Let me say first, that i accept and apreciate your position. Being retired and not having flown the new gadgets doesīt mean a position against automation. I would have been glad if our "George" would have 10% of the features available to a pilot today.
ELAC
The only "consensus" on the forum is a simplistic one that comes from a group of mostly retired types who seem to long for the good ole days of DC-8's and gooneybirds.
Your statement here is a simplistic one as well. This generation might have not that expierience with automation, but the expierience with flying was definitly more intense one. Itīs not the fault of the pilots, itīs the fault of the management that the piloting skills rely only on automation and the handflying skills are deteriorating.
Some here say that succumbing to a somatogravic illusion (if that is what happened) is simply indicative of poor scan or instrument flying abilities
It is, it was before without automation and it still is. Because the ADI in our days or the Attitude information in the glass cockpit is not affected by SI. It shows the correct values. If you follow it, you will not crash.
and then condemn both the individual and the entire generation of "button pushing bus drivers" for the failure.
Nobody is condemning the pilots. How should they train, when it is not allowed? How should they know from flying in the box? The bloody who is the management.
SI has been an issue for a long time and has caused a significant number of accidents over the years, most particularly with higher performance military aircraft.
That is true. A lot higher percentage of the missiontime is flown under conditions and with maneuvers, which bear a high SI potential.
It's probably less of a risk for commercial operations because power to weight ratios are generally lower and the frequency of exposure to the triggering conditions is also substantially less, but still we've seen instances of it at work here as well.
Due to the fact, as you describe it very well, that only minimal exposure to SI is to be expected in cammercial flying, there are too much happenings and accidents documented.
What this accident may be suggesting to us is that our training on how to recognize and combat perceptive illusions is lacking. This is a matter that is distinct from simple good instrument flying skills. You can be a real pro at reading the dials and fly on them like an ace, but if you havn't had exposure to convincing illusions and are unable to identify when you are experiencing one then it becomes much more difficult to make the cognitive choice to ignore the illusory perception.
When the Instruments tell you that you are in a ten degree climb and you feel like being in a 45 degree climb, to what information do you follow? The autopilot will do it on its own, it doesnīt fall for SI, the human does. You only need to reed the instruments correct, thatīs the only way to avoid mistakes by SI. There is no thinking "its SI, the instruments are correct" versus "its not SI, the intruments are wrong". That might have been a problem with our old ADI or with the standby ADI.
Trainng however is essential to know that it exists and be prepared to get that feeling, when you follow the instruments. It comforts. But it does not prevent it. Basic instrument flying with a sound instrument crosscheck does, as well as crew coordination.
Manual skill in the absence of appropriate training won't save you from your instincts.
Appropriate training without the manual skill will do it neither.
Points to consider for discussion would be when, for most of us, did we receive our last training or exposure to potential illusory conditions? When was it discussed in terms of where the high risk points during a flight would be? What training do we do relative to illusions in the sim? As others have pointed out the sim itself is an illusion and the means by which it functions may make it difficult to create a situation where a trainee experiences a deliberately induced illusion that he can identify as such. There's also the individuality of it in that, like hypoxia, not everyone experiences the same result in the same circumstances. How do we cater for this in respect to the changing background experience of those we are hiring into the right seat of our aircraft? In many countries there is neither a civil or military pipeline of experienced pilots for the airlines to draw from, so the baseline experience with such conditions is likely dropping significantly. Is it possible that this will be a factor in this accident? If so, where does the fault that needs correction lie, and what can be done about it?
Excellent. As i mentioned before, management failure.
These would be a far more valuable discussions than a simplistic diatribe such as "far too many of today's pilots are button-pushing bus drivers, who are truly screwed if the automatics go bad"
Its stating a fact, you yourself confirm it with your posting. But again, its not the pilots fault, its a management problem.
which seems to ignore the fact that accident and incident rates for this generation of button pushing bus drivers are an order of magnitude lower than they were a generation ago.
The reason being not better pilots today, but better equipment, more failsafe, better tested, lot of lessons learned out of the accidents our generation had to suffer. The weather was 40 years ago as good or as bad as today, but the approach aids inside and outside of the cockpit made an immense progress as did flightcontrolsystems, ATC and procedures. Take the human out of the equation and weigh the improvement. If the generation you named would have been trained like some of the new generation, the accident rates would have been a lot higher. But again, itīs a management problem.
They must be doing an awful lot of things right the vast majority of the time, including managing degradations in the automation when they occur, for that to be the case. How about giving them their due as professionals along with the wisdom of your experience, instead of just pontificating about what you consider their failings to be in the same fashion as a more distantly past generation did about you?
Imho they do the job within their cababilities. Good friend of mine liked to keep proficient in his abilities of handflying as a captain A320 (aquired before his comercial career, ), it was not liked by his FOīs and he had to give it up due to company procedure. Its a difference wether you monitor the autopilot flying the aircraft or wether you have to fly it alone when the time comes. And the box might be of some help, but itīs not the real thing and it never will be. They could do the job a lot better, but management doesnīt allow it.
It would be wrong to judge the critique of the old grandpaīs on the present system as a personal pilots issue. Itsīs the system which has to improve and we have the guts to name it. We are unemployed anyway.
Thereīs probably one thing the pilots themselves have to think about
:
Do the new generation of young pilots really feel safe and proficient enough to take the jet from the autopilot in any kind of situation or wouldnīt they appreciate some more realistic training in that area? Would it be bad to have more training or would it improve self confidence and therfore also safety? What can they do to get more training out of their management?
Never mind, i know that it is not my sandbox anymore, however as long as my family members and myself fly as paying guests, i have an interest in the matter.
franzl