galaxy flyer

Is it too much to ask professional pilots now to intuitively understand how a wing works, how to manage energy and anticipate changes in energy states? Is it too much to be trained not to panic in an entirely recoverable attitude?

Apparently it is. Sad, too.

GF

ptarmigan

[QUOTE=JohnBurke;2777150]I'm familiar with it. It may have some merit for the lowest hanging fruit that can't fly an aircraft or maintain situational awareness or do their job at the most basic level...but such really ought not be in the cockpit in the first place. Renslow, for example. Given his wholly inappropriate response to impact, there is no reason to believe an annoying voice or additional flashing light would have made any difference. Everything he needed was already in front of him.

If you are advocating that we entirely change how we are recruiting and training pilots, as you can see from my multiple writings on the topic, I'm 100% onboard with that. If you are saying that the design of our aircraft is "good enough" and it is the fault of pilots that accidents are happening, I will STRONGLY disagree! Between our system design and training we are completely failing pilots (and the traveling public!).

As for the MIT workshop, that is your loss, and reflects more on you than anything else, sadly. I suggest you read my friend's article on the topic for a primer: https://aviationweek.com/business-av...-out-accidents

Mesabah

I don't see how this is any different from other warning systems, especially GPWS.

galaxy flyer

Quite a bit different. EGPWS providing earnings of a unknown and unseen threat—terrain obscured from view by dark or cloud, especially in times where navigation was more black art—no GPS, no Nav Display laying the map out.

Airspeed is right in front of you. Stick shaker is unmistakable. We’re taught stalls from about the second lesson.

GF

ptarmigan

I would add that many professional pilots *think* they would recognize a stall. Unfortunately the are mistaken, hence my article on the topic.

JohnBurke

I didn't say anything remotely close to an opinion regarding recruiting of pilot, so no, I'm not saying that at all. You're saying that. Speak for yourself.

I don't care if you're on board with it. You've drifted from gimmicks to altering the recruiting universe. Good luck with that.

There are those who advocate ballistic parachutes in lieu of skill, judgement, and thought, and we have an industry full of children of the magenta line. Why bother training pilots to recognize a stall, or approach to a stall, when we can have circles of lights flashing in their face, and a loud voice yelling at them? No need to calculate or pre-plan the descent; just wait for the FMC to calculate it. What else can we dumb down?

Good god. Get off your high horse.

In the same time frame, I'm also skipping painting camp, baseball spring training, and an outstanding seminar on gastric distress. I'll spend some of that time at recurrent, some working, shoot a couple of steel matches, and write a chapter if there's time. If not doing what you'd prefer I'd be doing reflects badly on me because I choose not to go to a MIT workshop, that's too god damned bad.

dera

The thing to remember with Colgan was that they were nowhere near a stall when the stick shaker went off. They were in a plane with no ice, but they had selected the vref ice speeds, so the stick shaker went off at higher speeds than their configuration/energy state warranted.

With the complete lack of awareness of what was happening, I think they would have ignored any other clues, no matter how verbal or obvious they would've been, in their desperate panic reaction to a situation they did not expect.

ptarmigan

Well, the good news is that if you ever have an accident, I'll be able to look at the events in context to see why the actions you did made sense to you *at the time*, rather than throw stones and talk about how you were just "weak". Pilots throw each other under the bus quicker than just about any other group, and that is sad. You see that quite a bit less with engineering test pilots, but most pilots are pretty bad about it.

As for the last part, this section of the board is about "suggestions for improving safety", and the workshop is about improving safety.

ptarmigan

This is the common perception of this accident, and one I used to share as well. However, many pilots will simply not recognize a real stall when it happens to them outside of the training environment, and that is a sad fact. Reading it again, maybe we are not saying something so different. Once a person has created a mental model of the aircraft state confirmation bias kicks in so to that extent it true that they will ignore cues.

What I like about q-alpha is that it prevents the errant mental model in the first place. Ideally you have that an an AoA gauge that you are trained on.

galaxy flyer

Maybe 1500 hours of fighter time colors my attitude, but we did stalls in the sim every 6 months, how would that not be drilled in? I only saw two inadvertent stalls, both at altitude—unmistakeable. The first, I was riding in a C-5, crew was put in hold, heavy-ish, slowed to typical holding speed at training weights at 4,000’. You feel the buffet coming up thru the upper deck floor, I asked the load what was on the inter phone, “stall”. Recovered immediately. It was dark, in cloud, off circadian time, too.

Second time was on the north coast of South America, entered the top of those equatorial clouds that don’t paint but hold a lot of bumps and warm air. Mach rapidly went away, the “eyebrow” starting coming down on the PFD and the slightest tickle of the shaker. Pushed over, as trained, to maintain some Mach and lost about 1200’ before we popped out of the cloud. We were at or just above optimum.

Both cases, if you missed the warnings, you’d have to be dead.

GF