Latest edition of Flight International issue 9-15 August. Page 5 includes the editorial under the title of Comment. The headline is A Harsh Lesson: practice makes perfect. It goes on to say:
“Publication of the Air France 447 CVR transcript has confirmed the crew failed to regain control of the aircraft because they did not understand what was happening.
With shocking clarity, the transcript has revealed the extent of their confusion. It was total. So was it the pilots’ fault? That is far too simplistic. If three qualified pilots do not perform to specification, before blaming them, study their training. The accident investigator, the BEA, has already said the two co-pilots in charge of the aircraft had never been trained for manual flying and stall recovery at the edge of the Airbus A330’s flight envelope. That is what got them into trouble – but when they had four minutes to get out of it, so why couldn’t they? The answer lies in the fact that this is not the only recent example of a crew failing to recover control after losing it. In fact, there have been six other fatal loss-of-control accidents in serviceable airliners since 2000, and they have killed nearly 1000 people.
Flying manually on instruments requires a sophisticated cognitive skill, and today’s high level of automation ensure that pilots never get the practice, so the skill atrophies. Worse still, recurrent training requirements do not recognise that the flying task has changed.
The villains of the piece are the regulators who have failed to update recurrent training requirements.”
My thoughts: Some responsibility lies with the aircraft manufacturers who have always been aware that automation dependency was bound to happen eventually. Regulators won't move unless they see a manufacturer's comment in the FCOM that if nothing else acknowledges the need for operators to ensure crews keep current on manual pure flying skills in the simulator. On the other hand operators are reluctant to make quantum changes to their simulator training syllabus until forced by the regulator.
The solution to the whole subject is really quite simple and that is significantly more training accent on pure flying skills using the simulator - not just a couple of ILS hand flown with FD and autothrottle engaged. If simulator time is already limited due to regulatory box ticking, then simply make the time available by shaving LOFT. And have crews hand fly fifty percent of each simulator period whether type rating or recurrent training.