January 2012 Archives

This blog too - more space has been devoted here to LOC and specific examples of it (like AF447) than any other issue.

Behind the scenes, some organisations have been brainstorming the LOC phenomenon, but there's no action plan yet.

The latest idea, the product of a LOC analysis group, is to study what pilots are looking at and doing before they make the decisions that decide whether they retain control or lose it. Called the Pilot Monitoring Study, it is examining in detail where pilots' eyes look, what information they could glean from where they look, and what they do. The UK Civil Aviation Authority has commissioned this study, working with several airlines.

What they have found (they have completed the fact-finding phase) could make the skies much safer if used intelligently.

But training, and attitudes to training by regulators, airlines and flight training organisations, are going to have to change. Find out how in the 31 January issue of Flight International (and soon after on Flightglobal).

After several recycles, carried out by the copilot (the PNF on this trip to Crete) the ECAM pronounced slats/flaps were correctly set.

Take-off was uneventful. But the crew was mentally prepared to deal with flap alerts.

Just after take-off, when the captain called for gear-up, the copilot inadvertently selected flaps up. 

A couple of stall warnings later, to which the captain responded by reducing the angle of attack, the aircraft had accelerated into a safe climb regime. Meanwhile the captain called again for gear up, noticing, during his puzzled scan, that it was still deployed

Until the captain called the second time for gear up, the copilot had not noticed what he had done. 

We know what he must have felt like when he realised.

He told the skipper what had happened.

The Air Accident Investigation Branch report on this incident quotes a book called Human Factors for Pilots. "...if the decision-maker is preoccupied he may make the correct initial decision, inadvertently exercise the wrong skill, but fail to monitor his own activity and remain completely unaware of the mistake that he has made. This mechanism of error is very common on flight decks, and examples abound of inadvertent control operations such as raising flaps instead of undercarriage immediately after take-off."

So this was just another example.

The AAIB verdict is this: "The distraction of the slat problem and the preoccupation with the possibility of a slat malfunction on departure had mentally predisposed him to exercise the wrong motor skill." The Board makes no more of it than that, but felt it was worth publishing the event in its latest Bulletin, pour encourager les autres.  

Who/when?

Monarch, 26 July 2011. Could have been any of us. But at least Monarch pilots know how to handle a stall warning, unlike a few other unhappy crews in the last few years.

The pilots felt dizzy and, worried about losing consciousness, donned their oxygen masks, declared an emergency and rapidly returned to LHR where they were met by full emergency services and paramedics.

The landing was fine. The passengers were told the return to Heathrow was precautionary because of "a technical problem" and promptly put on new flights to Glasgow.

If the passengers subsequently suffered ill effects from the same toxic fumes that were making the pilots feel dizzy, they would not have known that, after such an event, it is wise to see a doctor and have a blood test taken to determine whether organophosphate neurotoxins are present.

Meanwhile, Daily Mail readers who read this story on line know precisely what it was about that flight that bothered them. You can read it in their comments.

It was the fact that the pilots were women.

Here is a selection:

"Women drivers getting all dizzy, lets hope the airline in question learns its lesson, probably better sticking to serving the drinks in future girls."

"Maybe someone slipped a Mills and Boon into their checklist."

"With the best will in the world many of us already find flying an ordeal and the thought of the plane in the hands of 2 women in the cockpit more unnerving than usual. On one flight I was on it was announced after take off that the co-pilot was a woman. I remember feeling some trepidation at the time but comforted by the fact that at least the pilot was male. This was a gut reaction and I am sure that many women have felt the same. Of course, I will be accused of sexism but I rank my safety and well being and that includes the perception of being safe and well as more important than political correctness."

BA says it checked the A321, declared NFF (no fault found), and it was back in service the next day.

So it's all fine, then. BA just has to use male pilots, and the problem is solved as far as DM readers are concerned.