Airline safety group warns that pilots are now too reliant on computers
They are the gadgets and gizmos that are supposed to make an airline flight a fool-proof, risk-free operation.
But are today's super-computerised planes actually putting passengers at risk - because they are leading pilots to forget their basic flying skills?
One air safety group thinks so.
Automatic pilot: Automated systems are used to fly airliners for all but about three minutes of a flight - the takeoff and landing
In a stark warning, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration committee on pilot training has announced its fears that today's pampered pilots - equipped with state-of-the-art technology - are losing their cockpit abilities.
With airliners increasingly navigating the crowded skies by autopilot, officials are concerned more accidents will be caused by the lack of hands-on experience.
More...
Hundreds of people have died over the past five years after planes stalled during flight or got into unusual positions that pilots could not correct.
In some cases, pilots made the wrong split-se! cond dec isions with catastrophic results.
Rory Kay, a pilot and co-chairman of the committee, says: 'We're seeing a new breed of accident with these state-of-the-art planes. We're forgetting how to fly.'
Out of control? Reliance on autopilot system is so commonplace, the airline industry is suffering from 'automation addiction'
Pilots use automated systems to fly airliners for all but about three minutes of a flight the take-off and landing.
Most of the time pilots are programming navigation directions into computers. That means they have few opportunities to maintain their skills by flying manually, Mr Kay's committee said.
Because computerised systems are so integrated in today's planes, one malfunctioning piece of equipment or a single bad electronic instruction can cascade into a series of other failures, unnerving pilots who have been trained to rely on the equipment.
Stall warning: In the U.S. in 2009, an aircraft crashed in Buffalo, New York, after the co-pilot programmed incorrect information into the plane's computers
In a draft study examining data from 46 accidents and more than 9,000 flights, the FAA found that in more than 60 per cent of accidents pilots had trouble manually flying the plane or made mistakes with automated flight controls.
A typical mistake was not recognising that either the autopilot or the auto-throttle, which controls power to the engines, had disconnected.
Crash landing: The wreckage of the Turkish Airlines plane in Amsterdam in 2009. Dutch investigators described the flight's three pilots' 'automation surprise' when they discovered the aircraft was about to stall
Big issue aviation can no longer hide from: All 228 people on board the Air France jet were killed when it crashed while flying from Brazil to Paris in 2009
Others failed to take the proper steps to recover from a stall in flight or to monitor and maintain airspeed.
In the most recent major crash in the U.S. two years ago near Buffalo, New York the co-pilot of a regional airliner programmed incorrect information into the plane's computers, causing it to slow to an unsafe speed. That triggered a stall warning.
The captain, who hadn't noticed the plane had slowed too much, responded by repeatedly pulling back on the controls, overriding two safety systems, when the correct procedure was to push forward. The plane crashed, killing all 49 aboard and one on the ground.
Bill Voss, president of the U.S. Flight Safety Foundation, said the ability of pilots to respond to the unexpected loss or malfunction of automated systems 'is the big issue that we can no longer hide from'.
'We've been very slow to recognise the consequence of it,' he added.
Testing the pilot: Because computerised systems are so integrated in today's planes, one malfunctioning piece of equipment or a single bad electronic instruction can suddenly cascade into a series of other failures
Comments