Latest / Pilot Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge / Episode 69 - Situational Awareness - Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge

Transcript

Episode 69 - Situational Awareness - Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge · Pilot Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge

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  Situational awareness. Situational awareness is the accurate perception and understanding of all the factors
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  and conditions within the five fundamental risk elements of flight, pilot, aircraft environment,
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  and type of operation that comprise any given aviation situation that affects safety before,
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  during, and after the flight. Monitoring radio communications for traffic, weather
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  discussion, and ATC communications can enhance situational awareness by helping the pilot develop a
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  mental picture of what is happening. Maintaining situational awareness requires an understanding of the
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  relative significance of all flight related factors and their future impact on the flight.
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  When a pilot understands what is going on and has an overview of the total
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  operation, he or she is not fixated on one perceived significant factor. Not
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  only is it important for a pilot to know the aircraft's geographical location, it
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  is also important he or she understand what is happening. For instance, while
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  flying above Richmond, Virginia towards Dullis Airport or Leesburg, the pilot should know
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  why he or she is being vectored and be able to anticipate spatial location.
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  A pilot who is simply making turns without understanding why has added an additional burden
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  to his or her management in the event of an emergency to maintain situational awareness.
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  All of the skills involved in ADM are used obstacles to maintaining situational awareness.
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  Fatigue, stress, and work overload can cause a pilot to fixate on
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  a single perceived important item and reduce an overall situational awareness of the flight.
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  A contributing factor in many accidents is a distraction that diverts the pilot's attention from
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  monitoring the instruments or scanning outside the aircraft. Many light deck distractions begin as
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  a minor, such as a gauge that is not reading correctly, but result
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  in accidents as the pilot diverts attention to the perceived problem and neglects to properly
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  control the aircraft. Workload management. Effective workload management ensures essential operations are accomplished
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  by planning prior toizing and sequencing task to avoid work overload refer to Figure seventeen
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  sixteen. As experience is gained, a pilot learns to recognize future workload requirements
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  and can prepare for high workload periods during times of low workload, reviewing the
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  appropriate chart and setting frequencies well in advance of when they're needed helps reduce workload
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  as the flight nears the airport. In addition, a pilot should listen to
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  adis, automated surface observation system a SAUCE or automated weather observing system a WASPS,
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  if available, and then monitor the tower frequency or Common Traffic Advisory Frequency
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  c TAFF to get a good idea of what traffic additions to expect. Checklists
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  should be performed well in advance so there is time to focus on traffic and
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  atc instructions. These procedures are especially important prior to entering a high density traffic
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  area such as Class B airspace. Recognizing a work overload situation is also an
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  important component of managing workload. The first effect of high workload is that the
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  pilot may be working harder but accomplishing less. As workload increases, attention cannot
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  be devoted to several tasks at one time, and the pilot may begin to
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  focus on one item. When a pilot becomes saturated, there is no awareness
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  of input from various sources, so decisions may be made on incomplete information,
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  and the possibility of error increases. Refer to figure seventeen seventeen team. When
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  a work overloaded situation exists, a pilot needs to stop, think, slow
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  down, and prioritize. It is important to understand how to decrease workload.
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  For example, in the case of the cabin door that opened in VFR flight,
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  the impact on workload should be insignificant. If the cabin door opens under
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  IFR conditions, its impact on workload will change. Therefore, placing a situation
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  in the proper perspective, remaining calm and thinking rationally are key elements and reducing
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  stress and increasing the capacity to fly safely. This ability depends upon experience,
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  discipline, and training. Managing risks. The ability to manage risk begins with
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  preparation. Here are some things a pilot can do to manage overall risk.
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  Assess the flight's risk based upon experience. Use some form of risk assessment.
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  For example, if the weather is marginal and the pilot has low IMC training,
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  it is probably a good idea to cancel the flight. Brief passengers using
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  the safety list s seat belts fastened for takeoff taxi landing, shoulder harness fastened
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  for takeoff landing, seat position adjusted and locked in place, A air vents
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  location and operation. All environmental controls discussed. Action in case of any passenger
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  discomfort, F fire extinguisher location and operation, E exit doors, how to
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  secure, how to open emergency evacuation plan, emergency or survival kit location and
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  contents, T traffic scanning, spotting, notifying pilot talking, sterile flight deck
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  expectations, why your questions speak up In addition to the safety list discussed with
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  passengers, whether or not smoking is permitted, flight route altitudes, time and
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  route destination, weather during flight, expected whether at the destination, controls and
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  what they do, and the general capabilities and limitations of the aircraft. Use
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  a sterile flight deck one that is completely silent with no pilot communication with passengers
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  or by passengers, from the time of departure to the first intermediate altitude and
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  clearance from the local airspace. Use a sterile flight deck during arrival from the
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  first radar vector for approach or dissent for the approach. Keep the passengers informed.
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  During times when the workload is low, consider using passenger in the right
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  seat for simple tasks such as holding the chart. This relieves the pilot of
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  a task. Automation in the general aviation community. An automated aircraft is generally
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  comprised of an integrated advanced avionics system consisting of a primary flight display PFD,
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  a multifunctioned flight display MD, including an instrument certified gluible Positioning System GPS with
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  traffic and terrain graphics, and a fully integrated autopilot. This type of aircraft
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  is commonly known as an advanced avionics aircraft. In an advanced avionics aircraft,
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  there are typically two displays, computer screens PFD left display screen and the MFD.
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  Automation is the single most important advance in aviation technologies. Electronic flight displays
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  efds have made vast improvements in howation is displayed and what information is available to
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  the pilot. Pilots can access electronic databases that contain all of the information traditionally
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  contained in multiple handbooks, reducing clutter in the flight deck prefer to figure seventeen
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  eighteen. With errata. Multifunction displays mds are capable of displaying moving maps that
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  mirror sectional charts. These detailed displays depict all airspace, including temporary flight restrictions
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  TFRs. MFDs are so descriptive that many pilots fall into the trap of relying
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  solely on the moving maps for navigation. Pilots also draw upon the database to
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  familiarize themselves with departure and destination airport information. More pilots now rely on electronic
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  databases for flight planning and use automated flight planning tools rather than planning the flight
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  by the traditional methods of laying out charts, draw the course, identifying navigation
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  points assuming a VFR flight, and using the pilot's operating handbook to figure out
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  the weight and balance and performance charts. Whichever method of pilot chooses to plan
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  a flight, it is important to remember to check and confirm calculations. Although
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  automation has made flying safer, automated systems can make some errors more evident,
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  and sometimes hide other errors or make them less evident. There are concerns about
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  the effective automation on pilots. In a study published in nineteen ninety five,
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  the British Airline Pilots Association officially voiced its concern that airline pilots increasingly lack basic
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  flying skills as a result of reliance on automation. This reliance on automation translates
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  into a lack of basic flying skills that may affect the pilot's ability to cope
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  with an in flight emergency, such as sudden mechanical failure. The worry that
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  pilots are becoming too reliant on automated systems and are not being encouraged or trained
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  to fly mannually has grown with the increase in the number of MFD flight decks.
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  As automated flight decks began entering everyday line operations, instructors and check airmen
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  grew concerned about some of the unanticipated side effects. Despite the promise of reducing
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  human mistakes, the flight managers reported the automation actually created much larger errors.
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  At times in the terminal environment, the workload in an automated flight deck actually
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  seemed higher than in the older analog flight decks. At other times, the
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  automation seemed to lull the flight crews into complacency. Over time, concern surface
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  that the manual flying skills are the automated flight crew deteriorated due to overliance on
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  computers. The flight crew managers said they worried that pilots would have less stick
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  and rudder proficiency when those skills were needed to manually resume direct control of the
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  aircraft. A major study was conducted to evaluate the performance of two groups of
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  pilots. The control group was composed of pilots who flew an older version of
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  a common twin jet airliner equipped with analog instrumentation, and the experimental group was
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  composed of pilots who flew the same aircraft but newer models equipped with an electronic
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  flight instrument System EPHIS and a flight management system FMS. The pilots were evaluated
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  in maintaining aircraft parameters such as heading, altitude, airspeed, glide, slope,
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  and localizer deviations, as well as pilot controlled inputs. These were recorded
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  during a variety of normal, abnormal, and emergency maneuvers during four hours of
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  simulator sessions. Results of the study, when pilots who had flown ephis for
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  several years were required to fly various maneuvers manually, the aircraft parameters and light
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  control inputs clearly showed some erosion of flying skills. During normal maneuvers such as
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  turns to headings without a flight director, the ephist group exhibited somewhat greater deviations
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  than the analog group. Most of the time, the deviations were within the
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  practical test standards PTS, but the pilots definitely did not keep on the localizer
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  and glide slope as smoothly as the analog group. The differences in hand flying
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  skills between the two groups became more significant during abnormal maneuvers such as slam dunks.
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  When given close crossing restrictions, the analog crews were more adept at the
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  mental math and usually maneuvered the aircraft in a smoother manner to make the restriction.
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  On the other hand, the EPHIS crews tended to go heads down and
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  tried to solve the crossing restriction on the f MS referred to figure seventeen Dash
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  nineteen with Arata. Another situation used in the simulator experiment reflected real world changes
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  in approach that are common and can be assigned on short notice. Once again,
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  the analog crews transitioned more easily to the parallel runways localizer, whereas the
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  EPHIS crews had a much more difficult time, with the pilot going head down
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  for a significant amount of time trying to program the new approach into the FMS.
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  While upon its lack of familiarity with the EPHIS is often an issue.
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  The approach would have been made easier by disengaging the automated system and manually flying
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  the approach. At the time of this study, the general guidelines in the
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  industry were to let the automated system do as much of the flying as possible.
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  That view has since changed, and it is recommended that pilots used their
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  best judgment when choosing which level of automation will most efficiently do the task,
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  considering the workload and situational awareness. Emergency maneuvers clearly broadened the difference in manual
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  flying skills between the two groups. In general, the analog pilots tended to
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  fly raw data, so when they were given an emergency such as an engine
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  failure and were instructed to fly the maneuver without a flight director, they performed
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  it expertly. By contrast, sop for EPHIS operations at the time was to
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  use the flight director. When EPHIS crews had their flight directors disabled, their
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  eye scan again began a more erratic searching pattern, and their manual flying subsequently
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  suffered. Those who reviewed the data saw that the EPHIS pilots, who better
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  managed the automation, also had better flying skills. While the data did not
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  reveal whether those skills preceded or followed automation. It did indicate that automation management
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  needed to be improved. Recommended best practices and procedures have remedied some of the
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  earlier problems with automation. Pilots need to maintain their flight skills and ability to
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  maneuver aircraft manually within the standards set forth in the PTS. It is recommended
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  the pilots of automated aircraft occasionally disengage the automation and manually fly the aircraft to
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  maintain stick and rudder proficiency. It is imperative pilots understand that the EPD adds
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  to the overall quality of the flight experience, but it can also lead to
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  catastrophe if not utilized properly. At no time is the moving map meant to
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  substitute for a VFR sectional or low altitude en route chart. End to Part
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  sixth of Chapter seventeen