737 MAX Pilots need simulator training - Sullenberger

[crazytown]

Sullenberger's experience in a 737 MAX simulator made him see how pilots ran out of time

Washington (CNN)The pilot who orchestrated the dramatic plane landing in the Hudson River 10 years ago told a congressional panel Wednesday that he can see how crews would have struggled during the recent Boeing 737 MAX crashes after he spent time in a simulator running recreations of the doomed flights.

(snip)"I recently experienced all these warnings in a 737 MAX flight simulator during recreations of the accident flights. Even knowing what was going to happen, I could see how crews could have run out of time before they could have solved the problems. Prior to these accidents, I think it is unlikely that any US airline pilots were confronted with this scenario in simulator training," Sullenberger said.

(snip)"We must make sure that everyone who occupies a pilot seat is fully armed with the information, knowledge, training, skill and judgment to be able to be the absolute master of the aircraft and all its component systems and of the situations simultaneously and continuously throughout the flight," he said.

Pilots need physical, firsthand experience to be prepared for emergencies, Sullenberger said. "Reading about it on an iPad is not even close to sufficient," he said.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/19/politics/chesley-sullenberger-boeing-737-max-scenario/index.html

[Sherman A1]

1. Better idea

Send these so called aircraft to the scrap yard.

[crazytown]

2. I will not fly on one.

[Sherman A1]

3. I hope no one needs to

Ever.

[Blue_Tires]

5. That's just throwing the baby out with the bathwater

As long as orders remain on the books, Boeing is going to keep assembling them...

[Sherman A1]

7. The changes to the engine mount and center of gravity

Requiring a software patch to compensate suggest otherwise.

[Blue_Tires]

9. Okay, and that's what engineers are for...

Other airframes across the course of not-too-distant history have had design faults that resulted in major loss of life and none of their production lines were shut down and shitcanned... Just sayin'

[Sherman A1]

11. The 737 design has had a long life

and it is in my opinion time to move on to new more efficient and better designs. One of Boeings goals as I understand it to be in using this older design was to cut on the training (and expense) needed for pilot transition as it was the same aircraft they already were flying. So the certification process of the airframe and the training would be less expensive for both themselves and their customers. Great plan except it really wasn't the same aircraft design with the changed center of gravity (CG) and the new software to fix the control issues stemming from the changed CG. There is also the addition of a fly by wire control system melded onto a design of one that used cables to move the control surfaces to my understanding.

The 737 design dates from the 1960s and while a good one is pretty long in the tooth.

[Blue_Tires]

13. Okay, that I can agree with

The B737 for all its brilliant history is CLEARLY on the last paragraph of the last page of its storied service life. There are no evolution/development options left after the MAX and Boeing is going to have to bite the bullet and finally build a new replacement from the ground-up...

[msongs]

4. so why not take off manually and skip auto-crash-pilot? nt

[Blue_Tires]

6. The problem is there are precious few MAX simulators...

[customerserviceguy]

8. Sounds like a problem

that can be remedied if enough money is spent on it. A lot of problems are not solved so easily.

[RockRaven]

10. This entire problem stems from Boeing and the airlines trying to scam the FAA rules... with FAA help

of course.

They significantly changed the flight characteristics of the 737 when they introduced the 737 MAX. These changes were necessary to accommodate the larger diameter of newer, more fuel efficient engines on the old airframe -- the goal of the redesign was to have an airplane with these engines which was still considered a 737, and not a new aircraft, by the FAA.

Airlines' major on-going costs are fuel and wages, so they want to minimize fuel usage and non-productive man hours (which includes training, especially the very significant time necessary to get certified on a new aircraft type). If Boeing had come out with a new aircraft, call it the Seven-Eleventy-Seven, all of the pilots would have to undergo a much more intensive training regime than for an "upgraded" 737. The airlines want more fuel efficiency, but if those cost savings are just going to get eaten up by non-productive training for hundreds/thousands of pilots... maybe they won't buy those new planes after all.

There is no reason Boeing needed to try to shoehorn these engines onto this airframe in a way which changes how the airplane flies so much that they then needed to add automated systems to deal with the consequences... except that they thought they'd make more money doing it that way then designing a new aircraft which takes the size of those engines into consideration from the beginning of the design process.

This is the critical/original sin: this airplane is much more dangerous than it needs to be because Boeing tried to scam the system by massively changing how the airplane functions while minimizing how different this "upgrade" is from previous versions so they could claim it was the same aircraft and spare their airline customers the cost of getting all of their pilots certified on a new aircraft type. In doing so they added an automated system, reduced the likelihood that pilots would be properly trained on how to use it, and charged extra for an optional redundant sensor for said system, thus ensuring that if the single sensor malfunctioned, the plane would try to fly itself into the ground.

This is a story of corporate greed, corporate malfeasance, and regulatory capture/enabling.

[Traffic Interruptus]

12. Loss of a plane or two is also part of the calculation, they take everything into account

[Sherman A1]

14. Precisely

A very concise explanation of what I was pointing out very poorly above.