Is pilot proficiency diminishing with modern, simpler handling, high-performance aircraft?

Mooney_Driver wrote:

With regard to this particular accident however, i agree that the airplane type most probably had little if any impact on the outcome. There have however been quite a few accidents, particularly before Cirrus beefed up their initial training, which pointed in the direction that their initial marketing might have attracted the wrong kind of attitude towards their airplanes.

I think the issue was initially the same sort of issue that gave the Bonanza the reputation as a Doctor Killer – only this time, the ‘chute was seen as a sort of ’get out of jail free’ card. I don’t believe that Cirrus beefing up their training helped reduce the accident rate, this was more due to removing the stigma of using the ’chute as evidenced by the the slogan “Pull early, pull often”.

I’d like to hazard a guess that if we were all to attempt a forced landing, the best of us might achieve a 99% success rate with the average maybe achieving an 80% success rate – after all, if we were all able to achieve 100% success rates, we’d never hear of pilots fatally crashing after engine failure / fuel starvation, would we? The macho pilots out there would belittle the ‘chute and say ’real pilots don’t need ‘chutes’ and sure enough, when engines failed in Cirrus, the pilots looked to land their stricken aircraft with the same sort of outcome as other aircraft – some were fortunate. Others less so. It was only when the stigma of pulling the ‘chute was addressed, when pilots were trained to ’consider using CAPS’ first, did the accident rate improve, that was more down to the actions of COPA, not Cirrus.

Steve,

I think Cirrus did quite well with what they did and they are doing outstanding as a total package of airplane, service, training and the whole philosophy. They are not the market leader for nothing.

And you are very right that Cirrus was not the first and won’t be the last who found out after introduction that the clientele they wowed with their plane was not up to flying it. The Bonanza was one prime example, so was the Malibu in the early stages which even lead to a quite rare certification review which got the airplane cleared and put the blame straight to the pilots and certainly not least Airbus as well as recently Boeing who had to find out that their original perception of automatism and integrated flight decks caused some fatal misunderstandings or lack of comprehension with the pilots first let loose on it.

The way Cirrus addressed this was admirable and very effective. And I think it is not only the shute mantra which helps this but the imho quite unique training environment they built up too.

It has to be added that while integrated glass cockpits with protections and other stuff are super for people who know the basics, I feel uneasy using this kind of integration as a basic trainer however, at least if the students want to fly other planes as well. A bit like people who learn to drive with automatic transmission and then go on cars with manual clutch. Personally I think it makes a lot of sense training in conventional airplanes at least up to a point in time when they can safely handle those before letting them loose on a 200 hp Cirrus. I would neither recommend using a Mooney 201 as a basic trainer for the same reason (which has the same engine and slightly better performance). It is no accident that Cessna and Piper still sell their basic trainers so well, while the SR20, at least here, is still a LOT more expensive also to rent than a C172 or PA28 or Katana e.t.c

Personally I think the SR20 a great and undervalued traveller which is post PPL entry airplane other manufacturers are missing.

Steve6443 wrote:

It was only when the stigma of pulling the ‘chute was addressed, when pilots were trained to ’consider using CAPS’ first, did the accident rate improve, that was more down to the actions of COPA, not Cirrus.

COPA certainly has done a great job too. However, I don’t think engine failures were the prime reason for the early accident series, at least not what I’ve seen around here. Quite a few were either ballant incomprehension of the airplane and it’s systems, it’s flight characteristics (low stall and spin) and some outright stupid IMC accidents where people tried to fly these things in conditions they definitly were not made for.

Again, this is not a first and mirrors the events surrounding other makes. I guess some rather high profile accidents have been incentive enough for those manufacturers to seriously rethink the human factor part of their training. More than once systems which were designed to protect the airplane from the “stupid” pilots has ended up doing the opposite (e.g. see the Boeing Max saga or several Airbus accidents/Incidents in this connection.)

So the question posed in the thread title is valid and one which aviation safety community has been discussing in great length. I personally would find the approach of stating that pilot qualification has diminished misleading, as that is not really the issue. Pilots have been and will do what they were trained for and it is one goal of every type transition or what ever training you are going through to get pilots to a point where they will enter a particular mindset and procedure for each abnormal situation they encounter. However, it has been proven many times that what the manufacturers predicted was not quite what eventually happened. The examples are too many to list, but there are quite a few prominent cases where procedures worsened the actual problem rather than solving it.

- AF447: Where the crew initially did the procedure prescribed by Airbus for unreliable airspeed, only that this procedure was intended for low altitude and not the coffin corner they found themselves in. This particular bit was clearly a training deficiency, the fact that 3 pilots did not reckognize a stall later on the other side was a clear lack of piloting skill.
- Overflooding of error messages in automated cockpits can cause massive problems too. It was found that several accidents had that element that the crew were totally overwhelmed and confused by a kakophonia of alerts and multi page ECAM messages which they were unable to work. QF32 were extremely lucky to have a much enlarged crew to help deal with all this. Two 757’s who lost their pitot static system were not so lucky and had to fight not only loss of airspeed and altitude but conflicting overspeed and stall warnings in a high stress environment. Both crashed.
- Automatism which kills planes: The obvious pointer here is the Max Saga, where totally servicable airplanes were forced into the ground by a system which was there to protect it from unwise aerodynamical changes. Not only that, but it was not deemed necessary to tell the pilots about it, so they would know what they are facing and why it’s happening.
- Or one case a bit out of the usual: When Apollo 12 took their trip to the moon they were struck by lightening which blew most of their command module electronics off line. Only one of the 3 astronauts (Al Bean) reckognized the command given by mission control to place one obscure switch into aux mode (SCE to Aux) which restored the electrics sufficiently to continue the mission. The failure mode induced there had never been thought of and the mission almost failed because of it. However, the flight controllers at mission control learnt something quite important that day which may have had a huge impact on the next failure they saw on Mission 13.

AF447 most of all has shown that no automatics can ever totally replace basic flying skills. A similar approach has to be taken with GA airplanes which have started to feature protections and safety features which might either lull pilots in a false sense of security or overtax them if they go haywire.

As much as Tesla drivers must be taught how to use their self-drive gadgets in order not to kill themselves and others or to end up in a very different place than they wanted to go to, pilots need to be trained and in some events train themselves to learn all they can about their systems.

That is a good point. I recall the first time I had simulated trim runaway during my IR training, it was totally automatic, asplit of a second to turn it off. And I was not expecting any malfunction, any simulated error, I wasnt reading about it before. Just seemed logical. It took more time to realize that I need to pull the circuit breaker, though :D

Steve6443 wrote:

we’d never hear of pilots fatally crashing after engine failure / fuel starvation, would we?

Perhaps that is the reason we don’t – but this is not a chute discussion…

The question asked here is as old as I’m in aviation – and probably as old as aviation itself. There have always been people that tell you that you will never become a good (or a “real”) pilot if you haven’t spend years of flying gliders, Cubs, Tailwheel, C-152, steam gauges, … (add any “type” that is perceived as 1-2 levels “below” what you actually want to fly). It always reminds me of some (elderly) people telling children that they should study Latin in school because with Latin it is much easier to Learn French, Spanish, Italian later on.

I believe that is BS! If someone wants to fly a Cirrus they should learn to fly a Cirrus. You can lear to and fly a Cirrus as good and proficient as any other plane. Yes, there are “Cirrus-Pilots” that lack basic stick and rudder skills and airmanship. But there are C-152 pilots with the same deficits. There are Cirrus Pilots that are overly relying on the Playstation Screen in front of them, but I’ve also seen steam gauge PA-28 that had the windscreen pasted with so many toy devices that one could hardly watch out.

Malibuflyer wrote:

The question asked here is as old as I’m in aviation – and probably as old as aviation itself. There have always been people that tell you that you will never become a good (or a “real”) pilot if you haven’t spend years of flying gliders, Cubs, Tailwheel, C-152, steam gauges, … (add any “type” that is perceived as 1-2 levels “below” what you actually want to fly). It always reminds me of some (elderly) people telling children that they should study Latin in school because with Latin it is much easier to Learn French, Spanish, Italian later on.

I believe that is BS! If someone wants to fly a Cirrus they should learn to fly a Cirrus. You can lear to and fly a Cirrus as good and proficient as any other plane. Yes, there are “Cirrus-Pilots” that lack basic stick and rudder skills and airmanship. But there are C-152 pilots with the same deficits. There are Cirrus Pilots that are overly relying on the Playstation Screen in front of them, but I’ve also seen steam gauge PA-28 that had the windscreen pasted with so many toy devices that one could hardly watch out.

Nothing beats type currency, a high perfprmance aircraft need to be flown “many times” a month with regular handling practice with no pax near the edge of it’s enveloppe but as general “human remark”: you are forgiven to have zero sense but you will be hopelessly out of your depth if you have more money than sense

For landings: speed control in type, slow flying currency in type and height/engine managment, overall flying/landing currency
Touring SEPs are less forgiving to the 1st & 2nd as generally flow in high speeds and less draggy in medium speeds but should be no issue if you have a 3km runway, but you will start splitting sheeps from wolves as one start to go to short runways

As fact, all aircraft are terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect, especially, "1-2 levels below”, they are the worst !
I learned that after I broke propeller of D31 Turbulent and kissing the ground with CT2K in gusty day faster than what it’s tire can take

The difference to a high performance SEP is your repair bill is 0.1-1AMU rather than 5-20AUM, less if you fix it yourself and get someone to fill the paper

It’s just a cheap way to learn, knowing when to go-around or where the wind is comming is agnostic to aircraft type

My driving examiner signed me off but joked that I should buy an old Renault 205 first

My driving examiner signed me off but joked that I should buy an old Renault 205 first

I know a guy whose IR skills test examiner said to him “well you won’t kill anybody”.

I had the same guy a bit later. I think he will remember me as his only test subject to pee into a bottle

Peter wrote:

I think he will remember me as his only test subject to pee into a bottle

The others missed ?

Malibuflyer wrote:

There have always been people that tell you that you will never become a good (or a “real”) pilot if you haven’t spend years of flying gliders, Cubs, Tailwheel, C-152, steam gauges

This is of course 100% true. It’s just different definitions of the word “pilot”. It is the same in all other fields you can think of. A real musician is able to play lots of different instruments even though he/she is only really really good at one or two of them. A top alpine skier is among the national top 10-20 in all disciplines, but an Olympic champion in only one or two.

What it boils down to is how well you know and understand the basics, common to a wider group of stuff, and how well you can execute that basic knowledge/skills.

If all you want to do is to fly Cirrus, then it’s perhaps a waste of time to fly anything else. But even if you can hit all the buttons blind folded, every procedure is automated in your spine, this doesn’t necessarily mean you are a good pilot , if the definition of a good (“real”) pilot is one that excels at the basic common skill set of handling an aircraft, any aircraft. With more complex systems and procedures an aircraft has, it becomes more important to focus on that particular aircraft. This does not make you a better pilot IMO, but it does make you a better “flight engineer” of that aircraft. As single pilots we need to be good pilots, good navigators and good flight engineers, and it doesn’t require all that much complexity in the flight engineering department before it becomes overwhelming without enough currency.

If in addition to SEP, you also have flown gliders and tail wheel, maybe floats and aerobatics as well, you will become a better pilot IMO, because all that is pure piloting skills (stick and rudder, SA and airmanship). The better you are, the more capacity you can afford to use on other stuff.

I’m convinced that “flight engineering” tasks should be automated as much as is humanly possible. Navigation should be automated as much as humanly possible, SA should be augmented as much as humanly possible. All this is possible with current technology. What is not possible is to automate pure piloting skills, airmanship and basic SA. Not without rendering the pilot useless and irrelevant at the same time.

A “good” aircraft has:

• FADEC (fully automated engine control and monitoring system)
• Automatic monitoring and super simple/automatic operation of systems
• Lots of glass for SA and navigation.

Technology can fix all that, and modern GA aircraft are like this.

Antonio wrote:

In fact we know several pilots, some within the same airline and even the same airplane, “narrowly” dodged death by disconnecting electric trim.

That is interesting to hear.

Antonio wrote:

What kind of cognitive disconnect makes you think you can save a severely out of trim situation by repeatedly trying to engage the autopilot?

The trouble with the 737 is, that up from a certain airspeed you can no longer use manual trim to rectify the situation, as the air load on the trim is too high. So the only way to get the trim back out of full nose down is to re-engage the electric trim and trim up like hell. The trouble then is of course, that MCAS immediately countered that again.

What would have solved the problem as well is setting of flaps 1, as MCAS is inhibited with flaps set. Obviously they were way beyond flaps speed, but in the indonesian case they actually got temporarily control back when they did set flaps, but unfortunately retracted them again, allowing MCAS to take over a final time. Also if I remember right, engaging the AP would disable MCAS as well.

Personally I think the trim system of the 737 is dangeorusly flawed as it can NOT be unloaded when you need to do this most. I would not be suprised if more accidents could be atributed to this. And I fear in the future more will be.

It is interesting to see as well that Russia (MAK) determined the 737 to be inherently unsafe and wanted to retract the russian C of A for the series after an accident in which pitch trim played a deciding role (737-500) but were overruled by Rossavia. Unfortunately we never heard why MAK wanted to do that but I would bet that it was because of the design of the trim system.