Air Safety Panel Releasing Report on Automation

tomokc

Well-Known Member
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles...39804579204202526288042?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5

The link is to a WSJ story in today's (Mon 11/18/2013) story behind their paywall. An FAA report may be released as early as this week which is the the effort of "a team of industry, labor, academic and government officials," and points to overreliance on automation by flight crews. A few excerpts:

A soon-to-be-released study commissioned by the Federal Aviation Administration determined, among other things, that "pilots sometimes rely too much on automated systems and may be reluctant to intervene" or switch them off in unusual or risky circumstances, according to a draft reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Among the accidents and certain categories of incidents that were examined, roughly two-thirds of the pilots either had difficulty manually flying planes or made mistakes using flight computers.

Pilot lapses and automation were implicated in the high-profile 2009 crash of an Air France Airbus A330 that stalled and went down in the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 228 aboard, just as they are suspected of causing lat July's crash of an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 during a botched landing in San Francisco.

But the latest effort stands out due to the wide-ranging collection of experts who participated. It also breaks new ground because the panel sifted through large volumes of voluntary safety reports filed by pilots, along with additional data gathered by cockpit observers on more than 9,000 flights world-wide.
 
Erm, FAA, take a look in the mirror.

When I go to LGB (simulator), I do a lot of button pushing and not so much on the flying.
 
Leaving ATL, I typically hand fly up to 18k. It makes a lot of captains nervous because we are told from the training department "we'd like to see you have the autopilot on at 600AGL leaving ATL because it's an RNAV departure." SO! If you are having guys getting yelled at/violated because they can't hand fly a departure, what the hell are you going to do when a guy can't hand fly an approach and the weather is bad everywhere?

"Sit back cap-e-tan, I got this. Don't act so nervous. It's just an airplane."
 
I bet they love that.

I'm not there to make the captain feel good. I'm there to do my job, and work as a team. It's briefed before hand(team part). The lack of skill I see from the left seat of some of these guys I fly with is alarming, and I don't want to end up that way.

Like I said, if hand flying an airplane with a Flight Director makes you nervous, you should re-evaluate yourself.

What's really asinine about your response, is this is in a thread about how automation is setting guys up to loose their skill set. And all I am doing is mitigating that risk.

*shrugs shoulders*
 
Ah come on mikey, you know he is being sarcastic.

Honestly, I haven't come across anyone who jumps down my gut for not saying "Autopilot on" at 600ft AGL coming out of Atlanta.

If you have encountered one of them, they clearly can not fly themselves and are afraid of your skill level since they do not trust themselves. Avoid them like the plague, add them to your no-fly list, and move on.

If they really have a problem with it, bring it up during cruise and figure out what the real catalyst for their problem is. Then remind them that of the most recent accidents an abondance of pilot reliance on automation was a contributing factor. Pilot proficiency is slipping and if you are afraid to have an FO hand fly an RNAV departure using a flight director, then well - perhaps you shouldn't be a Captain.
 
The lack of skill I see from the left seat of some of these guys I fly with is alarming, and I don't want to end up that way.

Wow. Just wow.

You do understand that if you see something 'alarming' you have a professional responsibility to bring it up to that person? Have you done that? How was their reaction?
 
I'm with mshunter on this - I hand fly up to cruise and out of 18k on the descent. Just about all the approaches are hand flown too. We fly 4 - 5 days a week, mostly short legs into various fields with about a 50/50 mix of ILS and GPS approaches. I have found that I can fly a GPS approach better than the AP in the King Air I fly. I'm not anti autopilot use, but I want to keep my skills sharp so that losing the autopilot is at worst an inconvenience and not an emergency....plus I just enjoy actually flying the airplane.


Bp244
 
Wow. Just wow.

You do understand that if you see something 'alarming' you have a professional responsibility to bring it up to that person? Have you done that? How was their reaction?

I have. And their response is usually something along the line of "company asks us to turn the AP on at 600agl." My response is usually along the lines of "It's just a request. Am I doing a bad job at following the FD?" Alarming, and nervous are two different things. Feel free to take the controls from me if it makes you that nervous.
 
Was the AF crash really a result of relying to heavily on automation or the result of a pilot who lost situational awareness and panicked by pulling back on the stick?
 
SeanD said:
Was the AF crash really a result of relying to heavily on automation or the result of a pilot who lost situational awareness and panicked by pulling back on the stick?

Both.

If you really have the time to dedicate to reading all the reports (about three weeks), you'll arrive at the same conclusion a number of safety folks reached.

Automation dependence and lack of high altitude hand-flying proficiency contributed to the lose of a good airplane, and countless lives.
 
I don't know, just force everyone to be a 1900 FO for 1,000 hours and the fundamentals will be down.

Without paying for the job of course.
 
Touché. Was busy enjoying lunch to type our num-bers.

barbie-hates-math-518x2741-300x158.png


That said, I obviously agree with your entirely literate (if perhaps a bit innumerate) conclusion. ;) *hugs*
 
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