Originally Posted by
maxter
Did an extra well qualified pilot who happened to be on the flight deck happen to be a factor in first incident? Hopefully not conveniently overlooking this factor to suit an argument. QF32 similar result with extra crew and extra minds to maybe lower 'brain overload' maybe. We will actually never know but no 2 situations are ever identical.
Well, this wasn’t the thrust of my original question, but it is a worthy point to elaborate on.
I think the crew of the penultimate Lion Air 610 flight did a great job handling this emergency, particularly since at this point no one outside of Boeing had ever heard of MCAS. They dealt with the immediate stick shaker, recognize the plane was flying and not stalling, and identified the IAS DISAGREE problem early on. They were rightfully taken surprise by the MCAS event, but they kept the plane flying, both the Captain and FO in turn, while they tried to sort out the problem. They used the resources available to get the malfunction contained and eventually landed safely. Good job all round.
We can look at their performance and see it follows a pretty standard three-step approach to dealing with any aircraft emergency. Different airlines/flying organizations may express this process in different ways, but the version I prefer goes like this:
1. Maintain aircraft control
2. Evaluate the the situation and take appropriate action
3. Land as soon as conditions permit
While each step is critical in its own right, it is important to note that you can’t get to Steps 2 or 3 without first getting through the critical Step 1. You
can actually make mistakes or fail to complete Step 2 and still get through the situation. Step 3 is, of course, mandatory for successful completion.
The intent of my original query was to point out that three of the five pilots who actually operated the flight controls during this malfunction broke the code on Step 1. MCAS was misbehaving, and they kept the blue side up. However, the next two didn’t. Personally, I think it is worth asking why that was the case? What was the difference in the training, experience, and environment that allowed the first three pilots to succeed where the others did not? I don’t really think it was just a matter of luck.
Taking care of Step 1 is critical to handling any emergency because this step then buys
time. Specifically to the MCAS malfunction, once the pilots figure out how to counter it, they have effectively to the end of their fuel supply to take care of the rest. Given time, the crew has access to all manner of resources to include onboard manuals, deadheading crew members, and even systems experts on the ground via direct radio or phone patch.
Your question above applies to Step 2, and this is where the jumpseater was of valuable assistance. It is often the case that this extra person will pick up on things that the primary crew doesn’t, and he absolutely helped the crew in getting to some resolution of Step 2
quicker. However, it does not mean the crew would not have gotten there by themselves given more time.
In order to arrive at the conclusion that, absent the jumpseater, this would have been the first MAX accident a person would actually have to make a few very rather unflattering assumptions about the primary crew. For example, a person would have to assume that after quite a few cycles of using the Main Electric Trim to offset MCAS (20? 50? 100? 200?!) that it would not dawn on them to give the stab trim cutout switches a try. You would have to assume that failing to find an answer themselves they would not try to contact help on the ground. You would have to assume that if they ran into a complete dead end with all such attempts (remember, they literally had hours of fuel onboard), they would just give up and let the aircraft spiral into the sea. Finally, you would have to assume that they would never attempt to land even with the active MCAS malfunction.
That last point about a landing attempt is particularly important. If the crew had continued to struggle with the aircraft and made the decision to land anyway, one of the first steps would have been to slow down and extend the flaps. We all now know what would have happened next. MCAS doesn’t work with flaps extended, so the malfunction would have gone away, and the landing should have been uneventful.
Anybody here want to make the case that this crew was really so poorly trained or experienced that they would not have attempted any of the above and would have just given up the ship? I think they would be rightfully insulted if someone did.
So this is why I keep asking what made the difference between the first three pilots and the last two when it came to the first critical step. Yes, none of us would wish any of them to be placed in this situation, but once they were, the training and experience they brought to the cockpit was absolutely critical to what happened next.