Despite all the recent talk in this blog, at the FAA, at Airbus, and now at US ALPA about loss of piloting skills as a result of operating with high levels of automation for a long time, there is a danger that some people are getting confused between the loss of hand-flying skills and the loss of mental skills.
Hand flying skill rarely gets terminally rusty, and if it does you can pick it up again fast. Once you've learned to ride a bike you never lose that ability.
It's the mental ability to fly and to navigate using raw flight and navigation data that gets lost if it is not used. If you have to hand-fly the aircraft at the same time as using raw flight and navigation data when you are not used to either, that's quite a workload.
That mental ability can also be restored quite quickly with a bit of training, but its return is not instant.
Raw-data handling is manual flying without the flight director. It's having to choose a pitch attitude and a bank angle that will provide the performance you want at the power setting you have selected, instead of having both of those chosen for you. If you unquestioningly follow the crossbars out of sheer habit, you may stop noticing what your pitch and bank actually are, or at least not with any precision.
All pilots learn early on that a chosen flight path is the result of a combination of a selected pitch attitude, bank angle (or wings level) and power setting. If you stop having to choose the attitudes and power settings that give you the result you want because you can choose the performance directly by dialling the numbers into the autopilot, that is not flying, it's trajectory management. So if, one day, you have to go back to flying when the autopilot trips out because two or more air data computers disagree and so do your airspeed indicators, you are not in practice for the situation you face.
So the recurrent training today's pilots need to be given must entail a couple of hours with the autopilot, authothrottle and the flight director tripped out, and compass rose mode selected on both navigation displays.
All pilots can do this. They wouldn't have their licence if they couldn't. But they can't do it well if they never practice it.
Does it matter? Yes it does. The FAA-quoted Colgan accident is not the only example of why it does.
on February 1, 2010 12:19 PM | Reply
I read this week's article "Jobs For Tomorrow" and found it very interesting.
I thought about today's problem about pilots lacking hands-on skills because of excessive automation.
You are right to sya that the skilled pilots coming from the Forces are getting scarce and airlines never tackled this side of the training problem, costwise being the main reason.
So, why not share the costs between Airlines and Military Air Forces. The airline hands over its ab-initio pilots to the Air Force sharing the costs for a certain period, 3 years or more for example, and once the experience period has ended and the ex-ab-inbitio pilot returns to his airline "sponsor" having acquired important experience.
From there on the pilots' decision to stay with the airline at certain finacial conditions or continue his career in the Air force.
I think my idea gives way to further solutions, no?
Oliie361
on February 2, 2010 2:03 AM | Reply
PF F/O, B-744. Mode = TOGA THR REF...After VR, PNF Capt. call,"Positive rate, gear up" PNF/PM repeat..."Positive rate,gear up, LNAV(@50 radalt).THR REF, VNAV SPD(@400 baralt), Right A/P to CMD E/O or E/All, F/O PF to CMD.
Indeed, the EICAS/EFIS philharmonic flow of the magenta highway is David L's apt "trajectory management" every time via SOP. Failing that, FLCH to close the MCP rumour and PFD FMA, as in "Fact". It's modus operandi is only 2 mins to close the MCP-PFD gap via PFD's THR to THR REF, without announcing the Ref, if it throttles up to it. EFIS PFD is always deferential to the referential. This is EICAS=EICAS/EFIS 101 !...
Failing A/P FLCH mode, employ the more potentially pot-holed V/S mode. Vertical Speed is Very Special, as no horizontal speed protection is provided, logically for flexibility of performance mode unbundling. As you say, RawDataHandling=ManualFlight. Lets dispense with the JAA's MCC BS. After all, a crew is plural not oxymoronic MCC multi ?. Keep the CRM original. Unfortunately the JAA has an inferiority complex of stating the very-very bleeding-bloody obvious,with monotonous regularity.
The F/D is a great servant, but as said, a potential tyrant as manual PIC. Remember analogue F/D on AA-191, KORD 25-05-79 with F/O as PF.ET409 0f 25-01-10 is the early morning latest in a long line of spatial ocean loss of control crashes. I call this, "SpatLOC", as a CRM tool, that I have long been aware of, as it is generally a black hole, non bordello silent killer in the dead of oceanic night in contextual general, subtracting FltOps specific.
Ideally as a PF, one needs to go through a cascading automation failure from the various A/P modes from initial Econ-Auto flight. To wit : VNAV-FLCH-V/S in a recurrent sim PC and then get naked with a blank PFD and focus totally on the naked PFD keeping the trend vector short and V/S needle twitching about neutral, avoiding extreme V/S+/- relationships, with a Boeing bull wheel knee central yoke and crew central throttles, this equates to yoke tug & twitch, rudder foot-tap and throttle/thrust lever squeeze. This flow avoids the squeeze of human adrenal glands.
The more we know, the less we understand,unless we relentesly challenge our knowledge with understanding, without fiscal bonus. This understanding is an aeroECONdynamic which underwrites all aero-knowledge understanding.
An aircraft in all phases needs to support itself aerodynamically, economically, symmetrically simultaneously.
It is an analogue phrase to say practice makes perfect. It does not, it makes what is human, automatic...Live flying requires a positive attitude, physical and mental...QED !
In short,in keeping hand-flying a mental flying raw data skill, via FMS mentalism, one needs to think hard ahead to the ultimate landing and pull aft on one's central joystick to flare gently at an optimal radalt 50 to 69 ft, as the Bishop did not say to the actress. In short, brains in bollocks may not be the short drawn joystick, however masterful a debater one ultimately is.