UN group to discuss pilot training after 737 crashes
In the final, harrowing seconds of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, the pilots tried desperately to keep their Boeing 737 Max aloft.
Nothing worked. Not pulling back on the yoke to try to get the nose up. Not attempting to adjust the trim, the preliminary report on the crash would show. Making matters worse, multiple alarms, clackers and other audible warnings distracted the pair. The jet crashed in March outside Addis Ababa, killing 157.
The crash laid bare Boeing’s shortcomings in having designed an automated flight system that overrode the actions of the flight crew. But it also raised questions about pilot experience – whether mistakes were made in the cockpit and whether foreign airlines require pilots to have enough training. Those questions will be at the fore Monday, when a United Nations committee is scheduled to take a fresh look at pilot requirements.
In the U.S., copilots must have a minimum of 1,500 flight hours, the same as pilots, before they can take the right seat in a commercial airliner. Internationally, it’s only 240 hours and can include a mix of time in simulators.
Although the preliminary accident report in the Ethiopian crash showed the 29-year-old pilot had an impressive 8,122 hours of flight time, the 25-yearold first officer had only 361 total hours, having received his commercial airline license three months earlier.
The crash followed another about five months earlier involving another 737 Max flown by Lion Air. That plane plummeted into the Java Sea, killing 189.
In both crashes, investigations revealed an automated system repeatedly pointed the planes’ noses down as pilots tried to pull up. Boeing had installed the system to compensate for larger engines positioned farther forward on the wing.
After the Lion Air crash, Boeing had insisted the 737 Max is safe because pilots can follow a procedure to switch off the system, called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System. Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg hinted about six weeks after the Ethiopian crash that pilots did not “completely” follow procedures.
The crash report illuminated what he might have meant. In particular, the report showed pilots never cut back the plane’s power after takeoff, which would have made manual control of the horizontal stabilizer harder.
On Monday, a committee of the International Civil Aviation Organization, a unit of the United Nations known commonly as ICAO, is scheduled to review flight-hour requirements for pilots. The meeting was scheduled before the 737 Max crashes and won’t be limited to requirements for commercial pilots, said Miguel Marin, chief of the operational safety section of ICAO’S Air Navigation Bureau.
But rather than moving closer to the U.S. standard, ICAO appears to be headed toward another approach. It is more concerned with pilots’ skills and demonstrated competency rather than flight hours, questioning whether a minimum-hour requirement is still needed. A recommendation to reduce flight hours, if one comes, would reflect a long-standing difference of philosophy.