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Fuel for debate
Posted: 15 Mar 2010, 15:19
by nigelb
NTSB: No Evidence Glass Cockpits Improve Safety :
http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/nt ... 143-1.html
Interesting article. The question in my mind is if there is sufficient data to draw statistically valid conclusions. That said, the NTSB recommendations (pdf link at end of article) will help improve safety.
Nigel²
Re: Fuel for debate
Posted: 16 Mar 2010, 01:35
by Chris Trott
I read that article and the NTSB findings and found that rather than there not being enough data, the problem is that there's not sufficiently similar data. The NTSB even admitted that the types of profiles and missions being flown by aircraft with glass cockpits had not insignificant deviations from the operation of non-glass cockpit aircraft in the area of higher amount of IMC flying, a longer average mission length, and a higher level of pilot proficiency in the flights.
In addition, some of their "recommendations" are already the case in the US. When being checked out in a "glass panel" aircraft, insurance requirements demand that you do 10 hours in a similarly equipped aircraft that includes failure training. In addition, the manuals for the glass cockpits include data on failure modes and how to handle them. This information should NOT be included in the aircraft manual in all cases because this makes the aircraft manual too bulky to be useful during a situation when you'd actually need it. The regulations already require that the manuals for the glass cockpit be in the aircraft and that they contain all the information the NTSB recommends, so I'm not sure where the issue is. In addition, there are test requirements when training in a "Technologically Advanced Aircraft" (TAA) that must be completed when taking a test for any level of rating to ensure that you were properly trained.
In the end, I think the problems the NTSB found were problems with the pilots, not with the training or the airplane. As Ron White likes to say - "You Can't Fix Stupid," or in this case, you can't always prevent people from going beyond the limits of their training because they have a false sense of security in the technology.