Air France does a 'Memmingen'.

[blind pew]

Couldn't agree more Atc watcher.
Had a post censored last week after I commented on another post which ran along the lines that the poster had a sim check in three weeks and would swot up for that rather than making a reply.
It mirrored the attitude of some of the guys in BEA in the 70s...don't open the manuals except for a sim or route check.
My final company - another culture - always be ready for any emergency - use the books for conformation.
Didn't do any revision for any checks - I just did the professional job that I was paid for.
Suspect the poster concerned inherited the old attitude - as did the crew on the BA lax flight who didn't understand the basic fuel system or those on the 777 who didn't understand the importance of the sequence of the on ground emergency items and left a fuel shut off open.
My only contact with the Air France attitude is through the French gliding clubs and is typical macho best pilots in the world....with the odd exception of a 380 trainer who goes seems to do his job very well but knows there are limitations in fighting arrogance and the system (in our club!).

[roulishollandais]

Who were the winners of the first oil crisis ?

Originally Posted by ATC Watcher

20 years minimum at least

Retroactively, and knowing that problems exists since 20 years, so the startle point was in the 70's : first oil crisis, increasing agessivity and dishonesty to have the job in Countries victims of the crisis and Franco-german airspace's "elite" starting destroying UNO's worldwide peace culture and ICAO's global autority., replacing virility with machism

[5 APUs captain]

I am 737 TRI/TRE and trained hundreds young CPL pilots with 250 hours only from all EU (and not only).
From my experience the kids receieved CPL in France have WEAKEST flying skills and navigation knowledges. It is just my experience, but it is too visible!

[RAT 5]

In response the general query of your post, how do you change an airline's culture and how long does it take?

I've seen it done very fast, within the 5 years, due to a focused HOT and an SOP book as thick as a bible and treated as such. That plus OFDM and many tea no biscuits. Whether is makes for better pilots, I doubt it. The allowed performance envelope was shrunk in to a vacuum packed cigarette packet. If you stayed within that you were OK, but sometime circumstances pushed you outside that and then you see guys outside their comfort zone. Not a pretty sight as the thinks bubble and ?'s mark appears as a halo and nothing happens for quite a while. The company philosophy could be, 'don't stray outside the box, and if you do get back in ASAP.' Most of the time it works, but not always. As has been said many times in many threads, the aviating airmanship foundations are not a solid as once, but how to change it? Perhaps the large SOP bible, robotic trained monkey philosophy is really a longterm conspiracy theory to dilute the need of 'the right stuff' and turn everyone into airborne bus drivers and so lower T's & C's. It seems to be working looking around at what I've departed from.
I was told it is quicker to slap restrictions on what you can & can't do than to train the crews to be able to do it all. In my early days of mostly visual flying on charters, even to ILS rwy's, the company culture was fly the very basic a/c we had. That is what all captains trained/demo'd their new apprentices, every day and you did the same. Airlines were reasonable stable in size. The massive expansion into many bases in many countries has removed the oversight of a home base training dept. Crews have come from various backgrounds and cultures. The training was to get the crews on line and safe ASAP as a/c were arriving frequently. Make an SOP bible that works and management can be confident will not cause too much mayhem, and make violation a hell & brimstone matter. Not great, but it can be argued it works; until the day when the poo hits the airco and thinking outside of the box & comfort zone is necessary. However, in a risk/management environment it can be considered acceptable.
Changing away from this will be extremely difficult and the discussion will go round in circles again & again; as it already has on here.

[dudubrdx]

Well that's funny M.APU: A lot of the TREs in my company seem to think the level of training is very weak, in all countries except their own!! And there are quite a few.

[doniedarko]

Well that's funny M.APU: A lot of the TREs in my company seem to think the level of training is very weak, in all countries except their own!! And there are quite a few.

...touché...

[blind pew]

5APUs
250 hours - shear luxury ...the Irish churn the out with 160.....and when I visited Weston there was "icing" forecast so they even stopped circuit training.

[roulishollandais]

how do you change an airline's culture and how long does it take?

1980 : I discovered a ATPL exams traffic, with in the shadow a women traffic for blackmails., Some powerful (by family backgrund) DGSE Officer was concerned in protecting de facto the traffics against public interests and air safety.

Mr ARONDEL (AF) was the President of the "Jury des examens du perssonnel navigant professionnel" office..,. GTA and DGAC stopped the enquiry I asked him with plaintiff.

My chief pilot of the moment, (whom I discovered later he also buyed exams) said it was the old "affaire ZIEGLER" .

After ARONDEL came Mr MOUREAUX, Mr GOURGUECHON, aso. FRENCH DGAC NEVER STOPPED THE GUYS WHO BUIED CPL and ATPL EXAMS AND LICENSE and theses guys got quickly airline instructors... You can imagine on which cryteria signatures were given.

Some years ago again I put the thing on the table publicly, and GERARD FELDZER (AF, ACF president, ACF president) confirmed he knew that since in 1980 he was pilot student in the ENAC where the traffic of exams was going too. But nobody worried.

Telling about that on different occasions with French aviation people I often listened the now famous "PILOTS DO NOT NEED TO KNOW THAT" about airmanship and aviation knowledge
(All the persons names are already public)

[jcjeant]

1980 : I discovered a ATPL exams traffic, with in the shadow a women traffic for blackmails., Some powerful (by family backgrund) DGSE Officer was concerned in protecting de facto the traffics against public interests and air safety.

When you know what happens now in the political circles in France .. it's not astonishing ... corruption and fraud are rampant .....

[B888]

Official Reference

Quote: FIREFLYBOB

Psychologists have established (and subjectively I think they are correct) that when humans become "maxed out" the first "sense" which the brain deletes is that of hearing. ie the ear (physically) hears what is being said but the brain says "hey am too busy to listen to that at the moment!".

May answer the question to a number of overruns, but do you have any
Reference Material to back this up?

[BOAC]

No reference material but a fair bit of experience in cockpits when the other person can go 'deaf' when things get difficult. Missed RT, missed inter-cockpit words etc.

[ManaAdaSystem]

I thought the "loss of hearing" was common knowledge?
The very first sense to go out the window when a person gets stressed is the sense of humour. Then the hearing loss follows shortly after.
I don't even have to find documentation for this, it's my personal experience.

[B888]

Re: Reference Material

Quote :

I thought the "loss of hearing" was common knowledge?
The very first sense to go out the window when a person gets stressed is the sense of humour. Then the hearing loss follows shortly after.
I don't even have to find documentation for this, it's my personal experience.

I do agree with you however I may have the opportunity to tell pilots this in the classroom and having reference material will be an asset to back up what is said.

[alf5071h]

Not ‘loss of hearing’ per se, but limited attention resource.
General concepts outlined by James Reason in ‘The Human Contribution’, and most books on human factors.

Also see ‘Lack of Attentional Resource’ page 23 et al, in Monitoring Matters. A good document, although after this accident and similar, some aspects the philosophy of monitoring might need to be reconsidered – cross monitoring, self-monitoring.
CAP 737 is another general reference.

[B888]

Thank you alf.
Very useful.

[fireflybob]

Thanks Alf - been looking for the references too - somewhere in my library!

[Ian W]

There is a lot of research on 'Cognitive Overload' (see Wickens’ (2002) Multiple Resource Model). Verbal analysis appears to be a 'single channel' in the human brain. This means that you can read and understand or listen and understand but you cannot do both simultaneously. So someone who is concentrating on reading say the check list - or even visualizing the check list and verbally analyzing the memory - will appear not to hear what is said to them, even STALL STALL STALL. There is a similar issue with spatial analysis so if you are listening to someone on your cell phone while driving and they start giving you directions your brain will start processing the spatial analysis from the phone call - and will stop processing the visual cues from the road you are driving along; this is one of the reasons talking on the phone is dangerous.

More interesting still these cognitive channels also have a level of interference with each other. So if you are attempting to regain straight and level in Alternate law watching the various instruments and trying to listen to the PNF reading checks you will miss a lot of what is being said.

I do not believe that sufficient thought is given to cognitive overloads in the design of instruments and flight deck procedures: add the startle effect and 'automation surprise' plus the sudden stress of an aircraft that appears to be behaving differently to the instruments - and it will appear that the PF is ignoring everyone and auditory cues. This is a human limitation. If you don't believe it recite a nursery rhyme and as you do re-read this posting and have someone talk to you and try to understand what they have said. You cannot do it. The only input that will break into this lock out is 'haptic' that is touch - smack the guy on the arm and that will usually break attention from the other cognitive inputs

[Capn Bloggs]

No reference material but a fair bit of experience in cockpits when the other person can go 'deaf' when things get difficult. Missed RT, missed inter-cockpit words etc.

That's the crux of it. "When things get difficult". Why are things "difficult"? Because we don't do them often enough. I'm not suggesting that we all start doing these yahoo approaches on a regular basis, but sitting there with arms folded watching the machine go along the magenta line is doing absolutely nothing for our ability cope when placed under a bit of pressure, as these guys were (runway change).

We need more "left field" scenarios in the SIM to help us learn how to cope with these "unusual" situations.

[Juan Tugoh]

More left field scenarios that allow us to press on regardless, or give us the belief that we can press on regardless?

The answer to this was always to stop the approach and take a moment to sort out the height problem. That should be the point of training, not to develop techniques to allow the sort of macho attitudes displayed in this incident.

Capacity was the problem here and spending more time in the sim will not increase that significantly, it may help you to realise when your bucket is full and to try to give yourself more time but not if your training department is pushing you into situations whereby it is acceptable to press on.

The brave and macho thing to do would have been to accept that they had messed up and broken off the approach, accepting that we can mess up and owning the error and the consequences of that error are what HF is all about. While we try to develop ways of pressing on rather than accepting we cannot and must do something positive this sort of incident/ accident will continue to happen.

This is a cultural problem - Air France seem to have a problem within their safety culture, this is not their first press-on-itis incident.

[A4]

+1.

I cannot understand why crews cannot see how simple it is to fix