Originally Posted by
Skipness One Foxtrot
Wasn't one of the significant causes of the British Midland BD092 crash involving a new B737-400 at Kegworth, exactly this? The differences between the -300 and -400 had been a very quick presentation (OHP vs PDF nowadays) and then back to line flying? And when the key differences between the two aircraft manifested in such a way that the pilots misdiagnosed a problem that led to a fatal crash.
Not really. There were two primary contributors to the misdiagnosis of which engine had failed. One was that there was smoke on the flight deck, the pilot thought all the flight deck air came from the right hand engine so he figured that the problem was with the right hand engine. Problem was that was only true on the 737-1/200 - the change to mixed bleed air was not unique to the -400, it was that way on all -3/4/500 aircraft. The second issue was a change to the engine vibration gauges - with the smoke and vibration the pilots were unable to see the gauges clearly and not realizing the gauges had changed misinterpreted what the gauges were telling them. I can't recall now if the gauge change was an 'and-on' change or if it was a customer option, but it wasn't specific to the -400 variant.