Pilot skill v. Aircraft Automation

Zapphod Beblebrox

Zapphod Beblebrox

Inventor of the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster
For discussion:
https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-...versight-pilot-automation-training-questioned

https://www.oig.dot.gov/sites/default/files/FAA Flight Decek Automation_Final Report^1-7-16.pdf

FAA LACKS AN EFFECTIVE PROCESS TO ASSESS HOW PILOTS MONITOR AIRCRAFT PERFORMANCE AND MAINTAIN MANUAL FLYING SKILLS
FAA does not have a sufficient process to assess a pilot’s ability to monitor flight deck automation systems
and manual flying skills, both of which are important for handling unexpected events during flight. In addition, FAA is not well positioned to determine how often air carrier pilots manually fly aircraft. FAA has also not
ensured that air carrier training programs adequately focus on manual flying skills.


Seems the FAA and Aircraft engineers and designers have a dilemma. The more automated the more the pilot skills deteriorate. Who would-a thunk that would happen.

Way back almost 30 years ago my first airliner looked like this. I was actually on the other side of the airplane.
uadc9classic5.jpg



It had a compass, vor, adf and a clock. I was never so good at hand-flying as I was on that airplane. Now I fly an Airbus. I have been on that airplane for over 10 years. Every once in a while, we both have to ask ourselves "what's it doing." Why did it do that? What's the problem? If you input bad data it will get a little messy with the Bus. The auto pilot is too good. We fly a lot of RNAV departures so it is mandatory to use the auto-pilot at 500ft after takeoff.

To achieve the required RNP you have to leave the auto pilot on. To keep proficiency you have to hand fly a lot. The FAA and manufacturers are running in the opposite direction with regards to keeping up pilot skills. In the old days we had more space, Airways were not that narrow and traffic was not sequenced that close.

RVSM requires very accurate handling at altitude and we keep the auto pilot on above FL290.

It doesn't seem that hand flying skills and automation are heading in the same direction. Instead the FAA publication says we have to watch the automation more. That will put you to sleep quickly. Last trip LAX to IAD. Got direct Charlie West (HVQ) (red-eye flight) while still over California. Yep I watched that green line real close. Can't think of a quicker way to fall asleep. ( I didn't, but it was tough)
 
Zapphod Beblebrox said:
We fly a lot of RNAV departures so it is mandatory to use the auto-pilot at 500ft after takeoff.

To achieve the required RNP you have to leave the auto pilot on.
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We fly a lot of RNAV departures and the use of the AP is only highly recommended for intricate or noise abatement heavy departures, think LHR. Other than that, hand flying is allowed. As for the RNP requirement, it is .5nm from centerline. Just keep the airplane symbol on the magenta line and you're GTG.

Of course I fly an MD88 now, (Super 80 for you!) so I regressed in available equipment.
 
I'm in the training department here when I'm not flying the line and one thing I see is guys either don't use the automation enough when they should (trying to handfly while running an engine shutdown checklist while flying the missed approach with a quick level off), or guys who fall apart when you take away the flight director. As usual, the truth is somewhere in between what the "constant handflying warriors" and the "titans of automation" would have you believe. You need to be proficient at hand flying the airplane - this means you have to hand fly the airplane occasionally to stay sharp, even EGADS! under raw data. You must be able to use the automation effectively and efficiently. Automation is a tool to reduce your workload at critical times, but if you do not understand the relationship between workload and how much automation you're using, you need to be reevaluate your automation practices. It's a balance, and it takes discipline and practice, and I often struggle with it as well.

One of my favorite little training exercises to give a guy is to have a guy lose an engine during the missed off of LNY as he's about halfway through the turn to 224, but before he's joined the radial out to GRAMY. This is the point where the guy is at his busiest mentally, and after the missed, most guys haven't gotten the autopilot coupled up yet by the time they're at this point or are just starting to engage it. It's good for the guys who prefer handflying to see that their SA narrows substantially when they have an engine failure and that coupling the A/P allows you to divert more brain power to running the checklist and pointing the airplane in the proper direction, and it's good for the guys who are more automation dependent because it cues them into the fact that their heading, altitude, and course maintenance is weaker than perhaps it should be. Ultimately, the guys who sit in between both ends of the spectrum do exceptionally well on this particular task and fluidly manage workload as appropriate to get the airplane under control, then couple it up, then follow the missed to a safe altitude to troubleshoot.

My personal recommendation to most people is to hand fly whenever possible when the weather is good and it's not too busy in the airplane for at least part of the climb, descent and in the terminal environment, and couple up for when the weather is bad. You can afford to narrow your situational awareness a little bit when it's nice outside so that you can stay "sharp." You are not afforded that luxury in the other direction, when you need to be able to handfly well, you typically really need it.
 
Cptnchia said:
We fly a lot of RNAV departures and the use of the AP is only highly recommended for intricate or noise abatement heavy departures, think LHR. Other than that, hand flying is allowed. As for the RNP requirement, it is .5nm from centerline. Just keep the airplane symbol on the magenta line and you're GTG.

Of course I fly an MD88 now, (Super 80 for you!) so I regressed in available equipment.
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Our OPS specs require the auto pilot to be on. Just one more rule to follow.
 
I'm not so much concerned about our ability to hand fly an RNAV departure so much as a high and fast visual from the downwind. The knowledge of when to turn off the AP and then manipulate the aircraft by hand in those situations is more useful, and likely tells you more about the pilot's hand flying skills than almost any other situation.
 
jtrain609 said:
I'm not so much concerned about our ability to hand fly an RNAV departure so much as a high and fast visual from the downwind. The knowledge of when to turn off the AP and then manipulate the aircraft by hand in those situations is more useful, and likely tells you more about the pilot's hand flying skills than almost any other situation.
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Me too.
 
So the discussion circles back to the underlying question: does a company really care about the "skill" of its pilots, beyond their ability to operate reasonably safe, on-time, and customer-courteously?

What interest is it of Acme Airlines if their pilots are all Al Hayneses or Cesley Sullenbergers, or if they are all John Doe who can achieve a mediocre-but-safe level of performance at the FAA-set average bar of achievement? What is the benefit to their business?

I have a distorted view, as I was trained and raised in an environment (military fighter community) where there was both objective and subjective value put on actual pilot "skill". Since the military cares about results and effects -- and generally not fiscal responsibility -- it puts training, testing, and performance bars much higher than what is required to perform the job 99% of the time. In fact, a huge amount of time, effort, and money is put toward training for those 1%-of-the-time Black Swan moments that a pilot or unit may never, ever see during an entire career. And it is one's performance there at the edges of the envelope that is used to measure a pilot's skill, because a pilot's ability to execute all of the other 99% is assumed to be perfect (or at least excellent).

Unfortunately, the commercial air world does care about money a lot more than the military does, and doesn't want to expend the time or resources required to focus on "1%" training when focusing on "99%" training is more than adequate the vast majority of the time (99% of it?).

When I put myself into the shoes of 121 airline management, and try to look at the big picture of keeping costs low to make profits big, I have a tough time seeing why I should really care about the skill of pilots on the line, so long as they meet the FAA standards and aren't making the company look too stupid in front of the paying passengers.
 
It matters because the last 4 big crashes have all been some sort of a failure in the automation system that led to a very inappropriate crew response which in turn led to a complete loss of control event and crash.
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
It matters because the last 4 big crashes have all been some sort of a failure in the automation system that led to a very inappropriate crew response which in turn led to a complete loss of control event and crash.
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Preaching to the choir.

As a pilot, I personally think that the level of average hand-flying "monkey skill" at the 121 airlines is ridiculously low and wish that airline training programs would be designed and executed differently to address it.

I'm just saying that, from the airline's perspective, what motivation do they really have to change it? AF 447, AirAsia, Asiana, etc...those are all incredibly rare events compared to the thousands of day-to-day operations of those airlines that don't involve catastrophe.
 
Hacker15e said:
So the discussion circles back to the underlying question: does a company really care about the "skill" of its pilots, beyond their ability to operate reasonably safe, on-time, and customer-courteously?
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Only when such skills are required. I'm pretty sure (ignoring the petulant "I wouldn't have shut down a good engine" comments that are made by envious regional pilots who are merely tired of Sully calling them underqualified hacks) that U.S. Airways was suddenly delighted to have Sullenberger and Skiles at the controls that morning.

Thing of it is, the bolt-from-the-blue doesn't happen until it does happen, and then it's really up to the individual pilots and how well they can work together as a team. My airline's analog - which was by no means as dramatic as the "miracle" (not) on the Hudson - came with a pipe zone fire on the Brasilia that knocked out both hydraulic systems and caused a smattering of other problems. They did very, very well, and that Captain was an absolute delight to fly with.

What interest is it of Acme Airlines if their pilots are all Al Hayneses or Cesley Sullenbergers, or if they are all John Doe who can achieve a mediocre-but-safe level of performance at the FAA-set average bar of achievement? What is the benefit to their business?
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There is no benefit.

Until, of course, you have a pipe zone fire on the Brasilia, or a dual engine failure over the Hudson or whatever. Then there's very much a financial benefit, because you don't crash the airplane (and if you do, sometimes it's survivable).

I have a distorted view, as I was trained and raised in an environment (military fighter community) where there was both objective and subjective value put on actual pilot "skill". Since the military cares about results and effects -- and generally not fiscal responsibility -- it puts training, testing, and performance bars much higher than what is required to perform the job 99% of the time. In fact, a huge amount of time, effort, and money is put toward training for those 1%-of-the-time Black Swan moments that a pilot or unit may never, ever see during an entire career. And it is one's performance there at the edges of the envelope that is used to measure a pilot's skill, because a pilot's ability to execute all of the other 99% is assumed to be perfect (or at least excellent).
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That culture is distinctly inappropriate in an airline environment. (It's the standard JetCareers problem of "this is a different operation with different priorities and consequently, a different culture." :) )

While I do believe that pilots should be exposed to the edges of the envelope, I think the largest threats to our modern operation come from an insidious combination of a lack of manual flight proficiency, situation awareness, competency in the automation (I'm talking about how the automation can subtly fail you, here, not mashing NAV-VNAV), and complex environments. (All that AAMP stuff, really - not the "this is how you can roll this thing" - but adequate and ACTIVE monitoring!) There has been, and continues to be, a fundamental problem with priorities - "Aviate, navigate, communicate, automate, in that order."

Indeed, the majority of the accidents we have are the result of flying perfectly good airplanes into perfectly firm terrain. So, bully, you managed to Yeager it up, but that's not the threat here, and when it does happen, we actually wind up handling it fairly well despite being boring straight-and-level types.

Unfortunately, the commercial air world does care about money a lot more than the military does, and doesn't want to expend the time or resources required to focus on "1%" training when focusing on "99%" training is more than adequate the vast majority of the time (99% of it?).
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We do see the "odd" stuff in initial 175 qualification. Hydraulic failures, flight control failures, and so on; we do our upsets, and so on.

Honestly, I worry far more about the guy on the left who doesn't give a damn and the guy on the right who is new and doesn't know any better going to some mountainous place at night, VMC, high and hot, with the field in sight after a long duty day than (some weird set of circumstances). Of course, pilots DO need to know how to extract maximum performance from their airplanes, but it's just as important to avoid those situations to start with.
 
Fellas, fellas. It's not exactly raining aluminum out there. Nothing to see here, move along...

"A measure of commercial air safety is the yearly fatal accidents/million departures. Using data available in a Boeing publicationhttp://www.boeing.com/resources/boeingdotcom/compa...
the figures from 1959 when manual flight control predominated to 1980, when automated Flight Management Systems were largely introduced by Airbus to 2014, the worldwide fatal accident rates were 28 in 1959, 8 in 1968, 3 in 1980 and 0.2 in 2014."
 
Hacker15e said:
When this is what the numbers say, why should airline management give a squat about the objective "skill" of their pilots when it produces this standard of safety?
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There us lots of data that shows it isn't worth spending time and money trying to prevent black swan events.

Not putting up the power when needed (Asiana, Colgan etc) is a thing that should be trained out of exsistance. Things like low altitude AEO ditching (USAirways) are not. The best you can hope for is a high enough general level of skill to get by the black swan events as they occur.
 
BobDDuck said:
Not putting up the power when needed (Asiana, Colgan etc) is a thing that should be trained out of exsistance. Things like low altitude AEO ditching (USAirways) are not. The best you can hope for is a high enough general level of skill to get by the black swan events as they occur.
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I agree...however, skill is only attained through experience and training, and aviation skill is also perishable in that it atrophies if not constantly tended to.

Or, as we say in the military, "hope is not a plan."
 
BobDDuck said:
There us lots of data that shows it isn't worth spending time and money trying to prevent black swan events.

Not putting up the power when needed (Asiana, Colgan etc) is a thing that should be trained out of exsistance. Things like low altitude AEO ditching (USAirways) are not. The best you can hope for is a high enough general level of skill to get by the black swan events as they occur.
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I like this.
 
As Al Haynes once said, "Everything I needed to know to survive Flight 232 I learned in a United Airlines training program."

Yet, again, circling back to the beginning...what care does airline management or flight ops have about actual "pilot skill", so long as it meets FAA standards?
 
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