Originally Posted by
WillowRun 6-3
From the reporting in the Wall Street Journal (by A. Pasztor and A. Tangel) yesterday, Nov. 13:
"....company had decided against disclosing more details to cockpit crews due to concerns about inundating average pilots with too much information - and significantly more technical data - than they needed or could digest." (emphasis added)
First, what and who provided the definition of an "average pilot"? (and various extension questions, such as, is this construct of an average aviator one that is subject to refinement accounting for air carrier, extent or absence of military flying career, age and education, country of licensing, just to iterate a selection). And aren't the abilities and attributes expected of aviators for sorting through sudden, severe onsets of high spikes in information the business of other authorities in the safety system of aviation - not the airframers?
You appear to be very ignorant of the certification process. Yes, the airframers decide that, and no the regulators do not. Airbus for example assumes a significantly lower skill level pilot than either Boeing or Douglas, provides more automation, and provides/imposes more protections that cannot be over ridden by the pilots. Further, I've already said it multiple times. The emergency procedure for a 737 runaway trim condition (whatever the root cause be it STS, MCAS, or magical gremlins) is the same. Inundating the pilots with checklists and troubleshooting procedures to determine root cause is pointless and just delays execution of the procedure. Perform the procedure, fly the airplane, get it on the ground, and let the maintainers do the trouble shooting. As it is, the vast majority of pilots don't understand STS and indeed don't understand what it does nor why even after hundreds of thousands of pilots have flown the aircraft for multiple decades and millions upon millions of safe flight hours. The point is they don't really need to understand STS. They only need to recognize a runaway trim condition, need to be trained to recognize it in a timely manner, and need to know the procedures to overcome it. The same applies to MCAS.