Is Plane Technology Affecting Pilots’ Abilities?
While airline industry insiders debate how long it’ll be before aircraft are fully autonomous, critics are raising safety concerns about the effects of increased automation on pilots’ abilities. Citing the recent Lion Air crash that killed 189 people, critics say an overreliance on technology combined with a push to decrease costs means pilots nowadays aren’t always adequately prepared to use new technology and may not be equipped to deal with emergencies.
Critics and experts have also sounded alarms that Boeing, who made the 737 Max 8 that crashed into the Java Sea, didn’t warn pilots about new technology on the 737 Max, nor how to deal with potential malfunctions, dooming everyone aboard the Lion Air plane. The crash and resulting concerns raise important issues about how pilots are trained to adapt to new technology and who is to blame when automated technology and flight crews are at odds, resulting in tragedy.
Lion Air Flight 610 Crashed 11 Minutes After Takeoff
On Oct. 29, Lion Air flight 610 left Jakarta headed to Pangkal Pinang with 181 passengers and 8 crewmembers. Shortly after takeoff on the one-hour flight, the plane crashed into the Java Sea, killing everyone on board. Evidence from the flight recorder shows the pilots repeatedly attempting to override a safety system on the aircraft that was apparently malfunctioning, but despite more than 20 attempts to right the issue — the first one only two minutes after takeoff — the pilots failed and the aircraft crashed. Before the plane crashed, the pilot requested permission to turn back to the airport.
Indonesian investigators issued a preliminary report suggesting that the Boeing 737 Max 8 was not airworthy and should not have been put in service. Specifically, the National Transport Safety Committee noted that the same plane experienced the same issue the day before it crashed, but on that day the pilots disconnected the automated system and the aircraft made it to its destination.
What’s Different About the Boeing 737 Max?
The 737 Max was designed to be more fuel-efficient than the 737NG, saving fuel costs for airlines. This is accomplished by using larger engines, but to provide enough ground clearance the larger engines are placed differently on the Max than on the NG, which changes the aircraft’s balance. To compensate for this change, Boeing used an anti-stall protection system called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), a system that is automatically activated when the plane’s nose is oriented too high, which can result in a stall.
MCAS recognizes the risk of a stall using angle of attack sensors — sensors that measure the angle between oncoming air and the aircraft’s wing. In the 737 Max, the anti-stall system kicks in when the angle of attack is too high. The system responds by pushing the plane’s nose down to decrease the angle of attack and prevent a stall. Investigators indicated, however, that one of the plane’s angle of attack sensors was faulty, causing the plane to think it was at risk of a stall and repeatedly pushing the plane’s nose down even as the pilots fought to bring it up.
Another one of the 737 Max’s peculiar design features was that, although it had two angle of attack sensors, MCAS received information from only one at a time. If that one sensor happened to be faulty or the data was not correctly transmitted, disaster could occur just as it did with Lion Air.
MCAS essentially amounts to lines of code that are written into the flight control system to prevent a stall and keep the plane’s nose at the right angle. The system, however, uses stabilizers differently than how pilots use them manually. In previous 737s, pilots could pull back on the yoke to cut off the stabilizers and give pilots control of the aircraft, but the 737 Max did not have this function and the pilots were likely not aware that pulling the yoke would not help them.
Boeing Fought Against Pilot Retraining for New Planes
In addition to concerns that Boeing failed to warn pilots about the anti-stall feature are allegations that Boeing convinced customers and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that the 737 Max was similar enough to the existing 737s that pilots would not have to undergo extensive MCAS training. Regulators in Europe went along with the FAA’s decision, though they reportedly initially disagreed with it, while Brazilian lawmakers required pilots be made aware of the change.
Large-scale changes to aircraft generally require pilots to undergo training, which can be time-consuming and costly. Hoping to avoid a situation where pilots would have to undergo training, Boeing worked to ensure the differences between the 737 Max and previous 737s were minimal. The FAA determines how much and what kind of training is required for aircraft changes, and in this case the FAA decided that the 737 Max was similar enough to previous 737s to not even require minimal training — on a simulator — to become familiar with MCAS. Pilots were required to receive training on other changes in the Max 737, but not the system that ultimately doomed the Lion Air flight.
Without proper training on the Max, the Lion Air crew didn’t know how to address the issue of the control system pushing the plane’s nose down in an attempt to prevent a stall. The National Transportation Safety Board is now investigating the FAA’s decision not to warn pilots about the new safety feature.
Boeing says that long-established emergency procedures that were effective on previous 737s would have addressed that issue and enabled the crew to take control from the flight control system, allowing the plane to continue to its destination. Pilots, however, say Boeing’s argument fails to take into account how a crew responds to an emergency in the air.
Regardless of whether Boeing was technically following the rules in not notifying airlines and crew about the new anti-stall technology and whether existing emergency protocols would have addressed the issue, critics say that any time new systems are put on planes, the crew should be made fully aware of the technology and how to handle it. In the case of MCAS, many pilots did not even know it existed. Had they known, it is possible they would have changed how they responded to the malfunction.
Is Technology Eroding Pilot Skills?
Along with Boeing’s potential role in the crash, critics say the Lion Air crash suggests that an increased reliance on technology in the cockpit has eroded pilot skills to the point that they have less ability to manage an emergency. Airline safety consultant Keith Mackey told Forbes that increased use of autopilot takes flight time away from pilots, giving them less opportunity to maintain rudimentary skills.
“You get a lot of takeoffs and landings but no one gets much flying practice,” Mackey said. “They’re getting to be good computer programmers, they know which buttons to push and when to push them. When something begins to fail it becomes a puzzlement.”
Mackey’s words appear to be supported by a survey of Airbus and Boeing pilots, who said they only manually operate a plane for between 3 and 6 minutes per flight. The rest of those flights are in autopilot, though Forbes doesn’t state how long the average flight is. That said, even if flights are an average of an hour, pilots are manually operating a plane for less than one-tenth of a flight.
Among eroding skills, safety experts told the Los Angeles Times, there is an inability to use the stick, rudder and throttle to control the plane. Although the situation is more pronounced outside the US, it should be a concern here as well. Airlines have embraced technology as a means of decreasing costs, including the costs of training, but experts say increased technology should result in additional training.
“Pilots are not being told or taught everything they need to know about their airplanes,” said pilot Chesley Sullenberger, who landed a plane safely on the Hudson River in an emergency. “It is not easier or cheaper or requires less training to fly an automated airplane. It frequently requires more, because you have to have a deep understanding of how a system works, including the dark corners, the counterintuitive things it might do in certain circumstances.”
Increasingly, airlines around the world are looking to technology not as a way to complement human flight crews but as a way to make up for crews that do not have adequate training or experience.
The greater ability planes have to fly themselves, the less prepared pilots will be to effectively address a malfunction, especially when that malfunction puts pilots and flight systems at odds, as in the Lion Air crash. It’s a situation some safety experts refer to as automation complacency — when crews become complacent in allowing technology to fly the plane.
Although automation is designed to increase safety and decrease the risk of human error in plane crashes, large-scale tragedies like the one involving Lion Air Flight JT 610 affect how the public views aircraft technology, and raise important questions about an aircraft maker’s responsibility not just to the airline and its crew, but also to passengers.
Lawsuits Filed Against Boeing in Wake of Lion Air JT 610 Crash
In late November, the family of the doomed plane’s pilot filed a lawsuit against Boeing, alleging the 737 Max was not safe and that Boeing did not tell airlines or crewmembers about the new safety feature found in the 737 Max. Boeing has said the information was available in a training manual, but Lion Air’s operational director has also claimed the aircraft maker did not make it clear that the plane had a feature to prevent stalls.
Seeming to confirm Lion Air’s claim, representatives from American Airlines, United Airlines, and Southwest Airlines told CNN they also did not see information in Boeing’s Flight Crew Operations Manual that explained the safety feature or how to manage it. Meanwhile, Reuters reportedly analyzed Lion Air’s flight manual and could not find information about the new system.
Dennis Tajer, a 737 captain who has flown the 737 Max and spokesperson for the Allied Pilots Association, said the first time he heard about MCAS was in the bulletin Boeing issued on Nov. 6, 2018, after the Lion Air crash.
“Pilots are extraordinarily skilled and if they have the right training and information they will make the right decisions, they will do the right thing,” said Peter Goelz, a former NTSB managing director. “But if they don’t know what’s confronting them and there’s been an increasing reliance on the infallibility of fly-by-wire systems [designed to let computers control many of the flight aspects], then you are faced with a real challenge. That’s a broader question that’s going to be looked at.”
Sources:
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/14/asia/lion-air-cockpit-voice-recorder-intl/index.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46121127
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/18/americas/lion-air-boeing-safety-intl/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/world/asia/lion-air-plane-crash-pilots.html
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/14/asia/lion-air-cockpit-voice-recorder-intl/index.html
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lion-air-crash-20190204-story.html
