Are Pilots' Flying Skills Gone?

After the Fly Dubai crash in Russia a few weeks ago there has been a lot of talk about pilot fatigue as the main cause. Many pilots from various Middle Eastern airlines have been speaking up about the tiring roster patterns they are flying and how this is effecting performance.

 I would like to bring attention onto another aspect that could also be a contributing factor to the above mentioned accident and also others, lack of polished manual flying skills. Most airlines actually prohibit pilots from flying manually for passenger comfort reasons. Airbus training in Toulouse does not train pitch and power at all in their syllabus. Their training is very much Flight Director (FDs) dependent.  A Flight Director displays visual cues on the Attitude Indicator, the AI. If you, the pilot, follow those visual cues by turning or pitching the aircraft as "directed", you will end up at your destination, be that the end of a runway, a VOR, a waypoint etc. In other words, the Flight Director directs. However, Flight Directors do fail from time to time and the pilot then needs to revert to manually flying the Instrument Approach.

Any glider pilot will tell you how to control airspeed; to go slower, raise the nose and conversely, lower it for more speed. Set an outside pitch reference then verify this with a glance inside at the gauge. I started flying gliders at 15 years-old and then for my basic instrument training had a former RAF Squadron Leader,  who was very much into teaching instrument flying with this technique, instruct me into mastering the art of instrument flying. The throttle allows the privilege of climbing and the pitch for each airspeed will be different depending on the power setting. It is all about energy management. For example,  as you fly slower (the critical phases of flight) mishandling pitch and power can get you in trouble fast. In his classic book Stick and Rudder, Wolfgang Langewiesche cautions: "Get rid at the outset of the idea that the airplane is only an air-going sort of automobile. It isn't...it goes on wings...And a wing is an odd thing, strangely behaved, hard to understand, tricky to handle. In many important respects, a wing's behavior is exactly contrary to common sense." (see the Barry Schiff article below "Fatal Instinct") He goes on the explain the need for overcoming "human instincts" and trusting instead to trained responses. Langewiesche spends a lot of time explaining angle of attack. The aircraft will act in ways you will not understand. If you study and learn applied aerodynamics, you will be forever grateful and at ease in the air. Advisory Circular 61-50A in the table is ancient...from the 1970s. It is a great read and offers sound advice.

Unusual attitude recovery is another thing still many airlines are not teaching their pilots, I covered the importance of this type of training in one of my previous blogs. Airbus only introduced stall recovery into their manuals after AF447 crash. Until than it was not thought at all. I thought that the Boeing group training was much better as Boeing is not such a forgiving machine as an Airbus with its protections but the situation over there is similar. The airlines inability to teach basic "pitch and power equals performance" is a wide spread phenomenon through all airlines and types. I have met a few capable instructors in my flying career, who could taught me the basics, as well as putting myself through aerobatics and Upset Recovery Training. But most airlines brush basic training off with the words, "They are airline pilots, they must know how to fly".

 A recent study commissioned by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) shows that pilots depend on automation much more than they should, and many don't know what to do when they must manually take over. The 277-page study concluded that many pilots have poor manual flying skills and fail to master the latest changes in cockpit technology. In fact, the study found that two-thirds of the pilots either had trouble manually flying planes or made mistakes using flight computers. Automation does help to make travel by air more safe, but the panel worries that pilots depend on it a bit too much and need to be prepared in cases where automation fails.  While pilots in the study were able to address small automation problems before they became too serious, they had a more difficult time taking over with manual flying when they came to do so.  The report gave 18 recommendations to the FAA, and the agency has already taken some sort of action on each one through new rules, research and guidance material. Some of the changes include more focus on manual flying skills and improved pilot certification standards.

 If pilots do not have basic scanning ability and in all their manual flying they only follow flight directors, while not seeing through it the actual performance, how can we expect these pilots, who were not exposed to proper training for years, to perform well while they are under stress, tired and at night? If the heads up display flight directors show them to dive down due to busting assigned altitude, of course they will blindly follow it. They are used to flight directors showing them the way. Unfortunately out of the time the Flight Director is the real Captain on the aircraft.

 Major international A330 airline pilot, blogger and novelist Karlene Petitt, author of Flight for Control, says, “This is a new world we face—a battle between automation and proficiency. The real question is, How will we win this war without losing thousands of lives? Encouraging pilots to hand fly their planes is a great idea. Our training footprints must include rigorous sessions where pilots perform engine failures and emergencies without the autopilot, flight director and auto-thrust. But I have to ask, Do you want your pilot hand flying an approach to minimums after being awake for 14 hours on the back side of the clock in a state of exhaustion?”

 Automation is great and does help make flying safer. After most night flights I would program my Boeing B737-800 for an automatic landing, as I knew it would do a better job than me. However, I made sure that at least once a month I performed a manual approach and landing after a night flight. I think a balance between automation and basic flying skills needs to be kept. The airlines should be incorporating some basic flying into their simulator training and couple it with Upset Recovery training. This extra training could save lives and has done in many cases. With our private jet management clients we make sure all the pilots get extra training, which includes LOC-I (Loss Of Control Inflight) or Upset Recovery Training. After all what is the point in spending USD$50M on a jet if you don’t get “$50M pilots to fly it”…

Fabrizio Poli is Managing Partner of Aircraft Trading Company Tyrus Wings. He is also an accomplished Airline Transport Pilot having flown both private Jets and for the airlines. Fabrizio is also a bestselling author and inspirational speaker & has been featured on   Russia TV (RT), Social Media Examiner, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, Daily Telegraph, Billionaire.com, Wealth X, Financial Times, El Financiero and many other Media offering insight on the aviation world. Fabrizio is also aviation special correspondent for luxury magazine, Most Fabullous Magazine. Fabrizio is also considered one of the world's top 30 experts in using Linkedin for business. You can tune in weekly to Fabrizio's business Podcast Living Outside the Cube available both in video & audio. You can also follow Fabrizio's aviation videos on Tyrus Wings TV.

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