Posted on 12/30/2014 4:04:22 PM PST by Col. Bob
It is becoming clear that the probable 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.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/12/air_asia_8501_when_will_we_learn.html#ixzz3NQdAA2PI Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/12/air_asia_8501_when_will_we_learn.html#ixzz3NQcrOqw5 Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
With reliance on automation, flying is becoming a lost art, a skill we can't afford to lose.
The Airbus is an advanced fly by wire system. There were some scary stories about BSOD’s on Airbus planes some years ago, IIRC.
Maybe even by raw odds it is as safe as other aircraft. But there is not going to be any way to physically wrestle it down if the systems give up the ghost.
It reminds us that nothing made by man in this mortal coil is foolproof.
Im a dispatcher and every year at CRM we have it drilled into us: when something goes wrong remember the four rules; 1. Fly the Airplane 2.Fly the Airplane 3.Fly the Airplane 4. Fly the Airplane..
I’m not a pilot but I’ve had plenty of right seat time in single and dual engine a/c and worked for a company with a major presence in avionics, so I concur 100% with all of your comments. Despite the tightest software quality and testing standards, the modern commercial airliner is “everything-by-wire” and there’s always the potential that erroneous information can be presented and bad decisions made based upon it. That’s why primary systems and basic skills must still be required, and practiced.
I heard a bunch of mambling about pitot tubes on Fox News the other day, the reporter making it sound like if a pitot tube heater failed the aircraft would fall out of the sky because the pilot wouldn’t know how fast he was going. Once the ADS-B mandate kicks in, anyone with a computer and $20 worth of hardware can tell how fast an aircraft is going, and lots more.
I have been told (I am a 3 million mile flier) that pilots much prefer to manually tale off and land and autopilot versions of either are rare to non-existent.
Have I heard wrong?
“With reliance on automation, flying is becoming a lost art, a skill we can’t afford to lose.”
Yes, indeed - I have heard several old-timer pilots say much the same. And, I submit the same is true in other fields - such as an over reliance on computer models for scientific and medical procedures, navigation at sea, and on and on.
Go into the HS classroom where they no longer learn multiplication tables, no longer prove geometry theorems, no longer do long division, etc.
When a football team has a bad game what does the coach do?? He goes back to the basics of blocking, tackling, and...
Have I heard wrong?
Can't answer the question. But I can claim a part of history.
In 1965, I believe it was, I flew from Cincinnati to New York (JFK) on TWA, in a Convair 880 jetliner.
After landing at JFK, the pilot advised us we had just participated in the first "hands-off" landing in commercial airlines history.
Well, it’s a bit early to be drawing the conclusion that some sort of turbulence induced loss of autopilot control authority is the root cause, but considering recent history it’s clearly a serious candidate.
Or he could have encountered a cell that saturated his engines to the extent of inducing combuster flameout and surge similar to the old Southern Airways accident (1977).
Or encountered significant vertical up/downdrafts leading to high inlet distortion and a concomittant surge.
Or encountered severe turbulence leading to actual load bearing structural failure, and probably control surface failure.
Or the Bugaboo of the Airbus, the infamous frozen pitot problem with the non-working pitot heater...but don’t know that this unique situation would replicate. But they did fly into the ITCZ (the “Zeke” as it’s called in South America), and this guy looks like he headed into something equally ugly...not intentionally.
Just throwing a few out there....and yeah, I agree people should hand fly more often than not too.
When he was denied permission to change altitude he should have turned back. But your being a dispatcher know how that would screw up your scheduling ....
We only have to look at the crash as SFO involving Asiana Airlines Flight 214. It looks like a lot of pilots who come from countries without active aviation, but who choose career as a pilot without having ever flown an aircraft, have a low level of basic airmanship. They seem to be appliance operators and company procedure manual followers rather than pilots.
Another factor is there is a similar issue with people who go to work at regulator agencies and aircraft systems companies. This is the mentality of the Airbus “normal law” system.
Same with cars.
From what I understand most airline pilots take off and land manually but 98% of the flight is by autopilot. I think these days they have more taxi time to and from the runway then actual flight time...when I read an airline pilot had 5,000 flight hours I’m not that impressed anymore.
high time international airline pilot,
I had to think twice about what he really meant....
I have no idea. But neither does the author of this article.
About landings, always assume something is going to go wrong and you will have to go around, landing on the first attempt is pleasant surprise.
"Tower: landing checklist complete, gear down and locked, ready for the go around"
Wait. Do we actually know WHY this plan went down, or is the author making a gross assumption that it is due to the assumptions of working systems by the pilot and crew?
I’ve been busy the past few days, so I might have missed it, but I was under the impression that we still don’t know the cause of the crash. If that is still true, this author is an ass to write such an assuming article about modern pilots making assumptions.
What does fly by wire mean?
I’ll bet a nickel that the pilot had a better understanding of the weather than the controller and that collision avoidance stuff would have dealt with the request for a change of path. Sad.
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