Originally Posted by RJSAviator76

I don't necessarily disagree with some of this, but at what point do you start holding pilots accountable? The answer from foreign governments and entities is NEVER. Case in point? Asiana. To this day, they maintain it's Boeing's fault they flew a perflectly good 777 into a seawall at SFO because GS was out and their pilots couldn't be trusted to monitor airspeed tape and its trend vector and act accordingly, or fly something other than a coupled ILS.

Lion Air and Ethiopian and the whole MCAS system are two separate issues. On one side, there are/were weaknesses in the system that needed to get fixed, but an existing procedure covered the issue - runaway stab trim which in Lion Air's case was dealt with the day prior. At some point, you may have to do that pilot $hit. It's kinda hard to do when your training consists of excessive automation dependency.

Having spent a number of years flying overseas and having been exposed to their training and operational philosophy, these crashes did not surprise me at all.... not the 777, nor the MAX. Throughout my recurrent training while overseas, I was browbeaten into engaging autopilot at 400' AGL. In a V1 cut, the first action wasn't to handfly the plane to a 1,000 feet AAE, speed it up, clean it up, set LVL change and MCT, trim it out and then autopilot on. Oh, no sir... That would get you yelled at. The first action was AUTOPILOT ON. For whatever reason it's not coming on, press the damn button harder. Mash it, but get it on. OK, trim outta place? Well, whatever it takes, but you need to put the autopilot on first. V1 cuts were always entertaining.

The focus was on engaging the autopilot, not handflying the airplane. Hand-flying was dangerous and only encouraged once on an ILS at some point between CAT 1 mins and 50'. Oh, and pure visual approaches were practically emergency procedures. That's not getting into the whole principle that CRM as we know it in the US is name only over there. Look at the flight deck crew of that Asiana and the respect between the super senior check airman equivalent, their senior captain, and the schmo in the jumpseat. Do you think an FO would speak up to super senior captain and a super senior check airman? If you think so, then you don't know the culture of face-saving. Google it... your mind will be blown.

So after these accidents, yes Boeing bears a good chunk of the burden for the quality control... there are zero arguments against that. But what about training and quality of pilots, training standards and operational philosophies? Also, at what point do business and national politics become relevant and important factors?

The easiest thing in the world is to thrash Boeing. And then there's the "it's racist to question the pilot competence in these crashes" crap which is beyond ridiculous and absurd.

Get the accountants, politicians and fear porn peddlers out of this, and I'll have a lot more faith in the safety system.