Updated MCAS ‘Safe’ Says MAX Technical Team

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Re: Updated MCAS ‘Safe’ Says MAX Technical Team

Post by iflyforpie »

Minimums wrote: Wed Nov 13, 2019 9:58 am
valleyboy wrote: Wed Nov 13, 2019 7:40 am
the MAX.
And they're flying with training captains for MONTHS, even after line checks
All is good and automation will offset low time until it doesn't. Training captains are not god and the aircraft is not single pilot. The main question is how do pilots gain and maintain stick and rudder skills.
Easy. Hand fly approaches. Hand fly departures and level offs. Not all the time, but at least once a day, per pilot. Heck, even an entire leg. When is the last time you hand-flew an entire leg? I try to from time to time, and find it really does help keep me a little sharper.
Only if you do it without a flight director.

A monkey can hand fly and keep a scan up by matching symbols.

https://airfactsjournal.com/2018/04/fli ... ttraction/
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Re: Updated MCAS ‘Safe’ Says MAX Technical Team

Post by ReserveTank »

Pardon my dissent, but we are paid to fly accurately and with as much situational awareness advantage as possible. Your passengers aren't paying for you to practice hand flying beyond what's necessary to complete the flight. Rent a 172 or book a sim slot.
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Re: Updated MCAS ‘Safe’ Says MAX Technical Team

Post by Old fella »

'97 Tercel wrote: Wed Nov 13, 2019 10:12 am or fly into St. John's
Did that a few times many years back piss cutting over the south side hills when the gales of November came slashing 😉.
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Re: Updated MCAS ‘Safe’ Says MAX Technical Team

Post by C.W.E. »

Pardon my dissent, but we are paid to fly accurately and with as much situational awareness advantage as possible. Your passengers aren't paying for you to practice hand flying beyond what's necessary to complete the flight. Rent a 172 or book a sim slot.
Wow.

Has aviation come to the place that pilots are not allowed to hand fly an approach?

What happens when your automatics fail?
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Re: Updated MCAS ‘Safe’ Says MAX Technical Team

Post by Gannet167 »

By that logic, so many ridiculous inferences can be drawn. Perhaps only the capt should be allowed to fly takeoff and landings, after all, passengers expect the best. No line indoc with passengers, can't have less experienced guys at the controls when passengers are paying for the highest levels of safety. Maybe we should cancel flights if there's any runway contamination, after all, highest levels of safety or nothing. All landings should be autoland, Can't risk having a pilot make an error etc. Etc.

Aviation is dynamic, there are risks, identifying and mitigating risks is the business. Never hand flying is a risk of its own and potentially much more unsafe. Whatever 'danger' passengers endure while a pilot (ahem) pilots the airplane, is easily trumped by the better levels of competence and safety from having a crew that can actually fly. If you think allowing a pilot to fly a plane is an unacceptable reduction in safety, I'd suggest you need more Sim time to solidify your own proficiency.

Passengers pay expecting competent crews (which is where safety starts), that includes maintaining skills which necessitates actually flying from time to time. There's a time and a place for it, likely not during a complicated departure in the mountains at night, IMC, into a long crew day while managing a major malfunction with a brand new guy. That's a great time to use automation. I trust a professional crew to know when it's a good time to practice flying and expect them to be well practiced.
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Re: Updated MCAS ‘Safe’ Says MAX Technical Team

Post by C.W.E. »

Aviation is dynamic, there are risks, identifying and mitigating risks is the business. Never hand flying is a risk of its own and potentially much more unsafe. Whatever 'danger' passengers endure while a pilot (ahem) pilots the airplane, is easily trumped by the better levels of competence and safety from having a crew that can actually fly.
Exactly.
If you think allowing a pilot to fly a plane is an unacceptable reduction in safety, I'd suggest you need more Sim time to solidify your own proficiency.
I'd suggest anyone with that mindset find another occupation.
Passengers pay expecting competent crews (which is where safety starts), that includes maintaining skills which necessitates actually flying from time to time. There's a time and a place for it, likely not during a complicated departure in the mountains at night, IMC, into a long crew day while managing a major malfunction with a brand new guy. That's a great time to use automation. I trust a professional crew to know when it's a good time to practice flying and expect them to be well practiced.
Exactly.
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Re: Updated MCAS ‘Safe’ Says MAX Technical Team

Post by valleyboy »

How many pilots actually manually fly to minimums on an imc day let alone raw data. Companies just don't allow it. The catch 22 that automatics are taking over to the point all flight regimes will but done by the computers and even things like wind shear will be left to an autopilot mode. It will be the antique airplane enthusiasts and the mum and pop flying "outdated" aircraft alone with the northern 705 operators that will maintain pilot skills but certainly not the level one carriers who want efficiently and cost savings. Automation makes total sense to bean counters.
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Re: Updated MCAS ‘Safe’ Says MAX Technical Team

Post by GoinVertical »

ReserveTank wrote: Wed Nov 13, 2019 12:18 pm Pardon my dissent, but we are paid to fly accurately and with as much situational awareness advantage as possible. Your passengers aren't paying for you to practice hand flying beyond what's necessary to complete the flight. Rent a 172 or book a sim slot.
We are paid to be able to fly accurately and with situational awareness in the event that automation fails and shit hits the fan. How much you think you need to practice that is up to you... If you feel hand flying degrades your situational awareness that much on a good day - then you probably need to practice hand flying.
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Re: Updated MCAS ‘Safe’ Says MAX Technical Team

Post by C.W.E. »

Beyond any doubt fully automated airline category airplanes is the future of airline flying.

In fact I hope to live to see it happen.

For me it will be quite the experience to have been in aviation and having actually flown from the age of " Radio Range Navigation " to the age of fully automatic flying monitored by a pilot or two.

I remember the last Radio Range airway I flew in the Yukon in one of those hand flown machines the DC3, not sure exactly what year it was so I will go search it on Google. :mrgreen:
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Re: Updated MCAS ‘Safe’ Says MAX Technical Team

Post by GoinVertical »

valleyboy wrote: Wed Nov 13, 2019 3:23 pm How many pilots actually manually fly to minimums on an imc day let alone raw data. Companies just don't allow it.
You don't need to hand fly to minimums in IMC to be good at it... take advantage of good weather, and ask the guy you're flying with if he's okay with you doing the ILS raw data from the intercept down to minimums with you keeping your head inside until minimums. It won't create any issues as long as it's a nice day without anything else going wrong, and the person you're flying with isn't straight out of line indoc. If they're not comfortable with it, ask the next guy on the next pairing. Most will (should, anyway) be happy to see it.
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Re: Updated MCAS ‘Safe’ Says MAX Technical Team

Post by Meatservo »

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Last edited by Meatservo on Wed Nov 13, 2019 6:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Updated MCAS ‘Safe’ Says MAX Technical Team

Post by Meatservo »

GoinVertical wrote: Wed Nov 13, 2019 3:53 pm
You don't need to hand fly to minimums in IMC to be good at it... take advantage of good weather, and ask the guy you're flying with if he's okay with you doing the ILS raw data from the intercept down to minimums with you keeping your head inside until minimums. It won't create any issues as long as it's a nice day without anything else going wrong, and the person you're flying with isn't straight out of line indoc. If they're not comfortable with it, ask the next guy on the next pairing. Most will (should, anyway) be happy to see it.
Many companies including the northern ones will state in their SOPs that hand-flying to retain competency is "encouraged" but none of them have a program or policy by which this monitored, tracked, or standardized. Which tells me that it's just lip-service and they don't actually care whether you "retain competency" or not. In fact if you should have the misfortune of exceeding a limitation or earning a CADORS, your reputation for enjoying a bit of manual flying might well come back and bite you in a way you will have difficulty justifying when you're up on the rug. Most of us respect a pilot who wants to "retain competency" but you'd better be perfect at it now that the plane records everything you do. When it comes down to it, most managers consider automation, not training or "practice" to be their lifeline when it comes to the ever-decreasing experience levels in the cockpit.

As much as I don't want to admit it, I'm starting to agree with the point that reserve tank made a few posts ago. For me and the purposes of this discussion it's not so much what passengers "deserve" (even though they do deserve everything we can do to keep them safe) but from a management point of view, "retaining competency" is superfluous and not part of the bottom line at all. That's why the SOPs basically say "do it if you want to, I guess". They sure don't contain that degree of careless ambiguity about anything else.
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Re: Updated MCAS ‘Safe’ Says MAX Technical Team

Post by C.W.E. »

Here is a question that I have.

Is there a downside to being able to hand fly an airplane?

As far as I can determine there are no certified fully automatic machines flying yet, or are there?
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Re: Updated MCAS ‘Safe’ Says MAX Technical Team

Post by ReserveTank »

C.W.E. wrote: Wed Nov 13, 2019 1:48 pm
Pardon my dissent, but we are paid to fly accurately and with as much situational awareness advantage as possible. Your passengers aren't paying for you to practice hand flying beyond what's necessary to complete the flight. Rent a 172 or book a sim slot.
Wow.

Has aviation come to the place that pilots are not allowed to hand fly an approach?

What happens when your automatics fail?
GoinVertical wrote: Wed Nov 13, 2019 3:46 pm
ReserveTank wrote: Wed Nov 13, 2019 12:18 pm Pardon my dissent, but we are paid to fly accurately and with as much situational awareness advantage as possible. Your passengers aren't paying for you to practice hand flying beyond what's necessary to complete the flight. Rent a 172 or book a sim slot.
We are paid to be able to fly accurately and with situational awareness in the event that automation fails and shit hits the fan. How much you think you need to practice that is up to you... If you feel hand flying degrades your situational awareness that much on a good day - then you probably need to practice hand flying.
I don't disagree that skill needs to be maintained. Of course, you should be good at hand flying, but the practice should not be on customer paid time. You'll fly portions of the flight by hand in many airliners anyways, because of AOM requirements. Just no need to do it down to mins on a crummy morning when all of your servos are working. And definitely no need to do it up in the flight levels. Most companies send you to sim at least twice per year, where you can hand fly until you're content. That's where you can practice AP/FD fails and raw data flight.

It increases your workload greatly when hand flying. Part of this is the way that the industry has evolved. Excessive commands, callouts, checklists, and other legal CYA activities clutter the cockpit now...it's a fact of the airline industry now. If you err, and you will at some point, you'll have to explain to the feds, CP, and every subsequent employer why you didn't use all of the available tools to complete the flight "safely." I've seen a few good guys get burned thinking that they were doing themselves a favour.
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Re: Updated MCAS ‘Safe’ Says MAX Technical Team

Post by Gannet167 »

Sims are highly structured and time compressed scripts. There's no time or money for proficiency flying in the Sim.Even if there were, twice a year isn't enough to be proficient.
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Re: Updated MCAS ‘Safe’ Says MAX Technical Team

Post by Cessna 180 »

valleyboy wrote: Wed Nov 13, 2019 3:23 pm How many pilots actually manually fly to minimums on an imc day let alone raw data. Companies just don't allow it. The catch 22 that automatics are taking over to the point all flight regimes will but done by the computers and even things like wind shear will be left to an autopilot mode. It will be the antique airplane enthusiasts and the mum and pop flying "outdated" aircraft alone with the northern 705 operators that will maintain pilot skills but certainly not the level one carriers who want efficiently and cost savings. Automation makes total sense to bean counters.
i don't know which company you work for, but i fly a transport category aircraft and the only time we are prohibited from hand flying an approach is with a cat 2 ILS.
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Re: Updated MCAS ‘Safe’ Says MAX Technical Team

Post by jakeandelwood »

ReserveTank wrote: Wed Nov 13, 2019 12:18 pm Pardon my dissent, but we are paid to fly accurately and with as much situational awareness advantage as possible. Your passengers aren't paying for you to practice hand flying beyond what's necessary to complete the flight. Rent a 172 or book a sim slot.
I'd bet the passengers would disagree with you, hand flying is more like staying current and sharp rather than "practicing". It's not like you are heading over to the practice area to do some stalls and steep turns, the passengers should not even know you are hand flying from A to B.
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Re: Updated MCAS ‘Safe’ Says MAX Technical Team

Post by Beefitarian »

First officer, "Wow, that's the hardest landing I've ever seen!"

Captain, "Yeah, I don't know why that happened, I have been practicing lots, just last week I was doing greasers in a 172."
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Re: Updated MCAS ‘Safe’ Says MAX Technical Team

Post by ReserveTank »

Gannet167 wrote: Wed Nov 13, 2019 10:08 pm Sims are highly structured and time compressed scripts. There's no time or money for proficiency flying in the Sim.Even if there were, twice a year isn't enough to be proficient.
Different companies have different ways that they utilize the sim time, I'll give you that point. I disagree-twice per year comes around quickly. The sim should be a tool to keep you sharp, not bring you back from regression. It should never be difficult to follow the cue with the AP off anyhow.
Beefitarian wrote: Thu Nov 14, 2019 6:44 am First officer, "Wow, that's the hardest landing I've ever seen!"

Captain, "Yeah, I don't know why that happened, I have been practicing lots, just last week I was doing greasers in a 172."
Almost funny. Most airline guys are hand flying the portion below mins, are they not?
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Re: Updated MCAS ‘Safe’ Says MAX Technical Team

Post by corethatthermal »

IF PILOTLESS AIRLINERS could decrease ( guaranteed) the accident rate, even marginally, then it would be implemented ! The folks in power do not care about the what ifs , ( a pilot saving many lives on an automated flight ) they are political numbers people ! Do you think the Asiana San Francisco disaster has changed the whole pilot ability equation at that airline ? it's a numbers game, to hell with passengers lives !
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