Originally Posted by
MemberBerry
I feel there is also discomfort among some others on this forum to accept that even pilots that "know what they are doing" might not have been able to save the Lion Air or the Ethiopian flights.
My discomfort is with the constant claims that a "competent pilot" would have identified and solved the problem immediately, and the insinuations that the crews from those two flights "didn't know what they were doing".
Until we get the final reports from the investigating teams, it's the other way around: WE don't know exactly what those crews were doing.
I'm not saying those pilots didn't make mistakes, it's quite possible they did, after all it was a stressful and confusing situation. It would actually be surprising if they did everything perfectly.
But so far I didn't see any evidence suggesting a training deficit of those pilots, compared to pilots from other airlines. If that's true, it means it is not impossible this could have happened to pilots from US or European airlines. There are even some people that claimed it couldn't have happened to European and US crews, because of their better training. I think we don't have enough evidence, and it's way to early for such claims.
Yes indeed. I have seen such commentary. It is premature and totally unproven. What I have said, I think, is that a runaway STAB whether continuous or intermittent (stop/start but always nose down) is containable - from a purely piloting / mechanical / aerodynamic point of view. If it is
noticed it can be stopped. STAB OFF switches.
That is a fact, and it happened the day before. And of course the recent Boeing simulator sessions with line pilots at Seattle showed that they all stopped it. But of course, they knew what to expect, didn't they. But they were 737-max airline pilots and not Boeing test pilots.
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