Cranfield crash, 5 June 2013

[First_Principal]

Specific and comprehensive EFATO training?

From Cow's earlier post:

An analogy is driving a car through town without instinctively using the steering wheel to control direction. A professional pilot ( ie instructor) should be able to 'feel' the aircraft and react accordingly

I agree that this would be ideal, and perhaps in a pilot of several thousand hours one might expect this, or at least hope for it! However this chap had just 390hours, most probably in a fairly rigid environment where the sort of experimentation that might lead to a good 'feel' in order to build up a good instinct would be frowned upon.

GtE makes some interesting comments; I'm horrified to hear that a qualified [low hour] pilot would ever express the possibility of a turn-back without having an extremely good reason for so doing - and obviously they didn't.

In the absence of experience then one would want pilots to put training before instinct, no easy thing to do in the heat of the moment. To express this kind of thought suggests that such training was deficient, or perhaps that they didn't listen, or thought they knew better once they got the bit of paper... none of these things are good and presumably would have lead to a serious discussion and retraining before consideration for the syndicate!

But that's one that was 'caught' by one such as GtE, and his later comments are very germane insofar as the training/examination/supervision system appears to be failing some people.

Whilst relatively young and inexperienced people can be safe and competent (after all, the Battle of Britain was won by pilots often as young, and with as few hours)

I'm not so sure that this comment is defendable - 'safe' in 1940 would be very fluid I would have thought, and the environment then is as different to now as chalk is to cheese. However, coming back for a moment to Cow's comment, I think that 1940's Sptifire pilots certainly got the chance to 'feel' an aircraft a lot more, or at least a lot earlier, than today's pilots. In short their flying was perhaps much less by rote or definition than it is today - and it's probable that those selected for the task were of better than average ability.

Today then for an average pilot to get to such a level of competence, and have a useful instinct for their craft, they'd probable need to have several thousand hours of flight time, and have 'experimented' somewhat during that time - a combination of an inquiring mind with a carefully judged taking of risks in order to learn well.

But such a combination is probably rare, and the taking of even qualified risks is not encouraged, so we're left with a cadre of pilots whose response to EFATO may be sub-optimal.

So to bring this back to the present, and to contribute to the future, what can we do?

It's my view that for a minimally trained low hour pilot (after all 50hours isn't a lot, yet one can be in an a/c with passengers and be expected to deal with an EFATO when it happens) the strictures of current training methodology may not have been sufficient to overcome natural tendency, that is to say the instinct to turn back would transcend the voice that says land dead ahead.

Cautiously therefore I'd suggest that some actual turn-back training should be given. I should say very cautiously; but to qualify this, and to present something for discussion here's my thinking:

1. The possibility of EFATO is just as important, if not more so, as say flight into cloud yet we spend 5 hours specifically on instrument training for a VFR PPL pilot.
2. I use the word 'important' deliberately because EFATO is an instant unexpected thing whereas flight into cloud carries some deliberation to it - the mechanism is different.
3. EFATO and all aspects of recovery should be specifically taught to a level similar to instrument training (ie. 5hrs minimum) and should include actual demonstrations of heights and situations at which landing dead ahead, or turning back, are appropriate.
4. One thing that would hopefully come from this is a clear knowledge of why you don't turn back at 75-200ft - there's nothing like seeing what happens to focus the mind.
5. Such training could occur at height, but should also include simulator work to give visual aspect cues that wouldn't be available at 3000ft or whatever.
6. Obviously real-life EFATO's with turnbacks etc would offer the best experience wrt of training, but I suspect we'd very quickly end up with the same issue as to why we don't teach spin recovery to student's these days - the cure could be more fatal than the disease. Yes I know that's arguable but...

This list is hardly comprehensive but I feel that, if nothing else, a specified allocation of time and a comprehensive syllabus to follow specifically on EFATO could reduce the terrible consequences that seem to happen with unfortunate regularity. I doubt that with current technology and humans as the driver we'd ever eliminate such disasters altogether, but surely increased emphasis would improve peoples chances?

FP.