Air
Originally Posted by
EDLB
If we talk about human factors we should start at the Boeing management decision making. They had years to think about that safety case, and figured, that the two chaps in row zero would always solve this problem in seconds.
May be we need for the MAX a third mandatory jumpseat pilot which only looks for weirded trim movement to get the MAX into the air again...
This “problem” didn’t have to be solved in seconds. It’s not as if the aircraft is on fire. As pointed out earlier, the ET aircraft flew for almost two minutes with UAS before the flaps were selected up and MCAS kicked in. That was two minutes to do the UAS drill. Same thing for the fatal Lion Air aircraft. You could have given them all day and I don’t think it would have got ‘er done.
As I and others of my “cohort” have stated, Boeing’s mistake was to assume that B737 type rated pilots were trained to handle a basic emergencies like UAS and Stab Trim Runaway. If either of the fatal flights had done at least UAS the aircraft would have been controllable and bought them time to figure out the stab trim issue and, once they determined that, be able to manually trim the aircraft. This is what happened in the successful Lion Air case. In fact, they completed the flight (1 1/2 hours) with UAS and MCAS disabled.
Instead, neither of the accident aircraft crews did that drill, they failed to control the aircraft as it was going way too fast for manual trim. I don’t think it’s too much to ask of professional pilots to know and do memory drills and also to fly the damn aircraft at a speed where one can manually trim and not at the barber pole.
And, to be clear fault for this lies squarely on the airlines that employ and train them, the national CAA’s that regulate them and, to a lesser extent, the aircraft manufacturers that sell them aircraft with their brand on the side of the aircraft. And, yes, MCAS needs to be toned down too.