Automation Addiction
Hello, I am new to this forum and have never in the past felt compelled to add my humble opinion but as I continue to see perfectly good aircraft smashed up and all those lives lost because the pilots were unable to deal with an automation issue I feel compelled to try and promote the process that my fellow pilots and I developed during a 4 year research project I was the primary author of. At the time I was the chairman of my company's ALPA Air Safety-Special Projects committee. Our research paper and a copy of the presentation is available from the Flight Safety Foundations IASS conference in Paris France, October of 2006. It was also presented by IFALPA at a latter conference.
Automation Addiction: When a pilot is no longer able to fly the aircraft without reference to FMS generated guidance or thrust management, he/she has become automation addicted.
Automation Exception: occurs whenever the FMS generated guidance is out of sequence with the desired flight path. AN "Automation Exception" can be the result of an aircraft malfunction ie: AF447 loss of pitot/static system, FMS program error by the pilot or manufacture, ATC demands the "Slam Dunk Visual", TCAS or Windshear recovery, or a host of other maladies.
Automation Addicted pilots are particularly susceptible to failure when confronted with an automation exception.
Project goals:
Develop a methods that pilots could maintain manual flight skills that were robust enough to "Keep the shiny side up" while they resolved some issue with the automation. The final project was reviewed by the company's FAA -Principal Operations Inspector who rode on my flights for 3 days. The inspector felt quite strongly that ALPA should promote the concepts and ALPA as well as IFALPA have adopted automation policy guidance that encourages training departments to provide the pilots with guidance to help maintain "Manual Flying Skills" I would humbly request that your review of the paper Automation Addiction and the application of the concepts within might help our industry to reduce this issue as a primary factor in loss of control accidents. I look forward to future discussion s of the research and you thoughts
Aeronaut A320