Inevitably, the old visceral “hands-on” flying skills, no longer much employed by pilots, have atrophied like an unused limb. But this physical involvement, or lack of it, is only part of the problem. In the classic skillset of piloting, mental acuity, and its coordination with hand and foot movements, is equally vital.
In “loss of control” situations, the phrase “situational awareness” often comes up, and, if anything, it seriously understates the challenge involved. One specific kind of emergency is at the heart of this, such as when an airplane suffers a loss of stability at night. There’s no visible horizon and the computers may be feeding totally misleading and critical information to the pilots. At such a moment, the pilot has no resources other than his own instincts and experience.
So, what happens if nothing in his training has replicated such a dire condition? What happens is Air France Flight 447. Faced with the sudden shutdown of their Airbus A330’s automated flight management system and left to fly the airplane manually the pilots lost their “situational awareness” and misread the physical behavior of the airplane when there was very little margin for error. In the space of just four-and-a-half minutes, from when the computers shut down (because of a flawed speed gauge) the airplane was lost and with it all 228 people on board.
French investigators found the Air France’s pilot training program had not prepared the crew of the Airbus for the situation they found themselves in over the south Atlantic.
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