For safety, make sure 737 MAX pilots can fly with automation — and without it
As Boeing hires 160 veteran training pilots to assist flight crews worldwide preparing to fly the ungrounded 737 MAX, the aviation industry has a terrific opportunity to rethink its approach to flight safety.
Instead of simply training pilots incrementally, as new aircraft roll out, pilots flying more than 350 of the 737 MAX aircraft already in service will be learning together how to fly the fastest selling plane in aviation history.
No one knows if the critical 737 MAX simulator training that Boeing successfully blocked — in favor of a do-it-yourself course on the iPad and a minimal set of instructions — on the launch of this plane in 2017 would have prevented the tragic crashes of Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines in 2018 and 2019. But today, we can say this for sure: Every training step the manufacturer and the airlines take going forward on simulators and in flight could potentially prevent future tragedies triggered by automation failures. By accident, this is the first time in aviation history that every pilot flying a large fleet of identical planes is being retrained simultaneously.
First, it’s important to realize, as Capt. Dennis Tajer — an American Airlines pilot and Allied Pilots Association spokesman flying the MAX — points out, lessons learned from review of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes have created important training opportunities for flight crews piloting older 737 aircraft such as the NG.
The en masse MAX training gives instructors the perfect opportunity to focus on the fact that, in foreseeable future, we have a chance to train pilots to manage the unexpected on any airliner. That used to happen organically. Now systems are so reliable that new pilots don’t have the chance to see the kind of untrained-for anomalies that led to “automation surprise” on flights like Air France 447, which led to a crash that took the lives of 228 people.
Flight automation is wonderful. At the same time, all pilots, even beginners, with a qualification to fly a specific aircraft should know how to operate the machine using raw display of controls and how to manually handle the controls when automation fails.
Such displays — such as pitch, alpha, slip, altitude and control positions — will allow pilots to revert to safe manual control, if necessary. This should include a clear understanding of thrust control when failure or partial failure also occurs.
Breakdown begins with the fact that automated systems are not always doing what the pilot expects. This is analogous to a baby forgetting how to walk. Suddenly they have to divert all their attention back to baby steps, the primary movements that are part of their muscle memory.
Fixing the 737 MAX software is a solution to one potential problem, but it is not a panacea. Because it’s impossible to train for every unanticipated scenario, flight crews must become nimble enough to work their way out of any kind of automation surprise.
Adopting this philosophy as a basic airworthiness requirement may set a new target for designers, certifiers and test pilots. It is overdue.
From the 737 MAX experience, we know what can happen in the absence of this approach. Pilots need to fly without a crutch. Aircraft should be designed to allow this.
Currently, the system does not perform well here, with warnings and alerts coming too late much of the time or not being accurate enough for pilots to take necessary quick action.
These are some of the problems that led to the 20-month worldwide grounding of the 737 MAX fleet following two crashes. Hopefully a better approach to pilot training — backed by the regulators, manufacturers and the airlines — will reduce dependency on automation.
In the process, many other safety-critical industries in the world of transportation, energy, medicine and communication will benefit from lessons learned in the world of flight.