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Aviation History
1957
1957 - 0931.PDF
5 July 1957 \ ;. . CIVIL AVIATION . . . 31 The Future of the Flight Engineer AM one of many Americans (writes Mr. Petty) who have PRESENT controversy abont the place of the flight engineer in thebeen reared properly, that is to say with a predisposition to modern airliner cockpit (see particularly "Flight" for March IS report-I say, admire all things British, even when they may be wrong.Sadly, I have found this predisposition strained, of late, with regard to your excellent magazine; and for that reason I feel obliged to com-ment upon some remarks made in your columns concerning the flight engineer and his position in gas turbine powered transports.To begin, I have acquired the impression that the British industry questions the value of our U.S. civil air regulation whichrequires the carriage of a flight engineer on all aircraft over 80,000 lb gross weight. I am sure it will be recognized that this moder IS, report-ing the B.O.A.C. Britannia dispute) has prompted Mr. George R. Petty, Jr., Vice-President Engineering of the Flight Engineers' InternationalAssociation (Washington, D.C.) to send us this letter. It is the strongest case yet put for the preservation of the flight engineer. mechanical duties, will enable the pilot to concentrate his attentionon the actual flight of the aircraft, radio operation, and receipt of traffic control clearances, particularly during instrument conditionswhere this is imperative." Implicit in this decision and the and DC-6. I think that in any discussion of the difficulty involvedin flying an airplane it will be admitted that the problems of the pilot increase as the wing loading increases and, further, that theyincrease as the power to weight ratio decreases. Furthermore, the workload of the pilot will increase as block speed increases overthe same average stage length, because of the greater number of landings and take-offs per hour of flight. To summarize then, thedifficulties of pilotage are proportional to 2VbW2 divided by the average stage length times the wing area times the thrust, i.e., DaAFa Since the pilots' troubles apparently increase with W2 it isentirely appropriate that the gross weight be selected as the para- meter by which we will determine when he needs help. The Maintenance record comparing K.L.M. Convairs with flight engineers to Convairs of European operators not using flight engineers—data for April 1955. Number of aircraft (average) Daily utilization Number of take-offs per 1,000 hr Number of technical delays per 1,000 hr Ratio of delays to take-offs Delays per 1,000 flight hours: Engines ... Ignition system Fuel system Prop, control system Electrical system Instruments Air conditioning Hydraulic system Aircraft Radio Miscellaneous K.L.M.Convair 240 7 4hr36 min 959 11.4 1 to 84.3 1.2 1.8 0.8 0.7 1.6 1.7 0.2 1.3 1.3 0.5 K.L.M.Convair 340 10 5 hr 27 min 625 10.6 1 to 58.7 1.2 0.7 0.6 1.1 2.7 0.4 0.4 0.9 1.6 0.4 0.5 EuropeanConvair Operators 4.7 4hr 31 min 792 30 1 to 26.3 2.3 2.1 0.9 1.3 3.23.2 0.9 2.4 4.1 3.6 2.6 Civil Aeronautics Board decided on the basis of empirical evidencethat the point on this curve where the pilot's need for help was such as to require a flight engineer was somewhere between thegross weight of the DC-4 and the gross weight of the DC-6; and, consequently, they selected the figure of 80,000 lb as the divider.At the selected point the mass of the complex machine exceeded the ability of the two-pilot crew to cope with it under all conditions.The Civil Aeronautics Board arrived at their decision in favour siderations concerning the flight engineer's duties: — (1) The duties of the flight engineer cannot properly be performed bya third pilot crew member. Apparently the Board felt that a different set of qualifications, especially of a mechanical nature, were required of aflight engineer, and accordingly new requirements were established for the training, examining and licensing of flight engineers. (2) The division of duties in the cockpit into pilot functions and flightengineer functions, based upon the type of experience required to per- form them, is a practice required in the interests of safety. (3) Flight engineering is a separate craft from piloting. (4) The flight engineer assumes a degree of responsibility for main-tenance work in flight, and—to the extent that an aircrew is consulted on accepting the airworthiness of aircraft—on the ground. Before therequirement for a flight engineer, the maintenance group on the ground had to deal with the captain only, whose understanding of larger andmore complex aircraft might be limited to the point where he lacks the knowledge to judge whether the maintenance performed would rectifythe troubles (snags) reported. This decision (wrote the Civil Aeronautics Board) has received impor-tant support just recently from Mr. D. P. Davies, D.S.C., chief test pilot of the Air Registration Board, who, in a lecture to the Royal Aeronau-tical Society, reported in Flight for November 30 last year, favoured the use of the flight engineer on any large aircraft with passengers aboard.To quote from the Flight summary (said the C.A.B.), It was his opinion that the airline captain should be given no more than the primaryflying controls and trimmers, brakes, steering, flight instrument panel and primary power controls and indicators. All the rest of the engineer-ing should be given to the engineer, and all the secondary aircraft con- trols to the second pilot. The engineer should have a "properly equippedstation." The difficulty here had arisen because of the differences between minimum and operational flight crews. "An aircraft should bedesigned not for a minimum flight crew, but for the operational flight crew." It was of academic interest only that large aircraft could beferried by two pilots, and attempts at two-crew layouts had resulted in a generally unsatisfactory operational layout. He "viewed with suspicion"the tendency to reduce crew number and the corresponding increase in workload. Similar opinions have been advanced in the United States withregard to gas turbine powered aircraft by Captain B. A. Martin, chief test pilot of the Lockheed C-130. Capt. Martin stated to ajet study group from the Air Line Pilots' Association that "besides a pilot and a co-pilot, the operation of the aircraft required a manwho would have an understanding of its various systems and be able to troubleshoot and by-pass inoperative components. Someexamples of the systems that need monitoring of a fairly constant nature are: the powerplant, the electrical system, the pressuriza-tion system, the propeller system, the pneumatic system, the fuel system, and electronics system." It was Capt. Martin's view that of retaining the flight engineer after public hearings in the fall of the third crew member or flight engineer would be the systems1947 at which every segment of the American aviation industry co-ordinator, and would need more mechanical know-how than was represented. The previous years had seen the newly intro- had been required of a pilot. One aspect of his concern for the duced DC-6 involved in accidents which suggested the need for oronerlv trained "systems co-ordinator" is that soecial abilities such a crew member, in spite of the fact that at the time of the;egulation'; introduction the DC-6 had 1,600,000 flying hours to need for the third crew mer^credit. The U.S. Air Line Pilots' Association at that tune sup- operauon and analys« of properly trained "systems co-ordinator" is that special abilitiesand inclinations are needed for the job. As he sees it, there is a need for the third cre member to have an inclination towardelectronic, electrical and other ; growing more complicated eachported the Board's proposal for the addition of the flight engineer mechanisms which seem to be growing more complicated each fo the crew of fo^Sined aircraft. The Air Transport Associa- day. The emergency or^ration of some systems with various com-to the cre of four-engined aircraft. e Air Transport Associa^ tion of America submitted a brief which among other things statedthe opinion that the determination of crew complement was a function only of airline management, not of civil air regulations.The Civil Aeronautics Board refuted this contention and in effect took jurisdictionover the determination of minimum crew requirements for transport aircraft.In explanation of its decision the Board stated in part: "As a result of this testi-mony the Board has concluded that the multiplicity of instrumentation and com-plexity of controls on certain of these air- craft limit the pilot's ability to focus hisattention on all of the critical instruments and controls. It is believed that a com-petent flight engineer, by assuming certain ponents inoperative requires detailed knowledge of those systemsso that maximum utilization of the remaining components will be possible under all flight conditions. TABLE 1 Relative complexity of commercial aircraft as shown by the total number of displays, controls, switches, etc.. in the cockpit (including radio switches, but not including circuit breakers and fuses). Pilots' panels, or total if no engineer- ing panel ... Engineering panel... Total DC-: 208 208 Mar-tin 404 259 259 T.C.A Vis- count 322 322 r.c.A. ^ortr Star 343 343 3C-6B 466 466 L.49 238244 482 L.1049C 255 274 529 3C-- 538 538 B-377 235 331 566 Plec- tra 518 518 707 A.A.L., 345 209 554 I
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