It was only a few days ago I was standing outside Hong Kong International Airports' Terminal 1 on a cold Tuesday night, shortly past 1AM. Awaiting the arrival of a taxi to take me home, I was listening to the roar of wide-body aircraft flying past on departure to unknown destinations around the world. "Those poor pilots" I thought; a late night departure and flight through the WOCL (window of circadian low), I was happy to be firmly on the ground following a long multi-sector flight from Australia. The pressures of a modern and profitable airline operation meant higher demands on the use of automation at the expense of maintaining manual flying ability, especially when called upon late at night, and I knew what pressures those pilots would be under.

On the cab ride home with taxi-driver friend Alex, shop-talk ensued. We had a conversation about where I had been, the type of 747 operation we fly, and a common subject asked by passengers; "Just how much time do pilots actually hand-fly the aircraft"?

Reports recently released claim 2017 to have been the safest year in commercial jet aviation in terms of casualties. A great achievement, but hardly indicative of true and absolute safety; just because there were fewer deaths doesn't mean that safety wasn't being compromised. Only a few days ago, a blocked pitot-static system on a Saratov flight 6W-703, a AN-148 aircraft in Russia was speculatively reported to be the cause of a crash killing all 71 aboard. The alleged failure of the crew to manage the loss of airspeed and/or altitude by simply following basic raw instrument data, by setting known values to ensure desired aircraft performance has been the cause of several accidents in the past few years. None more relevant was AF447, an Air France flight that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, due to an aerodynamic stall induced and maintained by a confused flight crew. While both crashes occurred with limited or no external visual reference, crews should have been able to remedy the situation by applying raw-data flying skills taught early in their pilot training.

Retention of Manual Flying Skills in Modern Aircraft

Released in 2014, a study from the NASA Ames Research Centre was undertaken, which built upon a study conducted in 1971 by Mengelkoch, Adams, and Gainer called Forgetting of Instrument Flying Skills. The Retention of Manual Flying Skills in the Automated Cockpit studied 16 Boeing 747 pilots operating for US carriers. The study involved testing the pilots under three levels of automation use;

Autoflight (autopilot, autothrottle and FMC programmed route with flight director), Manual (flight director and autothrottle only), and Raw data + manual control.

In each scenario, flight instrument errors were introduced and a count of deviations made was measured on each pilot tested. Throughout the test, pilots were asked to measure their task-related and task-unrelated thoughts, by categorising their thought's into three categories and reporting this to the researchers when prompted.

“The researchers found that when hand-eye skills such as those used to scan instruments and manipulate flight controls were initially well learned, they were surprisingly resistant to forgetting, even after four months of inactivity,” the 2014 report said.

“Another type of skill considered in the study is the set of cognitive skills needed to recall procedural steps, keep track of which steps have been completed and which steps remain, visualise the position of the aircraft, perform mental calculations and recognize abnormal situations. Like researchers before them, [NASA Ames] found that after four months of inactivity, pilots’ cognitive skills had significantly deteriorated.”

The results suggested that raw-data flying skills could benefit from at least some additional practice and that the current practice of manually operating flight controls in response to flight director commands probably falls short of keeping instrument scanning skills sharp.

However, it is important to recognise that this recommendation was made on the basis that instrument flying skills had been mastered through previous experience, and that reduced emphasis on stick-and-rudder or instrument scanning skills, may invalidate the findings that NASA Ames had found.

It is interesting to note from the study while the pilots did well at recognising instrument failures, they did not do well at cross-checking other instruments, diagnosing the problem, and avoiding undesired aircraft states. All but one of the pilots entered the stick shaker (pre-stall or stalled condition), and one pilot did so 13 times. Also, 14 of the 16 pilots correctly decreased pitch in response to the first stick shaker event, but only 5 increased thrust.

The Relevance of Automation in Todays Flying Environment

While most modern flight departments recognise the importance of maintaining manual flying skills, training programs do little to foster the development and retention of these skills. Most, if not all simulator sessions carry 'jeopardy', making pilots reluctant of disconnecting the automatics to practice their manual skills, for risk of an error may place their licence on the line.

Furthermore, busy and tightly regulated airspace can mean that a pilot needs to rely on automation to ensure that sufficient cognitive capacity remains to manage their flight path. And if all of this wasn't enough, flight departments often place restrictions on manual flying in their SOP's. Some vary from being quite liberal, with 'automation' clauses in their training manuals reminding crews that its use is not the be-all-and-end-all, and encouragement to manually fly when conditions and workload allows.

Some operators are beyond conservative with their manual flying policy however, where it is expected that the autopilot would be engaged at 400ft on departure, and disengaged at only 200ft on approach, with minimal manual handling practiced.

"It's been years since I've seen anyone turn the Flight Director off, and practice flight on raw data"

Correlation can easily be made to recognise that those who DO take the opportunity to disconnect the automatics and practice their manual flying skills are those that already have better-than-average skills in the first place. However it is increasingly rare that this is done with purely raw-data, due to the increased cognitive load placed upon the pilot monitoring.

Watching those long-haul departures a few nights ago, and those "poor pilots" starting their workday past midnight, it's no surprise to me that reluctance exists to practice their skills when fatigue is at their six. While those crews should be 'fully rested', the reality exists that in long-haul flying they might not be at their sharpest, especially at approach/landing stages of flight, where manual flying practice is most relevant. Automation isn't nice-to-have in those scenarios, it's need-to-have.

Regulating the Training Environment

In 2015 the FAA (USA Federal Aviation Administration) issued an Advisory Circular requiring operators implement Upset Prevention and Recovery recurrent training by 2020, in response to industry research and development following the AF447 crash. While this training reflects evidence leading to its requirement, in 2016 USA Transportation Department report found that the FAA has not ensured that airline training departments have focused adequately on manual flying skills. "The agency is missing important opportunities to ensure that pilots maintain skills needed to safely fly and recover in the event of a failure with flight deck automation or an unexpected event". The report follows accidents such as Asiana 214, where automation dependancy led to a low airspeed, low altitude event with the Boeing 777 airliner crashing short at San Francisco, and Colgan 3407, where again a low airspeed event led to the crash of a Bombardier Dash 8 in upstate New York.

Commercial pressures that airlines face inhibit pilots from gaining enough time in flight simulators to practice manual flying skills. Until bodies such as ICAO and state regulators specifically require airlines to focus on maintaining the manual flying skills of their pilots, and in-particular, specifically train in the recognition of failed or contradictory instrumentation, we may continue to see accidents such as Saratov flight 6W-703.

How Evidence Based Training Can Help

For many years when completing an Instrument Proficiency Check (IPC) in Australia I would be required to manually fly not only on raw data, but 'partial panel'; a simulated failure of several instruments. Now after entering the airlines, 'airspeed unreliable' events is relegated to only 2 of 6 recurrent training sessions, and a flight-director inoperative, raw-data approach/landing to 1 of 6 proficiency checks. Hardly what you can call regular...

So while 'partial panel' procedures used to be a regular occurrence under old training schemes, under an Evidence Based Training system (EBT), they're presently not. Evidence Based Training is a major industry wide program instigated by ICAO to use air safety reports, LOSA (line orientated safety audits) and flight data analysis to garner evidence and translate these findings into training outcomes that should be implemented into an airlines cyclic training program. It also does away with the traditional 'satisfactory/not satisfactory' grading scale, used in my old IPC checks in Australia, and instead uses set performance indicators to accurately gauge competency.

While EBT is reactive, using previous data such as LOSA to drive changes in training requirements, it is far better at highlighting current trends and requirements in training than older legislative training requirements set by each ICAO state. It offers a form of resilience, in that the EBT system itself feeds back into the flight data analysis, allowing the two to better co-exist.

Decreasing Pilot Experience

The high demand for pilots worldwide is now decreasing the experience levels that were one high throughout the industry. When it used to be normal that a minimum of 5000 hours (approximately) was required before joining a major airline, those minimums have been reduced down to as little as a few hundred. It's not to say that those low-hour pilots are unable to do their job under normal circumstances, however the foundations of manual flying and raw-data navigation have barely been built, elementary at best and not matured, and can hardly be considered what NASA Ames called "mastered".

Without a strong foundation to fall back upon, the reliance of automation for these "Children of the Magenta" (a name coined by Warren VanderBurgh of American Airlines' Flight Academy) creates an underlying, hidden risk amongst in-experienced pilots. If those manual flying skills aren't regularly practiced, improved and honed, the day that they are called upon could end in tragedy.

So the question of the day:

How do you encourage pilots, flight departments and regulators to practice (or require the practice thereof) manual, raw data flying skills? Is the commercial pressure of simulator cost too great to warrant the expense, and are alternative methods of training required? Would a computer based instrument trainer provide the adequate practice required?

Keep the discussion going:

What is your opinion on the present relevance in manual handling skills? Does a modern pilot need to keep these skills present given the level of automation available on the flight deck? Do new pilots still need to be better trained in the manual navigation flying that the NASA Ames test candidates struggled to adequately manage? Will automation ultimately lead to the demise of the piloting profession? Will the reliance on automation lead to autonomous airliners flying around sooner than we expect? Should pilots be actively practicing their manual flying skills to prove that there is still a need to keep these current, proficient and honed?

Please leave your comments below. I would be interested in hearing from you!

Andrew Mizzi is an Australian pilot based in Hong Kong working on the Boeing 747. Having 'cut his teeth' flying charter and low-capacity airline throughout northern Australia, he spent several years flying the Dash 8 and teaching aircraft systems, flight planning and performance privately and for an airline, before moving abroad. With qualifications in Workplace Training and is a member of various professional organisations including the Technical & Safety Committee of HKALPA, he has a strong interest in furthering technical development, safety and the piloting profession as a whole. He is an avid traveller and scuba diver.

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