Originally Posted by
Big Pistons Forever
There is a reason that the airliner fatal accident rate is a fraction of what it was 40 years ago. Alerting is a big part of that. For example how many lives has a GPWS and TCAS saved since their introduction? In principle no pilot should ever get into a position where it’s needed, in reality people screw up and these systems saved them. Yes the 737 has both but it is missing the integrated alerting system every other airliner in production has.
No system is perfect but there is a pretty good consensus on what alerting systems a modern airliner should have and the 737 is now the outlier. It is past time the 737 family is updated.
Granted, that is the case. The A320 is vastly more advanced in it's systems than the B737, and has had multiple disasters from the crew not understanding what is written in front of them on the ECAM. The B737 has had two spectacularly bad events from an undisclosed function. If the function wasn't going to be disclosed to the drivers, it is unlikely that any alerting function would be provided, that was the background reticence to disclosing the mod. Improved alerting is great, but doesn't stop the crews losing SA. I was frustrated by what TBC did on the Max, but it is still the case that had the crew been able to recognize the unwanted stab input, that would have been appropriately responded to as a stab [runaway] anomaly - if it isnt doing what we expect it to do, it's time to do our piloting magic stuff, and get back to flying.