Pilots say they were 'in the dark' about Boeing's 737 safety update

[Eugene]

Source: Washington Post

Pilots say they were ‘in the dark’ about Boeing’s 737 safety update

By Craig Timberg, Aaron Gregg and Ashley Halsey III November 28 at 9:37 PM

Boeing’s latest airliners lack a common override feature that, in some dangerous circumstances, allows pilots to reliably pull planes out of nosedives and avert crashes such as last month’s fatal plunge by Lion Air Flight 610, aeronautics experts and pilot groups say.

The state-of-the-art 737 MAX 8 airplanes do not have this feature, yet the company failed to prominently warn pilots of the change even as airlines worldwide began taking delivery of the new jets last year, pilots say.

“We were completely in the dark,” said Dennis Tajer, a 737 pilot and spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association, representing American Airlines pilots.

Questions surrounding the crash have turned a harsh spotlight on Boeing’s latest update to its workhorse 737 line, the world’s most popular commercial airliner. Boeing’s stock is down nearly 12 percent since the Oct. 29 crash, even after a slight uptick on Wednesday amid a broad market upswing.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/pilots-say-they-were-in-the-dark-about-boeings-737-max-safety-update/2018/11/28/10b2da14-f339-11e8-aeea-b85fd44449f5_story.html

[harumph]

1. After reading the NYT article on this - the measures/steps the pilots have

to go through to "turn off" the automatic features seem excessive. Evidently, on
prior aircraft, merely yanking back hard on the yoke would shift to manual control.

This seems (to me) to be a dangerous design flaw.

on edit: of course one or more damaged sensors didn't help matters...