[Max Cow Disease]

I’m not sure why some of the sentiments in posts by Ryan Coke and others have stirred up such controversy in here. Nobody is blaming this accident on the pilots as this looks to be a fault that would be tough to surmount for any pilot, but it doesn’t detract from that statement to also infer that higher experience levels in the flight deck are likely to mitigate a larger number of bad outcomes. Human factors play a huge role in pretty much every aviation incident, so it’s fair game to take a look at elements like pilot experience in a situation such as this (and no, I realize that more experience doesn’t necessarily make for a “better pilot”).

It also isn’t controversial to observe that aviation standards do vary depending on your location on the earth. Nothing to do with racism, xenophobia, or a sense of superiority - just a fact. It’s also true that certain nations - not necessarily by any fault of their own - face shortages of pilots due either to lack of training infrastructure or an exploding middle class (and the growth in air travel that comes along with it), or both. If this in turn results in a net decrease of experience levels in the cockpit, you’re clearly looking at a potentially heightened risk factor. Bottom line, the more 200 hour butts you have in seats, the less likely crews will be able to identify and respond to problems that arise on the basis of any sort of prior experience.

I’m interested to hear what comes of this accident though. I’ve never heard anything negative with regards to Ethiopian and their safety record/practices, so all eyes are certainly on Boeing right now and the dudes in lab coats that are attempting to push out a software update to fix this mess.