This will be too long for a single post, but I think some of the comments will resonate with some contributors ...
Part A
On 20-21 March the Royal Aeronautical Society held its first 'The Aircraft Commander in the 21st Century' conference. Organised by the RAeS Flight Operations Group, the conference sought to explore the changing role of the aircraft commander, particularly as civil airliners get ever more automated and complex. This issue has recently been thrown into sharp focus, as incidents such as Qantas QF32 and Air France AF447 have demonstrated differing responses from pilots to ever more complex aircraft.
In particular, the industry now is reassessing the training given to pilots. A major theme that emerged from the conference was that, in the past 20 years, pilots have been taught to 'Follow the ECAM [(Electronic Centralised Aircraft Monitor]' - the computerised glass display that in Airbus aircraft (and Boeing aircraft as the EICAS Engine Indicating and Crew Alerting System) which shows critical engine and systems information. While this ECAM display makes life easy in many respects, (but which), if followed blindly, can lead to disaster. Previous training, said one speaker, relied on following the ECAM procedure step-by-step and pilots 'never considered not doing the procedure'.
This issue of displays showing spurious information was highlighted graphically by the keynote speaker at the conference Captain David Evans who, as a Qantas A380 training and check captain, was one of the five flight deck pilots who successfully resolved the QF32 incident in November 2010 after the 02 Trent engine suffered an uncontained failure. With the ECAM 'information overload' deluging the crew with a barrage of error messages the experienced captains had to sort through and examine what these meant for the aircraft. In particular, the ECAM recommended that the crew shift the fuel balance from one wing to another, as an error message said 'wings not balanced' as the imbalance limit had been exceeded. However, the reason why the aircraft was becoming unbalanced was that there was a serious fuel leak caused by the exploding engine - a situation that was obvious to anyone looking out of the window and seeing the damaged left hand wing leaking fuel.
Yet, had the crew followed procedure to the letter instead of 'using the force' and disregarding the computer, they would have ended up pumping fuel into a leaking fuel tank with consequences. At the very least this would have dramatically shortened the available time for the crew to think through and solve the problem.
Reliance and dependence that the computer always knows best can be dangerous. As Captain Evans notes: "What needs to be brought back into the skies is a 'healthy scepticism' about technology". This view was echoed in a later presentation by Captain Scott Martin, an experimental test pilot at Gulfstream, who said the correct approach was to treat the cockpit automation
'like a third pilot' but to be prepared to question it if it was not making sense. In the final analysis, says Evans - 'airmanship' or 'does this seem sensible?' should trump any automated ECAM/EICAS messages.
Yet this natural suspicion of technology runs counter to the future generations of pilots who will be drawn from today's 'Generation Y and Z' now at college or school. As Evans and others point out, these future captains born in the 1980s and 90s, while being able to grasp new technology and systems far quicker than their predecessors as well as absorb new information, will also, growing up with computers, iPads and smart phones, instinctively trust technology more.
The problem is not only one of younger pilots relying on technology too much but also of older pilots who may be losing touch with basic flying skills after years of relying on the autopilot. Though aircraft accidents remain rare - a noteworthy statistic from the conference showed that while the most common incident was a runway incursion/penetration - the most lethal in terms of lives lost is now loss of control in flight (LOC-I).
Lessons from QF32 are already making their way into Qantas' training. At the conference Captain Evans explained how Qantas has started to introduce simulator scenarios based on real (but rare) scenarios to expose pilots to difficult command decisions.
One example chosen for a recent simulator LOFT (Line oriented flight training) exercise was the scenario of flying an A380 through a volcano ash cloud, which could simultaneously set off fire alarms on the flightdeck and elsewhere (thanks to smoke detectors) as well as flame out the engines.
In the simulator exercise, pitot tubes would also be blocked by ash.
So what happened? With smoke warnings, engines flamed out, the airspeed went blank and the aircraft went into direct law with no autopilot. In particular, Evans noted, the ECAM logic prioritised the multiple ( spurious) fire warnings over the engine flame out warning. However for the pilots, understanding that the ash had caused the smoke detectors to trip, the priority should be to restart the engines.
This simulator exercise clearly demonstrates to pilots how a highly automated aircraft could revert to a challenging manual flying task for the pilots - whilst simultaneously presenting them with information overload in the form of ECAM messages.
However, doing this in the sim allows them to hone their command and decision making skills in a safe environment.