Plane Tests Must Use Average Pilots, NTSB Says After 737 MAX Crashes
Safety board says FAA should embrace data-driven approach to assumptions about pilot responses
Federal accident investigators called for broad changes in decades-old engineering principles and design assumptions related to pilot emergency responses, the first formal U.S. safety recommendations stemming from two fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes.
As part of lessons learned from the crashes that took 346 lives and grounded the global MAX fleet, the National Transportation Safety Board suggested that Boeing Co. and the Federal Aviation Administration used unrealistic tests to initially certify the aircraft to carry passengers. The board also urged the plane maker and the FAA to pay more attention to interactions between humans and cockpit computers to ensure safety. The board wants Boeing and the FAA to reassess—and potentially jettison—what senior investigators portrayed as overly optimistic assumptions about the speed and effectiveness of cockpit-crew reactions to complex automation failures.
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Both planes went down because pilots—seemingly confused and distracted by sometimes contradictory warnings prompted by faulty sensor readings—failed to cope with a powerful automated flight-control feature, called MCAS, that pushed down the noses of the jets and ultimately put them into unrecoverable dives.
NTSB officials told reporters that before the MAX began commercial service Boeing failed to test—and the FAA never asked to see demonstrated—the full range of alerts, warnings and related system failures that could result from an MCAS misfire. Pilots of the ill-fated jets were overwhelmed by multiple alerts caused by a single malfunctioning sensor, leading to what safety experts call task saturation.
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Senior NTSB investigators questioned historical assumptions that pilots can be counted on to identify certain in-flight emergencies and respond to them within seconds.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/plane-t...6401?mod=rsswn
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