Seconds to Disaster: US Edition (3 page)

BOOK: Seconds to Disaster: US Edition
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With such concerns in mind, it
may make you wonder what kind of man or woman would want to face a potentially
hostile work environment in which they also have to strap themselves into a
cockpit seat and go hurtling through the air at hundreds of miles per hour in
an aluminum tube?

Not only have they the growing
threat of an act of terrorism on board their airliner to contend with, but on a
daily basis pilots have to face technical catastrophes, a raft of security
issues, longer flying hours, and the possible danger of inclement
weather—weather which it seems is growing even more severe perhaps due to
global warming.

What kind of man or woman is
prepared to face such challenges daily?

What makes them possess “the
right stuff”?

What kind of training do they
incur?

And last but not least, what
are their own fears and concerns within a rapidly expanding aviation industry?
Pilots are battling against an increasingly competitive and ruthless industry
where the safety envelope is not only being pushed but ignored.

We will attempt to answer
these questions in the next chapters. And some of the answers may well surprise
and frighten you.

Chapter 5
The Right Stuff
What Makes a Safe Pilot?
“We're going to be in the Hudson.”
Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, responding to air traffic controllers
asking on which runway he preferred to land US Airways Flight 1549. Jan. 15
2009

Aviators come from
countless backgrounds. They have personal quirks like everyone else, but you
can generalize when it comes to the basic characteristics of a pilot. There are
certain traits that must be present.

Above all, pilots have to be
quick-thinking survivors. They continually assess what they have done and they
ask themselves if what they have done is working.

No matter what happens they cannot
shrug their shoulders and simply give up.

Over and over, cockpit voice
recorders have entombed the last challenging words of crews in disastrous
situations who fought to the bitter end to regain control of a stricken
aircraft.

In business a common and
frustrating response is “Okay, leave this problem with me. I’ll get back to
you.”

Pilots don’t have that luxury.

They consistently have to
assess a problem and often act within
seconds
.  And it may not be a
minor problem—regularly it is one that will decide the fate of hundreds of
passengers.

The aviation industry demands
that pilots stick to standard operating procedures— these are the procedures
enshrined in aircraft manuals which flight crews are expected to follow to the
letter, especially in the case of emergencies—yet US Federal Aviation
Administration's chief scientific and technical adviser Dr Kathy Abbott
believes that as much as 30% of aircraft failures were not foreseen by systems
designers and so there were no checklists for them.

So it’s obvious that there are
times when the men and women in the cockpit have to be the kind of people who
are not only capable of adhering to standard operating procedures, but if standard
procedures fail and they are faced with a life or death situation then they
also have to be capable of being able to think
outside
the box.

There are other qualities
pilots must possess.

Whatever they think of life
outside of work, once pilots are seated in the cockpit they have to be
absolute
positive thinkers. When muck hits the fan they must keep cool, work out not
only how to avoid a mess but often they must also figure out what has caused
it.

The only way to instill this
instinct even further is to practice life-saving in a simulator.

A captain is normally teamed
up with a first officer and over two days they act as a crew while the examiner
throws disaster scenarios at them. They must turn these situations into
manageable problems whether they are engine fires, systems failures,
flight-control malfunctions, or any combination of failure and
malfunction—whatever an instructor throws at them. Security and dangerous goods
threats are simulated too.

They must pass these checks or
face re-examination, training or loss of license. Pilots face losing their jobs
in this way every six months.

But do pilots get enough
training?  This question was addressed in the US Airline Pilot’s White paper
report of September 2009 and the resulting testimony was—
they do not.
[10]
However, the industry and its regulators do not always listen to such testimony
by experienced aviators, but sometimes totally disregard it.

As with the flight crew of the
influential Colgan Air disaster of February 2009, which will be examined in
Chapter 11, we will see dangerous aviation industry practices exposed, in which
air crews receive insufficient training.

In some cases such dangerous
practices have been in existence for over six decades and put the lives of
millions of unknowing passengers at risk. Training can sometimes fall seriously
short due to time restrictions, both in the simulator or due to management cost-cutting
or regulatory failings.

Readers will no doubt be aware
of the heroic efforts of Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger. It is amazing
how Captain Sullenberger managed to ditch his Airbus A320 in the Hudson
successfully.

Any pilot you’d care to speak
to was also totally amazed.

Not because they are less
skilled — some are more some are less, and not because they thought they could
never have done the same. But because contrary to belief, airline pilots,
unlike some helicopter pilots,
do not
practice ditching in water.

However, along with flight
attendants, pilots do practice the aftermath of a ditching at least once in a
swimming pool.

But it may surprise some
readers to know that there is currently no simulator software for landing on
water, and no real life training scenario in how to ditch a plane. To be fair,
it would be a difficult situation to reproduce.

In the aftermath of the Hudson
Miracle, however, the US National Transportation Safety Board, NTSB, slated the
industry's lack of training for this type of accident.

As well as the stresses
outlined above, there are the myriad pressures of the actual work, of piloting
an aircraft often with hundreds of passengers on board, and the daily regime of
preparation for a flight.

Because flying airplanes for a
living is not an industry for introverts, the operations room of an airline
where pilots report for work and prepare flights can be a unique place.

On day five of a week of early
5 a.m. reports it’s not easy to arrive at that hour of the morning and brighten
the long day to come with a handshake and a smile. There are grunts, nods,
baggy eyes. A short-lived caffeine induced alertness.

Pilots on check flights or who
are on their way to becoming captains may well have been there an hour earlier
to prepare. Schedules can be tough; this is not work for the faint hearted. Preparation
means they must gather the paperwork, check it all, plan perhaps four legs—a
leg being a complete one-way flight between two airports—and fill in the
paperwork blanks. They will look at the predicted weather, airport notices and
the condition of the aircraft offered to them for that day’s work. (It’s at
this stage the pilots hope to detect any errors made earlier by flight planners
and to catch something hidden among the paperwork, that may indicate problems
ahead.)

They must then travel across
the airport to their aircraft, check it during a visual inspection, complete
safety and security checks; and— if time allows—brief the flight attendants. As
well as that they must program the flight management computers for the flight
ahead, check the maintenance logs, input the flight details, and deal with
passenger boarding or cargo issues, airport delays and technical faults if any.

Some airlines allow just
forty-five
minutes
from the pilot checking in for work to completing all the above.
Others may require ultra-fast turnaround times—of 20 minutes, between the
aircraft arriving on stand to pushing back with a new full load of passengers.

Tired already?

As for the men and women who
find themselves gripped by a passion to fly and who will barter house and home
to do it, they are in for a shock.

The cost of a commercial
license, plus add-ons, continues to rise towards 130,000 US Dollars. A
year-and-a-half in fulltime study, including weekends, is not the end of it.

Neither is the initial expense.

Pilots increasingly have to pay for the aircraft type
rating, at least another thirty thousand dollars for a job that may pay you half
that.

Having the “right stuff” used
to mean the pilot who had a combination of the requisite character traits for
the job, coupled with a love of flying. These days the right stuff may simply
mean having a large check book and little else to spend it on.

It may also mean having to
enter the world of the Pay-To-Fly pilot because pilots must get experience,
somewhere, somehow. They can pay thirty thousand dollars or more for the
privilege of gaining experience on passenger carrying jet aircraft over a
period of perhaps six months.

There is no way to avoid “beginners”
flying on the line with training captains and in this case, a safety pilot, is usually
carried until the training captain is happy that in the event of his
incapacitation the “Trainee” could land the airplane safely. The problem with
the Pay-To-Fly pilot system is that in many cases there is a
high turnover
of inexperienced pilots sitting in the right hand seat as co-pilot with
fare-paying passengers on board.

Yes, you read it correctly.
You, the passenger, sometimes fly with rookie pilots who are paying for the privilege
of sitting in that seat. And this brings us to some other disturbing
revelations that the flying public ought to know.

Chapter 6
Lethal Airlines
When it’s Safer Not to Fly

“I once sat as a concerned
passenger in an aircraft about to taxi on the runway at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo
airport, while a snowstorm was blowing and witnessed two mechanics try to beat
the crap out of a badly-fitting metal engine cowl as they attempted to fit it
into place with blows from their rubber mallets. Much to my disappointment,
they eventually succeeded.

As I called the flight
attendant to voice my concern, the aircraft promptly took off. Safely, which
seemed to me like a miracle. But twenty minutes into the flight the attendant
came round with the drinks trolley and handed me a Styrofoam cup for my drink.
Around the rim I saw lipstick and the clear outline of teeth marks. I was on
the flight from hell...”

The list of airlines
banned from flying within European airspace is long enough to fill
26 pages
.
[11]
List of airlines banned within the EU.

The US regulator, the FAA, has
a list of zones or states which are “unapproved.” Airlines from those areas or
states are forbidden from entering US airspace but, incredibly, the FAA will
not specify the airlines, which is not much use to you, the fare-paying
passenger, as you plan your travel abroad.

The European agency, however,
regularly updates the list and tells you outright the names of the companies
they say are not up to standard.

There are thousands of
airlines around the world, but some in fact are not real airlines and are known
in the industry as Virtual Airlines. They hire or outsource planes and crews
from other companies.

Flight Global, a leader in
aviation comment, has this to say on the virtual airline phenomenon: “Commercial
air transport operators provide a unique kind of service. They should not be
treated, in law, like companies that sell tickets for, say, theatre seats. At
no stage before, during or after a theatre performance does the audience find
their seats collectively careering at nearly 300km/h along a short tarmac path
in a three-wheeled vehicle that was not designed to operate on the ground,
before being launched into the sky. Neither do theatre-goers contract to spend
several hours in an artificially pressurized container traversing the
troposphere at 750km/h before being aimed at another small tarmac strip to
impact with it at some 250km/h.”

To pursue the theatrical analogy, a virtual carrier
may be nothing more than a ticket agency.

Flight Global believe virtual airlines should be a
thing of the past. “What really provides safety in an airline is unbroken lines
of responsibility and control, a corporate ethos, and a set of company standard
operating procedures. A ticket agency that contracts out its customers to three
or four different operators all with different aircraft types cannot offer the
standards that passengers expect when they purchase an airline ticket.”
[12]

Another worrying development
is that many airlines are now challenging the captain’s authority onboard his
aircraft, to prevent him making safety decision that may cost them money.
Pilots are appearing in court or finding themselves in difficult employment
circumstances for making safety decisions that did not ring well with
management. For instance, a diversion for safety reasons to an alternative
airport can be costly for an airline, as can delaying boarding over re-fueling
safety concerns.

Airlines may also ban pilots
from being members of unions or pilot associations, but in aviation terms,
these associations can be the last line of defense for safety. Otherwise
pilots do not have any protection against attempts from commercially driven or
ill-informed managements to push pilots into actions that go against their
professional judgment.’
[13]

US Airways, the airline employing the Miracle on the Hudson
River pilots, are not immune to problems. A recent audit by Illumia, University
of Illinois, found the safety culture there is poor and “has led to cutting corners”.
Management have dismissed the report. “In summary, the results of the survey
indicate that US Airways’ Flight Operations has a negative safety culture, with
some areas driven by a fixed, unyielding view from leadership, and others
reflective of employees feeling they must take safety matters into their own
hands.”
[14]

In the words of Tom Kubik, safety committee chairman, USAPA, “a
poor safety culture will inevitably affect the safety record.”
[15]

Captain Chesley Sullenberger and First Officer Jeffrey Skiles,
the crew who successfully ditched their dying Airbus A320 in the Hudson River
in New York have not hesitated in speaking out about the concerns they have
about their own airline.

“The success of Flight 1549 was due to the professionalism,
experience and dedication to safety of the US Airways employee groups,
especially the pilots and flight attendants. This has been
in spite of
US Airways management, not because of it. The continued safety of our
passengers requires that US Airways management establish a genuine commitment
to safety and create an effective safety culture in partnership with the
employee groups. We commend US Airways employees for maintaining their focus on
passenger safety, despite Management's lack of leadership, their attacks on
Captain's authority, and their creation of a flawed safety culture,” said Sully
Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles.

Harsh words indeed. Meanwhile passengers strap into their
seats, completely unaware that the pilots in whom they place their trust are
increasingly finding themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place. Should
they satisfy management demands by pushing the safety margin, or just say no
and risk losing their job? Confident pilots, who are backed up by a union or
association are not so vulnerable to these pressures. But as we will now see,
even pilots who do have this backing are finding they are just too disheartened
or brow-beaten to make those kinds of calls when it matters most.

*

“In my private life I’ve been drunk and I’ve been fatigued,
they both feel very similar, both have debilitating effects. I’ve only
experienced one of them on the flight deck, fatigue and I might as well have
been drunk.” Airline training captain.

A peculiar word, fatigue;
it suggests many things to many people and is easily dismissed by skeptics. It’s
a condition that is difficult to prove even when a fatigued patient presents
himself to a medical practitioner; it’s easy to see how it could escape
reference in an aviation accident or serious incident. Despite this, fatigue is
considered by air accident investigators to be a factor in 20% of airline
accidents, a figure often disputed by airlines.

Safety is said to be the
number one priority at every airline, but not all pilots believe this is true
of the company they work for. “Over the last three years cost has been the
overriding focus of the business,” says one captain.

Fatigue may be a dirty
word in aviation but many pilots will maintain it is at an all time high, and
that “it has just become part of our work.”
[16]

To minimize risk many
airlines use fatigue management systems to monitor pilot work rosters. But such
systems are not always adhered to or can be flawed. Some airlines do not even
recognize fatigue as a problem. For pilots, this often means they are being
pushed to the limits.

A commercial airline
captain with a major low fares airline talks about how his constant tiredness
is affecting the standard of training he provides his trainee pilots. “I don’t
bother thinking anymore; I just know I’m too tired to bother with it. I know I
made several mistakes during my last simulator session, I’m pretty sure the
crew may have failed an item, but I have no idea what they did. I was just too
tired to care.”
[17]

Too many crew—including
flight attendants,—are afraid to call in sick for fear of losing their jobs. Flying
when ill debilitates a crewmember’s ability to make safe decisions; it also
adds to fatigue levels. A fatigued/distracted pilot is a short step away from
failing in his duties altogether.

UCL, University College
London conducted a survey of pilots at one airline.
[18]
The survey found pilots often flew right up to the maximum safe level of hours,
and flew above and beyond the
recommended
safe limit of work hours in a
day at least
24
times a year. Levels of fatigue, sleep problems, levels
of anxiety, and depression, were higher than would be expected in a general
population. The survey also found and discussed poor mental health among the
pilots.
[19]
Results such as these ought to ring alarm bells worldwide for airline passengers.

In the Colgan Air crash
of 2009 in Buffalo, 50 were people killed. Fatigue induced by long commutes for
the pilots were cited as contributing towards the accident.
[20]
In 2010, an Air India Boeing 737 overshot the runway, fell over a cliff and a
fire ensued among the wreckage. 158 died. Fatigue was cited as a key factor in
the crash.
[21]

In the US, new flight
duty time rules set by the FAA in late 2011 don’t go far enough. “I'm very distressed
over these rules,” John Nance, a former Air Force and Airline pilot told NBC
news, “because they don't go anywhere near far enough and they bear the
earmarks of having listened to the whining of the airline industry. We have
needed comprehensive change in our duty time controls for fatigue for a long
time and this just ignores about 25 years of research.”
[22]

Strong lobbying by
airlines to allow pilots to work long hours continues to have an influence,
this despite scientific studies that advise otherwise. It demands lobbying by
pilot groups who must journey to DC in an attempt to counter the powerful
aviation representatives. A pilots’ group study suggests that 50% of the pilot
sample are over the threshold for sleep disorders.
[23]

If a pilot kills you due
to pilot error caused by fatigue, he will doubtless be blamed.

And yet the airline he worked for will be well within
its right to hold up its hand and say, “But it was legal…’”

BOOK: Seconds to Disaster: US Edition
2.29Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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