Why pilots would never agree with Trump's tweet about the Boeing 737 MAX 8

Since the early days of autopilot, the principle has been: free the professionals from routine tasks so they can watch the big picture and take time to make the right decision

“Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly.” No doubt those seven words in a tweet from the president are shared by a good few people in Donald Trump’s support base.

They can cherish the analogue days when “fly by wire” meant steel cables connecting the pilot with the control surfaces, when heroic (and almost always male) aviators battled through the skies with one hand on the joystick and the other with fingers firmly crossed.

The leader of the country that leads the world in aviation berated Boeing for over-complication: “Always seeking to go one unnecessary step further, when often old and simpler is far better.”

I wonder what “unnecessary” safety precautions he had in mind?

Starting soon after the Wright Brothers took off in 1903, pesky engineers and scientists have been doing all they can to improve air safety, with technology facilitating increasingly sophisticated risk reduction. The aviation safety community has been outstandingly successful at going “one unnecessary step further” – learning from disaster to devise ways to avoid future fatalities.

Because plane crashes are, thankfully, extremely rare, such tragedies attract all the more attention, as with Sunday’s awful accident involving an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa to Nairobi in which 157 people died. Investigators know that the grieving families need to understand how and why their loved ones perished when a Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft plunged into the ground shortly after take-off. But beyond that the world needs to know, in order for travellers to be able to make informed judgements about the safety of the airline and aircraft involved, and for plane manufacturers and airlines to learn from the tragedy to design ways to make it less likely for mechanical or human failure to cause such appalling loss of life.

I hope that the president’s support base is with me so far. But in aviation safety circles, the assertion that “often old and simpler is far better” has been roundly derided. Thankfully, some of the smartest brains on the planet devote themselves to reducing the number of ways that people can die in plane crashes.

When President Trump said, “Split second decisions are needed,” he baffled aviation safety experts. Aircraft have complex management systems in order to reduce the hands-on role of the pilots. Since the early days of autopilot, the principle has been: free the professionals from routine tasks so they can watch the big picture and take time to make the right decision.

At the heart of every maintenance check, every operating procedure, every flight-deck decision is: what can I do to maximise safety?

As a passenger, it’s going very well for me, thank-you.

The United States has performed outstandingly well in enhancing passenger safety, the UK and Ireland even better – the safest carrier in the world in terms of passengers flown without a fatality is the Irish airline Ryanair, followed by easyJet of Britain.

“Complexity creates danger,” said President Trump. “All of this for great cost yet very little gain.”

Perhaps America’s leader should spend a little time talking to the pilots of Air Force One.