Originally Posted by
Chronic Snoozer
I don't think that is a helmet fire fdr. That just sounds like a regulation gherkin that ATC throw at you from time to time.
And yet, it is exactly the same thing that happened at KSFO 28R with the latest effort to cut tails off aircraft parked off the side of a runway, but from the other side, ATC directing 6 times for the plane to go arounds, a whoopsie put down to "sorry, comms". Are we so fixated on details that actually looking that the runway is clear is too much to ask for? Is it too much to expect a pilot to cross check a MASI/AOA indexer when they have an auto throttle that they have abrogated , rightly or wrongly, responsibility to? For the F35, perhaps the APC needs a set of gold wings gifted from the drivers, and silver wings from the USAF. Or maybe, and sorry to be simplistic, maybe we should train and expect crews to cross check their instruments to confirm performance and selections, perhaps pilots should be trained to confirm a switch selection against an expected response, and in the absence of that response, to have a curiosity in the proceedings. Would save the odd occasional F35A, F35C, B777, B777, B777, ATR 72... etc.
Developing of bad habits can occur over time, or instantaneously. The instant version tends to be self evident by the ablutions that follow. Those that develop over time are insidious, and we have an expectancy that our deviation from good practice is without risk, until stuff goes pear shaped. Driving planes continues to be an education, hopefully.
“Helmet fires” (otherwise known as task saturation, mis-prioritization, situational awareness and channelized attention)
Assuming that they only relate to temporally constrained events is to miss some of the obvious implications.
In respect to temporal constraints, an 11 second window is about the time that it took to tear apart Lauda 4, It is about 15 times the available response time for a recovery of an R-22 from a throttle chop OGE^... it's 4 times the event time for an engine failure in the hover*... and, as far as SA is concerned, if the time available to ensure that you can remain in front of the elevators is inadequate for the driver to remain in front of the elevators, or to bother to look at an ASI or AOA gauge, then perhaps the training command and the RAG is needing to change their program. In the event at Eglin with the high speed landing there, the time spent leaving bite marks on the elevators was substantial.
- If a day VFR recovery to the boat with a jet is reliant on the guys getting the right sequence of buttons flicked as it is a cognitive overload to check an IAS or alpha indexer, then we need to be looking at drones instead.
- If it is reasonable to be dismayed by the state of SA of the AZ214 crew for loss of awareness pertaining to basic aviation skills, then there is a hypocrisy in not considering the Eglin A35A and the F35C ramp striker to be "...just one of those things..."
- The failure to check performance is not a new phenomenon, e.g, serviceable F-8 Crusaders parked short of the airport in the 50s and 60s and early 70s...#
- it is't restricted to nuggets, e.g., CAG Super hornet.
----------------
^ OGE hover engine failure, one certified helicopter has a Tau (time constant) from normal Nr to stall of 0.7 seconds. The FAA §27 requires a 1 second delay for showing compliance, which exceeds the time from failure to death by around 1-(0.7+(1/8.87)*0.5)= ~0.244 seconds, an eternity to meet eternity. The FAA is happy for a 200FH brand new CFI(H) to demonstrate and to teach that procedure... Now, divide the 11 seconds by 0.7...
* for an IGE hover engine failure, in a low energy rotor system the event is over and the dust is settling in less than 3 seconds. In that time, there are at least 5 control input responses that the 200hr instructor has to get right in sequence to avoid rolling his shiny little rotorcraft into a wad.
#The approach mags used to have so many of the "didn't look at AOA/MASI" events that it was hard to determine if a magazine had been previously read or not.