Boeing overestimated pilots’ ability to handle misfires on 737 Max, NTSB says

The electric assist on the vertical trim can be turned off with the cut-off switches next to the trim wheels. MCAS itself can be turned off as well. With all the alarm bells and whistles going off the pilots became distracted and forgot to fly the plane. This is a hallmark of government and lawyer based safety sh*t in our society today. You have lawyered up warning labels and even alarms on everything. Think of your newish car and the half a dozen or more dummy lights, most of which don’t give any useful information, just make you wonder what is wrong when you forgot to tighten your gas cap enough.

I have two FAA people on one side of me and two more on the other side. What happened with this certification modification was standard FAA procedure.

The most critical flight instrument in general aviation aircraft is usually considered the airspeed indicator, yet few GA aircraft have more than one pitot tube. Systems that are not considered critical to flight do not typically have redundency. A system that can be turned off by the pilots and not missed other than an increased but manageable workload is not generally going to be required to have redundency. I do not know what your role in software design was when it came to working with the FAA but you seem to have a distorted view of the process.

Boeing has kept right on making 737 MAX aircraft. They seem confident that the FAA will re-certify it by the end of the year. And if they don't, a little typical Deep State-style Boeing political pressure on Elaine Chao and a firm reminder about what a closed 737 production line would do to the US economy and Trump's re-election chances are in the offing.

But the world's airlines are already starting to choose a different solution to the MCAS problem - the Airbus A321neo.

I don't think Boeing recovers from this without introducing a new 737-replacement aircraft type, as they had originally planned to do.

Excellent summary however

there is plenty of blame to go around

there were many contributing factors some

of which may never be fully known for certain.

I’ve developed software for over 30 years and

automation has it’s own set of challenges but

I completely agree that there is no substitute

for highly skilled / trained pilots at the helm

of any large airliner.

I completely agree that there is no substitute for highly skilled / trained pilots at the helm of any large airliner.

One of the points Juan has made in his excellent video series was that airline pilots are often almost completely insulated from the basics of flight these days. We know a married couple who are both test pilots for Boeing. They both got their training in the military, neither of them has ever flown or even ridden in a small general aviation aircraft. All of their experience is in aircraft that have incredible power and capabilities and have software systems that take care of much of the finer points of flying for them. They said that they could not fly out little planes without remedial training, I thought that they were joking when they said it. One of my brother-in-laws is a Colonel and squadron commander in the Air Force... I don't think he has ever been in a small plane either.

My brother is a captain for Southwest; he came through the civil aviation system where he started out as a flight instructor, then flew small commercial aircraft, then commuter turboprops, and then jet airliners.

So there are two basic categories of commercial pilots these days... military and non-military. One group has basically only flown airplanes with a lot of software assist. Some of the people in this thread have said that military pilots would be more capable of handling this type of software failure because they have been in more stressful situations than non-military trained pilots. This was either written by military people or non-pilots. One of Juan's primary points in his last MAX video was that a lot of current airline pilots don't have much experience with basic airmanship, and that this leaves them less prepared to actually handle this type of situation.

One of Juan's primary points in his last MAX video was that a lot of current airline pilots don't have much experience with basic airmanship, and that this leaves them less prepared to actually handle this type of situation.

Exactly!

I try to imagine a sailor / hang glider that

relies on highly sophisticated electronics to

effectively compete but has no ability

to sail or fly without them.

Skill, ability, talent and courage are essential

when faced with a life and death crises,

it's what saved the Gimley Glider, Flight 1549 and

probably countless other flights we've never heard of,

I don't particularly care where they get it but

the audacity it takes to put

inexperienced pilots with little or no basic flying skills

in the seats of any large passenger caring airplane

is simply inexcusable.

As a kid I started out jumping off of the roof of my grandmother’s house to get air time. We also constructed ramps out of dirt and wood at the bottom of hills to see how high and far we could “fly”. Then we constructed huge kites out of lumber and plastic sheeting to try and tow ourselves aloft behind the tractor. When I actually purchased my first hang glider at a garage sale, my parents were a little relieved that at least I had something that might have been designed by someone who knew what they were doing.

From hang gliders I graduated to a homemade powered ultralight airplane. It had CHT and EGT gauges for the single cylinder snowmobile engine but not even an airspeed indicator. Somehow I survived into adulthood and started flying general aviation aircraft and my little brother got into commercial flying. I don’t know that these early experiences had any value to him in his career. But I feel that I understand the wind and micro-weather phenomena like thermals, ridge lift and rotors at a gut level more than most other pilots.

And I have always loved the book, Stick and Rudder which communicates the basic mechanics of how everything fits together in flying better than any book before or after.

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