FMAs...to callout or not
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If the request needs a response, give it i.e. flap, gear, selection whilst flying manually. If it is a PF selected event, PF should announce it, the PNF should check it and only verbally challenge if they think it is not correct. That satisfies a challenge/response check and keeps the inane check chatter down.
Previous post suggests you can fly with the FMA covered - on the Bus, this is not a good idea as there are things that can be selected on the FCU that will not happen unless they are confirmed on the FMA - i.e. constraints in climb, managed descent (VNAV) in heading etc. It is not a problem, it is how the system communicates a confirmation that a selection has been either activated or conditionally activated.
Previous post suggests you can fly with the FMA covered - on the Bus, this is not a good idea as there are things that can be selected on the FCU that will not happen unless they are confirmed on the FMA - i.e. constraints in climb, managed descent (VNAV) in heading etc. It is not a problem, it is how the system communicates a confirmation that a selection has been either activated or conditionally activated.
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So many think that it is OK to use a tongue to fly an airplane. Yack yack, constant chatter repeating the bleeding obvious
Callouts have been developed through the years because in a team communication is essential.
Of course when everything goes well you could say they are superfluous. Even boring, maybe. But that's what keeps awareness up when things go to worms and are not obvious at all. If I'm busy with something else, I want my colleague to tell me of every change he's made in the cockpit. The callouts method is the guarantee that will happen in bad times. Or when I'm tired. Or bored or distracted. I'm human, after all...
It doesn't mean I'm not using my brain or flying with my tongue.
It means I'm realistic and know and accept my limits.
Callouts help me, yes.
Repeating the obvious? Until you keep it obvious you keep it safe.
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Thanks to everyone for well thought out and articulated replies.
My previous company required all FMA changes to be verbalised including those generated automatically by the FMS, with no response from the PNF. On several occasions, I have seen pilots callout what they expected to see instead of the actual indications.
An example: after a pilot thought he pressed the APP button, he called, "Heading mode, loc and glide slope armed'. In actual fact, we were in LNAV and ALT HOLD.
My current company has a new type of aircraft and is not quite settled on the fine detail of its procedures yet. Currently, all FMA changes are called and the PNF responds with 'checked'. We also call the applicable speed limit prior to making a configuration change. This can also be error prone; a number of examples exist of pilots calling for configuration changes above the limit speed in spite of the verbalisation of the limit.
The intention of the callouts is clear; it keeps both pilots in the FMA loop and prevents over speeds. The paradox is that it can also degrade safety by creating a large amount of chatter during the busiest periods of ATC, particularly when pilots raise their voice so they can be heard over the radio! I don't particularly appreciate that, on a dark and stormy night, in a foreign country when I can barely understand the controller at the best of times.
In my previous job, a couple of pilots were exchanged with the parent company airline with a view to establishing interoperability of crews. The parent company procedures were basically silence unless something was wrong, whereas our procedures were to talk when everything was right. The pilots on exchange developed the view that the silent cockpit was a better system as it allowed maximum situational awareness outside the cockpit and they felt they had more mental 'reserve'.
We never really got to try it because my own company made a determined shift towards manufacturer procedures (including Airbus), which required maximum talking.
I would like to see a reduction in our flight deck chatter because I find it distracting and it does not necessarily fulfill the intention. The views expressed have certainly given me some perspective.
My previous company required all FMA changes to be verbalised including those generated automatically by the FMS, with no response from the PNF. On several occasions, I have seen pilots callout what they expected to see instead of the actual indications.
An example: after a pilot thought he pressed the APP button, he called, "Heading mode, loc and glide slope armed'. In actual fact, we were in LNAV and ALT HOLD.
My current company has a new type of aircraft and is not quite settled on the fine detail of its procedures yet. Currently, all FMA changes are called and the PNF responds with 'checked'. We also call the applicable speed limit prior to making a configuration change. This can also be error prone; a number of examples exist of pilots calling for configuration changes above the limit speed in spite of the verbalisation of the limit.
The intention of the callouts is clear; it keeps both pilots in the FMA loop and prevents over speeds. The paradox is that it can also degrade safety by creating a large amount of chatter during the busiest periods of ATC, particularly when pilots raise their voice so they can be heard over the radio! I don't particularly appreciate that, on a dark and stormy night, in a foreign country when I can barely understand the controller at the best of times.
In my previous job, a couple of pilots were exchanged with the parent company airline with a view to establishing interoperability of crews. The parent company procedures were basically silence unless something was wrong, whereas our procedures were to talk when everything was right. The pilots on exchange developed the view that the silent cockpit was a better system as it allowed maximum situational awareness outside the cockpit and they felt they had more mental 'reserve'.
We never really got to try it because my own company made a determined shift towards manufacturer procedures (including Airbus), which required maximum talking.
I would like to see a reduction in our flight deck chatter because I find it distracting and it does not necessarily fulfill the intention. The views expressed have certainly given me some perspective.
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Agree with 411A on all points.Call-outs should be kept to a minimum and speak up only when things are ABNORMAL.Confirming a normal or expected FMA might be a good idea on the Airbus as there are more of them and each annunciation has a more complex implication to the pilot.On the Boeing it's completely unnecessary except perhaps during initial training.
Crossunder's point that excess verbosity automatically equates to good CRM(thirty years on,we still dont have a definitive answer to what is good CRM)is absolute b.s.
The best flight-decks are pretty quiet ones.
Have watched guys in the sim make a dozen call-outs during start-up and still miss an exceedance.Point is that stating the obvious doesnt make it a safer operation.
The flap-speed call is not a bad thing at all,but "speed checked,flaps ..." is all you're ever going to need.
There's a low-cost Irish airline that requires pilots to do a x-check of nav aids and instruments during the most critical phase of flight,namely approach and landing.This represents up to 2 minutes of heads down verbosity when all they should be doing is monitoring the flightpath and ATC.PFD and ND annunciations will alert the crew to any discrepancy in the pilots altitude,speed and heading.And the nav aids?Well,that should have been taken good care of in the briefing prior to descent.
The Cali crash is totally unrelated to this topic and whoever said it was(probably crossunder again) has totally missed the plot.The pilots accepted a runway change at the last minute and workload resulted in loss of situational awareness.They could have cross-checked with each other till they were blue in the face and it wouldnt have mattered.The error was not procedural...they didnt fly the plane...and why?Because they were about five minutes behind it due to a poor judgement call.Next time your colleague types the wrong waypoint in the scratch pad,let him and see what happens.The world wont stop turning,I can assure you.Reach over and select HEADING.Just fly the plane.
Crossunder's point that excess verbosity automatically equates to good CRM(thirty years on,we still dont have a definitive answer to what is good CRM)is absolute b.s.
The best flight-decks are pretty quiet ones.
Have watched guys in the sim make a dozen call-outs during start-up and still miss an exceedance.Point is that stating the obvious doesnt make it a safer operation.
The flap-speed call is not a bad thing at all,but "speed checked,flaps ..." is all you're ever going to need.
There's a low-cost Irish airline that requires pilots to do a x-check of nav aids and instruments during the most critical phase of flight,namely approach and landing.This represents up to 2 minutes of heads down verbosity when all they should be doing is monitoring the flightpath and ATC.PFD and ND annunciations will alert the crew to any discrepancy in the pilots altitude,speed and heading.And the nav aids?Well,that should have been taken good care of in the briefing prior to descent.
The Cali crash is totally unrelated to this topic and whoever said it was(probably crossunder again) has totally missed the plot.The pilots accepted a runway change at the last minute and workload resulted in loss of situational awareness.They could have cross-checked with each other till they were blue in the face and it wouldnt have mattered.The error was not procedural...they didnt fly the plane...and why?Because they were about five minutes behind it due to a poor judgement call.Next time your colleague types the wrong waypoint in the scratch pad,let him and see what happens.The world wont stop turning,I can assure you.Reach over and select HEADING.Just fly the plane.
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This is a topic that reoccurs every 18 months or so.
Just to paraphrase my usual response...
What is 'obvious' to one pilot may not be 'obvious' to the other.
A pilot can obviously have an incorrect view of the situation ((i.e. wrong mental model)). It doesn't mean we are substandard and need immediate suspension, it just means we are human.
One of the best ways to see if your mental model is wrong is to compare it to the other pilot.
We can only do that by communication.
And since we all know the flight path is the most crucial thing, it therefore follows that anytime anything about it changes we need to make sure our mental model is correct. So we need to announce what we think is happening, so that our colleagues can set us right / be set right.
CPB
Just to paraphrase my usual response...
What is 'obvious' to one pilot may not be 'obvious' to the other.
A pilot can obviously have an incorrect view of the situation ((i.e. wrong mental model)). It doesn't mean we are substandard and need immediate suspension, it just means we are human.
One of the best ways to see if your mental model is wrong is to compare it to the other pilot.
We can only do that by communication.
And since we all know the flight path is the most crucial thing, it therefore follows that anytime anything about it changes we need to make sure our mental model is correct. So we need to announce what we think is happening, so that our colleagues can set us right / be set right.
CPB
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Everyone has his own view on the subject and will not change it from what he reads here...
The FMA in the Boeing airplane is meant to show each pilot what the status of the A/P and F/D is, in real time. It is located in front of each pilot and prominently displays this information, highlighting changes for ten seconds. It has been designed to do this effectively and without ambiguity. So why the need to make a callout? How can the system possibly be improved this way? If a pilot is not aware of what is happening right in front of his eyes, and if he does not know that he can check the status of the system at any time merely by looking at the display, how does a callout help? If he needs such a callout he should not be in the seat in the first place.
Of course callouts are important when a switch is moved or mode changed by one pilot, but the callout should relate to what is being done, not how the FMA responds.
Safer flight will be achieved when the pilots actually monitor what the airplane is doing (basic flight and engine instruments) and not the FMA, which only shows what the airplane is programmed to do (should be doing).
If the airplane is programmed by the pilot to fly into a mountain for example, monitoring the FMA will not save you, in fact it will faithfully show that the program is correct and give a feeling of false confidence. Less fancifully, if the airplane is making a LOC capture, the FMA will show that capture has occurred, but only raw data monitoring will tell you if the capture has been made incorrectly, or if the airplane has flown through the LOC without capture, etc. A failure of the airplane to achieve a parameter programmed (does not level off when it should, does not capture LNAV etc) will not be displayed by the FMA and many pilots, accustomed to allowing the FMA to make all their decisions for them, will not see this because nothing will happen in front of them.
Many pilots are swamped with information and overwhelmed by the amount of work required to safely fly the airplane in busy environments, and forcing them to concentrate on the FMA, which is only a switch position indicator after all, prevents proper monitoring of actual airplane behaviour. I have seen many IPs berate the FO for missing a callout, equating it to the worst sin possible, such that new FOs will put every effort into these calls, ignoring all else. And one of the funniest sights is a FO who is PF, still making the calls! If this does not show how absolutely ignorant this policy is, nothing does.
I can only assume that those who need/require FMA callouts are simply ignorant of the purpose of this system, or are ex-Airbus pilots (who are by definition ignorant of the system).
The FMA in the Boeing airplane is meant to show each pilot what the status of the A/P and F/D is, in real time. It is located in front of each pilot and prominently displays this information, highlighting changes for ten seconds. It has been designed to do this effectively and without ambiguity. So why the need to make a callout? How can the system possibly be improved this way? If a pilot is not aware of what is happening right in front of his eyes, and if he does not know that he can check the status of the system at any time merely by looking at the display, how does a callout help? If he needs such a callout he should not be in the seat in the first place.
Of course callouts are important when a switch is moved or mode changed by one pilot, but the callout should relate to what is being done, not how the FMA responds.
Safer flight will be achieved when the pilots actually monitor what the airplane is doing (basic flight and engine instruments) and not the FMA, which only shows what the airplane is programmed to do (should be doing).
If the airplane is programmed by the pilot to fly into a mountain for example, monitoring the FMA will not save you, in fact it will faithfully show that the program is correct and give a feeling of false confidence. Less fancifully, if the airplane is making a LOC capture, the FMA will show that capture has occurred, but only raw data monitoring will tell you if the capture has been made incorrectly, or if the airplane has flown through the LOC without capture, etc. A failure of the airplane to achieve a parameter programmed (does not level off when it should, does not capture LNAV etc) will not be displayed by the FMA and many pilots, accustomed to allowing the FMA to make all their decisions for them, will not see this because nothing will happen in front of them.
Many pilots are swamped with information and overwhelmed by the amount of work required to safely fly the airplane in busy environments, and forcing them to concentrate on the FMA, which is only a switch position indicator after all, prevents proper monitoring of actual airplane behaviour. I have seen many IPs berate the FO for missing a callout, equating it to the worst sin possible, such that new FOs will put every effort into these calls, ignoring all else. And one of the funniest sights is a FO who is PF, still making the calls! If this does not show how absolutely ignorant this policy is, nothing does.
I can only assume that those who need/require FMA callouts are simply ignorant of the purpose of this system, or are ex-Airbus pilots (who are by definition ignorant of the system).
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Spot on, lizard drinking.
Have personally watched a few F/O's call 'altitude capture" when in fact the aeroplane was still climbing/descending.
No capture at all.
When I point this out, their response is....'well, it was supposed to capture.'
These guys really have absolutely no idea what the aeroplane is doing, simply because they fail to observe.
And it's not their fault, 'tis the fault of the respective airline training department and the nonsense that prevails therefrom.
Have personally watched a few F/O's call 'altitude capture" when in fact the aeroplane was still climbing/descending.
No capture at all.
When I point this out, their response is....'well, it was supposed to capture.'
These guys really have absolutely no idea what the aeroplane is doing, simply because they fail to observe.
And it's not their fault, 'tis the fault of the respective airline training department and the nonsense that prevails therefrom.
FMAs...to callout or not
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Been on Lockheed, Airbus and now Classic 747. Calling out FMA status is very important. It just keeps both pilots in the loop. I can't say how many times on each type of plane, that the pilots had different info depicted because one side captured and one side didn't. It just saves a LOT of cunfusion in critical phases of flight.
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Good point, WR.
One more reason to make callouts.
To those who say that despite the callouts some people still miss some elements: have you considered the possibility that without callouts they would have missed even more?
One more reason to make callouts.
To those who say that despite the callouts some people still miss some elements: have you considered the possibility that without callouts they would have missed even more?
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I must have been lucky, after 13+ years on the "bus," I've only had different indications on the FMA once...and that was when the FMGC was in independent ops...than we knew it from the scratch pad message.
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FMA callouts ............... TENNIS anyone?
Looks like there is good arguments on both sides. I personally prefer 'standardization' across all aircraft types (preferably prefer the preferance of NOT calling out FMA 
Main question......
Why do AIRBUS 'CALLOUT' and BOEING 'VERIFY' ??
Wonder which side will pull ahead by 2 in the tie-breaker
Main question......
Why do AIRBUS 'CALLOUT' and BOEING 'VERIFY' ??
Wonder which side will pull ahead by 2 in the tie-breaker
