[ad_1]
Breaking News Emails
Receive last minute alerts and special reports. News and stories that matter, delivered the mornings of the week.
By Reuters
Boeing 737 MAX pilots around the world have not been warned about a potentially dangerous feature suspected of playing a role in the Lion Air crash in Indonesia, according to investigators and pilots.
Indonesian officials said Monday night that the aircraft flight manual did not reflect the alleged situation of the crew of the convicted flight JT610 and that the pilots of the new aircraft were to receive further training.
The American pilots were also unaware of the potential risks of the scenario in which the aircraft could become uncontrollable without proper entries, said two US pilot unions to Reuters.
The comments shed further light on the areas under review as investigators were preparing to release their preliminary report on November 28 and 29, a month after the Lion Air plane crashed into the sea of Java after taking off from Jakarta, killing 189 people on board.
Until now, the public attention was mainly focused on potential maintenance problems, including a faulty sensor for "angle of attack", an essential data to help the user. plane to fly at right angles to air currents and to avoid stalling.
The investigation now seems to focus more on the clarity of US-approved procedures to help pilots prevent the 737 MAX from overreacting to such a failure.
Dennis Tajer, 737 ship captain and spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association (APA), who represents the pilots of American Airlines Group Inc., said his union had been informed of the crash of the aircraft. a new system installed by Boeing on the 737 MAX that could control the nose of the aircraft. in certain situations to prevent a stall.
"This is information we did not have access to either in training or in any other manual or material," he said.
Boeing said it was taking "all the steps" to fully understand all aspects of the incident and was working closely with the investigative team and the regulators involved.
Soerjanto Tjahjono, chairman of the Indonesian Committee of Transport Safety Accident Investigators (KNKT), said on Monday that Indonesian regulators would tighten training requirements as a result of the findings of the investigation.
The comments focus on the content of the aircraft manuals and a conversion course that allows the previous generation of Boeing jet aircraft, the 737NG, to upgrade to MAX.
The October 29 accident was the first accident involving the 737 MAX, an updated version of the Boeing narrow and compact jet that went into service last year.
Information retrieved from the aircraft's flight data recorder last week prompted the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to issue an urgent airworthiness directive calling on airlines to update their flight manuals.
The directive warned the pilots that a computer on board the Boeing 737 MAX could force the aircraft to descend sharply up to 10 seconds, even in manual flight, which could cause hardship. control of the aircraft.
Pilots could stop this automated response by pressing two buttons if the system behaved unexpectedly, but questions were raised about how prepared they were for such an automatic response and how much time they had to react.
Although the investigators stated that this problem was not addressed in the user manual, pilots had access to a checklist designed to disable stray systems when the aircraft began to sting. from the nose to the wrong time, said Soejono, an Air Lion instructor who, like many Indonesians, goes by name.
Experts say the investigators will examine whether the crew has reviewed this checklist and, if so, whether he has had time to cut off the automated dive system while he was flying at a relatively low altitude of 5,000 feet. Pilots from a previous flight would have solved a similar sensor problem.
To fully answer this question, investigators may need to access voice recordings in the cockpit supposed to be hidden in the seabed.
Source link
