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

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

#201

Post by simion314 »

paulclinger wrote: post #200
pilsetnieks wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There wouldn't be a sensor disagree message because there was only one AOA sensor, prone to failure, with no redundancy.

MCAS was only using data from one of the AOA sensors (picked during restart), but two were still present, so sensor disagree light/message (when available) would show disagreement between the sensors.

And Boeing decided to make it an optional paid feature, though I am not sure if it was added later by request from airlines or they designed it like this.

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

#202

Post by brianpan »

dahart wrote: post #196
mlyle wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In aviation we tend to look at failure chains . There are many, many things that went wrong: 1. The stuck AOA instrumentation on the plane. 2. MCAS not using redundant AOA information and being fooled by the stuck instrumentation. 3. Lack of clear indication of what MCAS was doing contributing to flight crew confusion. 4. Improper execution of the runaway trim procedure/checklist by flight crew. 5. Training shortcomi…

Agreed! Your comment reminds me a lot of this 1998 article about the ValuJet crash in Flordia https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/03/the-les... Specifically it's the argument in the article that large disasters often have multiple causes. "Perrow says, Murphy's Law is wrong—what can go wrong usually goes right. But then one day a few of the bad little choices come together, and circumstances take an air…

Not just large disasters, every failure in engineering large or small. That's why we use tools like 5 Why's in a root cause analysis. Anyone who's thinking about safety is thinking about redundancies. So every observed failure is likely a confluence of many failures.

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

#203

Post by avar »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #172
tyingq wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry, trying to clarify but there is too much to tell for a full picture. In a B737 you are not allowed to do most maneuvers you do when flying a small plane or a fighter; not necessarily acrobatics, but even more basic things like stalls, spins, side slips or flying without engines, which is something I regularly do to maintain my proficiency. That means 10,000 hours of limited, routine flying does not make a lot o…

Aren't those maneuvers done in simulators?

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

#204

Post by inimino »

OrgNet wrote: post #191
inimino wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% control of any complex system does not and can not exist.

well, at least they could try. but yeah I know that most software sucks and can't be predicted 100%

They do try. Avionics is miles ahead of everyday commercial stuff like your desktop computer in reliability and correctness.

This is not just about software, a plane is a complex physical system and the idea of absolute control is a fantasy. This is why you need alternatives, failsafes, contingency plans, and training in dealing with unexpected failure modes.

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

#206

Post by sour-taste »

Make sure you read the actual report before commenting. The article is misrepresenting the recommendations: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/....

Also, kudos to the airline industry, their postmortem culture is second to none, even software engineering.

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

#207

Post by cmurf »

dahart wrote: post #62

This seems like a good thing, they should be testing with people who don’t know the answers. 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. This approach of a regulatory agency recommending “average pilot” testing makes both the agency and Boeing look good, and tends to downplay the fact that Boeing intentionally avoided training the pilots,…

I see it as every certificated Airline Transport Pilot is a pilot who passed the certification requirements, and any of them should be able to recover from recoverable scenarios, rather than fragmenting this certification into elite or specialist test pilots. The notion that a specialized test pilot or airplane certification pilot can recover from a unusual scenario cannot be used to justify impunging the qualification of any qualified pilot.

And that's basically the early Boeing rhetoric, and also from others like Langewiesche, talking about airmanship, the notion that some certified pilots really actually are incompetent they just so happen to be foreign pilots, etc. To whatever degree the average pilot is not getting the proper training, it's a call that the entire industry has an obligation to bring up the average pilot to the actual real world expected minimum level of competency, and stop this b.s. blaming of pilots as if there are different kinds of competencies for the same level of certification.

I further note, upon MCAS existence becoming public, U.S. based pilots got rather distinctly pissed off about being kept in the dark. That is not a reaction consistent with, yeah it'll be just like runaway trim, we can handle that, no big deal.

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

#208

Post by soapboxrocket »

Regardless of the report and the article, I worked with the Boeing pilots for years.

On the plus side they always argued that emergency equipment in the cockpit should be able to be operated by almost any idiot off the street to ensure safety.

On the negative side they had special expeditions from the FAA that allowed them to skip mandatory training on emergency equipment that airline pilots had to take.

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

#209

Post by avar »

kayfox wrote: post #132
JanSt wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that the pilots had only about 40 seconds time to solve the problem and were trained for one hour with an iPad (not on the MCAS, but the whole 737 Max). I'm not sure whether this is a question of pilots' standards in the US vs around the world.

The general idea was that pilots would correctly recognize large amounts of undesired and uncommanded trim being runaway trim and perform the checklist to resolve that issue that they are expected to know by memory, since there is a need to execute it fast, without paging through the Quick Reference Handbook. This is not a checklist that was introduced with the 737 MAX, but one that has existed since the introduction…

> "Boeing's designs reflect a US-centric expectation of pilots"

So we are expected to believe that Boeing never connected the dots between:

1. We design planes for US pilots

2. We sell planes abroad

3. Incidents abroad can ground an entire aircraft series

This makes them seem more incompetent, not less. It's not like they have no say in what's considered standardized training for the series.

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

#210

Post by jakeogh »

mlyle wrote: post #193
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…

In aviation we tend to look at failure chains . There are many, many things that went wrong: 1. The stuck AOA instrumentation on the plane. 2. MCAS not using redundant AOA information and being fooled by the stuck instrumentation. 3. Lack of clear indication of what MCAS was doing contributing to flight crew confusion. 4. Improper execution of the runaway trim procedure/checklist by flight crew. 5. Training shortcomi…

0. They added software hack (keeping their cert) to use engines on a aircraft not desinged for them.
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