YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images
- Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed shortly after take-off on Sunday, killing all 157 people on board. The cause for the deadly crash remains unknown and under investigation.
- According to Ethiopian Airlines, the co-pilot on Flight 302 had 200 hours of flying experience.
- Two aviation experts told Business Insider that is considered remarkably little experience.
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed shortly after take-off on Sunday, killing all 157 people on board. The cause for the deadly crash remains unknown and under investigation.
Its captain was Yared Getachew, who had more than 8,000 hours of flying experience, according to Ethiopian Airlines. In the co-pilot seat was someone with considerably less experience — Ahmed Nur Mohammod, with just 200 hours of experience.
Read more: The family of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 captain speaks out after crash that killed 157 people
Ethiopian Airlines has "a tremendous safety record," aviation consultant Kit Darby told Business Insider.
The airline has passed the IATA Operational Safety Audit, aced all but one measure on the ICAO Country Audit, and is also certified by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the European Union to service those regions.
Still, 200 hours of flying experience is far below the requirement to co-pilot a plane in countries including the US. In 2013, the FAA upped its co-pilot (also called first officer) qualification requirement to 1,500 hours from 250 hours, while European airlines often require at least 500 hours.
And having just 200 hours of experience is especially cumbersome when flying a massive jet like the Boeing 737 Max 8, which was the plane involved in the March 10 crash, said Ross Aimer, CEO of the airline consulting and legal firm Aero Consulting Experts.
Aimer said the dearth of experience can be "a menace in the cockpit."
"Two-hundred hours is extremely low," Aimer told Business Insider. "In an emergency, it becomes a problem. If you have a complicated airplane and you basically put a student pilot in there, that’s not a good thing. Even if the guy in the left seat has so much experience, if you have so much imbalance of experience, that can be a problem."
Now read:
- Another Boeing 737 Max 8 has crashed leaving no survivors. This time it was flying with Ethiopian Airlines.
- People of 35 different nationalities were killed in the Ethiopian Airlines crash, including 8 Americans
- China grounds all its Boeing 737 Max 8 planes following the deadly Ethiopian Airlines crash
- An Ethiopian Airlines passenger said he missed the crashed flight by 2 minutes: ‘I’m grateful to be alive’
- Boeing set to plunge 9% after fatal 737 Max 8 crash killed 157 people in Ethiopia
- The black box from the crashed Ethiopian Airlines flight has been found
- Indonesia is grounding all Boeing 737 Max 8 planes after a crash in Ethiopia killed 157 people
- Boeing’s big drop is shaving more than 200 points off the Dow
- Some countries and airlines have grounded the Boeing 737 Max 8 after a 2nd crash involving the plane killed 157 people — here’s who’s taken action so far
- These are the victims of the Boeing 737 Max 8 crash in Ethiopia
- A Georgetown University law student who reportedly expressed a fear of flying is among the 157 dead in the Ethiopian Airlines crash
- The family of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 captain speaks out after deadly crash where 157 lost their lives
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See Also:
- Germany joins the UK, China, and other countries in banning the Boeing 737 Max 8 after the plane’s 2nd deadly crash
- Boeing has $400 billion in orders on the books, 80% of them are for the 737
- ‘I don’t want Albert Einstein to be my pilot’: Trump says airplanes are becoming ‘too complex to fly’ as the UK, China, and other nations ground the Boeing 737 Max 8
Source: Business Insider – rpremack@businessinsider.com (Rachel Premack)