From FDR
The average pilot is exactly that,
AVERAGE. They are not Yeagers or Armstrongs, or Eric Moody nor can they be reasonably expected to be.
The internal emails that show how hard the OEM pushed to stop the operator from having specific training appears incongruous to complaints that foreign crew were inadequately trained... that sticks in the throat.
Dear FDR. I think you have a lot of really good commentary here and I am working through and learning from it. Thanks. I would take a different view on one comment if that' ok.
Eric Moody is someone I have met from being around at the time, and had a long chat with the First Officer (we refer to the BA 747 that lost all four). I have also read the reports and even seen it on Nat Geographic so it must be true!
What is very clear is that the last person to say he was Chuck Yeager or Tex Johnson was Eric for any of his crew. He and his crew were truly average for the airline they worked for. The never claimed anything else. Yet their training, experience and airmanship allowed them to calmly cope with a situation "Beyond the Scope of the QRH" as the chapter in the Boeing QRH calls it. They were in a place where there was little or no advice. Improvisation came to the fore. Yes they worked the checklists, but with no expectation that they would succeed. They had to do workarounds all the time too. That is what I expect an average pilot to be able to do. Otherwise one begins to wonder what they are there for. For the expected? Engine failure on takeoff, practiced by me and every other pilot, over 100 times in my career in the sim. Could do that without heart missing a heart beat. And the other forty or so items which we all do every six months on the three year EASA training cycle. All easy enough really once you have the training. I just hope the training is not a band aid solution.
Your second para above is very true and is relatively new to me. Saw it couple of days ago. If Boeing were strenuously trying to prevent Lionair doing more training that they were actively seeking, (I have said from the start of these threads that training, or lack of training is the key), then that is very serious indeed. Until seeing those exchanges I had imagined that some airlines were just buying planes and not realising that a plane is not a bus with wings. That expression has actually been used by the way. I am glad to see that "training" is now part of the new program to get the MAX back flying and that is a major step forward in my view.
Thanks
R Guy
§ 25.672 Stability augmentation and automatic and power-operated systems.