Photo: wirelezz / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
At first sight, it seems like a bad joke. Northwest Airlines Flight 188 from San Diego to Minneapolis St-Paul forgets to land at St-Paul. In fact, the Airbus A320 flies on for another hour and twenty minutes, no less, before turning around.
What happened in that cockpit? The pilots say they “lost situational awareness” while arguing about airline policy. The immediate suspicion is that they fell asleep. And from that the issue of fatigue follows.
Not so simple. We could be dealing with something new.
For a long while now, the piloting community has been concerned about the undemanding workload of highly automated cockpits. Even a fully-rested and awake pilot has little to do during the cruise phase of a flight in an airplane as sophisticated as the Airbus A320. If there are no weather alerts to worry about, flying can be left to the autopilot, which is part of a computerized flight management system.
For sure, cockpit automation has greatly improved safety. These days most pilots have never faced a situation where the old-fashioned, seat-of-the-pants skills are needed to get out of trouble.
The problem is that the physical part of the art of flying has atrophied. I’ve talked to experts on this and they have a phrase for it: “Proficiency failure.”
When pilots are being tested for the sharpness of their responses they
do so without leaving the ground, in simulators that are as
sophisticated as the actual airplane. Emergencies are thrown at them
and, since they know that’s what they are facing, they are ready. (I’ve
flown an A320 in the simulator, without being challenged by
emergencies, and I managed to make a perfect landing at JFK at night in
very realistic conditions, and I’m not a pilot, although I was given a
make-believe “Captain’s License” after doing it!).
In the real world, flying legs between cities several times a day, it all becomes very routine. And I wonder if what we are looking at with the “fly by” of Minneapolis might not be a form of miasma called-boredom. The kind of boredom that becomes soporific.
The euphemism of losing “situational awareness” could be an evasive way of describing just this altered state. Fatigue itself is certainly an increasing concern.
There are caps on the hours a crew can spend in the sky-on domestic U.S. flights, regionals and majors, pilots can fly for only eight hours in any 24-hour period. But that leaves a whole invisible world away from the cockpit that can’t be regulated. The rule is that after a flight the pilots should have at least nine hours of consecutive rest. But who’s watching?
The often harsh reality of crew rest times was exposed by the crash of Continental Flight 3407 in Buffalo early this year. The co-pilot, 24 year-old Rebecca Shaw, had hitched flights on FedEx planes, involving a cross-country “red-eye” from her home in Seattle, before reaching Newark, the departure point of Flight 3407. The pilot, Marvin Renslow, had had a full day’s rest the day before but had slept in the Newark crew lounge before departure-against the regulations of the company operating the flight for Continental, Colgan Air.
Then there is micro-sleep-the kind that causes road accidents when a fatigued driver slips involuntarily into a few seconds of sleep but that’s enough to be fatal. Research carried out for the U.S. military found that 80 per cent of regional pilots admitted to nodding off during a flight.
The cockpit voice recorders should quickly expose to the National Transportation Safety Board what happened on Northwest 188. Protracted silence would be the most telling thing.
Were they just bored out of their minds?
Related Reading
On the Fly aviation blog on Truth.Travel
In the real world, flying legs between cities several times a day, it all becomes very routine. And I wonder if what we are looking at with the “fly by” of Minneapolis might not be a form of miasma called-boredom. The kind of boredom that becomes soporific.
The euphemism of losing “situational awareness” could be an evasive way of describing just this altered state. Fatigue itself is certainly an increasing concern.
There are caps on the hours a crew can spend in the sky-on domestic U.S. flights, regionals and majors, pilots can fly for only eight hours in any 24-hour period. But that leaves a whole invisible world away from the cockpit that can’t be regulated. The rule is that after a flight the pilots should have at least nine hours of consecutive rest. But who’s watching?
The often harsh reality of crew rest times was exposed by the crash of Continental Flight 3407 in Buffalo early this year. The co-pilot, 24 year-old Rebecca Shaw, had hitched flights on FedEx planes, involving a cross-country “red-eye” from her home in Seattle, before reaching Newark, the departure point of Flight 3407. The pilot, Marvin Renslow, had had a full day’s rest the day before but had slept in the Newark crew lounge before departure-against the regulations of the company operating the flight for Continental, Colgan Air.
Then there is micro-sleep-the kind that causes road accidents when a fatigued driver slips involuntarily into a few seconds of sleep but that’s enough to be fatal. Research carried out for the U.S. military found that 80 per cent of regional pilots admitted to nodding off during a flight.
The cockpit voice recorders should quickly expose to the National Transportation Safety Board what happened on Northwest 188. Protracted silence would be the most telling thing.
Were they just bored out of their minds?
Related Reading
On the Fly aviation blog on Truth.Travel
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