Transport Committee on March 12th, 2020

[Capt Scott Wilson]

When you take a look at the miss on having MCAS fully understood by the operator and properly promulgated through the publications, that's unusual. I've certainly never experienced it myself, at this time.

When you take a look at the training, it's important to understand that we train continually and through many levels of fidelity. We train face to face in ground school. We use the benefit of our electronic flight bags, which are our iPads, and the opportunity to train on systems differently through them. A one-hour or two-hour or three-hour system is not uncommon.

Of course, we are all, through recurrent training programs that follow an initial training program with many hours in the simulator, very adept at ensuring that we have the right level of fidelity to ensure the right output, which is a safety output for all of our pilots who are training.

One hour using an iPad on a system, then, is not unusual. Most of us did much more, on a transition course training out the Max for differences, than was the regulated requirement.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Wilson.

Thank you, Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

Mr. Bachrach.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and to our witnesses for appearing today.

I'd like to start by asking about the workers who fly on the 737 Max, who work for your companies and who, every day, went up in those airplanes. I'm wondering if you have heard from them. I'm sure you've heard from the pilots, but have you heard from the flight attendants and the unions representing them in a formal way? What concerns have those workers expressed to you so far?

[Capt Scott Wilson]

The good news is that we have relatively strong, consistent and collaborative answers amongst us. When we take a look at those who have been flying on the Max—both pilots and cabin crew—yes, they have questions as well, and obviously it's our job to ensure that before the aircraft is safely put back into the fleet, we're able to answer those.

The union has been involved. Our head of the Air Line Pilots Association for Canada is here with us today. We've also been working with CUPE, which is our flight attendant union across the airlines. We've been actively engaged in keeping them abreast, and even together, right now, as was mentioned by the minister who was here, we've all put forward line pilots to be part of the joint operational evaluation board, which will validate the training from a line pilot perspective with Transport Canada's concordance and assistance.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Can you characterize the questions and concerns that have been brought forward by those groups?

[Capt Scott Wilson]

For those who have flown Boeing aircraft in particular—and all three of us are Boeing captains on current Boeing aircraft—Boeing has a longstanding commitment to the pilot group. It's very engaged. You know the Boeing aircraft at a different level; you're tied to it a lot more.

It feels wrong that we didn't understand some of the information that was available to us. Most of it comes around to how come this wasn't provided to us, because a pilot takes very seriously his responsibility to understand the aircraft and the system so that he's able to manage anything on the aircraft to a safe outcome.

[Capt John Hudson]

If I could just add to that, on the lines of communication, I'm sure none of us thought we'd become communications experts on MCAS. We're technical people, and we operate airplanes.

One of the things our airline did very early on—and we got great feedback for it—was to provide town halls and factual information to our employees, because if you don't have the buy-in of the employees to understand and ask questions, how can you ever go out and explain it to the travelling public? The facts matter. Those were certainly our efforts, and we'll continue to do that before we return to service.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I'd like to ask a brief question about the angle-of-attack disagree alert safety option. You spoke to this before. I believe you characterized it as a “red herring”.

I'm a lay person. It seems this is a safety feature that was offered by the manufacturer as an option to the airlines that were purchasing the aircraft.

Why did you choose not to purchase that safety feature? That's my understanding from your previous comments. Also, were there ever questions raised about why that safety feature was being offered in the first place? My understanding is that this safety feature alerted pilots to the problem that Boeing was aware of and had concealed.

[Capt Scott Wilson]

I think you've mistaken two of the aspects. The alert about the angle of attack is called the “angle of attack disagree”, and that's common to the NG. It was basically available and was configured on all three of the—

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

My apologies. It's the disagree alert.

[Capt Scott Wilson]

Yes. We had that.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

You did purchase that piece. Okay.

[Capt Scott Wilson]

Yes, but I wanted to make sure it was understood that there is a secondary piece called the “angle-of-attack indicator”. That's the one that is an option. It also comes with no training and no corresponding checklist. As a result, it's not considered to be a true safety enhancement as the media has portrayed it.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

If I may, very briefly, because I only have 30 seconds left, in this report from the congressional committee, they mention that the AOA disagree alert was delivered inoperable on many aircraft. Were any of those aircraft in your fleets? Did you receive inoperable—

[Capt Scott Wilson]

That is correct. The aircraft was configured, and again, it was supposed to be lined up exactly like the NG aircraft, with an AOA disagree, which is an alert on the bottom right-hand side of the CDS. The alert on the NG is a stand-alone. On the Max, it happened to be tied to the angle-of-attack indicator, so if you didn't have the option, what you didn't know was that you wouldn't have had the disagree alert, and the operators weren't....

[Capt John Hudson]

Just quickly, from a technical point of view, an angle-of-attack indicator is not the only alert in this particular malfunction you're talking about. There are other alerts that the flight crew get, including an indicated air speed disagree and an altitude disagree. There are multiple alerts going on at the same time.

While the AOA disagree alert is helpful, it's not the only piece of information we get during that kind of a non-normal situation.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Did the culture of concealment that's described in this report affect your companies and your pilots? Did the features that were concealed affect the airplanes you purchased and the pilots that fly for you?

[Murray Strom]

Has it been raised by our pilots? Yes, it has been raised by our pilots. This is why we have taken the extraordinary measures we have, for the three of us to work together on the safety aspect with Transport Canada, with Boeing and with the technical experts, to make sure we get this one right. It has been brought up.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Strom. Thank you, Mr. Bachrach. And to you, gentlemen, thank you for your participation here this afternoon. Thank you for the time you have taken to come out and provide testimony for the members, as well as for the public and those in the gallery.

I will now suspend for five minutes before we go into our business planning session.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Members, we are meeting past the time of 5:30, based on a motion that was passed last meeting by Mr. Doherty that we take on committee business at this time.

Mr. Rogers, go ahead.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

There's a motion on the floor, actually.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

It was tabled for committee business, so whether we do it in...

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Perhaps we can quickly deal with Mr. Bachrach's motion. Then perhaps we can entertain a motion to go in camera, which I think is a....

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Mr. Bachrach does have the floor. We're going to entertain his motion. If I may, then I would also like to go into a discussion on the motion, and we will go from there.

Mr. Bachrach, you have the floor.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

It's a motion that I moved previously under my point of order:

That the Committee formally request that representatives from The Boeing Company appear before the committee with regard to the on-going study concerning the aircraft certification process.

I think it's clear to everyone at this table why that's important in light of what we have heard and what we have read. Copies have been circulated. I'm happy to proceed to hear from the other members. I understand that my colleague, Mr. Barsalou-Duval, has an amendment he would like to make.