Change to airline pilot training

[brien23]

Don't blame Boeing and the 737 Max jets, the Department of Transportation's top watchdog will review how we train or lack of training commercial pilots. How commercial airline pilots are trained in the United States along with federal aviation requirements for training. The two fatal crashes involving Boeing 737 Max jets that killed more than 300 people, both of which drew scrutiny of the Federal Aviation Administration’s oversight and certification practices.

 

[Salty]

 

[Grum.Man]

Ahh yes let's keep blaming the pilots for failures of automation. The more we try to engineer the pilots out of the cockpit the less they will know what to do when that fails.

 

[Doc Holliday]

Don't blame Boeing and the 737 Max jets, the Department of Transportation's top watchdog will review how we train or lock of training commercial pilots. How commercial airline pilots are trained in the United States along with federal aviation requirements for training. The two fatal crashes involving Boeing 737 Max jets that killed more than 300 people, both of which drew scrutiny of the Federal Aviation Administration’s oversight and certification practices.

Let me point out the obvious. Both of those accidents happened with airlines operated by third world countries under their CAA’s authority. There were no accidents or incidents with US operators working under the FAA.

 

[brien23]

Let me point out the obvious. Both of those accidents happened with airlines operated by third world countries under their CAA’s authority. There were no accidents or incidents with US operators working under the FAA.

What does the obvious have to do with it remember Colgan air flight 3407 and what the FAA did to ATP .

 

[James331]

Ahh yes let's keep blaming the pilots for failures of automation. The more we try to engineer the pilots out of the cockpit the less they will know what to do when that fails.

Ofcourse it wasn’t the airplane the FAA rubber stamped it was those nasty pilots again!

What does the obvious have to do with it remember Colgan air flight 3407 and what the FAA did to ATP .

Yeah, as I recall it wouldn’t have changed anything on that crash.

The change it made in the industry was sheer dumb luck with supply and demand increasing pay and quality of life.

.... There were no accidents or incidents with US operators working under the FAA.

 

[Doc Holliday]

What does the obvious have to do with it remember Colgan air flight 3407 and what the FAA did to ATP .

You clearly don’t understand. Explain to us how a third world country, operating under their own CAA (not the FAA) can hold the FAA accountable for their training and standards?

 

[hindsight2020]

The change it made in the industry was sheer dumb luck with supply and demand increasing pay and quality of life.

Win's a win! Better lucky than good TC

 

[Tantalum]

I'll take "threads I don't understand" for $500 Alex


no really though, what's the point?
Boeing made a crappy system, and it was compounded by crappy training and crappy pilots

 

[PPC1052]

Boeing made a crappy system, and it was compounded by crappy training and crappy pilots

This is the pithiest and most accurate summary of the Max accidents I have read to date.

 

[Kenny Phillips]

Ahh yes let's keep blaming the pilots for failures of automation. The more we try to engineer the pilots out of the cockpit the less they will know what to do when that fails.

Since the pilots are there to take care of things when automation fails ... what else can you do? Remove all automation?
@Tantalum said it best: Boeing made a crappy system, and it was compounded by crappy training and crappy pilots.
I'd modify that by saying that Boeind made a system crappy.

 

[RyanB]

I'll take "threads I don't understand" for $500 Alex

Pretty much... just another edition of the weekly doom and gloom report.

 

[jordane93]

They’ve already implemented extended envelope training. We have do ground and sims. Things we cover are unreliable airspeed, high altitude/low altitude stalls, upset recovery, windshear escape maneuvers, etc. Not sure what else could have been done because from my understanding, most pilots and operators didn’t even know about MCAS.

 

[Greg Bockelman]

Not sure what else could have been done because from my understanding, most pilots and operators didn’t even know about MCAS.

Most? As far as I know, nobody outside Boeing had a clue that MCAS even existed.

 

[murphey]

I'll take "threads I don't understand" for $500 Alex


no really though, what's the point?
Boeing made a crappy system, and it was compounded by crappy training and crappy pilots

From the Washington Post last year
“[Rockwell ] Collins built the 737 Max flight-control computer and wrote the software code that contains MCAS, among other components of the plane.”

United Technologies bought Rockwell Collins...2018?

 

[James331]

You clearly don’t understand. Explain to us how a third world country, operating under their own CAA (not the FAA) can hold the FAA accountable for their training and standards?

Maybe because FAA rubber-stamped a plane that had major issues?

 

[Greg Bockelman]

I just got back from recurrent training. And as you can imagine, one of the training scenarios was an MCAS type event. Since there are no MAX simulators in existence, at least not where I work, it was “simulated”.

I used to think that an MCAS event wasn’t REALLY that big a deal. After all, it is just like a runaway trim scenario, right? Let me tell you, it might have certain similarities, but it is not. More likely than not, an MCAS event will be triggered by a malfunctioning alpha, or stall vane. What that does is trigger the stick shaker. So now you have the pitch down trim along its the noise and vibration of the stick shaker. It’s all very distracting.

I have a better appreciation for what those guys went through. I am better equipped now to handle it but all I have to say is “There but for the grace of God go I.”

 

[Spring Ford]

More likely than not, an MCAS event will be triggered by a malfunctioning alpha, or stall vane. What that does is trigger the stick shaker. So now you have the pitch down trim along its the noise and vibration of the stick shaker. It’s all very distracting.

As I understand it (not a jet pilot, just read a lot about MCAS) -

"trigger the stick shaker", yes - and unreliable airspeed flag and unreliable altitude flag and give you actual (modest) airspeed and altitude display errors. If AoA gage installed you will get an AoA disagree flag too (or was that the bit that they forgot to implement? - I can't remember).

I presume flags are on both sides and display errors on the side with the incorrect AoA sensor.

So, even more distracting.

 

[WDD]

So.....
Isn't the whole reason MCAS is needed is because they moved the larger engines forward to make them fit, with the consequence that it threw off the weight and thrust vs center of lift from what it used to be? I get that they want to keep things as similar as possible to avoid new training, certification, etc., but would all of this not be solved by biting the bullet and say it's different enough that it needs to be the 738, make the landing gear taller, pull the engines back a bit, etc.?

Is MCAS a band aid for dealing with the larger engines vs making structural changes?

 

[Tantalum]

The "MAX" absolutely needs to be it's own type.. this whole "scope creep" of tacking on different versions and keeping the same type gets pretty crazy. I posted this in another thread.. these two planes are NOT the same, the fact that they share a type is absurd. By this logic the Airbus A330 and A340 are just "MAX" versions of the A300.



The fact that something which will fight the pilot and potentially create a catastrophic nose down trim is pulling its data from ONE source is crazy
The fact that the the training (by some accounts) consisted of a half hour iPad powerpoint that didn't mention MCAS is bonkers
The fact that there are trained professional pilots who can't catch and react to a runaway trim situation is disgraceful


Also, what's with the half baked FBW..? if you are going to go FBW then do it right, I've never been an Airbus fanboy, but they nailed the commonality thing down right, and, at least looking at accident history, the FBW works quite well (the Air France guys couldn't fly pitch and power, and the airshow was an early version, the software was later corrected)

PS.. I am hoping the 777X fairs well, but it was born of the same company that gave us the MAX, the 767 tanker debacle, the disgraceful "Starliner" launch, and the massively delayed 787. No one really talks about either how the fuselage blew apart during the 777X wing testing

 

[hindsight2020]

So.....
Isn't the whole reason MCAS is needed is because they moved the larger engines forward to make them fit, with the consequence that it threw off the weight and thrust vs center of lift from what it used to be? I get that they want to keep things as similar as possible to avoid new training, certification, etc., but would all of this not be solved by biting the bullet and say it's different enough that it needs to be the 738, make the landing gear taller, pull the engines back a bit, etc.?

Is MCAS a band aid for dealing with the larger engines vs making structural changes?

Yes, you're walking right over the murder scene. Cheaping out was not the bug, it's was the feature. The entire economic premise behind the NGs (especially the dash 900s), and now the franken-powerplant mod we call the Max series, was precisely to attain the cost savings of no new type. In the case of the Max, it was specific to competing with the Airbus Neo series. Going with a new type would defeat the purpose, let alone the fact that none of the cost savings would be realized in a market that was already fielding the 320neo. So even if they had made the decision to go clean slate retroactively, they were already late to the party so airlines would just procure neos. So they are committed to doubling down as a sunk cost, and if people get hurt oh well.

Yes, MCAS is a bandaid to fix a dynamic stability problem introduced by the eccentric-placement of the engines relative to the control surface authority for that particular flight attitude regime. Not telling the rank and file about the shadow control inputs of MCAS is just the typical contempt a Wall St. speculator operation that merely happens to have airplane-making as a store front, has for his sucker customer. Boeing stopped being in the business of making airplanes a long time ago. Airplanes is just the front.

You really should see the stuff they put out on the defense side too. The service bulletins are FOUO so I can't post it on here, but some of the stuff I've had to deal with in their avionics integration work in the T-38C would make my wife consider it an overt and material threat to her husband's life, with no recourse of course given the nature of military service vice civil tort. Put simply, their software QA is garbage. It's sheer luck and a proactive stance to training and ORM that we don't mort more people in the military side while in IMC relying on these boxes. I've already said too much, I digress.

 

[nauga]

Also, what's with the half baked FBW..? if you are going to go FBW then do it right...

If you're referring to MCAS, you should probably understand the difference between stability augmentation and FBW flight controls. On one hand you lament the lack of technology and the cost of development, OTOH you appear to advocate wholesale abandonment of a functional flight control system to add a new one with the attendant development and certification costs.

Nauga,
who wishes he knew how to do his job as well as people who've never done it tell him it should be done

 

[Tantalum]

If you're referring to MCAS, you should probably understand the difference between stability augmentation and FBW flight controls.

that's why I said half baked. From what we've been told MCAS was a way to make the plane, in certain flight envelopes, handle a certain way so as to minimize, or eliminate, additional pilot training. Not FBW in the sense of the yoke/joystick being hooked up to rheostats and computers that then relay and send signals, but it is using software to "augment" the way the plane flies. It's half baked because it's taking its signal from one source, there was virtually no training on it, and, as the later trove of emails and text messages revealed, people within the company, not just your every day Debbie's, but the pilots themselves, were saying it was developed "by clowns" and supervised by monkeys.. I think it's fair to say the max flight control is half baked

On one hand you lament the lack of technology and the cost of development, OTOH you appear to advocate wholesale abandonment of a functional flight control system to add a new one with the attendant development and certification costs.

I wouldn't call the flight control system of the MAX functional, since it did result in two crashes killing 346 people within only a few months. It might be functional if there was an adequate training and sim work on how to handle when the system goes kaput, but that didn't take place.. so as it stands, in its "virgin" state, at least two different flight crews, who's rodeo being first this was not, failed fly the plane safely with its flight control system

who wishes he knew how to do his job as well as people who've never done it tell him it should be done

I don't believe (though I could be wrong) that either of us worked on the flight control software for the MAX, and it doesn't take a musician to hear when something is sang or played off key, or to be a chef to know when something tastes bad. Boeing had almost 80 billion in revenue in 2019, surely having two AoAs, or different software, or at least few hours of sim work or better training / documentation, to at least demonstrate "hey if this happens here is what you do" is not that much to ask


--I'm not excusing the pilots either, but that's a whole different thread, the evolution of a cultural shift from aviators and pilots who stay ahead of the plane and are in control of their metal sky beasts, to instead a world where you send a student to the US on a contract, then take them back home and teach them wrote memorization items basically turning them into FMS jockies. We just had a poster here recently who was nervous because his short field landing technique needed work but he wasn't allowed to log more training time, and was basically looking for "off the books" training. Crazy.

 

[nauga]

that's why I said half baked...

What you said was, "Also, what's with the half baked FBW..? if you are going to go FBW then do it right..." Stability augmentation is not "half baked" FBW any more than electric trim or a yaw damper in a GA airplane is half-baked FBW. Proposing 'fully-baked' FBW as a solution to a stability augmentation issue is naive. If you're going to determine causes and propose solutions you should at least understand the scope of the problem.

Nauga,
who knows...?

 

[Larry in TN]

From what we've been told MCAS was a way to make the plane, in certain flight envelopes, handle a certain way so as to minimize, or eliminate, additional pilot training.

No. The 737-8 and 737-9 (both MAX) couldn't be certified without MCAS, even as a new type.

At very high angles-of-attack, the lift created from the larger, farther forward engine nacelles produced too much nose-up pitching moment which prevented the elevator forces from increases sufficiently, as certification requires, as AoA increases. MCAS was designed to introduce a nose-down bias through the introduction of nose-down stabilizer trim.

The longer 737-10 MAX, currently in certification, is not expected to require MCAS due to its longer length which negates the effect of the lift from the nacelles. I'm not sure if the 737-7 MAX will have MCAS.

 

[denverpilot]

What does the obvious have to do with it remember Colgan air flight 3407 and what the FAA did to ATP .

FWIW, Congress forced that change after extensive lobbying by very emotional people.

FAA really wasn’t the driving factor in the ATP changes.

 

[IK04]

From the Washington Post last year
“[Rockwell ] Collins built the 737 Max flight-control computer and wrote the software code that contains MCAS, among other components of the plane.”

United Technologies bought Rockwell Collins...2018?

Not really important to the discussion... Collins delivered what they were paid for. They have a cookie cutter FMS version (not the FCC) that shares code with several other platforms, including my helicopter! That software development is expensive and code is reused and patched together to meet the customer's demands.

When UTC bought them out, there was no change, except for the color of the letterhead and the paint stripes on the walls.

Raytheon owns them now, so they'll have to change their shirts again. They'll still be using the same code from way back when...

 

[N1120A]

Let me point out the obvious. Both of those accidents happened with airlines operated by third world countries under their CAA’s authority. There were no accidents or incidents with US operators working under the FAA.

I'll take "threads I don't understand" for $500 Alex


no really though, what's the point?
Boeing made a crappy system, and it was compounded by crappy training and crappy pilots

If it was only Lion Air, I might agree here. Ethiopian Airlines is one of the safest airlines in the world and a leader in flight training. Those pilots knew how to fly airplanes, and knew how to fly them without automation (their operation involves a lot of rather unique challenges, including flying into airports where you have to operate VFR hand flying only due to terrain and other conditions).

MCAS is a joke, plain and simple.

 

[Tantalum]

MCAS is a joke, plain and simple.

Yep. Totally half a$$ and disappointingly poor system, especially for Being. The emails and text messages that were released were awful

 

[N1120A]

Yep. Totally half a$$ and disappointingly poor system, especially for Being. The emails and text messages that were released were awful

There was no reason for it either. The MAX behaves more than enough like a 737NG to carry over the type rating.

 

[Doc Holliday]

If it was only Lion Air, I might agree here. Ethiopian Airlines is one of the safest airlines in the world and a leader in flight training. Those pilots knew how to fly airplanes, and knew how to fly them without automation (their operation involves a lot of rather unique challenges, including flying into airports where you have to operate VFR hand flying only due to terrain and other conditions).

MCAS is a joke, plain and simple.

According to the Aviation Safety Network records for Ethiopian Airlines, the airline has had 61 accidents and incidents since 1965, plus six more for Ethiopian Air Lines, the airline's former name. As of March 2019, these occurrences resulted in 494 deaths. On 10 March 2019, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a 4-month-old Boeing 737 MAX 8, crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa en route to Nairobi, killing all 157 people, from more than 30 different nations. on board. Prior to the 2019 accident, a hijacking was the carrier's deadliest accident, when an aircraft crashed into the Indian Ocean due to fuel starvation in 1996. The third-deadliest accident occurred in 2010, when an aircraft crashed into the Mediterranean Sea shortly after it departed Beirut–Rafic Hariri International Airport, killing all 90 people on board. The crash of a Boeing 737-200 in 1988 led to 35 fatalities and ranks as the fourth most deadly accident experienced by the company. Despite these , Ethiopian Airlines obtains a great safety record, operating from 74 years.

Yea, only 67 accidents and incidents, and only 494 deaths.

 

[Bell206]

Ethiopian Airlines is ... a leader in flight training.

I guess if you believe allowing a 361 hr (total) pilot, who passed his commercial rating several months earlier, to sit as SIC in their front-line MAX aircraft as indicative of a "leader" in flight training then you might be correct. However, there are a number of highly experienced pilots, IPs, etc. who have publicly stated the opposite. What's not making the headlines is that in the aftermath of these 2 MAX accidents, every national CAA, to include the ICAO, has quietly begun investigating national/international training requirements/minimums and are comparing them to US, UK, and similar countries for potential changes in these requirements. So if training was not a major factor in these accidents, why the big push to change the current training requirements???

The MAX behaves more than enough like a 737NG to carry over the type rating.

That was part of the whole intent of the MCAS install, to make the MAX "act" or "feel" control-wise the same as earlier models. The issue was the MAX's flight control force feedback was not linear at the extreme upper edges of the flight envelope as required by Part 25. Nothing more. So in order to remain on the same TC and type rating (with differences training) the MCAS was installed.