Originally Posted by
tdracer
So you're honestly suggesting that Boeing should repeat the fiasco of MCAS on a 737 EICAS?
A patch job for adding an "EICAS" to the B737 would seem to be asking for embarrassment, and frankly, there is negligible display benefit to the crew that arises from the "EICAS". What off's in recent times would an EICAS have provided the vital input to stop the crew having a bad day? My 20,000 hours with various Boeing EICAS and Airbus's later ECAMs have never provided any information that actually altered the correct actioning of a QRH. The NNECL on the B777/787 is delightful but other than closed loop items, the iPad can do the same with a little less overhead in costing. The Synoptic is a nice touch to have, from a training point of view, as in stopping new drivers from balancing fuel tanks due to a bad sender, but otherwise, I am not sure that it ever changed the outcome of an issue. I would give parts of other peoples anatomies for real imaging of a cabin, as every smoke event I have had the misfortune to experience has been most entertaining, getting the information as to what is actually happening is interesting in a multi-lingual environment. The original lack of a cabin altitude alert separate to the T/O warning was probably not one of the better cost-saving exercises Boeing undertook, but even then, at X thousands of feet after takeoff, a "T/O warning horn" blaring in your ear may tend to make one look at the other logics that make it chatty.
Originally Posted by
tdracer
Essential systems are allowed single failures since it's assumed that crew can adequately detect and react to a malfunction (the entire MCAS fiasco goes back to that seriously flawed assumption). EICAS is "Critical" - DAL A. Going from a DAL C to a DAL A system increases the costs exponentially (both hardware and software) (which is probably why they wanted to make MCAS DAL C)
An EICAS would not have made a difference in the MCAS shambles, the crew had the controls in front of them, hands on those, and had two lots of trim position indicators showing the action of the trim, and wheels spinning around to give a hint. Not sure that anything else was going to be a bigger hint, except, for a very modest sum, an audio output giving the problem would be possible to add to any of these "plains", maybe make them as good as a Lancair...
The Airbus ECAM has some insidious characteristics to it, where there is a compounded/cascading defect, there can be a continuous rolling series of alerts and actions that make it difficult for the drivers to stay on top of the problem. Boeing's EICAS and the ECL-NNML do handle that condition with much more grace and less frustration.
All in all, the most frustrating problem is not having a checklist on a screen, or on plastic or in a book, (or on a boat, or with a goat, or with green eggs and ham, Sam..) it is actually getting a crew to start actioning what they train to do in the simulator routinely, and then in the real world, the crews ad-lib for various reasons. The justifications are depressing to listen to when there is the subsequent washup, yet that is where we seem to have ended up as a group of operators.