Mismanagement of automation
 

I made the mistake of including this in my previous post about Vmini so it was lost along the way. Now it has it's own thread.

I get the impression that the EHEST team is more familiar with the Airbus AP systems than they are with the AW139. There are dangers in generalisation I believe.



G.

Why, specifically? Is this really how the aircraft is flown in practice, or a 'simulatorism' to assist accuracy in training? As an example, we used to get pilots back from FSI with their new S92 ratings who tried to lift into the hover using the collective beep trim and their feet on the floor!

Apart from any discussion about the ability to release the controls and return to wings level trimmed flight (sounds like a reasonable concept to me), there is the practical reality that pilots tend to spend too much time looking in at the ADI to check the angle of bank and then 'tweeking' the beep trim back to wings level.

212
 

S92 story - horrific. The SFI's teaching that need a word in their shell-like. I hope someone has spoken to FSI about that. We had a similar problem with instructors removing the TAWS CB because the 'TAIL LOW' audio warning was driving them nuts when trying to teach in the hover. We then found that students were taking this bad habit away with them thinking it was the OK thing to do. We have to be alert to this kind of problem.

Refers to the notion that recovery from unusual attitudes can be assisted by the AP. If the AP's are not functioning then all this technique does is delay recovery at a time when things are becoming divergent - rapidly!

I spend less time checking the angle of bank because the AP will manage this for me if I have HDG engaged. Even without once set it will maintain until you get to the heading required allowing you to attend to your lookout. :)

Flying against the springs is OK but do it for too long and you get a "MISTRIM' CAS message. letting the springs roll you out is also OK but that's not how the aircraft was designed to be flown.

The beautiful thing about the AW design is that the beeper trim does not move the cyclic, just the aircraft attitude.

Looks like the Airbus guys went in one direction and AW in another.

G.

The problem with this fascination with automation is that pilots rely more and more on it and lose their handling skills - look at airline pilots as an example.

I'm not saying that knowledge and use of the AP systems (whichever flavour you have) is bad, it should be encouraged so that pilots don't get lost in the levels of automation but regular practice in the 'raw' aircraft should be equally encouraged.

I expect my pilots to be able to hold an accurate angle of bank manually and roll out on specific headings the same way - but also be able to use the higher AP functions to achieve the same thing when required.

The whole point of an AP is to reduce the workload on the pilot but if that workload becomes so low that there is no arousal level then reacting to something like an unusual attitude will be slower.

If a pilot is in the habit of letting the AP drive him round the sky and stops monitoring the AI, it doesn't take much turbulence in actual conditions, especially if he is head down reading a plate for example, to induce the leans.

Frankly the issues of trimming or not trimming into the turns will depend very much on which flavour of AP you have and your personal preferences as a pilot - trying to dictate which is 'right' or 'wrong' isn't an argument you can win.

Is the 'official' Agusta advice? If so, I imagine that a lot of AW139 TRIs need to be informed.

How is AP loss annunciated on the 139?

Quite a few old duffers on here then! I am with Geoffers on the principle that a lot of old hands in high places resist progress. You are not a real man unless you can fly the whole IR AP out etc.

However I would question why on earth you would want to fly a turn in IMC manually? This is what HDG mode (or higher level) is for. The HDG mode ensures the bank angle and rate of turn is correct, the exit heading is set and cross checked between the crew, whilst the PF is concentrating on the big picture. I suspect those who like to fly IF procedures manually also like to go home and whip themselves with nettles.

If you look at the FMEA it's effectively impossible to lose HDG mode whilst the AP continues to work normally in ATT so there is no need to maintain such a Luddite and pointless skill.

Whilst the 225's AP is excellent in nearly every way, it is surprisingly difficult to hold a steady angle of bank against the springs, much harder than the L or L2. Apart from anything else it tends to be quite wobbly-uncomfortable for the pax and a moments distraction risks large angles of bank. It is ABSOLUTELY NOT the way to fly safely.

Trim into the turn if you must, but why bother?

Personally I always flew visually with the cyclic trim pressed (if I was moving the controls) and if IMC, I used the buttons, which is what they are there for.

"Autopilot" voice + either an AP FAIL or a few other miscellaneous AP related cautions.

Torquestripe: There is a fix for the AHRS mounting, which should fix the problem of the AP tripping out with vibration. Ask your freindly neighbourhood engineer to fit it!

CAR42ZE
 

Actually there are two types of CAS message '1 AP FAIL' if the AP has failed in some way, plus the audio warning and a second CAS message is possible '1 AP OFF' if the AP system has not been selected ON. In both cases the audio warning will occur - 'AUTOPILOT - AUTOPILOT', and a second CAS 'AFCS DEGRADED'.

G.

because we are supposed to be pilots and, if the AP fails IMC who is best placed to make a safe recovery - the pilot who has practised AP out or the systems manager who hasn't

It's an extraordinary thing.....
 

.... but guess what? The passenger in the back does NOT expect you the pilot to be practicing ANYTHING on his flight from Timbuktu to Walumboola Base. He expects you to be doing everything in your power to deliver him/her/them without fuss or bother, as smoothly as possible. So please don't tell him.her/them that you plan to practice your AP out flying at any stage during the flight or he just might say something to your boss .... and when your boss finds out that you have been practicing your driving skills on a public transport flight he will dump so much CRAP upon your head so as to be extremely UNKIND.

Please save your practicing for training flights and not when doing your normal daily job. I suppose if you have never had to carry VVIPS or even VIPS around you won't have much idea about their capacity for being UNHAPPY with excessive attitudes, angles of bank greater than 20 degrees and for heavens sake don't go anywhere near those blasted CAT A profiles which scare the **** out of the head honcho's wife and kids and and don't please his girlfriend much either.

CRAB - we, most of us, inhabit a world where the guy down the back pays and he gets treated to the best our expensive AP can deliver including modifying the RoC and RoD to no more than 500 feet per minute.Even the SLF we call BEARS get that treatment because they are GOOD GUYS and deserve the BEST. I guess SARBOYS carry people who are grateful and don't care much what their carriage looks like or smells like or if the head set ear covers are snow white.

One day, when you get to work CAT with non-mil pax you will find out what I mean.


G. :)

You miss the point. Setting aside the fact that if you ever get to fly a modern helicopter you will come to know that the levels of redundancy are such that AP failure is almost inconceivable, there is only any point in training for a scenario that could actually occur. As I said, on the 225 at least, it's not feasible to have a failure where HDG doesn't work but the AP works normally in ATT mode (ie the mode it's in normally, without any other "upper modes being engaged). So why conduct lots of training in ATT mode? A complete waste of time.

Certainly, train for realistic failures such as SAS mode and complete autopilot out, but let's target training on what could realistically happen, not just on something "because we've always done it that way", ie mindlessly.

As an aside, the primary and as far as I know only ever occurring reason for loss of AP functionality on the 225 is the pilot pressing the AP disengage button accidentally. I've certainly done it! So as well as training for that specific event (requires PM to swiftly re-engage the AP) why not put a bit of effort into making that event less likely to happen.

Helicopters crash for various reasons, often on a repeating theme, but these are not single engine failure nor an inability to fly with the normal AP engaged but without use of the upper modes. So why do we continue to expend so much training time on these things and so little on the things that repeatedly cause crashery?

Geoff, You are exactly correct! In todays world they the SLF will report back to their manager, supervisor or higher of anything they deem to be irregular. Which intern means the crew gets called into the Chiefs office the very next day to explain.

Hand flying is fast becoming a lost art in the offshore environment. On a 2.5 to 4 hour flight how much does a crew actually jiggle the wiggly bits. Well FDM data show about 3 to 4 minutes at max if you abide by the written procedures in most of the procedures that I have seen and witnessed on highly automated aircraft. To state that you can practice this in training or on training flights is again incorrect. When was the last time your organization allowed you to take a large offshore heavy aircraft out a training flight. I can tell you that it does and will not happen in our part of the world, again economics.
As for the practicing hand flying on simulator missions given the structure of syllabuses as of late most of it revolves around use of automation and CRM. Which is fine but the times allotted are no suffice to cover everything especially handling without modes engaged. The funny part is most of this is being driven by outside entities ie: the customer / aviation advisors but yet they are the ones whom are first to challenge the company or crew when there is a excursion of any form. Facts be known the operators are losing control of how to manage their own aircraft and crews and the big oil folks are dictating who we will all fly our aircraft.

Off topic but the SAFETY word is becoming a huge joke now in the industry in North America anyway. We are finding that we are more worried about what boots, protective eyewear, proper and approved undergarments, following the right pathway to aircraft, correct high vis outwear to get to aircraft, fatigue management scores the list goes on and on. Yes, these are all important and valid concerns but during audits or reviews by big oil they seem more focused on these issues then the REAL issue – FLYING. All of our training budgets are predicated on the contracts we have agreed upon with the client which in turn means lowest price wins, hence training is always a major player in the cost. Given the current economic crisis the oil companies say they are in (joke) I can only forsee more things becoming more degraded as we move forward.

HC

To prevent inadvertent removal of both AP's why don't we ask the designers to put a relay in the line such that the first button push on the SAS REL (remember that on the AW139 this removes both AP's) just one AP is dropped and on the second button push the second AP is removed. This would go someway to prevent simultaneous, inadvertent loss off both AP's.

Goose

Unfortunately there is a real world out there and very little of it can even spell 'Cat A' let alone understand it. In the global helicopter pilot context most of the time spent teaching Cat A is wasted.It's easy to forget that to be Cat A compliant you must not only be at the correct WAT weight for the prevailing conditions and use the appropriate profile you must also know how long your take off area is, your reject area is and the height and position of every obstacle with the FATO. I'm afraid that's just a little too much wishful thinking for most.

SK92

The fixed wing world are getting to grips with 'Upset Training' following the spate of accidents related to pilots who cannot fly manually. I think you are absolutely right and more time should be set aside for good old manual flying but then who is going to pay if it is not mandated by the regulator??

G. :ugh:

Geoffers, regarding the AP out button they have done something similar on the EC175 ie IIRC the first press puts it into SAS, the second press dumps it altogether. It sounds a trivial change but I suspect there are some certification issues at play. After all, why have the AP cancel button under your thumb unless it is requirement to be able to quickly dump the AP?

I suspect that once again it stems from old fogies who don't trust new-fangled electronics whilst maintaining that of course the pilot should never screw up!

I have wondered as well why we have that button, is it in fact a certification requirement?

Probably not a certification requirement as such, but certification requirements often relate to the outcome rather than the way to achieve it. So for example there might be some requirement relating to safety being ensured with some sort of AP runaway, and an easy way of achieving that is to have a fast disengage button. So it's probably a means of compliance rather than a requirement in itself. But if you have "hung your hat" on that as a means of compliance, it could be difficult to find another means.

Which could be why Air Asia and Air France aircraft ended up in the sea for no reason other than the crew couldn't fly the aircraft in manual.

Yes it's funny, there were never any accidents when aircraft had to be flown exclusively manually.

Anyway sarcasm aside retaining relevant manual skills is important, but no more important than good management of automation which in general stops you getting into a situation where your superior manual handling skills are required.

I think the PF should be able to fly any level of automation at any time, and if he hasn't practiced it....well....

If I came back into Halifax (Canada's East Coast) at mins or worse, I expected the PF to stay fully coupled, but if it was a few hundred feet and vis was decent, hand flying was fine, and even recommended to keep the skills sharp. Actually our SOPs spell out when the plot can choose the level of automation. Going from hand flown 61s to 4-axis Pumas I could see a deterioration in my scan after a few months.

As far as trimming into turns or not, I remember seeing a good article comparing the US Navy SOPs to push against the force trim vs. the Army's trim into turns, or vice versa, but I can't locate it. If you've trimmed into the turn and you lose the plot, you are still in a rate one turn so I don't see an issue. I think the pilot should be fully capable of either.

I agree Bladestrike!

I could skipper should be capable of bringing the AC and pax home with everything off!

Hmmm . -don't recall ever suggesting that you do training with pax on board - maybe people should stop reading things that aren't there.

On one hand we have Geoffers who constantly complains about the standard of pilots coming through his sim and then on the other hand we have the fact tha no-one is allowed to do any training in the helos because no-one will pay for it - how is this not more accidents waiting to happen

I don't consider flying the bugs or even hand flying to be training, it should be all in a normal's day work. You do what is required and hopefully your SOPs allow for some choices to be made by the Captain. Pax on board or not, you hand flew, flew the bugs or were fully coupled, depending on the weather conditions and what the crew desired. Our SOPs dictated when you should be fully coupled, basically anytime on approach with weather below; cloud base of 600 feet/4000 m vis/200 above DH/MDA. You could "practice" anytime otherwise....

I can see that the brevity of our submissions has led to a oversimplification of the debate and the selective use of quotations.

CRAB
We all tend to use our own experiences as a guide to our opinions and of course our perception is also our reality. Let's cut each other some slack and I'll attempt to clarify one or two things. Firstly you are quite correct you didn't say anything about practicing with pax on board but then again you SAR guys don't get to fly many bona fide fare paying (paid?) passengers around so excuse me for making that assumption.

My complaints about the competence levels I see from the global diaspora of helicopter pilots has a lot to do with a lack of the basics and many are new to automation so need to max their work with it to try and get them up to speed. With the tick-box system (practice until you can do it then slap a tick in the box before moving on) there is a nagging doubt about overall competency and I am one of those 'glass-half-empty' guys when it comes to my opinion on that.I personally believe there is a dreadful malaise in the helicopter industry and that maybe Evidence Based Training might be our saviour. But I'm not holding my breath.

BLADESTRIKE & SK92
All presumptions about pushing against the spring fall apart if you encounter the worst of nightmares and suffer (or give yourself) a double AP fail. Any unusual attitude recovery strategy that relies on the AP to help is doomed if you have no AP's. Best use a more basic strategy. In any case modern helicopters have been designed to be flown using the automatics and flying manually goes against this ethos. Yes we need to have that skill but we should not disguise the need by pretending that a little bit here and there is a substitute for a properly designed, conducted and assessed lesson. As long as we play that game then we will not get what we need.

G

Haven't the dinosaurs in OGP fought hard for years to keep hours based requirements rather than competence based requirements?

Of course I realise that its easy for lazy auditors to check hours and for certain unscrupulous OGP members to always contract for minimums a bit more that the OGP standard so junior crew fly for their fellow OGP colleagues not them.:ugh:

EBT has nothing to do with OGP. It is the regulators waking up and realising that the checking regime based on 1960s failure modes does not apply to modern aircraft.

http://www.icao.int/SAM/Documents/20...%209995.en.pdf

I know it was a few years back now but on the Super Puma occasionally we came back empty or freight only in the North Sea and I certainly allowed my Co-Pilots to fly manually if they so wished - weather and pilot skill depending

I sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong but if you are hand flying or coupled up the punters should not know the difference.
If they do I would have thought there might be some currency/competency issues.
Why is hand flying regarded as training?.

Modern technology
 

Modern equipment is truly great and it certainly is a fatigue reducer, but there was a day (before flight and duty limits) we would fly 180 hours a month in aircraft (212, 61, 76A-) that didn't have autopilots. In the Beaufort Sea during the summer (fog time) that sometimes meant 20 ADF/RADALT approaches a day.

Point is, you should be able to hand fly the aircraft all day long doing on limits takeoffs and approaches and the lads in the back shouldn't know the difference.

As someone mentioned earlier 500 fpm climbs and descents and no more than (smooth) rate one turns. In fact, when we got the first Bell 212s with Sperry autopilots when flying an ILS we would turn the VOR/LOC off and use BRG and the manual turn knob to intercept the LOC because the auto capture was too abrupt.

I reckon it doesn't hurt to still be able to actually fly the damn things :O

Fadecdegraded - "I sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong but if you are hand flying or coupled up the punters should not know the difference.
If they do I would have thought there might be some currency/competency issues.
Why is hand flying regarded as training?."


Exactly.

Dear oh dear. It's not about whether the pax notice the difference or even how big one's balls are, it is about what is the safest course of action. Most pilots can fly manually if required to a competent standard and it seems doubtful whether the pax would notice the difference. However by flying manually we are exposing the pax to human frailty which tends to show itself when the weather is bad etc. Of course it depends on the technology, but in most modern helicopters the technology is far more reliable than the pilot. Why should the pax have to suffer increased risk during a night flight in bad weather just so that the pilots can demonstrate to each other what heroes they are?

Fly manually when there are adequate safety margins by all means (ie reasonable weather) but not when safety margins are at their minima.

Any SAR pilot auto-hovering over the ocean at 40' on a foggy night who says "never mind this phenomenally clever and robust inertial auto-hover system, I'm going to take it all out and fly manually" (just to show how clever I am) should be sacked immediately, and the same philosophy extends to any sort of flight near published limits for helicopters with modern and robust autopilot systems.

HeliComparator ..... told you a million times not to exaggerate.

People are not deliberately going out in poor weather and flying manually / by hand ..... unless of course you are not equipped with flight director or equivalent when they have no choice (some S76A++ etc) ...... but that is the crux of the matter - people are noticing a degradation of the scan and skills learned in those types when nowadays they continually fly coupled from gear up or whatever until gear down etc .....

So they will usually fly a departure profile till established and bored in the cruise ..... then those slightly braver might also attempt an IFR recovery probably onshore - simply to hone those skills in danger of being lost. Not a drama, surely?

Most operators have deemed you should be fully coupled (though some are not capable of being fully coupled) for most ops following certain incidents/accidents and thus training / recency is also now encouraged ...... quite removed from the days of 332L's being flown AP's off for all the flight back from distant platforms.

ummmmm ,...
 

"Any SAR pilot auto-hovering over the ocean at 40' on a foggy night who says "never mind this phenomenally clever and robust inertial auto-hover system, I'm going to take it all out and fly manually" (just to show how clever I am) should be sacked immediately, and the same philosophy extends to any sort of flight near published limits for helicopters with modern and robust autopilot systems."
___________________________

I don't believe anyone in this discussion has suggested such a thing.

Nobody here is suggesting for a minute that hand flying skills are maintained in marginal or hazardous conditions. Obviously judicious use of all the aids available will increase safety and reduce the pilot workload. But the day all those aids decide not work is not the day day to discover your basic general handling skills are significantly lacking. It probably won't be 8/8 blue when you need to get back down manually, so you had better be reasonably competent at it.

The "how big one's balls are" comment is indicative of maybe being exposed to some old school thinking where real men (and woman) don't use autopilots. That attitude is as outdated and dangerous as the opposite "never hand fly" approach. Both are stupid, and that is why once again on this forum we return to the issue of sound captaincy. If you can't make safe, consistent decisions, you shouldn't be in the front. As others have mentioned, the Air France and Air Asia accidents did not involve "big balls" decisions that exposed the aircraft and passengers to a perilous fate. They both started with completely innocuous and easily solvable problems (airspeed indications and rudder trim), but the subsequent actions or inactions rapidly took the aircraft into irrecoverable situations through a lack of situational awareness and inability to hold or recover a straight and level trimmed attitude. There isn't a more basic but more essential flying skill than that. In a helicopter you won't have 38,000 feet to figure out where you screwed up, so being able to recover to stable flight better be second nature. If you have inadvertently become a button pusher instead of a pilot, you might be in for an interesting trip one day.

Any why are we encouraged to be button pushers? Because it's safer. Statistically if you can get aircraft to operate with less human intervention, you get less mistakes. But don't be a slave to it. When the bean-counters figured out it was far less costly to throw everyone in a sim rather than have steely-eyed check pilots pulling back levers on a whim, training became focused on systems and system management. The assumption was all the handing skills would be maintained during operations and the emergency drills were covered in the sim rides. That wasn't true. Many pilots now complain that sim rides are unrealistic in terms of emergencies, and handling skills are hugely variable. That is not a constant approach to safety.

The bottom line is basic handling skills are essential, so keep them sharp, but you don't need to expose you or your pax to any additional risks keeping them up. Simulators are essential, but they are only a piece of the overall puzzle. Use sound judgement and all the tools available.

Having read this thread, I'm happy to be in a position where I can choose whether I fly coupled or manually. Sometimes it's better for me to fly coupled up, sometimes not. But it's up to me to make the decision.

When to use the automation?
 

I feel for the Chief Pilot who has to put the company policy on the use of automation in writing and then stand by it. How do you ignore the fact that using it (correctly of course) is much safer than not. Open the door to pilot discretion and you open yourself to the kind of incidents we have seen punctuating operations around the world.

When I read a TR syllabus and observe the absence of 'effects of controls' and 'trim management' in Lesson One I despair that we will ever get things right. Maybe I'm old school but to me success begins with getting the basics right.

To enable the SFI to check that the controls are being used correctly the sim instructor needs to be able to see the pilot's hands from his IOS and a simulator that does not allow that shows a worrying ignorance on the part of the sim designers and those that certified it.

G.

I am of course not against practicing manual flying skills to retain some degree of competency. However I come back to "let's make that practice useful, for a reasonably foreseeable scenario". I know I have said this before but...

When I was a baby pilot I learnt on a Bell47. To start with, 99% of concentration was taken up with controlling the throttle so as to maintain 3050-3100 rpm. That only left 11% for operating the flight controls (yes, I was working hard!). Eventually rpm control became easier and almost subconscious as I had acquired the skill. But when I progressed onto a type that had no manual throttle control at all, that "skill" was completely redundant and useless.

Certainly by the time I had retired and I suspect to date, there has never been an occasion when an EC225 had to be manually flown on an ILS with the autopilot otherwise working normally (there was one occasion when the autopilot was only working in SAS mode. Oh and that failure was a software bug long since fixed). So why do people feel the need to fly an ILS in ATT (ie normal uncoupled) mode? It is a completely pointless, useless and redundant skill for an EC225 pilot.

If you really want to train for the only foreseeable failures of the aircraft to auto-fly an ILS, then fly them manually in SAS or AP out altogether. That way you will be well prepared for that one event in tens of lifetimes. But personally I think you just need to be able to do it with sufficient accuracy to "get away with it" not to keep the GS and Loc bang on all the way to DA. There are so many more important things to train for, and there is not unlimited training time.

So my message is that one should expend effort and training on those things that are feasible failures. It seems obvious but it's not what we seem to do. Of course the human is probably the most failure prone bit of a modern helicopter!

Point taken - but then that training can only be done in the sim or non-revenue as per your desire not to expose the passengers to risk. Normal pilot reaction and most checklists advise de-couple and fly manually in the event of any AP / FD failure .... so why not practise it?! And incidentally, as several others have done it, practise is the verb, practice the noun. So there.

We have been struggling with this issue for some time over in the fixed wing world as has been alluded to earlier. Regrettably the argument about the level of automation and the maintenance of manual handling skills is something inherent to the introduction of automation. There are several different approaches and positions that can be laid out, most of which have been discussed with reasonable sobriety on this thread. In general my team has opted for the 'use of maximum automation' strategy as defined within the OM-A. This is pretty common I'm the 'other teams' as well. In general 'manual flying' above 10,000' is not allowed unless something stops working - then we cannot go into RVSM airspace and may not get to destination. We cannot disconnect the auto thrust/throttle (unless the MEL permits dispatch!).

So what to do? Well for one, we do something called a 'manual handling sim' where we practice those prohibited skills twice a year for an hour. One of the interesting things in these events is the first ten minutes is usually pretty ropey and then miraculously the sleeping brain seems to recollect the muscle memory required to stay upright, so all is not lost and beaming pilots emerge from the simulator. The limitation with this strategy is the Air France syndrome (btw I suggest someone actually reads the report rather than rely on National Geographic), where they did not have time to 're-discover' their dormant skill. The slightly sad thing about the AF447, is that if the pilots had not been pilots and left the aircraft alone for 2m:30s then they would probably only have had to change their underwear. The natural stability of the aircraft would have generally maintained the flight trajectory until valid anemometric data had returned. It is worth nothing that things happen very quickly in both versions of flying machine.

Now for the additional 'squirrily' bits: the things I have flown since 1999 do not usually have the same level of manual reversion that most helicopters possess - there is too much redundancy. Fly by Wire gives us Normal Law which is like an advanced version of SAS (with the AP out) It is very smooth and remarkably agile, the 575 tonne version flies much the same way in terms of attitude change as the 75 tonne version. The chance of dropping out of this Normal Law is very small - but not so small as to be invisible. One of our pilots on his first operational was bringing his 575 tonne version back from Seoul and en-route suffered a dual independent failure that left him still in Normal Law. However during an ILS approach into the one thunderstorm a year we get in this part of the world, a third independent failure dropped him straight into Direct Law, bypassing the usual pause at the intermediate Alternate Law which is now the closest we get to helicopter AP off. Our man then had to do a go-around from the ILS, reposition for a vectored manually flown raw data ILS at night and IMC with special lighting effects. Now his experience has saved the day, from the FDR trace we could see that there was a distinct ropiness to his flying that once again recovered pretty quickly.

Here we have the conundrum: how do you train the new generation to fly these modern automated machines and yet still expose them to the unexpected events? If you need to train for the improbable, what do you train? In a sense this is what Evidence Based Training is attempting to address, we all know the engine failure shortly after what ever TDP is used, has little application apart from delivering a flight manoeuvre validation 'tick in the box'. The newest versions of conversion training currently in the pipeline emphasise the management of flight trajectory for the first events in the full flight simulator (what it was really designed for). The subsequent course then expands these manual skills to include Upset Recovery.

It is vital however that automation is trained properly and the implication of the different modes fully understood. We have some interesting examples from San Francisco and 'other places' that managing the flight trajectory during an approach with automation still causes extreme confusion. If the automation does not have a sound procedural basis then it would be probably better to remove it and install SAS with a beep trim again - turn the clock back 30 years and say what we had in the past was best (it wasn't). Without proper SOPs that specifically define the roles of both the PF and PM, you are back to 'pilot and helper' or person who flies and person who does the radios. If the PM does not have a comprehensive understanding of the PFs intention and 'what should happen next' then the PM cannot challenge any deviation. Similarly, the role of PF changes dramatically with the disengagement of the auto flight system, their area of responsibility expands to monitor things they were not monitoring as carefully before. When you brave souls decide to do a raw data ILS in IMC 'for the practice' then your PM is probably struggling to catch up.

The key to this training however (IMHO) lies with the attitudes of the trainers and evaluators. We all know it is possible for a pilot to 'fail' in a simulator within 10 minutes, however trainee and experienced pilots need to be allowed to 'fail safely' in the simulator without jeopardy to their careers or licences so they can learn from their own experience of how easy it is to mishandle any flying machine. Hopefully these lessons in the training environment will translate to the line. Personal reflection on personal experience has an enormously powerful influence on the trainees abilities.

TOD