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rubik101
1st Apr 2002, 13:05
Bearing in mind our very expensive and ongoing training, our appropriately high opinion of ourselves and our undoubted skill and proffesionalism, why is it we still crash?
Undoubtably some accidents are unavoidable, however some which have resulted in total or near total death and destruction, might just have had a differtent outcome if we, as pilots, had a somewhat different attitude to our abilities to handle the situation.
No-one likes to admit they have reached a point, either in the simulator or for real, that they are in a situation which is now beyond their control. If the pilots who 'heroically' crash landed the aircraft at Souix City had admitted defeat much earlier they mighht well have saved everyone's lives.
If they had decided that the best course of action was to admit that control was almost impossible and that to crash land, in a shallow glide, then the aircraft may well have come to rest in one piece.
Consider also the fact that the remaining engines on the ill fated and almost inverted Concord were at full thrust and again you might wonder if the better course were to admit defeat and shut them all down before impact, hopefully again in an upright attitude. I am not suggesting that the outcome would have been so different, nobody can see what might have been but I would be fairly sure that the outcome of some accidents would have been different had the pilots at the controls had less of an 'I can do this' attitude of mind.
I suggest such scenarios should be introduced into our simulator training to demonstrate that a crash landing is not the worst outcome of an 'event' such as this!
Any thouights?

dolly737
1st Apr 2002, 16:33
Dear rubik,

„...I am not suggesting that the outcome would have been so different, nobody can see what might have been...” quite right! so how can you be so sure that “...the outcome of some accidents would have been different had the pilots at the controls had less of an 'I can do this' attitude of mind...” ?

Considering options is one step in the decision-finding process. Airline pilots are trained in decision-making and I can’t see how a ‘I canNOT do this’ attitude would be advantageous.
However, I think I get your point here, but we do have the option of “crash landing” an airliner; it is just such an extremely rare occasion where such a course of action would yield a less catastrophic result.

It is not “I can/cannot do this”, but “what can I do” that plays the leading role in handling an emergency, a combination of sticking to procedures with airmanship supported by experience. Therefore “accepting defeat” is never an option.

Concorde: I doubt that the pilots were aware of the severity of the damage, and putting it into a field S&L with a full load of fuel,........???
Sioux City: The only difference here would have been the location of the touchdown. It also would have taken hours for emergency services (who saved many lives) to arrive at the scene...???

always happy landings
dolly

Pegasus77
1st Apr 2002, 22:05
Rubik,

After reading your post I felt I had to reply. Maybe you don't mean everything as you write it, but still....
I see you live in Germany as well, but I can only guess you don't work at the same company as I do; moreover I hope your license only allows you to fly anything smaller than a C152.

Captain Haynes and his crew were superprofessionals. They adapted to the situation in a very creative way, in the beginning days of CRM, and, as stated above, saved many lives. It is not normal for an airplane to operate without any hydraulics, and it is a miracle the crew managed to stay ahead of the situation and even found a way to steer the aircraft towards an airfield, with emergency services prepared for their arrival.

Sitting in the cockpit there may come some point where you have to admit that you cannot do anything anymore to save the aircraft. Realising such a thing and then sitting back, waiting to die, doesn't help anything IMHO. Above all others, captain Haynes showed where inventivity can save hundreds of lives, which according to the textbook should have been lost.

In the cockpit we're not the NTSB or similar. We do not have the amount of information which is available later on, after years of investigation. Therefore we might not always present the best solution possible, but we will present the best solution possible to think of in very little time.

Where you present in the cockpit of the crashed Concorde? Do you know what information was presented to the pilots? Do you have the mental capability of even guessing at what those pilots went through in their last minutes of their lives?
Offcourse, now knowing all the facts, it is easy for us to say, they MIGHT (!) have had better chances surviving, pulling the power back on the two remaining engines. But do you know for sure? Aren't you really guessing?

We are trained for 1000s of failures, all out of the book. The fun in flying is that not everything happens as written, and there our creativity, CRM and so on comes into play. That makes the job diverse and challenging.

I honestly think you are wrong in stating that in the Concorde-crash or in the Sioux-accident the pilots thought "we can do this". My humble guess is they fought for their airplane and their passengers lives with everything they could.

The moment you sit back and admit that everything is lost, you will die for sure. Why not try to make something out of it and do what you are there for?!

P77

rubik101
1st Apr 2002, 23:35
I did not suggest that when the point of realisation that the aircraft is behaving in such a manner as to be beyond our control to sit back and accept the inevitable. I am suggesting that we have an 'instinct' to get the aircraft on the ground at or as close as possible to an airfield/runway. Had Captain Haynes accepted the fact that the aircraft was beyond his ability to control it and put it down striaght and level in an open fireld he may well not have needed any emergency services at all.
I wasn't there and I admit that with the benefit of hindsight it is easy to be more analytical but this does not mean that to consider putting the aircraft in a field should be disregarded.
It is an option to be considered in an extreme situation but we are not 'programmed' to ever consider such a course of action.
My point is simply that perhaps we should be!

GlueBall
2nd Apr 2002, 01:22
Rubik has a good point on the Concorde crash about landing straight ahead in a farmers field! As we know it was Marty's copilot who desperately had alerted him three (3) times about airspeed decay. With the gear down at only 200 feet, lower than the height of the Control Tower, it would have been a better survival probability instead of trying to make Le Bourget with insufficient airspeed and stalling in the process. A controlled crash is always better than an uncontrolled stall/crash!

In any inflight emergency, our simulator training "mind set" always stresses the concept of landing on a pavement, which in some cases may be impractical reality.

It's lesson One on your first single engine flight: If the engine quits right after takeoff, don't even think about turning back to the airport, land straight ahead. Which is to say that in the case of any multiengine airplane, if you don't have the airspeed then you must land. Now. :eek:

Pegasus77
2nd Apr 2002, 01:47
I agree there are more options than only returning to the airfield.
I don't agree in the Sioux-accident. The crew found a way to steer the aircraft, and used that possibility to get the maximum out of the situation. Have you ever seen a crashlanded airliner, where everybody got out unhurt? In the same situation, given all the knowledge we have afterwards, I would take the same decision als capt Haynes did, it seems best to me considering all factors, including the uncertainty of the outcome he had to deal with.

In the Concorde-crash I wasn't aware of the FO repeatedly warning the captain of the approaching stall. This would suggest that the cockpitcrew, or at least part of it, was aware of how grave the situation looked. In that case you can be right, maybe a straightout controlled crashlanding would have been better.

More generally seen, I agree with you that creativity (and having your mind set because of training prevents this!) can only be helpfull in an abnormal situation.

P77

Princess PP
2nd Apr 2002, 10:55
Rubik,

God help me if I was ever to be in the unfortunate position of being a passenger in an a/c during an emergency, with you at the controls.

Danza
2nd Apr 2002, 11:36
I'm in a rush and have not had time to read what everyone else has said, so if anyone has said this already sorry. If you are interested in this sort of stuff I'd reccomed you to read "The Naked Pilot" (I can't remeber the author). It goes into a lot of the human and psycological side of aircraft flying.

john_tullamarine
2nd Apr 2002, 12:33
I think that Rubik101's thoughts are well meant but, perhaps, simplistic. However, the questions implicit in his/her post are quite valid and deserve objective consideration.

The article hyperlinked by BIK is illustrative and is a cut down version of a lengthy dissertation given by Haynes to a learned society meeting in the US, a videotape copy of which I have .. and treasure as a salutory lesson in the management of an impending disaster when all indications are that the situation is near futile. To watch this video lecture is to marvel quite absolutely at what the crew of the Sioux City aircraft did, and the good luck which they wrangled, enticed, and dragged out of the situation with which they were faced.

Haynes, I think, quite clearly had in mind that his only realistic option was to hope for a semi-controlled crash (with a good dose of luck) on or near an airport - there was never any available option to put the aircraft down nicely in a field. It was in the final seconds that it appeared a miracle was to be snatched from disaster .. only to be dashed subsequently, as I recall, by a quirk of fate that saw the phugoid pitch the nose down at a late stage of the approach, leading to the aircraft's rolling itself into a ball. The crew did their bit by getting the aircraft somewhere near the end of the runway more or less right way up.

In respect of the Concord, it is my very limited understanding that the pilot flew the aircraft with remarkable manipulative skill, only to end up in a situation where he was, in effect, just along for the final seconds of the ride. I suspect that the time frame, the multiple conflicting cues provided to the crew, and the extreme workload with which they were faced, precluded sufficient time to second guess a most unusual situation. Some days we would really rather, with the benefit of hindsight, have remained in bed.

Where I am leading to is my observation that, in CRM role play exercises with which an airline in my past treated its pilots, the typical experienced line pilot's personal management approach to a seemingly hopeless situation was to play the game down to the wire, even when an unsuccessful outcome was unavoidable. Some non-pilots, who periodically participated, were far more likely to throw their hands up in the air when the situation became "hopeless". I suspect that a similar observation might be the case for some, if not all, inexperienced pilots and that one of the desirable characteristics associated with the apprenticeship gaining of flight experience is the subtle change of attitude to personal management of problems.

Maybe, in respect of a given accident, the Monday morning quarterback sessions will determine in due course that the endplay was inevitable .... perhaps even demonstrate that a more optimal game plan was available.

I have no difficulty with Rubik101's suggestion that, on occasion, the option of putting the aircraft into a paddock may be both worthy of crew assessment and, possibly, may be the optimal solution. Situations which come to mind include uncontained fire enroute, anticipated major structural failure, early engine failure on a light twin in adverse circumstances.

I do have a concern, though, with the apparent thoughts of others who appear to suggest that one should just give up rather than exploring options and fighting it down to the crash site.

At the heart of the matter both for crew and passengers is the following question ... which sort of personal management attitude would you prefer to have up front driving the machine at the time ?

Tinstaafl
2nd Apr 2002, 16:01
My thoughts?

Don't give up until you're dead...

rubik101
2nd Apr 2002, 21:27
How very enlightening ,and educational for some perhaps, to see that some people, such as John Tullamarine, have read and understood what they have read and are able to pass considered comment. Exactly the sort of opinion we should welcome, wether we agree with it or not.
How unlike the rather misguided and somewhat rude comment from PrincessPP, an interesting nom de plume, who seemingly fails to grasp the whole point of the posting. I am simply trying to discover if our training and 'mind-set' needs to be adjusted, improved, altered with a view to improving, even if only marginally, the survival rates of catastrophic situations.
Shame she/he had nothing worthwhile to add to the discussion. Again, I never suggested we give up, merely reconsider, before the event hopefully, that there is an alternative to the 'press-on' attitude instilled in us from day one of our training.

'%MAC'
2nd Apr 2002, 22:41
I’m probably going to regret posting this. While in transition to a new aircraft type I had the pleasure of training with some junior members of our airline. One chap, upon loosing an engine around VsubR was obviously going to roll over on his back, as most new-hires did. Instead, this enterprising young man reduced the power on the good engine and ‘landed’ straight ahead. This was obviously not what the check airman had wanted. I thought it was a great example of thinking outside the box, realizing one’s limits, and choosing the most survivable scenario based on all available information. My comments obviously did nothing to quell the check airman’s admonition. The young man eventually learned how to perform Vsub1 cuts spot on and I hope hasn’t lost his ability to see alternative choices when situations try to force us into ‘group think’.

You do state a valid point, this is a very difficult area to broach with either the training department or operations, so much of aviation is procedures. While jumpseating a pilot said, “I am no longer a pilot, I am a thespian”, it’s all about callouts and following the script. In the case of UAL 232 and Concord, I think both crews improvised to the best of their ability, but for the Grace of God…

Bluejet
2nd Apr 2002, 22:49
I'm all for thinking things through, and also looking at it form all angles. However I believe the use of the Souix City crash as an example may be flawed in that the aircraft had lost all of its hydraulics. Leaving it impossible to steer without use of asymmetric thrust. it would have been nigh impossible to put the aircraft into a shallow glide and land off. An aircraft in that condition has to be put down near an airfield where there are highly trained emergency services personnel who can, and who did, save many lives.

Other than that, yep, I think that with each successive year of airline flying a pilot finds it harder to accept that he has to make a forced landing at anywhere but an airfield.

Difficult to engineer this scenario in the sim though. We fly round Europe and our guys tend to always find an airfield in the sim to get into, even in an engine off glide. When we do have an all out failure at rotate, everyone so far has reverted to warrior mode and just gone for the best landing into wind, although it has little training value in a valuable resource like a sim; as we have to cram in so much in order to sign off those LPC/OPC etc. A full on degrading situation, requiring a forced landing would take ages to engineer and burn a load of sim time for what is, in reality, an almost impossibility.

However I am open to suggestions.

Pegasus77
3rd Apr 2002, 20:36
Nevertheless... It is always good to think about it, outside the simulator. In the simulator we practice things we cannot practice in a real airplane (engine failure recovery, severe electrical failures), and that is what sims are there for.

Often when in cruise flight I let a certain scenario play through my mind, and try to solve it, and then discuss it with my captain. For instance: what would I do, when the captain got sick right now? Or where would we go with a fuel leak? What would be the best option with smoke in the cockpit, when flying in the middle of nowhere over Russia, instead of within 80nm of a very suitable airport as in almost every simulator scenario?
In the same row fits the Concorde accident... Where are good spots for a crashlanding after takeoff? etc. etc.

I don't think I can be prepared for eveything, but discussing every possibility with another pilot, when we're in cruise flight has enhanced my view on things greatly. And for that I don't need a simulator.

P77