Automation Addiction

[xchox]

Thought I'd share:

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigation ... 81801.html

[PilotDAR]

Thanks for the link, certainly a concern worthy of consideration.....

[Gino Under]

My sense is that the "experts" are wrong. I would toss the FAA into that basket.
Contrary to some who believe there is an over reliance on automation, I would point out that this is how the aircraft were designed and intended to be flown.
What I would concede is that many pilots don't adequately understand the automation, are not as proficient with it as they should be and try to mask their lack of proficiency with automation behind the cop out of disconnecting BECAUSE they say they need the manual flying practice.
Sorry, but I don't buy into these kinds of news reports and I certainly don't agree with everything published by "the experts".

Gino

[ahramin]

I'm going through that report right now. Nothing particularly new or interesting so far, and certainly no guidance on what the actual problem is or how to fix it.

I recently witnessed an airline's attempt to address the issue by requiring a raw data, manual thrust, manual landing to be conducted in the sim, once the autopilot has got the thing configured for landing and lined up with the LOC and GS of course. Meeting stable approach criteria were obviously not part of the exercise as all approaches are continued to either a touchdown or a crash regardless of how many times the PM calls "Unstable". Instructors had not one word of instruction or constructive criticism for the pilot before, during, or afterwards.

It is obvious that we wouldn't have ended up here if the chief pilots of the world had a handle on the problem. It's also obvious those same chief pilots aren't going to fix it without a complete paradigm shift such as they had at AA in the 1990s.

[frozen solid]

I wonder where the truth lies in all of this. You've got pilots seemingly unable to win a battle of wits with an autopilot, and also, when presented with the same configuration of manual flight controls that have come as standard equipment on aeroplanes since before the great war, are unable to manipulate them with sufficient talent to hit a runway even when they can see out the window on a nice day. On the one hand you've got people who believe that it's the automation's fault, and on the other you've got guys who believe that the aeroplanes in question were never intended to be handled with the manual flight controls, despite said controls having been installed in a relatively prominent place, i.e. right in front of the "pilots", and right under the big front window.

Fascinating.

[Rockie]

My sense is that the "experts" are wrong. I would toss the FAA into that basket.
Contrary to some who believe there is an over reliance on automation, I would point out that this is how the aircraft were designed and intended to be flown.
What I would concede is that many pilots don't adequately understand the automation, are not as proficient with it as they should be and try to mask their lack of proficiency with automation behind the cop out of disconnecting BECAUSE they say they need the manual flying practice.
Sorry, but I don't buy into these kinds of news reports and I certainly don't agree with everything published by "the experts".

Gino

These aircraft are designed to be flown using the automation as much as possible, but they still have manual controls for times when the automation simply is not suitable for the situation. Reasons for that could be the particulars of the airport (terrain, navaids etc), weather, ATC instructions, malfunctions...the list goes on.

It's all about training. A lot of effort must be placed in teaching people what level of automation is appropriate for any given circumstance and how to scale it up or down accordingly. There will always be situations where the most appropriate level of automation is no automation, and pilots have to know where and when to recognize it and quickly make the transition before the flight path of the aircraft degrades to an unacceptable level.

An equal effort must be made developing and preserving the hand flying skills for a particular airplane for the reasons stated above when full automation is either not appropriate or not available.

Unfortunately operators usually provide the minimum amount of training required by law and it is not sufficient in my opinion.

[navajo_jay]

And also judgement. If you use your training + judgement this would be a non-issue. I mean, how many times companies are trying to take our judgment away with so many procedures and SOP and a shit load of crap to know. I am totally for SOP's don't get me wrong, it makes the job easier, but there are some pilots that can't work if the procedure is not written somewhere. Automation is good. It's like the water wings kids are wearing when they swim. It helps you stay afloat when the work load is high. Leaving LGA in IFR condition with no autopilot or doing a YYZ-YWG with no autopilot, I can guarantee you that I'll be a little bit more overloaded. The Asiana crash is a total lack of judgement, not too much automation. When you see you airspeed too low and the A/P not correcting, disconnect the damn thing and hand fly it or use your judgement + training to correct the situation. I think we are becoming scared of making mistakes and we fly with a lawyer on the jumpseat. Anything wrong we make will be against us. One day it'll be we use too much automation, and the next day we hand fly too much and made altitude bust because we were not using the A/P.

my 2 cents

[Big Pistons Forever]

vimeo.com/64502012‎

[CID]

There's nothing wrong with the FAA report but the TV station report is alarmist claptrap. They use the jargon incorrectly and try to come across as an authoritative source that figured it all out months ago.

Like I've said before, context is everything. If the reporters did their jobs they wouldn't have just focused on the causes of accidents, they would have looked in to how automation has made airline travel MUCH safer. Like with any complex systems, yes they will let you down sometimes and crews may be hypnotized by the automation but for modern complex aircraft automation is the answer. Perhaps even MORE automation rather than less. Let's think about where the weak link is. In the Asiana accident, the flight crew seem to have failed to notice the auto-throttle was off.

[Colonel Sanders]

Perhaps even MORE automation rather than less

Would be funny if it weren't so tragic. A solution
resulting in even less proficiency amongst flight
crews, virtually guaranteeing worse results in the
future when all the fancy stuff craps out.

Religion can be so tiresome, sometimes.

Remember, this is coming from a guy who has
spent the last 30 years writing embedded software:



What could possibly go wrong when you have
millions upon millions of lines of source code, with a
hideously complicated user interface designed by a
bunch of non-pilots?

[Rockie]

Perhaps even MORE automation rather than less. Let's think about where the weak link is. In the Asiana accident, the flight crew seem to have failed to notice the auto-throttle was off.

The autothrottle wasn't off, it was in an automatic mode doing exactly what it was designed to do. Among other things the problem was an undertrained, overtasked crew in unfamiliar and dynamic circumstances failing to understand what mode the autothrottle was in and the implications. Throw in some unwillingness to do a go-around due to cultural pressures and voila...you have a disaster on your hands.

More automation wouldn't have helped here. Understanding the automation they had would have.

[Colonel Sanders]

undertrained

Agree 100% except this part. Four-bars had 9000TT
which implies years and years and years of successful
training and tests.

Are you asserting that this 9000TT gold-bars had not
successfully completed his required training and testing?

Do you know that his training and testing records were
faked or altered?

overtasked

ummm ... how many pilots on duty were on-board?
How many were in the cockpit at the time?

[ahramin]

CS, anytime a median airline pilot is required to fly the plane, they're overtasked. Agree about the training issue though. It's the quality of the training that is at issue, not the amount.

[ahramin]

While we're on the Asiana topic, any 777 drivers on here? Airbii have a limitation of 500' in open descent for this reason, many airlines up it to 1000'. Is there a similar limitation on level change in the 777?

[cgzro]

Seems to me the 9000tt includes sleeping on the plane no? Something wrong with that.

Why not keep a separate figure for hand flown hours?

[ahramin]

Just because I'm asleep, doesn't mean I'm not responsible, nor does it mean I'm not in command. There would be no point to keeping such a column, as no one cares. In the unlikely event a company did want to ensure the pilots can indeed fly the airplane, it's a fairly simple test: During a route check, turn the autopilot, autothrust, and flight directors off in the descent through 20 000' and watch the hilarity that ensues.

Besides, I happen to like logging time while sleeping .

[Rockie]

Agree 100% except this part. Four-bars had 9000TTwhich implies years and years and years of successfultraining and tests.Are you asserting that this 9000TT gold-bars had notsuccessfully completed his required training and testing?Do you know that his training and testing records werefaked or altered?

Airplanes have become more complex over the decades and their capability has increased many times. FMS, CAT 2/3, GPWS/EGPWS, TCAS, Low energy go-around, Windshear recovery, RNAV are some of the things that require training by regulation that didn't used to be, yet the regulators have not increased the minimum amount of training hours operators are required to provide. In fact with the advent of AQP the number of hours has actually decreased. So guess what? Operators for the most part only provide the minimum time for training required by law due to cost, so how good and thorough do you think that training is?

Overtasked? Your exposure to aircraft with complex automation and SOP's/training that emphasize it over hand flying is limited so you are not familiar with how a pilot can get behind it. I've only said about a hundred times what a poor job we do teaching people how to timely recognize what level of automation is appropriate given a rapidly changing situation and make the necessary adjustments before flight path control is compromised. It doesn't matter how many people were up front at the time, one guy is flying the plane and cockpit dynamics don't always allow for rapid corrections from the other people. Cultural influences that interfere with a smoothly operating crew also occur as they appear to have done here.

[TheStig]

I think Big Pistons already posted this video, but it's worth the 25 minutes for anyone who flies any aircraft with any level of automation. It's old and grainy, but also the best lecture on automation I've ever seen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0rYX-Jn6o8

[Colonel Sanders]

Rockie: you seem to imply that the 9000TT
gold-bars is deserving of sympathy because
he was incompetent (and knew it) despite years
and years and years of training and testing and
experience.

Apparently, he shouldn't have cashed his paycheque.
But he did. So, he's going to have to take responsibility
for his incompetence.

Enough with the excuses. Maybe he had difficulty
with potty training, too. But other people have figured
out how to hand-fly a Boeing. If they don't want to
learn how, maybe they should find something else
to do, like become a plumber or carpenter.

[Rockie]

Rockie: you seem to imply that the 9000TTgold-bars is deserving of sympathy becausehe was incompetent (and knew it) despite yearsand years and years of training and testing and experience.

No, I'm not implying he deserves sympathy at all. I also don't know if he knew he was incompetent or not and neither do you, you should maybe ask him because I have no idea.

Apparently, he shouldn't have cashed his paycheque. But he did. So, he's going to have to take responsibility for his incompetence.

Perhaps you are not aware of this but pilots do not dictate to their company what training they will or will not receive, so stating that the pilot must take sole responsibility for his competence betrays a misunderstanding of how things are done in the real world.

Enough with the excuses. Maybe he had difficulty with potty training, too. But other people have figured out how to hand-fly a Boeing. If they don't want to learn how, maybe they should find something else to do, like become a plumber or carpenter.

Again placing full responsibility on the individual. I invite you to apply and join an airline, then you can enlighten us with your expertise on airline training with a certain amount of credibility.