David Learmount: November 2008 Archives

If you want an example of the ultimate in crew resource management, try this summary of a short report from the Irish Air Accident Investigation Unit.

The Air Canada Boeing 767 skipper turns up on time, but his first officer's positioning flight delivers him late and acting nervously. In the interests of setting up a harmonious flight the captain tells the first officer to meet him at the aeroplane, and not to worry because everything is done.

The flight leaves Toronto on schedule for Heathrow, where the weather is forecast to be Category IIIB autoland conditions.

Cruising at FL360, the first officer's demeanour goes gradually downhill, despite organised rest periods that the commander sets up to help him recover, until the captain is so concerned he calls the cabin crew to help the copilot out of his seat.

The crew finds medical expertise on board to attend to the copilot. Meanwhile the captain asks them to check the manifest for off-duty or positioning pilots, but there are none. One of the stewardesses, however, has a CPL with an non-current IR, so the skipper co-opts her to help manage flight deck tasks from the right hand seat. His comments indicate she was a real asset.

Because he doesn't fancy facing Heathrow at Cat III with less than a full crew, the skipper diverts to Shannon where the weather is good, and sets up medical help for the first officer on arrival.

The landing is fine, and the copilot is met by medical specialists and taken to hospital.

Recognising "subtle incapacitation" is important, but sometimes it's recognised too late and has caused accidents and serious incidents. This was a model piece of CRM in all respects.

A short time ago it was more or less certain that the UK government was going to give the green light to a third runway at Heathrow. An interim measure would have involved moving the two parallel runways to mixed-mode operation to make airport operations more flexible, reducing the delays that have become endemic there.

Now neither of these solutions to Heathrow's dire capacity problems are quite so assured. What does that feel like to an airline like United (to pick just one carrier at random) which has paid as much as  £30 million for an additional take-off/landing slot there?

So what has changed?

No new arguments have been advanced by any party, political or otherwise, but some significant political realignment has taken place.

On 11 November, by coincidence, there were two separate debates on closely related subjects: a parliamentary debate on the third runway issue, and simultaneously a debate at the UK Royal Aeronautical Society on whether the third Heathrow runway was the capacity solution for the UK's south-east, or whether - alternatively - the country should finally take up an idea already rejected three times over a period of nearly 40 years: building a completely new airport in the Thames estuary area.

Not at either of the debates was a single absolutely original idea advanced. All the arguments about all the options for all airport solutions have been rehearsed a thousand times.  

But the Conservative Party which, if current voter polls are to believed, will be in government by 2010 at the latest, has recently decided to oppose the third runway. It also says that if the present government gives the runway the go-ahead in a month's time, will reverse that decision when/if it gets elected. The Conservatives' solution is to build a network of high speed rail services that would eliminate the need for domestic slots at Heathow. But the party doesn't put a date on achievement of this monumental project, nor address funding.

The effect of this policy realignment by the Conservatives - including London's new mayor Boris Johnson - has been to galvanise the already formidable but disparate opposition to the third runway, giving them a banner to follow. Meanwhile Johnson has commissioned his own study into siting a new airport in the Thames estuary.

Only time will now tell whether the formidable - and so far highly effective - lobbying by the business and financial institutions in favour of expanding Heathrow can overcome a re-invigorated, previously scattered set of opposition groups.

This is a bit of a nightmare for UK plc, because nobody in any group denies Heathrow is essential to the national economy, but nobody loves it either. Not any more they don't, because of its congestion-related vulnerability to delay and inability to meet demand. Basically, back in 1962 it was realised that London and the South East needed a decent airport, and Heathrow was not it. A four-runway Stansted was the answer, the inquiry decided. But that was shelved. In the 1980s that prospect was revisited, approved and shelved again. Meanwhile there have been three Thames estuary sites examined and rejected: Foulness, Maplin Sands, and - since 2000 - Cliffe.

This is the story of Britain and its politics: make do and mend. Grand strategy is not on the menu - ever.

So what's really going to happen? Based on history and my reading of UK political behaviour, there will almost certainly be - you guessed it - more "make do and mend".

Stansted will get its government-approved second runway following a planning inquiry that is not able to stop it. Heathrow will get its third runway because, although it is environmentally the most inappropriate option available, all the governments since 1962 have failed to take strategic decisions, leaving any government in power right now or in the near future, no alternative except to approve it, or to see the UK's economy seriously "changed", which most businesses today would translate as "damaged". Then, some time after 2020, Gatwick will get a second runway also.

Why not the estuary airport or high-speed railway network? Because they'll take too long to deliver even if they were to work, and the latter is not a foregone conclusion. The best hope for the environment is that the high speed rail network will develop in parallel with the enlarged existing airports, but as someone at the RAeS debate said, the estuary idea is "a dead duck". The coastal area is a massive haven for migratory birds, which provides  environmentalists with powerful ammunition to deploy against the project, and the birdstrike risk would be a disaster for aviation safety.

Within about an hour of the Monday 10 November overrun at Rome Ciampino, the airline put out a statement that the Boeing 737-800 had suffered a multiple birdstrike on approach.

It certainly did. The gory evidence that the aircraft hit a flock of birds is all over the nose cone and wing leading edges.

Birdstrike alone is not an explanation of  the outcome, it's a statement of circumstances that definitely had a bearing on what happened. If his account is accurate, a clear description by a passenger of the aircraft pulling up followed by a rapid drop to hit the runway hard may be an indication that the captain tried to avoid the flock, but hit many birds just the same.

The late sighting of a flock of birds followed by a multiple birdstrike affecting both engines would have been a major distraction to the crew during a critical part of the final approach. New photographs of the aircraft's underside show that, on touchdown, the aircraft suffered a substantial tailstrike.

That, and the failure of the left main gear, indicates that the pilots were trying to arrest a very high sink rate when touchdown took place.

The new pictures clarify the situation the pilots faced, so although the following may seem like semantics, here's some contextual information about Ryanair standard operating procedures: the carrrier has strict instructions to its pilots that, if their approach is not stablised by 500ft (152m) on final approach they are to go around. But a birdstrike to both engines would have forced them to abandon any attempt at a go-around even if they were unhappy with their approach profile, fearing that demanding power from damaged engines would be the greater risk.

I have been to Ryanair's pilot selection and training base and seen the way the airline works there. Its selection standards are high, the simulator test for aspiring pilots consists of flying a demanding pattern on raw instruments, during which crew resource management skills are closely observed.

Ryanair may be a low-fare carrier, but where crew training and engineering/maintenance are concerned it does not cut corners.  

"Thousands of hours of flying doesn't necessarily make a good pilot. It's just proof of survival - a relatively easy thing to achieve in today's reliable aircraft." I argued that in a previous blog about pilot training standards.

Boeing has provided one little boost for that theory (I would argue it's a fact), having carried out a simple but devilishly clever series of simulator-based tests. They were designed to find out whether providing pilots with upset recovery training actually makes a positive difference to their performance when they are faced with recovering the aircraft from extreme attitudes by sole reference to instruments.

Boeing found it does, but that's not the main point of this little piece.

The reason for carrying out the tests is that loss of control (LOC) accidents now kill more airline passengers and crews than any other category of serious mishap, including controlled flight into terrain.

The Boeing test provided each of 30 or so pilots with three attitudes to recover from, and unfroze the 737 simulator just before they were allowed to look up and manoeuvre the aircraft to straight and level at a safe speed. Scoring was done by subtracting marks from the "perfect" score of ten for mistakes, omissions, and exceedences. The manufacturer did this to all the pilots before upset recovery training, and then again after it. The average "before" score was 5, the average "after" score was 8.

Maybe you would think that pilots with a military fastjet background, or aerobatic training, would be best, at least in the "before" session.

Wrong!

The only pilot who got three perfect tens was a low-hour pilot with purely civil training and no aerobatic experience. But his basic training was recent, his age way below the average for the group, and his discipline clearly good.

In fact, Boeing observed - although it was not the primary purpose of the exercise to find this out - there was no apparent correlation between individual scores and the pilots' backgrounds or experience levels.

I suppose you want to know what "extreme attitudes" the pilots were faced with?

Well, the first was 40deg nose-high, zero bank, 190kt with autothrottle engaged.

The second was 25deg nose-low at 60deg bank.

The third was 25deg nose-low with 120deg bank.

So, Capt Top Gun, you think you can handle the situation because once, long ago, you used to be able to?

Don't bet on it! After years of autopilot with bank angles rarely exceeding 25deg, maybe you've forgotten the routine. Most of these pilots had. Some scored zero. 

The Hawaiian Islands might be very beautiful, but this offshore US state's biggest city - Honolulu -  is the kind of tacky joint they'd choose to make an Austin Powers movie in. It was still just about cool when Elvis first sang Rock-a-Hula Baby, but not for long after that.

But it was worth being there for the 2008 Flight Safety Foundation International Aviation Safety Seminar (IASS). The IASS never fails to provide the latest thinking on how operators of all kinds can manage risk better.

Anyway I digress. One of the incidental delights of being at the IASS, which is held jointly with IATA and the International Federation of Airworthiness, is that you meet a lot of quality aviation people. I know name-droppers are ghastly, but I've got photographic proof of the quality of some of the people who will actually talk to me, and just wanted to show off a bit.

Aviation legends don't come any bigger than Don Bateman (left) and Joe Sutter (right).

Yes, that's me in the middle, and I don't make any claims except to have been around aviation for a long enough time to get to enjoy the company of people like this.

Joe, for those who are unforgiveably ignorant enough not to know, was the chief engineer on Boeing's 747 programme and is usually referred to as "the father of the 747".

Don is Honeywell International's chief engineer, and was the inventor, when at Sundstrand, of the ground proximity warning system, followed by that massive leap in aviation safety technology, the Honeywell enhanced GPWS, generically known as a terrain awareness warning system (TAWS).

Either of those achievements is enough for one lifetime, but both of them keep on improving their inventions to this day.

If I look as happy as a pig in sh*t, it's because I was.