DALLAS —Para penyelidik Komite Nasional Keselamatan Transportasi (KNKT) mengatakan pada Senin (12/11), perlu lebih banyak pelatihan untuk pilot yang menerbangkan Boeing 737 MAX.
Saran itu dikemukakan setelah penyelidikan menemukan bahwa para kru Lion Air JT610 yang nahas diyakini menghadapi situasi yang tidak ditemukan pada buku panduan pesawat jenis tersebut.

Para pilot AS juga tidak mengetahui potensi risiko, kata dua pilot AS mengatakan kepada Reuters.
Pernyataan tersebut memberikan titik terang pada beberapa hal yang menjadi penyelidikan di tengah persiapan KNKT merilis laporan awal kecelakaan Lion Air, yang direncanakan pada 28 atau 29 November, satu bulan setelah kejadian. Lion Air JT610, yang menggunakan Boeing 737 MAX, jatuh di perairan Karawang. Seluruh 189 penumpang dan awak pesawat tewas.

Hingga saat ini, perhatian masyarakat terpusat pada kemungkinan masalah perawatan, temasuk kesalahan sensor memberi informasi ‘angle of attack’, data vital untuk membantu pesawat agar terbang pada sudut yang benar dalam melawan arus udara dan menghindari kehilangan daya angkat atau stall.
 
Sekarang fokus penyelidikan kasus tersebut sudah meluas ke arah kejelasan prosedur, yang disetujui AS, untuk membantu pilot yang menerbangkan 737 MAX agar tidak panik saat menghadapi situasi kehilangan data dan metode untuk melatih mereka.

Dennis Tajer, seorang pilot Boeing 737 dan juru bicara dari Asosiasi Gabungan Pilot (Allied Pilots Association atau APA), mengatakan setelah kecelakaan Lion Air, APA diberitahu mengenai sistem baru yang dipasang Boeing pada 737 MAX yang dapat memerintahkan pesawat untuk turun dalam dalam situasi tertentu untuk mencegah hilangnya daya angkat.

“Ini adalah informasi yang tidak diberitahukan kepada kami dalam pelatihan atau buku panduan atau materi lainnya,”

kata Tajer seperti dikutip Reuters. APA mewakili pilot American Airlines Group Inc.

Soerjanto Tjahjono, kepala Komite Nasional Keselamatan Transportasi (KNKT), mengatakan, Senin (12/11) bahwa pihak regulator akan memperketat persyaratan pelatihan berdasarkan hasil dari temuan investigasi yang sudah ada sejauh ini.

“Kami tahu, karena adanya kejadian ini , kami tahu kami membutuhkan pelatihan tambahan,” katanya.

Komentar berfokus pada isi manual pesawat dan kursus konversi yang memungkinkan pilot yang mengoperasikan generasi Boeing sebelumnya, yaitu Boeing 737 NG, untuk beralih mengoperasikan MAX.

Buku petunjuk tersebut tidak mencakup bagaimana menangani situasi seperti yang terjadi dalam kecelakaan tersebut, kata Soerjanto kepada para wartawan.
Pihak Lion Air mengatakan pada Senin bahwa mereka telah mengikuti pelatihan yang disetujui oleh regulator AS dan Eropa.
 
Pelatihan yang telah mendapat persetujuan itu dibatasi hanya tiga jam pelatihan berbasis komputer dan pengenalan penerbangan, kata manajer umum Lion Air Training Center, Dibyo Soesilo.

Seorang pejabat pemerintah AS mengatakan Boeing diharapkan mengungkap pembaruan perangkat lunak untuk mengurangi risiko dari sistem perlindungan stall dari 737 MAX. Tapi belum jelas kapan informasi itu akan dirilis.

Boeing menolak berkomentar tentang pembaruan perangkat lunak, namun mengatakan itu mengambil “setiap langkah” untuk sepenuhnya memahami semua aspek dari kecelakaan tersebut dan bekerja dengan tim investigasi dan semua pihak berwenang yang terlibat.
Kecelakaan pada 29 Oktober adalah kecelakaan pertama yang melibatkan 737 MAX, versi terbaru dari pesawat jet berbadan sempit Boeing yang mulai terbang tahun lalu. [vp/ft]

https://www.voaindonesia.com/a/situa...n/4656121.html

U.S. Pilots Say Boeing Didn’t Warn of 737 Feature Tied to Crash

 Two U.S. pilots’ unions say the potential risks of a safety feature on Boeing Co.’s 737 Max aircraft that has been linked to a deadly crash in Indonesia weren’t sufficiently spelled out in their manuals or training.

Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration issued directives last week telling flight crews about the system, which is designed to provide extra protection against pilots losing control. That prompted aviators, unions and training departments to realize that none of the documentation for the Max aircraft included an explanation of the system, the union leaders said.

“We don’t like that we weren’t notified,” said Jon Weaks, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association. Dennis Tajer, a 737 captain and spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association at American Airlines Group Inc., said his union’s members were also concerned.

The complaints from pilot union leaders at Southwest Airlines Co.and American are significant because of the size of those carriers’ 737 fleets and their Max purchases. Southwest is the largest operator of the 737 Max and has the most on order with 257 of the jets yet to be delivered. American, the world’s largest airline, has outstanding orders for 85 of the planes.

“This is not about silos and layers of bureaucracy, this is about knowing your airplane,” Tajer said. “We will always be eager and aggressive in gaining any knowledge of new aircraft.”

A bulletin from APA to American’s pilots said details about the system weren’t included in the documentation about the plane.

“This is the first description you, as 737 pilots, have seen,” it said.
“The companies and the pilots should have been informed,” Weaks said.
“It makes us question, ‘Is that everything, guys?’ I would hope there are no more surprises out there.”

Boeing said it is confident in the safety of the 737 Max family of jets.

“We are taking every measure to fully understand all aspects of this incident, working closely with the investigating team and all regulatory authorities involved,” the company said in a statement by email. “Safety remains our top priority and is a core value for everyone at Boeing.”

Few details have been released about the underlying causes of the Lion Air crash Oct. 29 in the sea near Jakarta, but Indonesian investigators say that an erroneous sensor prompted the plane’s computers to push the aircraft into a steep dive. A new safety measure added on the Max models to prevent pilots from losing control is what caused the plane to point downward, according to the FAA and Boeing.

A long-standing procedure taught to pilots could have halted the dive, according to the regulator and the manufacturer. The FAA ordered airlines to add an explanation into flight manuals.

Indonesia’s National Transport Safety Committee is continuing to search for the plane’s crash-proof cockpit voice recorder under the sea, it said Monday. The investigative agency plans to release a preliminary report between Nov. 28 and 29, a month after the crash, as mandated by international treaty.

The FAA, which certified the plane, said in a statement it couldn’t comment on the matter while the investigation in Indonesia remains open. The FAA’s emergency directive required that U.S. carriers revise flight manuals and said the agency “will take further action if findings from the accident investigation warrant.”

While the design of the Max has been under a spotlight since the accident, other factors in the crash could eclipse it in importance. They include questions about how maintenance was performed after problems arose on at least three prior flights of the Lion Air jet and the actions of the pilots on its last flight.

When Boeing designed its latest version of the 737, it added the new safety feature to combat a loss of lift, which is a leading contributor to the loss-of-control accidents that by far cause the most crash deaths around the world.

Known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, it was added “to compensate for some unique aircraft handling characteristics,” according to a bulletin sent by Southwest’s flight operations division to its pilots on Nov. 10.
Sharp Dive

When the system senses the plane is close to losing lift on the wings, it automatically commands a lowering of the nose to counteract the risk. However, the chief sensor used to predict a loss of lift -- known as an angle-of-attack vane -- was malfunctioning on the Lion Air flight. It essentially tricked the system into ordering a sharp dive.

Pilots are drilled on how to cut power to the so-called trim system if the plane starts to dive or climb on its own, but that procedure was never linked directly to a malfunctioning angle-of-attack sensor in training or the documentation.“At the present time, we have found no instances of AOA anomalies with our 737 Max 8 aircraft,” the APA bulletin said, referring to angle of attack as AOA. “That is positive news, but it is no assurance that the system will not fail.”


Because the system is only designed to operate in rare conditions while pilots are manually flying, “pilots should never see” the system in operation, according to the Southwest memo. As a result, Boeing chose not to include a description of it in the extensive manuals it prepared for the Max models, said the memo.

That reasoning doesn’t make sense, said Roger Cox, a retired investigator with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and a former airline pilot. Flight crews have a right to be concerned that details about the new system weren’t included in manuals and the short training courses they were required to take before flying the upgraded 737, Cox said.
“I would be pretty pissed” about not being told, he said. “This is important systems information that pilots should know about.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ected-in-crash