Quote:
Originally Posted by
FGD135 
I can see what Boeing were trying to do. From their point of view, the pilots are already trained (supposedly) to deal with the situation the MCAS may bring up, so why complicate things?
If the pilots had followed the prescribed procedure for inadvertent/inappropriate/runaway stabiliser trim (a procedure which has existed for decades, across all Boeing models) then these crashes would not have occurred and the pilots would be none the wiser about MCAS.
I quite agree
The preceding flight Lion air pilots did (eventually) follow the runaway action items and were in fact "none the wiser about MCAS". This in turn led to an inadequate tech write up which caiused the accident flight to be released with the same fault.
and from DaveReidUK
...
...
. It is the challenge of actually understanding the system versus the end-user. It's easy for the engineer who designs and the engineer who approves to make assumptions about the human that actually uses the product. But there doesn't seem to be much validation in the certification phase of this knowledge transfer to the pilot.
This is a lot more than just a Boeing problem. It is fundamental to the certification base among all national regulators. Words alone in a design assumption are not enough, there must be validation all the way to the user.
Are there any certification requirements to validate "average pilot assumptions" in any way, ideally in high fidelity sim. This would also be usefull to validate training modules, did the 'average' pilot aquire the requisite knowledge for safe operation?