Automation challenges for pilots of the future.
 

Edited extracts from The Australian Business Review pages Friday 13 July Title: "Automation challenges for pilots of the future." The journalist was Annabel Hepworth..
"Pilots of the future will need to be able to cope with highly sophisticated automation and even autonomous aircraft", says The Royal Aeronautical Society Australian Division which pointed to concerns that regulations reflect training requirements for past aviation technology. The general aviation industry does not adequately prepare pilots for a future in the highly automated world. In order to ensure that the pilots of the future meet the needs of the future flight deck, the professional civil aviation industry needs to update recruitment assessment practices to assess an applicants abilities in cognitive tasks analysis thus allowing them to interface with the highly automated aircraft of the future."

Comment: Already those of us in the area of simulator training have for years witnessed the detrimental effect of ever increasing automation dependency on pilots pure flying skills. To say the general aviation industry (from whence our airline crews originally are recruited) "does not adequately prepare pilots for the future in the highly automated world" is drawing a long bow. The basics of learning to fly have changed little in decades; and it is doubtful there will be significant changes in the immediate future.

Today's candidates for the airlines are still tested in a simulator for their manual instrument flying skills. Would the RASAD advocate the simulator assessment be not a manual flying test anymore but rather the candidate be required to perform all test sequences by pushing automatic pilot buttons in order to "assess an applicants abilities in cognitive tasks analysis? Perish the thought..

Spot on Morno.
Aircraft manufacturers pitch the safety of their aircraft via automation to managers and CEO's. "These things fly themselves, you know."
Managers then mandate maximum use of automation for line flying operations.
Manual flying skills atrophy to the point of pilots becoming useless when the only thing that will save the day is exactly the raw data flying skills that have never been allowed to be practiced.
Insert accident. (AF449 etc).
Solution? More automation.

Like you, I am lucky to fly for an airline that still encourages hand flying when appropriate.

Last two times that I've had anything major go wrong with an aircraft, it took out the automatics as a bonus.

Pity you can't do this any more mrdeux, hones the manual skills just fine I'm told.

Thanks for that Megan,

For something like the Airbus, manual flying skills proven elsewhere, may not be enough for a non-perishable efficiency. I'd argue that the Airbus requires manual flying training due to confusion in flight display presentations. I think this has probably been mentioned, a few PLOC Airbus were from a crew that had been weened on Russian military aircraft. You may be a Mig ace, but having an Airbus endorsement not incorporating manual flying could be deadly on a low viz/ night go around, with mode confusion and the disconnection of the automatics.

Manual flying of an Airbus should be easy. A lot of guys struggle.

Isn't the whole approach to automation into jobs intrinsically wrong? By that, I mean, pilots are spending an increasing amount of time passively monitoring computers, expecting them to perform their tasks correctly and within preset tolerances. Sadly the reason air disasters still happen is that pilots seem to spend less and less time building skills to handle unexpected aircraft states quickly and accurately, e.g. AF447 and their monitoring capacity also has its limitations.

Shouldn't it be the other way around with computers continuously monitoring pilots doing their tasks?

What a disaster that would be i.e. computer monitoring a pilots attempt at hand flying on instruments. All you would hear would be a cacophony of :eek:out of tolerance automated messages of "Bank angle, Bank angle, sink rate, sink rate, speed SPEED, altitude ALTITUDE, .

That's a bit harsh, Centaurus! When I call for the autopilot to be engaged, the effo says "geez, I thought it was already!". :}:ok::ouch:

Why load up your long suffering co-pilot by asking him to engage YOUR autopilot, Bloggsy? It's not too hard to engage it yourself. :D

I can't! Both hands occupied! :{ ;) Besides, it's a "Boeing" thing...

I don't think we have to wait for the future, current pilots have problems with automation.

You could have fooled me although I realise it was a tongue-in-cheek remark.
. The 737 autopilot will not engage if slight control forces are being applied by the pilot. Investigators determined that the fatal loss of the Flash Airlines Boeing 737-300 at Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt in January 2004, occurred when the crew failed to recognise that the autopilot had not engaged as commanded after take-off.

The detailed reports describe the aircraft gently banking left as it departed at night-time over the Red Sea while the crew tried to understand what was happening – apparently realising only in the last few seconds the true situation. The aircraft finally rolled perpendicular to the horizon before crashing into the sea. All 148 occupants, 135 of whom were French, died.

The CVR revealed the captain shortly after take off asked the F/O to engage Autopilot A, which is the autopilot normally used by the captain if he is PF. Because the aircraft was slightly out of trim and the control wheel was being held slightly offset by the captain who was manually handling the take off and initial climb, the F/O who tried to engage the AP on request from the captain, was unable to engage it.

But he didn't tell the captain; instead he said "God Willing, Autopilot A engaged" The captain never double checked to ensure the AP was indeed engaged and relinquished his hand flying in the mistaken belief the F/O had indeed engaged the AP on his request.

Being slightly mis-trimmed, the aircraft began to fly by itself into an ever increasing angle of bank and the nose went down. As the 737 gradually rolled into a steep spiral dive, the captain was recorded on the CVR screaming for the F/O to engage the AP. The rest is history.

The accident could have been nipped in the bud if the captain had simply reached over and engaged AP "A" himself. He would have discovered he could not engage it while he still had control pressures applied. He would have realised why it would not engage and quickly rectified the problem by momentarily releasing his grip on the control wheel and then engaged AP A ,which would then operate normally.

That tragic accident was one good reason for the PF to engage his own AP. It was SOP when yours truly first flew the 737 many years ago. .
.

Wot the FCOM says is wot Bloggs does! :ok:

As for the rest of your Flash summary, A37575, the old saying "Aviation is not inherently dangerous... " comes to mind. :)

I thought you flew the Airbus?

Yep and still the case in QF 737 ops. Pretty sure the other Boeing types get the PM to engage the AP when requested by the PF though.

Hones the sphincter more like it. F*** that.