I really am worried that a significant number of posters here who seem have no idea of what it is like to fly and airliner and so do not understand the priorities and the skills required to do the job but are now casting judgement on the very profession.
Indeed, one could argue that the AF447 accident was due to cognitive overload - the pilots simply got way behind the plane, lost any understanding of what was happening and stalled. The fact that the pilots stalled the plane is the conclusion of the report - not conjecture on my part, but it could be argued that if they had more time, to arrive at an understanding of the root cause of the issue - UAS or erroneous airspeed, they would have done better
No. Those guys probably would have got a high pass in a systems exam BUT THEY COULDN'T FLY. Think about it: you have full power, 10° Nose Up and you're descending at 10,000ft/min with the speed coming and going, with the occasional stick shaker. What do you reckon is happening?? Granted they weren't helped by a poxy stab trim system, a silly stall warning system and a misleading flight director, but hey, we've stalled it Bloggs, get the nose down!!
An hour here and there of added training isn't going to turn commercial pilots into test pilots. Which is essentially what they are asked to be when they end up outside the automated flying envelope.
Yes it will! You can get to practice exactly how to fly out of crazy scenarios because the engineers are incapable of thinking of everything. Couple that with more hand-flying and you'll have pilots who can filter out all the distraction and FLY THE AEROPLANE until they sort out what is going on.
It is possible that the flight engineer on the old airliners would have been better equipped mentally to handle the diagnosis of the malfunction and tell pilots how to behave. But while he's been removed from the cockpit, Hal has not quite been able to replace him.
Seriously? What would an
engineer have said in the accidents mentioned, AF 447, Emirates 421 and AA 8501 (and a host of other LOC prangs?). Excuse me skip, I think we've stalled? How would he/she know? Do you want them to do a flying course as well?
So an interesting question which no one is willing to ask is whether the current generation of pilots actually have the intellectual abilities to troubleshoot the automation at the speeds at which incidents happen. Nobody would expect a surgeon to be of average intellectual ability - but his failure to correct a problem as it develops will only imperil one person's life.
I would suggest too much emphasis is being placed on bookwork (probably because it is easy to study and test). The skill, the art of flying, the very ability to ignore the rubbish and fly your aeroplane is the bit that needs improvement. Contrary to what some of you think, this is
not rocket science. But it does require a certain skill that you cannot learn from a book. Perhaps that is the reason some of you are hiding behind knowing your FCOM and OM back to front and all will be well. Well I'm sorry, that's not the way aviation works, and if you were sitting in the left hand seat you'd know what I was talking about.
My feeling is that the safety improvements to the mechanics of airliners have already taken place to the point of diminishing returns, and that improving automation and training is where the safety issues now lie.
If you mean improving the automation so that the pilot is not handed a bag of #$%^ when the automation spits the dummy, I'm all for it. And if you mean more pilot-handling skill training in the Sim, then I am also all for it.
And another thing. For all the prangs that occur, there are probably hundreds (if not thousands) of other non-prangs where the systems have lost the plot and the pilots have saved the day. I think I read there were 30 AF447-type incidents alone before the actual crash, all saved by the pilots.