Originally Posted by
SMT Member
Furthermore, if an MCAS situation is so forceful as described in the sim sessions where airline pilots participated, can the training be satisfactorily addressed by CBT only, or will the regulators mandate time in a SIM properly configured for MCAS events? If so, that kind of kills the idea that a NG pilot can breeze into the cockpit of a MAX with just a couple of hours of CBT under his belt. And that, in turn, will undermine Boeings marketing blurb, and thus make the aircraft somewhat less attractive to current and prospective customers.
Perhaps it should be renamed the 737 Kludge?
Looks like Seattle Times beat you to it:
https://www.seattletimes.com/busines...ked-on-the-jet
To quote (my emphasis):
Rick Ludtke, a former Boeing engineer who worked on designing the interfaces on the MAX’s flight deck, said managers mandated that any differences from the previous 737 had to be small enough that they wouldn’t trigger the need for pilots to undergo new simulator training.
As we suspected...
“It’s become such a kludge, that we started to speculate and wonder whether it was safe to do the MAX,” Ludtke said.
Speculate, wonder, and then what? I guess it's difficult to blow a whistle when you've got your head buried in the sand... Much easier to do now of course.
Ludtke didn’t work directly on the MCAS, but he worked with those who did. He said that if the group had built the MCAS in a way that would depend on two sensors, and would shut the system off if one fails, he thinks the company would have needed to install an alert in the cockpit to make the pilots aware that the safety system was off.
And if that happens, Ludtke said, the pilots would potentially need training on the new alert and the underlying system. That could mean simulator time, which was off the table.
Well, I guess at least we now have confirmation on why it only uses one
AOA input.