PBL:
Terpster, Dozy, fdr.
there is such a lot to say that it has taken me some time to think about how to reduce it to a few sentences. Let me first say that I am glad you all take these issues seriously. I think that Cali could provide a good test example for thoughts and tropes about automation and human operation.
We indeed have a communications issue between us. You are a scientist. I am not. I gave up reading the first paper you cite/linked because it delves far beyond my education, skills, and experiences. My primary life’s work was as an airline pilot. That was and is a job that does not require any formal post-high-school education whatsoever. Granted, many of the pilots hired by my airline (and other carriers) in the 1960s had undergraduate degrees, because the airline strongly desired (and usually could command) that level of formal education.
Those degrees did not have to be aviation-related, and typically were not (and are not to this day). The successful completion of an undergraduate degree provided a measure of assurance to the airline H.R. gurus that the candidate would likely be both disciplined and sufficiently intellectually alert to avoid difficulty with the equipment ground school courses over his (and later, or her) career. Nonetheless, because of expansion pressures some pilots were hired who had no college education, but who had a substantial amount of varied flying time. These college-deprived pilots typically did quite well throughout their airline careers. What the successful candidates had in common, were those difficult-to-define set of human skills necessary to be a good planner, evaluator, and able to continuously think ahead of the aircraft, so to speak, while being able to sequence tasks in the sense of appearing to “be able to juggle several balls at the same time.”
My education as an accountant, combined with my pre-airline stint as an instrument flight and ground instructor, plus a compelling interest, caused me to become an instrument procedures analyst, but as an adjunct (avocation) to my career as an airline pilot. I learned about the design concepts (and sometimes lack thereof) and construction methods used to build TERPs instrument approach and departure procedures. This is not an area of interest intended for the line pilot, nor should it be. PANS-OPS are not all that much different than TERPs, except for circle-to-land criteria. After all, a given airplane needs to operate at an acceptable target level of safety while IMC, whether in TERPs or PANS-OPS airspace. In fact, with the advent of performance-based navigation, the nominal differences between TERPs and PANS-OPS will eventually disappear. This is already true today with RNP AR instrument approach procedures.
As to my taking the FAA to task in 1996, I felt then they were doing a poor job of promulgating and explaining RNAV procedures. They have improved that mission greatly in the intervening 16 years, although the inevitable conflicts in the U.S. between the “900 pound gorilla” (FAA ATC) and the remainder of the agency continues as it always has.
I stand by my writings about Cali I penned in 1996. And, my comments in Post #128 of this thread are consistent with my view of the Cali accident. I do, however, take exception to contributing factors 3 and 4 more strongly today than I did in 1996. Those factors continue unabated to this day. But wary, informed, cautious pilots are able to resolve the seeming discrepancies quite nicely (the EDDS ILS 07 in your country recently discussed on this forum is a good example). I don’t worry for a moment, though, that the pilot proficient in both RNAV and ground-based instrument procedures would have any problem flying that ILS approach in any modern aircraft. What I do worry about on a systemic basis is the ever greater possibility of a repeat of “We’d like direct Rozo” (as in “we’d like direct to the middle marker.”) I don’t foresee a repeat of the wild excursion of AAL 965 into the mountains miles removed from protected airspace; instead I see some member of today’s “direct-to” crowd eventually shaving off a hilltop not far off to the side of the modern RNAV containment areas.
Finally, you dwell on the communications difficulties between the captain of AAL 965 and the Cali controller. My pragmatic view of that one is, and always has been, “Hey captain, knock off your doomed attempt to turn a Colombian controller into an FAA controller, and get back on your unabridged flight plan.”
In no way do I denigrate your work. It is extremely important for this industry. But, your mission is to open the avionics device and examine/critique the fundamental work of the designers. Indeed, that is quite necessary. My primary mission is to get the device to work safely in spite of its blemishes.