Let's bring back the Stuntman

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Member for

12 years 3 months

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The text bellow is pasted from the A320 gone Missing (QZ8501) thread:

The pilot should be trained to fly and manages "situations", not to react to an increasingly complex Automated system. Monitoring Software have come a long way from all over the horizon of the tech. It's now time to to bring all this in an appropriate manner in our planes.

It doesn't makes sens that a 20+ year old with 6 month training can ctrl a UAS from the other side of the globe when a 20+ years experienced Captain standing behind the yoke can't. Something is wrong.

Then [...] we see that the pilot range of responsibility will evolve toward coping mainly with "Situations" . As envisioned, candidate profiled and screened for their 3D Space Awareness, trained in a flight simulator... flying and kept proficient throughout in-flight classes (instead of spending their time monitoring the FCS).

It could be something like that

- Level0: FCS as seen today
- level1: FCS Monitoring software (plane maker) - this where the liability and responsibility of the plane maker stop - this to ease the industries dialog toward a more responsible procedure (no more finger pointing b/w companies, Pilots association and Maker) and protect IP.
- Level2:Industry Monitoring Software (FAA) - Supervisor / Coordinator / Innovation - and secured database (open architecture and Mil grade anti hacking, regulations enforcement, flight route coordination etc.. all data refreshed before each flight via a cassette like hardware (security, safety, responsibility) ))
- Man-machine interface (simple) to rapidly de-activate totally or partially the FCS and reset the plane in a Fully controllable state (Frd CG etc...).
- Level3: Pilot

Member for

16 years 11 months

Posts: 338

At last the subject is being debated again. When I flew as cabin crew 20 yrs ago the subject was already being mentioned but nobody really took it seriously. Even then I only knew one Captain who flew manually to keep up his skills. Interestingly he had flown types others hadn't (Concorde) and had far more diverse experience. He was a pilot.
I'd suggest it is reasonably predictable that the unpredictable and unexpected will occur at some point. Can those at the pointy end cope with that if they are never allowed to practice their skill outside of the sim?

Member for

12 years 3 months

Posts: 5,905

Thinking more into the concept, I think a flying flight simulator could come around easily. Systems emulation, adaptive control laws and virtual trafic are now notions that won't afraid anybody anymore speaking about it. The new key is now to have a low kinetic "situation" simulator to emulate the most hairy critical situations that a pilot now must have to be trained to deal with.

With crash safety design solutions and some other new minded approach, it should be possible to have a safe enough plane offering high sink rate and able to emulate the experience of a deep stall, a flat spin or a crash landing with enough safety and acceleration control to have an Instructor on-board teaching and screening several dozen of trainee at a low cost (before he had seen enough and decide to move on).

This kind of flying kinetic simulator (fitted with the above described virtual rendering systems (trafic, FCS systems and ctrl laws)) could be part of a mandatory session to all trainee with refreshing cursus in place for experienced aircrew.

It's easy to foresee an economic model around it with the design fulfilling an international RFP (ICAO for example) and the plane being bought by individuals or structures renting hours to companies or professional flying school (just like the NATO's pilot training system in place).

With such a tool, sensations could be safely introduced in the cursus, adding a new dimension to the training that will bring in a much needed awareness for the pilots encountering a critical situation.
Low kinetics is the necessary variable to emulate safely on a regular basis an abrupt flight departing, a high pitch rate (periodic or pulsed), a high drifting angle, a high sink rate and, of course, the most dairying crash landing training.

With such a tool (and added hardware), we can even envision to train (via flying simulator as opposed ti ground based one) for landing on forest canopy, crash landing at sea, take off and landing in icy/ or heavy snow conditions, extreme cross wind landing and of course, power-off approach (tracting engine at full power for safety - not even at idle).

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12 years 3 months

Posts: 5,905

An interesting editorial following the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 :

[Non US] airlines recognize an MPL (Multi-engine Pilot License) with only 200 hours of flight instruction before climbing in the right seat of your commercial airplane [instead of 1500 in the US]. With 18 months as an employee of this airline, this particular co-pilot had only accumulated 630 hours. ...

Foreign captains are often flying basically alone, with a very inexperienced new co-pilot. The doomed captain's thousands of hours of flight time did him little good, while foolishly locked out of the cockpit. As a check pilot in several fleets (B727, B757, B767, B777) for two decades before I retired, even a new co-pilot had thousands of hours in complex commercial aircraft before transitioning to a new fleet and was never alone in the cockpit.

There is a national and international shortage of commercial pilots resulting in the lowering of standards in employment and certification, particularly among foreign carriers. It is also why there is increasing reliance on automation in aircraft design, particularly in the Airbus philosophy of restricting pilots from overriding the autopilot to enhance sales.

Veteran professional pilot Adam Shaw

Source:
www.theatlantic.com/

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12 years 3 months

Posts: 5,905

An interesting testimony again in line with the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 :

I am currently 26 and have been flying since I was 18, I will most likely move on to flying an A320 or similar when I am 29, not too dissimilar to this FO. Now by that time I will have more than 4000 TT and flown in no particular order:

C208b bush flying
GA8 para dropping
DHC6 airline
Q400 airline

I will have worked my socks off and sacrificed to get there, have two kids and a beautiful wife at home and been around the world.

Who do you want sitting in the RHS of your positioning flight? Me or the 200 hr cadet [...]?

Bring in the 1500 TT FAA rule and we can start fixing our industry.

Source:
PPrune User cgwhitemonk11

Member for

14 years 9 months

Posts: 699

By all means have experience in the cockpit, but the pilot quoted by 'TomcatViP' is more likely to be seen as on enthusiast rather than the sort of person an airline wants in the cockpit.

I get the impression that the airline industry wants aircrew who are stolid imperturbable types who can cope with the sheer boredom of flying the modern airliner. And the boredom isn't caused by the on-board computer systems, it's caused by the nature of flying an airliner. It's just as dull for the aircrew as it is for the passengers and I do wonder whether, not withstanding his experience, the person quoted above is entirely suited to be an airline pilot. He seems to want the excitement part of flying not the inherent boredom of the airliner. As an occasional passenger I wouldn't want such a person in the right hand seat.

The current airline industry has created one of the safest forms of transport known. Not quite the safest, but very safe indeed. The Germanwings horror story should not detract from that achievement. It isn't AFAIK the first time this has happened and, with regret, I'd be surprised it it's going to be the last.

Regards

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 16,832

.... the pilot quoted by 'TomcatViP' is more likely to be seen as on enthusiast rather than the sort of person an airline wants in the cockpit.

Wasn't that the whole message of the post?

Moggy

Member for

14 years 9 months

Posts: 699

Wasn't that the whole message of the post?

Moggy

Yes, and the answer is that this is not the sort of person the airline industry wants to employ and this occasional passenger and total aviation freak wants to be driven by. What I want is a totally reliable, dull, unimaginative pilot who will get me to my destination without any alarums and excursions. It is a dreadful fact that the Germanwings passengers didn't get such an individual but neither would I want somebody who is in love with the romance and excitement of the past which appears to be the case in the post.

Sorry but again we are at odds.

Regards

Sorry

Member for

14 years 9 months

Posts: 699

A duplicated post ...

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 16,832

Sorry but again we are at odds.

No need for apologies. You'd be happy riding AF447 with its 'unimaginative' crew down to the ocean and below, I'd be happy sitting behind Chesley Sullenberger heading for the Hudson.

We all have different ways of enjoying our flying.

Moggy

Member for

14 years 9 months

Posts: 699

No need for apologies. You'd be happy riding AF447 with its 'unimaginative' crew down to the ocean and below, I'd be happy sitting behind Chesley Sullenberger heading for the Hudson.

We all have different ways of enjoying our flying.

Moggy

A cheap shot, thoroughly unpleasant. I think I'll stop posting here, goodbye

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 16,832

Not a cheap shot at all.

Simply the whole essence of the discussion.

Moggy

Member for

15 years 9 months

Posts: 1,684

I would myself be anyday in a pax seat knowing there was a Sully in the Left Seat.

Licensed to fly the aircraft not simply a computer.

Member for

12 years 3 months

Posts: 5,905

Thinking more into the concept, I think a flying flight simulator could come around easily. Systems emulation, adaptive control laws and virtual trafic are now notions that won't afraid anybody anymore speaking about it. The new key is now to have a low kinetic "situation" simulator to emulate the most hairy critical situations that a pilot now must have to be trained to deal with.

With crash safety design solutions and some other new minded approach, it should be possible to have a safe enough plane offering high sink rate and able to emulate the experience of a deep stall, a flat spin or a crash landing with enough safety and acceleration control to have an Instructor on-board teaching and screening several dozen of trainee at a low cost (before he had seen enough and decide to move on).

This kind of flying kinetic simulator (fitted with the above described virtual rendering systems (trafic, FCS systems and ctrl laws)) could be part of a mandatory session to all trainee with refreshing cursus in place for experienced aircrew.

It's easy to foresee an economic model around it with the design fulfilling an international RFP (ICAO for example) and the plane being bought by individuals or structures renting hours to companies or professional flying school (just like the NATO's pilot training system in place).

With such a tool, sensations could be safely introduced in the cursus, adding a new dimension to the training that will bring in a much needed awareness for the pilots encountering a critical situation.
Low kinetics is the necessary variable to emulate safely on a regular basis an abrupt flight departing, a high pitch rate (periodic or pulsed), a high drifting angle, a high sink rate and, of course, the most dairying crash landing training.

With such a tool (and added hardware), we can even envision to train (via flying simulator as opposed ti ground based one) for landing on forest canopy, crash landing at sea, take off and landing in icy/ or heavy snow conditions, extreme cross wind landing and of course, power-off approach (tracting engine at full power for safety - not even at idle).

NASA Brings Fused Reality Simulation Into Cockpit

NASA also wanted to evaluate use of Fused Reality for a landing task requiring a high glide angle to touchdown. This could not be tested using NASA’s F/A-18 because the aircraft would not be able to arrest its descent rate fast enough to recover. “We could simulate a runway at 5,000 ft. above ground level and fly a very steep approach to touchdown. The aircraft would flare to touchdown and fly through the virtual runway, but that was OK,”

Here we are... now where is my low kinetics flying mule?

Source:
AviationWeek.com

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12 years 3 months

Posts: 5,905

Flight EK521 go-around incident (plane destroyed) points to pilot overload

Just 10s elapsed between the sounding of a cockpit alarm, which appears to have triggered the aborted landing, and the retraction of the undercarriage.
[...]
Destruction of Emirates flight EK521 might also add a further twist to the complexity of training pilots to handle such events effectively. If the cockpit alarm, warning of a long landing, proves to have been the trigger event for the go-around, investigators will have to explore the decision process that led the crew to abort touchdown when some 3km of runway remained.

Source:
FlightGlobal.com

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12 years 3 months

Posts: 5,905

Thales outlines digital tranformation avionics

Examples of new functions include recommendations for optimal altitudes, weather rerouting, and turbulence and air-traffic-delay avoidance. Given that new aircraft already have advanced displays, secure connectivity to the ground and digital links to air traffic control, Thales is pursuing methods to take available data and package it in a way that helps a pilot make the best decisions. “That’s the next phase,” Pellegrini said, adding the improvements can be done incrementally, without waiting for the next clean-sheet aircraft design.

“What we’re seeing is significant disruption in many industries due to the exponential progress in Big Data, machine learning and connectivity,” he said. “The classic example is automated cars.” He noted that some automotive technologies, including the linking of information from various sources, can apply to aviation.

In that context, information from air traffic control, airport ground systems and other nontraditional sources, for example, can be fed into data analytics and artificial intelligence algorithms to provide airlines and pilots with “significant advances in operating their aircraft more efficiently,” he said.

Source:
AviationWeek.com

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12 years 3 months

Posts: 5,905


Autonomous Helicopters Seen as Wave of the Future

The Matrix algorithms and flight control system can also operate aircraft more efficiently than human pilots, Van Buiten said. Even seasoned air crews introduce extraneous inputs into platforms during operations, he explained. The super computer cuts down on those and can manage the onset of loads on a helicopter by making calculations and moving the controls in fractions of a second.
That has implications for sustainment.
“When we have the computer fly the airplane it can … reduce the wear and tear on the components pretty significantly, so that’s direct cost reduction,” he said.
The system can also be used when human pilots are on board the aircraft, he noted. In addition to enabling autonomous flight, it can be used to assist one-man or two-man air crews.

It gets clearer day after day now: the pilot (or should we talk about manned piloting?) is heading to be exclusively an "out of the loop" situation manager.

Source (as sourced from The secret Projects forum):
The national Defense magazine.org

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‘Nerves of steel’: She calmly landed the Southwest flight, just as you’d expect of a former fighter pilot

And sourced from UPI.com:

Emergency alarms on the plane acted properly and the plane rolled at a severe 41-degree angle after the left engine failed, he said. He also noted "a fair amount of vibration" and said the airliner landed in Philadelphia at an above-average speed of 190 mph.

Member for

6 years

Posts: 17

I think those days are gone from the barnstorming era of 1930's or 60's. Like any industry at the present recruiting new employees go through a wide range of tests to see if they are suitable. What you want is someone who is levelheaded and not a hot head, who can fly the aircraft safely and competent and yes just like Chesley Sullenberger.