Originally Posted by
CW247
musings...
The response time on briefed and prepared, readily identifiable events is short, and history is littered with examples that flight crew often do not meet these response times. That is for simple events, such as, engine failure or fire warning on a takeoff, GPWS, TCAS RA's. In the MCAS events the crews were given multiple critical cues and no clear indication of the underlying fault. It is not surprising that the limited expected time to respond to the event was longer than the assumptions of response time in the runaway/unscheduled stabiliser motion.
It is also interesting that the human factor training and resource management practices that has become core to current policy comes with a built in response lag while the crew run through their learned processes with dealing with an unusual problem. From the mid 80's, the panacea to some lousy accidents has become the cornerstone of the training of the crews, and along the way, economics have led to a diminishing of the core training in fundamental flying skills, predicated by the belief that CRM trumps handling skills. The regulatory response over the last 10 years to problems from lousy CRM events has been to increase such training, not to take any substantive action on curing the underlying diminishment in flying skills. This is not a complaint on the pilotage skills of the pilots, it merely suggests that the cure to future safety management is not going to be more administrative requirements like MCC, it may be to place additional emphasis on the basic flight skills.
Automation places the crew outside of the control loop, into the monitoring role, and that is one that humans tend to be less than stellar in. Training to ensure effective monitoring is appropriate, NDM is always worth while enhancing, but all of these are related to SA, recognition and recovery. The fundamental flight skills if left to atrophy lead to increased response time and the dynamics of flight usually has a limited time to respond and rectify issues.
Flight crew response time to an event is dependent on skills as well as training, and the skills that underpin the response have become secondary to general management skills.