Posted on 09/27/2019 7:33:26 AM PDT by Yo-Yo
Federal safety investigators on Thursday said Boeing overestimated how well pilots could handle a flurry of alerts when things go wrong on its 737 Max planes, which have been grounded since March after two fatal crashes killed a total of 346 people.
The National Transportation Safety Board issued a series of recommendations for aircraft safety assessments, including factoring in human responses when things go awry, the first formal guidelines since the crashes.
A flight-control system designed to prevent the planes from stalling misfired on both crashed flights: a Lion Air 737 Max in Indonesia last October and an Ethiopian Airlines plane of the same type in March.
“We saw in these two accidents that the crews did not react in the ways Boeing and the FAA assumed they would,” said NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt. “Those assumptions were used in the design of the airplane and we have found a gap between the assumptions used to certify the MAX and the real-world experiences of these crews, where pilots were faced with multiple alarms and alerts at the same time.”
Those multiple alerts can increase pilot workloads, the NTSB warned.
Boeing based its safety assessment of the planes, which the Federal Aviation Administration approved, on those fast response times, the NTSB says.
The agency said Boeing should be required to factor in the effect of all flight deck alerts in its safety assessment of the 737 Max, and to include design changes or pilot training and procedures to minimize potential safety risks if pilots take actions inconsistent with what Boeing expects.
Boeing and the FAA are facing several investigations into the design and certification of the jets, Boeing’s best-selling aircraft ever.
“Safety is a core value for everyone at Boeing and the safety of our airplanes, our customers’ passengers and crews is always our top priority,” Boeing said in a statement. “We value the role of the NTSB in promoting aviation safety. We are committed to working with the FAA in reviewing the NTSB recommendations.”
The FAA said it welcomed the NTSB’s recommendations.
“The agency will carefully review these and all other recommendations as we continue our review of the proposed changes to the Boeing 737 MAX. The FAA is committed to a philosophy of continuous improvement,” it said in a statement. “The lessons learned from the investigations into the tragic accidents of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 will be a springboard to an even greater level of safety.”
Boeing has said it expects to submit its software fix and new pilot training materials for the 737 Max to the FAA in the coming weeks, in an effort to get the planes flying again, which it expects to do early in the fourth quarter. The manufacturer is hosting pilots from airlines including United and American to try the Max software changes in its simulator.
The FAA has said several times that it has no set timeline for allowing the planes to fly again.
Boeing shares were little changed in afternoon trading.
Boeing added the flight-control software, known as MCAS, to give the planes the feel of older 737 Max planes. Myriad computer systems are now at the center of a debate about the state of pilots’ skills as aircraft become more automated and complex. Pilot training varies around the world, with some of the strictest requirements in the U.S., where pilots need to have 1,500 hours of flying before they can work for a commercial airline, unless they have military or other specialized training. Airline pilots globally need at least of 240 hours of flight time, which includes flying in a simulator, under guidelines from the United Nations aviation agency, the International Civil Aviation Organization.
At the ICAO triennial meeting in Montreal this week, the U.S. delegation is urging international regulators to examine pilot training around the world.
“At a global level, if the potential for automation dependency and degradation of manual flight operations skills is not satisfactorily addressed in existing standards, there may be a high level of variation in the approach utilized by individual States regarding how associated risks may be addressed in regulation or guidance,” the U.S. delegation said in a paper it prepared for the meeting.
When the automation works, it works well and makes the aircraft easy to fly. When it doesn't, the skill of the pilots to 1) recognize that there is a problem, and 2) know how to mitigate the issue and manually fly the aircraft are paramount.
With the huge worldwide demand for pilots, it is inevitable that the quality and skillset of airline pilots are not as high as they once might have been.
In years past, airline pilots were retired military pilots, accustomed to high stress situations and quick decision making.
Today's cadre of airline pilots, especially in second-tier markets, are more likely to have started in light private aircraft, and worked their way up through commuter aircraft to larger passenger jets, with no prior military or other high-stress experience.
“with no prior military or other high-stress experience.”
That’s no even close to reality. That’s just your guess.
If you knew pilot training you wouldn’t have said such a silly thing.
Task saturation when failures start to cascade.
Lots of Airlines pay pilots trash too.
There’d be more skill in it if pilots made enough for enough skilled people to want to apply.
“If you knew pilot training you wouldn’t have said such a silly thing.”
You are familiar with third world standards?
So Boeing thinks that when all the stuff fails and twenty lights and a horn are blaring, that people can manually fix what the computer cannot?
How many mechanics can even fix a car while it’s running at speed?
“If you knew pilot training you wouldn’t have said such a silly thing.”
I train pilots. There is a huge drop in skill and attentiveness of pilots as you leave the Western world.
“Task saturation when failures start to cascade.”
In one crash the pilot was managing the aircraft but then turned control over to his inexperienced co-pilot and stuck his nose into the manuals.
“We saw in these two accidents that the crews did not react in the ways Boeing and the FAA assumed they would,” said NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt. “Those assumptions were used in the design of the airplane and we have found a gap between the assumptions used to certify the MAX and the real-world experiences of these crews, where pilots were faced with multiple alarms and alerts at the same time.”
...
They also assumed there would be competent pilots who could handle a sensor failure before the MCAS ever activated.
People should also understand that there is an intended adversarial relationship between the NTSB and the FAA. A lot of NTSB recommendations are never implemented.
Read this regarding the 29 year old Captain and PIC of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/business/ethiopian-airline-crash-school.html
Captain Getachew was remembered fondly. While most pilot cadets entered the academy after college, he was still in his teens when he was admitted immediately after high school, Captain Zeggeye said. The son of an Ethiopian father and a mother who lives in Nairobi, he flew the route between Addis Ababa and Nairobi “on a daily basis,” Captain Zeggeye said.
A flight-control system designed to prevent the planes from stalling misfired on both crashed flights: a Lion Air 737 Max in Indonesia last October and an Ethiopian Airlines plane of the same type in March.
...
The system didn’t misfire.
The system activated as designed. The root cause was a bad attitude sensor that the pilots failed to diagnose and bypass.
This is why I think Boeing may have to completely redesign the MCAS system—or redesign the wing itself.
“We saw in these two accidents that the crews did not react in the ways Boeing and the FAA assumed they would,”
Complete CYA BS on Boeing’s part.
The way you get crews to react properly is to train them. But they didn’t get training, because Boeing didn’t want it to be a cost factor for airlines considering the updated planes.
Profit trumps safety for Boeing. Assholes.
We need robot pilots. They don’t get flustered, and they don’t drink.
“Mistakes were made”
Its a design flaw with the center of balance of the new plane using the old flight control computers.
EE Times put their finger on the problem right away.
EE Times is written by engineers, for engineers.
What we need are aircraft that seek the sky, not the ground.
This bodes ill for all types of automatously controlled vehicles.
. . . And your level of expertise is?
What are your thoughts on this?
Read some stuff - Boeing was wrong in not informing of the problem. I spoke with a couple of Boeing test pilots who told me The B knew about the problem using only one attitude vane but that wasn’t all.
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