Hi Peter
I liked one of the comments to that article: "I am an old and ancient military fighter pilot who spent many happy years training pilots to fly high performance jets. One of the key things I use to impress on my students was the need to monitor two things continuously during a landing, runway aspect and speed..."
Bob
Very true Bob, speed and where you arrive on the runway are the only things that truly matter and jets are remarkably critical of speed errors.
"Centreline, touchdown point, speed, centreline, touchdown point, speed, centreline, touchdown point, speed..."
I do not believe this report actually suggests they were fiddling with the knobs and buttons, and that distracted them. I think they were using a semi automated mode and relied on the autothrottles to maintain speed when in fact the autothrottles were not in the correct mode to do so.
If that is the case monitoring was the problem, not distraction.
Interesting video Children of Magenta
[link fixed - for youtube, just get the URL from the "share" button and drop it straight in]
That was an interesting watch, Officer. And so germane to this incident!
A very prophetic warning indeed contained in that AA briefing (equally applicable to the recent UPS crash in Alabama) by a pilot representing a generation who have a greater understanding of when and how to use a tool, and provided a necessary check and balance against those eager to forget the lessons of the past written in blood at the altar of profit.
Fast forward to today, and how many of those children of the magenta now occupy those senior positions? With respect, I have an increasingly depressing view that all the recent seemingly basic raft of pilot errors in heavy iron are In part at least, the result of an insidious cultural demise of layers of safety in exchange for perceived efficiency in automation within the industry.
I do not think it is even as easy as click, click, click any longer in the latest generation of FBW aircraft to disconnect the automation. Airbus in particular seems to require a negotiation between the pilot and computer before the various automation laws reluctantly relinquish parts of control a piece at a time.
Fly the damn airplane is an easy quip, but the sad fact is that the current SOP's that control all aspects of commercial flight actively discourage anything that deviates from the preset rigid cost based efficient procedures. I interact with a few young FO's (mainly Asian as it happens) via my local flying club. These guys know how to fly small GA aircraft well, and often confide in me their deep frustration at the lack of opportunity both in the actual aircraft and the simulator for practicing basic airmanship as part of their jobs.
In these situations, pilot error no longer cuts it in my view, when the very environment that is meant to support the pilot, is cut, cut, cut away into a corporate neat package that denies the art of flying and the basic dangers that still exist outside of the cockpit window despite whatever the clever computer screen inside is telling us.
