Amaya Toman The past week was not exactly a lucky one for aviation. After the crash of the Boeing 737 Max of Ethiopian Airlines, a global debate about the safety of air traffic was ignited. Although the investigation into the accident is still ongoing, it has already brought one surprising conclusion - most of the Boeing 737 Max pilots used an iPad instead of a proper simulator for training.
The usual process of involving a pilot in full operation looks like that the person concerned has to undergo demanding training, during which he acquires everything necessary. This training also includes practice on a simulator that faithfully replicates various situations in the air. But the New York Times server found out, that Boeing 737 Max pilots, who already had previous flying experience, were trained on the iPad.
One of the key reasons for the absence of simulators was that the company was still working on finalizing the relevant data without which the simulator could not be built. At the current moment, when the Boeing 737 Max has been in full operation for several months, there is only one simulator available so far, and that is in the United States.
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When the 2017 was about to enter the world in 737, a group of pilots put together training materials with no previous experience with either the machine itself or the simulator. James LaRosa, a Boeing 737 captain who helped lead the training group, said he took part in the retraining at the Seattle training center in a simulated cockpit, but it did not move like normal simulators.
In addition to a two-hour iPad training course, LaRosa and his colleagues used their experience to create a 737-page manual detailing the differences between the Boeing 737 Max and its predecessors, including changes to displays and engines. The Federal Aviation Administration, along with Boeing, was convinced that due to the similarities between the Boeing 737 and the XNUMX Max, pilots clearly did not need additional simulator training.
But insufficient retraining was, according to some, the reason for the recent plane crash. The materials used in the iPad course did not mention, for example, the new MCAS software that may have played a key role in the crash.
It is necessary to change this in the future and every pilot switching to a new model should be required to undergo training on a simulator including the MCAS system, as this was 99% of the reason for the crash of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 and 9 aircraft. the regulation issued by the FAA is the US Federal Aviation Safety Agency and it is already being investigated by the FBI and the prosecutor of the US Department of Justice if the manufacturer did not bypass the certification of the aircraft, which he carried out himself without additional control by the FAA, it is suspected that the sensors were not installed, which were only for an additional fee of 80 and in both to the crashed planes, these sensors monitoring the position of the plane and the MCAS system could not react when the lift was lost and sent both planes into a dive and 000 people died from both planes which had been in operation for 349 months and only after the first crash did Boeing undertake to put these matters in order, including training pilots and since the only simulator is only in the USA, the pilots completed training on iPads and were not trained on the automatic MCAS system and how to bypass it if the start and take-off of the aircraft failed and it was said that it was neither in the manuals nor a warning light in the cabins that something was happening and another plane was saved by a third pilot who flew in one of the planes in black and advised the pilots how to bypass the automatic stabilization system when descending instead of climbing. Otherwise, the price of this plane is 4 million and the sensors are only 120 and they were installed only for an additional fee, which is a suspicion of bypassing security with as a result of two accidents, the approach of a company that must protect people in air transport and not send them to certain death is really tragic, they should be held responsible and pay the survivors high compensation for errors during transport