From the Cockpit

BACKUP BASICS

As welcome as automation is, basic flying skills always need to be available as a back-up to help pilots through a confusing failure or mismanagement of the automated systems, highlights Capt. LeRoy Cook

FLIP-SIDE While automation has made planes more efficient, many pilots worry the systems are detracting from maintaining their own abilities.

Automation and technology are part of modern day business flying, so much so that initial training in a new aircraft spends perhaps half the allotted time on managing the cockpit equipment under normal and abnormal circumstances. So integrated have the systems in our aircraft become that we can’t move between aircraft types solely on our ability to operate the flight controls and engines. It takes some adjustment to get comfortable with handling the avionics, including the displays and flight management system.

Somewhere along this upward path to ever-greater subordination of flying

DANGER The crash, in which a B737 struck a light when taking off in Belfast, could have been catastrophic.

to managing, we may have forgotten the basics of our craft. When an unusual event or failure is encountered, we have to be ready to resurrect old skills to cope with the situation. If those skills have been allowed to atrophy, tragedy can result.

A Citation CJ4 departed from Cleveland, Ohio, USA’s Burke Lakefront airport on a night takeoff that resulted in an almost immediate crash into Lake Erie, with no survivors. The final investigation found that the autopilot modes were selected but no annunciation of engagement was displayed on the panel. In other words, the pilot thought he had turned on the autopilot but failed to verify that it coupled as intended, and then further failed to check the attitude indicator as he flew into the “black hole” over the lake, allowing the aircraft to dive into the water. Reliance on button pushes that had always worked proved his undoing.

As welcome as automation is, simplifying our management of a high-performance airplane in complex airspace, we have to be prepared to do without it, if need be. We must never attempt any flight situation under automated control that we wouldn’t consider flying manually. Even if the ops specs and regulations require a functioning autopilot, be prepared to assume basic manual control in an emergency. And in today’s cockpits, failure of the automation IS an emergency, or at least a high-level abnormality.

The Basic Equation of Flight

When things don’t look right, we must scale back our expectations to basic levels of flight control; simply put, power plus attitude equals performance. Keep the wings level, put the pitch of the nose on the correct rung of the PFD’s ladder and push up the power. If you can’t tell if your wings are level, look at the heading indicator to see if it’s moving and roll opposite to the movement to make it stop, taking care to neutralize controls the instant the turn reverses. Once recovered at a safe height, troubleshoot the automation that isn’t working.

A Boeing 737 operated by Sunwig airlines was departing Belfast, Ireland’s airport, using a takeoff computer to determine the minimum power required to meet balanced-field requirements for the runway, a method of extending engine life instead of setting max power. However, a lower-than-actual air temperature was input, causing the engine computers to reduce power far below what was actually required. As the crew watched the lethargic extended takeoff roll proceed, power was eventually added, but too late. The lumbering jet flattened a runway end light and lifted off into a very slow uneventful climb. Thankfully, flat terrain and few obstacles were ahead.

Reliance on automation is so automatic we pay little attention to its functioning… but we should. Monitoring the actual results of our selections is the job of the humans seated at the controls. If the results do not meet expectations, we need to revert to basic flight path control. If acceleration is more sluggish than normal, gauged by a target speed to be achieved by the mid-point of the runway, an immediate decision to override the automation and add thrust needs to be made. If the engines don’t respond, a rejected takeoff has to be conducted.

Continual practice is necessary to preserve the basic skills of manual control and instrument scanning. We are all taught to use the equipment in the airplane to help us meet the tight standards of our certification. But in a crisis situation the 100-foot altitude and 10-degree heading requirements can be tossed out the window. We need to be able to fly within safe limits to keep the airplane on a straight path, using all available resources while troubleshooting the system that failed us.

Know Some Basic Parameters

What are some of the basics? As we said earlier, attitude and power produces predictable results. In cases of unreliable or doubtful instrument indications, Boeing advises to establish 7 degrees of nose-up pitch and 70% N1 power, for basic stabilized flight. Similar targets of attitude and power should be in your mental flight bag for each flight condition; climb, cruise, low-speed cruise and descent. Rules of thumb for fuel consumption should remain in the back of your mind, even if the fuel totalizer has proven to be uncannily accurate in times past. Most of us have acquired figures for “pounds consumed for the

first hour and then each hour thereafter”, applicable to the airplanes we fly. Cross-checking the expectations with the fuel quantity indicators guards against excessive consumption from leaks or valve failures. Never assume an observed anomaly is due to a faulty gauging system.

Where Are We?

Navigational orientation is no longer dependant on bearings taken from navaids or ETA computations, thanks to space-based aircraft icons crawling across moving map displays, but those methods can still work, when all else fails. We should at least have a rough idea of how long it will take to get to the destination and how many miles per minute we’re making. Flying a certain number of minutes since our last known fix or waypoint, and holding a certain heading, should put us roughly in an expected position. If air traffic control requests a descent to a suspiciously low altitude, it is our basic responsibility to realize that compliance is a bad idea. We must not rely on ground-proximity warnings or map color exclusively.

Flying a visual approach to a runway requires the ability to think ahead of the airplane, a basic skill that deteriorates through reliance on ATC vectors and coupled guidance along a charted approach. Every so often, we need to reacquaint ourselves with the concept of making our own way onto a stabilized final approach. Doing this means making timely power adjustments to manage the aircraft’s energy state, and knowing what attitude and power is needed to hold an airspeed target in a given configuration of landing gear and flaps.

This is not to say that automation is not to be used during visual flight, but rather than we must rely on our basic skill set to manage the flight path, whether we’re holding the control yoke or letting the autopilot steer. Using heading mode and airspeed hold is helpful, but if the autothrottles are expected to be working, make sure they are actually engaged. The pilot’s job is to bring the aircraft to a point in space that represents a normal entry to a final approach to the runway, by anticipating where the airplanes needs to be and what its configuration is along each portion of the path. A last-minute change in runways, or switching to a different IAP than the one expected, requires some basic flight management. This is a good time to have the autopilot in simple heading and altitude modes while loading the new procedure, and to utilize CRM to the fullest, making sure one crew member monitors the flight path when the other one is headdown. When disorientation threatens, revert to basic flying; hold a safe altitude and point the airplane in a direction that heads it toward the interception of a final approach to the runway. Know where the airplane is, don’t guess.

An abnormal indication in an aircraft system means it will probably be necessary to revert to basic flight management during the troubleshooting or correction. Knowing the architecture of the aircraft is important, so you’ll understand which electrical bus contains which items and what isolation choices will restore flight capability. Know what you have left to work with, and use it to fly the aircraft. Remember the basics; aircraft control, flight path anticipation and power management.

Precision control of the aircraft’s course and height is expected in today’s operating environment, and rightly so. Without automation, it is very difficult to meet these demands. This does not mean we should ignore the basic flying skills that began our careers. They always need to be available as a back-up, to help us through a confusing failure or mismanagement of the automated systems.

SKILL Flying a visual approach to a runway requires the ability to think ahead of the airplane.