System

Airspace redesign, increased use of RNAV and optimum climb/descent profiles complicate and clutter STARs and SIDs. Procedure complexity previously stemmed from complicated lateral paths. Course changes and cross-radials required frequencies to be tuned and OBS knobs spun like the man behind the curtain. (Im supposed to identify each of these stations too?) The HAARP arrival into LaGuardia is an example: tracking outbound on Kingston R-203, the number two radio is set on Deer Park R-338, then number one on the Pawling R-211 or Huguenot R-107 to identify BASYE intersection.

A friend of mine used to work in customer support for a simulator manufacturer. He told me the most common customer support question was: OK, Im sitting at the end of the runway. Now what? Imagine a pilot in the real world pondering an equivalent question. There you are sitting at the end of the runway, engine running, and thinking, Hmm. What should I do with this airplane? Yet thats the abyss many folks face-and turn their backs on-when trying to use a simulator for proficiency.

Periodically, NASAs Aviation Safety Reporting System publishes many of the most meaningful ASRS report submissions that relate to various specific aspects of aviation, such as weather, near-midairs, GPS and the like. We looked at these selected reports covering Air Traffic Control, with a view toward lessons we can learn in dealing with ATC, better practices we can follow, and generally ways to do things better. Youll note two recurring themes. The first is incorrect pilot readbacks of controller instructions and controllers not catching the mistake. The second is pilots turning incorrectly left, right or to the wrong heading, or similar errors with altitude, as in this first case below.

Some of you might recall that almost two years ago I retired as an airline captain. Then, due to various circumstances both in and out of my control, I took a year hiatus from all self-piloted flight. The result was some serious catching up to do to get ready to fly my own personal flivver. Being an opportunistic magazine editor, I used that need to also create a number of articles for the magazine about the process.

This gets into how these various Advisory Circulars are updated. Once an AC is issued, its assigned a number and a version letter, such as AC 00-45G, Aviation Weather Services. That version can be revised by issuing changes. So, the full specification of the most recent document is AC 00-45G, Change 2. The main document-original version-is what is returned by the various searches; youve got to dig just a bit further to find the changed versions.

Growing up, I enjoyed Vietnam War helicopter-pilot memoirs, like Robert Masons Chickenhawk. U.S. Army Air Cavalry helos were a lifeline for American troops, but clear landing zones were rare in the deep jungle. Pilots got creative when wounded soldiers and critical supplies were on the line. Mason describes literally hacking down trees with the main rotor of his UH-1 Huey to land where he needed to be.

We spend most of our IFR lives wrapped in the warm cocoon of radar coverage, vectored from point to point by the all-seeing presence of ATC. And while controllers are human and occasionally make mistakes, the checks and safety nets in place rarely result in close calls, let alone bent metal. Its also true that when clearances get tight in the final descent to the airport, responsibility is handed over to the pilot.

To assume that an aircraft automation system has a will of its own and will try to kill us would be anthropomorphic. Autopilots and other automation systems have not reached that stage of sophistication. Not yet. What can-and too often does-happen, however, is that flight crews turn the flying duties over to the autopilot and relax. With frightening repetition, this ends in disaster.

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We need completely realistic virtual avionics. Ive been ringing this bell for a decade now and have achieved exactly nothing. Simulator training for real-world pilots is crippled without them. Pilots cant practice the buttonology, which atrophies even faster than a six-pack scan. Pilots also want their own panels to fly virtually. I say thats one of the biggest barriers to expanding the use of simulation.

The FAAs long-awaited ADS-B rebate program launched on September 19, and drew more than 1300 applicants in the first two days, according to David Gray, the FAAs ADS-B program manager. A robotic co-pilot that can be quickly installed in a variety of aircraft has been successfully tested in a Diamond DA-42 and a Cessna Caravan by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Textron Aviation flew its prototype Citation Longitude for the first time, in October. The super-midsize Longitude was announced in 2012. The crew of a Hawker 700A jet that crashed in Akron, Ohio, a year ago showed a disregard for safety, NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart said in October, and the company they worked for, Execuflight, also fell short of their obligations."

Weather and NOTAMs are a huge percentage of the mountains of data controllers process daily, and a significant chunk of that comes from pilot reports. Some pilots wonder how the information they share gets processed by ATC. As one IFR reader expressed: It appears that most reports of icing/tops/bases that are reported to ATC never make it into the PIREP system.