You can always override cruise control by stomping hard on the brake (like to avoid an imminent crash). That's how it's always worked and you've gotten used to this, and done it on occasion when warranted.
Now imagine that the next generation of adaptive cruise-control/"auto-pilot"/whatever comes out, and stomping on the brakes no longer does anything. You have to first disable the cruise control by pressing a button on the steering wheel, and only then will inputs to the brake pedal do anything.
And then you don't tell drivers about this change.
You can totally see how, right in the lead-up to a fatal accident, a driver is going to be focused solely on stomping on that brake pedal in increasing panic, wondering right up to the moment of death why that's not doing anything. They won't consider the cruise control off button because it's not their most immediate need (braking is), and they've never needed to use it before.
Firstly, there is no single equivalent to "slamming on the brakes" for uncommanded nose-down. This could be caused by a variety of faults, and pilots are trained to respond in a fashion that will be effective for even those in which the first thing to try doesn't work. There is a standard procedure in place to use in this type of situation - arguing that the pilots should only be expected to do one thing with increasing desperation is essentially arguing that they will not be able to respond to a whole host of emergencies causing uncommanded nose-down.
Second,
> Information from the flight data recorder shows that the plane’s nose was pitched down more than two dozen times during the brief flight, resisting efforts by the pilots to keep it flying level ... The standard checklist for dealing with that sort of emergency on the previous version of the 737 focuses on flipping the stabilizer trim cutout switches and using the manual wheels to adjust the stabilizers. [emph mine]
your argument essentially hinges on the assumption that pulling hard back on the stick is a sufficient solution for all the problems that may happen with a plane with the exception of a fault with MCAS (the new system). I don't think that is accurate. Even prior to the the 737 max! It sounds there were a lot of things that would require further action that pulling back on the stick.
There's clearly a problem on Boeing's end here.
"Older 737s had another way of addressing certain problems with the stabilizers: Pulling back on the yoke, or control column, one of which sits immediately in front of both the captain and the first officer, would cut off electronic control of the stabilizers, allowing the pilots to control them manually.
That feature was disabled on the Max when M.C.A.S. was activated — another change that pilots were unlikely to have been aware of. After the crash, Boeing told airlines that when M.C.A.S. is activated, as it appeared to have been on the Lion Air flight, pulling back on the control column will not stop so-called stabilizer runaway."
If the above is true, it's near criminal that Boeing didn't notify pilots about the change. It's also not just about following checklists but understanding the systems of the aircraft.
> they developed an unconscious/intuitive mental model of the plane
If the plane has a fault, it's frequently not going to behave like their unconscious model says it should. In the happy case, rely on your intuition. In the unhappy case, when things are working as they should, follow the emergency procedure.
Sorr, but this is a little like saying "follow standard procedure to put the landing gear down. If that procedure doesn't work, repeat your intuitive action over and over until hopefully the landing gear goes down." No - follow the emergency procedure in place for landing gear fails to descend.
> not communicated to them for cost-cutting reasons
Take it up with the FAA and the airlines?
Actually in the "old" version, there is.
From TFA:
Older 737s had another way of addressing certain problems with the stabilizers: Pulling back on the yoke, or control column, one of which sits immediately in front of both the captain and the first officer, would cut off electronic control of the stabilizers, allowing the pilots to control them manually.
Which makes the car analogy apt.
EDIT: ... Presumably because it's literally the second thing on the list of things to do in the case of a runaway stabilizer.
Its extremely unfortunate, but these pilots had ~10 minutes of flight time between their request to return to the airport noting aircraft control issues, and their crash, during which they completely failed to follow their checklists. Lion Air put those under-trained (if we're being generous) pilots into that cockpit and they are the only ones who carry responsibility for this crash.
Its anecdotal, but most of my older flight instructors have been lamenting the loss of critical pilot skills in the industry, and this appears to be just another example of that.
I don't read it that way. To me, it's specifically based on removal (without notice to pilots) of a function that would absolutely have terminated a trim runaway condition.
In other words, Boeing eliminated one well-known and trained-on trim runaway fix, and didn't tell the pilots. This is different from saying that stick pullback is a universal solution.
but still, instead of going trough the full checklist they stopped and tried repeatedly whatever fixed the issue in the past/on the simulator.
a more complete analogy:
"follow these ten step do diagnose a bug on the software"
"but last time it was just a compilation flag, I'll check the compilation flags"
"bug persists"
"last time it was just a compilation flag, I'll check compilation flags"
"bug persists"
"last time it was just a compilation flag, I'll check the compilation flags"
"system halts"
That's one heck of an analogy! Brutal
Imagine that the failure that caused the nose-down wasn't a failed AOA sensor giving bad readings to MCAS, but some other reason that _also_ wouldn't have been solved by pulling back on the yoke, but would have been by completing some later step on the checklist. Suppose the pilots didn't follow the checklist. Would that be enough information to say that Boeing is responsible?
To be sure, in this case the pilots may have followed the checklist! It may well be the case that Boeing is completely responsible! The checklist items might not have worked, or there may have been a good reason that the pilots didn't follow it, or the checklist might have been crazy, or they might not have had time to do what needed to be done, etc. There's still a whole lot that's not known (or hasn't been released) about what happened.
I'm just not sure that the current evidence, _viz_ that Boeing made an internal software change, that they didn't explicitly call it out to pilots, and that there's no difference in the actions prescribed in the event of an uncommanded nose-down pre- and post-change, is enough to say that the fault is entirely Boeing's for this accident.
And you are writing this after many, many accidents that root cause was pilot not exactly knowing what or why something happens with a plane or plane autopilot (ie. AF 447)
Being apologetic of cost cutting on safety issues is dumb as it erodes culture of safety and encourages others to skimp on safety.
The pilots did not train for a specific root cause of a fault. They trained for a symptom (uncommanded nose down), and the procedure for that situation was unchanged.
> extra burden to quickly determine if something else is wrong
This isn't an extra burden. Pilots aren't doing root cause analysis for failures while they are responding to them. They are trained to try actions in a specific order until something works. It's not like the checklist used to have one action on it and now it has two - the solution in this case was a standard action on the standard checklist.
Pilots do not look around, say "ah, electrical short in elevator actuator" or "ah, bad angle of attack sensor" and then take a single action.
Absolutely reasonable to ask what Boeing could have done better. I'm just not sure the information about Boeing's actions contained in the article gets me all the way to "indefensible", paraphrasing another comment.
