Safety

Ron Rapp, the pilot blogger behind the House of Rapp blog, has written a great (and lengthy) essay about answering the “is flying safe” question and more importantly, how to better phrase the question in the first place. Ron began his post by writing that over the years, he has received a wide variety of aviation-related questions from non-pilots and he has realized that a fair percentage of them are really trying to ask the same thing: Is flying safe? Specifically, Ron has heard the question phrased in the following ways:

• How long have you been flying?
• Do you fly much?
• Have you ever had the engine quit?
• Have you ever had an emergency?
• Know anyone who’s been in a crash?
• How much training did you have to undergo?
• How many hours do you have?

Ron later pointed out that as a general aviation pilot, you will have a great deal of control over how much risk you are exposed to while flying. On the other hand and if you are a general aviation passenger, you will have far less control over the amount of risk you are exposed to. Hence, deciding whether or not to fly in the first place will be the most critical decision to make.

For that reason, it will be important to ask the RIGHT question or questions before taking up an offer to fly with a friend or family member. Therefore, Ron wrote that he recommends non-pilots to consider some of the same items that pilots themselves are taught to look at when assessing risk. In other words, rephrase the “is flying safe” question or if you are a pilot, rephrase your answer to address the following risk questions or considerations:

1. Do you trust the judgment of the pilot?
2. How much experience does the pilot have?
3. How recent is that experience?
4. How’s the weather? 
5. Is the pilot experienced with the aircraft? 
6. Is the pilot familiar with the route?
7. Is there any pressure to make the flight?
8. Did the aircraft just come out of the maintenance shop?

Ron ended his post by commenting that the only purely “safe” alternative is to never leave the ground but that is not an option for him and no doubt many readers of this blog.

The Associated Press has recently come out with a lengthy article entitled: “Automation in the air dulls pilot skill.” And while I doubt that the journalist who wrote the article is a pilot or has any flying experience beyond being an airline passenger, her point seems to be that as commercial aircraft become more reliant on automation in order to navigate increasingly crowded, officials are becoming more worried about deadline accidents involving pilots who have forgotten their “hands-on instincts in the air.”

The article noted that hundreds of people have died in recent years in so-called lost of control accidents where an aircraft stalled or got into an unusual position that could not be corrected by the pilots. Moreover, there have been cases where pilots made the wrong split-second decision, such as steering the aircraft’s nose skyward into a stall, that have led to catastrophic accidents.

Moreover, Rory Kay, an airline captain who is the co-chairman of a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) committee on pilot training in the USA, was then quoted as saying that the airline industry is suffering from "automation addiction” and that we are “seeing a new breed of accident with these state-of-the art planes." It was also noted that airline pilots use automated systems to fly airliners for the entire flight except for about three minutes during the takeoff and landing as most of the remaining time is spent programming navigation directions into computers rather than actually flying the aircraft. Hence, Kay’s committee warned that airline pilots have “few opportunities to maintain their skills by flying manually.”

Finally, a draft FAA study was mentioned that had found that pilots sometimes "abdicate too much responsibility to automated systems." The study looked at 46 accidents or incidents along with 734 voluntary reports by pilots and others plus data from 9,000 flights to conclude that 60% of accidents and 30% of major incidents involved pilots who had trouble manually flying the aircraft or who had made mistakes involving automated flight controls. Typical mistake included not recognizing that either the autopilot or the auto-throttle was disconnected or failing to take proper steps to recover from a stall or failure to monitor and maintain proper airspeed.

The entire AP article is well worth reading but we want to ask you our readers, especially any commercial aircraft pilot readers, what you think: Is automation, either on commercial aircraft or general aviation aircraft (e.g. glass cockpits), really causing pilots to forget how to fly?