Originally Posted by
CurtainTwitcher
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Having said all that, Boeing pushed the system too far. The $10 billion in industry costs for an EICAS model is now a line ball breakeven, and 346 people have lost their lives. . . .
There seems to be an assumption in the article and in the comments that a retrofitted EICAS would have been likely to have prevented these two accidents. How realistic is that assumption?
In JT610, the crew knew they had a malfunctioning stab trim system and they figured out they could keep the plane in the air using MET. They were focused on the stab trim problem but they just couldn't figure out that they needed to shut off electric trim. How would EICAS have fixed this? Presumably, it would have focused the crew on the principal problem (malfunctioning AoA) and suppressed some of the cascading warnings (e.g., stick shaker, IAS disagree) but the crew was already focused on solving the problem. Would EICAS have displayed a "Turn off the freakin electric trim" message?
In ET302, the crew knew they had a stab trim malfunction and they shut off electric trim, but didn't relieve control column forces first. They then knew they were out of trim, but were apparently confused about what to do about it. What would EICAS have added? Would it have displayed a "Don't turn the electric trim back on" message? Or maybe a message "If you turn electric trim back on, trim up fast and then turn it off"?
I understand the general assumption that less noise/flashing lights may lead to better decision making, particularly at the very beginning of an incident. But both crews were past that and were controlling the plane (even climbing in the case of ET302), albeit with significant effort. Isn't it hugely speculative to say that EICAS would have made any difference in the outcome?