U.S. pilots filed complaints about Boeing 737 Max 8 months before Ethiopia crash — manual ‘criminally insufficient’
Several American pilots submitted complaints about the Boeing 737 Max aircraft months before the same aircraft model crashed in Ethiopia on Sunday, killing 157 people.
The complaints, first reported by the Dallas Morning News, were revealed as the Federal Aviation Administration doubled down on its decision to continue flying the Max 8 and Max 9 in the United States.
At least five complaints about the Max 8 were made in October and November of 2018, and most mention issues with the aircraft model’s autopilot and the plane going nose down shortly after takeoff. One pilot wrote that the Max 8’s aircraft manual was “criminally insufficient.”
“I think it is unconscionable that a manufacturer, the FAA, and the airlines would have pilots flying an airplane without adequately training, or even providing available resources and sufficient documentation to understand the highly complex systems that differentiate this aircraft from prior models,” one pilot wrote about the lack of instructions regarding the aircraft’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). [Continue reading…]