An interesting blog post re Aviation and technology

[HeadInTheClouds]

Couldn't figure out where to put this but I will stick it here because it is somewhat relevant to learning. I found this post on Ben Sandiland's "Plane Talking" blog on Crikey. In it he includes an extract with a truck drivers perspective on flying and how technology and gadgets in aircraft can be a bad thing.

 

I will post the extract I am talking about here, and the link to the full post at the bottom -

 

Everyone drives. Everyone knows that being on the road is far more dangerous than flying.

 

But how dangerous is it to fly if Pilots have insufficient experience or are poorly trained?

 

I own and drive a 1994 Volvo truck and as well as being an experienced driver, I am a Trade Qualified Diesel Fitter. I am 56 and have driven Coaches, tippers, over-size low loaders, cattle, bricks and tour buses on Fraser Island.

 

I have had a couple of hours in gliders.

 

Guess what! I loved it! But I found out that even though I have a talent for driving big things, I have no talent for flying.

 

So lets go back to what I know most about – trucks.

 

Now trucks used to be really hard to drive, and you needed real ability to be able to do it well. These days it’s not so hard because of the technology that you can buy in them.

 

Like fully automated gearboxes (not like your auto in the car) that have gears but no gearstick. Some still have a clutch pedal that you use to take off and stop but don’t touch while you drive and others have no clutch pedal at all.

 

Like cruise control.

 

Like infrared cameras that show things on a screen long before your headlights reach them.

 

Like forward looking radar that first sounds an alarm if you are approaching something stopped or slower than you and will then bring the truck to a stop before hitting it without any input from the driver.

 

Like side looking radar that sounds an alarm when the turn signal is activated and there is something in the lane beside the truck, possibly in the driver’s blind spot.

 

Like engine computers that make it unnecessary to watch instruments.

 

Like electronic braking systems that match the prime mover with the trailer(s) so well that optimum braking is achieved using only the brake pedal with no need for the separate trailer brake control handle that has always been part of an articulated truck until now.

 

Some new drivers are going straight into trucks like these. Some are well trained and some are not. It is human nature to start to rely on all the gadgets that are there to help you. So what happens if the gadgets fail or the driver finds himself in an older truck that doesn’t have them fitted? If he or she does not have the training and experience to be aware of everything to do with and around their vehicle so that it is kept within it’s and the driver’s performance envelope and react correctly and instinctively in an emergency situation, you have a very dangerous person behind the wheel of what is effectively a truck that is not fully under control the moment it starts to move.

 

I suppose it would be a bit like your A330 disengaging the autopilot then reverting from normal law to alternate law but you can’t figure it out and don’t know how to hand fly the thing at high altitude anyway.

 

“STALL”

 

Ignore that. You can’t stall these. That’s what they told us.

 

“STALL”

 

I’ll just keep pulling the stick back, maybe that will help.

 

“STALL”

 

Why don’t we both pull our side sticks back together. That’s gotta work. We’re not really sure who is supposed to be driving anyway.

 

“STALL”

 

Check the vertical speed indicator! Nah. Can’t trust it anyway.

 

“STALL”

 

What about ground speed? Nah. Can’t trust it either.

 

“STALL”

 

What about the artificial horizon? Nah. Don’t use them.

 

“STALL”

 

What’s going on here?

 

“STALL”

 

We don’t know Captain!

 

CRASH. – with unimaginable horror.

 

That is so ridiculous – it just couldn’t hap……..Oh yeah. AF447.

 

I hope that a look at man/machine interface from a different angle and my little bit of nonsense will help the understanding of those who continue to argue that “World Best Practice” is good enough. Nothing but the absolute best is good enough.

 

How criminal would I be if I chucked the keys of a brand new 700hp Volvo or Mecedes truck with all the gadgets to a kid who just got his semi-trailer licence and sent him to Cairns or Perth and said “Don’t worry. You’ll sort it out in a couple of K’s. You don’t have to do much – just steer it.”

 

I wouldn’t do that with such an expensive piece of equipment ? You’re right! But some do and guess what ? It happens with aeroplanes too.

 

If the two AF447 Pilots had spent perhaps even as little time in gliders as I have, maybe some instinct would have kicked in and all those people would be still alive because in a glider airspeed v altitude is a non- negotiable equation and there aren’t any gadgets.

 

Every professional driver (that means of things that float or fly as well as things with wheels) lives with the constant doubt in their mind of how well they will perform when the “big one” comes along. If you don’t you either don’t know enough to be doing the job or you have become complacent and shouldn’t be doing the job. You learn from every incident and that equips you better for the next one. The name of this phenomenon is experience and there is no substitute for it.

 

I marvel at the clips of landings at the old Hong-Kong Airport and asked someone I know who was still a First Officer before it closed “How the hell DO you land a 747 like that?”

 

He said “It’s easy! You just look out the window and fly the aircraft.”

 

I was amazed!

 

He said “It’s your job. That’s what we do. It’s about the same as you sharing a narrow bridge with a truck going the other way. There are only inches to spare but you know what you are doing.”

 

[/url]http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2012/01/29/a-truck-driver-on-technology-training-and-experience/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I found this to be an interesting piece to read. I guess one thing that we are blessed with in RAA is aviation at it's simplest. I am learning to fly with the use of only two instruments (Excluding engine monitoring gauges here) - the Altimeter and the ASI. No Artificial Horizon, not even a VSI (Not that I use anyway - it is an option on the screen but usually that is left to show only the engine instruments)

 

 

 

Maybe it should be a part of airliner pilots currency checks to go and fly an Ultralight or a glider for an hour or two every 6 months or a year, some already do fly for fun on their days off but I would bet there are some out there who last set foot in a 2 seater aircraft for a CPL test.

 

 

 

 

[Tomo]

Where do you draw the line?

 

I could say I'm annoyed because I'm not a skilful horse and buggy driver because of all this technology... but that would be silly.

 

I purposely chose the RAA way to begin my aviation adventure - not only because it's far cheaper, but because you get to fly aircraft like the Drifter, and you do learn stick and rudder - the fundamentals of flying. I don't think I'd have as much feel for an aircraft if I just went straight into something like a 172, they do literally fly themselves.

 

I've just spent the last three weeks servicing about 28 school buses for a company. Most of them now have auto boxes in them because of the simple fact you can't get drivers to drive a manual, particularly if it's a crash box! I wouldn't say the driver that can only drive an auto box is a worse driver than the one that can handle a crash box. They just posses different skills, the crash box driver would have more 'skills' than the auto driver, but they would both have the fundamental ability to drive the bus safely - one would hope.

 

So what I'm getting at is, technology shouldn't be replaced by 'the' fundamental skill of an operation. It just makes it a lot easier, and in many ways safer.

 

Personally I reckon students training to be an airline pilot, or the syllabus to train such pilots need to have a serious section on BAK, no joke! Not only on paper but in the air. Use the technology but by all means understand the fundamental controls of what you are actually operating.

 

Not sure if that makes sense, but that's just my 2 cents...

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

What a brilliantly-written piece. This bloke could be a major influence for the better in training regimes- and not just for drivers and pilots.

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

So another set of thoughts:-

 

In commercial operations such as airlines everything is about efficiently and economically managing risk. If an event is incredibly likely to occur, and the consequences are unacceptable then clearly you spend effort and $ mitigating it, but only to the extent that it is mitigated, not beyond.

 

While the writter used the AF example the reality is that modern passenger aircraft of the size we are talking have multiple redundant systems configured with oversite computers and embedded voting logic to automatically discount and isolate a failed subsystem within a multi redundant configuration. Now all that said clearly as the AF example showed for a number of reasons the best plans of mice and men dont always work out as expected, however we very well may wait an awful long time time to see a new set of circumstances occur again that again create a similar set of outcomes as the AF example. So, using the commercial approach, the likelihood is way down there, but the impact if it occurs, is way up there, so simplistically its a midsized risk and deserves some mitigation/risk reduction. The key here is to get that mitigation right and not overspend on risk reduction, you may very well be the safest airline if you do, proceeding rapidly into bankruptcy. In the AF example, Airbus will address a fundamental shortcoming in their redundant designs and likely the software will be upgraded to address (medium to long term fix). In the short term Airlines will issue operational instructions to their pilots of that aircraft and /or avionics fit about what to do if the set of circumstances where to reoccur.

 

I agree that simple flying like your talking about cannot hurt, but as Nev has inferred before, the circumstances at FL300 at mach 0.87 are very different to tooling around at 5000ft and 120kts. For example our stall might be 48kts, or at 40% of our cruise speed, where as their stall speed wont be within a bulls roar of 40% of their cruising speed. In fact if you google "coffin corner" and "Air France" you'll see a deal of commentary that said the speed seperating stall from cruise at the altitude the AF was operating at was.........28Kts, yeah seriously!!! thats 28kts at a cruise of 280Kts inidicated or 10%. to bring that back to us, for a cruise of 120kts we would stall at 108kts. You may well be a better pilot than I am but I could see that at altitude on a long X country I could easily have stalled a time or 2 with just that separation.

 

So I understand the sentiment, and cant see any disadvantage to what you say, but really I think he and we are comparing apples with Oranges and deciding they are both bananas.....

 

Andy

 

EDIT: In reading more there are those that claim the 25Kt (28Kt I wrote above) difference between stall and cruise is wrong for the altitude that teh AF aircrfat was at. It may be since I cant find anything else that is more definitive. Needless to say the split is not teh 60% that we have available to us

 

 

[fly_tornado]

The irony of people complaining about intrusion of technology in their lives by posting on the Internets, which is the most intrusive of new technologies.

 

 

[facthunter]

I think your I phone is.

 

The high tech approach that stops the pilot from breaking the aircraft is a concept which occurred because statistically, pilots were causing aircraft to crash. They have tried to engineer out human error.

 

The problem with that is you have to anticipate ALL POSSIBLE situations and combinations of failures. This is obviously a work in progress, but it is driven by economics as well as "safety".. Nev

 

 

[HeadInTheClouds]

I forgot about the seemingly small gap between stall speed and cruise speed that high, and yes it would be bloody hard to fly by hand when you only have a margin of 10 or so knots.

 

Also have to agree that sometimes economics comes first over safety which isn't the best thing to be happening.

 

The whole thing on risks of failures reminds me of the discussion on insurance risks and recalls in the movie 'Fight Club'

 

 

[farri]

I`ve driven machinery most of my life, from sugar cane harvesters to excavators, but no big trucks though, so I`m pleased I`ve read the above posts. If nothing else, I`ve learnt a bit more about big trucks, but it certainly doesn`t make me a big truck driver.

 

For those who don`t know:

 

I learnt to fly on the most basic form of Ultralight aircraft, built my own Chinook, from scratch and went on to run my own AUF/RAA flying school, off my own property, for twelve years. I retired from instructing a few years ago .

 

Off the top of my head I recall having flown nine different types,over the years, ( There are probably more, but it doesn`t matter ), from the Wheeler Scout, CFM Shadow to the Zenith 701, also test flew aircraft for others. Had numerous total engine failures in flight, both solo and dual and I`m still here without a scratch or ever having scratched anyone else. I`ve been around the block several times, so to speak.

 

So! What have I learnt?

 

I believe I had an advantage in flying the types of aircraft, most of us AUF/RAA pilots fly, because when I started flying, I didn`t have any GA training other than the four hrs I did in the Cairns aero club Cessna. That`s all the time it took me to realise it wasn`t the way I wanted to fly.

 

I believe you can`t compare apples to oranges and because I didn`t have any pre-conceived ideas and training in aircraft that I wasn`t going to fly, anyway, it allowed me to learn the skills required in the type of aircraft I did want to fly and in the event of an emergency I wasn`t likely to revert to what was needed in some other aircraft.

 

My point is this!...Though they are both aircraft and obey the same laws of physics, a pilot who flies a Drifter, no matter how much training, in the Drifter, isn`t going to be able to sucessfully fly a 747 and controll it in the event of an emergency!..Nor is it likely, that a 747 pilot,with no Drifter experience, could simply jump into a Drifter and use the skills required to fly a 747 to fly the Drifter. Each pilot requires different skills.

 

I believe that if we want to reduce the accidents,we need to stop trying to make comparisons with any other aircraft and completely focus on the aircraft being flown at the time.

 

Frank.

 

 

[facthunter]

Frank, I think that is important with complex planes but not with simple ones. when I first started instructing I would fly 5 different types in a day sometimes. It was part of the job.

 

In complex aircraft which may take more than a month to convert onto, you try to forget the one you just came off and you normally only fly the one type. or family of related types at any time. This is a safety thing for obvious reasons. You can't stay current on dissimilar aircraft without a chance of reverting to something belonging to the other one.

 

Basically all planes do fly very similarly and people who have flown many types adapt better, but you still have to have the speeds and power settings and know where everything is. Planes all have a different feel and till you are familiar with each one, you won't fly it at your best

 

RAAus type planes do not have standard instrument and panel layout and some are an owner's idea of how it should be. It's obviously necessary to know and be familiar with what does what.

 

RAAus does not have (in theory) a need for a separate endorsement for all different aircraft. You are qualified to fly certain categories of aircraft, and this applies in GA as well, but generally a little common sense prevails and you do a check ride. Nev

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

Well, RAA does in some cases...and not in others. learning weight shift from 3 axis, or vice versa has a defined way of happening supported by RAA, but in other caes such as Jabby to Technam etc there isnt anything defined other than a hopefully accurate sense of self preservation that means that while some will be comfortable doing it themselves without any assistance while others, perhaps more attuned to risk, will seek an hour or 2 of a flying instructor well versed in the new aircraft

 

Andy

 

 

[farri]

Frank, I think that is important with complex planes but not with simple ones. when I first started instructing I would fly 5 different types in a day sometimes. It was part of the job.Nev

Nev, I`m not quite sure what you call " simple ones " but I wouldn`t dispute what you say! I`m sure you have far more experience than I do.

 

Appart from my 4 hours in the Cessna and the spin training I did with Bob Harris in the Decathlon, I`ve only flown AUF/RAA registered aircraft.

 

Aircraft where you set the power, set the attitude then trim so they fly themselves, still don`t appeal to me.

 

If by, simple ones, you mean the category, 95.10, 95.25/55, 101.55 and so on, , then another thing I learnt a long time ago, is, that these simple ones,

 

still cause injuries and fatalities for real, as the more complex ones do.

 

In no way am I sugesting that the RAA implement a different endorsement for each type of AC, What I`m sugesting is that there must be no confusion about what is required to fly RAA aircraft and what is required in the more complex, commercial, aircraft.

 

Maybe I`m completely wrong and I`ll stand being corrected, but I get the impression from a lot of posts I read here, that the refference being made to what occurs with the more complex, commercial aircraft, should in some way, relate to our RAA aircraft operations.

 

Frank.