Originally Posted by
yanrair
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
Some talk that the problems faced by these crews were made more difficult due to the multiple warnings and confusion caused by same. I agree that it would be tough but it is not new; all airplanes with a warning system will display all the existing problems at the same time (except for TO/LDG inhibits) and it has always been necessary for the crews to prioritize. Many accidents (including two in 1996 involving the 757) have been caused when the crews could not manage that and it would be expected that pilots and the training departments of their airlines would include this in the syllabus.
In this case, the problem that would have to be handled first would have been to stop the airplane from diving into the ground. If that is not solved, and solved immediately, there is no need to even look at the other warnings.
The standard stab trim fault procedure (runaway trim) would have worked but this was not done in either case resulting in the loss of both aircraft and the deaths of almost 350 innocents.
How can anybody claim that this is not true? What else would a trained crew do as a first response? Pushing the nose down as a response to the stick shaker would not help, nor looking through the QRH to identify the CAS messages. If a crew cannot fly the aircraft they do not deserve to be on the flight deck and the passengers did not deserve what happened to them. Sadly (in my opinion) due to pilot error.
If we do not identify the root cause of the accidents and do something to mitigate it the same thing can happen. The design and operation of the MCAS is not a root cause; it is contributing of course but it did not cause the loss of the aircraft. That was solely caused by flight crews that did not know or could not apply the correct immediate actions for the runaway stab trim.