Originally Posted by
Tomaski
Yanrair is essentially correct. This aspect of the manual stab trim system has been there on the 707, 727, and the entire 737 line since inception, and it was apparently okay with the EASA and its predecessors. What changed? Well, for one thing airline training departments stopped teaching it, and general awareness of the issue was apparently lost along the way.
I've been on Boeing's most of my 30+ years in aviation, and I am very familiar with the trim system. Quite a few years back, I was actually taught the "roller coaster" technique. Somewhere along the way, the stab system in general, and runaway trim in particular, became less and less of a feature in our training syllabus. Despite the fact that runaway trim is a "memory" procedure, a pilot might see it once on initial checkout but it was not a regular feature of our normal recurrent training cycle (Stop and think about that for a moment.) In the early days of the MAX accident investigations, I was absolutely flabbergasted by the number of 737 pilots at my own airline who were unaware of many aspects of this trim system. To the extent that this was also the case at Lion Air and Ethiopian, then the pilots' reactions are more understandable.
Hi Tomaski
I am pleased that you say I am essentially correct because like you I have been flying Boeings since the sixties including the 737 most variants except Max, 707 (10 years) 757 767 747-400 and Tristar (non Boeing). I was the only pilot in UK licensed to fly the 737-400/757/767 concurrently with passengers to try and see if Boeing's claim that "they are all the same" was true! (All our pilots could fly the 757/767 concurrently despite one being twice the size of the other).
Boeing have always been annoyed by the fact that Airbus have this big advantage in commonality of handling and flight deck design. I flew that trio for a year sometimes flying a 767 in the morning and a 737 in the afternoon. It was fun and quite do-able but you had to stay so much on top of the learning and also it required 6 sim checks per annum, three Safety days, and three line checks. That was the killer. And no, I did not recommend it become the norm. For the reasons stated recently in this thread, the operation has to be capable of being flown by an average pilot - whatever that is.
I taught the 737 syllabus for twenty of those years and yes the emphasis in recent years has switched to not insisting on the full skill set which was demanded then. I find that deplorable.
My contention is that the "average" pilot skill set is now too low and needs a major revamp. It is Not the fault of the pilots and I especially mean the Lionair and ET pilots who were doing it would appear what they were trained to do, and it may not have been enough.
I get the impression from a lot of the comments I read here that some writers have only been on the 737 as a passenger and that a lot of comment is regurgitated from what is read in the media. Not from actual experience of actually doing any of this stuff. Yes, many of the commentators here are indeed professional 737 pilots too and have bags of experience. That is usually evident by the quality of the commentary.
I stand by the comments I made back just after the second crash. It was I think avoidable, especially given the publicity surrounding the first one. Every pilot I know in the UK / Ireland situation was all over that first crash report learning what they could from what they have read. And the Boeing bulletins . We learn these days more from a study of recent near accidents or actual accidents which occur daily around the world because we are unlikely to experience the actual situation in line flying due to the rarity of events. That is why Nat Geographic Air Crash Investigation is so popular with pilots who want to survive. I hope we all learned from the AF 447 how
not to fly with unreliable IAS. And Turkish Airlines at AMS that an auto-thrust failure should be a non event.
but did we learn from the Lionair crash? And especially the fact that the day before it was handled to a safe landing. Two days apart. Totally different outcome. Some learning to be had there.
Quite soon, I would say within a couple of months we will see where this is going and this thread will then become quite interesting. The problem faced by the whole industry is that if pilot training is even partly to blame, then there is a massive task ahead, but do-able at a cost.
For Boeing, they would hate a situation where it might appear that the 737 requires more training than an Airbus - perish the thought. Even though a well flown 737 is probably the Panzer tank of the air - it can take a lot of failures and still flies right down to total hydraulic failure and total electrical failure and the add in two failed engines. It still flies. If you know how.
Enough idle conjecture for one night.
Talk soon.
Y