Capt. Sully Weighs in on Boeing 737 MAX Disaster
Capt. C.B. "Sully" Sullenberger has taken to Facebook to talk about the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on Sunday. Only five months since the crash of Lion Air 610, both incidents involved the new Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft, which has now been grounded worldwide.
In his social media post, Sullenberger writes, "It has been obvious since the Lion Air crash that a redesign of the 737 MAX 8 has been urgently needed, yet has still not been done, and the announced proposed fixes do not go far enough."
Sullenberger, the former commercial airline captain who successfully landed a plane on the Hudson River in 2009, also says there are a number of issues that could have been factors in the crash. He focuses at length on the lack of experience on the part of the first officer and says that would have made working seamlessly with the captain to save the plane more difficult in a high-pressure situation. He added that the responsibility lies with the airlines when it comes to putting pilots on planes who aren't yet ready to handle such responsibility.
Read his full post here:
This isn't the first time Sullenberger has weighed in on a major aviation event. In an interview with The New York Times, Sully said that the presence of mind shown by Captain Shults, the Southwest Airlines captain who catapulted to the forefront of the world’s attention for her calm, controlled handling of Flight 1380, and her crew impressed him very much.
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Featured Photo Todd Sumlin/Charlotte Observer/MCT via Getty Images
