Originally Posted by
Takwis
Let me rephrase my question. I don't think that following that particular checklist would get them "home free"...I was asking about the assertions of the "hot shots". I seem to remember a whole lot of people (to include Boeing) insisting that if they had only followed that checklist, all would be well. I suppose I could go back through something like 14 closed posts and 10,000 plus comments, and figure it out myself. I was just wondering if anyone else remembered it that way.
Let me rephrase my answer. You asked:
It's been a year, with lots of conflicting information. But I seem to remember Boeing (and many hotshot pilots) insisting that if the Airspeed Unreliable checklist had been done, they would have been home free. Is that correct?
I'm going to ignore the "hotshot pilots" comment because quite frankly there was a valid point to be made here. Prompt and accurate execution of the Airspeed Unreliable would have significantly changed how this scenario played out. No one can prove whether it would have changed it enough to prevent the ultimate accident, but it would have decreased a certain amount of the confusion and provided a more stable platform from which to deal with the MCAS activation.
Before I continue, I want to emphasize that I do not believe this to be "crew performance" problem. Rather, this is a
training problem. It is highly probable that this crew was never trained to properly execute this procedure during the takeoff phase. This training failure exists across the entire industry and I am frankly surprised and dismayed that it has not gotten more attention.
Except for a brief moment when the flaps were retracted and then extended again (causing a single MCAS activation), the only malfunction the crew was dealing with during the first five minutes was a faulty AOA - which then generated the Airspeed Unreliable event and associated annunciations. Just about everything we see happening in those first minutes can happen TODAY on a 737NG and will continue to happen on the MAX after MCAS is fixed.
Within four seconds of liftoff, the FO correctly pointed out the "IAS Disagree" annunciation. Less than a minute later, the Captain instructed the FO to perform the memory items for Airspeed Unreliable (why the CA couldn't do it himself is beyond me). They knew what they were dealing with. Yet it then took approximately four minutes for the FO to locate this "memory item" in the QRH, and the Captain did not execute any of the appropriate steps. During this time, the Captain is struggling with aircraft control with altitude excursions and the airspeed becoming unreasonably high. Why? His power is still up, and the F/D is still on and is directing him to lower the pitch to break the "stall". Ultimately, someone raised the flaps again (probably due to overspeed condition), MCAS starts activating and the FO continues to read the Airspeed Unreliable checklist while the Captain is now pre-occupied with countering the MCAS inputs.
If the Airspeed Unreliable procedure had been executed when the Captain first called for it, at a minimum we would expect that the autothrottles and flight directors would have been turned off, N1's set to 80%, and pitch to 10%. If the crew had been properly trained in this procedure, they would have also been exposed to all the additional warnings and annunciations that go along with this malfunction (to use the engine failure analogy, no one is surprised when you lose a generator and hydraulic pump when you lose an engine because you see it all the time in the sim). These pitch and powers setting should have been maintained at least to flap retraction altitude. With these steps accomplished, the aircraft would have been in a slow but stable climb and the overspeed clackers would not be active.
What happens next depends on what you think the crew would have done with the flaps. There are reasonable arguments for both retracting the flaps and for leaving them extended (Boeing does not offer explicit guidance that I'm aware of). If the flaps were not retracted, MCAS would never have activated. If the flaps were retracted, then the aircraft would have been relatively stable with one of the pilots attempting to hold a fixed pitch and power setting according to the Airspeed Unreliable procedure. I think that it is entirely reasonable to speculate that if the crew had gotten to this point with a stable aircraft, a stable pitch and power setting, no F/D instructing them to dive, and no overspeed clacker, then yes, they may well have just handled any MCAS activation better.
So those who pointed to this procedure as an important aid in dealing with this malfunction were not wrong. Their primary error was assuming that the airlines had actually bothered to train their crews how to execute it.