depending more and more on autopilot systems without understanding how it works. If drive a boat and it has an autopilot, I would like to understand how it gets the data and how the sensors are used to move the boat for me. If any of those sensors go down, I would like to know so I can shut down the system. Its the same with airplanes. Its become so complicated that pilots don't even know how it works or where it gets the data for the sensors. If any of those sensors go down, it would be good to know you can't rely on the system. The fact that the pilot kept turning off the warning horn tells you he had no idea what that sensor would do to the automated system. Its like driving a car and you get an engine light come on. Instead of trying to figure out the cause, you just reset your car ODB system so it doesn't show you the engine light. Seriously, that is practically what the pilots did.
This comment's foreshadowing is quite ominous. Made after two 737-MAX 8 crashes, but before the MAX 9 door plug blowout & reports of many loose bolts on other MAX 9 planes; and before the nose gear tire spotted rolling along the runway by a fellow pilot.
@@monty58 Absolutely right. And sad, dangerous, & it seems very tricky to fix properly. Yet the _comment_ was ominous. Maybe omens always foretell some inevitable events. (How can we be sure they're inevitable, in general - not just in industry?) But they still feel eerie, spooky, scary & otherworldly. Until you know the basis they're founded on (sometimes that's possible): then they can become wise.
Pilots on this one model in 2008 alone, 2,569 reports of faulty radio altimeters. Boeing: we can't figure it out but our equipment is superior, flawless and fine; pilot error.
State of the art airplane but registered the plane at -8 altitude at 3000 feet. Sounds like top notch equipment. A pilot can only be as good as their equipment that provides them data.
Equipment can fail, that's OK. What is not so state of the art is an airplane that relies solely on one sensor and expecting the pilots to catch that and correct it.
I am no pilot but an Electronics engineer and we learn to program microcontrollers which is likely what runs airplanes' automation. I have so many issues with how this plane has been programmed. Like they got so entangled in the aeronautical stuff that they forgot the embedded systems basics? It is simply inappropriate to automatically change modes of operation without manual confirmation from the pilot. You should not change something crucial and just turn on a notification light. Simple logic: if a pilot did not touch something, he probably would never think of this might have changed automatically and I might need to reverse it. I have many other specific issues from what I can notice in this case. One very important issue is: cross comparing separate sensors, since they had that luxury in this case. Then restrict automation subroutines from being triggered if the sensors could not reach consensus within tolerances. Basic stuff man!
So a combination of pilot work load (because they were completing the landing check list too late) and auto throttle affected by the faulty altimeter caused the engines to be set to idle too far before touch down and it wasn't noticed by the pilots. If the check list had been completed earlier, the pilots could have been monitoring their instruments and would have caught the issue with the throttles (as had happened in many instances in other flights) and kept the plain from stalling. The plane tried to flare as it would just above the run way before touchdown, but it did it while at 1000 feet causing the plane to stall too close to the ground and crash. Additionally the radar altimeter was dodgy previous to this flight. The maintenance staff didn't find a correct resolution to the radar altimeter issues.
On Netflix as a documentary. Also a YT video which adds a lot more information than Netflix, including other incidents other than MCAS subsequent to its fix. CEO at the time resigned and received 62 million dollars! Disgusting. Boeing initially blamed pilots who had no defense as they were dead!
This was a very enlightening episode... The last comments made by the narrator of this video is 'Are the modern airliners becoming too complicated?' The late great pilot Warren Vanderborough probably said it best in his presentations... 'Be prepared for ANYTHING!!! Don't expect the Flight Control Computers to always be able to perform perfect automated landings and take-off's!!! ' He was absolutely RIGHT.... This is a perfect example.... People can easily become overly complacent and also become overly-dependant on automated systems.... What is also surprising about this is Rockwell-Collins was somehow- not aware of this issue, even though numerous aircraft were having issues that several of the pilots seemed to routinely over-ride and then make a write-up in the logbook about it, to which the airlines routinely changed- out the electronic equipment (maybe the FCC's?) to try to cure it... The suspected faulty equipment would then be sent back to the manufacturer for repairs with a condition of what was KNOWN to be routinely happening... It bothers me that neither Boeing or the manufacturer of this equipment would not ground the suspected problem planes.... It took a very bad accident to convince them to do that... That is one of the saddest parts of this entire story.... Later, the 737 Max planes would also develop serious avionics issues with something known as MCAS, that was kept very quiet and secretive, until two planes crashed, killing everybody (346 souls) onboard both planes... One in March of 2019 and the other in December 2020.... They need to save the electronics for the onboard flight entertainment systems... Keep the more reliable hydraulic assist mechanical flight controls for the way the planes are flown...
I'm not a pilot but I recognize that I should ALWAYS know the attitude, airspeed, and altitude of my plane, regardless of circumstances, which include Boeing's faulty design.
What I find weird is that the manufacturers had the foresight to install independent altimeters in case one of them malfunctions, yet didn't consider that one of them could be feeding false information to the computer. Pilots should be able to choose what altimeter the computer is receiving data from.
I want to correct one thing mentioned. Pilots do not capture glideslopes lower to just purely avoid drastic inputs - they capture glideslopes from a lower point to avoid capturing false glideslopes due to reflection. Intercepting a false glideslope at high altitudes can result in a non-standard approach from a usual 3-degree approach and can become a 6 degree or even 9 degree descent approach. A shame to see a radalt failure affect the GPWS and auto-throttle causing this unfortunate crash.
It appears to me, when possible, blame the pilots even with malfunctioning equipment. It's amazing more jets did not crash with the known problem. It was up to many pilots to generate a work around to land safely. Scary.
I see the captain is flying the plane, AND talking with the control tower, while the first officer should have been the one talking to the control tower. But not only was the captain talking to the control tower, he should have concentrated on flying the plane, but he was totally distracted with doing the first officer's job.
My father trained pilots during WWII and later worked as an aircraft electrician for Canadian Pacific Airlines. As planes became more automated his attitude was if the guy in the left seat couldn't fly that crate without all the bells and whistles then he has no business being in the left seat! When the cruise control fails if you can't keep your right foot on the accelerator then you have no business driving a car! ✈🛬👨✈👩✈✌😱🤣
Yeah but what if the cruise control disables your brakes? To be honest, it also largely disables your steering wheel. And it happens just as you start braking for a red light. p.s.: Airliner's auto pilots are a good thing. There is a bias because we dont know how many times and how many lives have been saved by the auto pilot correcting the pilot, or from a pilot error on some routine maneuverers. Just like self driving cars. I dont like the idea of the car driving for me. But I really like the idea of the car driving other people's car around me.
If the captains altimeter was stuck at -8...would his display be getting those warnings? Wouldn't they only be accurately functional on the first officers screens? If that's the case, then the captain wouldn't have known, and the first officer, that was in learning mode, would have been the only person with the indications they mentioned...is that correct?
The first rule of any air crash investigation is "Always blame the pilot if you can." The reason for this is that this is always the cheapest solution for the airline, the aircraft manufacturer, the air control system, the airport and any of the countries involved.
This documentary and its contributors should have mentioned and explained that the flight crew configured the plane for a Autoland approach due to the visibility being below a certain limit. They should have also explained the difference between a Autoland approach and a precision instrument approach.
The pilots should also understand how the plane gathers the information it uses to execute an automatic landing, and how it depends on which instruments.
@@fiddlermargie the plane shouldn't rely upon the input of a single sensor to make decisions when the other two inputs indicated the plane wasn't on the ground. This is the same thing that happened with a single non-redundant AoA sensor taking out the Max 8 flights. There was enough data for the computers to make the right decision.
This is testing in production. You can get away with it for a software projects, not so much here. "No one thought what a faulty altimeter can cause" - the pilot side was directly connected to the autothrottle. How did this not come up in simulations? Well it did, in live testing but they determined this issue is non-critical. Boeing waves hand like Obi-Wan: "the plane gives off sufficient number of warnings" therefore this system is not critical... This is a message: "Our systems are not reliable and we know it but expect the pilots to fix the situation."' Why not take input from both altimeters for such a critical system as auto-throttle? But that only delays the problem, what if both altimeters fail still, and the pilots get accustomed to the warning? Well the one last safety net falls apart. In a very "noisy," situation people's minds switch off nuisances and start to ignore them. This is how we can survive mosquito bites and such while trying to do something useful (me typing a comment here)
I don't know if this is ignorant to say, but wouldn't installing a camera of sorts so it has surveillance outside of the airplane as well as inside the airplane be a good idea? I know it would be destroyed if it crashed but I can imagine the footage would be uploaded to the cloud? so you have footage seconds before impact or is that not plausible. Someone let me know lol
Boeing only seems to care about profits and not about human lives. The USA's FAA seems to be fine with allowing Boeing to do whatever they want with very little oversight.
The Pilot's 11th Commanment: "Thou Shalt Maintain Thy Airspeed, Lest The Ground Reach Up And Smite Thee". An uncle of mine that flew during WWII on C-47 Dakotas had this placard mounted right above the throttles, he was a cargo/private pilot after the war & used that very same card & philosophy until he finally retired from flying. He never had one flying mishap in his whole 46 year career as a pilot, because he never violated one of those commandments. I don't remember all of them, but this one always stayed with me.
Another short but succint one, that was passed to me by an F-4 USAF pilot in SE Asia. "When the thrusties quit, ALL the lifties jump off" and #2- Always beware of altitude to avoid encounters with Cumulus Granite formations.
When a pilot is incapacitated with spatial disorientation that leads into the evil graveyard spiral and you're accelerating down, the ground can come up and bite real fast.
He he. At the time of the accident, the 737 was 42 years old, albeit the 737-800 had avionics and other updates. At the time of writing (2024), the 737 is 57 years old, still flowing the design principles of the 1960's. Boeing still believes it is state of the art,
The crew did not forget to fly the jet. They did not understand that system error and were not trained to handle such a situation because it was unexpected and unfamiliar to the industry. It requires innovative action to land safely when an unexpected & unfamiliar system error occurs.
segun...unfamiliar system error...apart from the couple of thousand times it had already occurred which no-one thought to mention to all the Boeing 737 pilots..."oh by the way your plane altimeter might malfunction be warned and prepared etc"...I guess it wasn't important enough..."if we get a few thousand more complaints..we'll send a memo"
Ironic how it crashed with a safety pilot on board. Scary that Boeing cant find out why their radio altimeters are failing. Seems like as in all accidents many things contributed to the accident. they forgot to fly the plane... like alot of other accidents.
I love the denial that the aircraft was not at fault by Boeing/American investigators. Pilots should NEVER have to compensate for poor aircraft systems design. That's what test pilots are paid for, not commercial pilots.
Okay so they solved why the plane crashed. Being a retired electronic engineer and technician. Swapping out parts if it's one failure is okay, not when there is more than two. Someone who knows what they are doing, needs to see what component or components are breaking down and Boeing needs to put pressure on that company. I heard no reference to solving that problem. Intermittent problems may take time, recreating them. Static problems where there is complete and constant failure, take seconds to find. A lot of times, there was a design error, miscalculation, and there is no substitute or options to replace that component. The personal in the airports, only change them out, see if it works, record the change and problem on record, but not troubleshoot what broke down inside. When you have too many of one component that keeps getting replaced, you have a problem.
Something interesting here. The Delta flight that crashed in Dallas was flight number 191. The American Airlines plane that lost an engine on takeoff from Chicago and crashed was also flight number 191. In all there have been 5 crashes with flight number 191 and 1 emergency return to the airport. It seems to be a cursed flight number and some airlines will not designate a flight with 191 as the flight number. Anyway just some interesting thoughts. Don't ever get on a plane with flight number 191. 😂
My Instrument Flight Instructor, for whatever reason, called the autopilot “George”. He was not prior military and he did not trust George and often spoke in a way, I should never trust him either. Of course we used George, but always did whatever to manually fly and he was always immediately was ready to take over. He said it was nice for a moment to use and it did make approaches easier, but he’d say George was there for when the “Little Jon” was required or you needed a moment of distraction. I went on to become an ATP and often, my fellow crew members would poke fun of my distrust an opposition to fully utilizing George, to which I’d always say “I prefer to keep sharp and hand fly as much as possible. I am prior military and went on to work for General Dynamics Electronics Division as I was a communications electronics technician in the military. I learned over decades in that field, that electronics can always fail, but sometimes they just do screwy things, often intermittently. I abandoned flying commercially for an airline because things were just moving all to much towards the day when George would be the Pilot in Charge.
I think there's a parallel with ATC automation. I watched controllers evolve to put too must trust in it and become dependent. You need to understand how the computer thinks and how it can go wrong. This is not the first of these videos where I sat here and said out loud, "Oh no. Disengage the autopilot. It's getting wrong information. Fly the plane yourself." In this case, I figured out very early that the plane would think it was on the ground before it really was.
Its interesting how all the "experts" in this documentary are all from the American side of the "investigation" and how they consistently overplay the pilots contribution in this accident. As if its a completely normal thing for the airplane to try to land itself while hundreds of feet in the air and the superhuman pilots should had monitored the hundreds of instruments simultaneously while landing and react within a second to save it
Happened to be listening to schiphol atc when this happened. Felt very surreal hearing atc lady state it crashed, reverting to Dutch for a moment when she did.
Here is a genius idea. Instead of a tiny red alert on a tiny LCD screen, build it in to the cockpit lighting. You might notice if the room lights suddenly change to amber and then red.,
The stubbornness and nuisance of the Boeing guy is startling. Just fix the damn things or build them better like the french instead of shifting the blame on others. After watching this and many other crash investigations involving 737s I am always nervous to book a flight operating a 737 or much of Boeings in general
Or better yet, dont fly at all ! Let Boeing and other companies keep making planes, without having any passengers. I mean i know some people cant do without flying, but those of us who can avoid it, can do our bit, to stop these monsters companies and airlines.
19:23 Approaching the glideslope from above... 'The Slam-Dunk'... "It's a 'Challenge' for pilots..." Yeah... playing 'Chicken' with people's lives at stake... 🤷🏼♀️
Yeah no I don't even know what kind of goon would do that if it wasn't ABSOLUTELY necessary with PASSENGERS in the back. It just sounds like a recipe for disaster and should be avoided at all costs. You will never catch me on any regular day "slam-dunking" my plane with people's families in the back.
This is an existing long term issue on many planes including this one. Boeing also knows. But they also don't know why faulty reading. But all blame goes to pilots. Strange🙆
Aviation analyst John Nance urges "fly the airplane-- that is all that matters". The only problem with his simple prescription-- it applies to Schipol, but not to other 737 disasters off Indonesia and in Ethiopia where the MCARS system actively prevented pilots from taking control. The ultimate irony is the Boeing ethic of pilot control supreme, in all situations, did not help with MCARS.
MCAS did not prevent the pilots from taking control. The Flight Data Recorders show that both flights were well under control of the pilots, with them intuitively countering the runaway stab trim using elevator control and electric trim quite successfully each time it actuated-which it did 24 times in one case-to the extent that both flights were creeping up in a gradual climb until the last two activations where the runaway stab progressed unopposed into an unrecoverable dive. The FDR doesn't show that MCAS was sweetly benign upto the last two activations then decided: No More Mr. Nice Guy, and attacked with vengeance. If you agree with that, then can you figure out why things went haywire on the last two activations and the real reason they crashed? The Boeing philosophy of pilot informed so pilot can decide and be in control DOES depend on the pilots knowing how to control (the MAX pilots didn't) and knowing when they need to control (the Turkish pilots didn't). Do you think there's something wrong with the philosophy?
@@petep.2092 "Sweetly benign" does not describe the MCARS struggle with pilots during their initial effort to reach altitude. In the final two instances, "secretly malign" MCARS had the last word.
Why did pilots ignore system warnings?
It’s a question we will never know
Because he knew the issue was the altimeter was broken.
Pilots need to train and follow the steps not hard
Because the "system warnings", such as they were, were woefully inadequate.
Unless I'm mistaken, there was never an audible "Airspeed!" warning, as there obviously should have been, nor a properly visible warning like a flashing light. You know, something that might actually get your attention.
You've got the slowly rising "barber pole", which is barely noticeable, and apparently you have a teeny tiny ultra-thin frame around the speed indicator that is about a millimeter thick and is almost invisible, and flashes imperceptibly from gray to white when the speed is too low. (White? Not red or orange? Since when is *_white_* an emergency color???)
These design deficiencies also contributed to the Asiana Flight 214 crash at SFO in 2013, which was also the result of low airspeed.
I used to think highly of Boeing, but in recent years I've really had to reconsider my opinion.
It's bonkers for a flight to have 3 pilots in the cockpit and not a single one paid attention to the instruments.. Especially considering the 3rd pilot was there specifically for that.. They did their final approach checklist/configuration too late, unsure as to why it was delayed. Possibly they were too comfortable and trusted the systems too much? Every pilot should always remember: Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.
But, as far as the plane itself, everything in a plane has redundancy, taken with a grain of salt.. how come there was no connection between the radio alt and the first officers display?
Most pilots recognized and solved the problem. But I like what Sully said about this type of thing. "Pilots should never be expected to compensate for flawed design." If there is a system that repeatedly fails to give accurate data to the pilot, that sounds like flawed design to me.
Flawed design sounds 100% accurate. Imagine a car being produced with gauges showing sloppy readings.
@@S730SD "Yeah we understand the speedo gives you BS speeds, but you should be able to look out the window and figure it out :)"
It is a flawed design if you are fortunate to walk away , then you have the right to not fly an aircraft with such a flaw. May cost you money but you still have your life
@Opterongeek Which Warners are those? There was Jack Warner. Aside from producing films he appeared in films in the 1950s. He was in the 1951 version of "Scrooge," with Alistair Sim, that was based on Dickens's _A Christmas Carole._ Just a random factoid there for you. I am a font of useless info. Just ask and I will give you more. You never know when you might need them and trivia night or something. 😸🤯😁
Unsurprisingly there is a bit of a parallel here, coming from the nuclear power industry. The partial core meltdown that occurred at TMI, was due to a few primary factors. Without going into the engineering weeds, we'll just put it simply. The operators in the Control Room, released too much water from the primary coolant system and partially exposed the reactor core. This caused the still hot reactor core to overheat and begin to melt. A set of valves designed to keep the reactor coolant system from becoming over-pressurized, had a design flaw. They were notorious for sticking partially open after being operated, as seen by many routine tests of them. Also, the valves had a poor system for indicating their position in the Control Room, that was also seen on a number of occasions to indicate shut, when in fact they were just a little bit open still. The water from these valves when released was directed into a tank inside the Reactor Containment Building. For an unknown reason, the engineers designing this system only provided temperature gauges downstream of these valves. Other tanks in the plant were generally provided with some sort of level indication and most importantly the PRESSURE in the tank. During the accident sequence, the operators became concerned with overfilling the reactor coolant system and causing its pressure to increase, perhaps dangerously. They elected to open these valves to release the excess water in the system. Once the operators saw indications that the coolant levels were properly restored, they shut these valves. Unknown to them, a set of the valves failed to fully close, yet in the control room they indicated shut. The operators observed the downstream pressure indication and it seemingly returned to a near-normal temperature. The operator training program has intensive instruction in thermodynamics and the behavior of system pressure and temperatures during both normal and emergency conditions. However there was a flaw in the training manuals, and they did not provide an explanation for the relationship of pressure and temperature in this particular system. It's function was much different than other systems in the plant and therefore the indications during operation were also much different. This condition composed of these three or so factors, led to the real disaster.
The parallel I see is that we have systems with known deficiencies, but instead of modifying their design and installing more adequate indications to the control room, they chose to rely on the operators identifying and reacting properly to the issues should they arise. Then DID and the poor SOBs in the Control Room relying on their flawed training didn't notice the loss of water for some hours, triggering the core partial meltdown.
This one was particularly good. A real multilayered mystery. Finding episodes of these that I haven't seen is a treat.
LoL, I totally agree. Episodes like this are some of the best ones.
Yes definitely, I concur my friend
@@777Maranatha he never said anything about the people, of course this is above all a tragic event. What he said is that the episode was more interesting than the others.
@@777MaranathaIt is a captivating puzzle *_and_* a tragic loss of life. Both not only can but need to coexist. What do you think motivates the air crash investigators? They are the very people who, by being captivated to solve a puzzle, are ultimately trying to prevent loss of life to plane crashes.
Now, the difference between us watching and commenting on this and the air crash investigators is only in that they trained to become ones and are doing it as their jobs, but when it comes to interest, why would we be any different than them? We are not.
Things can be both fascinating and tragic, and you need to learn that because emotions aren't black and white.
Same here, surprisingly ,never saw this one,was great.
RIP to all the people died in the accident.
I am a pilot although now retired. Automated systems need to communicate with the pilot as would a co-pilot. Frankly, although clearly these pilots contributed to the problem, the aircraft is autonomously configuring itself without clearly communicating its actions to the pilots. I suggest verbal (spoken) messages as well as some simplified form of screen display. Overall, in the attempt to make aircraft smarter, and safer, the automatic systems are operating in a counter-intuitive mode from the pilot's perspective. There needs to be a complete rethink on how pilots and aircraft avionic systems interact.
Great idea having the computer parrot the changes back to the pilots, but there needs to be proof the changes were actually applied, no?
@@jp.1543 That's what the pilots are for. The normal procedure in the cockpit is: One pilot makes a configuration change and calls out that change, and the second pilot _verifies_ that the change was made, so there would be no difference in procedure aside from a clarification of whose responsibility it is to verify changes the computer makes.
I'm honestly kind of surprised this isn't already how things operate.
From an automation perspective I'm surprised that no redundancy was built into this system. In the space shuttle as well as other aircraft, multiple CPU's are used as safety to protect against faults. In this case if the altimeters don't agree the computer should have allowed the pilots to select the functioning altimeter and have the computer ignore the faulty one. Of course they would also have to program a notification to ensure the plane didn't get stuck on this mode after repair, but it's surprised me with both altitude and airspeed that aircraft computers have only relied on the Captain's side.
@@jp.1543 Having the aircraft's electronics communicate verbally is not the same as an indicators on a panel or system alarms. A pilot can easily be overwhelmed by information and the computer should be seeking to distill the warnings into something the pilots can quickly and easily digest. In addition, when we give computers the 'smarts' to autonomously play with power settings we invite potential catastrophe - at the very least the computers should be clearly enunciating what they are doing to the pilot(s). Humans perform poorly when bombarded by information and having the aircraft make its own decisions, without properly and clearly informing the pilots, only compounds the problem. What is annoying, as a programmer and hardware designer, is that flight control systems could perform in a way that is far more compatible with how humans function.
@@TheLegoMasterMan100 ---- Hadn't thought of it before, but relative to the rest of the aircraft, a CPU is cheap. I don't know what they'd have to connect it to ... I think there are something like two miles of wiring in an airplane, maybe more.
200 dead, new procedure, 300 dead, new procedure, flying may be safe but I'd hate to become a new procedure
It's design by body count! 😱
Well, it least you only have a 1 in 30 million chance
Hahahha
Exactly what I think.
@@AccidentallyOnPurpose that statistic is a lie to keep people flying. It only takes one failure and hundreds gone.
What up with multiple airlines from several countries highlighting widespread - 2,500 - incidents of failed radio altimeters and not being penalized or scrambling to improve that component?! Wtf...
HAHA YOU NEW ON THIS PLANET?
It's Boeing again!!
It is really suspicious that most of these deaths are caused by Boeing.
Boeing killed every whisleblower who speaks against them.
Something disturbing about Boeing, it's like it was made with many dysfunctional problems as part of the depopulation plan!!!!
@@liukang3545 why?
I find that baffling, too. If Boeing had received 2500 reports and even THEY couldn't find the problem, shouldn't they have redesigned the system? Sounds extremely irresponsible to me.
@@DalokiMauvais Its all about money. Another greedy American corporation relentlessly pursuing the dollar at any cost....
The basics like airspeed should have a voice warning not just a little red changing of a box around airspeed instrument that can go unnoticed. To many crashes could have been prevented.
Exactly… if you have to listen to pull up over and over again, why not add throttle down! :)
Yes it should say throttle down or throttle up if needed. But at the same time there have been instances where there has been other computer malfunctions and it's telling them to do one thing such as pull up low terrain and there's not even terrain. So what do they do about that then??
When you’re in landing mode, airspeed is supposed to be low.
There is a shaker on the flight control column to tell the pilots of things like this.... This flaw was KNOWN to exist on several of the 800 series 737's.... Those planes s
hould have been grounded.... Until Boeing and Rockwell/Collins identified & repaired the problems... According to this video, Boeing and Rockwell-Collins did not feel that the inop radio altimeter was a bad enough problem to ground these planes.... I thought that the Radio altimeters are serious enough items to be on the MEL's....
Both air speed and altitude
The bodies of the three cockpit crew members were the last to be removed from the plane, around 20:00 that evening, because the cockpit had to be examined before it could be cut open to get to these crew members. Also, some of the survivors say that at least one of the pilots was alive after the crash.
Aaaaaah… What?
Is this true?
That’s awful 😣
@@777Maranatha I'd day this is definitely not true
I remember the news video the captain waving his hand. Surely he was badly injured but was alive.
Contrary to the commentary in this video it took ages Dutch responders to arrive to crash site
That means boing inform every Airport that don't save the Pilot, as they could tell the true reason of crashing Airplane, it maybe systematic crash as maybe some important political person on board.
Which survivors? The only people in the cockpit were the pilots so it's clearly nonsense
Regardless of all the other things stated here, this is yet another example of Boeing designing the avionics so that vital flight and control systems rely on the input from ONE Side (ala MCAS and the AOA transmitters on LionAir 610 and Ethiopian 302). In any decently designed system, the Flight Control Computers should compare the information from BOTH sides, and if there is a substantial discrepancy, that system is disabled and the pilots are required to fly the aircraft manually. In this case, the differing radar altimeter readings would remove the computer's authority to control the auto-throttle.
There’s only one radio altimeter, and a barometric one. They just feed different displays. If they disagree then any automation that relies on either sensor should likewise be disabled accompanied by a visual/audio warning. Why you’d continue running any automated process after it was known that a sensor failed is beyond me.
The single AOA sensor feeding MCAS with the Max was a political decision not an engineering one. If they’d used 2 sensors then it would’ve required manual reconciliation in case of failure, which would’ve necessitated training the pilots specifically for the Max, in which case pilots couldn’t just use their old type rating, in which case they’d lose out on money.
My thoughts exactly. It's utterly baffling how such obvious design oversights make it into production.
@@JohnnyUtah488 Read my comment above. It wasn’t an oversight. It was a deliberate decision designed to meet the commercial objectives of the program.
Boeing did a poo (and had plenty of good reasons to, though safety was not one of them), but they fixed it. I don't get why every still hates on the 737 MAX - it's a great plane.
100%!!!!!! Can’t blame the pilots for a fault in the design
I disagree! The real problem is why was the altimeter constantly failing? It should never be acceptable to replace the same components several times in a short period of time. As a retired software engineer it was my job to figure out the root cause of a failure and fix it. In this accident, the root failure was the altimeter.
The root cause is often irrelevant, and you should have remembered that; fixing the root cause is often expense when put next to a functioning workaround, and in this case, there was such a workaround. It only became an issue when the function of the workaround was compromised because of an incorrectly performed procedure.
IT is a failed human endeavor.
no... we been landing planes in IMC for 50 years. radio altimeters are a new luxury... the root cause is the pilot monitoring, wasn't. there are reasons that there is a pilot monitoring, there is a reason you need to be stabilised on approach 1000ft AGL. they ignored all the warnings, didnt follow procedure and missed everything
@@PhycoKrusk expense? to get an altimeter to work reliably? in a supposedly super hitech airplane? an airplane that otherwise does not how high it's flying? Lets work around it? lol
@@PhycoKruskAs a software engineer the last word I want to hear for an airplane is "workaround". We have a word for that: "hacky"
@@mg-by7uu I'm not disagreeing, but that's the nature of any highly computerized system; if something doesn't work right, someone will find a way to make it work, even if that doesn't actually correct the problem.
_Every_ computerized system is like this, and they are like this because they have grown so large and so complex that it's basically impossible to actually fix anything; _everything_ is a workaround.
i feel so special being here an hour after this was posted
Altimeter fails and plane crashes.
Boeing: It was pilot error
If It's Boeing , I Ain't Going 😢
@jaomircourtar1501 I see two problems.
The pilots were not fully aware that the captains radio altimeter controls the autothrottle
Under normal circumstances. the pilot monitoring would be monitoring the instruments. He was under training for landing and no one was assigned the monitoring role.
I would have expected the third pilot to have been assigned this role, but did his seating position give him a clear view of the instruments.???
@@mg-by7uu it was pilot error, below 2000 feet HANDS ON THE CONTROLS
Yup, Boeing was right. One altimeter failed to indicate the altitude. Three pilots failed to monitor the airspeed. The airplane stalled due to insufficient airspeed. The airplane crashed. You think the airplane crashed because the altimeter failed. Obviously this stuff is too complicated for you to understand.
@@petep.2092 Yeah, if the pilots were smarter they could've overcome the faulty equipment. But if the equipment wasn't junk they wouldn't have needed to
Boeing always says "There's no issue, the pilot should be able to identify and resolve the issue".
Instead of saying "lets resolve the issue so pilots don't have to cover for the failing aircraft system".
Boeing has a poor track record of implementing autopilot behavior without still needing pilot implementation. More recently with the 800MAX was to hide aircraft flaws, auto configuration to push for non-cert requirements.
Is Boeing flying the airplane or the pilot? When I drive my boat with the autopilot on, do you think I trust my life to that autopilot system? I know if one sensor failed, the damn boat would steer itself into the nearest rock jetty. Many boats has been lost due to autopilot systems. Do yo blame the pilots or captains or do you blame the boat?
@@ahndeux Either the Pilot or the plane can be at fault, or even both combined.
Human, being imperfect will eventually make mistakes and shouldn't be expected to cover for a known mechanical fault that could be prevented.
I don't think it's right for manufacturers of any type of vehicle to place blame on issues caused by known mechanical failures that shouldn't exist.
Sure sometimes human pilots make dumb mistakes but expecting humans to never mess up, will cause deaths.
-In summary, manufacturers shouldn't be allowed to forward blame to pilots for the "manufacturers" known problems.
In this situation Boeing would say 9 of 10 pilots caught the issue in time, and this time the pilot was at fault. But Just because pilots catch an issue doesn't make the issue OK.
I'm not singling out Boeing, all aircraft manufactures have pushed aircraft to the production line and blamed the user for mishandling.
I'm actually a fan of Boeing and hate Airbus joystick control and greater automation. I think the pilots needs more control ability.
Despite how great Boeing has been, they have recently been letting safety slip.
@@mrdan2898 Wait a minute. Its not a design failure. The radar altimeter is known to have failed so it gave bad data. A system that was designed to take in inputs to automate the control of an airplane is being fed KNOWINGLY BAD data. How is this related to blaming the pilots by the aircraft manufacturer? In reality, pilots should FLY the airplanes manually and not rely on AUTOMATED SYSTEMS which are prone to failures or respond incorrectly due to bad data. The real SAFETY issue it he pilots has been relying too much on autopilots and other automated flying software and that is a MISTAKE.
@@ahndeux I agree with you that Pilots rely on automation too much as a result often forget how to manually fly the plane when issues arris. That's a known issue. Supposedly the airlines touch up, retrain pilots but I don't have any confidence in this.
@@mrdan2898 Almost every accident shown in these videos are because pilots are depending too much on software and automated system as opposed to flying the airplane itself. If your life depends on these systems, you better know how it works and which sensors it uses to run the systems.
"Are airplanes becoming too complex?" (38:52). The answer is yes. As others have noted, you have to be able to actually fly without the bells and whistles, but the fact that aircraft technology has gone so far as to make the aircraft unflyable without it makes the issue.
Boeing should have taken most of the hit for this, since they had awareness of this problem and with multiple complaints of the exact same problem, there should have been a PRESUMPTION that an accident was BOUND to happen and should have either trouble shot the problem down to every available circuit and solder joint or redesigned it entirely.
This problem is going to show itself in the concept of self driving cars and trucks. Ummm....no. Absolutely not.
Maybe they should go back to the days of having a flight engineer to monitor all the increasingly complex systems and let the pilots concentrate on flying the plane.
@@johncantwell8216 Now that's a suggestion worth considering.
@@johncantwell8216 Another trained hand in the cockpit to take workload off the pilots would help. But that would also be another salary for the airlines to pay, so I doubt flight engineers will return. The Air Force still uses them on many planes for a reason.
You are right about the F/E's not returning: in addition to their salaries and cost of training, a row of seats would have to be removed to accommodate their workstation.
Maybe better air-to-ground telemetry could be developed so the status of the onboard systems could be more accurately monitored from the ground, and the pilots advised in real time on how to deal with certain problems.@@lawv804
@@lawv804 your likely correct.
And passengers may end up paying the price in human lives that airlines are unwilling to pay in currency
Holly smoke, I am a student pilot and I know to keep a keen eye on the airspeed indicator when on approach. My peepers are outside but I manage to be able to get in some quick peeks at the airspeed indicator. Most important instrument in the airplane for me.
We need more female commercial pilots!
There are women who can ride Harleys & fly planes very well, but if you drive enuf you will find the majority of women cannot even drive a car let alone ride a MC or fly a plane. They just dont have the aptitude. And its frustrating! We are THE FEW.
@@ShalomShalom-d5c Why are you all being sexist about this!? For goodness sakes people's lives were lost here! Have some decency!
@@ShalomShalom-d5c The internalized misogyny here is pathetic. Do better.
@@christinajackson6309 All you ladies belong in the kitchen and keeping the house clean.
Being an old avionics technician, I would like to say that when changing components ("black boxes", antennas, etc.) more than twice doesn't fix a problem it's time to look elsewhere. Over a 21 year period I ran into just about every kind of trouble imaginable but never had one I couldn't fix. I'm disappointed in the techs working on these aircraft. I admit that none of the aircraft on which I worked had any automated flight control systems except autopilot.
USAF avionics tech here. Agree 100%.
I worked mostly older systems. KC135, B52, C5 +141.
@@stratrat57 I go back to F-86H, C-119C, & C-121G&C then C-130A&B. Ah, the days of vacuum tubes when real troubleshooting was required. I was ANG tech.
1975-1998 analog multimeter and breakout box.
Of all the airline accident documentaries, yours are the best.
Content agrees with writing and accompanying visual. The shows are literate and intelligent, and it's a joy to watch the professionalism.
You rule;
Sincerely,
86 yo never retired editor.a
For a plane that had plenty of fuel, it's a miracle there was no explosion.
It was at the end of the trip, so the fuel was probably very low.. something that helped a bit..
@@gamingmaniactv5050 low fuel is worse, fuel vapors instead of liquid.
@@stratrat57 The
@@gamingmaniactv5050Airplane fueling works in such a way that they should never get to very low fuel. That in itself would've been an emergency.
Also, as they said here at some point during the video when the investigation started - the plane had *_plenty_* of fuel.
They were lucky really more than anything else because it seems the impact didn't burst the tanks
that was flowing slowly thats why the plane pieces stayed together
Gosh, I just CANNOT stop watching these…
Next time I get on a plane, I’m definitely gonna watch an episode while onboard
Why watch when you can be part of one?
@@NoReply28 Yeah, imagine me on TV. No thank you. If I were involved in a plane crash, I’d either want to be dead or someone they don’t interview
I just did that. It was intriguing. Flight was fine.
I already did it as well. 😂😂😂
@@sharoncassell9358That would be fun! I used to always joke about that. Like "Hey, let's watch a plane crash movie while flying aboard an airplane!" Awesome!
Gotta love the shelves full of open beakers and flasks filled with colored liquids. Gives it that "we do science in here" look and feel.
Heh, and the microscope, and the audio mixing console that looks like it's better suited for a concert, than listening to a CVR...
yeah lmao. What is this chem class?
Yeah I like that and the fake dutch safety board office. they don't speak English in holland officially so I highly doubt it exist. looks good though
Boeing: Provide information to pilot and have them make decisions.
Boeing proving information: -8 meter
What’s this a submarine?
Feet.
-8 ft. But this is a very valid question. 😂
Wow, this is one I haven’t seen or heard mentioned before. I agree with Mica, people don’t think like robots, and there has to be more training of these new technological developments and especially the older pilots, since they learned to maneuver a bird in a different manner.
Um, she didn't say "more training" at all. She said, "So what we have to do is design automation to work with people in a way that keeps them more actively, cognitively involved and in the loop, and not just monitoring a piece of automation to say, 'Is it doing what it's supposed to be doing?'"
Also, maneuvering was not an issue in this case, it was about failing to monitor the progress of the flight.
today's young pilots don't know what to do with the airplane when their precious computers go out.
These programmes are so well made - I love watching them for the technical and human factors involved and also how aviation learns from every event.
Not a single incident in the history of the ✈️ where BOEING accepts the responsibility and admits. Shame on them
Neither does Airbus.
It's human nature... "It's not my fault"...
@@hhds113neither did Douglas, Lockheed, Convair, etc.
did they not say in this video that they concluded that a major part was due to the altimeter bug?
But surviving pilots/crew carry guilt forever
The safety pilot wasn't paying attention to the instruments. He probably just trusted the captain
Let's edit the title to "A crash that revealed the corners that Boeing cut"
Just like the 737 MAX because of the MCAS issue!
Boeing seems to have had a tendency to design systems that depend on a single source of information, even when multiple sources are available. If the primary radio altimeter deviates significantly from both the secondary radio altimeter and the pressure-based altimeter, it should never be allowed to keep feeding that faulty information to the autothrottle. It should either have switched to the secondary radio altimeter or disabled the autothrottle completely (with a nice fat warning to the pilots). The fact that they later made the exact same mistake by linking the MCAS system on the MAX to a single angle-of-attack sensor is downright infuriating.
Is it just me, or does Boeing have a disturbing history or either deceiving the pilot, or taking away pilot control.... and then claiming that it's not an issue?
And with all the boeing news coming out these days, having 3 boeing engineers being victims adds some layers 😂
Look at all the airbus “fly by wire” issues
@@CheddarCheeseBandit examples please?
@@aspiringcaptain Yup. This is the second (or third?) Mayday I've seen where the autopilot's malfunction caused/played a role in crashing the plane, and all of them have been Boeing... Despite the fact that Airbus is meant to be the one relying more on automation...
@@Metoobie it's more poor training that causes the problems
It's a miracle that the whole thing didn't blow up on impact. If that had been the case, nearly everyone on that plane would have died.
The airplane is not a bomb. It doesn't "blow up" on any impact. Pieces will fly off, but its due to the inertia and momentum of the airplane.
@@ahndeux Airplane fuel is very flammable
@@alex15095 And set up to not mist. KAM, Kerosene - AntiMisting. The product of an extensive R&D campaign in the sixties or seventies. Like gasoline, it's not the liquid that goes boom, it's the gas.
Boing always blames crashes on the pilots and never their archaic systems 🔥🔥🔥
In this case, it wasn’t an archaic system, although it could have been better.
Boeing be like - this is an amusement park ride, enter at your own risk.
13:40 Dude (unironically, and with a straight face) just said: "They're 100% accurate...if they're working properly."
"60% of the time, it works every time."
I think he means that the pressure altimeter isn't 100% accurate compared to the radio altimeter
@@NobleSuitGThe plane literally...crashed...because of the inaccurate radio/radar altimeter readings. That's what this whole episode was about. But sure, it's 100% accurate😂
Can confirm: My car starts 100% of the time it starts correctly.
What he's trying to say is that the pressure altimeter is approximating the altitude and will never tell you how far above ground you are except flying above the sea, where as the radio altimeter will tell you exactly how many feet above ground level you are if it is operable.
I love the lawyer speak , say anything that will deflect a problem away from the manufacturer
I give props to all the pilots! They need to start recording the engineers and make them sign off on things and be accountable for what they do.
Unless you don’t have trained licenced Engineers with enough experience …. the world is running out of these responsible men because off ? Reducing Maintenance Costs 😮
The 737 has had a few crashes lately. Two of them involving 737 MAX planes which killed 346 people and now this terrifying incident involving an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 that lost a part of its fuselage just after takeoff from Portland, Oregon. What happened to Boeing??
the mergerign with MD and what affects many companies today. corperate heads wantign the quick buck rather then long term investment
@@Revkorsoon they will merge with Uranus!
DEI?
@@fiddlermargieUm,NO.The pilots were all white. As most on these airplane disaster channels. Try again,bud.
Accountants
Boeing never should have been allowed to say "nah, this issue isn't dangerous"
They've never done a good job at regulating themselves and never will.
When you're flying in an airplane going at 300+ knots per hour, every issue is dangerous. However, the main issue I see is that pilots are depending more and more on autopilot systems without understanding how it works. If drive a boat and it has an autopilot, I would like to understand how it gets the data and how the sensors are used to move the boat for me. If any of those sensors go down, I would like to know so I can shut down the system. Its the same with airplanes. Its become so complicated that pilots don't even know how it works or where it gets the data for the sensors. If any of those sensors go down, it would be good to know you can't rely on the system. The fact that the pilot kept turning off the warning horn tells you he had no idea what that sensor would do to the automated system. Its like driving a car and you get an engine light come on. Instead of trying to figure out the cause, you just reset your car ODB system so it doesn't show you the engine light. Seriously, that is practically what the pilots did.
Has *any* airplane manufacturer?
This comment's foreshadowing is quite ominous. Made after two 737-MAX 8 crashes, but before the MAX 9 door plug blowout & reports of many loose bolts on other MAX 9 planes; and before the nose gear tire spotted rolling along the runway by a fellow pilot.
@@dexterpoindexter3583 it's not ominous if the problems keep getting ignored, it's just fucking inevitable
@@monty58
Absolutely right. And sad, dangerous, & it seems very tricky to fix properly.
Yet the _comment_ was ominous. Maybe omens always foretell some inevitable events. (How can we be sure they're inevitable, in general - not just in industry?) But they still feel eerie, spooky, scary & otherworldly.
Until you know the basis they're founded on (sometimes that's possible): then they can become wise.
Pilots on this one model in 2008 alone, 2,569 reports of faulty radio altimeters.
Boeing: we can't figure it out but our equipment is superior, flawless and fine; pilot error.
Well in this case it was a pilot error. 😂😂
Especially 737 Max MCAS scandal!
State of the art airplane but registered the plane at -8 altitude at 3000 feet. Sounds like top notch equipment. A pilot can only be as good as their equipment that provides them data.
Equipment can fail, that's OK. What is not so state of the art is an airplane that relies solely on one sensor and expecting the pilots to catch that and correct it.
Of course they blame the pilots and not the faulty system
Boeing " only killed 9 people ", lets go to lunch now...
😅
Most are Boeing engineering!!! Hmmm !!!
Boeing should be held accountable for this.
"It makes landing the plane effortless" **big ball of fire**
Yeah when you intercept it. They never intercepted the ils. Did you not watch the same video we did?
I am no pilot but an Electronics engineer and we learn to program microcontrollers which is likely what runs airplanes' automation. I have so many issues with how this plane has been programmed. Like they got so entangled in the aeronautical stuff that they forgot the embedded systems basics? It is simply inappropriate to automatically change modes of operation without manual confirmation from the pilot. You should not change something crucial and just turn on a notification light. Simple logic: if a pilot did not touch something, he probably would never think of this might have changed automatically and I might need to reverse it.
I have many other specific issues from what I can notice in this case. One very important issue is: cross comparing separate sensors, since they had that luxury in this case. Then restrict automation subroutines from being triggered if the sensors could not reach consensus within tolerances. Basic stuff man!
So a combination of pilot work load (because they were completing the landing check list too late) and auto throttle affected by the faulty altimeter caused the engines to be set to idle too far before touch down and it wasn't noticed by the pilots. If the check list had been completed earlier, the pilots could have been monitoring their instruments and would have caught the issue with the throttles (as had happened in many instances in other flights) and kept the plain from stalling. The plane tried to flare as it would just above the run way before touchdown, but it did it while at 1000 feet causing the plane to stall too close to the ground and crash. Additionally the radar altimeter was dodgy previous to this flight. The maintenance staff didn't find a correct resolution to the radar altimeter issues.
❤yes, I agree, a lot of method is required for pilots and perhaps it packed here😮
I would LOVE if they did the 737 Max! Sure we know about this, but the film would be epic as always!
They did in the last season
@@JayJayAviationwhere is the link ?
@@luisfernando5998 what
On Netflix as a documentary. Also a YT video which adds a lot more information than Netflix, including other incidents other than MCAS subsequent to its fix. CEO at the time resigned and received 62 million dollars! Disgusting. Boeing initially blamed pilots who had no defense as they were dead!
Maybe I'm just dense, but isn't multiple redundancy a necessity for critical systems? Especially autopilot systems?
This was a very enlightening episode... The last comments made by the narrator of this video is 'Are the modern airliners becoming too complicated?'
The late great pilot Warren Vanderborough probably said it best in his presentations... 'Be prepared for ANYTHING!!! Don't expect the Flight Control Computers to always be able to perform perfect automated landings and take-off's!!! '
He was absolutely RIGHT.... This is a perfect example.... People can easily become overly complacent and also become overly-dependant on automated systems....
What is also surprising about this is Rockwell-Collins was somehow- not aware of this issue, even though numerous aircraft were having issues that several of the pilots seemed to routinely over-ride and then make a write-up in the logbook about it, to which the airlines routinely changed- out the electronic equipment (maybe the FCC's?) to try to cure it... The suspected faulty equipment would then be sent back to the manufacturer for repairs with a condition of what was KNOWN to be routinely happening... It bothers me that neither Boeing or the manufacturer of this equipment would not ground the suspected problem planes.... It took a very bad accident to convince them to do that... That is one of the saddest parts of this entire story....
Later, the 737 Max planes would also develop serious avionics issues with something known as MCAS, that was kept very quiet and secretive, until two planes crashed, killing everybody (346 souls) onboard both planes... One in March of 2019 and the other in December 2020.... They need to save the electronics for the onboard flight entertainment systems... Keep the more reliable hydraulic assist mechanical flight controls for the way the planes are flown...
I'm not a pilot but I recognize that I should ALWAYS know the attitude, airspeed, and altitude of my plane, regardless of circumstances, which include Boeing's faulty design.
What I find weird is that the manufacturers had the foresight to install independent altimeters in case one of them malfunctions, yet didn't consider that one of them could be feeding false information to the computer.
Pilots should be able to choose what altimeter the computer is receiving data from.
@@AnonimatosTM I think Airbus is feeding sensor data to several computers and the software is making decisions based on multiple factors
Can I just say, I LOVE this narrator.
You should never trust everything to a machine, without having a man in control. 😢😮
All of these Air Disaster videos really shines a light on the issues that Boeing has had over DECADES.
Ever since it's merger with Mc Donald Douglas.
Begining of the video
"The crew is flying a state of the art Boeing 737".
🤣🤣🤣
I want to correct one thing mentioned.
Pilots do not capture glideslopes lower to just purely avoid drastic inputs - they capture glideslopes from a lower point to avoid capturing false glideslopes due to reflection. Intercepting a false glideslope at high altitudes can result in a non-standard approach from a usual 3-degree approach and can become a 6 degree or even 9 degree descent approach.
A shame to see a radalt failure affect the GPWS and auto-throttle causing this unfortunate crash.
Boeing ..blaming pilots since.. forever
Especially 737 Max MCAS scandal!
Thank you for this educational video. Condolences to the families and friends. Rip Amen 🙏.
It appears to me, when possible, blame the pilots even with malfunctioning equipment. It's amazing more jets did not crash with the known problem. It was up to many pilots to generate a work around to land safely. Scary.
I see the captain is flying the plane, AND talking with the control tower, while the first officer should have been the one talking to the control tower. But not only was the captain talking to the control tower, he should have concentrated on flying the plane, but he was totally distracted with doing the first officer's job.
Why didn't the supervising pilot keep an eye on their speed and stuff like he was supposed to when the Captain was teaching..
My father trained pilots during WWII and later worked as an aircraft electrician for Canadian Pacific Airlines. As planes became more automated his attitude was if the guy in the left seat couldn't fly that crate without all the bells and whistles then he has no business being in the left seat! When the cruise control fails if you can't keep your right foot on the accelerator then you have no business driving a car! ✈🛬👨✈👩✈✌😱🤣
Who cares
@@Kylecamp420 You may someday! 😘🤭🙄🤣😂
GOBBLESS!!!
@Kyle ask yourself that same
Yeah but what if the cruise control disables your brakes? To be honest, it also largely disables your steering wheel. And it happens just as you start braking for a red light.
p.s.: Airliner's auto pilots are a good thing. There is a bias because we dont know how many times and how many lives have been saved by the auto pilot correcting the pilot, or from a pilot error on some routine maneuverers.
Just like self driving cars. I dont like the idea of the car driving for me. But I really like the idea of the car driving other people's car around me.
If the captains altimeter was stuck at -8...would his display be getting those warnings? Wouldn't they only be accurately functional on the first officers screens? If that's the case, then the captain wouldn't have known, and the first officer, that was in learning mode, would have been the only person with the indications they mentioned...is that correct?
Yup
Ok pilot
The first rule of any air crash investigation is "Always blame the pilot if you can." The reason for this is that this is always the cheapest solution for the airline, the aircraft manufacturer, the air control system, the airport and any of the countries involved.
Especially when the pilot is dead
Especially during the 737 Max MCAS scandal!
Tragic for teachers who don't follow procedures; namely, finishing landing checklists on a timely basis.
This documentary and its contributors should have mentioned and explained that the flight crew configured the plane for a Autoland approach due to the visibility being below a certain limit. They should have also explained the difference between a Autoland approach and a precision instrument approach.
The pilots should also understand how the plane gathers the information it uses to execute an automatic landing, and how it depends on which instruments.
@@fiddlermargie the plane shouldn't rely upon the input of a single sensor to make decisions when the other two inputs indicated the plane wasn't on the ground. This is the same thing that happened with a single non-redundant AoA sensor taking out the Max 8 flights. There was enough data for the computers to make the right decision.
43:36. “Look out the damn window, if you want to “. Lol!!
This is testing in production. You can get away with it for a software projects, not so much here. "No one thought what a faulty altimeter can cause" - the pilot side was directly connected to the autothrottle. How did this not come up in simulations? Well it did, in live testing but they determined this issue is non-critical. Boeing waves hand like Obi-Wan: "the plane gives off sufficient number of warnings" therefore this system is not critical... This is a message: "Our systems are not reliable and we know it but expect the pilots to fix the situation."' Why not take input from both altimeters for such a critical system as auto-throttle?
But that only delays the problem, what if both altimeters fail still, and the pilots get accustomed to the warning? Well the one last safety net falls apart. In a very "noisy," situation people's minds switch off nuisances and start to ignore them. This is how we can survive mosquito bites and such while trying to do something useful (me typing a comment here)
God bless all these people on these planes . All scary and so sad . 😢
I don't know if this is ignorant to say, but wouldn't installing a camera of sorts so it has surveillance outside of the airplane as well as inside the airplane be a good idea? I know it would be destroyed if it crashed but I can imagine the footage would be uploaded to the cloud? so you have footage seconds before impact or is that not plausible. Someone let me know lol
It's not a crazy idea because it would give pilots a clear view of the outside in case visibility is a problem.
Good luck getting that to work fast enough to actually be of any use. The plane crash isn't going to wait until everything is uploaded to a cloud.
The Pilot Unions do not want that !
Boeing only seems to care about profits and not about human lives. The USA's FAA seems to be fine with allowing Boeing to do whatever they want with very little oversight.
Especially when it came to the 737 Max MCAS scandal!
Outstanding presentation along with
Followup investigation .
The Pilot's 11th Commanment: "Thou Shalt Maintain Thy Airspeed, Lest The Ground Reach Up And Smite Thee".
An uncle of mine that flew during WWII on C-47 Dakotas had this placard mounted right above the throttles, he was a cargo/private pilot after the war & used that very same card & philosophy until he finally retired from flying. He never had one flying mishap in his whole 46 year career as a pilot, because he never violated one of those commandments. I don't remember all of them, but this one always stayed with me.
Another short but succint one, that was passed to me by an F-4 USAF pilot in SE Asia. "When the thrusties quit, ALL the lifties jump off" and #2- Always beware of altitude to avoid encounters with Cumulus Granite formations.
Pretty sure the ground does not have the capability of reaching up and doing anything
Size matters....
When a pilot is incapacitated with spatial disorientation that leads into the evil graveyard spiral and you're accelerating down, the ground can come up and bite real fast.
@@csn6234 oh yes it does
"State of the art Boeing 737"
Hardly
He he. At the time of the accident, the 737 was 42 years old, albeit the 737-800 had avionics and other updates. At the time of writing (2024), the 737 is 57 years old, still flowing the design principles of the 1960's. Boeing still believes it is state of the art,
@@todortodorov6056Except for the 737 Max MCAS scandal!!
The crew did not forget to fly the jet. They did not understand that system error and were not trained to handle such a situation because it was unexpected and unfamiliar to the industry. It requires innovative action to land safely when an unexpected & unfamiliar system error occurs.
segun...unfamiliar system error...apart from the couple of thousand times it had already occurred which no-one thought to mention to all the Boeing 737 pilots..."oh by the way your plane altimeter might malfunction be warned and prepared etc"...I guess it wasn't important enough..."if we get a few thousand more complaints..we'll send a memo"
Also they didnt have anything to work with. No altitude, no time. Last moment crash.
Ironic how it crashed with a safety pilot on board. Scary that Boeing cant find out why their radio altimeters are failing. Seems like as in all accidents many things contributed to the accident. they forgot to fly the plane... like alot of other accidents.
Watching this series I've seen both pilot error and problems with automation bring down planes, so I'd say both Boeing and Airbus have a point.
I love the denial that the aircraft was not at fault by Boeing/American investigators. Pilots should NEVER have to compensate for poor aircraft systems design. That's what test pilots are paid for, not commercial pilots.
Not in an ideal situation but doesn't save this from any sort of liability..
Okay so they solved why the plane crashed. Being a retired electronic engineer and technician. Swapping out parts if it's one failure is okay, not when there is more than two. Someone who knows what they are doing, needs to see what component or components are breaking down and Boeing needs to put pressure on that company. I heard no reference to solving that problem. Intermittent problems may take time, recreating them. Static problems where there is complete and constant failure, take seconds to find. A lot of times, there was a design error, miscalculation, and there is no substitute or options to replace that component. The personal in the airports, only change them out, see if it works, record the change and problem on record, but not troubleshoot what broke down inside. When you have too many of one component that keeps getting replaced, you have a problem.
Test bench connect and computer says LRU is o.k. 😂 , tell me how many times did you get a “serviceable” LRU back on the shelf … 😅
“Fly the jet. That’s what they forgot to do.”
Sounds to me like Airbus is correct about their design philosophy.
The captain knew that he had a faulty altimeter and he proceeded with an ILS approach. That's crasy.
I mean.. is he just supposed to stay airborne forever?
That wasn't an issue he didn't pay attention to the airspeed. All three didn't!
"Fly the damn plane"
- Larry the crusty retired airline pilot
At 38:45 that picture of the KLM 747 landing is classic
Something interesting here. The Delta flight that crashed in Dallas was flight number 191. The American Airlines plane that lost an engine on takeoff from Chicago and crashed was also flight number 191. In all there have been 5 crashes with flight number 191 and 1 emergency return to the airport. It seems to be a cursed flight number and some airlines will not designate a flight with 191 as the flight number. Anyway just some interesting thoughts. Don't ever get on a plane with flight number 191. 😂
My Instrument Flight Instructor, for whatever reason, called the autopilot “George”. He was not prior military and he did not trust George and often spoke in a way, I should never trust him either. Of course we used George, but always did whatever to manually fly and he was always immediately was ready to take over. He said it was nice for a moment to use and it did make approaches easier, but he’d say George was there for when the “Little Jon” was required or you needed a moment of distraction. I went on to become an ATP and often, my fellow crew members would poke fun of my distrust an opposition to fully utilizing George, to which I’d always say “I prefer to keep sharp and hand fly as much as possible.
I am prior military and went on to work for General Dynamics Electronics Division as I was a communications electronics technician in the military. I learned over decades in that field, that electronics can always fail, but sometimes they just do screwy things, often intermittently. I abandoned flying commercially for an airline because things were just moving all to much towards the day when George would be the Pilot in Charge.
I think there's a parallel with ATC automation. I watched controllers evolve to put too must trust in it and become dependent. You need to understand how the computer thinks and how it can go wrong. This is not the first of these videos where I sat here and said out loud, "Oh no. Disengage the autopilot. It's getting wrong information. Fly the plane yourself." In this case, I figured out very early that the plane would think it was on the ground before it really was.
Most pilots go wrong on not trusting George .
The safety pilot must have just been there for the ride.
1:01 that was a fire intro 💯
I'm surprised that computer didn't print out something that said, "You had three pilots on board. Don't blame me!"
Its interesting how all the "experts" in this documentary are all from the American side of the "investigation" and how they consistently overplay the pilots contribution in this accident. As if its a completely normal thing for the airplane to try to land itself while hundreds of feet in the air and the superhuman pilots should had monitored the hundreds of instruments simultaneously while landing and react within a second to save it
A crash that made Boeing change their system...and somehow make it worse
Happened to be listening to schiphol atc when this happened. Felt very surreal hearing atc lady state it crashed, reverting to Dutch for a moment when she did.
This one is kind of unsatisfying, in that "The cause of the radio altimeter failure was never uncovered." 42:49
Probably no one at Boeing wanted to die by a hit man.
Here is a genius idea.
Instead of a tiny red alert on a tiny LCD screen, build it in to the cockpit lighting.
You might notice if the room lights suddenly change to amber and then red.,
The stubbornness and nuisance of the Boeing guy is startling. Just fix the damn things or build them better like the french instead of shifting the blame on others. After watching this and many other crash investigations involving 737s I am always nervous to book a flight operating a 737 or much of Boeings in general
Or better yet, dont fly at all ! Let Boeing and other companies keep making planes, without having any passengers. I mean i know some people cant do without flying, but those of us who can avoid it, can do our bit, to stop these monsters companies and airlines.
I always fly Airbus, since the MAX disasters
Audible reminders about airspeed and altitude should be ongoing throughout all flights might be a little annoying, but would’ve saved this flight
19:23 Approaching the glideslope from above... 'The Slam-Dunk'... "It's a 'Challenge' for pilots..." Yeah... playing 'Chicken' with people's lives at stake... 🤷🏼♀️
Yes I was upset hearing that, what the heck!
It's not a game it's commercial transportation (we pay to make it to our destination safely)
Yeah no I don't even know what kind of goon would do that if it wasn't ABSOLUTELY necessary with PASSENGERS in the back. It just sounds like a recipe for disaster and should be avoided at all costs. You will never catch me on any regular day "slam-dunking" my plane with people's families in the back.
Such an interesting investigation,tragic timing
This is an existing long term issue on many planes including this one. Boeing also knows. But they also don't know why faulty reading. But all blame goes to pilots. Strange🙆
Aviation analyst John Nance urges "fly the airplane-- that is all that matters".
The only problem with his simple prescription-- it applies to Schipol, but not to other 737 disasters off Indonesia and in Ethiopia where the MCARS system actively prevented pilots from taking control.
The ultimate irony is the Boeing ethic of pilot control supreme, in all situations, did not help with MCARS.
MCAS did not prevent the pilots from taking control. The Flight Data Recorders show that both flights were well under control of the pilots, with them intuitively countering the runaway stab trim using elevator control and electric trim quite successfully each time it actuated-which it did 24 times in one case-to the extent that both flights were creeping up in a gradual climb until the last two activations where the runaway stab progressed unopposed into an unrecoverable dive. The FDR doesn't show that MCAS was sweetly benign upto the last two activations then decided: No More Mr. Nice Guy, and attacked with vengeance. If you agree with that, then can you figure out why things went haywire on the last two activations and the real reason they crashed?
The Boeing philosophy of pilot informed so pilot can decide and be in control DOES depend on the pilots knowing how to control (the MAX pilots didn't) and knowing when they need to control (the Turkish pilots didn't). Do you think there's something wrong with the philosophy?
@@petep.2092 "Sweetly benign" does not describe the MCARS struggle with pilots during their initial effort to reach altitude. In the final two instances, "secretly malign" MCARS had the last word.
This is strangley analogous to me constantly hitting the snooze button before work 🤔
The amount of depth which a crash withholds is just too much of unexpected turn of events leading to the deaths of many
Seems like this might be a better way to crash land than many of the alternatives we see here.
Whoever edited this needs a raise
Airplanes are not becoming to complex. Pilots are becoming to reliant on the automation.
And Uranus is becoming too tight