Originally Posted by
autoflight
Risk avoidance will minimise the number of pprune threads like this one. The multiple factors that conspire to place a crew in risky situations need to be considerered by all pilots. By the look of the number of accidents like this one, not all of us spend some quiet time at home thinking about the various scenarios and the choices that might be available to minimise risk.
It is OK to consider and practice in the sim for recovery procedures under difficult circumstances, but wouldn't it be heaps better to recognise the risk? Finally it is up to ther captain, but the F/O is not in a comfortable position as the risk escalates. Some captains will have their own reasons why staying at F390 in increasing moderate turbulance is acceptable in an A320. A lower time F/O might accept an insufficient reason, like ATC clearance, reduced endurance, possibility of diversion or increased turbulence at lower levels.
I see no indication on these pages that companies are pressing ahead with avoidance training. Rather there seems to be so much discussion on recovery.
On the contrary, it is companies that have only been doing avoidance training that has led to the current state.
* Anyone flying manually outside the immediate landing or takeoff gets snitched by FOQA and told to desist: the automatics are better than you are and this avoids the risk of something going wrong.
* If this (alert/instrument fail/behavior) happens then memorize this list of precise instructions and follow them. Get the PNF to read through and check that you have done them and nothing else.
* Sit in this reasonable simulation with critical unrealities every month and improve your by rote response to specific (alert/instrument fail/behavior)
These are all risk avoidance by the aircraft operators. To some extent one can understand their point. However, when the real LOC happens it is nothing like the SOPs/FCOM say and usually multiple things happen at once. Unlike the simulator there is negative and positive g, manuals, drinks, grit, EFBs flying everywhere about your head - you cannot even read the instruments and the ones that you have trusted for thousands and thousands of hours are not working. The training to reduce risk may have gone through the motions but the visceral reactions to unexpected g, airstream noises, perhaps even shouts screams and bangs from the passenger cabin. This sudden and extreme stress puts you right at the wrong end of the 'inverted U' (
Yerkes?Dodson law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ) and leads to cognitive/attentional tunneling usually onto an incorrect area. The training in other words has not prepared the crews for what things could get like. But its difficult and expensive and 'how many of our aircraft will have that problem?' So it is not done. This is unfortunate because as people have said here if you actually _have_ experienced negative g, and recovering from an incipient spin _multiple_ times _and_ been scared a few times then you are likely to perform better. The psychologists call this 'stress inoculation', you are put in the situation and shown how to get out of it. Then when it occurs you are not pushed into cognitive decline by the stress and arousal levels.
The current system is built around avoiding nasty problems around the edges of the flight envelope and training people not to go there. The training is done in comfortable shirt sleeve environments without any physical stresses at all. The training and systems have no doubt increased safety but they have had the unfortunate side effect that when an aircraft is in a sudden upset there is a very much higher chance that the crew will not recover the situation. The very risk avoidance approach has increased the risk of crew poor performance with attentional tunneling due to stress and automation surprise at the very time that they become the sole people capable of recovering the situation.
So now take a many thousand hour fighter pilot and put that pilot in a shiny airliner with two underwing engines and go through all the risk averse training ticking all the boxes. That will NOT include stall or spin recoveries "don't even go there!". Then a few thousand hours into flying the airliner go from bumpy but normal flight in early daylight IMC to all the bells alerts cavalry charges and whistles 2 g zoom climb all inside 20 seconds followed (speculation alert) by a port engine compressor stall as the aircraft approaches apogee with full power on starboard - and the edge of the stall turns into a fast rotation into a flat spin driven by the 'good engine'. Hind brain training kicks in and what were the by rote procedures in the fighter aircraft - and they are implemented. However, the procedures for a fighter with roll/yaw diversion due to a weight concentrated in the fuselage is not quite the same as for a twin jet airliner with a dead engine but that is the practiced response and nobody bothered to erase that response with what to do in _this_ aircraft because we "don't even go there!"
So cautious stay out of trouble training needs to be looked at very carefully. As does the reality of what 'trouble' feels like. If crews felt that once - they may be 'inoculated' against the cognitive stress of its occurrence when it happens.