Aircraft Automation vs the Airline Pilot

A question has been asked in recent years " Can your pilot really fly your plane?". As insulting as this is to the great majority of airline pilots immediately, it does seem to be somewhat validated by recent airline accidents.  There is no denying that the modern day airliner is a technological marvel with levels of automation that are getting more complex all the time. While the intent is to make the pilots job easier and to alleviate workload on the flight crew it may be true that the complexity may actually increase it.

It can not be argued that today's automation has made life easier for us airline pilots. Today's modern systems monitor all aspects of the flight and bring our attention to anything that maybe required. They allow us to have a greater "situational awareness" by flying the aircraft for us to different degrees by various levels of automation. It has been seen, however, that pilots struggle with not only changing levels of automation but also how the aircraft responds in each level or mode. Two recent accidents have highlighted this issue, Air France 447, and Asiana 214.

Air France 447 has been widely discussed in the aviation industry as an example of "automation overload". After entering into icing conditions, loosing airspeed indications and subsequent auto thrust failure the pilots 

were unable to control the aircraft and eventually entered into an unrecoverable stall. Cockpit voice recorder transcripts chilling described how these pilots "battled" with trying to come to grips with their situation. 

In a more recent incident, Asiana 214 it is highly suspected that once again pilots struggled with reducing their level of automation. Although the investigation is not complete in the Asiana 214 accident in SFO there is high speculation that the pilots became confused with how the auto thrust would respond in the mode they were flying. After getting high on a visual approach (ILS not operational), the crew needed to increase their descent and turned off the autopilot. While attempting to stabilize the aircraft on the correct descent profile they for some reason neglected to notice a decay in airspeed. The big question is how experienced pilots flying  ultra modern aircraft could make mistakes like this?

It is my humble opinion that the answer to this question is a lack of training. Gone are the old days of  "after you can build it then you can fly it". A time when pilots had to know their aircraft and it"s systems intimately. Airlines today treat training as a unit cost measure. They want to get pilots trained as quickly as possible and for as cheap as possible. They cover the MOT,FAA.JAR minimums and not much more. There is very little time for pilots to just "fly" the airplane both with autopilot on and off in the simulator. Thankfully this concern seems to be gaining some traction. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal focused on this very topic and mentioned that the FAA was looking at mandating airlines to conduct this type of training. Hopefully the MOT in Canada and JAR in Europe follow suit.

The Real Value of CRM Training

Like most airline pilots I attend our yearly mandated CRM training with a bit of scepticism. We all meet in a room and watch our yearly security video followed by a less than challenging quiz that is corrected to 100% anyway. After that, it is the usual barrage of table exercises with  constant references to CRM skills and Jame's Reasons ( Swiss Cheese) Model. Everyone knows those key words (communication, situational awareness, etc) to throw out in order to keep the class on the rails so we make it to lunch on time. Like many I have wondered if this is training or just govt. mandated forced participation? Are we really learning and enhancing our skills or just patiently letting this info flow in one ear and right out the other as we wait for the day to end?

Well today I received my answer. Just after take off with a fully loaded Boeing 767 bound for Asia we experienced a problem with the aircraft fuel system. Given the fact this happened during a critical stage of flight and we were in no immediate danger the aircraft was cleaned up and safely climbing out before we addressed our fuel problem. Since I was the pilot flying I asked for the autopilot to be engaged, informed the other pilots (there were 3 of us on this flight) that " I had ATC" and called for the pertinent checklist. I asked ATC if we could level off at 10.000' because we were quite sure that we would be returning back. By the time I had the aircraft level at 10,000' our third pilot had the diversion checklist out, VHF #2 tuned to company dispatch, and the ATIS for our return. As the Captain talked with dispatch and maintenance control again the third pilot had all the pertinent info written down that they would require.

While we continued to work through our fuel system issue our flight attendants waited patiently strapped to their seats in the cabin. After we had all the checklists complete and confirmed with company dispatch that we would have to return the Captain then called our Service Director in the cabin. The Service Director indicted that he assumed we had some type of issue and had already began thinking of considerations in the cabin. After passing on the details to him as well as our estimated time of landing he quickly sprang into action to inform the rest of his crew and prepare the cabin.

While the Captain was briefing the Service Director and I continued to fly and get a clearance back to our departure airport ,again our third pilot jumped into action . Due to the fact that we were now faced with an overweight landing, he had calculated our landing distance, missed approach single engine performance limitation and had the approach nav aids tuned. Since this was complete, we loaded the arrival and approach in the FMS and briefed the approach. Before we began our descent we "brain stormed" between the three of us for considerations we could think of  such as rate of descent, touchdown, braking etc. After this was complete we then flew an uneventful approach and landing.

Although this was a minor issue with our aircraft today, it reinforced to me anyway, the importance of the yearly training we attend. Our crew today worked "as one" in our situation.  There was no talking over each other, no need to tell anyone what they needed to do, as each of us just reacted instinctively to our training. In this pilots view, the smoothness of our short flight today was a direct result of the training we have received yearly at our airline. Some may feel that the training we do is only to prepare us for that dire emergency someday, however, this is not true. The real purpose of this training is to install in us a foundation of skill. Skills that we can rely on not just in a dire emergency but in fact any time we are faced with some type of non normal situation.  Maybe this is something we can all consider next time we are in our yearly CRM training.