Firstly my sympathy to the crew. They had probably been up at "oh-god o'clock", and doing a Palma W pattern can be a frazzling experience, especially after almost a year of not flying.
I think there are two aspects to this. First; I know that both pilots had been in the SIM, but a concert violinist would never be expected to perform a difficult musical passage well unless they had had days or even weeks to practise it at home, over and over beforehand. Unfortunately, we are not allowed to take the aircraft home to practise!
Even in the SIM, one never has the luxury of practising go-arounds say five times in a row in order to hone our responses. Usually even if it was wobbly and untidy; if the manoeuvre is flown just about within the limits then the box is ticked and the session moves on.
Secondly the 737.......There will be those shouting at the screen: "just fly the got-damned plane! Are you a pilot or an idiot?". However the limited 1950's technology of the B737 and the pitch-power couple from the engines demands a hefty push forward on the yoke and a trim forward during the go-around transition, which is opposite and counter-intuitive to what one would expect when wanting to go up. If you fly a go-around every day or every week; fine, but once a year ?
Why Boeing have still not introduced FBW or decent autopilots and auto-thrust that can handle all flight phases to the 73, baffles me. They could even have brought in FBW just in pitch, which would have made a huge difference enabling auto-trim, and things like bigger engines and MCAS would have been very easy and safe to implement.
Last edited by Uplinker; 5th Dec 2021 at 09:19.