The New York Times Revealed The Facts Of The Accident in 2009
The New York Times Revealed The Facts Of The Accident in 2009 The American New York Times reported that the Boeing 737-800 NG Turkish Airlines (THY) plane, which crashed while landing at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport in 2009, did not crash due to pilot error on its own, as claimed in a report by Dutch authorities, and that “risky design choices and faulty safety considerations” were also involved in the crash.
The newspaper suggested that the Dutch Safety Board, which conducted the investigation, avoided imposing liability on the manufacturer in its final report under pressure from Boeing and US federal safety officials.
Nine people were killed and 50 injured in the plane that crashed on February 25.
The report, released in May 2010, described the root cause of the accident as two height indicators on the aircraft showing different values.
It had been suggested that the autopilot during approach reduced the speed of the aircraft due to this altitude difference and that the pilots could not intervene in time by noticing this situation late.
‘Boeing Didn’t Warn Pilots’
Production of the Boeing 737 MAX, the latest model of the crashed plane, was halted last year after two accidents in Indonesia and Ethiopia in which a total of 346 people died.
The findings reached by the New York Times, some of which were previously confidential, show parallels between the Turkish Airlines crash and the recent accidents.
Accordingly, in the 2009 and recent Max accidents, the aircraft crashed because a single sensor misled the aircraft’s systems, and Boeing did not provide information to help pilots intervene in such a problem.
Doctor, an aviation safety expert who was commissioned by the Dutch Safety Board to examine the crash “The previous accident (THY) was very cautionary but not taken seriously,” Sidney Dekker said.
In a report reached by the New York Times, Dekker accused Boeing of trying to divert attention from its own “design flaws” and other errors with unreliable disclosures.
That report has not been made public. Dutch authorities also declined to release the report, according to Dekker and another source close to the investigation.
A spokesman for the Dutch Security Council argued that it was not common to publish Expert reports and that it was only the board’s decision.
The board’s own accident report also noted that when Americans stepped in, it deleted some sections and made additions. According to the paper, the report stated that the Americans ‘ pilot errors in the crash were not properly highlighted.
In 2009, American safety officials did not go over Boeing as they did in recent Max accidents, according to the New York Times.
According to aviation safety experts who have seen both reports, the Dutch Safety Board’s report says Dr. Dekker’s findings were too brief, and not enough attention was paid to them.
“The Turkish Airlines crash should have woken everyone up,” Prof. David Woods said.
There are remarkable similarities between the THY accident and the recent Max accident. Because of Boeing’s faulty design decision, for example, the system activated its computer, a single faulty sensor, even though there were two sensors on the aircraft.
In Max accidents, the sensor that measures the plane’s angle to the wind caused the flight control computer to bring down the plane’s nose after takeoff.
In the Turkish Airlines crash, an altitude sensor caused another computer to slow down the plane just before landing.
According to the newspaper, Boeing thought that if the sensors malfunctioned before the Turkish Airlines crash, the pilots would immediately notice the error and prevent the plane from stopping. As with the recent max accidents, no such information was included in the THY aircraft’s manual.
‘Software Update Is Not Compatible With THY Aircraft’
After the Turkish Airlines crash, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, 737-800 NG (new Generation) airline companies to make a software update to ensure that aircraft are not connected to a single sensor and the two sensors will be compared to the given.
Boeing had developed a software assurance as an option for new aircraft in 2006.
However, according to the newspaper, this update was not suitable for older model aircraft and no compatible update to older model 737-800s was made until after the accident.
The crashed Turkish Airlines plane was a 2002 production.
Dutch experts first pointed out in their report that Boeing offered no alternative to older aircraft. But American officials, who have seen the draft of the report, have disputed that. The additional section of the report suggested that software modification was not necessary because there was no risk.
Dutch officials then removed that statement from the report but accused Boeing of not doing too much to warn pilots about the sensor problem.
