The state of the airline industry

[legoboyvdlp]

Who are you, and what did you do with the real Vincent?! I never thought I would hear about Vincent trusting an Airbus.... even with a sensible pilot and airline!

[KL-666]

Hi Legoboy,

Manual flight is not about manipulating the controls. A child can do that. No, flying is about having a mental model of what you do to the state of energy when you manipulate the controls. A good example of people with such mental model are the pilots of the 777 landing before the rw at Heathrow. The copilot realizes that he has lost the source for his kinetic energy (speed), and immediately adds another source, namely trading potential energy (height) for kinetic energy. In the mean time the captain realizes that there is a considerable blockade to their kinetic energy (flaps), and he reduces the flap setting, so less potential energy needs to be spilled for the same kinetic energy. Resulting in them ending up on the airport terrain, and not in a suburb.

So when i say that a pilot can not fly, i do not mean that he can not hold the plane in a straight line. But that he does not have that mental model of changes in the state of energy, so he gets into trouble after a while. In case of the 777 example above, such pilot would try to reach the rw by simply steering towards it. And in the process he would stall from considerable height. Due to his lack of knowledge, he would never realize what he did wrong.

Airbus pilots are more prone to not having that mental model, because they do not feel the penalty of things they do, like making a turn. The plane wants to loose potential energy, but the fbw aim and shoot technology solves it unnoticed for the pilot. Adding thrust, pulling up a bit, correcting the bank with small aileron inputs all the time.

Maybe this quote is more clear about the mental model than i am:

Ebbatson (2009) found that pilots who had significant experience flying
traditional, non-glass cockpit aircraft, developed robust mental models of
performance characteristics during different phases of flight. These heuristics
allowed experienced pilots to quickly and accurately predict and anticipate
exactly how the aircraft would perform, thus reducing the high processing
demands imposed by closed-loop processing. These pilots developed their own
schema for the operation of the aircraft based upon experience with power
settings, descent profiles, and rules of thumb. They no longer had to perform
complex mathematical calculations to determine when to begin a descent; rather
they could simply apply the heuristic model for that situation. Less experienced
pilots, lack these heuristics and quickly become saturated, resulting in poor
aircraft control and planning. Over-dependence on automated systems
exacerbates this issue and further inhibits the ability to develop the required
mental models for manual flight.

http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5108&context=etd_theses

Now there are airlines that still drill this model into their pilots brains. BA and the likes even train airbus pilots to have that mental model. Airbus pilots there would say: Look, i am manipulating the stick now in such and such way, but it is not real. In reality this and that happens to state of energy of the plane.

At airlines where the mental model is not trained, Airbuses are the worst death traps. But at BA and the likes i can be confident that even Airbus pilots are trained to fly the planes properly.

Kind regards, Vincent

[HJ1an]

I understand that if it comes to the British, they practice safety almost up to a fault. I know this not from airlines, but from oil & gas, and then people who I've met mentioning how even mundane tasks (pruning branches, etc.) are taken super-seriously. So yeah I have never flown on BA, but I would totally have 100% confidence in them.

[legoboyvdlp]

I would totally have 100% confidence in them.

How jolly nice, old top, what?

Great mews n' pews, pal!