Lyman

In the building business, a similar 'pathway' process is utilized. The concept is called the critical path, and sounds similar to the approach in medicine. It is applied in each project, drives scheduling and assessment, and must be monitored constantly by process (project) managers.

If applied (very) loosely to 447, one starts to appreciate the British expression: "losing the plot". I hope the comparison to construction does not offend, in Medicine, as in Aviation, lives are on the line moment to moment, and generally, losing the critical path does not cost lives.....

But in investigation, the critical path is apt, and perhaps could be used to better results if it were applied....

It depends wholly on the mission.

A33Zab

AMM 22-11-00 PB 001 AUTOPILOT/FLIGHT DIRECTOR (AP/FD) ENGAGEMENT D/O.

Par. 2.C:

• AP engagement is inhibited when abs(phi) > 40°
• AP is automatically disengaged when abs(phi) > 45°.

- Pitch angle

• AP engagement is inhibited when theta < -10° or theta > +22°
• AP is automatically disengaged when theta < -13° or theta > 25°.

(b) AP engagement is inhibited in flight when CAS < VLS or CAS > (VMO/MMO or VLE/VFE).

(c) AP engagement is inhibited when the FMGEC receives the "pitch angle protection active" information from the FCPC.

PJ2

slats11;
Yes, a very good observation indeed. Medicine and aviation have a great deal in common when it comes to "passenger/patient" care.

We could say it is cultural but I think of it also as a political economy which has been developing since the early 70's, sometimes loosely known as "neo-liberalism" - the notion that privatization, de-regulation, and "free enterprise" will provide "market solutions" for all problems including the ones you have just outlined.

Nothing could be further from the truth and further from what is needed.

Like all social/economic phenomenon it's not all bad but recognition of the worst effects of a neoliberal political economy in the areas under discussion is only now taking hold.

If the regulators of the western world are not tuned into these notions, massive safety initiatives like SMS could be the de-regulation of safety rather than an enhancement of safety using modern data technologies and new knowledge regarding psychology and human factors in high risk enterprises.

The notion of "ethics" has all but evaporated in this fundamentally-instrumental economy. It is a shame that the term "business ethics" is often joked about as an oxymoron. However there are encouraging signs of change, beginning first with awareness that untoward outcomes in high-risk endeavours do not favour high profit or shareholder satisfaction nor do such events sustain the viability of an organization which normalizes deviance for short-term solutions.

A "prescriptive" approach where responses are patterned, quietly assumes that given sufficient rules and flow-charts for programmed diagnoses and actions, that anyone with a bit of bread-and-butter training, (MCPLs...), can be plugged into a sophisticated system even within a high-risk environment, and succeed.

The notion of automation is a social phenomenon, not a technical description.

A flow-chart process works for ordinary cases, as you say and it does save time, money, guessing and lives.

But the regulators often hearken to, and follow, private enterprises' ways, and, assuming that prescriptive approaches actually work, download expensive responsibilities which are the rightful pervue of government, onto profit-centered organizations, assuming that they will willingly and effectively monitor themselves and act in safety's best interests. Further, none of this requires experience but mere adherence to policy and procedures. An audit by the regulator sometimes seems more focussed on process and documents than it does on "smelling the health" of the place.

A lot of people really believe that this approach works but try telling a VP of Flight Ops who's knocked around aviation for a lifetime and knows his or her stuff, that kind of nonsense. It is an aid for quick reference, not a replacement for knowledge, training and experience, none of which are valued nearly as highly today as a nice, organized shelf of perfect documents in everyone's office.

This isn't to denigrate the changes - I think in many ways they're better now. But addiction to paper and process without watching and knowing what's actually being done and not just written or said, makes the difference.

I think, as the saying goes, that those chickens are coming home to roost, but private enterprise, with government's assistance through and relative absence in the past, (it seems to be changing...but how?), and the elixir of short term profit, have taught the travelling public that airlines can fly people safely for $59 one way and that complaint is legitimate when airfares differ or increase by the cost of a McDonald's happy meal. Such standards are going to be extremely difficult to alter when the factors we are seeing against the background noise become stark.

I wrote the following on automation and pilots earlier this year:

Standards, the notion of professionalism and the career and the job of “Airline Pilot” all have changed since de-regulation, even more so since the 90’s, almost singularly through the hands of non-aviation, finance people.

These changes were likely well-meaning, intending to come to terms with economic challenges in an increasingly deregulated, speculative political economy. But the effects must be examined for what they are, not what was intended.

The present environment makes it very difficult for airline executives to plan and finance an industry which by its nature requires very heavy capital investments over long periods of time as well as investor patience.

Downward pressures on costs, wages, benefits and pensions remain significant on those areas of an airline’s operation which remain most “flexible”, in terms of reducing costs. The most “flexible” of all tend to be its labour force. The effect is now familiar to all employees, known as ‘the race to the bottom’. The relationship to fares and fare structures, outsourcing, reduced regulatory oversight and other factors is complex and well beyond examination here.

From a flight safety point of view, the effects of wholesale cost reductions in a high-risk enterprise usually do not show themselves right away and so they appear to be justified because “nothing happened”. The immediate rewards are, costs were ‘successfully’ reduced and the department manager looked good and met his or her quarterly reductions.

Quarterly Reports may be important to the life of the corporation but only convey a financial snapshot. Other systems reflect the health of the organization but they are rarely “attached” to the organization’s fiscal statements.

The effects and the results of a fiscal “cutting to the bone” on flight operations may only emerge years later. Changing trends in incident or accident rates are thus disconnected from their origin. Solutions may thus be incorrectly informed.

Is “automation” the problem?

Many observers, including pilots, have already stated that automation itself is not the problem. Having flown such automation for many decades I agree with this view.

Automation is just part of the kit for flight crews. The approach was always, “We fly an aircraft, we do not "manage a software platform". Just because a technology can be created to accomplish something does not mean that it should be adopted as natural or inevitable. Automation is a conscious choice made primarily by airlines and manufacturers and is essentially an economic one with flight safety benefits.

I and my colleagues were comfortable with automation because, as a colleague has stated, we flew older generation aircraft and knew how, and automation was an “add-on” which, like anything in an airplane, was always watched carefully.

We had the attitude that “the airplane was trying to kill us”; perhaps blunt but it remains an effective attitude for aviators, especially when the obvious benefits of full automation were in some minds beginning to eclipse the utility and even the definition of “pilot”.

In the seventies and eighties almost every departure and every arrival was hand-flown, sometimes to and from cruise altitude. Except for those flying versions of the B737 and MD80, nobody entering the profession today does that, nor is it emphasized anymore.

Encouragement to hand-fly and the “freedom to practice” was always offered by captains who knew the value of remaining cognitively engaged and situationally aware. However, very few took up offer, citing discomfort, especially when disconnecting the autothrust.

Automation was engaged just after takeoff and disengaged at around 400ft just before landing, just like the FCOM required.

In fact, one hand-flew the airplane at some risk should an incident have occurred while doing so. Hand-flying was, and remains, discouraged by airlines. It is not automation that is the problem – it is the absence of piloting the airplane, a physical and psychological act which creates a cognitive situational awareness that is not available otherwise.

I think a historical misunderstanding of what automation does and what automation’s capabilities are, which are quite spectacular and wonderful in my opinion, is quietly replacing a corporate understanding of what flight crews do and what their job and what their profession is. This shift in attitude towards pilots as "almost redundant to automation", has translated into a silent legitimation of what in some cases is inappropriate cost-control initiatives including the unwillingness to pay reasonably and otherwise ensure a reasonable career. It wasn't hard to imagine the outcome: Young people have taken note and are avoiding aviation as a career.

Because training is enormously expensive, (crews are non-productive during training, training itself is costly), time spent in training is focused on the one thing that is perceived to reduce costs, and that is automation.

As well, automation is viewed by the industry as a fatigue-management tool, (“the airplane flies itself” thinking), and therefore justifies reductions in both augmented crew requirements (in terms of how many) and the qualifications of those doing the augmentation, (in terms of experience and training). In fact automation is a superb fatigue-management tool, used appropriately but it is not “the third (or fourth) crew member”.

Because of inherent accuracies and predictability, ATC accepts and views automation as a flow-control and accuracy tool and, to accommodate greater traffic demands (in both time and space), design SIDS and STARS which have tighter tolerances for altitude, speed and route control, requiring the use of automation to ensure accuracy.

Automation’s complexity and training costs (crews are non-productive while in-training), requires that most recurrent training time in the simulator is spent in automatic flight. It is extremely rare to be given a hand-flown, raw-data, manual thrust ILS to limits. Hand-flying at altitude is simply never done; even the Emergency Descent (after a depressurization or verified bomb threat), is done on the autoflight system.

There is no time formally set aside for hand-flying and practicing one’s instrument scan. The expectation is that professional crews will develop this skill for themselves. The failure in such thinking is, there is no opportunity afforded to do so, not, at least, without risk should an incident occur.

The almost-complete absence of hand-flying has led to a state of affairs not discussed in the industry or by the regulator until AF447. While airline pilots flying international overseas routes might “fly” 700hrs per year, 99% of the air time (excluding takeoffs and landings) is under automation and actual manual stick time is only about 3 to 5 hours per year.

There are about two to five minutes during takeoff and initial climb in which the airplane may be hand-flown, (on autothrust), and between 40 seconds and two minutes during the approach and landing.

On international routes that would be done twice, perhaps three times per month. Domestic flights do more flight legs per month, but I cannot speak to how much manual flying is done.

An RP, (Relief Pilot) will fly manually even less because of the nature of the job and the qualifications, (Air France’s RPs are trained to take off and land. In Canada, the Relief Pilot is not legally permitted to sit in the front seats below cruise altitude. Therefore, a Canadian Relief Pilot receives no training in takeoffs or landings except in initial training. In one operation I am familiar with the Relief Pilot is trained to do the Emergency Descent from the left seat when relieving the captain.

Flying an airplane, either under autoflight or in manual flight, are cognitive and physical skills which must be practiced, but we have an industry which continuously is reducing the opportunity and the legality of hand-flying.

Automation as non-paid labour – the “third pilot” syndrome

The perception is largely held by non-aviation people who manage the business of aviation that "these airplanes fly themselves" and that the computer got passengers to their destination, safely.

This perception subtly opens the door to cost-saving notions justified on the basis of utility and safety. The matter is far more complex. There is risk in portraying this state of affairs as an industrial and an economic issue. It is such a matter but only in part.

The notion that ‘automation reduces the need for pilots’ has slowly translated into legitimation of changed (lowered) hiring standards, lowered wages and, importantly, a loss of those financially intangible but psychologically-critical factors such as professionalism and its associated sense of “the apprenticeship” when bringing new pilots along.

This process has become self-justifying and is now self-sustaining. In fact the goal of papers like this from many people who do this work is to intervene in this recursive process by answering the question about why the character of accidents is changing.

Another side of this is awareness is, the career, (and the industry itself), has become especially unattractive to young people who find they can do far better elsewhere. Captain Sullenberger spoke eloquently of this in his February 2009 presentation before Congress.

In speaking with senior executives in the business (major carrier) who regularly visit the flying schools and universities from which airline pilot candidates come, I hear that they are seeing a significant dwindling of pilot entrants. Young people are not coming into the profession.

Those visiting the schools say that the passion for aviation has been lost. They know that such passion has been taken advantage of and young people now know how corporate values degrade the profession. As a result they are going to more rewarding jobs, careers or professions to earn their living. This is not necessarily about capability and talent; it is as much about attitude as anything.

Downward pressures on regional carrier pilot wages are significant. We know that the First Officer on the Colgan Q400 was earning US$16,000/year. She was living at home with her Mom and Dad near Seattle while commuting to fly out of Newark. These circumstances have been unfolding over the last thirty years and are not the result of recent events. These circumstances and low wages are common in the commercial aviation industry.

There is another factor in the development of a professional pilot which has been lost and that is the notion of “apprenticeship”.

With regard to the Colgan accident, there was no one within this organization teaching their young First Officer how to be a professional pilot. This lack is not unique to one airline.

There was no one, including her captain, who was teaching her, for example, that texting during taxiing was unprofessional.

Should she have known it was unprofessional? Young and old are endlessly texting and talking on cell phones, while driving cars, operating trains, ships and heavy equipment. Today in our culture it is “normal”. We must ask, Wither “professionalism?”

Defined in law, the Colgan First Officer was “qualified” and passed flight tests but that is where her professional development stopped. I have deep empathy for this First Officer and all new entrants to our profession.

The changes required are not ours alone to make, and they are not all merely “technical”.

B-Schools and an MBA degree do not teach business leaders about the principles of aviation, perhaps nor should they. But those entering aviation at the executive level do not innately possess an understanding of how high-risk enterprises are made safe and they need to to be able to provide leadership in non-finance areas of an aviation operation.

What is good for shareholders and what looks good on quarterly reports often does not present a full picture. The notion of “risk”, if broached at all in such reports, is only framed in the fiscal discourse.

The nature of aviation accidents has been changing. We know that there is an increase in loss-of-control accidents. We are starting to see why this is so but the question requires a change in perspective. Automation is neither servant nor master; automation is kit.

Sorry for the length slats11- these issues beg to be discussed, perhaps in other forum threads but I wanted to echo your concerns as part of the discussion on AF447 because I believe there is a relationship.

Organfreak

Absolutely brilliant article, PJ2! I humbly suggest that you submit it for publication. Your political/corporate analysis is astute.

This is the true cause of this awful crash, and likely more to come.
(At last I reveal my stripes.)

Owain Glyndwr

Franzl,

There is not a lot I can add to your remarks, but I can't resist an invitation

The BEA wording is rather loose, but I think the context indicates that they are concerned with static "speed stability" rather than classical short period mode.

It is fundamental that you can change/control either speed or flight path by the use of elevator alone, but not both at the same time.

So JT's description of "pull to reduce speed, push to increase it" is fine for classical airplanes or the A330 in direct law, but it rather loses meaning when stick movement commands a flight path change. Even more so when the implied pilot's command on releasing the stick is "Hold this flight path". With the flight path being held by the FCS any pitching moments are taken care of by the automatics so the CG to aerodynamic centre moment arm isn't really a great concern for speed control. For what it's worth, the aircraft would have to be statically stable in pitch to get certification. Moreover (and I am not sure of my ground here) I think they might have had to show that it was flyable for extended periods in failed states to get EROPS clearance.

Speed stability on the A330 in normal or alternate laws is therefore a rather different animal to what we were all brought up to understand.

As I said previously, it looks as if the aircraft under normal or alternate laws would be more or less neutrally speed stable over a fair range of airspeed - say from 200 kts to 260 kts - and increasingly speed stable above that (Mach 'tuck' effects excepted - but they seem to be modest and it doesn't affect AF447 anyway). Below about 200 kts the aircraft would be increasingly speed unstable because it would be flying up the back side of the drag curve.

The problem, as I see it, is that if the FCS is trying to maintain 1g flight when the airspeed is falling it will apply NU pitch. But even though the aircraft is descending rapidly the measured 'g' (without pilot input) may not be all that far away from 1.0 so that NU command may not be all that big (I'm not specifically relating to AF447 here because there was considerable pilot input on those traces). In such a case the attitude might not change much even though the airplane was decelerating and the AoA increasing rapidly due to the increasingly negative flight path angle. I think this is what the BEA are getting at.

llagonne66

Right on the spot PJ2 !

What we are witnessing in the aerospace industry today with deregulation and enforcement of regulations by those that have all kind of incentives to watch the other way is also SOP in others high risk industries such as oil, nuclear power and banking.
In the end, the golden rule of neo-liberalism is always applied : privatize profits and socialize losses !

Back to the thread, the recent discussions about "stability" are much more interesting than the senseless ramblings about BEA / Airbus / AF / French State hiding the thruth from the unsuspecting public. Thanks to all for these knowledgeable inputs on that matter !

hetfield

Why should that be "senseless" ?

I'm afraid it would make sense for all mentioned parties to hide the truth or at least some aspects.

llagonne66

Hetfield,

Because against tremendous odds (A/C lost at night, in the middle of an ocean and in deep water), BEA / Airbus / AF / French State spent months and millions of bucks to find the wreckage. And they found it ... just for the sake of hiding the truth

A330/340 A/C have flown more than 30 000 000 hours since their entry into service. No doubt that BEA / Airbus / AF / French State need to hide the fact that it is poorly designed and full of traps for unsuspecting pilots !

mm43

@A33Zab;Though PAP is "lost" in ALT and DIRECT Laws?

So your logic schematic is still correct for all conditions.

gums

Thank you, OG, for your contribution.

There's one helluva difference between speed stability and longitudinal static/dynamic stability in the FBW jets that emphasize gee compared to what many of us learned back when the Earth was still cooling.

The 'bus does not change the center of aero pressure using the control surfaces or the FBW system. The crew can change the cee gee by transferring fuel or having all the SLF's run back and forth, but the aero remains the same. Maybe the F-111. F-14 and Tornado could actually change the center of aero.

The big deal is that one can reduce the downward lift from the elevators/THS in order to gain fuel efficiency and such by moving the cee gee aft. The jet does not come anywhere close to the tiny one I flew in the dark ages of FBW. As an example, we manually transferred fuel once the deep stall phenomena was verified. This gave us a forward cee gee and supposedly help keep us outta test pilot land. Unfortunately, we would forget to re-position the fuel transfer switch back to "normal" when coming home after initially placing it in "aft fuel transfer". Hell, we were joining up and changing IFF codes and all that stuff. The procedure was not in our checklists, either. So we would have an unbelieveable aft cee gee. I only weighed about 135 - 140 pounds naked, and maybe 150 pounds with survival gear on. Our nose gear WOW would intermittently disconnect our nose wheel steering. So one day I stepped off the ladder and the jet started to tilt back on the engine exhaust nozzles!!! Crew chief and I grabbed the nose and I stepped back on the boarding ladder!!! Still laugh about that. But my point is that no jet ever built could have been flown with that combination of cee gee and center of aero pressure.

Gotta go, and some good discussion here. I'll address PJ's point paper later, maybe a separate thread.

TTex600

I will counter with this.

A market solution has never been tried.

A market solution would exclude government "oversight" in all ways and safety would be dictated by the customers. In such an environment, airline X could sell tickets based entirely on price and airline Y could sell tickets on properly maintained birds - properly trained pilots - adequate fuel loads, etc.

I'm not necessarily endorsing such a solution, but it certainly has not been tried up to now.

mm43

The premiums required by the insurance industry in this X versus Y scenario would IMO work very rapidly to restoring something close to the status quo.

jcjeant

Estimated price of all searches is 18 million Euros
A330-200 factory list price (2010) is 191.4 million dollars
Everything is relative ...
The price of research is not very high for the sake of (maybe) increase the safety of flights

DozyWannabe

Not really. The fallout of the DC-10 "Gentlemens' Agreement" proved that if you try to deal with problems surreptitiously, it *will* come back and bite you in the empennage.

I think by "active" it means "engaged and working" rather than merely "armed and ready". This makes sense because you don't want autopilot commands muddying the waters when you're in that situation.

You rode the F-16 bareback? Duuuude!

To all intents and purposes it has, and the result was the Great Depression.

Except that's not how it works though. What would in all likelihood happen is that your hypothetical "Airline X" would undercut the hypothetical (safe) "Airline Y", and because of the technological and safety advances, X would get away with shaving safety margins for some time - probably long enough for Y to go out of business, with X taking over the routes and heading towards a monopoly. By the time something catastrophic happens to X, either it will have become a monopoly (meaning the choice is X or nothing), or the only remaining competing airlines will also be price-driven - meaning if the accident puts X out of business, the only remaining players are much the same.

The problem with all these modern "free-market" theories is that they don't take human capriciousness into account.

@PJ2 :

OK465

A33Zab:

I understand what you're saying and I thank you for the info.

However, it's not what I'm seeing, and it leads me to question either the fidelity of the simulation, or the 'applicability' of the guidance in 'all' circumstances.

In the interest of quality simulation I'm not quite willing to accept either one or the other just yet.

chrisN

Dozy, I think that if the legal liability, and hence the insurance costs, are included in the “market” place for airline X, X may not be cheapest after all. This would depend upon somebody persuading the insurers of the x-type risks, and providing enough quantitative data for actuaries or assessors to put a price on it, but insurers are a conservative lot and price highly for unknown elements.

(Edited to add – In fact, when the legal costs are finally added up for Air France, I would not be at all surprised if the savings in training with no manual flying at cruise altitude, lack of UAS comprehension, poor CRM etc. are exceeded by the costs.)

TTex600

I somehow doubt that the mods want this to turn into politics. My argument was micro, not macro and we're talking about aviation not world economies.

wozzo

This market solution, how is it working out for all the people who live, walk, loiter or posses land and property under the flight and potential crash paths? Will the airlines have to get individual permission from each of these people, pay life insurance for them and compensate individually for noise and other emissions? Who owns the air the airlines obviously need for their business, who "rents" it out to them, at what price, who sets the conditions?

slats11

The problem is that RPT air travel is so safe that most carriers ( with a few notorious exceptions) look much the same regarding safety to the average person. The inflight experience is much the same. The schedules are much the same. This has left price as a key discriminator for a large section of the market.

In this environment airlines must compete on price. The growth in LCC is evidence of this. Legacy airlines are cutting costs where they can. Using offshore cabin crew, offshoring maintenance and eroding existing terms and conditions are examples of this.

I suspect some managers are concerned about degraded pilot skills. But they are between a rock and a hard place. There is no point being safe if you are out of business. Other managers do not understand and will not listen.

And so everyone is playing the odds. Air travel is still pretty safe even with a few corners cut. The planes and the wider system are safer than before. And hopefully this will be enough. And it almost always is.

In the event of a disaster, various conventions will serve to limit liability. And the causes will be sufficiently complex that the blame and costs will be shared. That's how the risk managers and lawyers view it.

Market forces at predicated on an informed market. This is not the case here.

It would be great if the insurers sent a price signal. They likely do up to a point, but only up to a point. Insurance is most efficient with a frequent number of smal claims ( auto accidents or heart attacks). The high frequency allows accurate determination of risk. That is not the case with infrequent catastrophic claims. Insurers manage these through exclusions (acts of God, war etc) and also through reinsurance.

With airlines, crashes are rare and so insurers have difficulty determiniing the risk to apply. AF however may have now had a sufficiently bad run that the insurers will see hem as high risk.

If premiums really offset savings from corners cut, then LCC wouldn't be growing as they are.

A33Zab

mm43:

IMO they mean: activated (in NORMAL LAW θ <-15° or θ >25/30°)
This is outside APs own Operational Conditions θ >10° and θ <22° which are also valid in ALTERNATE.

OK465:

Text is from AMM, but you have reason to question this based on your sim experience.

Are you able to verify this in NORMAL LAW condition in the sim?
AP & A/THR off,
NORMAL Law (to make sure VLS available),
fly CAS<VLS-5 and then try to engage AP....?