It would be ironic if the lack of 737-MAX category for reports is why these reports never made it to the people who needed to see them, which caused the issue to go unnoticed.
"I had my first flight on the Max [to] ZZZ1. We found out we were scheduled to fly the aircraft on the way to the airport in the limo. We had a little time [to] review the essentials in the car. Otherwise we would have walked onto the plane cold.My post flight evaluation is that we lacked the knowledge to operate the aircraft in all weather and aircraft states safely.
The instrumentation is completely different - My scan was degraded, slow and labored having had no experience w/ the new ND (Navigation Display) and ADI (Attitude Director Indicator) presentations/format or functions (manipulation between the screens and systems pages were not provided in training materials. If they were, I had no recollection of that material).
We were unable to navigate to systems pages and lacked the knowledge of what systems information was available to us in the different phases of flight. Our weather radar competency was inadequate to safely navigate significant weather on that dark and stormy night. These are just a few issues that were not addressed in our training.
I recommend the following to help crews w/ their introductory flight on the Max:Email notification the day before the flight (the email should include: Links - Training Video, PSOB and QRG and all relevant updates/FAQ's)SME (Subject Matter Expert) Observer - the role of the SME is to introduce systems navigation, display management, answer general questions and provide standardized best practices to the next generation aircraft.Additionally, the SME will collect de-identified data to provide to the training department for analysis and dissemination to the line pilots regarding FAQs and know systems differences as well best practices in fly the new model aircraft."
[EDIT] Fixed ACN Number
https://titan-server.arc.nasa.gov/ASRSPublicQueryWizard/Quer...
I'd assume that when the 777's came out even pilots with experience on the 767 and other Boeing planes were still given ample training beforehand. The minor difference in the Max's model name disguises the seemingly large difference in their operation.
The determination to shoehorn what aerodynamically kind of is a new type of plane into the 737's type rating seems likely to be the root cause of these deaths.
Given that investigation in both accidents is still ongoing and all we know is wild speculation your conclusion is premature even though it finally may turn out to be true.
(Also, I don't agree that we only know "wild speculation" about the Lion Air crash. The investigators have told us much about the proximate cause of the crash, even though their final investigation is not yet complete.)
There may or may not be something inherently problematic about the way the MCAS works, but more thorough training would likely have lowered the chance of these accidents happening - having the same type rating was one of the root causes for the lacking training
It's a damning indictment of Boeing, and whichever authorities let them get away with it, that they pushed through an aircraft with a different pilot UI/UX knowing that pilots would then be under trained when using it: like someone said we train baristas better.
I've driven minibuses before and always ensure to get an hour of driving a new model before taking passengers.
That would seem to fall directly on the operator / carrier.
Boeing takes responsibility if the training manuals were not comprehensive. Aviation authorities take responsibility if they under-mandated training. But ultimately neither know a given carrier's scheduling and pilot allocation.
If the carrier was told by Boeing and the FAA that no additional training was needed, why would they use any different procedure.
At some point this falls back on nannyism. Either you have a functional company, where your employees are empowered to communicate internally, and your company does something about it... or you don't.
Boeing's job is to engineer the billion things required to keep an airplane flying. The government's job is to validate Boeing performed due diligence and mandate what training is required to the carriers. The carriers have a job too.
I wouldn't be surprised if Boeing pushed hard to have it same type certified. Why wouldn't they? Ultimately, regulatory agencies agreed. Maybe that was correct, maybe not.
But absolving the pilots' direct parent company of responsibility is bullshit. Aerospace is a different industry, but it's not that different vis what a healthy, functioning company does.
Not that 90 minutes on a tablet constitutes a reasonable level of training though.
It's likely that people rewrote their memories of the event. It's also likely that the MCAS induced stresses on the plane caused a turbine flameout.
It wouldn't even be surprising if the aerodymanic stress had caused a breakup, though that doesn't seem to have happened judging by the crater.
Ultimately Boeing and the airlines share responsibility for ensuring the training is adequate, thats why many airlines have lots of training that goes above and beyond what Boeing supplies.
Why would boeings shuffle around such critical human+machine interfaces?
That model name would’ve been worse. The 737-800 is very commonly abbreviated to 738 in the industry (739 being 737-900, 744 being the 747-400, etc).
(Yes, that sorta stuff annoys me ;) e.g. people talking about v2.04 of $project, when they really mean v0.204 - sure, I get it, but at some point the searchability for issues on the internet is going to be screwed!)
Maybe that’s just me
However, Boeing seems to have marketed this plane under the regulatory fiction that it was the same plane as the 737, and that therefore no retraining was needed.
Are these changes not noticeable until you're in the air or should pilots have been refusing to take off in a plane they're not familiar with?
I'm not familiar with the plane and I'm not a pilot, but from reading the report it sounds like they were able to do the checks OK – but that took time.
It also sounds like the instrumentation displays on the plane very helpfully have modes and some kind of menu system. The references to stages of flight make it sound like these modes become available dynamically. So it seems quite probable that it isn't possible to actually navigate the screens in the air in the same way as on the ground.
Compare the 737 MAX8 cockpit [0] with the 737-800 cockpit [1] and the 737-300 cockpit [2]. Then consider that all of these planes are under the same type rating [3] – so a pilot trained on one of them is good for all of them.
There's also a lot of commercial pressure on pilots to not refuse to take off in a plane – which could lead to bizarre consequences like the airline questioning their competence for their current type rating.
[0] https://i.ytimg.com/vi/tCXPJkC7ZwI/maxresdefault.jpg
[1] https://drscdn.500px.org/photo/35641948/m%3D2048_k%3D1_a%3D1...
[2] https://magazin.lufthansa.com/content/uploads/2016/07/Boeing...