AOPA ASI Blog: Leading Edge

Any smart pilot or organization manager studies Murphy’s Law: life’s wonderful reality that if something can go wrong, it will! There are dozens if not hundreds of corollaries that remind us that complex airplanes are veritable breeding grounds for Murphy mischief.

In the March Issue of AOPA Pilot, I wrote about Air France 447, the Airbus 330 that went down over the south Atlantic after all three pitot tubes froze up. This caused the air data computer to leave the premises, and the automated systems, which the Airbus has raised to an art form, began cascading failures. The crew lost total situational awareness and the junior first officer, after some gyrations, pulled the big ‘bus into a stall and held it there for about three minutes for a final plunge from about 35,000 feet. Lots to learn from this one!

The saga of automation acting out continues. Here are two more incidents involving the Airbus where, once again, frozen pitot tubes discombobulated the autopilot, auto-throttle, and flight director. The crew managed to control the aircraft, but had to divert to an alternate airport because they couldn’t remain in reduced vertical separation maneuvering (RVSM) airspace and fly manually to the tolerance required. Guess keeping the tubes warm and dry is problematic.

The other incident involved a non-stabilized approach into Paris with another A340. This one had more help from the crew, with possible ATC assistance, in getting to the arrival gate not only high, but fast for a Cat III approach! The glideslope eluded them most of the way down. The aircraft at some point decided to go around, and a difference of opinion ensued between the crew and the ‘bus. It’s too long a story to relate here, but the crew and the automation never got on the same page, and let’s just say the outcome of the maneuver was seriously in doubt.

Before you think me anti-Airbus, recall that the Boeing Dreamliner, in pushing the performance envelope, has had a few miscues as well. Teething pains are one thing though, and ongoing incidents are something else—where one stops and the other begins is for your conjecture.

The principle concerning multifunctional devices states that the fewer functions any device is required to perform, the more perfectly it can perform those functions. Put more stuff on an aircraft, car, computer, home theater, or anything, and the reality is that it will break more frequently. DC-3s and Cessna 172s are prime examples of long-lasting simplicity.

Regarding automation for light aircraft, a certain amount is really good, and single-pilot flights in IMC without a simple and solid autopilot is much more work and distraction than it needs to be. However, remember Johnson’s First Law: When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the most inconvenient time.

My question is: How does it know?

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Several weeks ago as the sequestration was looming, we discussed the wholesale closing of contract control towers at GA airports. Last week the ax fell, indiscriminately in many pilots’ opinion. This is an emotional issue, but as stated in that blog post, now is the time for a clear-eyed view of what is needed—not what is nice to have. Operational needs should always take a back seat to political expediency— or should they? I’m always confused by such things.

The hit list was pared down to about 139 facilities. As Katie Pribyl, AOPA’s Vice President for Communications, noted, the money invested in building the towers was committed only after careful review of the need. In a few cases the towers had only been open a year or so!

In addressing hundreds of pilots over the last several weeks in speaking engagements, many of you agreed that aircraft fly just fine without ground guidance, and there were towers we did not need. But the end justifying the means isn’t always the best way of accomplishing an objective.

My concern is three-fold:

1) The FAA’s “process” appears to have had little operational consideration, or at least not that the FAA was willing to discuss. Transparency in how the decisions were being made other than the “trust us” approach would have been appreciated. A better way to accomplish this might have been to set up a non-political advisory group with the FAA, users, ATC, and affected communities to look at the facts.

Yes, I’m insane, but this worked very well about 15 years ago when the National Weather Service needed to close about 400 weather offices around the country. You can imagine the uproar, but such a group was commissioned to do it based on fact—I was the aviation representative, along with NWS management, the employees union, heavy scientific representation, etc. It worked against the goal of no degradation of service. It took much longer than a few months, but airport operations are a much less arcane science than weather prognosticating.

2) The second concern is re-establishing non-towered habit patterns in the transition. Notams, that wonderfully dysfunctional system of burying critical information within the irrelevant, will become vitally important. Airports that had ATC flexibility may now revert to preferred right-hand traffic patterns in some cases. This can all be handled, but it’s going to take a lot of eyes outside the cockpit, good radio procedure, and solid preflight planning. To refresh everyone’s memory, the Air Safety Institute’s Operations at Non-Towered Airports Safety Advisor is strongly recommended as a review, as is the Say It Right: Mastering Radio Communication online course.

3) Logic would also have suggested that this change become effective with the new sectional chart cycle which is staggered to keep things manageable. Don’t forget that hundreds of instrument approach procedure charts will soon be incorrect and will need to be updated as well. There were some cost savings in here somewhere.

May the FAA focus the rest of its budget cutting on non-critical areas that do not disproportionately target GA.

Can we do this better? What do you think?

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Does it seem that GA has been a target lately? There have been some high profile accidents including a Beech Premier that crashed into a house in South Bend, Ind., and a Piper Cheyenne in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., that apparently was attempting to return to the airport after a power failure and fell short.

Then ABC decided it was time to air a piece regarding spins that curiously had nothing to do with the accidents in question. The NTSB was also quoted, talking about GA being on the top 10 list when the number of GA fatalities is near an all-time low, and after it had dropped motorcycles from the list despite having 10 times the fatalities annually. Odd isn’t it?

With the two accidents noted above, it appears mechanical first cause is likely, but it’s a bit early for that. The pilots were doing everything they knew how to do—maybe it wasn’t perfectly executed. Perhaps it was. The ABC tie to dramatic spin footage is a stretch in relation to this story, or even to the total accident picture. Trying to tie this to a stall-spin outcome while the investigation is still in the early stages is not journalistically sound.

To reinforce a non-existent point, ABC stated that, “There are more private pilots in the air now.”  It badly overstates reality. Would that it were so.

Let’s address stalls for a moment because it is an area of concern. The Private Pilot Practical Test Standards are clear on what every private pilot should be capable of demonstrating, including maneuvering in slow flight, power-off stalls, power-on stalls, and spin awareness. In 2011 there were 11 fatal stall-spin accidents—less than one per month; a safe year. Somehow that doesn’t seem like a systemic problem to me but more of an individual failing. But one can prove almost anything with selective choice of numbers. A truer picture is that on average, there are less than two fatal stall-spin accidents per month. When spread across millions of flights annually, it just isn’t the purported epidemic.

That said, can we do better? Of course! CFIs are required to teach high angle of attack operations to assure that the pilot has the appropriate level of awareness. This is checked by designated examiners. Spin and unusual attitude training is available for anyone who wants it from a professional instructor.

The Air Safety Institute has an excellent online course which should be required viewing for all pilots to be sure they understand AOA. (It’s currently in Flash format and slated to be updated at some point, so iPad users, take heart—but not quite yet.) There is plenty of water out there for the horses to drink!!!

To the aviation community: maintain the aircraft and flying skills well.

To the media and NTSB: could we be a bit more constructive in putting GA safety into perspective? GA accidents are big news because they happen relatively rarely. We’re working very hard to see that the numbers stay small, but please keep the “piling on” to a minimum.

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