LETTERS
38 | Flight International | 13-19 January 2015 flightglobal.com
[email protected]EDUCATION
In an emergency, it’s hands-on
Many people and much of the media hail Airbus for its new hands-
on approach to flight training. Pilots never had any doubt that manu-
al flying is what a pilot needs to do in an emergency. Especially in an
abnormal flight situation, automation and computerisation does not
help. It rather confuses the pilot’s rather slow brain.
Even software cannot be programmed for all possible situations
arising in such a quickly changing environment. The “new fashion”
of excessive computerisation made pilots lose their manual skills
and mental abilities. This led to many fatal crashes, and will con-
tinue to do so.
Again we learned through blood, sweat and tears that the cockpit
and the computerisation design needs to fit our brain’s capabilities- which includes manual skills based on personal experience in the
real environment.
You will see that the MPL [multi-crew pilot licence] will again pro-
duce different kinds of abnormal flight situations, if not crashes, as
again the brain will not get enough information in a simulator to
learn how to process certain feelings correctly.
Who believes that the feelings you have in a simulator during an
emergency are really the same as those you have at the “point of
no return” over the sea, on a dark night with bad weather all around
you? Many pilots, if they are honest, will agree that the first flight on
the real airplane after the simulator was very different in the way
your mind worked and coped with the situation.
It is time to accept that the training of pilots in modern cockpits
requires a completely new approach based on mental training, rath-
er than on pure manual skills and some button-pushing.
Capt Awad Thomas Fakoussa
By email
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INTERNATIONAL
We welcome your letters on
any aspect of the aerospace
industry.
Please write to: The Editor,
Flight International, Quadrant
House, The Quadrant, Sutton,
Surrey SM2 5AS, UK.
Or email flight.international@
flightglobal.com
The opinions on this page do not
necessarily represent those of the editor.
Letters without a full postal address sup-
plied may not be published. Letters may
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must be no longer than 250 words.FLIGHT
INTERNATIONALIncompetence
behind AF447
shaped. I watch these events
wishing that there was some
mechanism whereby people with
my sort of experience could feed
back into the current commercial
pilot environment some of the
‘seat of pants’ survival intuition
that I and my peers grew up with.
I have survived 20,000h of air-
line operations and would like to
help my young colleagues better
my record.
Dave Baker
By emailMissing trainers
I realise that Flightglobal has
great databases, but that does not
mean they are complete. I note
an omission in the training air-
craft section of the Mexican air
force in your World Air Forces
directory (Flight International,
9-15 December 2014). There is
no mention of the Boeing-Stear-
man PT-13/PT-17s still operated
for basic training in Jalisco, with
about 10 aircraft still in daily use.
From reports these aircraft are
kept in tip-top condition.
John M Davis
Wichita, USA
Editor’s reply: Our annual direc-
tory is compiled using informa-
tion from Flightglobal’s Ascend
Fleets and MiliCAS databases,
neither of which track piston- or
radial-engined basic/elementary
trainer types, such as the anti-
quated PT-13/PT-17 Stearman.
To download your free copy, visit
flightglobal.com/wafVenting air
And the award goes to Flight
International for its support of ox-
ymoronspeak in the form of per-
sistent use of the term “airframer”
in every 2014 issue. The prize is a
giant trophy made of pure air.
Arthur Nilssen
Bergen, NorwayRegarding AF447, two conclu-
sions are incontrovertible. One:
the crash was 100% preventable
with even remotely capable pilots,
and two: it was probably the most
incompetently caused crash in
civil aviation history (rivalled per-
haps only by the Aeroflot Airbus
A300/310 where the captain’s
teenage son was at the controls).
As to the pitot tube malfunc-
tion, two facts have to be under-
stood. First, it is virtually impos-
sible for an A330 level at FL350
and at a fixed power setting to
maintain Mach 0.82 cruise, to
overspeed.
Second, an A330 at FL350,
with the thrust levers retarded
and side-stick back pressure
generating a positive rate of
climb, will within a minute or
two run out of flyable airspeed
and enter a stall.
At that altitude the KIAS must
be in the neighbourhood of 300 or
a little more, and if the clean con-
figuration stall speed at MSL is
about 120kt, then at FL350 or
above and in a climb the plane
would likely stall at around 200
KIAS or a little less. That 100-150
KIAS bleed-off will occur very
quickly in a reduced to no-power
climb at that high altitude.
As for the captain, once in the
cockpit his situational aware-
ness should have almost imme-
diately encompassed three in-
strument readings: the ADI
would disclose the aircraft had a
nose-high attitude, the VVI
would show 1,000 fpm or more
of descent rate and the engine
thrust indicators would reveal
very low power settings.
These are the classic indica-
tions of a stall, and there was
more than adequate time and al-
titude to effect a full (and very
simply executed) recovery. Ergo,
the crash occurred due to afailure of basic airmanship. What
a tragedy.
Chris Skillern
San Diego, USAHow can I help?
I am a retired pilot – 31 years
with British Airways and 10
with other operators (because of
BA’s age 55 retirement mandate).
I was a training captain and
learned my trade the hard way –
no FMCS, no GPS, no CPDLC. Just
raw data VOR and ADF approach-
es, with the odd PRA thrown in
for good measure. It concerns me
that modern pilots do not have the
background experience to fall
back on when it all goes pear-Training courses to take you there
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