Comment: June 2012 Archives

In the last 15 years there have been many false alarms about impending pilot and engineer shortages, but evidence now suggests the day of reckoning is at hand. And this time there will be no remission.

To understand current predictions, it is worth reviewing how the airlines have been "saved by the bell" four times from their own failure to invest in training.

The first remission arrived in 2001 with the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Air travel slumped and large numbers of pilots were furloughed. In 2003 the threat of a global SARS pandemic depressed air travel, and an oil price crisis caused an economic slowdown. Then, in 2005, raising the pilot retirement age pushed the supply problem back a further five years.

Despite all this, by 2007 the world economy was booming and airlines expanding. But the US regional carriers were losing their pilots to the majors in unsustainable numbers, so they looted flight training organisations for their instructors, causing a crisis in the training industry. Then the final bell came in 2008 with the banking crisis, and the airlines once again were saved from their lack of provision for the future.

But now the world's economy appears to have bottomed out, the airline industry has shed much of its fat, air travel demand is rising in most of the world, orders for new airliners have created record manufacturer backlogs and economies in the Asia-Pacific region and the BRIC countries are expanding rapidly. Barring another pandemic scare, the stage seems set for steady expansion, and all the scary figures are being rolled out once more: 450,000 new pilots needed in the next 20 years; Asia-Pacific alone needs 180,000 pilots and 250,000 engineering staff by 2030.

This would be fine if airlines just had to wake up and throw money at the problem. But what money? They may be expanding, but margins remain low. And the production of expert staff has a built-in two-year lag. There is no way training can be done more quickly, and the product, while - one hopes - of good quality, arrives on the line with low experience and a need for nurture.

Given the hurdles, it is essential that airlines urgently attend to a number of tasks: attracting more well-educated young people into the industry; changing out-of-date training regulatory standards; training pilots differently for the modern piloting task by adopting evidence-based training; and promoting instructing as a career choice.

(This piece appeared as the leading article in Flight International 26 June 2012)

In the half-century between the 1900s and 1950s, aviation leapt from two brothers struggling to get a spluttering, home-made contraption airborne to transcontinental jet travel at speeds and altitudes much the same as today. Mass air transportation was still years away, but the Comet and Boeing's 707 shrank the world for the privileged few who could stretch to the fare.

Although the six decades since have seen many advances - supersonic travel, superjumbos, fly-by-wire cockpits and carbonfibre structures - youthful exuberance has matured to a conservative middle age.

Witness airliner architecture. Despite developments in cockpit technology, cabins and structures, today's Boeing 737-800 looks little different (number of engines aside) from the 707. A modern jet engine - although much quieter and more efficient than its 1950s predecessor - shares the same basic technology. The last attempt to fundamentally reshape the standard airliner design - the Airbus A380 - offered a third more capacity than the Boeing 747, but has not led to a paradigm shift in the way we travel.

The decision by Airbus and Boeing to reject clean-sheet designs in favour of adaptations of their top-selling narrowbodies - powered by tweaked versions of existing engines - will see the 737 and A320 into the 2020s and possibly beyond. That choice is understandable - why gamble the farm when you have 50% of a market that shows little sign of tiring of these workhorses? But it does illustrate the industry's caution. The nostalgic may hearken back to aviation's so-called golden age. It is unlikely we will again witness a step-change in technology equivalent to jet airliners' birth in the 1950s or the jumbo's gift of long-haul travel to the middle classes two decades later.

But aviation is far from wallowing in complacency. Take safety. Technology and training have made flying many times less risky than in the first decades of the jet age. Thanks to engine advances, airliners are less polluting and quieter. Gone is the din around an airport as older-generation jets departed and landed.

Most of all, aviation has experienced a popular revolution. Due to deregulation, low-cost airlines and an industry able to mass-produce safe, reliable, affordable airliners, air travel has become attainable for ordinary Chinese, Czechs and Chileans, creating a global village where millions can trade, holiday or work across time zones. Mobility for the many will be the jet age's main contribution to mankind in the 21st century.

(This piece will appear as the leading article in the 19 June 2012 issue of Flight International)

The fatal Dana Air crash at Lagos will inevitably put Nigerian safety oversight in the spotlight.

Even in countries where safety oversight is good, crashes still occasionally happen. A national aviation authority such as the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority cannot stop accidents; all it can do is to create a cultural, operational and infrastructural environment in which the risks are as low as possible.

After three fatal airline accidents in quick succession back in 2005/6, Nigeria devolved its safety oversight system from the machinery of government by making the NCAA an autonomous expert agency with legal powers to issue and remove licences to operate.

This was a massive step forward for aviation safety in Nigeria. At that time the new director-general and chief executive Dr Harold Demuren wasted no time removing the licences of non-compliant airlines and airports, and until the Dana Air accident Nigerian registered airlines had enjoyed six accident-free years.

Hopefully the inquiry into the Dana Air accident will not reveal any signs of reversion to bad old ways for Nigerian safety oversight. At this very early investigatory stage there is no evidence that the Dana Air accident was an oversight issue.

Nigeria retains the potential to be a role model for African safety oversight, and it is vital for Nigeria and for African aviation as a whole that it stays that way.

(This first appeared as a leading article in the 12 June 2012 edition of Flight International)

A culprit is now confirmed for the respiratory curse affecting an alarming number of US Air Force pilots flying the Lockheed Martin F-22, and it is not what anyone suspected.

At least part of the problem is now blamed on the partial pressure suit that, ironically, is designed to help pilots cope with the effects of high-g manoeuvres, which entail oxygen loss.

The F-22 is designed to fight and manoeuvre at altitudes up to 60,000ft, a flight envelope that strains the limits of physiological science. Other aircraft have flown higher and faster, but none has had the acrobatic agility of the F-22 in such thin air.

That kind of performance is apparently too much for the USAF's bespoke Combat Edge pressure suit to handle. Rather than protecting the pilot's chest, the suit at such extreme altitudes in aggressive manoeuvres constricts too tightly when inflated, sometimes collapsing tiny air sacs in the pilot's lungs. The pilot, however, lands but remains oblivious to the damage. Damaged air sacs need time to rebuild. F-22 pilots at two bases, in particular - namely Elmendorf and Langley - often fly more than once a day. On subsequent flights, the pilots' constricted lungs lack capacity to absorb enough of the filtered, 93% oxygen flowing into their masks.

The combined result of these phenomena partly explains the epidemic of hypoxia-like symptoms reported by F-22 pilots over the last three years - and almost exclusively by pilots at Elmendorf and Langley. It does not explain why maintenance workers on the ground have also reported lung problems.

Bad pressure suits are not the F-22 pilot's only oxygen problem. The F-22 lacks an automatic back-up oxygen system, requiring the pilot to activate an awkwardly placed pull-up ring in the event of primary system failure, while unable to breathe. Automating the back-up oxygen supply would probably have saved the life of Capt Jeff Haney, who died in a November
2010 crash.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has rightly ordered the USAF to install an automated back-up system on the F-22, but it will not be cheap. Likewise, the F-22 pilot community will also need to qualify a partial pressure suit tailored to the unique physiological circumstances encountered only by that stealth fighter.

Neither change may seem affordable in the current budget climate, but it is a bill that simply must be paid. The F-22 is an exquisite aerodynamic specimen that tolerates no shortcuts for life-support equipment.

(This first appeared as the lead Comment article in 12 June 2012 Flight International)

Future concepts of sea-based airpower confront navies with difficult problems. Some are a matter of pragmatics, such as the vessel design limitations that forced a certain red-faced prime minister to revert to the Lockheed Martin F-35B earlier this month.

Other problems are more operational. It does not matter if the US Navy ultimately decides to buy F-35Cs - the same carrier-based fighter recently de-selected by the Royal Navy - or funds new upgrades for the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.

If the West's consensus intelligence assessment can be trusted, China's guided ballistic missiles can keep the US carrier battle group thousands of miles away from Taiwan, the only foreseeable flashpoint of potential conflict. For this pivotal scenario, the USN's internal argument between an investment in stealthy but short-legged F-35Cs and non-stealthy, short-legged F/A-18E/Fs becomes academic.

This leads to more unsettling questions. What is an aircraft carrier really worth in 2020? And what is the value of carrier-based aircraft with an unrefuelled range shorter than the distance between Chicago and Washington DC?

These are hard questions with harder answers. In development today are unmanned, carrier-based bombers that have the range and survivable design characteristics to participate in any conflict no matter how far the carrier is driven from the scene of action. But which politicians would be willing to gamble on whether these aircraft will be available and ready to work when called upon?

The prudent course seems to be gathering momentum. It is basically a hedging strategy: develop upgrades to keep the Super Hornet fundamentally viable, while investing in the leap-ahead, unmanned bombers that will arrive at some point in the future.

The problem is there is no additional money to pay for the Super Hornet upgrades. Any dollar spent to keep Boeing's programme viable must be one less dollar spent on another system. Unfortunately for Lockheed Martin, that system is most likely to be the F-35C.

It is nearly time for the USN to make a hard decision. Just like UK Prime Minister David Cameron, navy chiefs will have to accept the criticism that comes with having originally invested in the wrong technology. However, it will serve the taxpayer's interests in the long-run to choose the most sustainable path to the future of airpower at sea.

(This article first appeared as the main leading article in Flight International 12 June)