Editorial: Don’t compromise safety to ease airline pilot shortage

In March, a Boeing 737-800 cruising straight and level on a routine domestic flight suddenly nose-dived into a hillside, killing all 132 aboard. A full report on the cause of that China Eastern Airlines crash is probably months away, but with no other explanations, suspicion has landed on the pilots. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that flight data indicate someone in the cockpit put the plane into an intentional dive, as occurred in a Germanwings airline crash in 2015, and at least two other foreign carrier crashes in the late 1990s. Nothing puts aviation safety on the front burner…

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