They had a 200 hour pilot flying in the right seat of the crashed airplane. Star Alliance or not, who in the hell defends a low-time student pilot flying right seat in an airliner? In the US, that would be illegal as a first officer has a 1500 hour requirement along with significant multi-engine turbine training. That copilot wouldn’t even have enough hours for a commercial certificate, let alone ATP.
Because you're making a claim with absolutely no evidence that the captain sat by and watched a rookie crash a plane and kill everyone on board and the captain did nothing to intervene and save his own life.
>Because you're making a claim with absolutely no evidence that the captain sat by and watched a rookie crash a plane
Care to show me where I made that claim? All I said was that given the (good) conditions it was more likely (than any average minute of flight) that the less senior pilot was controlling the aircraft.
>and the captain did nothing to intervene and save his own life.
You mean like what happened the on the Air France A320 that wound up in the drink a few years back? It's perfectly possible that one pilot started fighting the MCAS system and both pilots actions in their attempts to deal with the situation combined in a way that resulted in the crash.
During the critical phases of flying both pilots will be engaged with the operation. While it's true that the first officer may execute the take-off the captain will be at the controls, alert and ready to intervene at any time.
Later during cruising the responsibilities may be split. For example: The captain may deal with administrative stuff while the first officer is actually flying the plane.
Especially since the crew knew that the plane can potentially behave in an erratic manner you can bet on the fact that an experienced captain is standing by and observing very closely what's happening.
Source: I had the oportunity to sit in the cockpit during an entire (short haul) flight, when that was still possible. Both pilots were always engaged during all critical periods of the flight and very specifically during take off and landing. Even when the first officer executed the operations.
As a sidenote: It's not like driving a bus up there. Both pilots were focused, concentrated and busy during the entire flight (this may be somewhat different on a long haul flight ).
It is relevant because MCAS is tied to the AOA sensor on the side of the active flight computer. Even if the Captain intervened, he may not have thought to switch flight computers to rule out a malfunctioning AOA sensor.
I'm well aware of cockpit procedure; my brother is a 30-year captain, now retired and our family has been flying since before I was born. One of my earliest memories is of using the barf bag in a 172 while my father was shooting landings.
I'm not interested in arguing for the sake of disagreeing : to refresh the context of this thread, here's a recap of the thread root:
>> They had a 200 hour pilot flying in the right seat of the crashed airplane. Star Alliance or not, who in the hell defends a low-time student pilot flying right seat in an airliner?
The captain of the doomed flight ET302, Yared Getachew, was a graduate of the highly competitive Ethiopian Airlines Aviation Academy, and had more than 8,000 flight hours — a respectable total. “Yared was a great person and a great pilot. Well prepared,” a former Ethiopian Airlines training captain told me.
Doesn't sound as if he acquired his 8000 + hours on a crop duster.
In addition: Your statement that he was 28 doesn't quite jibe with what the NYT has to say about him[2]
By the time he was 29, Yared Getachew was the youngest captain at Ethiopian Airlines. Despite his relative youth, he had spent a decade with the carrier, eventually piloting wide-body jets that crossed continents and oceans.
200 or 20 000 hour doesn't matter because the pilot called back the airport that he has issues taking off. This indicate a problem with plane, anything that happened after might a pilot mistake but 100% you have confirmed plane issue.
> They had a 200 hour pilot flying in the right seat of the crashed airplane. Star Alliance or not, who in the hell defends a low-time student pilot flying right seat in an airliner?
So do European airlines and they have great safety records.
FWIW Malcolm Gladwell's business bestseller Outliers: The Story of Success has a chapter devoted to explaining the superior safety record of American major airlines compared to foreign carriers: "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes". Gladwell comes to the conclusion that foreigners are unsafe because they are ... foreign. They have a strange and defective culture that prevents the first officer (copilot) from speaking up and pointing out problems to the captain. If only everyone were American, the world would be a better and safer place. This article explores an alternative explanation: foreign airlines do comparatively poorly because their first officers have almost no pilot-in-command experience.
