 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. On March 10th, an Ethiopian Airlines flight carrying 157 people crashed six minutes after it took off from Addis Ababa airport. The reason for the crash was a faulty sensor which triggered the manoeuvrability characteristics augmentation system, a feature of the newly launched Boeing 737 MAX. In the past couple of days, a number of new reports have emerged which have exposed the extent to which Boeing has not properly advised pilots regarding these new features. To talk more about this, we have with us Praveer Prakarisa. Hello Praveer. Praveer, could you just first detail what have been the recent reports and how they put Boeing in the dock regarding the advice it gave to pilots? Well that advice was also something which the regulatory agencies also shared. So we should put the blame only on Boeing in this case. I think if the Federal Aviation Authority also has a lot of share in this blame. The major issue that has come up is we have recovered the flight data recorders. With the flight data recorders, we now know that the characteristic of the path of the aircraft was very similar to the Lion's Air crash, which we now know was an MCAS issue and which was, you know, the pilots were really fighting against the MCAS. So one thing that comes out very clearly is what was issued as the directive after the accident which should have then been able to prevent a repeat of this accident that this was not enough. Now is that true or not? Was it because of as it has been earlier argued that it was essentially well third world pilots, lack of experience of the co-pilot, all of this. So now it's very clear that there are conditions under which actually manual trim, which is what was advised, switch off electrical trim, manually trim it, manual trimming actually means a rather anti-diluven system which you crank a wheel and the flap cups up and down and therefore you are able to restore or fight what the MCAS has done, restore the stability of the flight and you are okay. So that, this seems that this is not really possible because under certain conditions the basically the flap would essentially freeze and you would not be able to shall we say assert enough force with the cranking system that you had, manual cranking to be able to overcome that and therefore this recovery mode that was suggested was at best insufficient if not really useless. Now there have been simulated tests done to test this out and the simulated tests also show that if you have this MCAS runaway, but basically a runway stabilizing problem, then there is very little that the pilots could do. In this particular case the pilots restored what is called electrical trim because manually they could not maneuver further. The flap which is supposed to go up and down did not behave, they forced that they were manually applying was not going to be enough, it has been shown why and then what happened was when electrical trim was, they had to put an electrical trim to really be able to electrically move the flaps, then the MCAS again cut in and interestingly enough now we know again the MCAS amount it cut in was more than what the pilot could provide and therefore it completely overrode what he was doing and put the nose down further and leading to the unrecoverable, irrecoverable crash. So this raises a very key question that in the aftermath of the accident if a simulated test was done and this was clearly proved, how is it that some of these tests were not done ahead of the release of this flight and this new technology? Well you know this has been the fundamental question that has been raised that why was the MCAS system developed, why were the pilots not informed and was it tested thoroughly and who did the FAA, Federal Aviation Authority, who did the certification essentially rely on what Boeing said instead of testing out all the things themselves. If we come to the first main question, why was an MCAS system there at all, MCAS system was there to basically make the pilots feel that the new plane that was being given to them was very close to the original old Boeing 737 while we know that it was a much more powerful engine therefore that to shift the location of the engine, change the center gravity of the aircraft all of this meant it might have behaved differently and therefore the pilots may have felt that they need more training or the retraining on the new system. So to cut out that it appears that MCAS system was put not because of stability of the aircraft but for the pilots to feel it is like an old aircraft and therefore obvious the need for training, the simulator training, simulator programs all of that which is really which costs money takes time for the new planes to be inducted. So that's a cost that Boeing was trying to save because it was really in a strong contest with Airbus 320 already in service they wanted to therefore catch up and therefore the need for speed. So that was the MCAS issue if that was the idea that it's not really for stability primarily though that's been argued it was also for stability but essentially if the avoiding certification, avoiding pilot training was the issue then the second major issue came up that therefore they hid this from the pilot. Now normally and since I have dealt with control systems for much longer than I have dealt with shall we say news. Now normally a control system does not keep the operator in the dark in this case the pilot in the dark what its behavior is. If its behavior is not known then the system as a whole including the control system behavior is also unpredictable for the operator in this case the pilot therefore he doesn't really know what he can do. So he is fighting something he doesn't know the cause if he knows the cause then it's much easier for him to actually handle it well it still might fail but there is a much better possibility. So normally you do not cardinal principle of any control system is you do not keep the operator in the dark even if fly by wire lot of this control system you let the control system actually lead because without that very difficult manual to control certain systems. So I can understand the need for that but keeping the operator in the dark is certainly not something you do as a consequence they did not want to put in they had two sensors they did not connect it to the system they did not show a light with the set is only an extra you have to pay more for it which would show the two sensors do not agree with each other. So all of these which appear incomprehensible otherwise seems to make sense if you see that Boeing did not want to disclose the MCAS system and what it did do to the aircraft and that part of it is something which they also partially hit from the aviation authority FAA in this case where they did not tell them there is the 0.8 degree per MCAS shall we say intervention it actually had been increased to 2.5 apparently even this 2.5 degrees even this was not in the documentation that submitted to FAA so all of this would indicate that Boeing more than anything else was interested in selling the aircraft fast enough to counteract the airbus 320 competition in the process not only cut short a lot of the shall we say necessary steps both in terms of design and in terms of certification but also hid what they were doing from the pilot and the shall we say the people who are buying the aircraft and as a consequence when something went wrong the pilot had no way of knowing what to do neither did even subsequently the system have gave enough information for them to do that tragedy of it is that if Boeing had disclosed the extent of the problem Ethiopian Airlines crash should not have taken place and let us face it Ethiopian Airlines safety record is pretty good so that is that is the unfortunate part of it that this was a second I can understand the first being an accident I can understand okay we Boeing did make mistakes but okay mistakes happen but the second is really I would say a criminal act and it really deserves a much stronger shall we say response from the aviation authorities than a knuckle wrap on knuckle and even even as it's trying to rectify this flaw there have been reports of some more software errors emerging so this seems actually like part of a pattern too you know it's a one of the problems of life that you start having a problem the problem seemed to multiply because they come not from what is called a error an error as it were but a design hole which you have not thought through fully in computer terms somebody used the word bugs like to be together so it doesn't come from there really being a single error that you have made but some conceptual black hole you have created in your design where a number of things then are there which create the problem so in this case as they try to rectify something or some new problem seems to have come up we don't know what the details of it are but one thing is very clear forget this issue of the second bug the issue is that this now has to go through the following MCAS system has to be fully tested under all conditions we have to clearly have the two sensors linked to it we also need to know that can we recover from an MCAS system which has this strong ability to trim create such strong movements of the flap which changes the nose height of the angle of the aircraft is it possible then to do it with just some shall we say superficial fixes all it will need really a much deeper understanding of what went wrong and how to fix it under such conditions and finally it will be training of the operators and simulated training to boot because we have had people killed a large number of them to aircrafts crashing within short distances of each other and I think the most important part of it is that in the certification today has to be done again which it will be looks like the federal the federal aviation authorities FAA's credibility is at an all-time lowest taken a big hit because of this so the certifying authorities in different countries may want to look at this again so we are looking at anything between 6 to 8 months which is what is being optimistically now said to even longer it is interesting Boeing has already decided to cut the production of its aircraft it used to be 52 per month now I think it is 42 per month so there is a significant cutback that Boeing is doing it knows now that it is not going to be able to deliver the aircraft and there is a it is a big possibility a lot of the aircraft those who are bought the aircraft will actually not now go ahead and cancel the orders as well as those whose planes have been grounded are going to ask for compensation even the families are the victims of that of course is a separate issue because if it is known that Boeing knowingly hid certain problems then the punitive damages could be very high but even if I forget what is you know what is going to happen in the court case simply the commercial implications of this are enormous because I don't think Boeing is going to be able to put but put the aircraft back into there very quickly as I said 6 to 8 months seems to be a conservative figure at the moment and also you are looking at large numbers of cancellation of orders as well as those who are whose fleets have been grounded the kind of bill they are going to give Boeing. Thank you. That is all we have time for today. Keep watching. Yes.