Excess reliance on automation - the old story again
 

Recent happenings to the cruise ship Costa Concordia revealed that despite the availability of a fistful of wonderful aids to navigation the captain still found himself literally between rocks and a hard place.

The letter below to the editor of an Australian newspaper could equally apply to the constant drive to ever increasing reliance on automation in airliners.
Quote:
"Technology should be seen as an adjunct to common sense or learned intelligence, not an alternative.
With the sinking of the Costa Concordia perhaps, as a start, we really do need to take calculators out of primary school classrooms".

Strangely enough there was a story in yesterdays papers that the Captain had 'dumped' the automatics and was 'hand flying' the ship! Certainly agree about the calculators, we used to get mental arithmetic tests just about every week.

And the rock he hit wasn't on the map. I wouldn't lump that in with the issue of automatic vs. manual flight, as the nautical world works a bit differently than ours.

Denti, have a look at the very good thread running on Jetblast. Wasn't just a rock he hit, it was a charted island.

Funnily enough my boss told me today that he is near the place for holidays since almost 30 years. he said whenever he rents a boat there, he had to sign a paper stating that he is not allowed closer to Giglio than 500m because of rocks under water close to the surface.

He insisted that he never rented a cruise ship, but plastic made boats with 10-12 hp outboard motors.

Not on the map? Please.....

BTW, I promised him if I`d ever hit a rock and the aircraft is in danger of sinking, that I would leave the wreck last. Also promised him never to fly very low around Giglio.

Can´t work out why he looked at me as if I wore a funny hat. :rolleyes:

If automation means that the pilots have more spare capacity for situational awareness, then that's a good thing. It's only a problem if it means that they think they can take no notice of what's happening around them. But if they think that way, then they are the problem, not the automation.

This topic comes up often in our flight department. Some of our pilots feel hand flying is essential all the time (except cruise). Other pilots feel that the Autopilot should be used as much as possible to reduce workload and improve situational awareness.

I am currently tasked with developing SOPs and am trying to decide what policy would be best.

Is there anyone who could share what their company says on the subject or what the SOPs are at other flight departments or airlines.

It would be very helpful in being able to say that 90% (or whatever) of flight departments and airlines follow use "this" autopilot philosophy which is why we implemented this SOP. BTW, we fly the very highly automated Gulfstream G550.

Thank you.

There is a mountain of links to research papers and opinions if you scan through Pprune contributions. Everyone has an opinion. It is known that excessive reliance on automation eventually results in gradual loss of flying skills.

If you are happy for your crews to go down that path then fill your boots with more accent on automation. Make sure you read the individual history of loss of control in IMC accidents also to be found on Pprune and then form your own opinion remembering your crews will be a captive audience to your personal preference.

I like to handfly, but at times it is so much easier to let the automatics do the hard work.

I don't fly air transport anymore, besides my wings rotate over the top of the fuselage, but in my air transport days there was always an emphasis on handflying proficiency, as wel as the need to know how to use the automatices.
However, automatics took second place; when in doubt everybody could handfly the machines with precision and not be fooled by the automation. But those who understood the automatics knew how to offload themselves in times of high workload and got the best of both worlds.

Situation awareness is the key.

Hope this helps.