David Learmount/LONDON
AIRLINE PILOTS ARE given inadequate type-conversion training for modern, highly automated aircraft, according to a senior UK Civil Aviation Authority official.
CAA test pilot Capt Terry Newman, a European Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA) representative on a US Federal Aviation Administration team studying safety in highly automated cockpits, revealed his thinking to a meeting of the UK Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) on human factors in "glass cockpits". The FAA concludes its study this week.
Newman points out that highly automated aircraft have a better safety record than that of earlier generations, but that automation itself is occasionally a factor in accidents.
He calls for "measurable objectives" in drawing up cockpit-systems design.
Dr Kathy Abbott of NASA's Langley Research Center, told the RAeS that future generations of flight-management systems would have to offer a radically different, more "human-centred", intuitive interface.
At present, Abbott says, "...there has been an inadvertent change in the role of the pilot...[creating] the potential for new types of human error".
Source: Flight International
