Disgust.
Disappointment.
Anger.
These are the profound emotions that erupt among those of us deeply involved in the aviation industry after some recent accidents involving pilot actions that beggar belief.
Pardon me for going off the rails here and commenting about accidents for which there is no final report or where investigation authorities are too squeamish to pin blame where necessary, but this topic needs airing.
First of all, pilots.
Do you want to lose your jobs?
Not one of these accidents would have happened with a properly programmed computer at the helm. This is placing enormous pressure on aerospace technologists, aircraft and avionics manufacturers and aircraft operators to field systems that will remove the fallible human from the cockpit. You scoff? Work is already under way to move to a single pilot—not because that pilot is needed for safety reasons but because passengers can't face the idea of flying without someone up front who has a stake in the outcome.
When a crew of three supposedly highly experienced pilots fumbles a visual approach in perfect weather in one of the easiest-to-fly airplanes in the world—the Asiana San Francisco 777 accident—it makes one wonder why the pilots were even there. When two pilots omit to advance power after leveling off—the Colgan accident near Buffalo—the idea of a competent computer-pilot becomes even more compelling. When pilots don't realize that simply setting the still-working multiple attitude indicators at the straight-and-level attitude and perhaps moving the throttle levers to a reasonable cruise power setting might help—Colgan 3407, Air France 447, AirAsia 8501—then do not be surprised when the technologists take the controls away from you and kick you out of the cockpit.
Second, the regulators.
Unfortunately they won't lose their jobs because they work for bureaucracies that spend much of their time figuring out how to survive. But they should all be fired because they are forgetting the big picture of safety. And this is that safety has nothing to do with compliance with regulations but everything to do with thinking creatively about how accidents happen, then working closely with industry to prevent systematic weaknesses that cause accidents.
What am I talking about?
In so many recent accidents, what actually happened is something that nobody ever practiced or trained for.
For example, the ATR 72 operating TransAsia Flight GE235 allegedly crashed after the flight crew shut down the good engine following an engine failure. I think it's safe to assume that TransAsia pilots practice engine-out emergencies during initial and recurrent training, as do most pilots. But what kills plenty of people in multiengine airplane accidents where engine failure is a factor? Mishandling the resulting emergency is the obvious answer. And in the ways that engine-failure emergencies are mishandled, how many pilots get to practice these mishandlings?
The Aviation Safety Network published a list of 17 airline and military accidents where pilots shut down the wrong engine after an engine failure. There are plenty more examples in the annals of general aviation.
Have you ever practiced shutting down the wrong engine?
Or what about a blown tire on takeoff, where it feels like an engine has failed (Learjet 60 Columbia, S.C.)? Or trying to abort a landing in a jet after touching down (Premier IA, Thomson, Ga., February 2013), a maneuver that pilots keep attempting and that has led to many tragic accidents?
Pilots spend a lot of simulator time practicing V1 cuts, but where is the data showing that the greatest risk on takeoff is engine failure during the takeoff run? Why not practice other failure modes for a change instead of the same-old, same-old?
Regulators need to get off their regulatory and rigid high horses and use what we know about accident causes to modify training programs. And stop requiring formal approval of ancient and unsupportable requirements in the form of training programs. The approval process takes too long anyway. Why not allow operators to get creative and replace redundant and ineffective training with something that is more realistic and beneficial?
Aviation experts have pointed out that the types of accident happening recently are outliers, the kind that are unexpected, unusual and difficult to prevent. But pilots need training that is more than rote; we know how to do this training. So what’s stopping us?