No amount of training in sims is going to help these "startle events" in real life/time events.
I would beg to differ.
Additional training in sims to cover “startle events” above and beyond the “minimum required by regulators” should certainly help with the last slice of Swiss cheese in a scenario not conceived as a mandatory training item.
Basic thrust + attitude + trim training to cover startle effects together with basic flight path monitoring could possibly have saved many recent Boeing fatalities.
I’ve added “trim” to basic attitude flying because for a well-trained pilot, that should go without saying, but maybe in light of the two recent B737 fatalities it needs to be said.
The question is whether the regulators and/or airlines can be persuaded of this, which might increase their costs compared to their minimalist competitors.
Of course, the airlines would prefer to buy fool-proof aircraft so they can employ fools for peanuts, but we’re obviously not there yet. I think the message is we still need good pilots, and the industry needs to suck that up and pay and train accordingly.
For example (Boeing only): Lion Air, Ethiopian, Atlas, Asiana, Emirates, Air Niugini, FlyDubai, Tatarstan, Adam Air, Garuda etc (off the top of my head) were all events that could have been survivable with a different crew at the controls. To say it’s impossible to train crews to deal with difficult events is simply not true. It just might involve higher standards, more training, and inevitably more money. The industry will need to decide where the economic trade-off should lie.
Is Boeing complicit in the 737MAX events? Undoubtedly. But could better trained pilots have saved the day and become heroes? I suggest yes. One crew did (with a bit of help from a jumpseater).
I’m not necessarily suggesting I would personally have done any better - I could also be a victim of insufficient training. But I do spend a bit of my spare time trying to learn from others mistakes, including reading this website, which contains an enormous wealth of knowledge amidst the noise. I’m certainly not prepared to just throw my hands in the air and say “this was unsurvivable”. In fact, I put to any professional 737MAX pilot: if you studied the Lion Air preliminary report, you should have been well prepared for this event - it should not have been startle factor at all. If, in fact, you didn’t study the report and arm-chair fly it so as to be so-prepared, then maybe this isn’t the job for you.
As a professional pilot, of course I want my aircraft to be designed as safely as possible, but I need to be always ready to perform when it decides not to. That’s my job.