Originally Posted by
A320ECAM
Guys this is an important part of my previous post which has been absolutely overlooked and ignored.
The night before the Lion Air accident, a jump seating pilot managed to recognise the trim runaway and took corrective action. This saved the plane. The next day, a different crew crashed in the same situation.
Therefore MCAS was not a death trap as soon as it kicked in. In fact, looking at sim videos on how to disable the stab trim during runaway and "re-trim" the airplane, it is a very easy recovery procedure!
Why didn't the Lion Air pilots apply the basic trim runaway memory items?
Why did the Ethiopian pilots leave the thrust levers TOGA power?
Why did the Ethiopian pilots ignore the Boeing procedures by reenabling MCAS even with extensive lessons learnt from the Lion Air mistakes?
It frustrates me that Boeing are taking far too much blame for this and not the airline's training department!
Yes the pilots messed up big time but it goes deeper than just blaming them. It is the airlines Lion Air (worse safety record in commercial aviation) and Ethiopian who are at fault here.
As much as I respect Captain Sullenberger, a lot of his press releases are now for political gain only. His future is destined for politics but he is wrong in his case about Boeing to blame. Pilots need to focus more on their hand flying skills and less on automation.
Absolute rubbish!
It took the crew and the jump seater considerable time to deactivate the electric trim - they did this because they thought the STS was running in the wrong direction.
How on Earth you can interpret that to be - they identified a trim runaway and followed the correct memory item is beyond belief.
This same crew you consider in high regard for dealing with the MCAS in the correct way, continued on to destination with the stick shaker still active - hardly by the book guys.
The second Lion Air guys did not have a "runaway trim" that check list was revised after that crash & the word "continuous" was added.
Ethiopian probably re-engaged the electric trim because the reduced size manual trim wheel was not working - note * the trim wheel was marginal prior to it's reduction in size, that is why the Yo Yo procedure was in the early 737 manuals.