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  • Originally posted by 3BS twists Evan's words and sends them back View Post
    I seriously don't understand how you can continue to ignore all the lessons we have haven't learned about basic UNIVERSAL fundamentals that would easily have saved the day in many instances, by highly trained pilots, but were seemingly totally forgotten due to _______.
    See that blank line...It probably depends on the crash and you don't know and I don't know...

    But you preach mental overload post and then preach complexity in the next.

    And you refuse to acknowledge that complexity might just be one thing that goes into that blank line.

    Plus- I know I don't read as many FCOM's as you, but after 10+ years parlour talking and watching youtubes and occasionally reading official FAA documents, I really don't remember seeing much that says, "BE VERY VERY SURE YOU DON'T DON'T DO WHAT YOU WERE TAUGHT TO DO IN YOUR 152". What accident reports fault the pilots for reverting to some 152 procedure?

    Yeah, there's the obvious stuff that ILS approaches unfold a good bit slower and flying downwind 1/4 mile off the centerline and doing a 1/4 mile base can be done much more easily in a 152, and hey, let's do a deliberate spin at 3000 ft AGL, and for a well-executed post-stall-healthy-but-aggressive climb, the 152 target airspeed is indeed a bad thing on an airliner...but really...where are the Flying magazine articles that "if they had only NOT reverted to their 152 training, the passengers would have lived? Where are the accident reports?

    List or links please where the use of a fundamental was wrong and crashed the plane. (Delta 191 + the highest, ever-recorded wind shear...perhaps)

    Late edit: As confirmed by a number of real pilots, they study the hell out of procedures AND totally appreciate and remember and respect the fundamentals, and work very hard and actually provide us with an insanely safe aerospace system...

    So, I will continue to accuse you of disdain for 15 seconds of robust attitude and power, and you'll continue to offer recommendations, and the aerospace system will continue to haul me (at least occasionally) from here to there at fairly good speed, and rather mediocre customer service for one seriously reasonable price, unless I get killed on the way to the airport.
    Les règles de l'aviation de base découragent de longues périodes de dur tirer vers le haut.

    Comment


    • Originally posted by 3WE View Post
      See that blank line..
      LAST TIME (I mean it):

      List or links please where the use of a fundamental was wrong and crashed the plane.
      I have never once said that. What I have said is that, if we want people to stop dying, when a procedure exists, and that procedure is called for, that procedure cannot be ignored or cast aside. That procedure must be executed as soon as it is safe to do so, as a part of CRM, for a multitude of reasons I have gone into over many years here and which seem to bounce off you harmlessly.

      So, I will continue to accuse you of disdain for 15 seconds of robust attitude and power.
      I have never said that. What I have said is (see above).

      Disdain for fundamentals, etc..
      You keep using this one. My insistence on procedural discipline somehow, in your mind, becomes a disdain for fundamentals, which is absurd. I've stopped trying to understand that non-sequitur. I think sometimes you're just trolling me.

      But you preach mental overload post and then preach complexity in the next.
      Where do I 'preach' complexity? I would prefer for things to be as simple as possible. 'As possible'. It is not possible to create a modern, efficient and safe airliner without a great deal of complexity. I seriously doubt (with the exception of the 737-MAX) airplane engineers add complexity that doesn't have a distinct justification for being there.

      So what ARE you getting at? You want us to go back to 1952? Good old stick and rudder airmanship? No systems to learn? No stealth factors to understand? Well, it ain't gonna happen 3WE, because we have lives to protect and an environment to protect and an industry to sustain. If anything, airliners are going to become ever more complex and flying them when things go wrong is going to require an ever more complex understanding. But don't feel too bad for the pilots. It's the same story in many other lines of work as well. In many modern professions, people face higher bars of technical learning to compete for jobs and face higher cognitive and performative expectations. It's called the future. It's called evolution.

      Next time you accuse me of having 'disdain for fundamentals', I'm ignore listing you. It's just goes nowhere.

      Comment


      • Originally posted by Evan View Post
        If anything, airliners are going to become ever more complex...
        I think they will
        ... and flying them when things go wrong is going to require an ever more complex understanding.
        I think it won't. I think troubleshooting and failures management will be increasingly automated too.

        Airplanes are already too complex. May be not the majority, maybe not the average pilot, but a sizable fraction of pilots can't or won't do what you say they should. And I agree they should, but it ain't happening.

        And, to a point, it doesn't make sense to have the pilots routinely engaging the AT when they are just starting to roll, engage the AP at 400 ft AGL, disengage the AP at 200 ft AGL, and the AT at 20 ft AGL when the computer reminds you to retard, but then expect the pilot to manage the complexity AND the fundamentals when the computer gives up and surrenders the plane back to you at 35000 ft and M 0.8, in direct law, with half of the instruments not working, and a myriad of alarms and EICAS steps that will take 20 minutes to clear, and all that for you to go 5 deg nose up and CLB, which is something that an automation can perfectly do by itself.

        --- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
        --- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---

        Comment


        • Originally posted by Gabriel View Post
          I think they will

          I think it won't. I think troubleshooting and failures management will be increasingly automated too.

          Airplanes are already too complex. May be not the majority, maybe not the average pilot, but a sizable fraction of pilots can't or won't do what you say they should. And I agree they should, but it ain't happening.

          And, to a point, it doesn't make sense to have the pilots routinely engaging the AT when they are just starting to roll, engage the AP at 400 ft AGL, disengage the AP at 200 ft AGL, and the AT at 20 ft AGL when the computer reminds you to retard, but then expect the pilot to manage the complexity AND the fundamentals when the computer gives up and surrenders the plane back to you at 35000 ft and M 0.8, in direct law, with half of the instruments not working, and a myriad of alarms and EICAS steps that will take 20 minutes to clear, and all that for you to go 5 deg nose up and CLB, which is something that an automation can perfectly do by itself.
          I totally agree that we need more automation involved to stabilize system failures such as UAS. The current all-or-nothing approach to autoflight is not very well thought-out. The autopilot could continue to fly the pitch and power needed to remain safely in the envelope without airspeed or AoA data, just using inertial reference. More research and engineering needs to go into auto-upset-recovery. The goal would be to have the automation stabilize the aircraft and then prompt the pilots to take over. Of course, that isn't going to work in every failure scenario, but it would in the more common ones.

          You may also be right that the technology will become more user-friendly and less bewildering when things go wrong. As an example, look at the complexity involved in setting up a new printer on an MS-DOS computer in the early nineties and then look at how a Mac does it today. Click, clack, done.

          But both of these initiatives will require a tectonic shift in philosophy in terms of pilot authority. I think that philosophy will have to give however, because as operators are going to be chasing ever-higher efficiency, manufacturers will be delivering that through ever more complicated systems and it will probably exceed the ability of a human crew to provide that authority.

          We will still need airmanship as long as things can fail. But, as avionics become even more robust and very, very rarely require that airmanship, how to preserve flying skill is a big question. I think it can be done by dividing training between the systems admin role and the airmanship one with a good deal of sim training in high-fidelity sims. I don't think the compound knowledge and skill-set is unreasonable, but it will not be a job for just anyone. It will require an exceptional recruiting standard.

          So my greatest concern is in recruiting and training pilots for a new era, where they must be these sort of rennaissance men. In a climate that also seeks to rapidly expand while keeping down costs (a.k.a. the race to the bottom) and where the mystique of piloting is fading and bright, technically-minded young people are more interested in other, more lucrative fields, such pilots will be in short supply.

          Unless, of course, we end this race-to-the-bottom by embracing certain regulations...

          Comment


          • Originally posted by Evan View Post
            I totally agree that we need more automation involved to stabilize system failures such as UAS. The current all-or-nothing approach to autoflight is not very well thought-out. The autopilot could continue to fly the pitch and power needed to remain safely in the envelope without airspeed or AoA data, just using inertial reference. More research and engineering needs to go into auto-upset-recovery. The goal would be to have the automation stabilize the aircraft and then prompt the pilots to take over. Of course, that isn't going to work in every failure scenario, but it would in the more common ones.

            You may also be right that the technology will become more user-friendly and less bewildering when things go wrong. As an example, look at the complexity involved in setting up a new printer on an MS-DOS computer in the early nineties and then look at how a Mac does it today. Click, clack, done.

            But both of these initiatives will require a tectonic shift in philosophy in terms of pilot authority. I think that philosophy will have to give however, because as operators are going to be chasing ever-higher efficiency, manufacturers will be delivering that through ever more complicated systems and it will probably exceed the ability of a human crew to provide that authority.

            We will still need airmanship as long as things can fail. But, as avionics become even more robust and very, very rarely require that airmanship, how to preserve flying skill is a big question. I think it can be done by dividing training between the systems admin role and the airmanship one with a good deal of sim training in high-fidelity sims. I don't think the compound knowledge and skill-set is unreasonable, but it will not be a job for just anyone. It will require an exceptional recruiting standard.

            So my greatest concern is in recruiting and training pilots for a new era, where they must be these sort of rennaissance men. In a climate that also seeks to rapidly expand while keeping down costs (a.k.a. the race to the bottom) and where the mystique of piloting is fading and bright, technically-minded young people are more interested in other, more lucrative fields, such pilots will be in short supply.

            Unless, of course, we end this race-to-the-bottom by embracing certain regulations...
            Bla bla bla.

            Comment


            • Originally posted by Evan and Gabe
              If anything, airliners are going to become ever more complex...
              Alternative hypothesis: They will get simpler.

              We don't know exactly how it happens but wings push air down so the plane stays up.

              Fancy fan systems shove the plane forward.

              Tail planes point it where it needs to go.

              We have very unstable fighter planes where the computer stays ahead of the instability and the plane flies straight forward.

              We have Airbi (which apparently have some inherent stability) but computers blank out direct connections and phugoid behavior making the joystick function a bit like a game (Nevertheless, ATL get's to put in the perfect bank and nose attitudes to nail whatever visual landings he wants.)

              Yeah, Boeing made a kludge so the plane that's older than the 757 could have an engine that would have fit under a 757...

              But why all the kludginess? I'm thinking the from-scratch new planes (787, 777, Airbi) are TONS simpler than DC-4's, 707s, and Cape Air Cessna 421s.

              Sure, the plane as a whole is actually more complex, but I have to believe that the base aircraft and critical systems will not be getting that much more complicated.

              Finally- how about the WTF navigation system...I guess there's a whole other area of genius the Bobby and ATL have that we will never know...and here's also where the interface of the old human way and modern computer stuff remains interesting...

              We are already automatically uploading in-route portions of the flight plan. There may be some "last minute" (note quotes) departure and traffic vectors and runway changes...but really how soon until a COMPUTER is doing ATC, and talking to the airplane and telling it what to do?

              Being serious- yeah, sure, I hope a pilot with good fundamentals is watching it all, and dittos at the radar screen...and maybe we let pilots touch the plane and do a little flying to stay current.

              But, hopefully we are designing really big 172s...not exactly 172s, but super critical efficient designs, maybe they NEED FBW stability because the horizontal stabilizer is LIFT source...super duper fancy engines...but the rest is just airfoils and control flaps, some navigation and collision avoidance...what is the safety or economic benefit of additional complication?

              As to the lubricating oil pressure on the Lav#6 left side toilet seat hinge...I think the engineers will keep it wired separately from the AOA indicator (which maybe we won't have anyway- they mostly seem to break and cause confusion to computers as much as people). (Then again, I'm not sure I trust engineers- I once read "Fate is the Hunter")

              The 737 may be the exception but conversely, ERJ's and CRJ's may be the example of "the new simplicity"(and some of them lack auto throttles)

              Originally posted by Boeing Bobby
              Bla bla bla.
              That is a correct statement and noted.
              Les règles de l'aviation de base découragent de longues périodes de dur tirer vers le haut.

              Comment


              • More complex inside. Simpler, user-friendly, user interface (which keeps simple and user-friendly, but effective, even in abnormal situations).

                --- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
                --- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---

                Comment


                • Originally posted by 3WE View Post
                  The 737 may be the exception but conversely, ERJ's and CRJ's may be the example of "the new simplicity"(and some of them lack auto throttles)
                  That was 30 years ago. AFAIK all RJ's currently in production all have AT and are FBW which means there is a computer between the stick and the flap, and control laws are involved.

                  --- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
                  --- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---

                  Comment


                  • https://www.reuters.com/article/us-a...-idUSKCN1T22X5 Read the last paragraph!

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by Gabriel View Post
                      That was 30 years ago. AFAIK all RJ's currently in production all have AT and are FBW which means there is a computer between the stick and the flap, and control laws are involved.
                      Banworthy, expeletive-laden personal flame attack to Gabriel for MISSING THE POINT.

                      Did I say something about not trusting engineers?

                      On this thread, we have the example of the 737-MinLav where an add-on, duct tape and bailing wire, added-complexity system has been implicated in two crashes and it has been followed with calls for even MORE training to avoid the use fundamentals.

                      This is an example of an old airplane made more complex.

                      My point is NOT_about friggen autothrottles and when they appeared. (By the way, ATL reported flying unequipped CRJ's within the last 30 years).

                      My point is that 787s and a number of Airbi, and perhaps most stunningly RJ's (regardless of the first initial)...Do these represent airplanes that were designed with the primary systems being straightforward and not overly laden with work-arounds....(RELATIVE TO a DC-4 or 707)…and look at the expletive safety record of them!!!!! (Is that evidence? It MIGHT be?).

                      Don't tell me when they got autothrottles, I want to hear if a 2-engine CRJ has 37 workarounds including DCAS type stuff IF you chose debate...

                      And if you don't have 37 workarounds, maybe you can pause in Evan's trainings and say, "relentless pull ups cause stalls in lots of planes and you really ought to watch airspeed on final approach in the 777 just like you do in the 777 minus six hundred and five".

                      And nowhere did I say that computers weren't involved. It's too nice that my car is adjusting the mixture based on temperature, altitude, exhaust composition, load...And airplane versions are everywhere and going to be more everywhere.

                      I had just hoped you engineers would be trying to make all the bazillion systems kind of simple AND AVOID DCASSY systems (again, how much stuff to you really need to keep the plane lifting and aimed correctly...a FAST computer maybe, but hopefully not too many zillion if-then statements...

                      ...but if you get stuck on when RJ's got autothrottles...maybe I see why we have the DCAS we have.
                      Les règles de l'aviation de base découragent de longues périodes de dur tirer vers le haut.

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by BoeingBobby View Post
                        *** Read the last paragraph!***
                        I'm not as smart as Evan, but a favorite story from internet aviation fora came from our own ATL Crew.

                        After many years in the Regional world, he landed a job with big iron (ok, big 'FBW' composites).

                        I may not have the story 100% right, but he likes to hand fly, and during IOE as a FO with the real airline he was hand flying beyond the fuzzy-recommended window and his captain made a snide comment...(Not yelled at, nor asked to quit...BUT).

                        That story makes me a little sad.
                        Les règles de l'aviation de base découragent de longues périodes de dur tirer vers le haut.

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by 3WE View Post
                          Don't tell me when they got autothrottles, I want to hear if a 2-engine CRJ has 37 workarounds including DCAS type stuff IF you chose debate...
                          Workarounds tend to be the result of some level of desperation in adapting an older airframe to a newer reality. The other example of this being the MD-11, which came about when MD realized they didn't have the cash-flow for a clean-sheet airframe and had to cripple along the DC-10. And it was a shaky workaround for some time until they got the bugs worked out, and it did discomfort many unsuspecting passengers during that time (although it was an unrelated third-party workaround that killed a bunch of them). As far as I can tell, there is no ambition to adapt the CRJ to the new ultrahigh-bypass engines. I guess it is less of a big deal to operators shopping for $20M regional jets. The E-jets made the leap to ultrahigh bypass by using a rather comical gullwing design, thus avoiding any complex software workaround, but it comes at a price about $12M higher than the CRJ. Let's see who wins in the end.

                          [And if you don't have 37 workarounds, maybe you can pause in Evan's trainings and say, "relentless pull ups cause stalls in lots of planes and you really ought to watch airspeed on final approach...".
                          I would get that over with in PPL training.

                          Comment


                          • AHA!

                            A bit of the mystery solved. The part about "what were they thinking?" As it happens, the original MCAS did have sensor redundancy:

                            Originally posted by NY Times
                            At first, MCAS — Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System — wasn’t a very risky piece of software. The system would trigger only in rare conditions, nudging down the nose of the plane to make the Max handle more smoothly during high-speed moves. And it relied on data from multiple sensors measuring the plane’s acceleration and its angle to the wind, helping to ensure that the software didn’t activate erroneously.

                            Then Boeing engineers reconceived the system, expanding its role to avoid stalls in all types of situations. They allowed the software to operate throughout much more of the flight. They enabled it to aggressively push down the nose of the plane. And they used only data about the plane’s angle, removing some of the safeguards.

                            The change proved pivotal. Expanding the use of MCAS to lower-speed situations required removing the G-force threshold. MCAS now needed to work at low speeds so G-force didn’t apply.

                            The change meant that a single angle-of-attack sensor was the lone guard against a misfire. Although modern 737 jets have two angle-of-attack sensors, the final version of MCAS took data from just one.
                            As to the mystery of "what were they thinking at that point?", it seems the fatal factor was the rushed production process.

                            As Boeing rushed to get the plane done, many of the employees say, they didn’t recognize the importance of the decision. They described a compartmentalized approach, each of them focusing on a small part of the plane. The process left them without a complete view of a critical and ultimately dangerous system.
                            A system that doomed two flights was expected to engage only rarely and originally used two sensors. Critical decisions were based on those factors even when they no longer applied, employees said.

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by Gabriel View Post
                              That was 30 years ago. AFAIK all RJ's currently in production all have AT and are FBW which means there is a computer between the stick and the flap, and control laws are involved.
                              CRJs are still not FBW. AT is an option.

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by Evan View Post

                                We will still need airmanship as long as things can fail. But, as avionics become even more robust and very, very rarely require that airmanship, how to preserve flying skill is a big question. I think it can be done by dividing training between the systems admin role and the airmanship one with a good deal of sim training in high-fidelity sims. I don't think the compound knowledge and skill-set is unreasonable, but it will not be a job for just anyone. It will require an exceptional recruiting standard.

                                So my greatest concern is in recruiting and training pilots for a new era, where they must be these sort of renaissance men. In a climate that also seeks to rapidly expand while keeping down costs (a.k.a. the race to the bottom) and where the mystique of piloting is fading and bright, technically-minded young people are more interested in other, more lucrative fields, such pilots will be in short supply.

                                Unless, of course, we end this race-to-the-bottom by embracing certain regulations...
                                Here's an aspect of this that you may not have considered: as aircraft become more and more advanced, even the engineers who build the things don't always understand all of the interactions and "cascading failures". I've been known to have the annoying habit of emailing manufacturers when I've had questions for which I could not find answers (in fact, there is a guy in Montreal who probably still twitches nervously at the mention of my name), and more often than not they either could not provide a clear answer at all or it took weeks (in one case nearly a year) to provide one. These are people who are sitting in the factory, have ALL of the source material, and THEY don't even have it all down, and you want me and my ilk to be "renaissance men" who can figure this out in the middle of the night, in IMC, with the airplane on fire etc etc. You propose to achieve this by regulating more brightness. I get the sense you haven't met very many pilots. You'll be amazed how "bright and technically minded" most of them are, certainly much more so than yours truly.

                                The answer is not going to be cramming more smarticles into pilots' heads, if anything it's going to be the opposite. "We" will see a more wholesale approach at emergencies where individual component knowledge won't be a factor (not when there are this many components), the procedures will call for elimination of entire systems (or large parts of them) out of the equation and working with whatever remains. A good example is the Airbus Abnormal Alpha Prot procedure (with which I know you are familiar) which calls for the airplane to deliberately be thrown into Alternate Law. In other words, we are not to waste time trying to figure out what got blocked and why or how. Just get rid of the protections and fly the airplane. Systems change, airmanship does not. "We" need to let pilots be pilots, and let engineers be engineers. What you are proposing, this chimera that's somehow part pilot and part engineer, is bound to be lousy at both, regardless how bright and technically minded it is.

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