Ethiopian Airlines said the pilot that flew the Boeing 737 MAX 8 that crashed earlier this month was properly trained, saying reports that he had not practiced on a flight simulator designed for the new plane were not true.
Two reports — one from Reuters, and one from the New York Times — cited anonymous sources who said Yared Getachew, the pilot who died along with all 157 people aboard Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, had not practiced on a Boeing 737 MAX flight simulator to prepare for differences between the new plane and earlier 737 models.
Ethiopian Airlines, which had the simulator since January, disputed those claims in a statement Thursday, saying its pilots had completed appropriate training, as recommended by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Boeing.
Additionally, the airline said the 737 MAX flight simulator was not designed to include problems with the new plane’s automated systems, which are suspected of contributing to the crash.
“We urge all concerned to refrain from making such uninformed, incorrect, irresponsible and misleading statements during the period of the accident investigation,” the airline said in the statement. “International regulations require all stakeholders to wait patiently for the result of the investigation.”
The airline also expressed “disappointment” over the Times’ “wrong reporting.”
The Ethiopian crash has drawn international scrutiny because it is the second deadly crash of a Boeing 737 MAX 8, Boeing’s best-selling commercial airliner. The first crash involved a Lion Air flight in Indonesia in October. Some are questioning whether the plane’s automated Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which is meant to prevent stalls, caused both crashes.
Investigators said preliminary findings pointed to the automated system contributing to the Lion Air crash. Its role in the Ethiopian Airlines accident is still under investigation.
Ethiopian maintained in its statement that its pilots were familiar with warnings issued by the FAA following the Lion Air crash. It also said that the MAX 8 simulator is not designed to model the type of MCAS issues implicated in the crashes, seemingly suggesting that additional training would not have prevented the accident.
Boeing has, however, said its MAX 8 planes were safe, and has said that pilots with experience on older 737 models — like Getachew, who reportedly had 8,000 hours flying 737s — should not need much training to fly the MAX models.
Nonetheless, concerns over similarities between the two crashes, which both occurred shortly after take-off, eventually led the FAA to ground all MAX 8 planes in the U.S., following similar moves by Canada and about 40 other countries. The FAA at first maintained that MAX 8 aircrafts were safe to fly.
