Ethiopian pilot pleaded for training weeks before Max crash - oklahoman.com

According to the email chain obtained by the AP, Ethiopian responded to the Oct. 29 Lion Air crash with a few emails to pilots detailing bulletins from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing on what do if the anti-stall system malfunctioned. Other Ethiopian pilots who spoke to the AP say those emails required no signoffs that pilots actually read and understood the directives, and no mandated additional training.

"Ethiopian Airlines is a rapidly expanding airline and they have extremely inexperienced crews," von Hoesslin said in documents obtained by the AP. "You need to spoon-feed them the information and make sure they understand."

To underscore his point, von Hoesslin made a video shortly after the Ethiopian crash in which he quizzed a Max pilot on a Boeing list of warning signs on the stall system that crew members were required to commit to memory. That video, obtained by AP, shows him going blank on most of it.

"You have to have confirmation that they opened it, that they read it and that they understood it," von Hoesslin said in a document obtained by the AP. "They should have done a little online test with 10 questions. You don't pass until you get the 10 questions."

Ethiopian Airlines tweeted Wednesday that "the source of these false allegations is a disgruntled former employee ... who has left the airline after many administrative problems."

Von Hoesslin's lawyer, Darryl Levitt, issued a statement saying the pilot was not fired but "resigned due to legitimate concerns he had raised that he felt were not adequately addressed." He added that von Hoesslin will be cooperating with regulators and authorities "with his sole objective of contributing to make air travel safe."

Ethiopian has said that the requirements for warning and training Max pilots after the Lion Air crash were set by the FAA and Boeing and that their directives were used to "brief all our pilots" and incorporated into flight manuals.

CEO Tewolde Gebremariam said in an interview shortly after the Ethiopian crash, "Today we believe that might not have been enough."

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May 30, 2019 at 02:47AM