PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Could data mining help with the automation vs. hand flying debate?
Old 28th Nov 2013, 05:15
  #8 (permalink)  
framer
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
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I like that you're thinking and coming up with new ideas Zion so I don't want to sound like I am knocking the idea.....but, if you go to any airline with a great safety record and ask some of their pilots what they need to be safer pilots they will give you good answers that would improve the industries safety stats within six months if implemented and none of them will ask for more information to be aimed at their senses under high workload situations. In fact, some will probably ask for less. Competant professional pilots already know what they need to maintain their own standards and also what would improve their own standards.
So why is this not happening? Because their answers cost the airline they work for money. It's that simple. There is nothing magical about improving flight safety. Imagine this for a second;
'Perfect World Airlines' doesn't care about how much money they make, they are solely focused on maintaining their impeccable safety record and as such every pilot completes one simulator session then one line flight, another simulator session then another line flight and so on for their entire career. All sim sessions are non jeprody. They would be one sharp bunch of pilots who knew their aircraft inside and out and could fly the pants off the thing under all but the most extreme circumstances.
Now that's a completely ridiculous fantasy, but by going to an extreme it becomes obvious which direction we need to move. We need to train our pilots more. We have given them increasingly complicated aircraft with new ways of making approaches and new procedures and technology and have neglected the basics. Many airline pilots who used to be totally comfortable with their machines are not anymore. They have become detached from them and their skills which used to be second nature to them are rusty. There is so much information in a modern airliner that a great skill to develop is to ignore it all and focus on the threshold, the airspeed and the rate of descent when placed in situations that don't happen every day. It's hard to do sometimes because you have been focussing elsewhere for the last 100 or so flights.
So although I like your original thinking I feel like it would be a hinderance to me if I was ignoring all the dials, flashing indicators, call outs etc to ensure I didn't miss the most important things, the basics.
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