A dangerous over reliance on automation

[Arturo Carvajal]

Dear pilots:

First Happy new year.

I copy forward one article I hope you will find interesting.

By Rob Schapiro
December 30, 2014
It is now evident that the fate of Air Asia 8501 is that it is at the bottom of the ocean after losing controllability at high altitude in heavy thunderstorm activity.
Fair enough, except none of those things should have made the least difference to a safe landing. Pilots encounter thunderstorms every day worldwide. It’s a routine part of the job. So why did this one make a difference?
The problem is not the thunderstorms but with modern aviation practices.
As a retired high time international airline pilot, I feel qualified to give you a look at the practices in an airliner cockpit.
A professional pilot always expects things to go wrong. Nothing is normally taken for granted in the cockpit. The fact that a flyer flips a switch is no guarantee that the selected system is going to operate. Everything a pilot does in the cockpit is checked, crosschecked by the other pilots and then monitored by all to confirm it’s indeed working -- but it is never just assumed to be working. That’s called good airmanship.
A dangerous over reliance on automation and subsequent degradation of pilot hand-flying skills has led to a change in the traditional pilot mindset. Pilots now assume everything selected will function and if it doesn’t, the computers will warn them or take care of it.
Is this a unique Asian airline problem that has no bearing on American or European carriers?
Unfortunately not. Air Asia pilots have precisely the same training and skill requirements as any other airline in the world. What happened to them can happen to any other operator. And has happened.
The degradation of flying skills is endemic throughout the airline industry.
The sad fact is professional airline pilots struggle to achieve what private pilots do happily every day -- which is to maneuver confidently and smoothly, approach and land their machines by using hand flying skills that come only from regular practice.
Instead a modern airline pilot pushes buttons that program and operate the complex auto systems which actually fly the jets for them.
Why should the public care about this?
Because despite the fantastic advances in avionics and autopilot technology, nothing can cope like a well trained pilot when things go wrong, plans change unexpectedly or equipment fails. A pilot can think ahead and anticipate what’s coming unlike a machine that can only react. A pilot who is familiar with his machine’s idiosyncrasies can fly safely in conditions that auto flight struggles with such as a visual approach with no electronic aids.
That’s why you will never get to be a passenger in a pilotless drone. Drones have a high loss rate for a good reason. They get to the end of their programming and it’s all over. Drones can’t think or operate beyond that point. Pilots can.
But it takes practice. Flying is not like riding a bicycle. You need to practice constantly to maintain a high level of competence. The less you hand fly, the less familiar you become with the handling characteristics or feel of your aircraft. You lose the feel for your jet and hand flying becomes an unpleasant, chunky experience which pilots prefer to avoid.
So why did airline pilots stop actually flying their machines?
As avionic technology improved and became more reliable, it offered the industry a less stressful cockpit environment with higher flying accuracy that was not dependent on personal piloting skills. Thus the need to maintain hand flying skills became less important and began to take a back seat compared to computer operating competence, which was now seen as the primary way to fly in the intense electronic environment of a modern airliner. The ability to hand fly beyond a certain point was seen as an anachronism, like round dials and flight engineers.
What was not fully appreciated was that the unique cognitive and intuitive ability of humans would also be lost by relegating pilots to feeding instructions to an autopilot. Instead of using those unique human skills and senses (a pilot’s feel for his machine) to warn them something is amiss, pilots now defer to the autopilot program which they regard as infallible and often allow it to continue doing something they are uncomfortable with.
Air Asia, Asiana, Air France and other recent crashes are proof of this trend of blind faith in the autosystem.
The public needs to understand aviation has taken a wrong turn.
Flying safety depends on two interdependent arms. Technical excellence and the special cognitive ability and skill unique to humans. But one arm has been shortened by not allowing pilots to constantly practice hand flying and thereby removing the vital feel a pilot should have for his machine.
This is a bad mistake.
It is not good enough for pilots to be excellent programmers. We need both autoflight and high pilot skill for safety and the public should demand their airline pilots have both. Airline pilots must regain the feel that pilots should have for their aircraft. They must be confident in their ability to remove the autopilot in any flight phase when they might feel uncomfortable with its performance or don’t understand what it is doing. That takes regular hand flying practice. It will also stop the current trend of using autoflight for operations where a pilot is the better option such as a visual approach.
It is surprisingly easy to achieve this. Weather conditions permitting, a pilot should hand fly the jet from take-off to 10,000 feet on departures and from 10,000 feet to landing at least twice a month.
This will be enough to maintain a satisfactory level of hand flying.
Rob Schapiro is a retired 747 airline Captain with 34 years military / civil aviation experience.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles ... learn.html

[Rafael Fonseca]

Great article, Arturo. Thanks for posting it!

[Theodore Martin]

Thanks for posting Arturo, this is very timely. I was totally surprised when I saw the investigative results for the Air France flight that went down in the ocean. It was astounding to find that the co-pilot actually stalled the a/c at 30,000+ ft. because he kept raising the nose trying to gain altitude without keeping tabs on his speed. Yes, there was an icing problem with the pitot tube but per the manufacturer that would automatically clean in 10mins.

[Norberto Rivera]

So this brings up an interesting question for our real world airline drivers here: How often do you get to flip the off switch on Otto and hand fly the airplane and for how long? The article sounded a lot like an old timer whining about automation but he does have a valid point in regards to hand flying the airplane for a significant amount of time ad often as possible.

[Michael Blakely]

I have to trains of thought on this. As a non-pilot, I admit my knowledge is limited.

1. The article generalizes a bit because I think it's intent is to sway the opinion of influential laymen to provide more training and hand flying time per airline pilot, which costs money. He repeatedly states the need to hand fly frequently to build the, "vital feel a pilot should have for his machine". However, when I look at Air France, the issue was a dark night with no external visual references. I think flying by feel was part of the problem in that accident. I would rather see pilots get more simulation time on how to handle emergency produces they are unlikely to experience in routine hand flying.

2. The arguments on hand flying vs. autopilot go back to the 1940s. I read a great book last year called Digital Apollo by David A. Mindell about the history of autopilots and the engineering that occurred to design what gets done by pilots and what gets done by control systems. The book culminated in an analysis and description of the Apollo moon landings, the systems, and how they performed. I imagine pilots will always want to hand fly because it's in their nature, but autopilots and control systems will allow the "system" that includes both pilot and aircraft, to perform better. Jetliner fuel economy in cruise can be better, unstable yet highly maneuverable aircraft (i.e. F-117, F-22) can be maintained in stable flight due to extremely rapid control surface inputs, and large control surfaces on large aircraft that would be too hard for a man to move with cables can be moved with actuators.

[Greg Gemelli]

There is probably overuse/reliance on automation in aviation. It's not however, the downward spiral of safety in the industry as this article seems to claim. The reality is that each year there are more safely conducted flights (commercial, military or GA) than the year before....this is the direct result of technology and automation. Yes, hand flying skills are important but saying that a lack of them sealed the doom of the crew and passengers of flight 8501 is simply arrogant at this point in the investigation. The writer is implying that if this crew had his skills they would have landed safely when the writer has no idea yet what the root cause of the problems that crew had that lead to the crash were... So yes, pretty arrogant. That said I understand the inspiration behind what Ret. Capt Schapiro is saying and I completely agree that it's important for every pilot to remain comfortable flying without automation.

How often do you get to flip the off switch on Otto and hand fly the airplane and for how long?

At SkyWest we can hand fly below FL200. The FAA requires the AP to be engaged above FL280 in RVSM airspace. Interesting, since it applies to this conversation. Yesterday on a quick flight from SEA-PDX (PDX fogged in vis 1/16, RVR RWY10R 1200) we had to fly a CAT II ILS. My leg and once established on the approach the autopilot was over-correcting to stay on the LOC and I made the call to hand fly it. Our company procedure for CAT II approached basically just falls short of mandating autopilot...we can hand fly them but it's highly recommended that we don't and for good reason. When the autopilot is functioning properly it's way better at flying to a 100ft minimum in the fog than I am.

I have more to add but will have to in a bit....

[Greg Gemelli]

Anyway...continuing from my last post. Yesterday's hand flown CAT II was out of the ordinary and in that sort of scenario a riskier choice. It was a completely safe choice but one that was made understanding the additional risk after both the Captain and I agreed it was the best option. Everything in aviation is about risk management and in my opinion the autopilot is an extremely valuable tool. The issue is, as previously mentioned, over reliance in automation. So yes, pilots should hand fly but when should they do it? How much unnecessary risk do you want the pilot flying you and your family to accept practicing their hand flying skills? On a VFR blue and a million day I hand fly a lot. I'll often do it without a flight director (raw data). On a IFR day when the workload is exponentially higher I use the autopilot. That allows me to take a step back and be more focused on safe operation.

I agree with Mike that the simulator is a great tool for training crews in the handling of emergency scenarios and I have seen large shift to this style of training at my airline. We now are faced with real world scenarios that are dynamic when involved in our training sessions. This is a far better way to prepare crews for dealing with real emergencies.

Finally regarding the Air France accident. I will challenge you all with a question. The pitot tubes provide air data that is used for determining airspeed. When your pitot tube(s) freeze you loose the source of air data that is providing your aircraft with airspeed information. So initially your airspeed indicator drops significantly as a result of the blockage; it may even drop to 0. So when this happened the autopilot of the Air France A330 disconnected, which it should do when it sees the onset of a stall. Ok, so how will you recover from a stall? Pretty simple, lower the nose, regain airspeed/airflow over the wings ... elementary stuff right. Now we know from the data collected post accident that the A330 had stalled and was dropping out of the sky so why was it so hard for an experienced crew to not respond correctly to recover from the stall and prevent the accident?

So the question I challenge you with is this. What would happen to a failed airspeed indicator (due to pitot icing) as a plane rapidly fell from the sky in a stall?

[Norberto Rivera]

...
So the question I challenge you with is this. What would happen to a failed airspeed indicator (due to pitot icing) as a plane rapidly fell from the sky in a stall?

Part of me wants to say that as the aircraft descends into warmer air it will thaw out and start working again. The other part of me wants to say that your fourth point of contact should be giving you plenty of clues as to what is happening and you have bigger issues to deal with that rank higher than not knowing your airspeed. Then again, I'm not a real pilot so...

[Theodore Martin]

.....

So the question I challenge you with is this. What would happen to a failed airspeed indicator (due to pitot icing) as a plane rapidly fell from the sky in a stall?

According to the investigative documentary the issue with the pitot tube would be cleared up withing 10min by the a/c itself (heaters or whatever...). Also they indicated the autopilot shut off due to incorrect speed reading and not because the plane was already in a stall. My issue with the pilots is that even though the speed indication was incorrect the HSI would have still be working so they can determine when they are level. Also pilot training tells you if your speed is decreasing you can't keep commanding nose up. This is what I didn't understand about the co-pilot.

However, as Bert so aptly mentions, he and I are not RW pilots so we are just doing Monday morning, armchair criticism.

[Greg Gemelli]

According to the investigative documentary the issue with the pitot tube would be cleared up withing 10min by the a/c itself (heaters or whatever...)

I'm not familiar with the pitot systems/redundancies on the A330 but lets say it takes 8 min to thaw the frozen pitot tubes. An aircraft the size of an A330 in a full stall will be dropping in excess of 5000 ft per min... if it took the full 10 mins thats 50,000 ft of altitude potentially lost.

Also they indicated the autopilot shut off due to incorrect speed reading and not because the plane was already in a stall.

This a common safety feature in many autopilots. It senses the rapid reduction in airspeed or error in airspeed and the autopilot disconnects

Also pilot training tells you if your speed is decreasing you can't keep commanding nose up

absolutely true...but what if your airspeed is indicating that it IS increasing?

So this leads us back to the question I asked and the answer that is a bit insidious.

What would happen to a failed airspeed indicator (due to pitot icing) as a plane rapidly fell from the sky in a stall?

So a pitot tube is simply a pressure measuring device. As you speed up, pressure increases which creates a positive trend on your airspeed indicator and as you slow down pressure decreases which give you a negative trend on your airspeed indicator.

Ok so if you are flying at say.. 35,000ft and your pitot tube freezes, the air inside the tube will become trapped ...basically sealed in by the ice. Now you are stalled and descending rapidly... air pressure decreases with altitude so as you are falling from the sky the relative air pressure is increasing... this includes the air trapped inside your pitot tube. So as the air trapped expands, it's pressure increases and this causes you airspeed indicator to read an increase in airspeed... the more you descend, the more the pressure trapped in the tube increases and you air speed indicator will continue to increase.

Basically they had instruments lying to them. Telling them they had airspeed when they had none.

Ted you are right about the HSI giving them valuable information and it possibly could have saved them. Failed instruments on a dark stormy night are every pilots nightmare.

Cheers

[Theodore Martin]

Greg,
Thanks for the detail explanations some of which I had not considered. That's why we have you around.