Many airline pilots operating today do not have the technical knowledge base that their employers assume they have, delegates were told at Flight International's Crew Management Conference in London (30 November to 1 December).
It was revealed that, when tested, some fully licensed pilots had been found not to have a proper understanding of rudimentary aerodynamics relating to lift generation and drag. As an example of pilots' lack of understanding of the aerodynamics of stalling, speakers cited the fatal crash of a Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 at Buffalo in February. That accident happened because the speed was allowed to decay on approach, and the pilots then reacted wrongly to the onset of a stall, persisting with manual nose-up demands through a stickshaker alert and finally the stickpusher activation.
No single answer was put forward as to why line pilots had been found to lack the knowledge they must have demonstrated to pass the theory examinations for their licences, but suggested causes included instructional processes that concentrate on passing tests rather than conveying understanding, combined with a multiple-choice examination answer format that does not test comprehension, while rewarding rote-learning.
KNOWLEDGE GAPS
Referring to this "missing line technical knowledge", Graeme Ogilvie of Alsim Simulators said there was a case for airlines to give recently recruited pilots, no matter what their previous experience, training on a low-cost, fixed-base generic simulator to get them up to speed before they embarked on type rating training in a more expensive machine. This would enable the airline to begin inculcating its own company operating procedures as well as being an inexpensive way of discovering - and rectifying - the "knowledge gaps" Ogilvie said were increasingly being found.
In view of this knowledge gap, and the fact that the skills demanded of pilots in modern aircraft are no fewer than those needed for classic types, the main theme that emerged at the conference was the need for all policies relating to airline pilot training and management to be performance-based and evidence-driven.
Giving an update on progress of the International Air Transport Association's IATA Training and Qualification Initiative, project leader Mike Varney told the conference the team was working to establish "a new paradigm for competency-based training and evaluation", which it planned to publish in 2010. It was generally agreed that a good template for the design of a more effective approach to training is the International Civil Aviation Organisation's multi-crew pilot licence (MPL) standard, which is required to be entirely performance-based, with courses testing the demonstration of specified knowledge, skills and attitude throughout the learning process. But the components of the skills package must include knowledge, situational awareness, communication, leadership and teamwork, workload management, problem-solving and decision-making, and threat and error management.
FATIGUE RISK, UPSETS AND ECO-PILOTING
With the commercial air transport industry heading for a future in which every carrier will be required to operate a fatigue risk management system as a component of their safety management system, EasyJet specialist Capt Simon Stuart pointed out two essential facts about setting up an FRMS - first, airlines had to be aware that they "own" the risk associated with fatigue-caused pilot error, and mere compliance with flight time limitations regulation did not give them a legal escape from that responsibility; second, all FRMS policy decisions must be ruthlessly evidence-based, and their validity tested by a combination of a just-culture-based pilot reporting system and hard results from operations flight data monitoring.
Another subject that generated debate was whether airlines should provide upset recovery training for their pilots. Capt John Cox of Safety Operating Systems said there was no doubt it was needed, evidenced by the number of loss-of-control accidents in the past decade.
Cox appeared, in the well-attended workshop on the subject, to have won over almost all those taking part, with Airbus fighting a rearguard action based on the argument that prevention should eliminate the need for a cure. Cox, firmly backed by Southwest Airlines' senior operations director Jeff Martin, said training for prevention was the essential first component of any upset recovery training programme, but added that it was invidious to believe an upset could be prevented under all circumstances, especially unseen ones, so the training should acknowledge this.
Opening a discussion of "eco-piloting", Capt Marcel Martineau of TFM Aviation and Capt Peter Fogtmann of Oxford Aviation Academy, Stockholm, described techniques for operating safely while using significantly less fuel. Fogtmann went beyond fuel saving techniques and into the realms of how to train pilots to achieve them. Both maintained that, although many airlines believed they already operated for fuel economy, there were options many may not have considered, and none had formally trained their pilots in fuel-saving skills. Real success, they told the conference, could only result from a change of mindset, but if that were achieved, fuel savings could be about 3-5%, and on some flights could be higher.
Source: Flight International
