Buzz
Why planes crash: The misunderstood factors
---In a remarkable event on January 15, 2009, a seasoned pilot, reminiscent of a movie character, safely landed a US Airways plane on the Hudson River. The aircraft had suffered severe engine damage from geese, leaving it little more than a glider. Despite the odds, all 155 passengers and crew survived.
The pilot, Captain Sully, became an instant celebrity for his heroic actions, forever known for the Miracle on the Hudson. Even a decade later, his story continues to resonate and was immortalized in a 2016 Clint Eastwood film starring Tom Hanks.
The heroic pilot is an enduring figure. This might clarify why, when aircraft crash — as two Boeing 737 Maxs have in the past five months — people immediately speculate about the individuals in the cockpit.
“Was it pilot error?” I am often asked by those who know my background as a former air accident investigator and the author of The Crash Detectives. Pilots may be the first to arrive at the accident scene, as the saying goes, but the question still troubles me. Accidents are never the result of one thing or one person. They lie at the end of a long chain of events.
Therefore, I observed with dismay but not surprise as the pilots of Lion Air Flight 610, which plunged into the sea shortly after takeoff in October 2018, and those commanding Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which crashed into a field in March, became the focus of stories and speculation about the quality of their training and performance.
Certainly, when crash investigators commence the process of determining what went wrong, pilots are closely examined. Their training, medical history, sleep patterns, and emotional state are pertinent, as are the actions of many other workers associated with the flight. Crash investigators also analyze the aircraft, its past maintenance, repairs, service bulletins, cargo, and of course all details associated with the final flight itself.
It may sound unusual coming from a woman who used to perform this role — specifically for lawyers representing victims of air accidents — but investigators are not there to assign blame. They’re there to find out why events unfolded as they did. If it’s found that the pilots made errors, that’s not the end of the story. The next step is to figure out why.
However, from my years in this role and later reporting on safety, one thing stands out: The way pilots interact with technology designed to prevent errors can often contribute to accidents in unexpected ways.
There’s no superior instance of this than the dual impact of Boeing 737 Max calamities. Fresh evidence suggests that what confused the pilots of these doomed flights was not a lack of piloting skill, but a new system Boeing incorporated into the Max. Even worse, this technology — Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS — was designed to enhance safety by assuming control of the aircraft if its nose rose excessively, risking a loss of lift and a stall.
In reality, ongoing investigations indicate that in both incidents, the system activated due to an incorrect sensor reading. The planes were not endangered, yet the pilots were unable to override the computer’s directive, compelling the planes into a descent. In summary, technology outperformed the humans in the cockpit with catastrophic outcomes. Boeing now acknowledges the flaw in the software.
Integrating software into the cockpit as a safeguard against human fallibility has been a practice for decades. Undoubtedly, computers have significantly improved flight safety in numerous ways. Simultaneously, its integration plays such a substantial role in the pilot’s domain that one cannot consider either in isolation.
In the mid-80s, Airbus, Boeing’s European rival, introduced the first fly-by-wire aircraft. This advancement replaced the pilot’s mechanical control of flight surfaces with electrical impulses. This offered the flight greater accuracy and consistency. It also established secure operational limits beyond which pilots could not maneuver, thus averting potential catastrophic
By the mid-2000s, Boeing also incorporated fly-by-wire technology into its new B-777 widebody aircraft. Therefore, today’s advanced airliner technology can be likened to your smartphone, which tracks your movements, manages your schedule, and provides navigation to your appointments, or your car with its lane-keeping and parallel parking capabilities. Whether on land or in the air, modern technology consistently manages routine, complex, or mentally taxing tasks, freeing us from such responsibilities.
However, technology also has its drawbacks. Our smartphones, computers, cameras, and smart homes can both bewilder us and lead to carelessness. The same applies to pilots flying modern aircraft.
In the crash of an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 during landing in San Francisco in 2013, investigators determined that a contributing factor was the pilots' excessive reliance on automated systems, which resulted in a decline in their piloting skills. The investigation into the fatal flight of an Air France Airbus A330 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in 2009 concluded that the complexity of the fly-by-wire aircraft confounded the pilots.
The investigations into the 737 Max incidents reveal another aspect of the dilemma: Technology designed to prevent pilot errors ended up trapping the pilots. Helpless in the cockpit, they were unable to replicate Captain Sully's heroic actions and save the day.
VOCABULARY:
airmanship (n): skill in flying an aircraft.
=> Some of the most enjoyable training you will receive at the United States Air Force Academy is in aviation and airmanship.
bewilder (v): cause someone to be unable to think clearly.
=> Politicians often befuddle the public with campaign promises that they cannot keep.
puzzle (n): a perplexing and challenging problem or question.
=> Physicists believe they have solved the chicken-and-egg conundrum.
shock (n): distress, typically caused by something unexpected.
=> To his dismay, she left him.
mistake (v): be incorrect or mistaken; make an error.
=> The judges had erred in ruling that the evidence was inadmissible.
risk (n): danger of loss, harm, or failure
=> Michael’s job was not in jeopardy.
mishandle (v): mismanage or handle something incorrectly or inefficiently.
=> The officer mishandled the situation.
plunge (v): leap or dive swiftly and energetically.
=> Our daughters whooped as they plunged into the sea.
scrutinize (v): inspect or examine closely and meticulously.
=> Customers were warned to scrutinize the small print.
speculate (v): formulate a theory or conjecture about a subject without definitive evidence.
=> My colleagues speculate about my private life.
