I'm surprised there is not any further comment on those details of the recent totally fatal Vilnius crash.

Because everything known indicates pilot error. They rushed the landing instead of taking the time to analyze the problems they had. They did no landing checklist, no speedbrake setup. Captain ignored a couple of rules.. a recheck of the plane's configuration may should have helped them to identify the switched off hydraulics when they were confronted with master caution alarm and disengaging autopilot. Simply discarding the master alarm and doing nothing about it is... deadly negligence.

[Edit to add:] Throughout the flight they struggled with wrong ATC frequencies; wrong frequency of Vilnius stated by Warsaw ATC, confusion; no reply; recheck, changing frequency, trying again. This frequency confusion occupied the captain most of the time before the crash landing. Neither the captain nor the copilot noted that flaps did not extend when they set the flaps lever. Pilot error.

There was some discussion the captain was also a pilot manager of this airline with a significant part of his duty time in the office where you can't find out if he was not overworked... lacking sleep...

https://avherald.com/h?article=520c0e2b

Yes, I also assume it's a difficult environment: short-haul cargo flights, many rotations a day or rather mostly nighttime, early mornings. Decades old planes which weren't modernized with modern replacement components to lessen the pilot workload. There are no passengers; so airline managers don't care to improve the aircraft. They reduce costs to keep their market position... There's always another Eastern European airline willing to offer cheaper rates... Foreign nationals as pilots who have a job far from home. These pilots supposedly aren't well paid.

In the end; if these 2nd grade cargo airlines that distribute parcels from the big cargo hubs on less profitable routes wouldn't be so cheap, so cost sensitive, so "efficient", we all would have to pay way more for our way of life, for delivery of online shopping goods; the supply chains all modern industries depend on and profit from.

In the end; it's us, our way of life, our expectations, that killed these pilots.

Well said.

Very good comment there thanks.


There's a lot to unravel as to how so much went wrong. There's more there than only "pilot error"...

Beyond that rush and haste, there is also the added very deadly effect of pilot overload.

Is a large part of the deadly problem that the management demand that pilots are given less time? Too little time to allow them to fly safe??


Meanwhile for this exmple, the needless (deadly) difficulties of a 1960's era cockpit remain...

A singular warning light indicating that "SOMETHING IS WRONG!" might be acceptable for an old motor vehicle on the ground... But for a modern day flying machine??...


Fly safe?
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
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Is a large part of the deadly problem that the management demand that pilots are given less time? Too little time to allow them to fly safe??

A delicate topic and off-topic here as well, as it's independent of aircraft manufacturers.

There are management practices that influence pilot decisions which are questionable, to say the least.

E.g. there's this largest and most profitable European airline with it's ingenious CEO (includes benevolent as well as devilish traits) which does not operate a synchronized route network, no hub-and-spoke, no transfer connections, just low-cost point-to-point, everywhere within the large European economic space, EU rules enabling this business model (no protected route rights for national airlines... within EU). They and other low-cost airlines literally strangled the previous flag carriers of most smaller Eastern countries. They are cheaper, more efficient, successful. In the end it's these airlines who enabled the European Economic space, e.g. work migration, youth exchange, Europe-wide connections cheaper than railways or by car; island tourism for low-wage earners...

But one of the many reasons they are so cost efficient is the devilish invention to monitor fuel consumption per route, per pilot. They do statistics and rankings of their pilots regarding their fuel planning practices. Then they invite the 'low performing' 20...30% of their pilots to management meetings, to 'reeducate' them, to convince them to 'rethink' their planning (not to undercut mandatory minima, but to put pressure on the pilot's leeway in decision-making, e.g. a bad weather front is expected; delays at airports..., how much additional fuel to take?). Should pilots safely avoid the possibility of a priority request due to 'low fuel' in bad weather, or is cost efficiency more important? Who decides, in the end? The captain or the manager? For the big flag carriers seamless operation, on-time, without incidents, is paramount to minor fuel savings. But low-cost airlines can achieve a small, but relevant competive advantage putting cost efficiency first, thereby exploting the fact that the big flag carriers take more reserves, so that they almost never are forced to request ATC for landing priority.

Airline operation can be risky, optimal or wasteful. There is just a narrow band between risk and waste. It's hard for everyone in this business to find a sustainable mode without risky practices. And how to convince beancounting managers?

Another example of Profits come First?...


NTSB Urgent Safety Recommendation 737Max LRD CFM Leap Engines


Note the comments about the pilot checklists, lack of safety automation, the (old) control panels, procedures update procedure, and how the NTSB were not informed...


Has this been caught soon enough?...

Fly safe??
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
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When will the arcane certification requirements be changed to allow safety?

Note the comments about the pilot checklists, lack of safety automation, the (old) control panels, procedures update procedure, and how the NTSB were not informed...

as explained in the video:

No debris left the engine apart from the exhaust path, no fire occured. No need to inform NTSB.

When the 737 was designed pilots had to know their plane and its subsystems from memory. Seems that changed over decades with newer 737 generations as things became more complex... Why is it that supervisory bodies like NTSB have to demand from airlines to inform their pilots about specific characteristics of their planes; they should have learned them when achieving their type rating.

Ahh... yes there was no separate type rating for 737 Max... just a training video on iPad.

... And thorough training costs money...

... And a pilot with that thorough training becomes no longer easily expendable...

... Which spoils the American hire-and-fire-and-keep-'em-cheap methods of mistreating people...


Keep 'em dumb and the dumber the better?

Fly safe??
Martin

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No, you don't realize a very important fact. The regulators require a pilot to only be trained on one specific aircraft type at a time (to fly passengers on scheduled flights) So if he is trained on the new aircraft, he can no longer fly the old aircraft.

When are the arcane rules going to be changed?

When are the arcane rules going to be changed?

Blancolirio's short explanation: 5m10s...6m05s:

NTSB Urgent Safety Recommendation 737Max LRD CFM Leap Engines

Outdated, manual control of cabin air pressure shutoff valves (bleed air), which, if not done immediately in case of engine damage, may feed smoke, oil fumes... into the cabin.

Reason? Supposedly, to maintain the decades old, continuous 737 type rating for 737 Max.

This doesn't prevent FAA or airlines to enforce resp. train/teach their 737 Max pilots how to correctly shield cabin air in case of engine damages. They also have to train pilots how to use the glass cockpit, which the original 737 didn't had; or e.g. what MCAS is.

it is more strange than you may think https://registry.faa.gov/TypeRatings/

Interesting list, it has a few surprises, like:
The B17 not having an "Equivalent Military Designation", but the DC3/C47 does have an "Equivalent Military Designation";
There being two different rating titles for the b-747 family, but only one for the b737 family;


and I wonder if anyone has a current "Concrd" type rating?

---

Bob Smith
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Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

and I wonder if anyone has a current "Concrd" type rating?

Does Flight Safety still have a Concorde simulator? One year passes and poof no longer current. Doesn't mean the rating is invalid. And the thing that few outside aviation realize of all those ratings, you can have them all but if you work for an airline only one of them - the last you completed - is current at a time.

Here we have an example of an engine failure recently on an Airbus:


AA 1665 A321 KLAS Compressor Stalls 25 June


What does this have to do with the Boeing 737?...

Well, what that does highlight is what a stark difference there is in the modern day emergency procedures for that Airbus compared to the similar Market segment plane, the Boeing 737.

The Boeing, for an emergency, still since the 1960's, relies upon blinking warning lights, a multitude of pilot "immediate recall memory items", a library of ring binders of multiple pages of procedures and checks that take tens of minutes to work through, a multitude of rarely used manual knobs and switches, and military fighter pilot cold cool skills. ... Except we ain't paying fighter pilot rates.

What a stark comparison!


Fly safe?
Martin

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Surprised that no comment has been stirred by that comparison...

Is Boeing in such a very different world and a completely different time warp?...

(And lives are so cheap to freely cheaply gamble with life?)


Fly safe with that???
Martin

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Meanwhile...

What could possibly go wrong here?...


Shock Report: The 787 Water Leak That Could Crash a Plane? Boeing/FAA Warned About This For Years!


That really is shocking.

Electrically and in all disbelief...

Would you believe it?! Fancy that? Whatever next??!!


Fly safe?
Martin

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Boeing is too much in the news...

There's a Japan Airlines Boeing 737 that has just now made a 26000' descent due to a cabin air pressure problem (depressurisation?) that has hit some very sensational news. I'll post a link once there is one that gives any useful detail.



Meanwhile, this gives a good summary of the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 door blowout and what lead up to that:

The Alaska Airlines Disaster That Exposed Boeing’s Broken Safety System | Aviation News



And that brings to mind:

How is it that Airbus is NOT in the safety disasters news? Anyone care to chase up for Airbus in a separate thread? Airbus just can't possibly be 'perfect'... Can they?


Fly safe??
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

How is it that Airbus is NOT in the safety disasters news? Anyone care to chase up for Airbus in a separate thread? Airbus just can't possibly be 'perfect'... Can they?

If you look here or at similar web services there are incidents for all types of commercial aircraft each day: Airbus, Boeing, Embraer, Bombardier, ATR, Fokker...

I do not know if somebody correlates the number of operational aircraft of a specific type to the number of corresponding incidents and accidents. So, whether Boeing aircraft (resp. specific generations of 737) have statistically relevant more incidents. I doubt it. There's a general trend over decades that modern aircraft generations have less accidents than previous ones. Even the two 737 Max crashes will not change this longterm trend as today's airline fleets are larger, each aircraft flying more miles each day than in past decades.

Fly safe??

Yes, I think flying is safe, at least safer than driving a car. Okay, most car accidents aren't fatal; air accidents often are.

One thing to consider is the attitude of Boeing vs. Airbus when something bad goes wrong.
Some years ago Airbus had a number of headline grabbing incidents, which they initially tried to bury, but eventually eventually came clean on. It would appear that they learned a lesson, and thus their reputation is "OK".
Meanwhile Boeing have had some recent headline grabbers, but they have tried to say "not us guv", and done all they can to avoid any admissions, thus the public perception is "not so good".
I think, in terms of numbers of aircraft flying Boeing is still ahead of Airbus, but its not that big a difference - about 12 Boeing to 10 Airbus. So one could expect there to be a similar ratio of incidents. BUT in recent years the ratio of major incidents has been more like 2 Boeing to 1 Airbus (in the US - figures for the rest of the world are harder to get and analyse).

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

How is it that Airbus is NOT in the safety disasters news?

Because there is no profit in trashing them.