https://www.wsj.com/articles/flight-...b1d10cb08f8eca
OPINION | LETTERS
Flight Systems Have Become Too Complicated
There are airline pilots that are not capable of recognizing and mitigating certain system failures.
May 15, 2019 401 p.m. ET
Regarding Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.’s column “GM and Boeing Show How Safety Miscues Happen” (Business World, May 11): Most media reports portray Boeing as incompetent and inappropriately close with the Federal Aviation Administration. As Mr. Jenkins notes, any attempt by Boeing to defend its design is met with derision and contempt. This exaggerated portrayal increases the risk that the public will never recognize the real problem: Many current airline pilots are simply not up to the standard necessary to operate current systems. With that in mind, the airline industry—not just Boeing—needs to lower expectations related to pilot competency in designing systems and dealing with failures.
The fiasco around MCAS—Boeing’s twice-failed maneuvering control system—is a good example of that, and we can expect more accidents if action is not taken to revise the current safety methodology to minimize or eliminate reliance on pilots to recognize failures and respond correctly. The Lion Air crew that flew the same airplane the day prior to the accident also encountered the MCAS-induced antistall system, and simply disengaged the system and completed the flight.
The software changes that are now being implemented by Boeing eliminate the need for the crew to recognize and correctly respond to a failure of an angle-of-attack sensor. This is done in recognition that there are airline pilots that are not capable of recognizing and mitigating certain system failures. It is a shame that it took two accidents with many fatalities to understand this, but it is not fair or reasonable to assert that Boeing and the FAA should have known the exact point when systems would become too complex for certain pilots. That said, Boeing was remiss in disabling the AOA “Disagree” message, which would have given pilots a clear prompt to override a system failure. Yet given that the trim wheel was spinning madly and the stick shaker was activated, it is doubtful that a small, yellow advisory message would have made a difference.
Roger H. Hoh
Society of Experimental Test Pilots Grass Valley, Calif.