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. From a report: 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 and the Federal Aviation Administration used unrealistic tests to initially certify the aircraft to carry passengers [Editor’s note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. 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.
Five of the NTSB’s seven recommendations, released Thursday, called for the use of more-objective methods to predict likely responses of airline pilots in such cases when automation goes haywire. The board’s announcement challenged long-held industry and FAA practices that largely use the nearly instantaneous responses of highly trained test pilots — rather than those of average pilots, who typically have less experience — to verify the safety of new jetliner models. Some of the recommendations cover future airliner designs, not just the MAX.
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Source:: Slashdot