Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger III, the pilot who skilfully landed US Airways 1549 on the Hudson River in 2009, has harsh words for both Boeing and Ethiopian Airlines.
The “Miracle on the Hudson” pilot is an Aviation and Safety Expert for CBS News but weighed in on the recent Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737-8 MAX crash on his personal Facebook page.
Here are his comments in full. I’ve broken them up into paragraphs and bolded what I deem particularly noteworthy.
We do not yet know what caused the tragic crash of Ethiopian 302 that sadly claimed the lives of all passengers and crew, though there are many similarities between this flight and Lion Air 610, in which the design of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 is a factor. It has been obvious since the Lion Air crash that a redesign of the 737 MAX 8 has been urgently needed, yet has still not been done, and the announced proposed fixes do not go far enough.
I feel sure that the Ethiopian crew would have tried to do everything they were able to do to avoid the accident. It has been reported that the first officer on that flight had only 200 hours of flight experience, a small fraction of the minimum in the U.S., and an absurdly low amount for someone in the cockpit of a jet airliner. We do not yet know what challenges the pilots faced or what they were able to do, but everyone who is entrusted with the lives of passengers and crew by being in a pilot seat of an airliner must be armed with the knowledge, skill, experience, and judgment to be able to handle the unexpected and be the absolute master of the aircraft and all its systems, and of the situation.
A cockpit crew must be a team of experts, not a captain and an apprentice. In extreme emergencies, when there is not time for discussion or for the captain to direct every action of the first officer, pilots must be able to intuitively know what to do to work together. They must be able to collaborate wordlessly. Someone with only 200 hours would not know how to do that or even to do that. Someone with that low amount of time would have only flown in a closely supervised, sterile training environment, not the challenging and often ambiguous real world of operational flying, would likely never have experienced a serious aircraft malfunction, would have seen only one cycle of the seasons of the year as a pilot, one spring with gusty crosswinds, one summer of thunderstorms. If they had learned to fly in a fair-weather clime, they might not even have flown in a cloud.
Airlines have a corporate obligation not to put pilots in that position of great responsibility before they are able to be fully ready. While we don’t know what role, if any, pilot experience played in this most recent tragedy, it should always remain a top priority at every airline. Everyone who flies depends upon it.
I’m not a pilot and I am not here to affirm or dismiss Sully’s contentions about both Boeing and the state of pilot training. He’s certainly correct that a “cockpit crew must be a team of experts” but I’m not sure that 200 hours is necessarily too little. We don’t know exactly what happened in the Ethiopian flight deck prior to the crash of ET302 and to blame the junior pilot would not be responsible at this point.
CONCLUSION
Sullenberger commands instant credibility based upon his own crash landing. His words should be taken seriously. But until we know more, he is merely speculating like the rest of us.
image: Chesley Sullenberger / Facebook
Matthew –
I love your stuff. You’re my favorite FF blogger. But really, you’re not sure that 200 hours is too little for a copilot?
You’re a lawyer, right? Would you let an associate who had only practiced for 200 hours handle something critical? Of course not. They don’t have the experience necessary to handle things when they get complicated.
After a few hours in a simulator, you or I could taxi a 737 to the runway, take off and probably land. The reason you need a trained pilot is for when things go wrong like on ET302. This is exactly why Air Transport Pilot certificated pilots require 1500 hours of flight time minimum, and co-pilots on US carriers require ATP certificates. It’s possible that nothing could have been done to save ET302, but we can know with a high degree of certainty that the co-pilot couldn’t have added much to help the captain.
+1
If the autopilot is not doing what you want it, turn it off and fly the darn plane yourself. Simple, what happened to common sense. Pilots are depending on the automation way too much.
Exactly.
You say it like it’s the pilots’ faults for this problem. Pilots should be trained more in flying the plane without autopilot, and should not be taught to rely on it. We don’t know what happened in the cockpit, therefore you shouldn’t be blaming the pilots who are relying on autopilot and should just “fly the darn plane themselves”. The simple solution may not have been to take the plane out of autopilot and fly it themselves.
MCAS operates during manual flight. It is not part of the Auto Pilot. The pilot was trying to fly the plane…
Come on Robert, you know as well as I that autopilots allow pilots to look outtside more often. Also, can you imagine hand flying a high performance airliner 14 hours in the thin air of 37,000 feet. Just two reasons to be proficient in knowing your equipment.
It’s not so simple and clear cut.
Have a look at what exactly the workload is and imagine trying to sort out what’s going on just after takeoff. And remember, the pilots were not specifically trained to deal with this malfunction, apparently due to a cost-saving exercise by Boeing:
I whole heartedly agree on the first point…To have only 200 hours in the right seat of any commercial airplane is a complete joke. You barely qualify for an instrument rating with that kind of time. Ratings aside. It’s not the qualifications, it’s the experience…Period.
I flew for Ethiopian Airlines for several years. To begin with, pilots graduate with a minimum of 250 hours. How a person who graduated with 250 hours to earn commercial pilot’s licence somehow ended up with 200 hours after flying for a few years for a major Airline is a big mystery only Mr Sully knows. Ethiopian Airlines has many domestic flights that operate with smaller aircraft on which newer graduates accumulate respectable hours before they become first officers on Jetliners. Therefore, I do not believe the first officer had only 200 hours. My guess is 2000 hours. While flying for Ethiopian Airlines, in late 80’s, I had about 2600 hours by the time I became a first officer on a Boeing 727(rougjly equivalent for the Max 8 at that time.) Capt Sully should have known better when he made such insulting remark. He should watch what he says because what he says matters, unless he has sinister motives.
Matthew, I will definitely come to you on travel advice and love your blog, but you are way out of your league to comment on hours necessary for the job and I do not believe Captain Sully is calling out this particular co-pilot, more so the airline that puts him in the chair!
I’m actually not. When the Air Force sent me to flight school it was absolutely amazing how some colleagues knew exactly what to do before training even started. They had spent years on simulators and were so natural in the pilot seat that they didn’t really need their trainers. I was not one of those students…by a long shot. But hours alone are not the key in all cases.
So Matt, why do we not allow pilots in the US even become commercial operators in Part 121 flying without 1,500 hours?
Do not connect military flight training and the hours those pilots have with civilian commercial standards.
Do your homework
Ricky, the U.S. government doesn’t allow pilots without 1500 hours to become commercial operators. The choice is made by politicians, bureaucrats, associations and whatever people they anoint as “experts”. Just because the U.S. government doesn’t allow it by threat of force doesn’t mean it is right, valid or a good choice. I have no more trust in aviation burecreats than any other type of burecreat.
Much better than stupid Trump weighing in on it.
@debit: Once again, you’re giving double-entry bookkeeping a bad name
You seem to have some investigative skills. You should publish a list of airlines and the amount of hours required to be in the cockpit of said airline. It’s apparent that Ethiopian is a disaster waiting to happen and I won’t ever fly on them simply due to pilot training. What other airlines lack similar pilot training skills? I suspect there are Chinese airlines as well.
Virtually everywhere but the U.S. Even Europe (but the training and testing is more rigorous so it balances out).
There is a push now due to pilot shortage to lower the hours required in the U.S.
I was a USAF pilot and later a lawyer. Yes, Matthew, 200 hrs total for a FO is just absurd by any standard and in itself tells you to never, never fly Ethiopian Air. Here is my face book post:
I was never an airline pilot but I know a lot of them. A good friend of mine spent his career after the military with the NTSB as an accident investigator and is a lot smarter than I am by not offering any opinion until the all facts are in. I will however give you a limited opinion about current aircrews. I am not an engineer either so I’ll not get into those weeds. “Sully”, the ex F4 pilot, of Hudson River fame discovered the the FO (copilot) of the crashed Ethiopian Air craft a had total of 200 flying hours under his belt. Not in this 737 but ‘”total” as in probably most of which were in a Cessna 172. That is about as effective as putting my ex mother-in-law Mildred Lauterbach, bless her soul, in the right seat.
It is a fact that commercial aircraft probably don’t need any pilots at all…until you have a problem and problems can get very big very quickly. If you think trained pilot shortage is bad with US carriers, take a look at other countries. This situation is going to get much worse…and quickly as we can see by Ethiopian Air’s junior pilot.
High tech and pilot shortage has caused the airlines to “dumb down” it’s crews in response and hope that any problems will be first addressed by the “magic” in the machine. I am not saying that current pilots are not smart…they simply do not get sufficient hands on training and experience to be effective when trouble arises. In a word, they don’t know how to fly. Military trained pilots are far, far better trained but are no longer available in numbers sufficient to supply the demand. And we will and are continuing to pay the price.
Had Sully not been in command on that turn toward the Hudson, the outcome would have probably been far, far different.
James Sheets,
The fact is at least in the US airline pilots DO get plenty of hands on training and experience. Especially since AF 447 which has created a major emphasis on hand flying and stall training. For example our sims have been modified to accurately reflect the aircraft’s behavior in both the pre-stall and post stall regime and we are now (even in the Airbus where we have to switch to alternate law) training a variety of full stalls in the sim. There is no question that initial military training is far more comprehensive than what you get at the Private pilot level. But after 20+ years in the airline business I would not say that translates into superior skills in the guys that have 7-8-9-10 thousand hours of 121 flying.
And @James my understanding from European safety professionals is that this is NOT happening across the pond. European airlines are not emphasizing hand flying skills even remotely as much as we are now in the US.
Personally I think Sully is right and wrong. He’s right that 200 hours total time is an absurdly low amount for a pilot in the right seat of an airliner. Its simply not enough time in the seat to have developed good skills flying the airplane and a solid base of experience.
But he’s wrong about the 737 MAX. The aircraft does not need a redesign. Furthermore, given that the exact nature of Boeing’s proposed software fix is not known how could he possibly know that it doesn’t go far enough?
Personally I find it quite revealing that every 737 pilot I know (many of whom fly both the NG and the MAX) believes the aircraft should not be grounded. These are the men and women who fly it daily and know it best and they firmly believe that with a competent crew at the controls its safe.
So… In short, american standard is better than anywhere else standard. Typical american praising another american. What next? Feet and inch better than meter? All world should use fahrenheit?
More experience makes better pilots. Period. Doesn’t matter whether they’re North American, South American, Asian or African.
When I say standard, you insist on emphasising “more”. Did boeing issue a minimum flight hours to pilot their aircraft? Did IATA done so?
Nice try sugar coating the self entitlement of standard.
James –
Are you really trying to defend against the concept that a pilot will be better when they have more experience flying planes than they were when they had fewer? If you are, I don’t know what to tell you, because that’s a stupid premise.
You seem unduly passionate about this. Are you a cadet pilot yourself feeling defensive about the fact that you don’t have many hours?
It is what it is. Tough some people in recruitment section of a corporation can explain to you what is PQE…
BBeats flying underground..
The point is that pilots and first officers flying 737/A320 family aircraft for North American Airlines will have had several years flying RJs (1000s of hours) before being hired on by the major mainline carriers. These rapidly expanding airlines in Asia and Africa don’t have this feeder system so experience levels on these narrow bodies will be moderate to low. The most experienced cockpit crews are assigned to international wide body planes. In the case of the MAX (and Airbus Neo), pilots with North American Airlines will be taking the controls after a decade or more flying their predecessor versions. This I is not a put down of Asian or African newbie pilots, just what the situation is.
All the space shuttles that exploded NASA knew in advance that there were problems and chose to continue with the mission murdering 14 astronauts, the same thing happened with boieng they knew the plane had design issues yet they rolled it out praying the worst doesn’t happen. This is how we operate in the U.S. you have to die first.
I am climbing out onto a limb here.
We all agree that 200 hours experience is absurd.
I, for one, am sure that an error in translation or details is involved. A respected airline might have someone sloppy with clerical work. maybe it was 200 hours in the max variant or some other error.
When I think of the word “Pilot,” Captain Sully comes to my mind.
Capt Sullenberger’s opinions reflect his years of flight experience. I don’t think there’s much else to comment on.
Take a look at the Ethiopian Airlines Training Academy’s description of their program – they don’t seem to get any light aircraft time. That 200 hours is probably all the co-pilot had.
The more I know, the more certain I am that I will never fly ET:
Multi-Crew Pilot License (MPL)
MPL training at Ethiopian Aviation Academy aims to replace the traditional application of box-ticking, hours based prescriptive syllabi with competency-based training. Our training program guides students seamlessly from ab-initio training to airliner type rating, using simulation designed for multi-crew training. We also address the increased rates of loss of control in airline operations through Upset Prevention and Recovery Training (UPRT). In addition, we train our trainees to combat the continuing dominance of multi-crew human factors in accidents through Threat and Error Management (TEM) and Crew Resource Management (CRM)
We provide MPL training for an airline based on its own operating procedures. The graduates can perform as a co-pilot on any multi-engine multi-crew airliner without the need to go through extensive light aircraft experience, as the students are specially trained for the specific aircraft until they prove to be competent in all possible operational scenarios.
Has there ever been a confirmation that this is 200 hours total? Or 200 hours on the type? There is a significant difference and I have yet to see anyone show this information.
Ethiopian tweeted it themselves.
If you read the description I posted, you’ll see that they go straight into the airliner, with no light aircraft experience.
I read earlier and that is their training description but, again, has this been confirmed that this cadet only had 200 hours total? I am sure some cadets come in with previous hours. I am not saying that this is the case, I am just curious as to it being specified somewhere.
ET said it themselves (“200 hours”) in a written statement, and it’s consistent with their training program that s copilot would have so few hours, so I don’t know why you believe it would be something different than the plain statement. Are you questioning the captain’s described hours, too?
I loved his impression on snl.
Capt. Sully, not his first officer, landed the plane on the Hudson.
Lion Air pilots both had 5000 flight hours, but still crashed…Ethiopian Capt. had 8000 flight hours.
The planet grounded the 737 MAX based on satellite data of erratic plane, classless to sully the dead.
What gives? Until 2013, FAA only required 250 hs.
Does that mean that US air travel regulations were horribly unsafe until July 10th, 2013?
https://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsId=14838
They weren’t as safe as they could have been. To quote from your link:
“The rule gives first officers a stronger foundation of aeronautical knowledge and experience before they fly for an air carrier,” said FAA Administrator Michael Huerta. “With this rule and our efforts to address pilot fatigue — both initiatives championed by the families of Colgan flight 3407 — we’re making a safe system even safer.”
I don’t get all the defensiveness about the criticism of ET having such low time pilots. More experienced pilots are going to be better equipped to handle unusual situations. Nobody is blaming the copilot. What some of us *are* saying is that a pilot with only 200 hours of flight time is unlikely to have the experience to be much help to the captain when weird stuff is going on with the aircraft.
@SK917
You should have read further down for a complete explanation.
Per your link…
Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) certificate–multi-engine airplane
Prior rules
At least 23 years old;
Hold commercial pilot certificate with instrument rating;
Pass ATP knowledge and practical tests; and
>>>1,500 hours total time as pilot.
New rules
>>>Meet all requirements in prior rules;
Have at least 50 hours in a multi-engine airplane; and
Successfully complete >>> new <<< ATP Certification Training Program prior to taking the ATP
knowledge test (after July 31, 2014).
“A redesign of the 737 MAX 8 has been urgently needed.” At first I thought this opinion sounded extreme, especially when we’re far from learning the cause of the crash, but this Los Angeles Times story details how the 737 MAX is burdened with 50 year old design elements. I’d expect planes to be designed holistically, not as a patchwork of upgrades that rely on software and pilot training to ensure airworthiness.
https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-fi-boeing-max-design-20190315-story.html
All new airliners are a patchwork of upgrades. That’s because every single thing down to the [literally] nuts and bolts that gets installed on a commercial aircraft must be certified for operations and the certification process is expensive. So sometimes it makes sense to design a new products around old products, so you don’t have to get every single thing you’re using certified to make a new aircraft.
If 737 max planes are meant to be operated by pilots with let’s say 1,500+ hours, Boeing or regulators should mandate this requirement for 7M pilots. It is not unclear to me though if any experienced pilot would be able to survive the incident with the Ethiopian airline. I guess regulators agree so they have grounded 737 max.
Also access to the pool of “experienced” pilots varies depending on country and airline. How many hours of pilot experience should be required for the first airplane invented by Wilbur and Orville Wright? Answer: It depends. If Boeing or Airbus wants to sell to developing markets, it had better put in proper design and engineering to ensure their planes can be operated by pilots of stipulated minimum qualification, not least for public safety. The engineering hack in 737 max is a disservice to the public.
How much training did Sully have splashing? Not a single minute. Same with his # 2, Skiles. How much training or experience either have with all-donkeys gone? None.
As for “a cockpit crew must be a team of experts, not a captain and an apprentice”, this was a case of rank amateurs learning on the job. Too bad neither learned Rule #1 of aviation See and Avoid.
@Debit you are still an IDIOT..
I’ll take Sully’s very experienced “speculations” (no, we KNOW how many hours that co-pilot had, why are you trying to dismiss him??), hands down. He’s been there, done that.
I flew for Ethiopian. What Sully said is nothing less than a smear. The First officer was trained, certified and qualified to fly the Aircraft. He had 2000 hours, not 200. This is outrageous statement by Sully
To: Abay Selassie- You have a lot of chutzpah (gall) insulting my good friend, Capt. Chesley (Sully) Sullenberger, with your stupid remarks that “Sully has sinister motives”. You are the one who keeps stating 2000 hours, when it was officially reported by Ethiopian Airlines that the First Officer only had 200 hours. Why do you keep adding another zero?
Hi, I am disappointed that an experienced pilots like Sully would not point to the fact pilots are hired to fly the plane and that means first thing to do if you have a problem is to shut off auto pilot system and fly the plane like they are trained to do .. if Sully would of left the auto pilot on the Hudson river flight it would have had a completely different out come. Sully Flew the plane like he was trained to. It is so sad that as a sociality we think auto pilot on a plane or cruise control in our cars that wevthink we don’t need to Fly or Drive.. Sorry but get it together and fly and drive like we are trained and suppose to.
“I’m not a pilot”
And that would be the reason that you believe that 200 hours for someone with an ATP certification is sufficient.
Chesley Sullenberger named serious problems of worldwide handling in human-machine-interface affects commercial pilot training. The 737 MAX tragedies show us a part of them, but AF 447 and Asiana crash in SFO 2013 for example does the same. AI penetrates more and more Cockpits of airliners and our thinking about new human-machine-interface behavioral markers and the realization that the deep understanding of these technology is essential to handle it safe do not follow up to yet. That it is what Cpt. Sullenbergers words tells me. The 737 MAX accidents are only the opportunity to be heard about this. Without such tragedies nobody hear these messages – it’s sad but the truth in our steamy media world.