Originally Posted by
prestonh
As such, with the NTSB review, it was discovered that the crew lost control of the aircraft, nearly CFIT relatively low time in type pilots, due to a disputed call for flaps 5 by the PIC. the investigation also revealed the pilot statements, plane data, adsb data, weather data, that is a lot more information than the behind the scenes info you point to prior to the NTSB investigation that came after the media attention. the public has a right to know if they are safe in traveling and the NTSB has a broad safety mandate to investigate as such. I disagree this was sensational. a plane full of pax seconds from ending up in the ocean after the crew lost control deserves scrutiny.
I agree. I didn't see any sensational headlines like, "Passengers Mere Seconds From Death After United Plane Dives Towards The Ocean". I also haven't read any sensationalist posts on FT. Obviously we, as pax, don't understand how much risk we are in at any given moment in flight, so our assessments of risk are not likely to be correct. However, most pilots that I read suspected pilot error and even presented scenarios that were the likely cause of the incident, and which proved to be correct. So once the pilot lost the bubble, bad things could've happened, but team effort and training kicked-in, with the co-pilot announcing "pull up, pull up", and a recovery was made.