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Why is automation dependency encouraged in modern aviation ?

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Why is automation dependency encouraged in modern aviation ?

Old 4th Dec 2020, 13:09
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Originally Posted by pineteam
All the airports I'm flying have conventional SIDs. You can always request one. I do that sometimes in my own base.
Not all airport have them. RNAVs are usually also minimum noise routes, so have to stick to those at many noise-sensitive airports.
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Old 4th Dec 2020, 13:17
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Originally Posted by KayPam
You can't comfortably go around busy, noise sensible airports requesting for non standard departures. For example, if the standard departure is an RNAV noise abatement, it isn't commendable to anoy ATC (more talking, probably more work) and the inhabitants (more noise) just because your aircraft doesn't allow raw data RNAV.

Rose VOR is completely manageable if anticipated correctly, it was considered basic during my MCC training.
It is quite fun to consider that the first time I flew the A320 sim, it was all raw data flying and navigating. It didn't seem to be a huge problem. But it is never done like this on the line.

The conventional SIDs in my home base are almost identical tracks than the RNAV ones and no NADP required. That's the nice thing with airports built over the ocean I guess.

Of course it's manageable as long we remember how to fly the needles. xD

Originally Posted by FlyingStone
Not all airport have them. RNAVs are usually also minimum noise routes, so have to stick to those at many noise-sensitive airports.
Ok thank you. Did not know that.

Last edited by pineteam; 4th Dec 2020 at 13:39. Reason: Correction
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Old 4th Dec 2020, 16:33
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Capt Bloggs, pineteam,
The subject should not be seen as hand flying or not, pilots should hand fly; instead it questions why some views believe that more manual flight will improve expertise required to manage different situations.
Opportunistic flying in low workload conditions can improve confidence, self esteem, and refresh existing skills in that operation. However, this is unlikely to improve the expertise required in other flight areas or managing abnormal situations.
Although GA should be a normal operation, in reality it is abnormal due to low occurrence, not failure. Hand flying an approach and landing is unlikely to improve GA; hand flying a GA could, but also improved aircraft / systems.

A concern is if regulators or operators believe that the purpose of hand flying is to improve expertise, they risk complacency - they have responded to the perceived threat. Many safety 'interventions' are based on variable accident investigation and reporting, causal allocation, and misjudged recommendations.
Perhaps 'automation dependent' operators realise this and have other training methods to enhance expertise, particularly cognitive skill, situation awareness and decision making.

PK, yes inappropriate correlation, not cause or effect, but 'related' - associated; instruments and flying aircraft.
'… pilots have all of the skills … '. Accidents suggest otherwise, not weak manual skills, but inadequate situation assessment and choice of action.

An alternative view of manufacturing might be that modern aircraft have been designed for the primary task which is heavily automated - safer, but sufficient for manual flight, but not necessarily with the same accuracy depending on the situation; no AP, FD, RNAV could require a Pan call.
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Old 4th Dec 2020, 21:00
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Originally Posted by PEI_3721
KP, yes inappropriate correlation, not cause or effect, but 'related' - associated; instruments and flying aircraft.
'… pilots have all of the skills … '. Accidents suggest otherwise, not weak manual skills, but inadequate situation assessment and choice of action.

An alternative view of manufacturing might be that modern aircraft have been designed for the primary task which is heavily automated - safer, but sufficient for manual flight, but not necessarily with the same accuracy depending on the situation; no AP, FD, RNAV could require a Pan call.
I did not say pilots have all the skills, I said they should have them, which is a slight difference.
Many accidents reflect loss of awareness about automation, and reluctance to takeover swiftly.

Why design it for "sufficient" in manual flight, instead of "optimal" ?
They litteraly have thousands of engineers, for design and certification, and dozens of test pilots (cat 1 and 2) and maybe hundreds of airlines pilots (flight operations department)

With no crosstrack deviation in RNAV, you can't fly an RNAV approach in case of loss of FDs. So suppose you fly into an airport without conventional arrivals (which could happen in the near future due to the attrition of conventional means, or is even already the case at somes places?), with an FD failure you're now pan pan. But if the aircraft was designed differently, it would be a seamless reversion to manual flight.
The subject should not be seen as hand flying or not, pilots should hand fly; instead it questions why some views believe that more manual flight will improve expertise required to manage different situations.

Where does that come from ?

Opportunistic flying in low workload conditions can improve confidence, self esteem, and refresh existing skills in that operation. However, this is unlikely to improve the expertise required in other flight areas or managing abnormal situations.

I wonder how you got there. The point of practising manual flying is to improve manual flying.
The 9 competencies are, as you know if you use this model, manual flying, automated flying, procedures, knowledge, decision making, SA, communication, workload management, leadership and teamworking.

It is obvious that flying manually will not make you gain knowledge or help you remember the procedures.
However, it has to beneficial side effects, in my opinion : better workload management (because of a higher workload which will make you practise this competency) and situational awareness, for the precise case of awareness of the aircraft.
Someone who is used to flying manually knows very well how the different flight parameters should behave. If the automation starts to do something unwanted, they will very easily catch that there is something odd. It is basic flying skill, but some accidents demonstrated that they sometimes caused a problem. The most iconic one, in my opinion, is the Emirates go around without power.

Last edited by KayPam; 4th Dec 2020 at 21:12.
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Old 4th Dec 2020, 23:25
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There’s no conceivable drawback to regularly practicing without automation. My first jet didn’t have autothrust. I quickly had to learn power settings for different phases and configurations. Eventually you get to the point where you can set the approximate power setting without even looking at the engine instruments- your hand just knows where to go.

Likewise with pitch. If for some reason the attitude indicator doesn’t look just so, you know it’s not right and you fix it.

That sort of intimate knowledge of the aircraft comes in handy in an emergency. The flying part becomes subconscious. You’re using your mental capacity to handle the emergency. If that means I don’t fly the ILS as crisply as the AP in good weather, so be it.
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Old 5th Dec 2020, 01:01
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It is basic flying skill, but some accidents demonstrated that they sometimes caused a problem. The most iconic one, in my opinion, is the Emirates go around without power.
Not forgetting the Flydubai Flight FDB 981 B737-800 on 19 June 2016. It was a straightforward go-around on instruments yet the pilot blindly tried to follow the HUD beyond its tolerances and dived into the ground. A terrible accident. There is no exemplary skill needed for a go-around in a 737. Properly trained, it is a basic manoeuvre after all. All the usual excuses can be made (fatigue etc) but it boils down to staggering incompetence in instrument flying ability.
See:


https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/w...a6-fdn_eng.pdf
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Old 5th Dec 2020, 02:30
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Originally Posted by PEI_3721
Capt Bloggs, pineteam, The subject should not be seen as hand flying or not, pilots should hand fly; instead it questions why some views believe that more manual flight will improve expertise required to manage different situations.
It depends on what you mean by “different situations.” Will handlfying improve expertise on doing a QRH procedure for a hydraulic problem with the AP remaining on… no. Will it improve performance/SA during any situation where handflying is (or should be) happening, including the non-handflying-related hydraulic QRH? Absolutely unqualified yes, through the simple virtue of being less task saturated, which is a direct result of regular practice of one of those tasks, to where it takes, say, 20% of your available attention rather than 120%.

Opportunistic flying in low workload conditions can improve confidence, self esteem, and refresh existing skills in that operation. However, this is unlikely to improve the expertise required in other flight areas or managing abnormal situations.
Not just low workload conditions, but medium workload conditions too. When some semi-routine situation happens where a bunch of tasks fall in your lap simultaneously, like you’ve got to answer a radio call, and do 2 things on the FCP, and make an FMS change, and you’re in the middle of a flow/checklist… and one guy is handflying - do you want to be riding in the back if that can derail the whole train for the crew? Quickly prioritizing and shedding is an essential mental skill, and semi-regular practice of it (and guess what, this can happen by an unpleasant coincidence even on the nice day at the quiet outstation) should be part of our repertoire.

Also, by “abnormal situations” of which you say the management is unlikely to be improved by hand flying proficiency, you seem to excluding basically every airline crash in recent history.

Although GA should be a normal operation, in reality it is abnormal due to low occurrence, not failure. Hand flying an approach and landing is unlikely to improve GA; hand flying a GA could, but also improved aircraft / systems.
Totally disagree. You’re looking for “flying an approach” to be a transferable skill to “flying a go around,” and correctly coming up dry. But you’re looking in the wrong place. It’s not “flying an approach,” it’s “flying.” Being comfortable simply in the situation of being in charge of the control surfaces and thrust, and VSI and altitude and airspeed tapes and heading/course and N1 gauges, including the impending leveloff coming in 500 feet, as well as the flap-related pitch disturbances - and feeling more like you’re in your car than like you’re in the Apollo Lunar Module with the commensurate attention to spare for SA and the rest - is what’s going to improve the hand flown go around.

Would go arounds be better if we could regularly practice them? Of course, but we have no choice but to accept that we can’t do that. But from that to conclude that proficiency in general flying of the airplane does not improve the situation, for a given maneuver, any more than no such proficiency? No.

A concern is if regulators or operators believe that the purpose of hand flying is to improve expertise, they risk complacency - they have responded to the perceived threat. Many safety 'interventions' are based on variable accident investigation and reporting, causal allocation, and misjudged recommendations.
Perhaps 'automation dependent' operators realise this and have other training methods to enhance expertise, particularly cognitive skill, situation awareness and decision making.
I don’t understand this paragraph, especially the first sentence. But I feel like there might be something key in there… would you mind explaining?

Accidents suggest otherwise, not weak manual skills
After the accidents discussed in this thread (and recurring on this forum in general), how can you come out with this conclusion? You consider it not weak manual skills to slow the airplane by 30 pounds of pull force, over 2 flap changes without a single trim input? And not weak manual skills to be watching the flight path set to intersect the ground 2300 feet short of the runway and think everything is OK? How about to allow the airplane to slowly fly a wingover into the ocean, fully aware of what is happening, without leveling the wings?
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Old 5th Dec 2020, 09:55
  #168 (permalink)  
 
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The more we hand fly and use raw data without the FD, the less rusty our hand-eye coordination will be and the better our instrument scan.

Incidences such as SFO 777, several over-pitches and other very very basic mistakes during go-arounds, and some other fatal crashes, could have all have been prevented had the pilots "looked through" the automatics at the basic pitch, bank and speed.

But we should chose suitable times to practise. Am I going to hand-fly down from FL410 to a busy Gatwick morning after crossing the Atlantic during the WOCL? No - I will probably only hand-fly the last 7 miles. But should I practise hand-flying and/or raw data when it is appropriate? Yes !

(For my BAe146 line check years ago, I had to fly holds in three different locations during a very busy Gatwick morning - no auto available on that jet - so all flown with AP on HDG, (no A/Thr), and raw data with me working out the joins and drift headings in my head. Why did it have to be a line check !)
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Old 5th Dec 2020, 10:11
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Originally Posted by Centaurus

Not forgetting the Flydubai Flight FDB 981 B737-800 on 19 June 2016. It was a straightforward go-around on instruments yet the pilot blindly tried to follow the HUD beyond its tolerances and dived into the ground. A terrible accident. There is no exemplary skill needed for a go-around in a 737. Properly trained, it is a basic manoeuvre after all. All the usual excuses can be made (fatigue etc) but it boils down to staggering incompetence in instrument flying ability.
See:


https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/w...a6-fdn_eng.pdf
From what I understand, the PIC had to perform two go arounds and was emotionnally messed up. He had to push forcefully on the control column (he did not trim down at the first stage of the go around) and he looked like he went tired of this and eventually put way too much down trim.
To me, this is another illustration of the importance of ergonomics.
Surely, the captain failed to control his aircraft. But with an airbus, the captain would not have been disturbed by very large stick forces, even in alternate law and trim failure, because of the sidestick having a constant force feedback.
I forgot the exact word, but in the TEM model as well as in James Reason's model, safety comes from the addition of "safety layers".
So it is not contradictory to say that the pilot failed, but this does not prevent the manufacturer from trying to improve its product.

The whole subject is which improvement to make ? One strategy could be to keep the pilot out of the loop, as much as possible. Less pilot input required = less possible pilot error.
Another strategy would be to facilitate his task, offer him highly sophisticated automation, but also provide him with the means to keep sharp skills whenever he/she wants. And only then the regulator could ask for a certain point of manual flying proficiency.
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Old 5th Dec 2020, 10:39
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Surely, the captain failed to control his aircraft. But with an airbus, the captain would not have been disturbed by very large stick forces, even in alternate law and trim failure, because of the sidestick having a constant force feedback.
Airbus FBW sidestick has force feedback? Well, I learnt something new today, I thought it was just couple of springs that knew nothing about what was going on with the flight controls, airspeed or the atmosphere.

Airbus FBW handles very differently in normal and alternate law, particularly during a go-around. In normal law, one has to pull, whereas in direct law (which you will be in landing configuration) the same amount of pull will get you into big trouble very quickly, as with any aircraft with underslung engines.
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Old 5th Dec 2020, 11:27
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Originally Posted by KayPam
From what I understand, the PIC had to perform two go arounds and was emotionnally messed up. He had to push forcefully on the control column (he did not trim down at the first stage of the go around) and he looked like he went tired of this and eventually put way too much down trim.
If I understand your comment, the PF was over-reacting to the large amount of forward control force required to counter the power pitch couple by running far too much APND trim, however the report also mentions the somatogravic effect which can be mitigated by disciplined instrument flying. The HUD was originally intended to be a landing aid to allow visual acquisition of the environment while monitoring the instruments during the landing phase in Low Visibility Ops. It would appear that the HUD is now routinely used instead of the PFD for all flight modes, but looking at the clouds through the HUD may have increased the perception of a pitch up viewed through the HUD, particularly if the Landing Lights may have been illuminating the cloud layer as they flew through it.

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Old 5th Dec 2020, 12:39
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Originally Posted by KayPam
But with an airbus, the captain would not have been disturbed by very large stick forces, even in alternate law and trim failure, because of the sidestick having a constant force feedback.
I forgot the exact word, but in the TEM model as well as in James Reason's model, safety comes from the addition of "safety layers".
So it is not contradictory to say that the pilot failed, but this does not prevent the manufacturer from trying to improve its product.
On an Airbus He would have performed the go around with AP ON, and that makes a huge difference in terms of safety, especially with crap weather at 2 am.

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Old 5th Dec 2020, 12:51
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Originally Posted by FlyingStone
Airbus FBW sidestick has force feedback? Well, I learnt something new today, I thought it was just couple of springs that knew nothing about what was going on with the flight controls......

He said constant force feedback. i.e. springs. The point being that it is no effort to push or pull, unlike a mistrimmed Boeing type.


On an Airbus He would have performed the go around with AP ON, and that makes a huge difference in terms of safety, especially with crap weather at 2 am.
Even flying manually, though it is very easy - the pitch/power couple has been designed out (ooops, automation dependancy........)
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Old 5th Dec 2020, 13:19
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From what I understand, the PIC had to perform two go arounds and was emotionnally messed up. He had to push forcefully on the control column (he did not trim down at the first stage of the go around) and he looked like he went tired of this and eventually put way too much down trim.
To me, this is another illustration of the importance of ergonomics.
Surely, the captain failed to control his aircraft. But with an airbus, the captain would not have been disturbed by very large stick forces, even in alternate law and trim failure, because of the sidestick having a constant force feedback
KP I can't believe what you said.There's no feedback constant or otherwise on the Airbus side stick. It's just the spring pressure to bring the stick to neutral. Airbus maintains 1g when stick free so for a GA if you don't pull up there's a small pitch up at TOGA rarely exceeds 7to8 degrees. You need to pull up to 15° otherwise she will accelerate. The B737 has a large pitch up from TOGA that's why in a GA the pull if any quickly changes to push to prevent excessive pitch up. This Fly Dubai accident could have happened simply because not understanding fully the stab trim functionality. Unlike conventional elevator trim stab trim doesn't change the neutral position of the yoke. You pull or push on the yoke, trim and let go for it to return to neutral. Here he was pushing on the yoke and trimmed, long one 12 secs at that and was still pushing on the stick so the aircraft went in steep dive. Airbus GA is no problem or for that matter even flying because aircraft trims itself. It even applies to alternate law I am talking about within the envelope (you aren't supposed to be outside) which is different only in roll. Besides in Airbus the windsheer and GA could have been done in auto itself, definitely not the time for manual practice.
Last question how do we practice manual handling when emotionally messed up? Because all those hours spent on raw data didn't seem to help.
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Old 5th Dec 2020, 14:11
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Originally Posted by Uplinker
He said constant force feedback. i.e. springs. The point being that it is no effort to push or pull, unlike a mistrimmed Boeing type.




Even flying manually, though it is very easy - the pitch/power couple has been designed out (ooops, automation dependancy........)
Yes, absolutely, my point was that if the NG had the capability to perform an AP coupled go around in normal ops (besides low vis) then the outcome could have been different.
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Old 5th Dec 2020, 15:01
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Yes, the B737 really is the Mark 1 Landrover of the skies, (no disrespect to a Landrover mark 1 - it's just a basic machine). What a shame they didn't update the 737 properly.
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Old 5th Dec 2020, 15:55
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Originally Posted by sonicbum
Yes, absolutely, my point was that if the NG had the capability to perform an AP coupled go around in normal ops (besides low vis) then the outcome could have been different.
My post#114
3. No matter how well a pilot is trained or is experienced he does not become immune to all the ills human flesh is heir to(human factors).
4. Automation can perform repetatively to a given standard. There is no variation due to skill. If it doesn't just replace it.
5. A few failures of automation is not enough evidence against automation just as one Sully or Al Haynes doesn't make a summer. There are any number of fully serviceable Aircraft crashed through inadequate piloting.
Fly Dubai case:
Compare with my para no.3. Pilot was emotionally messed up. Human factor.
If it was Airbus they would have flown in Auto and result would have been different.
Compare my para no. 4 and 5.
Automation can perform repeatatively to a given standard.
The aircraft was fully serviceable crashed due to inadequate piloting.
Idea of practicing raw data is develop and maintain a scan pattern of monitoring attitude, speed, altitude, thrust and/or ROD or ROC. It doesn't help flying everything in raw data and it is not possible. You can't practice high altitude handling, GAs, Direct law landings or any abnormalities.

Last edited by vilas; 5th Dec 2020 at 16:13.
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Old 5th Dec 2020, 16:09
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Forgot to mention next time you go to SIM practice double SFCC Fail. A few approaches can teach you a lot.
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Old 5th Dec 2020, 18:46
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Originally Posted by vilas
Last question how do we practice manual handling when emotionally messed up? Because all those hours spent on raw data didn't seem to help.
I strongly disagree with this. Reference what I said earlier about aircraft control being intuitive. You have to practice raw data regularly, so that when you have a distraction (emotionally messed up- as you put it), you’re not expending valuable cognitive ability just trying to fly the airplane.

Think about it- you can write your name and phone number while holding a conversation, because you’ve done it a thousand times before. I bet you couldn’t figure out the square root of pi quite as easily while still having that conversation.
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Old 5th Dec 2020, 20:11
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Originally Posted by vilas
KP I can't believe what you said.There's no feedback constant or otherwise on the Airbus side stick.
Sorry if it's not clear or grammatically incorrect, but I said "constant force feedback". The spring in the sidestick does provide a constant force feedback, doesn't it ?
Or would it be more grammatically correct to say "constant force feel" ?

The interesting question behind this being : is it harder to push a few dozen kg with both arms on a yoke or a few kg (how much is it for the airbus?) with only one hand ?
If I have time, maybe I will measure it at work with a luggage scale, which will give an approximate answer.
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