There is no doubt whatsoever that permanent full automation controlled by pilots with rigid SOP’S written by a myopic Flight Ops. Dept. will give a highly reliable, very safe operation flight after flight. Build in very conservative restrictions and limits, enforce strict adherence to SOP’s by administering the most severe penalties, punish minor mistakes and reduce the thinking required by your flight crew and you will have the safest operation in the world, year after year. Your airline will be virtually incident free month after month, year after year.
So what is the problem with that? A fantastically safe operation where possibly millions of people have been flown on tens of thousands of flights risk free. Such an airline would be an insurance company’s dream client, shareholders would pat themselves on the back for investing in such an excellent company and passengers would feel safe knowing they will always get to their destination. And if I was a betting man, I would gamble that they would as well. These are the indisputable facts.
There is only one problem with such an operation. The odd ball, the card dealt from the bottom of the pack, the unexpected failure, the weather that wasn’t predicted, strange meteorological conditions, the software glitch, hardware faults in aircraft and on the ground, failures in planning software etc. These can and do happen. So the question is, when one or two of these events occur on a flight, how will it be handled? Are the crew capable of understanding that there is a problem and secondly, how will they overcome that problem.
On a takeoff roll, will they naturally firewall the power levers and gentle ease the thing into the air after suffering from a hidden bug in the performance software? When the ILS pops off line on their way to an alternate, will they be able fly a visual approach? How well will a windshear go-around be flown? When the autothrottle fails for no reason, will it just be taken in their stride as a minor inconvenience? How will a TCAS RA or a wake vortex encounter be flown? When the FMS decides to wander off all by itself, how will they navigate? How will an unreliable airspeed indication be handled?
Despite what manufacturers might like to say, their aircraft are designed to be flown by pilots. They would love to design us out, but are unable to do so. I’m flying version 27.1 of my aircraft’s flight control software. And it’s full of bugs. As will the next version be - I’ll guarantee it. Only when we have Flight Control Software version 1.0 still running error free after 10 years will our jobs might just be in jeopardy. And even then, who is to say there are no bugs in the operating system running and/or in the physical chips in the hardware.
So we are needed as the back-up. We have to make decisions and actually fly the thing every now and again when the systems let us down. So how do we acquire and maintain the skills that enable us to take over when the automatics fail? I think the answer is very obvious. So how much is enough? Well the rules say we have to let the autopilot fly in the cruise in RVSM airspace and it should land when the visibility is below manual landing minima. And that’s it.
My suggestion is that further restrictions should be based on the actual conditions of the day, common sense and crew arrangements. Restrictions should not be placed in Ops. manuals or SOP’s. Let pilots do more. Keep them current, allow them to fly manually to maintain and develop their handling skills so cabin crew don’t know if the autopilot is engaged or not. Also, stop them from getting bored. Allow those who want to fly to do so. Our performance is degraded if all we do is spend hour after hour flyng on autopilot looking a set of flat screens. If we don’t fly enough, come the day when flying is required, our performance will be found woefully lacking.
And what will the effect be with Flight Ops. departments? After downloading QAR data I’ll guarantee they’ll runaround the place saying look at all these nasty exceedences, of which there will now be many. They’ll infer an increase in minor incidents will automatically lead to something bigger. They would love to make us stop flying manually and use the automatics. But unknown to them, these incidents will be the symptoms that will hide the fact they have a pilot workforce that is more capable of dealing with greater range of events. Visual approaches might not end up with a crash in the sea short of the runway, go arounds might be performed properly and naturally, their aircraft might not be skimming trees miles after bungling a non-precision approach etc. But the big change will be that when the card is dealt from the bottom of the pack, when component X fails it won’t be luck that saves the day, it will be the skill of the competent, fully current well rounded crews who enjoy their jobs.