Air Crashes in the Age of the Internet

After Boeing’s popular new Max 8 planes got grounded in many countries following the crash in Ethiopia, it looked (financially) dangerous for Boeing. After all, this was their best-selling jet ever. You’d think that countries would have waited for the black boxes to be analyzed etc before coming to a decision. But then again, this is the age of the Internet…

Donald Trump had (as usual) muddied the waters by his rants on Twitter that the cause lay in the sheer complexity of new aircrafts. His rage-tweeting in turn had backed the US regulator, FAA, into a corner where not acting would make them look like Yes-men to Trump. And so when Canada’s transport minister said that “newly available satellite-tracking data suggested similarities between the crash in Ethiopia and another accident last October”, it was the straw that broke the FAA’s back (apparently) who finally grounded all those planes in the US.

And now, without waiting for the black boxes to be analyzed, we have all kinds of theories on the Net. No, not just the conspiracy theories on WhatsApp and Facebook but even on the established news sites. One site wrote:

“Pilots repeatedly voiced safety concerns about the Boeing 737 Max 8 to federal authorities, with one captain calling the flight manual “inadequate and almost criminally insufficient” several months before Sunday’s Ethiopian Air crash.”

So what was the problem with the flight manual, as per the pilot?

“(On this topic) description is not currently in the 737 Flight Manual Part 2, nor the Boeing FCOM, though it will be added to them soon. This communication highlights that an entire system is not described in our Flight Manual.,, I am left to wonder: what else don’t I know?”

Another site says Boeing knew some of the risks from its own testing:

“In the case of the 737 Max, with its nose pointed high in the air, the larger engines — generating their own lift — nudged it even higher. The risk Boeing found through analysis and later flight testing was that under certain high-speed conditions both in wind-up turns and wings-level flight, that upward nudge created a greater risk of stalling.”

Note that neither of the above sites mentioned are unknown sources; they are established news sites, the latter on aviation matters. And then there’s the geopolitics in all of this:

“The outcome, critics say, has undermined American credibility as the pacesetter for global aircraft standards, while potentially ushering in an era in which international regulators — particularly those in China and Europe — assert growing clout.”

And finally, there are those who say the increasing software automation of everything, including autopilot mode, is adding to systemic risks. Nicholas Carr’s 2014 book, The Glass Cage, expresses this concern well:

“A heavy reliance on computer automation can erode pilots’ expertise, dull their reflexes, and diminish their attentiveness, leading to what Jan Noyes, a human factors expert at Britain’s University of Bristol, calls “a deskilling of the crew.”

Which leads to trouble when these “deskilled” pilots are forced to take control:

“When onboard computer systems fail to work as intended or other unexpected problems arise during a flight, pilots are forced to take manual control of the plane. Thrust abruptly into what has become a rare role, they too often make mistakes.”

And the software only gets more advanced:

“When more advanced computers begin to take over planning and analysis functions, such as setting and adjusting a flight plan, the pilot becomes less engaged not only physically but mentally.”

This is termed the “automation paradox”.

These tragic crashes have now expanded in scope far beyond one model of a plane. Let’s see if something good emerges from all this eventually.