An Ethiopian Airlines flight takes off from Beirut, Lebanon, and dives into the sea a few minutes later. Investigators go to great lengths to recover the wreckage and find an explanation.
But the airplane is mechanically sound. One of the settings is marginally off but should be easily corrected in flight. A test in an elaborate flight simulator reveals nothing, nor do the recorders.
The focus then shifts to the crew -- an experienced pilot and a relatively new first officer. How could they have mishandled the situation so badly? It's surprising to see the effort that the authorities put into examining the reasons for the apparent failure of the crew. They examine the garbage from the crew's hotel rooms looking for evidence of drugs or alcohol. They interview the relatives of the pilot and ask about his habits. They examine the surveillance cameras in the hotel. Nothing untoward turns up.
The only explanation that sounds at all reasonable is that both officers were suffering from fatigue to begin with -- a heavy lunch and lack of sleep -- and a history of too much flying time in the past month. There was a thunderstorm in the vicinity during takeoff and the air traffic controller's instructions were clear but a little complicated. The first officer failed to warn the pilot that the autopilot hadn't been engaged. The airplane stalled and went into a spin. Result: disaster.
The cause is officially listed as "subtle incapacitation," which sounds to the untutored ear a lot like another name for pilot error, but error that can be accounted for with attributing ignorance or carelessness to the crew. Without getting too rarefied, Aristotle made a useful distinction between the material cause (mishandling of the controls) and the proximate cause (fatigue). Identifying the proximate cause enabled Ethiopian Airlines to correct the problem by modifying the flight schedule of its pilots.
But the airplane is mechanically sound. One of the settings is marginally off but should be easily corrected in flight. A test in an elaborate flight simulator reveals nothing, nor do the recorders.
The focus then shifts to the crew -- an experienced pilot and a relatively new first officer. How could they have mishandled the situation so badly? It's surprising to see the effort that the authorities put into examining the reasons for the apparent failure of the crew. They examine the garbage from the crew's hotel rooms looking for evidence of drugs or alcohol. They interview the relatives of the pilot and ask about his habits. They examine the surveillance cameras in the hotel. Nothing untoward turns up.
The only explanation that sounds at all reasonable is that both officers were suffering from fatigue to begin with -- a heavy lunch and lack of sleep -- and a history of too much flying time in the past month. There was a thunderstorm in the vicinity during takeoff and the air traffic controller's instructions were clear but a little complicated. The first officer failed to warn the pilot that the autopilot hadn't been engaged. The airplane stalled and went into a spin. Result: disaster.
The cause is officially listed as "subtle incapacitation," which sounds to the untutored ear a lot like another name for pilot error, but error that can be accounted for with attributing ignorance or carelessness to the crew. Without getting too rarefied, Aristotle made a useful distinction between the material cause (mishandling of the controls) and the proximate cause (fatigue). Identifying the proximate cause enabled Ethiopian Airlines to correct the problem by modifying the flight schedule of its pilots.
