Man-machine Interface: 21st Century flying

[Charl]

The discussion is about the fatal Air France 447 crash, which killed 228 people:
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2014/10...light-447-crash

It's a fair amount to read, but settle down with a cuppa.
I have yet to see a more measured, objective, take on the issues facing airliner designers and pilot training/deployment in the present era.

Every time the BS starts to fly about Airbus This, Boeing That, pilots The Other , I will pull out this link and plop it into the noise.

[Ian Warren]

I do like this comment

"which were far more reliable and easy to fly than the complex piston-engine behemoths that preceded them."

but then the sometimes true cockpit environment , was a aeronautical society meeting, base on a theme called 'The Right Stuff'

Lauber told me about one occasion, when he entered a Boeing 727 cockpit at a gate before the captain arrived, and the flight engineer said, “I suppose you’ve been in a cockpit before.â€￾

“Well, yes.â€￾

“But you may not be aware that I’m the captain’s sexual adviser.â€￾

“Well, no, I didn’t know that.â€￾

“Yeah, because whenever I speak up, he says, ‘If I want your trucking advice, I’ll ask for it.’ â€￾

One off thing pointed out was the ex-airforce fighter jocks were the beginning of the problem and had re school them with a team attitude, in the early 2000s with accidents the high percentage was an over bearing captain and a co-pilot with the balls to tell him he is wrong ! , my last work place for example , I shut down an entire nights production because I was not sure - paper work was signed off and all agreed, next morning shifts pretty boy come in , run the production with out checking the paperwork and with his arrogance trying to score brownie points running the machines ... on finding out his cockup threw the witnessed paper out and put the blame on me.

[Charl]

Yeah... people...

What I did find insightful, was the notion that although overall safety is greatly improved, when things go wrong, they go wrong MUCH WORSE than they used to!

[cowpatz]

What hasn't been touched on is that aircraft type rating training has been significantly reduced. Training that used to take months now takes just a matter of weeks. The operational manuals are now very basic and lacking system depth. Training is a cost and if this can be reduced to a minimum then so can costs.
Generally when pilots have completed type rating training they know just enough...."they are undercooked".
It is the old executive argument; is training a cost or an investment.

As this incident (and the Asiana 214 crash at SFO) illustrates is that all is well during a normal flight. It is only when that norm is changed and something unexpected comes up that the situation turns for the worse.
Those pilots had no idea how the aircraft handled at altitude in "Alternate law" - it's not in the training syllabus. By all accounts it is difficult.
The Air France loss of airspeed procedure was generic in that it was not varied for altitude and involved the application of thrust as well as to pitch up...remember the Airbus aircraft "cannot" stall...it is protected so pitching up has some merit. Was the monitoring of GPS ground speed ever part of this procedure or even taught?
Would they have known that the AoA warnings would cease at high angles of attack as the system would consider them invalid or even worse that it would come on again once the pitch is decreased into the valid range?
After this event almost all airlines incorporated high altitude stall recovery as a 'focused training' package to be delivered during a simulator training session. This was useful but it really needed to also include the loss of valid airspeed indications to complete the picture that the AF crew were faced with and make it truly representative.
In the later parts of the descent the nose would have been close to being on the horizon, or even below it (even though the actual AoA was in the order of 49 degrees), adding to the confusion as to just how the aircraft could be stalled when the nose is so low. They had not correlated the steep, low forward speed "pancaking" descent with a huge AoA.
When faced with this sensory overload and the inability to be able to see the sidestick movements, or even to know who was actually had sidestick priority (both a huge downside to the Airbus sidestick FBW system), the massive rate of descent and confusing paradox of the Stall warning coming on when lowering the nose and off when raising it would have made it nearly impossible for the Captain to do anything that would have allowed for a successful recovery.

[Ian Warren]

Not only the problems are caused in the air by arrogance, it starts from the ground also, I did have a book called 'The Black Box' it covered many whys and how an aircraft simply died with crew and passengers, even the simple thing off walking around the aircraft and doing the pre-flights, a 757 flying out off San Diego, the checks somehow missed out removing the 'condom' protection from the pitot tubes and sensors after a day washing the aircraft and even ground crew missed it, these little red rubbers that caused the crashed of the plane, Man - Machine Interface

[Charl]

QUOTE (cowpatz @ Oct 6 2014,6:39 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

...Those pilots had no idea how the aircraft handled at altitude in "Alternate law" - it's not in the training syllabus. By all accounts it is difficult...

There is a growing awareness that expecting a human to "partially rescue" an automated device in failure or part reversionary mode, is not realistic.

Whether AF 447 could have been rescued by full manual reversion is open to debate, though.
The pilots had no situational awareness.

Perhaps difficult to accept that the machines do a brilliant job most of the time, and when they don't, you probably die.
As mentioned, overall air safety has improved since these systems were implemented.

This does leave a fairly big question about the future role of the pilots however.

[cowpatz]

QUOTE (Charl @ Oct 6 2014,8:34 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This does leave a fairly big question about the future role of the pilots however.

Oh that's easy.

[Ian Warren]

Now that's funny .. and were is the pilots dog

[Splitpin]

Very interesting reading , thank you Charl .

CP , when you wrote " It is the old executive argument is training a cost or an investment " it took back a few years , when i was briefly involved on both sides of that argument .
Working for a tour coach company about to do a major fleet upgrade .
I spent weeks learning the new vehicle , writing a manual , and a training syllabus .... anyway , there was a change of power at the top , and my work was seen as costly and now unnecessary.

To make a long story short , they employed more staff to use the new vehicles ..... training consisted of a quick spin around the block and off they went "undercooked" and after a very short time
large repair bills , and one case serious injury .
Not in the same league as the subject post .... but you can draw some parallels.