The weather in Jakarta was clear on the morning of Oct. 29 when a brand-new Boeing 737 Max passenger jet left Indonesia’s capital on a domestic hop to a nearby island. Soon after, Lion Air Flight 610 plunged into the Java Sea, killing all 189 people aboard.
No foul play is suspected. Something cataclysmic occurred on board that potentially involved pilot error or equipment malfunction. But as safety officials, the airline and Boeing investigate, one chilling scenario has emerged: This super-modern, highly automated aircraft may have crashed itself by suddenly diving into the water.
The 737 is the workhorse single-aisle jet of Chicago-based Boeing. If you’ve flown in the U.S., chances are you’ve flown the 737. United and American operate 737s. Southwest Airlines flies it exclusively. The 737 Max is the newest, most advanced version; Lion Air’s 737 Max 8 plane went into service just a few months ago.
What may have happened? One theory is that this airplane may have outsmarted its pilots. The computerized cockpit controls of the 737 Max have a new safety feature designed to protect the plane from a midflight stall. If sensors detect the aircraft rising too steeply, the controls will react automatically by pushing the nose down. That’s all good if sensors are delivering accurate flight data, but what if those readings were faulty or misinterpreted?
Lion Air reported data problems with the doomed plane. On the previous flight, the crew noticed a bad reading related to the aircraft’s flight angle. So the pilot “improvised” by turning off a tail mechanism that could have sent the plane into a dive, an Indonesian safety official told The New York Times. That slick move was not in the flying manual, the official said.
Boeing markets the 737 Max as being similar to the previous generation, which means training pilots is relatively easy and inexpensive. According to The Wall Street Journal, Boeing didn’t highlight the risk of a sudden plummet because designers couldn’t picture a scenario in which bad data, pilot response and nose overcorrection would conspire to risk a crash. Pilots criticized Boeing’s handling of the issue. “It’s pretty asinine for them to put a system on an airplane and not tell the pilots … especially when it deals with flight controls,” Capt. Mike Michaelis, chairman of the safety committee of the Allied Pilots Association at American Airlines, told the Journal.
It may be tempting to ascribe a rise-of-the-robots fear to the Lion Air crash. Flying seems miraculous, but at least passengers know they’re safe in the hands of experienced pilots. Now there’s a scenario in which cockpit crews might lose control of their jet to a confused computer? This will not help members of the public overcome a fear of flying.
Indeed those are tempting worries, but misguided. Technology has made air travel safer than ever, yet no innovation eliminates risk. Accidents, errors and tragedies happen. The investigation of Flight 610 will determine fault and lead to corrections that should prevent more incidents of this type. The Federal Aviation Administration already has alerted airlines of the correct piloting procedure if the 737 Max’s nose suddenly dips. If there are unidentified risk factors to flying the 737 Max, millions of air passengers and their pilots will expect Boeing to respond. New planes are nice. Safe planes are paramount.
— Chicago Tribune
