Airline Pilots Rely Too Much On Automation, Says Safety Panel 270
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Nearly all people connected to the aviation industry agree that automation has helped to dramatically improve airline safety over the past 30 years but Tom Costello reports at NBC News that according to a new Federal Aviation Administration report commercial airline pilots rely too much on automation in the cockpit and are losing basic flying skills. Relying too heavily on computer-driven flight decks now poses the biggest threats to airliner safety world-wide, the study concluded. The results can range from degraded manual-flying skills to poor decision-making to possible erosion of confidence among some aviators when automation abruptly malfunctions or disconnects during an emergency. 'Pilots sometimes rely too much on automated systems,' says the report adding that some pilots 'lack sufficient or in-depth knowledge and skills' to properly control their plane's trajectory. Basic piloting errors are thought to have contributed to the crash of an Air France Airbus A330 plane over the Atlantic in 2009, which killed all 228 aboard, as well as a commuter plane crash in Buffalo, NY, that same year. Tom Casey, a retired airline pilot who flew the giant Boeing 777, said he once kept track of how rarely he had to touch the controls on an auto-pilot flight from New York to London. From takeoff to landing, he said he only had to touch the controls seven times. 'There were seven moments when I actually touched the airplane — and the plane flew beautifully,' he said. 'Now that is being in command of a system, of wonderful computers that do a great job — but that isn't flying.' Real flying is exemplified by Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, says Casey, who famously landed his US Airways plane without engines on the Hudson River and saved all the passengers in what came to be known as the 'Miracle on the Hudson.' The new report calls for more manual flying by pilots — in the cockpit and in simulations. The FAA says the agency and industry representatives will work on next steps to make training programs stronger in the interest of safety."
self-flying planes (Score:5, Insightful)
The obvious solution is self-flying planes! Then there won't be a pilot to rely too much on automation.
Re: (Score:3)
That is modifying the terms of the problem, not a solution.
A solution is: have pilots run simulation exercises while they are flying on autopilot. We'll call it the yo dawg routine. This will both have 'em stay alert at all times, prevent them to running candy crush on their tablet and brand new wifi equipped airplane, and train them without losing time. All you need is a spare monitor and a "this is not a simulation" honking siren when real emergencies arise
And when somebody eventually tries to patent this
Re:self-flying planes (Score:5, Informative)
Pilots are not permitted to fly more than 100 hours per month.
Citation required. I'm a pilot and I know of no such limitation.
Re:self-flying planes (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, you are actually totally correct. The problem we have today is we are in the twilight zone between automation and human control. A simple autopilot alleviates the pilot from drudgery and reduces fatigue related human errors. But we have moved so far from that to a point where it promotes ineptitude, but is not self sufficient for the hard crap.
I think we need to see rules that curtail how much an automation system does to just automate the drudgery (smooth level flight at cruising altitude) unless it is certified to do it ALL. Until such time that automated systems can handle bad weather, false sensor readings, and other crisis at least as well as a good pilot, they should not be given too much responsibility. The same steps are already applied to a co-pilot, he doesn't get the pilots seat as soon as he can handle the easy crap, he has to put in thousands of hours as co-pilot before he gets full command of the aircraft.
Re:self-flying planes (Score:4, Informative)
Except the problem is false sensor readings can't be handled by a pilot either. Trusting your human senses just doesn't work with piloting, and has been the cause of any number of light plane and several major jetliner accidents too.
When sensors on a plane malfunction, you can't just look out the window and know what's wrong. Similarly there's a lot of concern about exactly the type of deferrence you suggest - co-pilots that, due to their culture, feel unable to question or overrule perceived bad decisions of the captain.
It's a complicated problem and is not easily explained as laziness on anyone's part.
Re:self-flying planes (Score:4, Insightful)
Get some time under the hood, and come back and tell us the same. Been there, done that.
Re: self-flying planes (Score:5, Informative)
What ^ he said.
I've flown VFR on a dark night with no visible horizon. It's an unsettling feeling when there's a lit road in the distance, at an angle to the real horizon. Your eyes naturally attune to the road, and tell your brain the aircraft is banking. Your inner ear says you're level. After a few moments, that part of your brain that handles balance starts to freak out and throw its hands up in disgust with the conflicting information.
It takes willpower to trust that the artificial horizon on the attitude indicator is indeed correct, despite that voice in the back of your head whispering that it could be broken and you should trust your eyes instead.
Re: (Score:3)
The computer did not give any instruction. The computers went into alternate law (i.e. "act dumb, do 100% what the pilots command") precisely because the computer had detected sensors were giving conflicting readings. It was down to the pilots to determine what was needed to be done. The correct course of action was fairly obvious. They were flying at altitude, where maximum speed and stall speed are very close to each other. That is, any significant loss of airspeed risks stalling and disaster. The correct
Re:self-flying planes (Score:5, Insightful)
Flying in the US in the last decade is safer than it has ever been before, anywhere. Automation is part of the reason for that. What you propose is tantamount to disabling antilock brakes so people maintain their brake-pumping skills, just in case the ABS ever fails. It is likely to be a poor tradeoff.
Invalid expectation (Score:3)
Drones have a horrible safety record, and are exactly what you are claiming is the fix. In the case of drones since humans rarely get hurt you don't hear about all of the crashes. At least two within the last week have caused damage to people so we heard about those.
The problem is really that people sitting outside expect or demand perfection where it can't really exist, given our current "air lift" flying technology.
Well trained humans combined with computers has gotten us to an extremely good record wit
Re: (Score:3)
I have multiple thousands of hours in heavy aircraft, and I can tell you that 'hand flying more' is not the solution to the problem either.
A well placed, rigorously programmed, redundantly powered
Re: (Score:2)
After the tire smoke cleared from the landing, the Piolet exclaimed "Man, that was one short Runway!.
The copilot looked left, then right, then said "But it sure is wide."
--
I want to meet the guy that landed the Shuttle on that aircraft carrier!
Re: (Score:3)
Was that at Warsaw International?
Re:self-flying planes (Score:5, Informative)
Re:self-flying planes (Score:4, Interesting)
a heavily modified 747 Boeing uses for cargo hauling it is manufacturing process.
Okay, incorrect usage of "it's" in place of "its" is irritating enough, but expanding it to "it is"?!?!?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:In the SIMULATOR? (Score:5, Insightful)
It depends on the simulation. If you are training for a cross oceanic flight, you would simulate switching out flight crews and long periods where you would normally use auto pilot. The simulation would toss various problems at you to break up what is normally a dry, boring routine so you know how to handle different problems.
Personally, I think we're just a few years away from a fully automatic flying experience.
Re: (Score:3)
Personally, I think we're just a few years away from a fully automatic flying experience.
Me too. Honestly I can't imagine a human surviving as many crashes as our black boxes have.. The combined learning from all of those, as well as the automation we already have ought to be able to out perform a human right to the last moment, when human pilots may have been incapacitated by movements or G-forces. We are getting better and better at explaining to these moving robots how to handle themselves in all sorts of crazy situations.
Just think about the Google Car that has to handle far crazier th
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A human can get an appreciation of velocity even without working pitot tubes, in a middle of a weather system where GPS doesn't work. The flight computer can't handle that, which is why it disconnected and warned in the case of the Air France flight.
In the case of the Hudson River landing, bird strikes took out both engines simultaneously, killing power. Pilot manually switched over to APU. Ironically however, in that case, the computer helped the pilot ditch the plane safely, once it had power again. With
Re: (Score:2)
I see no reason why a computer couldn't use visual clues and alternate sensors to detect velocity.. These may have been harder in the past, but certainly possible with today's technology.
I also see no reason why a computer couldn't visually see broken engines and do an emergency maneuver.
I also see no reason why a computer couldn't learn from the Hudson landing and be able to do similar maneuvers.
I see the pilot being needed at this time, but I also see that in the not too distant future a computer could do
Re:In the SIMULATOR? (Score:5, Informative)
What alternate sensors, that aren't already in use? GPS? Far less reliable than pitot tubes, due to weather, and that's just one example. Come on, practical engineering please, and not crackpipe dreaming....
And the systems to see the broken engines would be powered by what? Also, the emergency maneuvers have to be programmed in, based on human experience. Humans also have the advantage of being able to generalise and abstracting, able to adapt from one situation to fit into another situation more or less on the fly.
Hudson landing, until the pilot activated the APU, the flight computer was crippled.
Let's face it, automated cars is a fundamentally easier to solve problem, due to far fewer variables and complications, and weaker forces involved.
Re: (Score:2)
What alternate sensors, that aren't already in use?
The ones they can develop and add to the plane in a few years. Not something already on the plane for some other function.
I'm guessing that's what he meant.
Re: (Score:2)
Let's face it, automated cars is a fundamentally easier to solve problem, due to far fewer variables and complications, and weaker forces involved.
Cars=moving in X and Y axis... Aircraft=moving in X, Y AND Z axis...
Re: (Score:3)
Don't forget about wind moving in X, Y and Z, ambient temperature, ambient pressure, humidity, precipitation, other objects moving in X, Y AND Z. And as I said, the forces involved in an aircraft flight are greater.
Re: (Score:3)
Keyword there being "mostly".
Also, far more extensive than an automated car would need.
The thing is, the aircraft autopilots are not AI's, and are tasked with routine tasks such as stabilising the plane, maintaining a level course etc. Adding decision making beyond "sensor data unavailable, alert pilot and disengage" would require you to carry a cluster on board, and a beefy expert system at the very least, preferably an AI....
Re: (Score:2)
AND on top of it, it has to keep moving at a speed above some minimum velocity with respect to the surrounding air. A car can just stop. It may be dangerous, but not as much as when a plane just stops in the middle of the air.
Re: (Score:2)
And the systems to see the broken engines would be powered by what? Also, the emergency maneuvers have to be programmed in, based on human experience. Humans also have the advantage of being able to generalise and abstracting, able to adapt from one situation to fit into another situation more or less on the fly.
If you are to the point where your engines are broken, and you have completely lost power so much that the FCS is down, I'm not quite sure how much any pilot is going to be able to help you on a large aircraft. He couldn't even get on the intercom to tell people to 'smoke em if they got em' if it reached the level of bad you are describing.
Re: (Score:2)
Read up on and watch a few documentaries about the Hudson River crash landing
Re:In the SIMULATOR? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think automated cars would have to cope with far MORE variables and complications.
Planes receive a unique flightplan and detailed instructions for take of and landing that are steered by a central traffic control to make sure that there won't be any other planes nearby. Thats possible because EVERY plane has to receive instructions from them.
So basically, automated planes would not need to consider other planes. They do in a rather simple way (TCASS) but only as a last line of defense. And even if that emergency system triggers, it sends one plane "up" and the other "down", which are obviously no evasion options for cars. (And blindly going "left" and "right" aren't options either as usually on roads, you have to expect curbs, trenches, more cars in more lanes or pedestrians)
Additionally, all information needed for a plane is already available in electronic maps. Pilots hardly have to react to speed limits posted on traffic signs. (Which my be dirty or partly shielded and all that stuff)
The final proof is even in the summary: We already have commercial airplanes that fly almost completly automated! (having to touch the actual controls no more than 5 times between NY and London is almost completly automatic!) whereas automated cars were unthinkable untill a few years ago and today they're not completly from "experimental" to "testing" stages.
But there is ONE THING that makes autonomous cars safer than planes: Cutting of the engine is a safe failure mode. (Espescially if it can be propagated to surrounding cars by radio, so blindly jumping out of your exploding Tesla onto a busy highway is rather safe when information about an emergency stop has been broadcasted to the cars around and they stop, too)
Re: (Score:3)
Yes. Fully autonomous flying is fine as long as nothing brakes.
Part of what made the AF crash such a high-stakes affair is that jetliners (AF included) fly up in "coffin corner".
Basically, if you draw a graph where the x-axis is airspeed, and the y-axis is altitude, and plot where the safe alt+airspeed boundaries are, you get a triangle. The far right of the triangle is basically a vertical li
Re:In the SIMULATOR? (Score:4, Insightful)
Planes receive a unique flightplan and detailed instructions for take of and landing that are steered by a central traffic control to make sure that there won't be any other planes nearby. Thats possible because EVERY plane has to receive instructions from them.
I'll stop you there because you've just shown you don't know what you are talking about. Even if we just limit the discussion to large commercial aircraft, your claim that each receives a "unique flightplan" is ridiculous. The initial parts of the flightplan (departure) are so UNunique that they print them in books and give them names. A common departure clearance would be something like "United 123 is cleared to [destination], Farmington 3 departure, SHADO (an intersection somewhere on the filed flight plan), then as filed, maintain 3 thousand, departure frequency 123.45". Pretty much every aircraft going the same direction gets the same thing.
When the aircraft gets close to the arrival airport, it will get yet another UNunique approach, by name. "United 123 cross BILBO at 5 thousand, cleared for the ILS 14 right approach". That ILS approach will start at some initial approach fix (maybe BILBO, maybe after) and then bring every aircraft on that approach through the same course. The goal of the approach controller is to get them all lined up at a nice, regular spacing all coming down the same ILS with sufficient spacing that as soon as the preceeding one clears the runway the next one is about to land.
An important thing to know about the system is that even with a filed flight plan and a clearance "as filed", the flight plan does not specify the approach procedure. That bit of critical info isn't known until close to arrival. Usually the last approach controller will tell the pilot "expect the ILS 21" or whatever. The automated weather system may contain that planning information, too, but the pilot is free to ask for something else if he wants it, and he isn't cleared to fly that approach until the words "cleared for ..." come out of the controller's mouth. If communications is lost enroute, the rule is that the pilot can fly any appropriate approach procedure.
The second bit of foo is "steered by a central traffic control". The pilot steers the plane. ATC issues clearances and gives instructions, but the pilot steers. And "center", despite its name, it not a "central control". There are a lot of them, and each "center" (New York Center, for example) is split up into sectors. Since we're currently limiting our context to large commercial passenger aircraft, yes, there will almost certainly be a "center" involved in the flight, but they take over only after the aircraft has gone through the departure controller at the airport, and will hand the flight off to the approach controller for the destination airport (for airports large enough to have their own). For destinations that aren't large enough to have their own approach, or their own control tower, this "central control" will actually cut the aircraft loose to talk on the CTAF (common traffic advisory frequency), so this IFR aircraft on a "unique" flight plan will now have to mix in with all the VFR traffic at the airport, even the student who is up in the pattern practicing landings. See and avoid.
These ATC folk don't make sure there aren't any other planes nearby. Only for IFR traffic (which anything above 10000 feet must be in the US) do they provide traffic separation. They will issue instructions to keep two IFR aircraft apart, but the vertical spacing can be just 1000'. In airspace where VFR flight is permitted, and outside ATC control, it is quite possible for another aircraft to be "nearby" and less than 1000'.
And the final nail? "Thats possible because EVERY plane has to receive instructions from them." It's severe clear outside here this morning. I could drive to the airport and fly off to someplace else where there is commercial service, and the only time I'll have to talk to ATC is when I'm within 5 mi
Re: (Score:2)
It wouldn't be called an auxiliary power unit if it was a battery, it'd be called, you know, a fucking battery. An APU is usually a small gas-turbine-powered generator. That same turbine can also power a hydraulic pump. Many planes also have a wind turbine that can be deployed if you're out of fuel. This turbine IIRC usually drives a generator that can power an electric hydraulic pump, or it includes both a generator and a small hydraulic pump.
Re: (Score:2)
I see no reason why a computer couldn't use visual clues and alternate sensors to detect velocity.. These may have been harder in the past, but certainly possible with today's technology.
Check.
I also see no reason why a computer couldn't visually see broken engines and do an emergency maneuver.
Check.
I also see no reason why a computer couldn't learn from the Hudson landing and be able to do similar maneuvers.
No. We are unlikely to see that before someone comes up with strong A.I.
Re:In the SIMULATOR? (Score:5, Insightful)
A human can get an appreciation of velocity even without working pitot tubes, in a middle of a weather system where GPS doesn't work.
Sorry buddy, you've just killed yourself in exactly the same way the AF pilots killed themselves. Oh the irony. NEXT STUDENT, PLEASE.
Seriously. Your seat-of-the-pants "feel" for a modern jet is precisely what is going to kill you. So let me be clear: if you ever end up as an untrained babbling idiot in a cockpit of a jetliner, trying to save a bunch of souls while the air data is missing, you better keep it straight and level and not mess with anything until you've read the checklists. After you do, and you better be quick about it, you'll know that what you're supposed to do is to set the throttles to a fixed position that depends solely on altitude and desired rate of climb/descent. You'll look those up in a fucking table, and as long as you do, you have a chance to make it. There's going full retard, and it's you.
Re:In the SIMULATOR? (Score:4, Informative)
One of the more frequent causes for a deadly airplane crash is a spatial disorientation of the pilot. The vestibular system is distorted in flight and if the visibility is low, there is no chance for a human to determine the current position in space without instruments.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:In the SIMULATOR? (Score:5, Interesting)
"The flight computer can't handle that yet. I mean, where comes the human's appreciation of velocity from? Well, three sources: Experience (which is just collected data), knowledge of physical relations (that's the easiest thing to program in), and experience from the senses (which is essentially sensor data). Nothing which could not be replicated in software. The point is that the computer would have to be programmed to estimate missing data from one sensor from available data from other sensors (and also simple check routines to estimate the reliability of data; but I guess they are already built in, to know when to give up control to the pilot). The more sensors are available, the better."
The computer is already programmed to use multiple sensors, such as multiple pitot tubes for example. Despite research, pitot tubes are still the most reliable sensors we have for this application, GPS is way too unreliable. And in case of Air France, all 3 pitot tubes froze over, making the flight computer completely blind(And forget about GPS or other radio based navigational aid in the weather they were in, in the region they were in...)
Also, experience is not just collected data. Experience is the knowledge extracted through sifting and analysis of the collected data, and perhaps generalised and abstracted upon also, to possibly be adapted in whole or part to other situations. A rookie trooper that's gone through training has collected lots of data. But the trooper is still completely inexperienced until he or she has been through the real deal, and seen what works, what didn't work, how it worked, and what can be learned from it. Same thing with pilots. To equate a pilots decision making, you'd need a beefy cluster to handle the expert system, image recognition, processing all the sensor data to give better spatial awareness, and recognize for example an improvised landing strip that is suitable.
Re: (Score:2)
Human appreciation is good enough, compared to completely frozen over pitot tubes.
Inertial navigation without input from reliable sensors is useless. If your Inertial navigation systems last received input with a good tailwind, and suddenly you get a strong wind from front and left, but your sensors can't catch that, your Inertial Navigation is worth 0. ATC? Air France Flight 447 was out of range of ATC, and the storm was essentially blocking that anyway. Engine data? Pointless without other data to correla
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
And what if the auto land system (on the ground) is off / not working right then what does the auto airline do?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:In the SIMULATOR? (Score:4, Funny)
Personally, I think we're just a few years away from a fully automatic flying experience.
No, there will always be guild navigators. The spice must flow.
Re:In the SIMULATOR? (Score:5, Funny)
Most future pilots can only dream of training to the level of the famous blue angels (usaf stunt-team),
The Blue Angels are the Navy demonstration team. The USAF demonstration team are called the Thunderbirds.
Having your facts straight may go a long way in not being labeled an ignorant kook for your conspiracy theories. Just saying.
Re:In the SIMULATOR? (Score:5, Informative)
It's kind of expensive to put them in an empty commercial plane just for training. That's why they usually have a more experienced pilot in charge who can take over if necessary. And the argument of having them fly a plane that's not full goes against the "every life is precious" philosophy that most western countries embrace. Sooner or later, they have to make the leap.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:In the SIMULATOR? (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, an Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) need at least 1,500 hours of practical, i.e. non-simulator flying experience before they can become one. A commercial airline pilot (level below ATP), needs at least 250 hours. And that's not to say "... in his lifetime ...", there are even more restrictions.
Yes, they usually do ALSO train in simulators, but the hours required here must be actual plane-flying.
The problem with long-distance flights is though that most of the time there is really nothing to do for pilot once the plane reaches the cruising altitude and auto-pilot is on (even on smaller planes). You have to watch the skies, the instruments, listen to radio - and that's it. Most of the work is done during take-off and landing (approach).
Re: (Score:3)
What really twists my noodle is the knowledge that a new pilot, after completing sim training, fly's a real airliner for the first time on a normal commercial flight with a full load of passengers.
Yeah, but that *new* pilot has several hundred hours of flight time (ie: Commercial pilots license by FAA, PLUS an instrument rating, certifying he's able to fly safely in the soup) in other aircraft before an airline will even talk to him.. He trains for MANY in that full-motion simulator for the type aircraft he will fly for the airline before he ever sits in the right seat (First Officer)....
It goes both ways (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_593 [wikipedia.org]
"Despite the struggles of both pilots to save the aircraft, it was later concluded that if they had just let go of the control column, the autopilot would have automatically taken action to prevent stalling, thus avoiding the accident"
And reading this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulkovo_Aviation_Enterprise_Flight_612 [wikipedia.org]
I'd rather have a computer flying the airplane I am sitting in, than a hairless ape.
Re: (Score:2)
That quote reminded me of Michael Crichton's Airframe. Was he basing it on that crash?
Re:It goes both ways (Score:5, Interesting)
But then you have things like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_1951 [wikipedia.org] in which the autopilot decided that 2000 feet high was a good place to do a landing flare, shortly followed by the expected plummet to the ground.
What you should rather have is the computer flying the plane with a competent human pilot to save the day when something goes wrong (usually with the various sensors the computer it using). But of course, and it's what the article is about, if the plane is almost always under computer control how do you keep the human pilots competent. Since, as you're examples point out and my example points out, incompetent crews make things worse and don't save the day when the computer has issues either.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, it was really not a computer issue, but a broken sensor that, for some reason, was not replaced by the techs on the ground. Garbage in - garbage out.
Re: (Score:2)
Rght, but sensors do break. At which point a human pilot is going to be preferable to a computer using garbage data.
And some failures occur in flight without any chance for service techs to find and fix them, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72 [wikipedia.org]
Usually such failures just result in the autopilot turning itself off and the humans taking over - not really an option if you want to ditch the human pilots altogether.
I'm not disagreeing with the basics though. A computer is much less likely to be
Re: (Score:3)
Nope.
Boeing has since issued a bulletin to remind pilots of all 737 series and BBJ aircraft of the importance of monitoring airspeed and altitude
The pilots were not flying the fucking plane. Aviate first. They didn't. The results are always the same. No blaming computers on that one. Good that only 9 people perished, it could have been much worse.
Re: (Score:2)
Both computers and humans have shownthat they're able to fly planes. Ususally safely, even.
The problem starts when computer and human can't agree on a manouver.
We'd need an independant way to find out who of those two parties is screwing up and give full control to the other one. (Like the redundancy already built into an autopilot and into a pilot - it's called co-pilot there) but if those redundant systems are programmed or trained in a similar way, they tend to have similar failure modes.
Redundancy preve
nt (Score:2)
I love the pro US swing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
For the Air France example, it mentions what model of aircraft was involved, the Airbus A330. For a another flight, it didn't bother mentioning the model of the plane. It was an Airbus model? Googleing reveals it was the Airbus A320-214, with 155 passengers. (For your information, I thought it was a smaller commuter flight with a dozen passengers, which is all the more interest I had in the story when it happened. Does that make me a bad American? Or even a bad citizen of the world?)
Maybe the way it is writ
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In a rare surge of honnesty the Discovery Channel reconstruction of the Hudson miracle concedes that a the fact that the pilot had activated the APU meaning that the advance anti stall protection on the A320 was active clearly contributed to the miracle.
At the time of hitting the water the plane whas flying slower and with a higher angle of attack than a human would safely be able to do...
They're sometimes required to fly on autopilot (Score:5, Informative)
There are a couple of parts of the flight where the pilot is required to use the automation. The biggest is during cruise in what's known as RVSM airspace, where the vertical separation minimums are reduced from what was standard before RVSM was implemented. There, if your autopilot quits, ATC will send you down below the RVSM floor. RVSM is in use above some altitude in the 48 states and on transAtlantic routes. (I don't recall the exact altitude.)
The other is in flying an instrument approach to very low altitudes, known as a category III approach. IIRC, those must be flown on autopilot in order to continue below category III minimums.
There were shitty pilots before automation (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Of course!
usually human action is only neccessary when the machines already failed.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, manual flight much better! (Score:5, Funny)
The Airbus helped (Score:5, Insightful)
This is such great news for son (Score:5, Interesting)
My son is 13 years old and has been training to be a pilot since he was 11. He has taken off and landed a small airplane (with the PIC in the airplane with him, of course) quite a few times. It just goes to show that landing an airplane isn't as difficult as some people think it is ... it just requires focus and passion. Both of which my son has in spades when he's flying an airplane.
This news story struck me as wonderful news. My son has wanted to be a pilot since he was three years old. If you are one of the lucky few (I am not) who knew what he wanted to be for his whole life, then I envy you as much as I envy my son for having a singular great dream. The notion of drones and computerized pilots scares me because it threatens that dream. Stories in which autopilots and drones are slandered make me happy.
Autopilot is like password fill-in (Score:2)
The autopilot failing is like when your computer crashes, and now neither your browser, nor you, remember your passwords.
The Problems (Score:5, Interesting)
- Stop treating us like a factory, each student is different and can they can take longer to learn certain concepts. Fixed length integrated courses don't work if they don't have good margins for this.
- English is the language of aviation. If you bring us cadets who can't speak it, we have to teach them english within your timetable which degrades outcomes.
- Redo the MPL and bring back spinning, hand and feet skills etc.
- Whilst the MPL has a heavy focus on simulators, it needs to be a much bigger part of their renewals and professional development in order to re-enforce what they learnt during early stages of their career and training when they start working.
- Some airlines have poor quality control in their recruitment phases, is susceptible to corruption or have too many "token" cadets. Some people just aren't cut out to be pilots, identify this early not late.
- Airline and safety authority audits are a joke, Standards/QA Manager(s) should be mandatory, I've seen our competitors teach students very bad techniques because of a bad instructor or two and it poisons entire batches of students. Auditing needs to be proactive, integrated into systems and workflows and not just a visit a few times a year. to look through paper records or merely reactive in the case of a safety incident.
Remember, the training doesn't stop when the student is finished their course. Operators and manufacturer (Airbus, I'm looking at you) need to stop treating pilots like bus drivers and focusing only on fuel optimisation.
- This is minor but still important. Shock material. We aren't allowed to show students the imagery of air disasters any more. They can be and usually are gruesome by statistically effective, safety incidents in classes that were shown this material were halved compared to classes that weren't.
This opinion is my own and doesn't reflect that of my employer, doing it anonymously because our media policy prohibits these types of comments. I'd love to hear people's feedback on how training could be furthered improved, it's what gets me up in the morning, trying to fight the system.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, pull over to the side of the highway and type it out.
So, do you think ... (Score:2)
Landing at the wrong airport? (Score:2)
I read the /. piece, then I came across this news item [cnn.com]. Even with automation, how do you land at the wrong airport?
The real problem with the Air France crash (Score:2)
Re:The real problem with the Air France crash (Score:5, Informative)
Disagree (Score:4, Interesting)
Automation and Intelligence (Score:5, Interesting)
First sorry for my English.
Automation work very well in fully tested conditions and bring many advantage in term of safety, cost and comfort. The problem is that the real life is not always contained into the fully tested conditions, and that even with an massive and continuous development effort, this assertion will never be proved false.
The current state of the aircraft operation is that basically the human endorse the full responsibility to engage the automation, monitor his work, disable it in case it is not appropriate, and manually operate the aircraft. This is manly because the today automation level don't include the capabilities to replace the human for those meta-tasks. But there is technically no reason to not includes them, and I believe that the future automation will take this direction. The consequence is that the human will have even less opportunities to operate an aircraft in sustainables conditions and that the remaining out of tested condition case will be so unmanageables situations that only a few exceptional pilots will eventually be able to survive. Until this extreme level of automation is in operation, we will inevitably see pilot error due to untrained operation like in the AF443, like in Kazan a few day ago, like many others accidents...
What is important to understand here is that the concept of "untrained operation" (or not enough) for an human is not so different from the concept of "untested condition" for an automatic system. From the aircraft essential operations like aerodynamic and motors, this make no difference if the action (or inaction) in from a human or from a computer. The point is to how to know what is the good action to do at each time in the operation. The only solution here it to have a very very depth knowledge in a lot of specific fields, a massive quantity of information to choose from, and a very quick reaction time to analyse all of them. Human brain can archive fantastic things from the eyes of others humans, but have still several hug limitations. He is specifically unable to focus on a task for a long time, sensible to external stress, limited in his precision and repeatability, and usually slow and error prone in untrained operation. An automation yield better result for most of those metrics, but is completely unable to handle untrained operations (out of tested conditions).
Did you get the idea ? Having a slow and error prone human trying to resolve untrained operation is better than having only an automation that will do nothing relevant at all. This is what we commonly call intelligence: trying to solve something new. Just a note: while our human body have evolved to integrate some basic survival action generator in case of emergency situation, there are really not effective for an today aircraft operation; don't mix them with the required intelligence. At this stage you maybe feel the problem: Out of the automation tested conditions, automation is for nothing, and human is a mediocre performer, but we have no other choice yet. Having the pilot trained to replace the automation working into tested conditions is not the solution, because the real problem don't lie into the tested conditions, but outside of them.
Now a level higher. Training a pilot on a unexpected situation is a long process. From a very general point of view, you can decompose this process into some basic parts: 1) recognize the situation; 2) select the appropriate action; 3) do the selected action. In practice this is implemented into a written procedure and the pilot train this procedure. What is important to understand here is that this way of training the pilot is to make an unexpected situation managed more by his experience than by his intelligence, because experience is fast, while intelligence is slow. We essentially try to extend the "tested condition" manageable by his brain, much like we can extend the tested condition of an automate. I predict that in the future, the computers will be less limited than the human brain in the extension of the teste
Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you read the summary, you'll notice one of the big problems is when that automation fails. It's great when it removes human error, but if automation fails, you still want human error as minimal as possible... and that means teaching pilots to rely less on automation (which is a very different thing from using less automation).
Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Likewise, the automation is not designed to handle extreme failures of the aircraft. For example, the situation many years ago in Iowa where the hydraulics failed and the pilot had to steer the plane using only the engine throttles is an example of something that no computer system is designed to do. Yet a veteran pilot managed to pull it off.
Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it? (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, the situation many years ago in Iowa where the hydraulics failed and the pilot had to steer the plane using only the engine throttles is an example of something that no computer system is designed to do. Yet a veteran pilot managed to pull it off.
That veteran pilot was a passenger that just happened to be on the plane. 99% of pilots would not have been able to pull it off. So what should we do about that?
Option 1: Train 100,000 pilots on a difficult technique that they will likely never use.
Option 2: Have one programmer sit down with that veteran pilot and code up the technique, test it on a simulator, test it on a real plane, and then use a USB thumb drive to update all flight control software on every plane.
automation is not designed to handle extreme failures of the aircraft.
It should be. One of the lessons of TMI [wikipedia.org] was that automating routine stuff only leads to disaster because operators lose the skills they need to handle emergencies. The "extreme failures" are the first thing that should be automated, because those are the events that pilots are least capable of handling properly. ABS in cars is a good example of this. Nobody needs ABS to slow down for a routine traffic light. But ABSes have saved many lives when drivers slammed on the brakes to avoid a collision, or started slipping on ice.
Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it? (Score:5, Informative)
That veteran pilot was a passenger that just happened to be on the plane. 99% of pilots would not have been able to pull it off. So what should we do about that?
That's not exactly the full crux of what happened. The DC10 had two pilots and one engineer. There was another pilot who happened to be a flight instructor that happened to be a passenger and he went up to the cockpit to assist when the plane lost hydraulics. From my understanding the instructor provided assistance by controlling the throttle but didn't take over. Could the crew have handled themselves? Who knows [wikipedia.org].
Dennis E. Fitch, an off-duty United Airlines DC-10 flight instructor, was seated in the first class section and, noticing the crew were having trouble controlling the airplane, offered his assistance to the flight attendants. Upon being informed that there was a DC-10 instructor on board, Haynes immediately invited him to the cockpit, hoping his instructional knowledge of the aircraft would help them regain control. Upon entering the cockpit and looking at the hydraulic gauges, Fitch determined that the situation was beyond anything he had ever faced. . . Haynes, still trying to fly the airplane with his control column while simultaneously working the throttles, asked Fitch to work the throttles instead.
Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it? (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't have strong AI yet and pilots will never just "sit down with a programmer". Automation has to be tested thousands of times across thousands of scenarios in different aircraft and conditions for decades. Even then, there's always the chance that some snippet of code is waiting to kill a plane full of people because it got the wrong set of sensor inputs.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
More automation already means that the pilots gain less experience, including in unforeseen circumstances. That was exactly what the AF447 crew ran into. The juniors didn't catch on and when the old man finally got back, he didn't gain oversight in time either. A veteran pilot would've been able to pull the thing out of its deathly course, provided he'd known what was going on. Worse, the automation will mean there will be less pilots of such veteran ability around.
So this is a bit of a turning point. More
Re: (Score:2)
What about all those times when a 'veteran pilot' farked up badly and crashed the 'plane?
Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it? (Score:4, Informative)
NASA has actually conducted tests with special flight control software that can fly the aircraft using only differential engine power, even in some cases with an engine inoperative. It performed beautifully, much better than a human pilot could. But this is just one of the many unexpected things that can happen to an airplane (and extremely rare at that). You can't program everything into the systems, you still need basic on the spot common sense surprisingly often. As an airline pilot, I can't tell you how many times I've had to keep the plane's automation from doing something completely stupid because of some malfunction in the software.
People often cite the statistic saying that most accidents are caused by pilot error, but those don't include the huge number of malfunctions of automation that were corrected by the pilots and therefore did NOT end up in the statistics.
Re: (Score:3)
The summary states that the report calls for more manual flying in the air, though. Which means using less automation. This seems like the wrong way to go about it since it gives more chances for human error. It seems to me that the better solution would be more mandatory yearly simulation time with simulations focusing on how to properly handle auto pilot failures. That way, you keep the pilots in practice without making the passengers any less safe.
Re: (Score:2)
If you read the summary, you'll notice one of the big problems is when that automation fails. It's great when it removes human error, but if automation fails, you still want human error as minimal as possible...
When automation fails the humans are supposed to get in radio contact with the ground and reach for the book of checklists. The "Top Gun" style of piloting where they switch off the autopilot and start heaving at the controls really, really doesn't apply outside of the cinema.
Even in the Hudson River incident the passengers might have been better off if the pilot had made it a bit further down the checklist and hit the "ditch switch" to close valves and air vents underneath the aircraft. They're designed to
Re: (Score:3)
Sometimes there are failures that aren't on the checklist. The Gimli glider comes to mind where they ran out of gas at 35000 ft. When the all engines out alarm went off, they reached for the checklist and discovered there was no entry as it wasn't supposed to happen. With all engines out they lost all electrical and hydraulic pressure and were informed that a 777 can't glide. Luckily the captain was an accomplished glider pilot and the co-pilot knew of an abandoned airfield and with luck they landed without
Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Automation fails from time to time, and when it does, pilots are the failsafe. But to be able to do that, they need to stay in practice, and that's the problem being highlighted here: they're getting so little time in control that they're getting out of shape.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not about staying in practice. The problem is much more immediate. In order to interact with any system when you're to be part of the control loop, your brain needs to be preset for control. That means you need to know and feel exactly in what state is the system you're going to take control over. It's very hard to maintain this awareness if you're not actually controlling the process. You need to be ahead of the plane, so to speak.
This very same problem is present in all of man-machine interaction when control tasks are involved. This is the reason, for example, that "taking over" a self-driving car while it is underway is pointless: you need to be pretty much driving the car without actually driving it - so you might as well be the driver without the self-driving brouhaha. Otherwise by the time you figure what's going on, you'll be dead. You can only take over a self-driving car when it's stopped. Even then you'll be quite likely to get lost or to execute a wrong turn/maneouver since you're unlikely to know where you are - unless you're on a road you frequent.
What it really boils down to is something else entirely: people use "common sense" to judge things that they have zero experience with. If you ask "common sense", it would be "cool" to have self-flying planes, self-driving cars, etc. But common sense is precisely the wrong one to make judgment about such things. Reality is quite far from common sense, until you had a chance to experience it just so. The common-sense widely-spread non-specialist thinking about self-controlling systems is usually wildly off-base. Reality is under no obligation to make sense to anyone, so to speak. Thus some things that should be "common-sense-easy" are very far from being so. Self-controlling systems often bring with them a whole lot of extra issues that nobody had any idea of until they've faced them. Aviation industry has only recently went out of automation-related self-denial. 20 years after it was all understood. That's the risk of relying on common sense over facts.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, it is, and this is the reason that the FAA has requirements for pilots to remain current. They're required to execute a minimum number of take-offs and landings. And any training program worth a shit gives them simulator time, and practice with emergency procedures. I haven't sat in the controls in 20+ years, but maybe these guys aren't getting enough practice now.
Your example with a car is irrelevant. Cars are not planes, and you don't have to stop the plane to take over from an auto-pilot.
Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it? (Score:5, Insightful)
What I meant by "it's not about staying in practice" was that the issue with automation has to do with things that happen on a much smaller time scale. It didn't mean that staying in practice is irrelevant. Is is relevant, but you need more than that. Practice demonstrably isn't sufficient in itself.
The only difference between a plane and a car is that the time scales may happen to be two or three orders of magnitude different, if you're lucky. Autopilot disconnect-related CFIT is a classical example of what I'm talking about. By the time the pilot figures out that his idea of what's going on (we're in a safe, controlled flight on autopilot) differs from reality (CFIT-in-progress), it's too late, or there's sufficient panic that has set in that the control responses are not what you've been trained for either (stall recovery, spin recovery, etc.).
It doesn't matter that the pilot has more time to figure it out. They are unaware of their own mental model's divergence from reality. In spite of having been given all that time, they still CFIT because they think they're on autopilot. You'd think this would be pretty obvious, but there's one insidious thing. If you're unaware of it, it will eventually kill you. Your brain's sampling of the state of the environment is highly dependent on how confident one is in their own model's accuracy. If things "feel" like everything is the way you imagine it should be, you'll be tricked by your own brain into "seeing" made-up instrument readings, your sensitivity to increased wind noise will be diminished, etc. I'm dead serious. It takes awareness of this pitfall to be able to force oneself to see how it really is, to make your brain not trick you. When you don't, and you're a pilot, usually a couple hundred people perish with you. This is happening over and over, it's sickening. The reason why it happens with such regularity is that we're dealing with a basic property of our brain's visual interaction with the environment. It's not widely appreciated in nonspecialist circles, unfortunately. We're almost all "broken" like that.
Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Automation fails from time to time, and when it does, pilots are the failsafe. But to be able to do that, they need to stay in practice, and that's the problem being highlighted here: they're getting so little time in control that they're getting out of shape.
Right, build or contract a small fleet of trainers (perhaps twin turboprops or two seaters trainers like PC.7s or Tucanos or even set aside an old 737 or something in that class) and make these people fly their ass off once in a while. I'm sure simulators are great learning tools but there is no substitute for taking a plane up and actually practicing things like: engine restarts, flying on one engine, simulating an emergency descent after a rapid decompression or just boning up on basic aerobatics (the value of practical experience is one of a number of reasons the military hasn't replaced exercises like Maple Flag with simulater-only LAN partys). That should take care of any 'bureaucratification' problems your pilots are suffering from.
Re: (Score:2)
Automation isn't so much to remove possibility for human error, as to stop people getting exhausted from performing a monotonous task. Which may reduce errors, but may actually also cause worse ones if it means you can relax more than usual. Think about using cruise control in your car. It makes highway driving much more pleasant, but it adds a little extra to your response time, since you've removed your feet from the pedals, etc..
Some cars these days have adaptive cruise control that can detect that of co
Re: (Score:2)
It also doesn't help that in some cases the change is rather jarring and the problem has gotten even worse now that the systems are fly by wire.
Re:Pilots are highly overrated (Score:5, Funny)
Well yes, but pilots help make sure they can go back up again.
Re: (Score:2)
exact
As exact as float, or more exact, like double?
Re: (Score:2)
Just require the pilot to demonstrate glider Silver badge proficiency once a year.
http://www.ssa.org/BadgesAndRecords#Silver
Sounds like the AirCanada 767 pilot who landed the "Gimli Glider" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider [wikipedia.org] back in 1983 might have those credentials...
Re: (Score:2)
Can you believe the idiot newscasters actually read that list on the air?
Everyone in that newsroom should have been fired for extreme stupidity.