The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued a number of recommendations to the FAA on April 2 related to flare cueing issues on the Boeing MD-11. The Board said the airliner made 13 hard landings between 1994 and 2010. It wants the FAA and Boeing to determine the effectiveness of new systems to assist MD-11 pilots in making timely and appropriate inputs during the landing flare. The NTSB expects to see a formal report to help determine how useful a new system might be. If the assessment results are positive, the Board wants Boeing to assist and encourage all U.S. MD-11 operators to install the technology.

The NTSB also recommends that the FAA work with Boeing to assess new methods to deliver weight-on-wheels cueing to enhance pilot awareness of bounced landings and assist crews with aircraft recovery techniques. A few of the key ideas related to the bounced-landing assessment include evaluating the effect of brief power increases on simulated MD-11 landing distances, adjusting the values in published landing distance tables accordingly and providing the adjusted values to MD-11 operators.

Another recommendation on the table includes reconvening the MD-10/MD-11 flight standardization board to determine whether currency requirements should be strengthened for MD-11 pilots.