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Aviation History
2001
2001 - 3009.PDF
WWW.FLIGHTINTERNATIONAL.COM EDITORIAL +44 (20) 8652 3842 Quadrant House, The Quadrant, Sutton, Surrey SM2 5AS, UK Fax +44 (20) 8652 3840 email fliQht.international@rbi.co.uk Editor Murdo Morrison +44 (20) 8652 4395 murdo.tnorrison@rbi.co.uk Editor's PA Debra Warburton +44 (20) 8652 3835 debra.narburton@rbi.co.uk News Editor Andrew Chuter +44 (20) 8652 3843 andy.chuter@rbi.co.uk Deputy News Editor Emma Kelly +44 (20) 8652 3096 emma.kelly@rbi.co.uk Features Editor DeeDee Doke +44 (20) 8652 3852 deedee.doke@rbi.co.uk Commercial Aviation Editor Max Kingsley-Jones +44 (20) 8652 3825 max.kingsley.jones@rbi.co.uk Defence Aviation Editor Stewart Penney +44 (20) 8652 3834 stemrt.penney@rbi.co.uk Operations/Safety Editor David Learmount +44 (20) 8652 3845 david.learmount@rbi.co.uk Business & General Aviation Editor Kate Sarsfield +44 (20) 8652 3885 kate.sarsfield@rbi.co.uk Reporter Justin Wastnage +44 (20) 8652 3863justin.mstnage@rbi.co.uk Spaceflight Correspondent Tim Furniss +44 (1237) 471960 tim@spaceport.co.uk Editorial Assistant Franceses Everett +44(20)86523842 EUROPE/MIDDLE EAST Paris Correspondent Simon Warburton +33 (1) 42 33 6710 simonwa39@hotmail.com Israel Correspondent Arie Egozi +972(3)9671155 Middle East Correspondent Gerald Butt +357 2 771967 gbutt@spidernet.com.cy AMERICAS Washington DC Office Fax +1 (703) 836 8344 Americas Editor Graham Warwick +1 (703) 836 3448 graham.mmick@rbi.co.uk East Coast Editor Paul Lewis +1 (703) 836 3084 paul.lewis@rbi.co.uk Washington Correspondent Ramon Lopez +1 (703) 836 7443 ramon.lopez@rbi.co.uk West Coast Editor Guy Norris +1(949)2528971 Fax+1 (949) 252 8972 guy.norris@rbi.co.uk ASIA/PACIFIC Singapore Office Fax +65 338 6171 Regional Managing Editor Nicholas lonides +65 434 3311 Fax +65 338 6171 nicholas.ionides@rbi.co.uk Deputy Asia Editor Andrew Doyle +65 434 3309 andrew.doyle@rbi.co.uk Regional Reporter David Fullbrook +65 434 3314 david.fullbrook@rbi.co.uk Australia Civil Aviation Correspondent Paul Phelan +61(7)40532791 Fax+61 (7)40533003 phphelan@optusnet.com.au Australia Military Aviation Correspondent Peter La Franchi +61 (0) 419 246 620 Fax +61 (2) 62312795 nulka@ozemail.com.au ADVERTISING UK S Europe+44 (20) 8652 3319 France S Switzerland Tel +33 (1) 53 2188 00 Italy Tel+39 (02) 236 2500 Singapore Tel+65 434 3303 Hong Kong Tel+852 29651542 Australasia Tel +61 (3) 9245 7350 ' North America Tel +1 (703) 836 7444 Classified S recruitment +44 (20) 8652 8228 FOR FULL LISTING SEE P76 SUBSCRIPTIONS +44 (1444) 445454 rbi.subscrlptions@rbi.co.uk THE FLIGHT COLLECTION kim.hearn@rbi.co.uk pfp-l AirT, r-\J I onlm ir Transport Intelligence (ATI), Flight International's sister online service at www.rati.com, contains the full text of Flight International anil Airline ft/s/ness since 1996. Full text of the magazines can also be found online with Lexis-Nexis, Dialogue, FT Profile, IAC and Reuters. Editor Kieran Daly +44 (20) 8652 3837 ® REED BUSINESS INFORMATION • nmnimoNm WBPA COMMENT The training gap Pilot training has not been sufficiently modified to take account of the loss of the flight engineer nor the age of computer monitoring Last week an event proved that the mantra about pilots of modern automated aircraft no longer being able to handle an aircraft manu ally is far from a universal truth. The crew of an Air Transat Airbus A330-200 was left with no engine power a long way from the Azores in the middle of the Atlantic. Coupled with this they had lost their autopilot, flight manage ment system and flight envelope protection. It was back to basics. But they managed. An airport runway looks as small as an air craft carrier's deck when you know you have only one chance. Not just to hit it in the right spot, but at a speed which will allow the air craft to touch down safely. Any sceptics who said that a fly-by-wire airliner would be im possible to handle without engine power and that the crew would have forgotten how to fly have been proved wrong. Although some airlines give their crews simulator practice at "dead stick landings", some do not, and it is not a requirement. The Pilots need systems knowledge and understanding to compensate for having no flight engineer cold figures for gliding performance and con figuration are there in the flight manual but- happily - it is not a well-thumbed page. But without pre-judging the Portuguese accident investigators' report on the Air Transat event, it is easy to understand why many people in the industry are asking why a single-point fuel leak should lead to the loss of both engines in a short time. Fuel systems in all airliners can be managed precisely to determine which tank should feed which engine. Alternative solutions are handled with the appropriate use of pumps and fuel shut-off cocks. The final option is to open up the com plete fuel plumbing system and have all tanks feeding all engines. That is not normal proce dure but, subject to further study by the Portuguese investigation, in this case the sys tem appears to have been open, and so the leak dumped all the fuel from all the tanks. It would be easy to put the blame for any failure in fuel management technique squarely at the door of the pilots. That is unwise, how ever, not only because it would cover up other contributory factors within the system, but also fail to take account of distractions to the crew that have not emerged in the evidence yet but which were almost certainly present. Having used the Air Transat case as an opportunity to raise the subject of modern air crew skills, responsibilities and training, it is worth looking at the issue generically, and any parallels with this particular incident from this point onward are not intended. Pilots in modern flight decks need a level of systems knowledge and understanding which compensates for the fact that they have no flight engineer. And with the demise of the flight engineer has come an increase in the size and complexity of modern aircraft, so more knowledge is necessary to manage the systems. Computer monitoring systems like the engine indicating and crew alerting system (EICAS), or the electronic centralised aircraft monitor (ECAM) are great for providing crew with information and even with tactical courses of action, but they do not confer understand ing. The latter is essential for knowing how the situation developed and therefore what strate gic action to take to keep the flight safe. And knowledge - the component which is tested in pilots, normally by the use of multi ple-choice questions - is of limited use without understanding. Understanding is much more difficult to test, and it is least well tested using multiple-choice questions. The airline pilot type conversion and recurrent training system, as structured today, suggests that the need for understanding has been forgotten or has been sidelined because the cost is too high. High quality, interactive classroom training is rare, and although computer-based training is im proving, it alone will never provide the answer. It takes more time to gain understanding than to gain knowledge, and time is in short supply in modern airline training. Over the last decade there have been increasing numbers of serious accidents which did not need to happen, and many of these showed a lack of crew understanding of aircraft systems - how they worked and even what they did. The 1994 China Airlines Airbus A300-600 accident at Nagoya, Japan, was not excep tional in this respect, but it showed a crew who did not know how the autopilot worked, how it controlled pitch, and how to disengage it when take-off/go around had been selected. More than 250 people died as a result. Airlines pay for lack of understanding in their crews. It would be better if they paid for training. SEE PAGE 32 www.fliqhtinternational.com FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 4-10 SEPTEMBER 2001 5
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