rudderrudderrat

Hi mm43,
I think the "startle factor" is something we need to address. Normally all training is pre-briefed, so when the event happens in the simulator, there is no "surprise".

Please see the startle effect mentioned in Incident: Air France A343 near Guadeloupe on Jul 22nd 2011, rapid climb and approach to stall in upset:
"The flight data recorder revealed that the pilot monitoring pressed the autopilot disconnect button, no aural alert sounded, and pulled the side stick about 75% of its travel back for about 6 seconds. The aircraft subsequently rolled right and left indicative that the pilot not flying was not aware of his actions....The pitch attitude in the meantime increased from 3 to 9 degrees in 5 seconds, .... The crew reported later they did not hear the altitude alerter that sounds upon deviating 200 feet from the assigned altitude, .... the pitch angle reached 12 degrees nose up, the mach decreases.... the aircraft still climbs, the vertical speed increases through 5700 feet per minute, the crew does not notice the excessive climb rate, engine N1 is at 100%, the pilot flying switches his navigation display to a range of 160nm."

Does it sound very similar?
In the future, will we be bursting paper bags or firing starting pistols in the sim to produce the "startle factor"?

Linktrained

When "new to type" a briefing by an " Uncle" type trainer on the sim may be helpful. (A " Talk around the Circuit.") A Check ride might be better with a "harder" personality... Even the same person with hat turned around can create the shock of the unexpected, the " Startle factor"which may happen, even when not sitting on the edge of ones seat.

I assume that is some way to indicate to one or the other do the " Pilot Dropped Dead Drill"

AF343's pilots might have benefited from noticing that the hands of "my old sensitive altimeter" were now "showing the wrong time"!

BOAC

- back to my 'Zut Alors' boxing glove in the panel?

OK465

The only way you're going to get the 'startle factor' in a simulator is to simulate being startled.

(One possible exception to this would be the real world sim motion base system going out of control. This has occurred. It is of limited operational training value however. )

Lyman

An alert pilot is not startled, surprised maybe, but not 'startled'.

However, it makes no difference the circumstances of cognition: if a pilot is confronted with a situation he/she has never experienced, the foundation for recovery is in a part of the brain that is not wired for a solution. I do not include simulation as training...

This is the foundation of the negligence exhibited by Airbus! And Air France.

UAS cannot be merely discussed, and passed along to pilots who have not flown it.

rgbrock1

As a non-aviator I would like to offer a real-world scenario, which I myself experienced in the hope that, perhaps, the so called 'startle factor' can be more readily appreciated.

25 Oct 1983. I was an infantryman stationed at Hunter Army Airfield near Savannah, Georgia with the 1st Ranger Battalion. (Now the 1st Ranger Bn 75 Infantry Regiment) Leading up to this date, Ronald Reagan was whining on about some unholy airstrip being constructed by Cubans, Russians and assorted other "bad guys" from Eastern Europe on the Caribbean island of Grenada. (He neglected to tell anyone that the airstrip was designed and supported by the Brits.)

Anyway, on 25 Oct 1983 the 1st Ranger Bn. embarked on C-130 and C-141 aircraft for an unannounced and most unwelcome trip down to the Caribbean. Intelligence at the time indicated that the airstrip would not be defended and the aircraft we were on could simply land on the airfield (Point Salines, Grenada) and we Rangers would simply disembark and take the airfield. However, the Cuban defenders decided to welcome us to the airstrip via small arms and anti-aircraft fire. On approach to the airfield, all our aircraft began receiving this most unexpected ground fire. The PF of our aircraft did an abrupt pull back on the stick and got our aircraft out of harms way. Even as we were hearing the pings of rounds on the fuselage.

Although as Rangers we had trained extensively for combat (train as you fight) this was a most "startling" turn of events. Which caused us to discard our planned method of ingress (landing on the airstrip) and opt for rigging our chutes and jumping from 500' onto the airstrip environs.

However, and this is the point I'm trying to impart here, there were several Rangers in my company who, after being "startled" by the ground fire, refused to jump out of the aircraft. This in the face of all the multi-hours of training we had done over the course of time. They simply sat down and refused to jump. (Well, at least until the jumpmaster kicked their collective asses out the back of the plane!) Basically, these couple of soldiers froze: training be damned. Had we landed on the airstrip as originally planned I'm quite certain they would have disembarked without being forced to.

In essence: they were "startled" into inaction. (Scared ****less as well perhaps.)

I see correlations, somewhat, between the above and the inaction, almost catatonic state, exhibited by the PF of AF447.
Perhaps this correlation is not appropriate and I'm sure I'll be called out if it is. But, me thinks it is indeed appropriate.

OK465

A bit harsh and patently incorrect.

Having trained pilots in an all aircraft program, and a combination aircraft and simulation program, there was no doubt which program provided the best preparation for ALL aspects of operating the aircraft.

Lyman

Ok465

Perhaps some explanation. Just as Stalls must be experienced to familiarize the student with the feel of the a/c, so too must the a/c response to partial or no panel, and loss of various instrumentation be experienced.

I did Not mean to marginalize the crucial contribution of sim experience. Some AB initio must include actual flight in these domains.

Aren't we talking about lack of experiential hand flight? Try to teach a child to ride the bicycle with a sim. Never having experienced the actuals, to learn muscle memory, an adult with a PhD in Bicycle riding acquired in a simulator will not get how to ride.

Two critical cues needed to suss STALL in the A330 Are Buffet and Nose drop. Are these included in the type rating? In the aircraft?

If only to experience the docility of UAS in the air, this must be done on the natch. One cannot rue the loss of manual flight experience, and also say it is not crucial to experience it in abnormals?

If sim UAS is acceptable for the rating, perhaps an AoA gauge, Approach to STALL at altitude, and some other minimum considerations should be added to the platform?

PJ2

Lyman;

There's "startled", "surprised" and then being merely spring-loaded.

I can appreciate and even understand being startled over an engine failure, (loud bang, big yaw swing, vibration, bevy of cockpit warnings), but really...full-blown "negligence" when the airplane had not suffered a catastrophic engine or structural failure and was in, and could have remained in controlled flight but for its crews' actions? I think some perspective is in order.

rgbrock, good story. I can appreciate your example because being shot at has a clearly-defined possibility.

Honestly though?...I think perhaps a connection between refusing to leave the airplane when bullets await one outside, and being unable to respond as per training when faced with an aircraft abnormality because one is "startled", is a bit of a stretch.

Consider the QANTAS A380 crew, their A330 crew, their B747 crew; the QATAR Airways A310 crew, the BOAC B747 crew that lost all engines - Startled, scared, wide-eyed, shaking a bit...yes. But completely unable to function rationally and as per training and experience? No, quite the opposite.

"Startled" is an invented, psychobabble notion created by non-pilots/non-aviation people in an industry that has been dealing with transport emergencies and abnormals and improving on checklist design, system design and crew performance for same, for over fifty years. Why suddenly does the notion of being "startled" in an airliner cockpit have the currency that it does instead of being examined for what it is actually saying?

Is the trend towards relatively low cockpit experience with commensurate reducing skill standards in combination with highly-automated aircraft technologies where a pilot can now be overwhelmed by anything just beyond training and experience, finding new expressions in terms like "startled"?

Pulling the stick back and achieving such pitch attitudes because someone was "startled"?

What should have startled, no, scared this crew into action was getting to such a pitch attitude in the first place.

If "startled" is the new metric when examining human factors in aircraft accidents then there are some serious questions to be asked of those processes upstream from putting crews into transport cockpits who can handle the profession and the job.

Lyman

The landscape of the cognitive brain can get real empty when startled. If the pathways to a solution are blocked by both lack of thinking, and no muscle memory, if only for a few seconds, the pilot can step into the unknown and unadvisable, never to regain a starting point.

Surprise should not be fatal in and of itself. If the brain is engaged in activity that is related to the context of the environment, he is in the game. This accident is full of overstimulation post event. Without the presence of mind and the muscle memory, bad things happened. The muscle memory this pilot exhibited started out arguably on the right track, but degraded evidently into some sort of rigid 'affirmation response'.

PJ2

Yes, understand what you're saying and agree on how it works.

Let us compare a concert pianist, who's muscle memory is equisitely nuanced and, with extremely rare exceptions, not subject to lapse regardless of "surprise".

While not in the same class of training, (it's neither possible nor necessary) as a concert pianist, it is in the same category.

I do not agree and do not grant that minds and muscles go blank in a manner that is, as in the case of pianists, other than extremely rare. While all is not amenable to rational analysis or thought, the probability that a transport crew is going to lose the picture at the first sign of abnormality, is not a basis for explanation. There are too many counter-examples.

The one thing I think is reasonable to accept is, there is no training in actually dealing with surprise, fright, panic etc. I have in the past expressed two reasons for this: Training-training-training and SOPs are intended as both predictive tools for crew coordination, and preventative measures to counter surprise, fear and inappropriate responses. Demonstrably, this works. But we are, after all, humans.

What I am unwilling to broach without substantive evidence is a shift in the characterization of crew responses into another industry which sets aside the old-fashioned notion of competency and how such is achieved.

rgbrock1

Ah, but was it surprise or "startle" which affected the PF, or was it abject fear? Was he so preoccupied with the weather that in pulling back and keeping it there (fright response) he thought he was getting out of the cloud layer and into blue skies? And in so focusing on his fright response in obtaining blue skies, he paid absolutely no heed to everything else going on around him?

OK465

As Perry Mason would say to Hamilton Burger:

"You're on a fishing expedition."

PJ2

Either can be argued but in doing so think about what is being said. What business has "abject fear" got in possessing a crew under the quite normal-for-the ITCZ circumstances faced that night and a system failure which, while disconcerting and even initially confusing, was neither an emergency nor as I say a massive failure of engine or aircraft structure? Why abject fear? Startle yes, but then an automatic response? My question is, what must be assumed for such an answer to be rational and in keeping with all those goals we hold dear?

A rapid decompression would certainly startle someone!, and the drill is there to do. Here, there was nothing to indicate a requirement for immediate action.

I want to be careful here not to portray this up as "judge-and-jury" discussion - it is not. It is an attempt by one experienced captain among many here, to keep the original question open rather than "answering" it with, "it was 'startle' factor, and therefore we need to train that out of pilots".

My point is, surprise notwithstanding, (been there a few times...with adrenaline), the intent of thorough training and flying transport aircraft with experienced crews is discipline when things go wrong, reversion to known responses and effective crew communication and why that didn't occur here. The BEA Report goes as far as it might in my view in answering this question but it isn't a complete answer. I think that is for the industry at large to answer, as per the larger discussion concerning automation and "wither airmanship?" I'm not dismissing the startle response - that would be silly. I am asking for some careful thought before assigning it.

Organfreak

rgbrock1:

Of course, we'll never know. But, when it comes to good guesses, I completely agree.

"Scared senseless."

Linktrained

"Scared, Surprised, Shocked, Scared-, Spring-loaded, Shaking, Scared-senseless..."

By chance these are describing in the last few posts how various contributors think that PF may ( or may not) have felt when he used the SS at cruising altitude.

I do not know how often or when last he had done so.

RVSM is mandatory... WHY.... ? ALWAYS....? EVERYWHERE...?

Traffic is dense. We all want the same flight levels ( that was the case before pressurisation too - we all cruised just below 10,000 ft. with quadrantal separation, 500 ft. from crossing aircraft)

Communications are vastly better. Here in my armchair even I can see the radar tracks of many aircraft around the world. There are times and areas where there may be NO other (civil) aircraft anywhere for 100 + miles.

Surely it cannot be beyond a human brain to think of a suitable R/T phrase to allow individual aircraft to fly, released from RVSM, for a finite period.

Lyman

Linktrained...

"MAYDAY"? ("m'aider" in French)

Linktrained

Lyman,

Legally you must be correct with "Mayday".

I am sorry, I ought to have made it clear that this intended release from RVSM MUST ( not should ) come from Air Traffic Control.

To make this clear, from the ground rather than from the air.

Can you think of a suitable phrase ? Understood by all, as far as you can....

Lyman

"conflict"? Doesn't TCAS do this? Certainly, if the altitude alerter fires, it is a/c generated, but TCAS alerts the common comm? if the authority comes down hard on RVSM busts, they can't then refuse the a/c a 7700? In Atlantico, Comms seem problematic on top of everything else? Consider that TCAS is simply a ground installed and remote ATC presence?

Lonewolf_50

I'll suggest he said merde at least once.