Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that's median not average...
Given set: 1 2 2 2 2 2 4 10 What's the average? 3.125 What's the median? 2
Mean is 3.125, median is 2, and mode is 2. All of those are averages.
Plane Tests Must Use Average Pilots, NTSB Says After 737 Max Crashes
161–170 of 317 posts
Re: Plane Tests Must Use Average Pilots, NTSB Says After 737 Max Crashes
#162Actually 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?
While I don't disagree, at least moving from test pilots to average pilots would be a big improvement. And, in practice, might mean that you have to simplify and streamline the UI just as much as for the minimum viable pilots. But, even if not, at least average would be way better than test pilots only.
"Simplify and streamline" is exactly not the solution here, in fact the issue was that the relevant information was invisible and hidden from pilots, not that there was too much. Not everything in good design needs to end up looking like a Fischer-Price toy.
The main problems from my limited understanding were: pilots didn't know the subsystem existed; they didn't know it had activated; they didn't know what it was doing; they didn't know how to turn it off.
Additional instrumentation could have addressed all these issues but would have been more expensive than what they actually did.
Re: Plane Tests Must Use Average Pilots, NTSB Says After 737 Max Crashes
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sport pilot here: total flight hours on an airliner is an almost useless metric, the difference between 2000 hours and 5000 hours is negligible. I know pilots with over 10,000 hours that died in stupid accidents, I know instructors that never performed maneuvers that are almost routine to other pilots that don't even have 500 hours. I know dozens of pilots and there is no average one, some are very good and some are…
Is there any data that would show that? Like crashes with pilot error as a contributing cause mapped to hours, and weighted by bands of hours.
For airliners, there is less room for error caused by the pilots (but it still happens). In General Aviation, the accident rate is more than an order of magnitude higher per mile (FAA has the data on their site) and by far in most cases it is pilot error, even if GA planes are less reliable. The official statistics are not very accurate because the GA accidents are investigated with less rigor, there are no black boxes to record what really happened and the pilots lie about the real cause (in more than 50% of the accidents I personally know).
It is hard to prove all these, but some data exists on the FAA site, the inside info will never be public anywhere to consult. By inside info I am talking about the real story told by the pilots that had the accidents, in small communities people talk very openly about it.
LE. I mentioned General Aviation because I know pilots with over 10,000 on B737 that died flying smaller planes or not able to fly at all smaller planes.
Re: Plane Tests Must Use Average Pilots, NTSB Says After 737 Max Crashes
#164Seriously, what not below average pilots? Assuming an even distribution (yes, which it might not be) then roughly half the pilots are below average. If the bottom 25% can't do it, that's a problem, no?
Re: Plane Tests Must Use Average Pilots, NTSB Says After 737 Max Crashes
#165Actually 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 agree. Though I would also feel pretty disheartened if I got a call from them after that decision was made -
"Hey, we need someone of your skill level to come in and fly some test planes"
"...okay"
Re: Plane Tests Must Use Average Pilots, NTSB Says After 737 Max Crashes
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it would be about making things safe/usable for the merely competent and not relying on "brilliance".
Right, but my point is there may not actually be any pilots who are merely competent at all skills. The distribution of skills may be more complex than that. You may be making things safe for someone who does not exist, which is pointless, and you'd be better off making things safe for something other than a simple mean average.
You're going off on a tangent based on semantics and speculation. Pilots who are competent at every basic skill, but don't have years of combat or test pilot experience or extensive experience on the plane in question absolutely exist and that's what we're talking about.
Re: Plane Tests Must Use Average Pilots, NTSB Says After 737 Max Crashes
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on the distribution
You're technically correct, but for the metric "human pilot skill" I think the median and average probably align fairly well.
I would guess that the skill distribution of licensed pilots is asymmetrical, if only because the tail end of bad pilots are not allowed to fly.
Re: Plane Tests Must Use Average Pilots, NTSB Says After 737 Max Crashes
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their logic was that pilots are trained to deal with runaway trim, a MCAS failure is runaway trim, ergo pilots are trained to deal with a MCAS failure. Obviously that logic turned out to be faulty but it's not like Boeing made some outlandish leap here.
Do you really think that’s an appropriate level of analysis for the manufacturer of a brand new MCAS? “Any failure of this new thing we’re shipping is just a trim failure, pilots can handle it”?
With the benefit of hindsight it looks obviously wrong, but without that the reasoning looks sound to me. IMHO, the failure lies in validating the analysis with realistic test conditions. They should be testing their assumptions against the worst pilots, not the best.
Re: Plane Tests Must Use Average Pilots, NTSB Says After 737 Max Crashes
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. From a practical perspective, however, Boeing making universal assumptions about pilot capabilities in life-or-death situations, utilizing new equipment that they were not trained on, is anything but irrel…
Their logic was that pilots are trained to deal with runaway trim, a MCAS failure is runaway trim, ergo pilots are trained to deal with a MCAS failure. Obviously that logic turned out to be faulty but it's not like Boeing made some outlandish leap here.
Boeing did though - they decided unintentional trim was the same as a flight system that was deliberately hidden from the pilots was just a “trim” issue.
They needed to classify it as a ordinary trim problem because otherwise they would have needed to have testing for it, which would have meant acknowledging MCAS existed.
The evidence that it wasn’t just a normal trim issue is the second crash, which occurred when pilots already knew about the design fault. When it turned out that it wasn’t physically possible for a pilot to take the corrective actions.
Boeing is still trying to blame the pilots for their own decision to fraudulently sell an unsafe aircraft.
Re: Plane Tests Must Use Average Pilots, NTSB Says After 737 Max Crashes
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I have downvoted your comment, because I believe it does more to obscure understanding than to enlighten.
> when 400 people die for a company to save money
Let me take a step back and ask: Why?
Is it because we're vindictive, and demand blood? Or is it because this actually does something to help keep people from dying in the future?
If the latter is more important than the former -- which I hope is the case -- how can we trust that we're pursuing a course that improves the future of society while also using rhetoric to the effect of "when 400 people die for a company to save money"?
Consider, for instance: Part of reason for the company "saving money" is that it results in lower costs for planes, and ultimately lower airfare for customers who pay airlines' capital expenses, potentially resulting in fewer miles driven and fewer accident. Is reducing this statistical danger more or less than the danger of the planes? Quite possibly, it's not -- but using this rhetoric certainly won't help us find out.
More broadly the "omg greed" narrative, which -- to me, at least -- just doesn't make too much sense. If the corner-cutting that led to 737 Max problems is to be understood as a "greed" move, it's a pretty incompetent one, because Boeing is almost certainly out billions over the mess. People who seek to maximize profits for their own self-interest also seek to mitigate risk, for the same reason. I would suggest that a "hubris" narrative, or something similar, is probably more appropriate here.
If this is so, the remedies are entirely different, and the assertion that we MUST jail people, because it fits our "greed" narrative and whatever cognitive bias we drag into the picture, ensures that we will not remedy the problem effectively. This means people may die.