Pilots hate Airbus… Too much auto pilot. And not enough seat of the pants flying. Seems to be problem with the 737 max too.
novice Airbus pilot from the experienced Airbus pilot?" “When the Airbus’ sophisticated automation kicks in, the novice Airbus pilot will ask: ‘what is it doing’ and the experienced Airbus pilot will ask: ‘what is it doing, again?’”
Seriously, the point is that the two cockpits were designed with a different philosophy. I’m oversimplifying but Airbus wanted to have a highly automated system flying the plane, with the pilots monitoring and taking action only when necessary. Boeing is more an evolution of early autopilots, providing systems to handle the repetitive tasks such as maintaining course and altitude.
This difference shows up among others in the yoke and throttles moving under autopilot control on the Boeing (it’s the autopilot helping the pilot) but not on the Airbus with its static joystick and non-moving throttles during almost the entire flight (the computer is doing its thing so why bother providing feedback to the pilot).
The joke I started with stems from the early days of Airbus, when supposedly some pilots had trouble understanding the various modes of the Airbus autopilot, which was doing things that the (poorly trained?) pilot might find unintuitive. Even a couple of crashes were attributed to this misunderstanding of the Airbus systems – look up China Airlines flight 140 if you’re interested. Of course, the Airbus philosophy is now well-accepted, the difference between the two has narrowed as the B777 and B787 are even more automated than their predecessors, and pilot training programs presumably improved so that this no longer should happen.
So which is better? It’s a bit like asking which religion is better: mine, of course! It all depends what the pilot is trained on and used to. Pilots have successfully transitioned from one to the other, and
From a pilot buddy …
Apparently, Boeing made the 737 MAX tail-heavy unintentionally when they modified it with new engines. To compensate, they used software in conjunction with the autopilot to lower the nose of the plane, rather than design it to be “balanced”. Faulty sensors, and this software, are causing the plane to nose down. American pilots are trained to immediately disconnect a faulty “stick pusher”, or other autopilot, that malfunctions, whereas foreign pilots may not have the same training. I also think there is too much automation in modern commercial aircraft, causing pilots to watch, rather than fly. And after a while they don’t even watch. It’s like the Tesla autopilot: not really good enough to drive without you paying attention, but the 737 has the added disadvantage of doing something wrong in an aggressive manner.
In essence, you are saying Airbus set the modern standard, Boeing did a poor copy that led to two accidents and the worst safety record for a modern jetliner and Boeing’s viable market share is only US airlines since only US pilots are trained to fly Boeing. Got it
Sell Boeing and wait till stock price reflects the shrunken TAM.
Coming into the Boeing discussion late, but seems to me that if this is a software error, none of the airplanes needs to be junked, just needs a software update. Great situation for Boeing. Boeing can continue to build while the SWEs take out the new stabilization software.
Is a bad hardware design with a buggy software. Need a re-design. Is a passenger plane not a military plane. Passenger planes are supposed to be designed for stability whereas military planes are designed for maneuvers. Unbalanced design that need software or pilots to deal is not appropriate for passenger planes. Max 8 is a goner. Max 9 might be ok, no unbalanced I guess. FAA should not have passed the flight worthiness of max 8.
I read something saying the engines are mounted slightly differently because of the larger fuselage and that makes the handling different from the other 737’s. On the other hand because it’s one of the big 737 family so pilots are not required to go through new training. So the slight difference in handling caught many pilots by surprise.
BA shares are not tanking much. So may be in the end they just need to train the pilots more.
The MCAS and the software was introduced with max 8 and max 9 version only. Trump grounded both versions now. The software presently overrides pilots action and takes over its own intelligence that creates all issues (suspected defect).
Read the reddit link I posted in this thread “I am a pilot…” someone gives complete picture of what is happening.
American Boeing pilots are ex military. Airbus pilots are bus drivers. When the shit hits the fan I want Sully not some bus driver that only knows auto pilot. That is why I don’t believe self driving cars will happen in my lifetime.
The decision maker for this stupid design should be banned from working for Boeing. There needs to be an investigation about his qualifications and his intentions. Is it a spy from AirBus to destroy Boeing?
Think about how much the CEO would have undergone pressure and continue to go through the pain. Internally, many heads/tails (and team) would have rolled off already.
That’s PR BS. If Southwest believed Max 8s should not fly, they didn’t need an external agency telling them to ground the planes. Southwest could have done it themselves.
point… though in particular, I was curious about at Southwest… Which is supposed to be an employee-owned company. Did they agree with the decision to pretend everything was fine.
