An important part of that story is that the pilots were overwhelmed by the unexpected circumstances so much so as to start to panic. Also, they seem to have been trained (or pressured?) to 'press on regardless' rather than to turn back or divert...

The pilots weren't trained at all! That's the first point you should have come away with. Training is not standing in the back of the simulator knowing in advance what "emergency" is going to be simulated and watching others go through the checklist, the correct one already in their lap because they also know which "emergency" is going to be simulated. This is not training this is rote memorization. If anything isn't exactly like what was memorized they have no clue and everyone dies. Training is getting something you don't expect tossed at you and having to figure it out, time and time again. If you can't do that you don't belong in the cockpit.

The key comments, which only a pilot might pick up on, were where airmanship was discussed. Things like sailplanes and aerobatics. The flight realm you will find yourself in when things break. Being there intentionally as part of your training is a must. That is the only way you can learn what it feels like and how to get back to straight and level. If you have done it before you will stay calm cool and collected and no panic. I think it is time to require some sailplane and aerobatic training before you can get an ATP. Does wonders for basic airmanship.

[interjection] both crews made the same idiot mistake of leaving the throttles firewalled with the overspeed warning screaming at them. They hadn't rote memorized it, so panic and ignore everything else. They did exactly what they memorized, which was nothing. Result crash. 100% predictable.

Maybe Boeing needs to placard their aircraft "Only REAL pilots permitted to operate."

Flying: Hours of sheer boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.

Microsoft president: Don't move fast and break things

Some US tech firms have gained a reputation for being willing to launch products before it is clear whether they could be damaging to society.

But Microsoft's president, Brad Smith, says that it is not good enough for such companies to absolve themselves of responsibility and say that it is solely up to lawmakers to decide what is right and wrong.

Mr Smith's book - Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age - aims to serve as a wake-up call to the industry.

Maybe he could send a copy to his friends at Boeing. Or a truckload.

An important part of that story is that the pilots were overwhelmed by the unexpected circumstances so much so as to start to panic. Also, they seem to have been trained (or pressured?) to 'press on regardless' rather than to turn back or divert...

The pilots weren't trained at all! That's the first point you should have come away with. Training is not standing in the back of the simulator knowing in advance what "emergency" is going to be simulated and watching others go through the checklist, the correct one already in their lap because they also know which "emergency" is going to be simulated. This is not training this is rote memorization. If anything isn't exactly like what was memorized they have no clue and everyone dies. Training is getting something you don't expect tossed at you and having to figure it out, time and time again. If you can't do that you don't belong in the cockpit.

The key comments, which only a pilot might pick up on, were where airmanship was discussed. Things like sailplanes and aerobatics. The flight realm you will find yourself in when things break. Being there intentionally as part of your training is a must. That is the only way you can learn what it feels like and how to get back to straight and level. If you have done it before you will stay calm cool and collected and no panic. I think it is time to require some sailplane and aerobatic training before you can get an ATP. Does wonders for basic airmanship.

[interjection] both crews made the same idiot mistake of leaving the throttles firewalled with the overspeed warning screaming at them. They hadn't rote memorized it, so panic and ignore everything else. They did exactly what they memorized, which was nothing. Result crash. 100% predictable.

Maybe Boeing needs to placard their aircraft "Only REAL pilots permitted to operate."

Flying: Hours of sheer boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.

Good post, I agree with that 100%.

The pilots weren't trained at all!

They were but the MCAS was not a memory item. Just an app to the pilot's iPhone.
Memory Items Boeing 737 NG/MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjWtt7C56I0

The pilots weren't trained at all!

They were but the MCAS was not a memory item. Just an app to the pilots iPhone.
Memory Items Boeing 737 NG/MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjWtt7C56I0

Define "Pilot". I don't think that many of those that fly commercial aircraft have the "Airmanship" skills to be defined as a pilot.

“Airmanship” is an anachronistic word, but it is applied without prejudice to women as well as men. Its full meaning is difficult to convey. It includes a visceral sense of navigation, an operational understanding of weather and weather information, the ability to form mental maps of traffic flows, fluency in the nuance of radio communications and, especially, a deep appreciation for the interplay between energy, inertia and wings. Airplanes are living things. The best pilots do not sit in cockpits so much as strap them on. The United States Navy manages to instill a sense of this in its fledgling fighter pilots by ramming them through rigorous classroom instruction and then requiring them to fly at bank angles without limits, including upside down. The same cannot be expected of airline pilots who never fly solo and whose entire experience consists of catering to passengers who flinch in mild turbulence, refer to “air pockets” in cocktail conversation and think they are near death if bank angles exceed 30 degrees. The problem exists for many American and European pilots, too. Unless they make extraordinary efforts — for instance, going out to fly aerobatics, fly sailplanes or wander among the airstrips of backcountry Idaho — they may never develop true airmanship no matter the length of their careers. The worst of them are intimidated by their airplanes and remain so until they retire or die. It is unfortunate that those who die in cockpits tend to take their passengers with them.

Well most pilots are trained and qualified and have airmanship.
Can Mentour Pilot, Petter Hörnfeldt, Airline training captain, simulator instructor and training manager in a major European airline and have more than 15 years of experience within the airline industry, Boeing 737-800 still fly?!
Lets find out:)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzXMyEaz4j4
However shit happens sometimes unfortunately...

Well most pilots are trained and qualified and have airmanship.
Can Mentour Pilot, Petter Hörnfeldt, Airline training captain, simulator instructor and training manager in a major European airline and have more than 15 years of experience within the airline industry, Boeing 737-800 still fly?!
Lets find out:)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzXMyEaz4j4
However shit happens sometimes unfortunately...

Assembly line to make pilots. Predictable result, plane crashes.

This spring, I drove an hour west of the Jakarta airport to a compound known as Lion City. There, 2,500 flight attendants live in dormitories and batches of pilot recruits sit through up to six months of initial ground school before moving on to four to five months of flight training in Cessna 172s, followed by guaranteed jobs as co-pilots for the Lion Air Group. The pedagogical approach is that of a production line, with no accommodation for creativity or the unexpected. The tuition is $60,000. About 150 to 200 students pass through every year. The completion rate for the flight training is an astonishing 95 percent. When I asked how the completion rate could be so high, the head of training explained that it is because of aptitude testing at the start. For instance, applicants must have graduated from high school. In other words, when it comes to predicting the competence of its pilots, Lion Air has achieved the clairvoyance that has long eluded Boeing and Airbus, both of which have spent decades in that pursuit without finding good answers.

This report, if true is rather worrying. Things to note: this is a US airline, not one based in Africa or the Far East, the pilot had a long career history as a pilot, he was not comfortable with the training he had received, he was denied additional training, he was reprimanded for asking for additional training.
https://qz.com/1584233/boeing-737-max-what-happened-when-one-us-pilot-asked-for-more-training/

The reported responses to the simple question posed by the reporter "Did any of your pilots ask for more training than the (mandatory) video/ipod?" is very enlightening, and evasive - none actually appear to have answered that question, but appear to have responded to very different questions.

(It is also worth noting that the report repeats the claim that MCAS is an "anti-stall" system, whereas Boeing cal it a "pilot aid" - subtle but critical difference in terminology)

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Airmanship. I think that relates to the philosophic basis of education in the different geographical regions, or in the different business models. A difference between 'memorising' and 'understanding'.

I think I'm seeing something similar in the technical areas of these message boards. There's a lot of 'use this app', 'use this command line', 'use this TLA'. I've just written this: it feels qualitatively different.

It only gets worse. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-24/faa-misled-congress-on-its-737-max-inspectors-u-s-probe-finds

It only gets worse. FAA Misled Congress on Its 737 Max Inspectors...

Thanks for that. Yes, that is yet more depressing and to my mind, deadly negligent also.

Another piece to the story of the bias of the FAA 'motivations' is shown up here:


FAA Aims for Detente at Summit on Boeing 737 Max’s Future

... officials privately have been discussing whether a critical disagreement over the jet’s architecture could be resolved [sometime (never?)] after it resumes commercial flight...

... roiled the aviation world by signaling during a Sept. 3 address that [EASA] didn’t intend to rely on the FAA, the lead agency for the U.S.-built Max. He also spelled out specific concerns with Boeing’s crew procedures and training and “integrity issues” with the angle-of-attack system. Erroneous readings from a single sensor triggered flight-control software that forced the plane’s nose down until pilots lost control in both crashes.

Boeing has redesigned the flight control system to compare inputs from both AOA sensors. If the sensors disagree ... the so-called MCAS system won’t activate and an indicator on the flight deck display will alert the pilots.

By requiring Boeing to add an additional sensor to its jets, or Max pilots to undergo full flight simulator training before climbing back into the cockpit, EASA would probably delay the jet’s return to Europe until mid-2020...

“Probably one of these things will come through, in a worst-case, both,” Michaels said in an interview. Even if neither measure is enacted, “EASA is not going to come right after the FAA in my opinion and rubber stamp its finding.”...



My uneducated random personal interpretation from reading that is that the FAA is going along with the 'Boeing cheap and incomplete option' to take the shortcut of only using two AoA sensors and yet still not training the pilots to survive a runaway or otherwise failed MCAS! Whereas quite rightly and thoroughly, EASA are insisting on fully triple redundant AoA sensors and upon fully training the pilots.

All a game of profits vs lives?...



That puts my personal no-fly Boeing up to two years proven flight and uneventful news first.

All in our only one world,
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

WaPo - NTSB cites competing pilot warnings and flawed safety assumptions on Boeing 737 Max

After an automated feature on a Boeing 737 Max failed in the skies above Ethiopia in March, repeatedly forcing the plane’s nose downward, the pilots were bombarded with a cacophony of alarms that shook, clacked and lit up throughout the cockpit.

Boeing did not sufficiently consider the effect that such a barrage would have on those flying the plane when it designed the Max, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, which released its first wave of recommendations Thursday in response to the crash in Ethiopia and one in Indonesia under similar circumstances in October.

The Federal Aviation Administration should require Boeing to make a more rigorous analysis of how its warning systems might overwhelm pilots, the NTSB said. The safety board also said the same problem could affect other passenger planes beyond the Max, and recommended that the FAA address such shortcomings broadly.

Alternative site - San Diego Union Tribune - Safety board: Boeing should reconsider pilots’ response time

Sadly it would appear that the lesson from Three Mile Island and many more in other industries, where operators were swamped with multiple potentially conflicting alarms have been properly considered.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Sadly it would appear that the lesson from Three Mile Island and many more in other industries, where operators were swamped with multiple potentially conflicting alarms have been properly considered.

Yep. Assume some level of competence in the operators but the user to save costs (fiduciary duty to the shareholder) won't spend the money on competent operators to run it. We all know how ass-u-me is spelled.

Sadly it would appear that the lesson from Three Mile Island and many more in other industries, where operators were swamped with multiple potentially conflicting alarms have been properly considered.

Yep. Assume some level of competence in the operators but the user to save costs (fiduciary duty to the shareholder) won't spend the money on competent operators to run it. We all know how ass-u-me is spelled.

We've talked about fiduciary duty before. Yes, Milton Friedman's version of economics was alive and well when TMI2 received its operating license on February 8, 1978 - with independent evaluation of the staffing levels and skills presumably forming part of that license. But surely even the dumbest corporate board would have realised that an operating lifetime of three months (from December 30, 1978 to March 28, 1979) didn't represent an efficient shareholder return on capital? If not before the accident, then certainly on March 29 and forevermore.

Dates from wikipedia.

You miss the point - if there are too many alarms sounding off it can be very hard even for the best, most experienced, operator to get things right if they haven't been trained to correctly identify the actual failure that is being reported.
It is a real "art" sorting out the correct set of alarms and notifications to present in any situation - I spent most of this morning in a meeting where we were going through one failure and establishing the "correct" sequence of alarms and notifications, and it was quite enlightening to listen to the views of the design engineer, the operator, the human factors engineer, the safety engineer, the maintainer, the owner and two of us monitoring the compliance of the suggestions with the huge number of regulations....

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

You miss the point - if there are too many alarms sounding off it can be very hard even for the best, most experienced, operator to get things right if they haven't been trained to correctly identify the actual failure that is being reported.

If the training consists of rote memorization, as was the case with the two flight crews, then having even two alarms at the same time is beyond their ability. Experience is knowing which alarms are high priority and which can be ignored. Competence is knowing which low priority indication sorts out what the real issue is. Mastery is not needing the alarms at all.

It is a real "art" sorting out the correct set of alarms and notifications to present in any situation - I spent most of this morning in a meeting where we were going through one failure and establishing the "correct" sequence of alarms and notifications, and it was quite enlightening to listen to the views of the design engineer, the operator, the human factors engineer, the safety engineer, the maintainer, the owner and two of us monitoring the compliance of the suggestions with the huge number of regulations....

I'm sure. Not sending people down a false path is hard. Not everyone has the same thought process and different people will see the same unknown situation as being different until additional details come into view. Frequently because of past experiences and what it was last time.

Yup
Who provided the inadequate training material?
Boeing
Who designed the alarms and notifications?
Boeing
Who apparently didn't properly assess the human factors of all these alarms and notifications?
Boeing
Who said these actions were "fit for purpose"?
FAA, and then the rest of the world's aviation authorities, acting under the "country of origin knows best" assumption. (Side comment - it would appear that some national aviation authorities are questioning the wisdom of this approach and so many perform their own assessments of what they consider to be "critical" functions and systems.)

One reason for having so many people in the meeting today was to get as many views on the subject as possible. There are a number of these studies on individual faults, then some on anticipated combinations of faults (this list has been developed by the regulator and are based on real failure data).

Past experience is only "good" when the system being studied is sufficiently similar to the system being studied, and with "new" or "novel" systems experience can actually cloud the situation - all too often a simple fault has escalated due to an experienced operator not realising that the current situation isn't quite the same as those that have built that experience (and sometimes the "new kid" sees that difference because both the "norm" and the "new" are new to them so they take that split second to think).

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Yup
Who provided the inadequate training material?

CFI name(s) unknown.

Come on, since they put electrically operated trim on aircraft, pilots should have been being trained on how to notice a runaway and what to do -- disable it. Does it matter how it is being activated, short or MCAS? Nope. Fix is the same, disable it.

The problem here is that non-US pilots are taught by rote. You did see that the Lion Air flight school went from a single engine Cessna basic trainer to a 737MAX in one step. Didn't even have to take up a twin engine prop job or a small corporate biz jet in between. If that is going to be the level of pilot, then better to simply remove the cockpit all together and fly by computer. It would be safer.