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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

#101

Post by jfim »

kayfox wrote: post #91
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…

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?

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

#102

Post by throw0101a »

kayfox wrote: post #91
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…

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.

Or perhaps assumed that the pilots even knew that the MCAS existed and how to override it.

Part of the debate is that Boeing told the FAA and everybody else that 'no special training' for the Max series was needed; just watch a couple-hour video or somesuch.

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

#103

Post by oconnor663 »

ebg13 wrote: post #21

Uh oh. What are they going to do when they discover that there aren't any average pilots? https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-... (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11230287 ) https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/the-inv... (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11155889 )

> Once these and other design solutions were put into place, pilot performance soared, and the U.S. air force became the most dominant air force on the planet.

Some of that trend miiight be correlation and not causation.

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

#104

Post by gniv »

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.

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

#105

Post by pilsetnieks »

simion314 wrote: post #15
adwww wrote: post #7

I wonder if a bigger factor would be the test pilots knowing in advance what the test was. Eg. being told, "next we are testing what happens when MACS fails", whereas in a real life situation the pilot has to diagnose what has happened, recall the correct remedial action, then act on it.

Also this test pilots may know the inner working of the plane where the real pilots were not told that MCAS was added behind their backs and some buttons/switches changed behavior. Also were this test pilots had accessed to extra diagnose data where regular pilots were not provided even with a sensor disagree message

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

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

#106

Post by JanSt »

kayfox wrote: post #91
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…

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.

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.

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

#107

Post by tyingq »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #86
tyingq wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine they could use total flight hours and total 737 flight hours...or some other metric that roughly correlates to experience and skills.

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.

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

#108

Post by chopin »

kayfox wrote: post #91
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…

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.

From what I read, I'd assume that the US just got lucky.

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

#109

Post by sudhirj »

rowanG077 wrote: post #100
sudhirj wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes the skill variance among pilots is pretty low. Average not in skill (I don’t think there’s a way to rate or rank pilots) but in specialised Boeing plane specific training. The problem with Boeing’s assumption was that pilots would have specialised training on that model, and the regulators seem to be trying to remediate that.

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.

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

#110

Post by exabrial »

Out of all the unfortunate hyperbole from the 737 MAX (which I think fundamentally is a safe aircraft), this change will improve air safety across all airliners. Pilots should be held to the highest of standards, but assessment should be done with average joes.
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