Originally Posted by
yoko1
This is one of my biggest pet peeves about the 737 (can't speak for other aircraft, but maybe other operators can chime in). There are quite a few noise-makers that activate when certain parameters are exceeded. Some of them can be silenced, but many cannot. Unfortunately, erroneous alarms can be also triggered by underlying malfunctions (as demonstrated by the stick shaker in the MAX accidents), and pilots are expected to just deal with them.
And yes, these alarms are very, very annoying and very, very much a source of distraction. If someone were to make me King of Boeing, one of my first commands would be to install a master button in the cockpit of every airliner that enabled me to silence any alarm, even if only temporarily, and effectively tell the plane to shut the flock up and let me do my job. I seriously hope that one of the recommendations out of these accidents is to provide some relief and/or mechanisms that will allow pilots to silence these kind of alarms when it is obvious that they are erroneous.
What is particularly troubling is that some alarms can be silenced by the simple act of pulling an associated circuit breaker that is within easy reach (the left stick shaker CB is behind the Captain's left shoulder), but we are procedurally not allowed to do so. Once upon a time, it was allowed at the Captain's discretion, but no longer. A Captain can always take a chance and play the "Captain's Emergency Authority" card and do what he/she thinks is needed to save the ship, but he/she would then be counting on a sympathetic Fed/Supervisor/Chief Pilot to agree with his reasoning at the subsequent hearing. I'm pretty sure the penultimate Lion Air 610 crew flew the aircraft the rest of the way to landing with the stick shaker going off, and I am aware of other similar events in which the crew did not feel justified in pulling the CB because the lack of any procedure or policy authorizing such an action. This is the environment we operate in. This is the job we signed up for.
Back to my wheelhouse - are we looking adequately at the training, certification, and operating environment that these crews were immersed in? If the airlines/regulators/manufacturers expect pilots to aviate, navigate, communicate and work an active malfunction while there is an ongoing, distracting alarm that cannot be silenced, then they can damn well train pilots to that standard. I can tell you now that they do not.
flew the Fokker 50 a long time ago, had a dedicated panel with 5(?) guarded switches to silence most if not all aural warnings. Can't believe A&B don't have that. There are several crashes were it is obvious that the disorientation from all the conflicting alerts were a big contribution.