![]() ![]() Manual flyingĪre manual flying skills at the forefront of contemporary training courses? (Lars Nissen/Pixabay) Many seem to habitually fail and need to repeat annual checks or underperform in other ways, yet remain employed up to the time of the final fatal crash. These effects do exist, but well-trained instrument-rated IFR pilots are trained to overcome them, recover their ability to think and recover the aircraft.Īnother trend identified in the reports was the employment by some carriers of pilots with a history of poor flying ability. They often cite such effects as startle, surprise and illusions as the causes of the event. We were also concerned that numerous official final accident reports often failed to allocate cause to what were human failings. The rationale was that too many recent accidents, fatal hull losses and Loss of Control (LOC-I) events had a lack of Instrument Flying (IF) ability as a factor. Captain Alex Fisher did much of the data research ( here and here) and its primary argument was that the quality and duration of pilot training could be on an unrecoverable downward spiral. Two years ago I helped to produce an article for AEROSPACE on the topic of “Skill Deficit/ Skill Decay”. You may well be on a path totally at variance with the FAA Circular. If you are a Training Manager at an airline, the Circular may not sit well with your current strategy. A newer breed of pilot may find this quite unnerving. What is ground-breaking about honing one’s skills? Those of us who cut our teeth in the 70s-90s period would not find this out of the ordinary. It suggests and recommends hand flying for most of a flight, in the right conditions. The FAA went on to state something truly ground-breaking pilots should hone these manual skills during revenue operations. Both are essential components with different but complementary skill sets needed. To paraphrase the document it concludes that manual flying skills are paramount for flight safety, that automation requires more training, not less, and that it is not a binary choice between manual and automated flight. The FAA recently published Aviation Circular Flight Path Management, in which it has clearly stated the importance of pilots having the skills to fly the plane when the automation fails. Recently the US FAA has voiced what appears to be a complete shift in attitude towards the balance between automation and manual handling of airliners. Qatar flight QR161 entered a dive shortly after departing from Doha on 10 January (Flight Radar 24) However, there was already a concern among many in the aviation industry that the ‘holes’ in the ‘Swiss Cheese’ (James Reason) model are coming into alignment too often – and only this week the FAA launched a safety review in response to recent ‘close calls’ in commercial aviation.Ĭan some of these incidents be linked to a much-discussed decline in manual handling skills among pilots? An unprecedented shift in view? We make no judgement on those particular cases. These incidents may or may not result in public reports but given the publicity surrounding them, it seems a good time to review the whole area of human factors and accident reporting. Each had the potential for the loss of hundreds of lives. In two alleged separate incidents in December and January large widebody aircraft from United Airlines and Qatar Airlines are reported to have come within 800ft of crashing into the water following take-off. Coincidentally, as this piece was being put together, there have been at least two reported (and yet to be fully investigated) major near-misses recorded in commercial aviation in the space of the past few weeks. Captains JOHN LEAHY FRAeS and ALEX FISHER provide the background to this ground-breaking shift. After increasing evidence of a decline in manual handling skills in airline pilots, the US FAA has now recommended that airlines should allow pilots to hand-fly during normal operations whenever possible. ![]()
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