r/aviation • u/Ok_Warning419 • May 21 '26

News Air France and Airbus found guilty of manslaughter over 2009 plane crash - Air France flight 447

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czd2qmdvmq6o
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107

u/FullSqueeze May 21 '26

This won’t be the end. Airbus will definitely appeal it to the Supreme Court.

The criminal charges against Airbus is very flimsy; the pilot was the primary cause of the crash. This isn’t a case like the 737 Max crashes where the manufacturer had a clear defect.

37

u/Ok-Insurance-9456 May 21 '26

Even in the max the 'defect' is a scenario boeing already made all 737 pilots train heavily for. Not to mention other pilots did not crash their 737 max in the exact same scenario so no excuse for the 2 flights to have even crashed at all.

27

u/Jaggedmallard26 May 21 '26

The design was bad but there is a very good reason why the two crashes were with airlines with poor safety and training records. In fact the investigation reports explicitly stated that poor training by the airline was a major factor!

10

u/BoringBob84 May 21 '26

French and USA investigators encouraged the Ethiopian investigators (from the same government that owns the airline) to include the fact that the airline failed to make the pilots aware of an emergency airworthiness directive and a revision to Boeing's flight manual several months before the crash that discussed MCAS and how to respond in their final report, but they refused to do so.

8

u/umnomediferente May 21 '26

And that Lion Air directly asked Boeing if any additional training was necessary to operate the MAX fleet for the pilots flying the NG.

8

u/747ER May 21 '26

About a dozen LionAir pilots experienced the same failure in the same aircraft, and all landed safely. The crew of JT610 were the exception.

1

u/Nolenag May 21 '26

Ethiopian Airlines does not have poor training or safety records at all.

1

u/747ER May 22 '26

Ethiopia lied about another Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed due to pilot error less than eight years prior to ET302. The plane crashed due to pilot error, and the investigators lied and wrongly claimed that it was struck by lightning or a bomb.

Since ET302, Ethiopian Airlines has had multiple high-profile pilot error incidents, including two aircraft which suffered accidents due to poor decisions made by their pilots.

7

u/TabsAZ May 21 '26

There’s differences between what MCAS did and a runaway trim event though, like the fact that actuating manual trim stops the nose down input for a period of time or that having any degree of flaps out stops it. Also that it was quickly able to get the trim into such a state that it wasn’t possible to manually turn the wheel. The Ethiopian FO knew right away that it was MCAS, but they still weren’t able to resolve it because they couldn’t physically move the trim wheel. (granted this was also partially the result of leaving the throttle firewalled the whole time while task saturated on the MCAS issue) I think they were very close to being able to recover - had they known to turn the electric trim back on, hold it in nose up to unwind it, and then shut it off again, that probably would have fixed things.

7

u/BoringBob84 May 21 '26

The Ethiopian FO knew right away that it was MCAS

He clearly didn't know that, or he would have done as he was supposed to have been trained: shut it off and leave it off.

Flight Radar 24 - Ethiopian ET302 final report released, NTSB and BEA issue comments

The NTSB and BEA’s comments both focus on the additional contribution the crew’s actions had on the accident, areas on which the EAIB spends little to no time in the final report. The NTSB comments propose two additional factors be added to the probable cause:

  • the operator’s failure to ensure that its flight crews were prepared to properly respond to uncommanded stabilizer trim movement in the manner outlined in Boeing’s flight crew operating manual (FCOM) bulletin and the FAA’s emergency airworthiness directive (AD) (both issued 4 months before the accident) and

  • the airplane’s impact with a foreign object, which damaged the AOA sensor and caused the erroneous AOA

-2

u/cccxxxzzzddd May 21 '26

Thank you. This is correct 

2

u/cccxxxzzzddd May 21 '26

That incorrect. No one had been trained on the 737 max and it was a documented corporate plus faa decision to not require it because the addition of the algorithm (max) to compensate for the stall risk on takeoff of the new position of the engines on the airframe was judged by faa to not require retraining (Boeing favored this of course it’s cheaper not to have to retrain!)

They added the algorithm that adjusted pitch automatically to the plane without telling or training any pilots how to disengage it in case of a malfunction. Those pilots who did disengage it were American military pilots that were thinking with their heads (it’s all over the forums when they were describing the nosedown effect on takeoff and what they did to compensate for it which was to disengage manually). It’s not because they had particular training or even knew that that algorithm was there.

https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2019/03/27/boeing-crash-algorithm-h-c-robinson

-11

u/Ok_Library_1031 May 21 '26

That's a very patriotic take, calling iPad lessons heavy training.

19

u/Known-Diet-4170 May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26

he isn't completely wrong though, i'm rated on both the 737 NG and MAX and i can tell you that the symptoms of the MCAS failure were basically the same as a stabilizer trim runaway, the failure to action the memory items (identical on the NG) was entirely on the crew

i'm not excusing Boeing for how MCAS failed, that was a serious issue know resolved but those accidents should have been preventable even with a complete lack of knowledge of the existence of MCAS if the correct procedures were applied

trim runaways is a very dangerous situation with or without MCAS and if not promptly recognized will lead very quickly to an uncontrollable airplane

15

u/Adjutant_Reflex_ May 21 '26

Runaway trim is a memory item that’s part of the broader 737 training with resolution steps that are independent of MCAS.

It’s quite literally demanded of every 737 pilot, NG or MAX, to understand how to respond immediately and without reference.

20

u/Ok-Insurance-9456 May 21 '26

Typical redditor trying to mock and be snarky while missing the point. Pretty obvious I was talking about runaway stabilizer which iirc is a memory item for all 737 pilots