By John Wyman, EAA 462533, Chapter 266, Montreal
There is a dynamic to two people working in a cockpit. For a long time now, the modern airliner has only had two crew members. Days gone by it had three or four. Today, on a wide-body airliner, the CARs (regs) stipulate when a third or fourth pilot may be required — especially on long oceanic flights. People most often ask me what the difference is between the co-pilot and captain. It drives me nuts. We are both there to fly the airplane. The captain has the ultimate responsibility for the aircraft and crew — just like a ship. I guess their definition comes first and foremost from the idea that flying an airplane is only carried out by one individual or another. It’s to be expected. They are likely asking themselves (and then me), “You can’t possibly be flying the airplane if the other one is flying… can you?” It seems that they don’t realize it is a team approach and that two are much better than one. Each one is a check valve to the other’s actions, and they work together. Or it could be that they’ve only been fed this out of Hollywood if their notion comes from Denzel Washington, in the movie Flight, taking a good whiff of oxygen to wake him up from the night before when he was on a bender! Whatever the reasons are for the misconceptions of the role, they don’t stop there.
I think what shocks me the most is how they have the impression that the computers are running the show and that the pilots are just along for the ride. If you want to think of anything as automated, then you could say that we are the robots who call the shots, and we’re programmed from day one to ensure that the flight goes smoothly. The automation of the cockpit (its computers, GPS, FADECs, and a host of other bells and whistles) are there primarily to make our jobs easier, but in no way does that detract from our responsibility to safely fly the airplane. We actually have to intervene all the time while flying the aircraft through its automated controls (or manually) to make it do what we want it to do. This is often to accommodate controllers, avoid weather, or just ensure that a stable flight path is flown. Even the fanciest of computers can’t compensate quickly enough to achieve a stable flight path if the pilot doesn’t stay ahead of the machine. This is, of course, before anything goes wrong. The tide can quickly turn if the pilot’s reaction rates are slow, or, believe it or not, too fast. Reacting too quickly can cause problems too.
Like anyone else, pilots are forced to adapt to change over time. Overall, accident rates since the late ‘70s have lowered, but there’s still dramatic loss of control event(s) every few years. We pause and shake our heads when a large turbo prop spins into the ground from 17,000 feet. How can that happen? What went wrong, and why didn’t they recover? That was recently caught on film near Sao Paulo, Brazil. I won’t delve into the details here, but that will certainly be an accident report worth reading. Some say that icing may have been a factor. The final report should get to the bottom of what really happened. If it was ice, they didn’t get out of it fast enough. You can’t be oblivious to it. It’s a killer.
Automation (and the computers and tablets storing that data) are good working tools, but they aren’t the ultimate answer to safer flying. I believe, in fact, that the opposite is true. An over-reliance on them can cause accidents, too. We’ve recently tried to move towards paperless cockpits. I can see that was a money-saving initiative from the bean counters in the office, but I don’t see how it makes it easier to manage a cockpit. They are slightly less cluttered, but we are now focusing a lot of our energies on jumping from screen to screen to get a checklist that could just as easily be on our clipboards or at the ready by our sides. Long and heavy former documents are neatly tucked away in an iPad database, and our backsides are no longer bent from carrying around a ton of manuals, but the number of finger manipulations to accessing a screen has taken a lot of our attention off the dials and looking outside. We are, however, more dependent than ever, to find the info, via a medium that is more suited to an office than it is to a flight deck. Our ground school training is now done with computer based training (CBT). There isn’t much interaction there. You can skip to the next slide. The computer won’t tell you what was behind the newer technology that replaced the old. A human can do that. Who do you direct your question to about the module when you don’t understand something? Oh, I forgot; you’d better write the training department about that and send it off in an email! Good luck trying to get a prompt answer on the phone. Our old performance charts have been replaced with software, too. It is easy-peasy now. Enter some information and out pops an answer. The iPad tells us if the airplane can land within the confines of the runway — not the pilot’s gut feeling if he’s up to the task that day; besides the fact that he barely slept the night before. In other words, we are left with drawing the line between what’s acceptable and what isn’t based on a piece of software — over and above what we already know is right or wrong. Technology has a huge influence over how we finally make a decision. If we get overly dependent on it, then the day it isn’t there we could be in for more trouble than we can handle.
Art: BNP 1124 John — Cessna 140 panel.jpg Caption: Our Cessna 140 panel. There isn’t much that can fail here! It is VFR equipped for a VFR airplane. The horizon is 4 inches above the top of the dash — that’s the “which way is up” reference. It was designed to teach the basics and keep you honest. You can’t really see it in the picture, but there actually is an ultra-small mixture control that works — a rarity for the type!
I suppose my point here is that along the way of change, we lose the ability to think for ourselves. I don’t feel changed, but I can see it affecting the next generation of pilots who are expected to handle an emergency (especially one that hasn’t been covered in training), when you know what hits the fan. Like our smartphones, which easily access information at our fingertips (as long as we have a connection) — we can only process it if it’s there. Try getting across the border now without a telephone and eAPIS? Again, good luck! Our airplanes used to navigate with independent onboard navigation, and they still do, in part, but now it’s more and more GPS driven to lower tolerances on approaches — why? Because that’s “progress” and it’s there. But the day it isn’t there, will the resilience to cope with a navigation problem (or any problem) be there? Hopefully common sense and independent thought will still be around to save the day.
You can probably see where I am going with all of this, and the next line will be hamming it up a bit. The film company Pixar best illustrates what I am getting at with the film WALL-E. In it, there is an overly incompetent captain of a spaceship who can’t carry out his functions without the aid of consulting the ship’s computer when he’s tasked to make a decision — any decision! It wasn’t his fault. Over time, traveling through space, the people on that space ark became over dependent on the ships onboard technology. This is kind of where we are going as a society, as a whole. We are given a book (or, in the case of an airplane, a tablet, a checklist, or SOP) and are expected to follow it to a “T”, yet when something happens that isn’t covered, we are still expected to creatively solve the problem. Unfortunately, because of that automation and over-reliance on the technology (that is ever present), our creativity has been lost, so it is a bit harder to think of a solution.
At a practical level, I think that the introduction of all-encompassing engine monitors and FADEC systems detract from a pilot’s overall knowledge to run his/her own show. If an engine is made to drive around like a Tesla, then how does that give a pilot a solid understanding of how his aircraft operates? New aircraft, like the diesel-powered Piper Archer that my wife just ferried to India, have FADECs in them that essentially make the throttles go or stop levers. These are now being used in schools. What does that teach? Should we be using the same technology that the students will use later in their careers to teach the basics? If so, are they learning more, or are they really learning less (overall) from day one? A young first officer I was flying with recently said that many new pilots entering the business are anxious to skip their formative years with the air taxi and CAR 705 carriers altogether (the small twin and turbo prop airlines) in the interest of getting to big airlines as quickly as possible. Some don’t recognize that this could give them extra experience towards an upgrade later on. He further explained that we now have “supervised” pilot in command time (SPIC) being logged by newbie pilots which is supposed to supplement total time towards an airline license. Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn’t the idea of logging pilot in command time the “raison d’être” behind aptly qualifying for the license in the first place? Do we have to react to market changes and now modify what it means to command an aircraft and hold a license? Is it a good idea to put pilots with very little “quality” time in cockpits? The panel is still out on that one, but that’s where the industry is headed, like it or not.
Maybe I am being an extremist. Or maybe not? The airline recently introduced logbooks that don’t even have the total hours of the aircraft listed! I am unaware if the aircraft has 10 or 100,000 hours. Cleanliness and cosmetics are my biggest hint. You’d think that the DOT wouldn’t have allowed that, but someone in the machine gave the go-ahead. Heck, “that info is only for the mechanics, right?” What’s the point of adding up the times, when all of that can be logged at a central facility, electronically, taking any tedious human addition mistakes out of the process? Heaven knows, that costs a lot of time. Somewhere, that seriously affects the bottom line?
I am being a bit sarcastic here, but the more technology advances, the less I am inclined to believe it greatly advances the pilot’s ability to manage the cockpit. I sense that the more it becomes automated, the more complacent we become in monitoring and handling the airplane. Navigational displays undoubtedly present a clearer picture of where you’re going versus the mental maps we flew with using standard six-pack layouts. Some stuff like HUD displays must be beneficial to staying focused and looking at where the automation might get wonky on you. Overall, it may simplify the job, but it doesn’t equip us (necessarily) to become better pilots. E.g. If you are given everything on a silver platter, what, if anything, is learned without prepping the meal? It might just be easiest to ask any pilot these days, when was the last time they dead reckoned from A to B just using a paper map? Oh, right — try to find one.
John Wyman, EAA 462533, Chapter 266 Montreal, is a passionate aviator. When he isn’t in the saddle at the airline, he can be found out at the airfield doing any number of things. He likes to fly gliders, practice aerobatics, work on airplanes, and fix stuff.