Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Plane Tests Must Use Average Pilots, NTSB Says After 737 Max Crashes

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 317 posts

Re: Plane Tests Must Use Average Pilots, NTSB Says After 737 Max Crashes

#111

Post by pdonis »

jfim wrote: post #101
kayfox wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be more precise, Boeing assumed that all pilots flying their aircraft would be up to the standards of the United States as opposed to the different standards around the world.

Has there been a documented occurrence of a US pilot encountering an MCAS failure in the US and correctly dealing with it?

Yes, there are many reported incidents from US pilots of stability trim incidents in the FAA's database which, in hindsight, were due to MCAS. The pilots couldn't identify them as such at the time because, of course, they didn't know MCAS existed. But they were able to figure out the corrective action in time to maintain safe flight. (The reports also criticize the flight manual for being inadequate.)

https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=us+...

Re: Plane Tests Must Use Average Pilots, NTSB Says After 737 Max Crashes

#112

Post by totally »

dahart wrote: post #99
treis wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Though I can’t help but wonder if this is a very subtle re-framing of the Max accidents to shift blame back towards pilots. Blame is a loaded word. Boeing assumed that pilots could be relied upon to recover from a MCAS induced runaway trim. Practice has shown that they can't. Whether Boeing or the pilots is at fault is, from a safety perspective, irrelevant. The bottom line is that an assumption was made, it was wro…

I appreciate the attempt to be diplomatic, and I agree that using average pilots is sensible. But, with respect, I could not disagree more with the rest of that. > Blame is a loaded word. Boeing’s response to the accidents was to blame the pilots, there is precedent for this word in this situation. https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/23/business/american-airlines-bo... > Boeing assumed that pilots could be relied upon No, Bo…

It sounds like you're advocating for blame-ful post mortems. Is that the case and what's your reasoning?

Re: Plane Tests Must Use Average Pilots, NTSB Says After 737 Max Crashes

#113

Post by kayfox »

jfim wrote: post #101
kayfox wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be more precise, Boeing assumed that all pilots flying their aircraft would be up to the standards of the United States as opposed to the different standards around the world.

Has there been a documented occurrence of a US pilot encountering an MCAS failure in the US and correctly dealing with it?

As far as anyone could tell, MCAS was not encountered before in the US.

Re: Plane Tests Must Use Average Pilots, NTSB Says After 737 Max Crashes

#114

Post by celticmusic »

rowanG077 wrote: post #81

Actually they must use the worst pilots. If they use average pilots that means 50% of the pilots might be out of their depth flying that plane. What kind of insanity is this?

I don't believe the wording means arithmetic average.

It's more akin to the reasonable person test in law. Meaning, a reasonably well trained pilot that is not considered significantly more expert than those around him or her.

Re: Plane Tests Must Use Average Pilots, NTSB Says After 737 Max Crashes

#115

Post by kayfox »

pdonis wrote: post #111
jfim wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has there been a documented occurrence of a US pilot encountering an MCAS failure in the US and correctly dealing with it?

Yes, there are many reported incidents from US pilots of stability trim incidents in the FAA's database which, in hindsight, were due to MCAS. The pilots couldn't identify them as such at the time because, of course, they didn't know MCAS existed. But they were able to figure out the corrective action in time to maintain safe flight. (The reports also criticize the flight manual for being inadequate.) https://www.goo…

Most of those reports involved the autopilot or were while flaps were extended, which disables MCAS. The ones that did not were complaining about not being informed about MCAS and not about it actuating. There were even incidents reported as being MCAS that did not involve stabilizer trim or a 737 MAX.

Re: Plane Tests Must Use Average Pilots, NTSB Says After 737 Max Crashes

#116

Post by aeonsky »

totally wrote: post #112
dahart wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the attempt to be diplomatic, and I agree that using average pilots is sensible. But, with respect, I could not disagree more with the rest of that. > Blame is a loaded word. Boeing’s response to the accidents was to blame the pilots, there is precedent for this word in this situation. https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/23/business/american-airlines-bo... > Boeing assumed that pilots could be relied upon No, Bo…

It sounds like you're advocating for blame-ful post mortems. Is that the case and what's your reasoning?

Yes, when 400 people die for a company to save money, you must assign blame and put people in jail.

Re: Plane Tests Must Use Average Pilots, NTSB Says After 737 Max Crashes

#117

Post by salawat »

sudhirj wrote: post #109
rowanG077 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the skill variance is pretty low then you might as well use test pilots. Their skill will hardly be better then the worst of the worst. I don't think there is actual data on skill variance among professional airline pilots so I rather they just force testing on groups which are statistically more significant to get into crashes.

But aren’t test pilots specially clued on to the plane, the features they’re testing and how to react in problem situations? That’s like testing car airbags with stuntmen who know how to crash without getting hurt anyway.

Keep in mind that even with test pilots briefed on the behavior, one of the three ended up losing the plane during testing of single event upsets of the Flight Computer.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/newly...

Re: Plane Tests Must Use Average Pilots, NTSB Says After 737 Max Crashes

#118

Post by objektif »

gniv wrote: post #104
objektif wrote: post #14

That awkward moment when you are called in for a plane test and you realize you are mediocre.

I had the same thought. But there are non-controversial (and, um, non-ego-hurting) ways of defining average: hours of flight, hours of training, number of certifications etc.

I just think average is not the right word here. Less experienced is better. Yeah jokes aside some sort of a “rabdomized” selection methodology of multiple pilots should be sufficient.

Re: Plane Tests Must Use Average Pilots, NTSB Says After 737 Max Crashes

#119

Post by sokoloff »

londons_explore wrote: post #48
sokoloff wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a tension between progress (some of which offers fuel [and ecological] savings) and cost. If you can make a plane that saves an airline $1MM/year/copy but costs them $4MM extra and $500K/yr in training costs, you won’t sell as many as if it costs them $3MM extra and requires no retraining (or even $5MM/$0). Sometimes that difference is enough to make the project not viable economically. Certification is incre…

This problem would be resolved if type certifications expired. Eg. A newly certified plane type can be produced for 15 years before requiring recertification to new standards. In effect, this forces Boeing to come up with new designs, since the chances of old designs meeting new standards are low. It'll give them a big incentive to find ways to get the cost of certifications down. Up to them if they choose to evolve…

That's an interesting proposal. Thanks for bringing it forward.

It would certainly increase costs in the industry and might introduce discontinuities in the pilot supply, particularly during irregular ops (weather delays causing crew timeouts causing crew substitutions) when pilots of 2015-era narrowbody jet #7 can't fly the 2014-era narrowbody jet #7 because the type rating is different or we have to stuff into their brains the qualifications for both the pre- and post- and have them alternate recurrent training between the two types, which brings its own safety concerns as compared to sending the crew to only one type of recurrent every required period.

Alternatively, we might address that by giving a common type rating to the aircraft (such as with the 757 and 767, which share a common type rating [the pilot qualification basis] today despite being built on different type certificates [the aircraft certification basis]), which would allow for common recurrent training with just differences training across models/series.

Re: Plane Tests Must Use Average Pilots, NTSB Says After 737 Max Crashes

#120

Post by NetBeck »

>Typically, overseas regulators follow the FAA’s lead. But after the MAX crashes revealed shortcomings in the FAA’s certification process, that’s no longer certain.

>Before the MAX is cleared to fly passengers again, both EASA and the FAA will require flight tests of the new updated software. In addition, Ky said, EASA will require Boeing to demonstrate the stability of the jet in flight tests that include high-speed turn and stall maneuvers with MCAS switched off.

Source: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/europ...

Post reply on HN