If anyone in global air-transport still believes that the legal minimum standards for airline pilot training are adequate for today's aircraft and air-traffic enviroment, they would do well to read the official report on the Birgenair Boeing 757 accident (P14). It states that the pilots involved in the accident, although experienced and trained by their employer to meet legal requirements, were not competent to handle a situation which should not have taxed their abilities.
The accident investigators observed that the Birgenair pilots had been able to gain and, more importantly, maintain, full commercial pilot licences and type ratings despite having a low level of aircraft systems knowledge, no apparent knowledge of appropriate procedures (or the inclination to look for them in the checklist and operations manual), low basic flying skills and no training in any form of crew resource management (CRM).
In an aircraft which, despite a single blocked pilot tube, still had enough fully operating static and dynamic atmospheric-pressure sensors to have provided all the flight performance information required, the crew became so confused that they did not react to that ultimate stall-warning device, the stick-shaker.
The Birgenair report holds back from blaming the airline. It blames the aviation authorities, which allow crews to be licensed using training systems and standards which are hopelessly outdated in the world of high-performance, highly automated aircraft.
It is worrying that another pilot/static system-blockage event should, according to a Peruvian transport ministry statement, have led to a second 757 tragedy in the same year. For the crew of the Aero Peru aircraft (P12) it is easy to have sympathy, however. Blockage of some, perhaps all, of the static vents would have left the pilot with airspeed and altitude indications which bore no relationship to reality except, ironically, during the take-off run. The auto-pilot/flight management systems would have been useless. With only the attitude indicator and engine instruments to rely upon, the only course available would have been to fly familiar attitude and power combinations manually, but with poor visibility at base and alternates, even high standards of airline-pilot training might not have been good enough. There have been suggestions that the Aero Peru crew could have been guided back to base by a serviceable aircraft, but is there an operational airline anywhere that trains its pilots in night-formation flying? When even responsible airlines debate the value of recurrent training in recovery from extreme attitudes and give scant regard to training for limited-panel flying, an addition like this to any training sylabus is not going to get very far.
What should go unquestioned, however, and what is much more reasonable, is that CRM-type training is now essential, particularly for modern, complex flight-decks with all their information and data resources. CRM, or its equivalent, must be made a pilot-licensing and type-rating-currency requirement in the laws of every national aviation authority in the world.
Many flying training schools offer CRM courses or CRM modules as part of courses, but the subject is by no means an accepted standard. Enlightened sections of the industry, however, are beginning to recognise that good, proficient "safe" pilots are, not necessarily those that never to make mistakes, but those that make mistakes but know how to correct them. This change of thinking should be one of the cornerstones on which a whole new structure of training is built. That new structure should be led by a complete overhaul of the International Civil Aviation Organisation's benchmark licensing standards.
This will not be easy, of course. The aircrew licencing standards of many of the world's nations may be outmoded and inadequate, but to change them, the air transport industry and the regulators must first admit it.
"CRM-type training is now essential, particularly for modern, complex flight decks with their data and information resources."
Source: Flight International
