Boeing is in a tough spot.

Boeing designs their cockpit controls for aircrew with an extremely high level of training and understanding of aeronautics and aircraft systems. Boeing’s overly complex cockpits display lots of raw data and it is up to the aircrew to use their powers of comprehension/reasoning to pinpoint problems and implement the appropriate corrective action. This works well for the aircrew category composed of former USAF, USN, RAF, AdlA, RNAF, Luftwaffe, Aeronautica Militare, Ejército del Aire, FABCA, RCAF, Israeli AF and a few others. There have been B373 MAX air data issues where aforementioned tier 1 aircrew rapidly reasoned through the AD issue, disengaged runaway stabilizer trim and landed the jet safely.

But aircrew who have not been through the rigorous pilot training of those air forces may not have the depth of understanding to quickly ID and take appropriate action. There was a recent article (I forgot who wrote it) about this second category of aircrew becoming qualified to fly airliners through rote memorization and not understanding the principles of systems and aeronautics which allows quick ID and corrective action to be taken. For 737 MAX, Boeing did this second category of aircrew great disservice by failing to provide sufficient hardware/software redundancy and unambiguous cautions/warnings. When the entire instrument panel is blinking red and yellow, warnings are sounding and the control column is pushing forward, the second category of aircrew is overwhelmed and rote memorization of checklist steps fails in the critical seconds before a crash.

Boeing, in the near-term, will need to re-engineer 737 MAX to provide high redundant air data, unambiguous warnings/caution, and a simple set of emergency procedures which the second category of aircrew can easily implement. Boeing’ leadership has already said that their technical solution won’t be ready for flight test until early 2020. I think that may be optimistic. And who reimburses the airlines for all the lost revenue from those grounded jets?

The best long-term solution for Boeing would be to completely redesign the control scheme for future jets to operate as if they were for an autonomous UAV with the reliability required by FAR Part 121. That type of control scheme is one of the areas where military aviation is ahead of civilian aviation.