In another era, a company I worked for hired a former Boeing Instructor Pilot who had been involved in the original Boeing 737 design in 1967. In fact his signature appears on the original Boeing 737 Flight crew Training Manual.
He accompanied the first 737 delivery flight to the operator's island base and for the next few weeks observed many line flights. Soon after he arrived he noticed that the chief pilot at the time had set about to change the original Boeing checklist by adding several more items. Asked why he had made the changes, the chief pilot said he felt some items were important and which he believed should have been included in the original Boeing design planning. They were minor additions but nevertheless made for extra checklist reading.
The Boeing instructor pilot disagreed with the chief pilot's reasons for adding extra items to the Before Start Checks. He said when the FAA approved the B737 operation for a two pilot operation, the number of physical hand movements by each crew member and also eye movements, were limited to a certain figure - otherwise a flight engineer would have to be included as must be part of the crew. The Boeing 727 was one example of the carriage of a flight engineer. Which is why Boeing automated some systems in the 737 to reduce pilot checklist work load. The pressurisation system and seat belts function for example.
Also Boeing, when designing the checklist items, took into account experience from previous accident and incident reports, where faulty checklist design was found to be a contributory factor. The additional items that the chief pilot thought would a be a good idea based upon previous aircraft he had trained on, exceeded the Boeing/FAA limit for a two pilot operation. The Boeing instructor pilot was right and said in good humour that the company should ground its aircraft until the checklists met the FAA criteria.
In some GA flying schools, it is common to see lengthy and superfluous checklists designed by various CFI's that do nothing for flight safety but that are intended to be used as a cheat-sheet or aide-memoir for student pilots by teaching them what comes next and thus fly by numbers. In turn, some of these students eventually become new flying instructors with minimal flying experience and the cycle repeats itself. There is something to be said for learning from corporate history.
Last edited by Centaurus; 6th Mar 2015 at 06:23.