Learmount

How to burn 18.4% less fuel and live. Really.

2009-11-05T15:13:24Z

Courtesy of Oxford Aviation Academy and SAS at OAA's Stockholm base, I have just flown an A320 twice from Gothenburg to Copenhagen, with identical weights in identical conditions both times.

But, by adopting a few modified procedures the second time, we used 18.4% less fuel.

Don't try all these tricks on your next trip without having a word with your ops and training standards people, because even SAS, which has been working for a few years with OAA to develop "Eco-Piloting" techniques and training, has only just got there, and has not yet begun the process of transferring the new tricks onto the line.

If you want to learn about the techniques SAS/OAA have been trialling, register for Flight International's Pilot Best Practice/Crew Management Conference in London at the end of this month and you can talk to Per de la Motte, OAA's Director of Training, Nordic region about his secrets.

Back to my two short trips.

Given that, on the first trip, my mentor in the right hand seat, OAA's fuel-efficiency guru Peter Fogtmann, ensured that we used normal SAS/A320 SOPs and standard routeing with absolutely no shilly-shallying, I wouldn't have thought a fuel saving of 18.4% was possible. But its what we did. Since it's only a 25min hop, 18.4% translates as a 320kg fuel saving, which may not sound much - but what a percentage! Save that every trip for a year and you're talking big bucks and dramatically reduced emissions.

Of course Peter and I are in a simulator, but it's a Level D FFS, so the figures we get should represent the truth, as near as dammit.

The first trip was done the way any good line pilot would do it, so I won't bore you with that. But here are the differences applied on the second trip:

Reduced the cost index from 30 to 7 in the FMS;
Chose Malmo instead of Gothenburg as the alternate, which meant we could carry 450kg less fuel;
APU was started only moments before pushback;
Single-engine taxi (using No 1 engine). APU was shut down once No 1 was established and checked;
No 2 was started with 3min to go to line-up for take-off;
Take-off was carried out with flap/slat 1 instead of 2, and packs off;
Power levers retarded to "climb" detent at 800ft (instead of 1,500-3,000ft), and acceleration initiated at that point;
Request for optimum speed below 10,000ft accepted, and continued at 305kt (opt) instead of sticking to standard 250kt;
Request direct routeing at every opportunity (in this case the routeing was almost direct anyway, so there were no benefits there);
Input forecast or actual winds rather than standard seasonal;
Initiate descent at a carefully estimated point beyond normal TOD because continuous descent approach was likely to be available;
Flap 1 selected at glideslope intercept; flap 2 at 2,000ft; gear down just before 1,000ft; flap 3 selected just before 500ft (would be 1,000ft in IMC); land with flap 3 instead of 4;
Idle reverse during landing run;
3min after touchdown, No 2 engine shut down; single-engine taxi to stand.

Yes I know you wouldn't be able to do all those things on many regular trips, and hardly any of them in busy terminal areas during the winter, but just doing some of them when you can provides a benefit that makes a difference. Yes I know you have to consider icing procedures in unkind weather, but sometimes the sun shines.

SAS and OAA, who are making this kind of expertise a speciality, say it's about a mindset. A mindset that hasn't been examined critically for a long time, with the result that there are lots of treasured beliefs out there that are effectively urban myths.

Come and listen to Per, and find out what he has found out.

Opening cabin doors onto the Hudson River

2009-11-02T13:59:49Z

It was Capt Chesley Sullenberger and First Officer Jeff Skiles that put the US Airways Airbus A320 safely down on the Hudson River, but it was the cabin crew that faced the job of getting the passengers out.

I spoke to two of Sullenberger's cabin crew, Donna Dent and Sheila Dail, at the Guildhall in the City of London, just before the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators annual awards banquet on 29 October.

The third cabin crew member, Doreen Welsh, could not attend that evening but she, seated as she was at the aft end of the cabin on that winter's day as the aircraft came to rest on the river, watched as the damaged tail slowly dipped, and the dark, freezing water began to flow into the cabin ahead of her. Dent and Dail were near the forward doors, and I will let them tell their story:

Flight 1549 crew

Why Sully succeeds

2009-11-02T11:41:01Z

If you read Capt Chesley Sullenberger's just-published book "Highest Duty", you will understand that the success of his Hudson River ditching was no fluke.

Sullenberger is a thoughtful man. Everything he does is considered. He identifies objectives and works resolutely toward them, checking his progress as he goes. It's the way he approaches life and flying.

If that makes him sound like a cold fish, you'll find it's not so. His quiet love of flying and his clear recognition of what's important in life - and what's not - shine through the unfussy prose and the downplayed narrative of events. He treats people, colleagues and family alike, with respect.

He knows he is good at what he does and is proud of that, but he also knows he's good because he has worked hard at it. He may enjoy flying, but he takes the task seriously.

Being a really good aircraft commander and pilot is not something many people can achieve, so if you want to know what it takes, check here.

A few days ago, at the Guildhall in the City of London, just before the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators' awards banquet, I asked Capt Sullenberger briefly to describe what it was like when his Airbus A320's engines were stopped by a massive birdstrike (see video).

Listen to the detail of what he says, and you'll understand why this ditching worked and everybody survived. It was no accident.

Later that evening Capt Sullengberger, accompanied by two of his cabin crew on the day of the ditching, Donna Dent and Sheila Dail, accepted the Guild's Master's Medal on behalf of the Crew of Flight 1549.

You can find out what the cabin crew had to say about their experience of the event in my next blog entry.

Toxic cabin air appeal: has your health been affected?

2009-10-14T20:58:08Z

This blog has, several times, addressed the subject of the contamination of bleed air supplied to aircraft cabins by toxic organophosphates. Now Susan Michaelis, already the author of the Contaminated Air Reference Manual, is appealing for those who have suffered - or believe they have done - from illness related to cabin air contamination, to get in touch with her. I'll leave the request in her hands:

"I am currently in the process of completing a PhD on the health and safety implications of contaminated cabin air at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. As part of this I am undertaking 3 health surveys. While I have obtained considerable data I am keen to hear directly from pilots from around the globe falling into the following 3 categories: 1) BAe 146/ 146 RJ pilots both past and present; 2) medically retired or pilots who are/have suffered long-term ill health (permanently or for a period of time) after flying the B757; 3) pilots (colleagues or family may respond) who have experienced brain tumors, particularly those having flow short haul or aircraft up to B767 during their careers.

To date my research of past and present UK BAe 146 pilots has shown the following preliminary results: Out of approximately 300 pilots contacted, 87% were aware of the contaminated air; 59% had experienced some adverse symptoms that are commonly seen with such exposures; 27% reported medium to long-term 'Aerotoxic' type symptoms and approximately 10% appear to have been either ill health retired, suffered long-term ill health or were deceased appearing to be related to what many call 'Aerotoxic Syndrome'. A similar pattern is being seen internationally and is supported by published literature from around the globe.

The data will all be de-identified and should contribute significant data to the knowledge we have on the cabin air issue. Anyone willing to participate in the basic survey should contact me as soon as possible at: susan@susanmichaelis.com."

Helicopters can escape their niche

2009-10-05T16:14:58Z

Safety has been - and still is - a problem for helicopters.

It may be the roles they perform as much as their inherent instability and mechanical complexity, but those factors are beginning to sound like excuses for not changing anything.

Actually, helicopters don't have to continue to be the poor relations of fixed-wing aircraft, with safety worries consigning them to niche applications. Because significant safety performance improvement is definitely achievable.

That much is clear from the impressive quantity and quality of work done on rotary-wing safety data analysis by the International Helicopter Safety Team (IHST) between the previous International Helicopter Safety Symposium in 2007 and the one I attended in Montreal last week.

The IHSS, 28 Sept - 1 October 2009, the final afternoon

Under the IHST programme, set up in 2005, painstaking study and analysis intended to establish the patterns of circumstances behind thousands of helicopter accidents, has been carried out in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Europe (coordinated by EASA), India, New Zealand, South Africa, UK, USA and the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council. It is fascinating - although not altogether surprising - to discover, using hard data unsullied by preconceptions, that patterns repeat all over the world. Helicopters crash for the same reasons everywhere. Pilots make the same mistakes or misjudgements, and even the league tables prioritising the factors behind accidents echo each other almost perfectly in countries on opposite sides of the planet.

The facts and wisdom in one accident report normally have little effect on the way the world aviates. But distilled wisdom from thousands of them has real power.

It may be coincidence that global helicopter safety has begun to improve since 2005 for the first time in a generation, because it was not until 2007 that active measures began to emanate from the IHST's findings. But maybe it is connected, just by the fact that the work that the IHST began four years ago created awareness of what could be achieved, and perhaps it sowed the early seeds of a new determination to improve.

This potential energy, however, has to be channelled and harnessed effectively, and that is what regional Joint Helicopter Safety Implementation Teams all over the world, under the IHST, are poised to do.

If there are any in the helicopter industry - from manufacturers to operators - who think they need take no part in this, they should think again. World safety standards and people's expectations are rising inexorably, but until the IHST came along in 2005 the rotary-wing industry's safety record had stagnated nearly 30 years ago. Unless helicopter safety improves, rotorcraft travel will not reach its real potential. It will remain a niche activity, shunned wherever there is an alternative.

Those who use helicopter services have power. For example hospitals that contract for helicopter emergency medical services have a duty to specify the operational standards, capability and equipment they expect and not to settle for less, as do companies that hire helicopters for business travel. Oil companies like Exxon, for example, now specify that any offshore oil support operator they contract must operate a safety management system.

Finally, operators large and small will find, if they examine the free toolkits available from the IHST, that the processes involved in becoming safer - scaled according to the size of the company - are relatively easy to apply.

They are also good for business and the bottom line; unlike continuing to be a relatively high risk organisation in the eyes of potential customers, insurers, and regulators.

Pilot fatigue: the invisible killer is paraded for all to see

2009-10-05T09:52:25Z

Pilots are conducting a day of action to draw attention to their concern that a scientific study saying European flight time limitations (FTL) regulations are unsafe may be ignored.

The European Cockpit Association says the report, commissioned by the European Aviation Safety Agency, proves that existing regulations, at their extremes, are actually dangerous because of the length of duty periods that they allow.

It is a fact that fatigue in humans has the same effects on mental reasoning and physical coordination as alcohol does.

A pilot may not be able to get away with flying when drunk, but he/she can legally get away with flying when fatigued because it cannot be proven by blood testing. For the same reason, an airline cannot be legally challenged for rostering a pilot to fly when he/she is actually fatigued, as long as the airline abides by the flight time limitations (FTL) regulations. So FTL limits do matter, because they are the only defence against an airline that wishes to push its luck. Most don't, but many do.

Fatigue was cited as a causal factor in this 24 November 2001 Crossair crash on approach to Zurich airport. Of the 33 on board, 24 were killed

This is not, however, a matter to be argued in law courts, it's a matter of common sense. But in this case it's also a matter of science. The European Commission required EASA to submit the existing FTL rules to independent scientific analysis.

Obediently, EASA did just what it was told, and the scientists duly reported to the Agency.

Now, the pilots fear, the report has been put on a shelf and it is being allowed to die.

Meanwhile the airlines have been frantically lobbying against any amendments to the FTLs that might take into account the scientific report's findings. The Association of European Airlines (AEA) claims the report is flawed. Well, it would, wouldn't it? Airlines have never liked FTLs of any kind.

EASA says the pilots are being premature, and that it has no intention of dropping its review of the FTLs, but that consultation with all parties followed by framing the final law will take until 2011.

The pilots are right to keep this process highly visible, however. They know that any proposed legislation against which there is a powerful lobby - like that of the AEA - has a habit of sinking without trace, especially when the issue is a human condition that cannot be measured after the event.

The solution for the problem that didn't exist

2009-09-17T14:43:36Z

BAE Systems, in partnership with Quest International, look as if they have come up with a brilliant solution to a real problem - contaminated cabin air.

But if you had asked BAE the day before the 15 September press conference that launched this new system (called AirManager) whether contaminated cabin air was a problem, they would have said it was not - or at least not one of any significance.

When I asked - at the press conference - why BAE had produced a solution for a problem that does not exist, the response was accurate and well-rehearsed.

Not the whole truth, maybe, but true. The new system, says BAE, will improve the quality of cabin air, and offering "improvement" is a sufficient incentive for installing this equipment. They have a "duty of care", the company said. How strange that, in previous discussion of this subject, that expression was not evoked.

If the companies' claims for the technical capabilities of AirManager are completely accurate, the improvement would indeed be dramatic.

Most of the media, following the press conference, have hyped one very important benefit: this system kills bacteria and viruses of all kinds.

With a swine flu pandemic predicted to sweep the Northern Hemisphere this winter, maybe an aeroplane kitted out with AirManager could be one of the safest places on the planet.

The system, originally designed for medical premises, literally sterilises the air, and destroys odours too.

But what of toxic organophosphates that enter the cabin via the engine bleed air pressurisation system when engine oil seals fail?

It will deal with those, too, promises the system's inventor, David Hallam of Quest.

But BAE and the UK Government have told us that events involving oil-based organosphosphate fumes/mists getting into cabin air have been incredibly rare, and when they happen it is not at harmful levels.

I was informed at the press conference that it is more or less a coincidence that the first two aircraft types that have been fitted with this clever invention are the two that have suffered "fume events" more commonly than any others: the BAE Systems 146/Avro RJ series and the Boeing 757.

Maybe we should just be grateful that, finally, it looks as if a viable solution to contaminated cabin air has been found?

No, not good enough. The rights of crew and passengers whose health has already been ruined by neurotoxin fume events have to be properly recognised. The same treatment should apply to those whose health has yet to be damaged by flying in aircraft that suffer unfortunate fume events while their aircraft is awaiting fitment of AirManager (or any other worthy competitor that emerges).

Within a month or two of today, Professor Clement Furlong of the University of Washington, Seattle, will have identified the biomarkers that scientifically link sickness in passengers and crew to aircraft fume events. Then the industry's lawyers will no longer be able to rely on legal technicalities to avoid facing reality.

At least the launch of AirManager is a sign that reality is beginning to be faced in a practical and beneficial way.

Peanuts, monkeys and pilots

2009-08-26T14:12:46Z

The following is a US-flavoured comment, but thoughtful and illuminating. It's penned by a senior US airline pilot who posts under the name Seaavi8tor, but he's real alright. Some of you will know him and his views.

You can read what he says here, but the following quote provides a flavour of his subject:

"In terms of inflation adjusted dollars, Airline pilots today earn less than half of what they did 35 years ago. The unit of work can be measured by flight hours, duty hours, hours away from home, Revenue Passenger Miles, Available Seat Miles, or most importantly, revenue generated per pilot."

His argument is that if you pay in peanuts you'll get monkeys, and this is what the airlines are inviting into their flightdecks.

I agree - many of them (not all) are doing just that. Especially American regionals, and look at what's been happening to their safety performance recently. Likewise US air taxis over a long period of time.

You'll find plenty in this blog on a related theme, including:

Don't marry an airline pilot (Part 2)

Piloting is going blue-collar

Fatal distraction

2009-08-18T15:54:30Z

Spanish investigators have just released more information about the Spanair MD82 take-off accident at Madrid Barajas in August last year. If you remember, the crew attempted take off having omitted to set the flaps, and there was no take-off configuration warning to alert them to their mistake. The aircraft was destroyed and almost all on board were killed.

The new interim factual report makes it clear that three opportunities to prevent the tragedy were missed. Twice the crew were distracted during their pre take-off checks, and then there was a technical anomaly whereby tripping a circuit breaker to overcome a minor fault appears - unbeknown to the crew - to have disabled the take-off configuration warning.

In March we revealed a new NASA study that looked at more than 50 events in which crews had inadvertently taken off without setting flaps, and mostly they got away with it - just. NASA's purpose was to find out why it happened, and they did. In a Comment at the time, Flight International said: "Another of those uncanny studies has been produced. The type that produces a conclusion that - once you have read it - is so obvious that it's suddenly amazing the industry has not noticed why a clearly imperfect way of operating has been allowed to continue - since the Wright Brothers - to permit by default the fatal mistakes it does. Like unintended flapless take-offs."

What they "discovered" was that distractions and interruptions between pushback and take-off are legion. This, they say, should be taken seriously for what it is: a very uncongenial state of affairs during a safety-critical sector of the operation. There is no equivalent of the "sterile cockpit" pre take-off. The only reason why, presumably, we have ignored this fact is that it is far too obvious, and there is very little you can do about the R/T chatter on the ground frequency, that late clearance or departure amendment, the "cabin secure" report, etcetera ad infinitum.

But maybe there is. Just a new level of pilot awareness of the fact that the whole pre-take-off period is a minefield of distractions and - literally - an accident waiting to happen - would be a good start.

This subject is one of many that will be examined at the 2009 Flight International Crew Management Conference in London, 30 November-1 December, at which the theme is Pilot Best Practice .

Airbus automation: is enough enough?

2009-08-16T18:56:30Z

Airbus is considering automating another pilot function when it introduces the A350.

Highly automated aircraft include all the airline types rolling off all production lines today.

But Airbus, a child of the digital age, is often tagged as being even more automated than Boeing. This perceived difference generates a lot of heat - but very little light - among pilot devotees of one or the other genre.

Aside from the genre issue, there is the pilot ego issue: automation is a tacit decision that the system can do "it" better than the pilot can. So of course it's going to generate heat.

But rather than slagging off one system or the other, maybe line pilots ought to be getting involved in the fundamental debate: is automation ever good? And if it ever is, what is it good for?

The latest Airbus wheeze (sorry if your English is not old fashioned English English) is to set up an automatic, laterally offset emergency descent in the event of a depressurisation to which the pilots do not react.

Remember Helios? Airbus quotes a generic scenario like Helios as justification for this potential system (not yet set in stone, so you have time to tell them what you think). If such a system had existed in that 737, a lot of people who died might be alive today. But, on the other hand, what might go wrong with the system itself?

What do you think?

Meanwhile, let's look at an accident that might have been prevented by automation, and another that looks as if it might have been triggered by it:

Cali: that highly complex American Airlines 757 accident in 1995 might have been avoided in its last seconds if the airbrakes had retracted automatically when the pilots firewalled the throttles. But they didn't retract and the aircraft hit a mountain ridge just below its peak.

Amsterdam Schiphol: according to the investigator's early reports into the Turkish Airlines Boeing 737-800 crash, the trigger for the accident was an autothrottle system that "thought" the aeroplane had landed and retarded the throttles during the final approach. The crew didn't notice the airspeed loss until too late. The reason the autothrottle thought the aircraft had landed was that the radio altimeter was faulty, and was reading just below airfield elevation.

On the other hand, the throttles didn't retard when the TAM A320 actually landed at Sao Paulo's Congonhas airport in July 2007, and although there was an audio "retard, retard" alert, the crew didn't close both throttles. The aircraft overran and everybody on board was killed.

To automate, or not to automate? And if you do it selectively, when do you choose to do it?

Which way is up?

2009-08-13T16:02:25Z

Loss of control accidents are the world's new big killers since the installation of airborne terrain awareness warning systems (TAWS) dramatically reduced the numbers of controlled flight into terrain crashes.

The US FAA is considering mandating an upset recovery training programme for airline pilots. But what does it think is the best training method?

Right now the agency is looking at expensive airborne training, using Calspan variable-stability, semi-aerobatic Learjets. Airlines will not like the cost, given that, over decades, loss of control (LOC) accidents in which pilots played a part has not been a problem for US carriers.

But there have been a couple of high profile mishandling-induced LOC mishaps in the USA more recently - the Pinnacle Airlines Bombardier CRJ200 mishap in 2004 and the Colgan Air Q400 crash at Buffalo early this year - which have clearly worried the FAA. The fact that LOC might be in the frame as one of the factors in the Air France 447 loss may also be providing some impetus.

The FAA proposal is about how upset recovery training could be carried out effectively, not whether it is required or not. The agency starts from the assumption that simulators are inadequate because they cannot provide the acceleration feedback, and there is insufficient performance data for, say, a Boeing 737 at 130° bank with 50° nose up, to enable a simulator to replicate reliably the results of pilot input.

Sure, using a modified Learjet would be desirable, because it ticks all the boxes, including providing something akin to the inertial reactions of an airliner.

But the danger of proposing an expensive solution is that it may either be rejected altogether, or be under-used in practice - and upset recovery training does need to be recurrent, even if not annual.

Light aerobatic aeroplane training is less expensive, but maybe the FAA is worried pilots would over-react to upset recovery training as happened in the 2001 American Airlines AA587 wake encounter. Even training in the Learjet, however, would provide no guarantee against that.

Assuming no external visual cues, upset recovery training has to teach the pilot to mentally reject his/her sensory impressions, and react only to what the flight instruments reveal. Human sensory and balance organs are easily fooled, but they are very compelling.

Teaching this hard discipline is critical, and an ideal training programme would include airborne practice, but it is not the only way. Simulators can provide practice at least in the drills for reacting to an unexpected scenario revealed by the flight instruments, because it is getting those drills right that is critical.

Boeing, in recent tests, has found that pilot background and long experience are not necessarily indicators of who will do best at upset recovery. Its results were revealing.

Don't marry an airline pilot (Part 2)

2009-08-06T15:43:36Z

About this time last year I suggested reasons why marrying an airline pilot might not bring you the lifestyle you had in mind. Today David Nicholas, who frequently posts comments here, has kindly sent me a link to a human interest story on the BBC website - including a video - which rather backs up my thesis.

Two captains living in a trailer in a car park does not do much for the traditional image of the airline pilot. Maybe that's because the terms and conditions aren't what they once were for, say, a Braniff 747 Classic captain just before deregulation in the States.

But being a commercial airline pilot has never been only about the 1970s "Braniff skipper" sort of job - that was just the cream of the crop.

And there, sitting grinning in his RV (motor home), Capt Bob Poster still says he loves his job (see video in the link above), and is totally realistic about the way things are.

But you can't say you haven't been warned

Winter thoughts in the northern summer

2009-07-17T14:33:29Z

Are pilots ever really ready for winter when they have just flown through summer?

They could be this year...

It's not just about de-icing, its about which de-icing fluid to ask for under which circumstances. It's not just about contaminated runways, it's about what the runway is contaminated with - and how much of it. Plus coefficients of friction supplied (maybe) by ATC. Do you know what they mean for your aircraft type? How would you use them? What does "braking action fair" mean in the USA? If the runway has just been snow-ploughed and treated, what does that mean to you?

This is run by pilots for pilots on a non-profit basis.

Why has airline safety stopped improving?

2009-07-15T15:35:28Z

"Unless there is a dramatic improvement in airline safety performance between now and the end of 2010, then 2001-10 will become the first decade since the Second World War when global airline accident rates did not show improvement." You will shortly be able to read those words in Flight International's review of global airline safety in the first half of 2009, where you will also find out why airline safety has stopped improving.

Although the text says that safety improvement had previously been continuous since the Second World War, in actual fact it had improved ever since the Wright Brothers. WW2 was mentioned only because airline operations before the war were at the embryonic stage and statistics are hard to come by.

It's only a few days before the magazine comes out, but lets have some intelligent proposals as to why safety is not improving any more. Offers?

Do we do nothing if AF 447 remains a mystery?

2009-07-09T09:37:39Z

It is still possible that the AF 447 recorders will be found.

But if they never are, can the industry afford not to explore what is likely to have happened, rather than what is merely possible?

The list of theoretical possibilities is, at present, so long that an assumption by the industry that any of them might have occurred would lead to a failure to take any action at all.

So what is "likely"? Let's not get too philosophical here or we'll end up nowhere useful.

The Airbus A330 was under control in the cruise when some airspeed indication problems occurred and the autopilot and autothrottle tripped out. This happened a couple of hours after midnight when the crew would have been at their deepest circadian low.

The flight control law also changed from normal into alternate, but the latter does not alter the way in which the crew would act to exercise control of the aircraft, nor how the aircraft feels to fly.

The next significant known and understood fact is that the aircraft hit the sea.

There are only two alternative generic scenarios that describe what happened between cruising altitude and the sea: either the aircraft, for an unknown reason, became actually uncontrollable; or it was controllable but the crew was unable to control it.

A study of airline accident history - both recent and going back decades - would suggest the latter is the more likely.

Take two recent nighttime accidents that also happened over the sea: pilot disorientation caused loss of control in the Flash Airlines accident (2004), and in the Adam Air case (2007) the cause was pilot fixation on troubleshooting a fault followed by pilot disorientation and loss of control. This cannot be ruled out as a cause in the AF 447 case.

But the question is, do we rule it in?

Yes, if that would move the industry to take action prevent such events in future.

That's my opinion anyway, and here's why.

Flash and Adam Air actually happened and the accident investigators revealed the cause, but practically nothing has been done since then about this phenomenon. There is increased interest in upset recovery training, but no agreement on how it could be done.

The fact that AF 447 might have been caused by the same phenomenon just adds additional urgency to the argument for action.

Still not convinced?

Flash and Adam Air were not the only ones. There was also the Gulf Air (2000) and Armavia (2006) A320 crashes. They, also, were caused by pilot disorientation at night over the sea. Nothing was wrong with the aeroplanes in either case.

And a week or so ago we had the Yemenia A310 accident at Moroni in the Comoros Islands. It went into the sea at night too, at about 02:00 local time, and the crew had not reported any problems with the aircraft.

Here are some linked truths:

Loss of control accidents are becoming proportionately more common as a serious accident category;
operating highly automated aircraft give pilots less practice at physical aircraft manipulation, and deprives them of practice in operating and thinking with raw data.
pilot training is a soft target for cost cutting because there is no instant perceptible effect from reducing it, just an unquantifiable increase in risk.
simulators are essential to affordable training, but they are best for teaching systems knowledge and management, and standard operating procedures.
simulators are at their least good when training pilots in manipulative flying skills because their greatest shortcoming is their motion system. It cannot - and will never be able to - replicate reality.
Handling training in simulators "does not transfer" to the real aeroplane (US DoT Volpe Center).

But what if simulator motion systems were able to improve, so that "flying" the box feels much closer to flying the real thing? This could enable pilots to be refreshed more effectively in the stick and rudder skills that they lose as a result of flying highly automated aircraft.

Well, there is such a system, and the industry - including the major simulator manufacturers - should give it a chance. Because if it were proven to deliver transferable training in pure handling skills - like landings in crosswind, for example, or recovery from extreme attitudes - it might have the potential to save lives and aluminium while adding only minimally to training costs.

It's called Lm², I've written about it before, and it's the brainchild of Filip Van Biervliet of Sabena Flight Academy - Development (SFA-D). It needs to be taken seriously because it delivers. Here's my description of what I thought when I first "flew" it.

And now I've just flown it again (see below) on a Boeing 737-800 full flight simulator at CAE's Hoofddorp training centre near Amsterdam Schiphol, and have no reason to change my opinion.

Now what is needed is for a research agency like NASA or the Volpe Center to run trials to see if, with Lm², manual flying skills training in a simulator really does transfer to the actual aircraft for the first time.

Because if it does, it is impossible to overstate the importance of this for aviation safety. One thing's for sure, the industry cannot afford to revert to training in real aeroplanes, so the least it can do is to use the next best training solution.

Is Lm² the next best solution? There's no excuse for not finding out.