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Why it really should be about the man and not the machine
I will start this article with a short foreword. Although it may sound as though I am being critical of airline pilots, that is not the case. I believe there is a consequential gap in the way airline pilots are currently being trained. Yes, there are exceptions to this rule and there are some great airline pilots out there. My good friend Stan Humphrey in Galveston, Texas is one of them. When he is not flying a Boeing 737, he is out doing loops and rolls in his personal Starduster bi-plane.…Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
As a retired military and civilian pilot, I agree wholeheartedly with the author. In my years prior to retirement, I had occasion to fly with an assortment of non-military trained pilots, and, with one exception, none had the training to recognize "feel" of the aircraft, i.e. the bottom falling out feeling when the aircraft is sinking. All were nervous about more than 60 degrees of bank. It has always been my contention that ALL pilots-to-be should experience inverted conditions to be able to recognize unusual recoveries. We of the industry need more voice in demanding proper training for more than systems operators in the cockpits. Good "gamers" don't necessarily make good pilots!!
Many arguments have been made here for (re)teaching professional flight crews basic airmanship, prompted by a few high profile accidents that can be attributed to obvious (at least in retrospect) pilot error. As a 5000 hr ATP Part 135 charter pilot, I am ALL in favor of improved training. As FlightSafety says, "The best safety device in any aircraft is a well-trained crew". Amen. That said, and at the risk of offending some of the very qualified pilots on this thread, I don't fully agree with the sentiment that we need to return to the 'good 'ol days' when men were men and pilots were, well, pilots.
Let's start with the premise that the primary goal in air transport is safety above all else. Then take a look at the overall statistics regarding airline safety:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety
The data shows a steady decline accident rates... roughly speaking from 1 fatality in 1 Million passenger miles (1926) to 1 fatality in 2 Billion passenger miles (1997)... a 2,000x improvement. The most recent statistics are even better, showing 1 death per 30 billion miles (0.05 deaths per Billion Kilometers).
Of particular note, is the fact that safety has continued to improve during the very decades that automation proliferated in our cockpits.
Should we learn from tragic accidents and implement changes to improve safety? Of course. Are these highly visible accidents (Colgon, AF447, Asiana 214) reason to revise training syllabi? Sure. But it would be a mistake to attack the use of automation as an evil when it has, overall, contributed to dramatic safety improvements over the years.
Let's start with the premise that the primary goal in air transport is safety above all else. Then take a look at the overall statistics regarding airline safety:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety
The data shows a steady decline accident rates... roughly speaking from 1 fatality in 1 Million passenger miles (1926) to 1 fatality in 2 Billion passenger miles (1997)... a 2,000x improvement. The most recent statistics are even better, showing 1 death per 30 billion miles (0.05 deaths per Billion Kilometers).
Of particular note, is the fact that safety has continued to improve during the very decades that automation proliferated in our cockpits.
Should we learn from tragic accidents and implement changes to improve safety? Of course. Are these highly visible accidents (Colgon, AF447, Asiana 214) reason to revise training syllabi? Sure. But it would be a mistake to attack the use of automation as an evil when it has, overall, contributed to dramatic safety improvements over the years.
Sure, no need to throw the baby out with the bath water. Automation has surely contributed to safety over the decades.
But when a problem arises, a pilot should be able to be...well... a pilot. With or without automation, all pilots should be able to capably command an aircraft in such a manner that their performance and proficiency (or lack thereof) doesn't lead to the loss of the airplane nor any of the lives aboard.
Pilots must have the situational awareness to get themselves and everyone else on the plane along for the ride out of a mess. If pilots can't routinely recover from automation failures and other unusual situations (their most important job), the designers will improve the automation and get rid of the pilots.
But when a problem arises, a pilot should be able to be...well... a pilot. With or without automation, all pilots should be able to capably command an aircraft in such a manner that their performance and proficiency (or lack thereof) doesn't lead to the loss of the airplane nor any of the lives aboard.
Pilots must have the situational awareness to get themselves and everyone else on the plane along for the ride out of a mess. If pilots can't routinely recover from automation failures and other unusual situations (their most important job), the designers will improve the automation and get rid of the pilots.
Goes back to what my flight instructor always insisted upon, Avigate, Navigate, Then Communicate. Scary part is I returned to the US from Thailand a day before AF447 plummeted into the Atlantic and I made it home safely in a Boeing 777 and 767-300 in severe weather.
My wife and I were schoolies at #1 Fighter Wing Marville in Northern France. Because we were both members of the Officers Mess and the fact that I played on our mess hockey team we made lifetime friends with several young officers, several of them pilots and now retired airline Captains I forgot to mention that the years were 1965 to 67. All of them started their training on th Chipmunck then moved to the Harvard (I think you call it the Texan) then to the T33 Shooting star and then some went to the F86 and some to the twin engine prop or piston. By the time they joined the airlines they had 3000 plus hours with lots of takeoffs and landings and aced the airlines one month training programme. However the srogs who came over in 1966 started on the Tudor jet and missed that single piston engine training. Unfortunately for the arlines the number of airforce pilots joining the ailines has diminished greatly. Your point about the long autopilot flights with little real flying should be heeded.
*This article does not apply to the Mighty Beech airline pilots :D