More serious concerns about loss of flying skills among airline pilots
AP IMPACT: Automation in the air dulls pilot skill APBy JOAN LOWY - Associated Press | AP – 3 hrs ago
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FILE - In this June 14, 2009 file photo, workers unload debris, belonging to crashed Air France flight 447, from the Brazilian Navy's Constitution Frigate in the port of Recife, northeast of Brazil. Airline industry and safety officials are concerned that pilots’ flying skills are becoming rusty and their ability to handle unexpected situations is eroding because most flying is delegated to computers in today’s highly automated planes. Last month, French investigators recommended that all pilots get mandatory training in manual flying and handling a high-altitude stall. The recommendations were in response to the 2009 crash of the Air France jet flying from Brazil to Paris. All 228 people aboard were killed. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)
FILE - In this June 14, 2009 file photo, workers unload debris, belonging to crashed …
FILE - In this Feb. 12, 2009, file photo, a plane burns after it crashed into a house in Clarence Center, N.Y., Authorities say it was Continental Airlines Flight 3407 operated by Manassas, Va.-based Colgan Air. Airline industry and safety officials are concerned that pilots’ flying skills are becoming rusty and their ability to handle unexpected situations is eroding because most flying is delegated to computers in today’s highly automated planes. (AP Photo/David Duprey, File)
FILE - In this Feb. 12, 2009, file photo, a plane burns after it crashed into a house … WASHINGTON (AP) — Are airline pilots forgetting how to fly? As planes become ever more reliant on automation to navigate crowded skies, safety officials worry there will be more deadly accidents traced to pilots who have lost their hands-on instincts in the air. Hundreds of people have died over the past five years in "loss of control" accidents in which planes stalled during flight or got into unusual positions that pilots could not correct. In some cases, pilots made the wrong split-second decisions, with catastrophic results — for example, steering the plane's nose skyward into a stall instead of down to regain stable flight. Spurred in part by federal regulations that require greater reliance on computerized flying, the airline industry is suffering from "automation addiction," said Rory Kay, an airline captain and co-chairman of a Federal Aviation Administration committee on pilot training. "We're seeing a new breed of accident with these state-of-the art planes." Pilots use automated systems to fly airliners for all but about three minutes of a flight: the takeoff and landing. Most of the time pilots are programming navigation directions into computers rather than using their hands on controls to fly the plane. They have few opportunities to maintain their skills by flying manually, Kay's advisory committee warns. Fatal airline accidents have decreased dramatically in the U.S. over the past decade. However, The Associated Press interviewed pilots, industry officials and aviation safety experts who expressed concern about the implications of decreased opportunities for manual flight, and reviewed more than a dozen loss-of-control accidents around the world. Airlines and regulators discourage or even prohibit pilots from turning off the autopilot and flying planes themselves, the committee said. Safety experts say they're seeing cases in which pilots who are suddenly confronted with a loss of computerized flight controls don't appear to know how to respond immediately, or they make errors — sometimes fatally so.
A draft FAA study found pilots sometimes "abdicate too much responsibility to automated systems." Because these systems are so integrated in today's planes, one malfunctioning piece of equipment or a single bad computer instruction can suddenly cascade into a series of other failures, unnerving pilots who have been trained to rely on the equipment. The study examined 46 accidents and major incidents, 734 voluntary reports by pilots and others as well as data from more than 9,000 flights in which a safety official rode in the cockpit to observe pilots in action. It found that in more than 60 percent of accidents, and 30 percent of major incidents, pilots had trouble manually flying the plane or made mistakes with automated flight controls. A typical mistake was not recognizing that either the autopilot or the auto-throttle — which controls power to the engines — had disconnected. Others failed to take the proper steps to recover from a stall in flight or to monitor and maintain airspeed.
"We're forgetting how to fly," Kay said. In the most recent fatal airline crash in the U.S., in 2009 near Buffalo, N.Y., the co-pilot of a regional airliner programmed incorrect information into the plane's computers, causing it to slow to an unsafe speed. That triggered a stall warning. The startled captain, who hadn't noticed the plane had slowed too much, responded by repeatedly pulling back on the control yoke, overriding two safety systems, when the correct procedure was to push forward. An investigation later found there were no mechanical or structural problems that would have prevented the plane from flying if the captain had responded correctly. Instead, his actions caused an aerodynamic stall. The plane plummeted to earth, killing all 49 people aboard and one on the ground. Two weeks after the New York accident, a Turkish Airlines Boeing 737 crashed into a field while trying to land in Amsterdam. Nine people were killed and 120 injured. An investigation found that one of the plane's altimeters, which measures altitude, had fed incorrect information to the plane's computers. That, in turn, caused the auto-throttle to reduce speed to a dangerously slow level so that the plane lost lift and stalled. Dutch investigators described the flight's three pilots' "automation surprise" when they discovered the plane was about to stall. They hadn't been closely monitoring the airspeed. Last month, French investigators recommended that all pilots get mandatory training in manual flying and handling a high-altitude stall. The recommendations were in response to the 2009 crash of an Air France jet flying from Brazil to Paris. All 228 people aboard were killed. An investigation found that airspeed sensors fed bad information to the Airbus A330's computers. That caused the autopilot to disengage suddenly and a stall warning to activate. The co-pilot at the controls struggled to save the plane, but because he kept pointing the plane's nose up, he actually caused the stall instead of preventing it, experts said. Despite the bad airspeed information, which lasted for less than a minute, there was nothing to prevent the plane from continuing to fly if the pilot had followed the correct procedure for such circumstances, which is to continue to fly levelly in the same direction at the same speed while trying to determine the nature of the problem, they said. In such cases, the pilots and the technology are failing together, said former US Airways Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, whose precision flying is credited with saving all 155 people aboard an Airbus A320 after it lost power in a collision with Canada geese shortly after takeoff from New York's LaGuardia Airport two years ago.
"If we only look at the pilots — the human factor — then we are ignoring other important factors," he said. "We have to look at how they work together."
The ability of pilots to respond to the unexpected loss or malfunction of automated aircraft systems "is the big issue that we can no longer hide from in aviation," said Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va. "We've been very slow to recognize the consequence of it and deal with it." The foundation, which is industry-supported, promotes aviation safety around the world. Airlines are also seeing smaller incidents in which pilots waste precious time repeatedly trying to restart the autopilot or fix other automated systems when what they should be doing is "grasping the controls and flying the airplane," said Bob Coffman, another member of the FAA pilot training committee and an airline captain. Paul Railsback, operations director at the Air Transport Association, which represents airlines, said: "We think the best way to handle this is through the policies and training of the airlines to ensure they stipulate that the pilots devote a fair amount of time to manually flying. We want to encourage pilots to do that and not rely 100 percent on the automation. I think many airlines are moving in that direction." In May, the FAA proposed requiring airlines to train pilots on how to recover from a stall, as well as expose them to more realistic problem scenarios. But other new regulations are going in the opposite direction. Today, pilots are required to use their autopilot when flying at altitudes above 24,000 feet, which is where airliners spend much of their time cruising. The required minimum vertical safety buffer between planes has been reduced from 2,000 feet to 1,000 feet. That means more planes flying closer together, necessitating the kind of precision flying more reliably produced by automation than human beings. The same situation is increasingly common closer to the ground. The FAA is moving from an air traffic control system based on radar technology to more precise GPS navigation. Instead of time-consuming, fuel-burning stair-step descents, planes will be able to glide in more steeply for landings with their engines idling. Aircraft will be able to land and take off closer together and more frequently, even in poor weather, because pilots will know the precise location of other aircraft and obstacles on the ground. Fewer planes will be diverted. But the new landing procedures require pilots to cede even more control to automation.
"Those procedures have to be flown with the autopilot on," Voss said. "You can't afford a sneeze on those procedures." Even when not using the new procedures, airlines direct their pilots to switch on the autopilot about a minute and a half after takeoff, when the plane reaches about 1,000 feet, Coffman said. The autopilot generally doesn't come off until about a minute and a half before landing, he said. Pilots still control the plane's flight path. But they are programming computers rather than flying with their hands.
Opportunities to fly manually are especially limited at commuter airlines, where pilots may fly with the autopilot off for about 80 seconds out of a typical two-hour flight, Coffman said.
But it is the less experienced first officers starting out at smaller carriers who most need manual flying experience. Airline training programs are focused on training pilots to fly with the automation, rather than without it. Senior pilots, even if their manual flying skills are rusty, can at least draw on experience flying older generations of less automated planes.
Adding to concerns about an overreliance on automation is an expected pilot shortage in the U.S. and many other countries. U.S. airlines used to be able to draw on a pool of former military pilots with extensive manual flying experience. But more pilots now choose to stay in the armed forces, and corporate aviation competes for pilots with airlines, where salaries have dropped.
Changing training programs to include more manual flying won't be enough because pilots spend only a few days a year in training, Voss said. Airlines will have to rethink their operations fundamentally if they're going to give pilots realistic opportunities to keep their flying skills honed, he said.
The International Air Transport Association says the most common type of airline accident is one in which planes stalled or otherwise lost control in flight. It counted 51 such accidents in the past five years.
Centaurus, I suspect that one of the primary reasons for this is the direction that modern airline training is taking. This is not a shot at your profession because I believe it is being driven by the airlines who want to cut training costs.
This link is to an article by John Deakin on getting a GIV type rating. It describes a pressure cooker environment where instructors were having to "tick all the boxes" in a required time to be able to meet the advertised cost of the course. Deakin was extremely critical of the process and in later articles he describes how there were repercussions.
While airlines are going to cut costs associated with training and currency there will continue to be crashes. Any pilot can tell you how their skills deteriorate without practice and airline pilots are no exception. It is chilling to read of some airline SOPs' that mandate autopilot use from just after takeoff to just before landing.
"We think the best way to handle this is through the policies and training of the airlines to ensure they stipulate that the pilots devote a fair amount of time to manually flying. We want to encourage pilots to do that and not rely 100 percent on the automation. I think many airlines are moving in that direction."
This is indeed an interesting subject. The need for more automation is purely due development of airframes & systems to make them more safe.As we all know an A/P can do the job far better than us mere mortals hence the word 'safety' becomes the prime reason for such a high level of automation. Bit like adding up numbers on a piece of paper.That's all we could do once upon a time then the calculator was invented (not taking into account the abacus used by the Chinese centuries ago) & now a lot of the younger set would struggle to use their minds to add up etc. Are these bad things? Of course not we got away from old fabric bi-planes 'cause the technology changed to be safer & more efficient (they where too slow bit like adding up on paper) but like most things in life where we 'run away' with an idea it does tend to bite us in the ass latter down the track, we are seeing this now in the thread subject heading here.
The answer? It's a balance, a balance between safety & cost, the two demons that fight each other everyday out there in the world of aviation.
because I believe it is being driven by the airlines who want to cut training costs
I believe that this is a big issue that has been conveniently swept under the carpet. The regulator is to scared to call them on it so the airlines get away with diminishing the standard of training and once again it is up to the pilot to effectively teach himself how everything fits together.
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As we all know an A/P can do the job far better than us mere mortals hence the word 'safety' becomes the prime reason for such a high level of automation.
Most of the time yes, however I have seen 3 instances where the autopilot couldn't cut it and the human took over and did a better job. Autopilots are excellent servants but don't make very good masters.
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Quite a few years ago now, a former BA senior pilot (retired) and I were studying on the same course. He was an interesting character with a raft of experience on everything BA flew up to that point, including the Concorde. He was also a check & training captain on everything he was rated on. He related the story of a line-check in a 747 into Hong Kong, during which in the downwind position for landing in VMC, he disabled all of the automatics with the intent of the crew undergoing check fly a visual circuit and land.
Without the automatics, the crew couldn't even find the airport, clearly visible off their wing-tip.
That discussion took place probably the fighting end of 20 years ago now. Even then, this very senior and knowledgable pilot was raising concerns about the deterioration of pilots' manual flying skills in the face of advancing levels of automation.
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Originally Posted by Wally MkII
As we all know an A/P can do the job far better than us mere mortals...
Until the automated systems reach the point where the say effectively "too hard" and completely disengage themselves, leaving a probably baffled and potentially disoriented imperfect human with atrophied manual flying skills to try and recover the situation.
The automatics can and do do a more precise job of following the magenta line, as long as everything is trucking along alright. It's when things get a bit outside the programmed parameters and the automatics just bang themselves off that pilots are being dropped in the do-do! If the manual flying skills have been eroded and/or the pilot has settled into any level of automation complacency, you're in a world of hurt.
There was an excellent discussion elsewhere on PPRuNe recently, on the Colgan crash. Now, entirely from (imperfect) memory, it seems the co-pilot made a programming error which effectively led to an incipient stall, that went either unrecognised or inappropriately responded to by the PF. Whatever. Anyway, the PF wound up rotating the nose into the stall with known consequences. The training of all pilots was mentioned as a potential... when we're training for stalls, what are we taught to do with the stick? We pull back, into the stall. Recovery commences after the aircraft has stalled -a conditioned response in this circumstance? Almost every pilot I know is well aware that pulling back at the 1st indication of a stall is an inappropriate response. Release any back-pressure and/or check forward with power going up... but did this guy know that? If not, why not? How many others similarly trained are out there? Interesting thought.
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Originally Posted by PLovett
...is the direction that modern airline training is taking.
I wonder if, given that most pilots today are trained with the goal of achieving airline cadetship in an (IMO excessively) automated environment, perhaps the word "pilot" should be substituted for "airline" in that quote...
There have been countless threads here lamenting falling standards across the board, from GA to the airlines, from radio calls, to light GA aircraft flying 747 circuits... these matters are usually dealt with here in isolation. It's time we, as a profession, start looking at these matters as a whole. It's only then that we can truly start to address the issues and forge some sort solution. The regulators are apparently too gutless to do it, the airlines won't spend what the accountants consider to be an "unnecessary" cent on training -the impetus for change must come from within the pilot body. We have to individually lift our own game, collectively demand appropriately trained and experienced new hires and where appropriate establish effective, comprehensive mentoring programmes.
QF32 - one suspects the outcome might've been rather different but for the pilots' ability to hand-fly, given Nancy's automatics had decided there was too much wrong with the aircraft for them to be able to run the show...
Thank God the A320 that went into the Hudson River had a REAL pilot as a Captain,I believe this incident sums it all up What is going to happen as time goes on and pilots become more Auto Reliant we are going to see a lot more simple accidents that shouldnt happen
The startled captain, who hadn't noticed the plane had slowed too much, responded by repeatedly pulling back on the control yoke, overriding two safety systems, when the correct procedure was to push forward.
This doesn't indicate a lack of recent poling of the aircraft to me, more deficient training back in this pilot's early days. If something whacky happens, what's your first response?
Wouldn't any reasonably well trained pilot check attitude, airspeed and power setting and go from there?
Possibly I'm being too judgemental, but I don't think so.
This will be a problem with the new breed of cadet pilots and MPL's. There will be no flying skills to lose because they will never of had any to begin with.
I've refused outright to fly with the little buggers. I'm flat out like a lizard just keeping those arrogant 200hr Y-genner kids from burying me in the dirt.
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responded by repeatedly pulling back on the control yoke, overriding two safety systems, when the correct procedure was to push forward.
In that prang it looked to me like he went into a go-around mindset iso unstall mode. Crew fatigue was also mentioned.
Being deteriorating for years, as the airlines have taken away the ability of pilots to think for themselves. Manuals, computers, so much information being taken in by the brain, leaves the pilot little time to develop "airmanship". Add to that, not as many pilots coming thru GA, and learning slowly but surely about their own ability, their own reactions, and their own problem solving solutions. In my day, for want of a better word, we learnt to listen to the aircraft thru our "arse". A sixth sense that developed over a period of time, and not learnt from a manual or a Sim. For all the bells and whistles modern day aircraft can still become just another aircraft in peril (as the A380 skipper found out) fortunately he was a pilot with airmanship, that would have been installed in him from his RAAF days, and it showed. It will be a sorry day when pilots simply become systems managers, and that is where it is heading. As one pilot blogged earlier on this site, he has to fly a "lighty" every so often to reconnect to flying for flyings sake, where we were lucky, to fly aircraft that still required flying, enjoyable flying, but none of us ever trusted the bastards, never.
Thank God the A320 that went into the Hudson River had a REAL pilot as a Captain
Now I am not saying that the skipper did not do a fantastic job, (and the F/O) but as for flying skill into the Hudson, anyone could have done it. Some credit has to go to the airbus itself with its stall protection laws and fly by wire system to keep the wings level even as it was hitting the water.
None of Airbus' "stall protection laws and fly by wire system" played any part in keeping " the wings level even as it was hitting the water"; it was pilot skill and judgement by Sullenberger, who was ably assisted by Skyles. Conversely, the Airbus safety features still allowed AF447 to pancake, virtually wings level, into the Atlantic at a sink rate which caused disintegration, and death to all on board. Sullenberger's experience and judgement prevented any of those "protection laws" from being invoked, and if he'd relied on them to save the day the results would have been the same as AF447 or any other airframe similarly mis-handled. And as for "anyone could have done it", you've evidently not seen the variety and depth of deficient piloting skills caused by:
- incomplete or inadequate training in the first place,
- inadequate training to cater for when automation fails, or
- skills atrophy arising from an over-reliance on automation. Do you think that a freshly minted MPL could have supported Sully the way Skyles did.? I know what I think!
From the accident investigation report- Airbus performed a simulation of the last 300 feet of the accident flight, which indicated that the airplane was performing as designed and was in alpha-protection mode from 150 feet to touchdown. The Airbus simulation indicated that, from 1530:36 to 1530:43, the flight control system attenuated the effect of the pilot’s airplane nose-up (ANU) sidestick inputs below 100 feet radio altitude.
and
Despite not reaching this portion of the Engine Dual Failure checklist, the captain stated during postaccident interviews that he thought that he had obtained green dot speed immediately after the bird strike, maintained that speed until the airplane was configured for landing, and, after deploying the flaps, maintained a speed “safely above VLS,” which is the lowest selectable airspeed providing an appropriate margin to the stall speed. However, FDR data indicated that the airplane was below green dot speed and at VLS or slightly less for most of the descent, and about 15 to 19 knots below VLS during the last 200 feet. The NTSB concludes that the captain’s difficulty maintaining his intended airspeed during the final approach resulted in high AOAs, which contributed to the difficulties in flaring the airplane, the high descent rate at touchdown, and the fuselage damage. (See additional discussion in section 2.7.1.)
and The flight envelope protections allowed the captain to pull full aft on the sidestick without the risk of stalling the airplane.
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Sullenberger's experience and judgement prevented any of those "protection laws" from being invoked, and if he'd relied on them to save the day the results would have been the same as AF447 or any other airframe similarly mis-handled.
Jetsbest- So clearly you are wrong. You don't fly airbus do you?
Besides AF447 was not in normal law during its descent, so it is an entirely different scenario.
Listen - I am not saying they did not do a fantastic job, they did, and this isn't about an MPL qual'd guy, it is about handling, and I was just saying that 3 blader's example was not the best one to give to bolster the thread's argument.
The John Deakin article was excellent and a bloody frightening look at how Type rating schools shove a fire hose of info down everyone's throat and one up the other end too all in the name of a " lowest" set price and min time course. That was written 10yrs ago, nothing has changed, gotten worse if anything as greed for profits and marketing shortest possible course times continues to climb. Every other post above has restated nicely the same points on this subject that has been around for at least 30yrs since the early 80s when the new glass cockpits and fully automated airliners started to become more widely available and greed is good started to be the corporate way
Deakins was 120% right, students should be given reasonable time to absorb complex material and ask Q to ensure a more thorough understanding. Confidence in the newly acquired knowledge and skills in the sim should progress steadily or reasonably so as the course progresses to enable a basically escalating performance as time goes by. Everyone learns at different rates and hits temporary learning plateaus, that is only natural.
Most of these ground schools whether on a bizjet or airliner should realistically be almost twice the length, ie maybe 3-4 wks instead of 2 ( in the GIV example given) to allow for the average spectrum of users. Not the uber hotshots who are brilliant in that time while everyone else is still miles behind the ground training or sim and completely overwhelmed.
Same with sim sessions, start off with the basic handling and procedures, manually flying and getting a feel for it all then move into more automatics usage, then emergencies etc
He was a veteran B747 Captain. How would an experienced GA light aircraft driver feel/cope, or a 0-200 hr space cadet??
A balance between cost and training time/content needs to be found as Wally said, sadly that balance has long since been completely lost by both airlines and the Type Rating schools like FSI and Simuflight.
Oh that's right all the real learning begins when you start airline line training or get back to your corporate flight dept right? Of course now you are in a real aeroplane worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars with real pax down the back and out in the real world where there is no reset button.
Anybody here care to describe briefly what the training time vs amount and quality of material is like for anyone lucky enough to get hired at Qantas and Virgin that do their own in house ground and sim training?? Is it as bad as what Deakins described or more reasonably paced??
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IMHO its pilots themselves causing these problems! When a big legacy carrier runs a ground school and/or sim they usually are very thorough (6 weeks plus) Its the independent providers doing courses for self funded customers that try to squeeze the courses down to reduce costs for the client. So its "pay for your rating" airlines..ie LCC who would suffer from this practice the most.
Noted, I stand corrected, and thanks for pointing out the report's analysis. I've read Sully's book heard Sully & Skyles relate the story in person (evidently before the report brought those facts to light) and maintain, as do you, that they did an extraordinary job in extraordinary circumstances.
I still say too that "anyone could have done it" is a difficult assertion to support. In my view, an either inexperienced or skills-atrophied pilot would have been a far slimmer chance of the successful "Hudson" outcome than Sully/Skyles or similar crew; his book profoundly asserts that opinion.
I've flown Boeing and Airbus; I like 'em both. So I'll summarise my thoughts:
- Airbus laws didn't keep Sully's wings level, Sully did,
- we'll never know if Airbus pitch protections absolutely saved Sully or whether he would have done just as well in a 737 with manual feel of 'approach to stall',
- preliminary info suggests AF447 was grossly mishandled after what was no doubt a confusing set of initial indications. Alternate Law, and even Direct Law, should not be used as excuses for flying into the water with full back-stick and idle thrust at approx 10000ft/min rate of descent. Such a tragedy is more likely to have been averted with better training and/or less skills atrophy and/or more more manual flying experience on the crew's part. (fatigue as a factor?... and no, I'm not blaming the crew; it's an organisational & regulatory issue)
So, to refer again to this thread's title; When things go wrong, as they still do albeit with decreasing regularity due to engineering improvements like fly-by-wire, my money is still on the aeroplane with a REAL pilot at the controls.
jetsbest- I think we all agree that there is no substitute for hand flying skills cemented through thorough training. I was fortunate enough to have spent 18 yrs in the RAAF flying non automated aircraft before embarking on an airline career. The issue of degradation of flying skills lies squarely on the shoulders of the airlines themselves. The bean counters assert that the automatics give a lower statistical chance of bending the jet. The airlines convert people to type in minimum time. The airline I fly with takes cadets, and in general, though they are smart talented chaps, some, lack the airmanship and handling skills that can only be acquired through time and training exposure. (Mind you so do some of the non cadets) We get one handling sim a year which IMO is not enough, but better than nothing. Unfortunately I can't see things changing without substantial pressure from regulatory authorities. Safe flying.
