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MAX Lessons Prompt FAA Shift In Training Evaluations
The
FAA plans to have a large number of pilots with a variety of backgrounds validate changes to
Boeing’s 737 MAX, departing from an approach that aligned operational evaluations with the airlines it regulates.
The agency wants to bring in about 15 crew pairs from around the world to conduct MAX-simulator sessions in the coming weeks, multiple sources confirm. The group will include pilots with varied experience. One source said the FAA plans to recruit evaluators with multicrew pilot licenses. Those licenses emphasize competency-based outcomes and simulator training—as opposed to flight hours—and qualify a candidate to serve as a first officer. The FAA says it “has not specified” a particular number of flight hours for these crews, but that they must have “previous experience at the controls of the
Boeing 737MAX.” Such evaluation groups are common, contributing to FAA-led Flight Standardization Boards (FSB) during certification. Usually, they are dominated by U.S. pilots. The FSB conducted during the MAX’s initial certification in 2016 included 737-800 line pilots from
American Airlines,
Delta Air Lines and
Southwest Airlines, as well as representatives from
Transport Canada and the
European Aviation Safety Agency.
The shift from relying on U.S. pilots is an acknowledgment that, while the FAA’s baseline requirements for training on a specific aircraft can be modified by other agencies, they often are not. This is even though big-picture standards established by authorities for how pilots are trained vary widely.
“We’ve always done the [pilot training] evaluations with the mindset of our system and our understanding of our system,” a senior U.S. government official says. “[The MAX situation] has highlighted that when you have the majority of the fleet going [to other countries], maybe we have to look at it differently. We are now including other pilots from other locations and with different skill sets, training and backgrounds, because they will be the ones [operating the aircraft].”
Past groups have also been smaller, meaning the new approach, which requires coordinating schedules for more pilots, is expected to take more time.
The 385-aircraft MAX fleet was grounded in mid-March following the second fatal MAX accident in five months. Boeing halted deliveries soon after and cut 737 production—now almost all commercial-version MAXs—to 42 per month. The software changes, along with new training materials, are being finalized for review by the FAA.
Boeing’s changes primarily affect the MAX’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) flight control law that interim investigation reports suggest played a role in the crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 in October 2018 and
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March 2019.
Feedback from the pilot group will help the agency finalize an update to the 737 FSB report, which is needed to clear the MAX to fly again. A draft of the report is expected to be opened for comment for 15-30 days. The agency is still sorting through hundreds of comments made to a previous draft.
The FAA is not expected to call for simulator sessions before MAX pilots can fly again but will likely require them during recurrent training. Deeper dives into the MAX’s flight control system uncovered high-pilot-workload failure scenarios that 737 pilots may benefit from practicing. They also highlight that assumptions made during the MAX’s certification, such as that pilots would quickly diagnose an MCAS malfunction as a common runaway stabilizer problem and react accordingly, were wrong. This could prompt other countries and some airlines to insist on simulator time right away.
Boeing says it is working to deliver its final MAX update package to the FAA “in the September time frame,” part of a timeline that has regulators starting to lift flight bans in the fourth quarter. It has made financial estimates based on that and is hiring several hundred temporary technical workers to help move the backlog of undelivered MAXs. Once its final package is in the FAA’s hands, the agency is expected to take at least a month to validate it.
The FAA has not committed to a timeline. Two sources say the FAA and other regulators continue to ask numerous, detailed questions about Boeing’s software changes, including some that go beyond the MCAS. It is unclear whether this, combined with the expanded pilot-review effort, will put Boeing’s fourth-quarter return to service estimate at risk.
Boeing’s changes are addressing the MAX-specific issues and should eliminate MCAS failures as a source of concern. But the MAX-accident preliminary reports suggest longer-term challenges remain, such as how well crews were trained to handle an emergency that required procedures rarely, if ever, practiced by airline pilots.
By expanding participation in evaluation boards, the FAA hopes to receive feedback that is more representative of the industry and establish more effective training standards. The issue goes beyond flight-hour experience, the government official says, noting: “It’s about gaining a better understanding of different environments.”