[Peetwo]

Aviation safety: The auto-dependency spectrum??

Opposite ends of the spectrum? - Duck'n'dive:

Flight below minimum permitted altitude involving Cessna 441, VH-EQU

Near Wollongong Airport, New South Wales, 3 August 2015

Versus...well duck'n'dive??    


Courtesy Flight.org blog...

11
Oct
SHEED, MESEN and Melbourne’s RW34. A Look Back at Virgin Australia’s Boeing 777 Flight Path Incident.
4 comments -

It’s been a little over 12 months now since the ATSB were informed of an incident involving a Virgin Australia Boeing 777 and an unstable approach to Runway 34 at Melbourne (YMML, MEL). Given the impending update from the ATSB, now is a good chance to reflect on the incident before the final report is published.

This article seeks to uncover a means in which to mitigate occurrences of similar unstabilised approaches elsewhere, and we’ll also compare the procedure as flown on the Boeing 777 to that of the Boeing 737 (for which similar incidents are a rarity).

Today in the Australian, international aviation safety legal expert, Joseph Wheeler is back with yet another thought provoking article, this time in relation to the Emirates crash landing in Dubai - see HERE for the latest on AP on the developing story on this accident:

Emirates EK521 Dubai accident puts focus on autoflight systems

• Joseph Wheeler
  
• The Australian
  
• 12:00AM August 5, 2016
  

It may be too early to narrow down the causes that contributed to the destruction this week of an Emirates Boeing 777 aircraft in Dubai, but aspects of the accident warrant attention given similarities with others in recent years.

The event bears at least a superficial resemblance to the crash of Asiana Airlines flight OK214 at San Francisco Inter­national Airport on July 6, 2013.

There, a variant of the Boeing 777 family crashed on landing due to a mismanaged approach. ­According to the US National Transportation Safety Board, certain safety issues were identified which contributed to the disaster.

If initial reports are correct — that Emirates flight EK521 was attempting a go-around or missed approach when it landed on its belly — then many of the matters implicated in OK214 could be relevant to this latest incident.

Among these factors are the design complexity of the 777’s auto­flight system. The NTSB recommended that reduced design complexity and improved systems training could help reduce the type of errors made by the pilot flying in the Asiana crash.

Other findings indicate there was an overuse of automation at Asiana. The US aviation regulator has since introduced guidance and a regulatory change to support the need for pilots to regularly perform manual flight so their skills do not deteriorate.

It will be interesting to note as an Emirates investigation proceeds, whether this issue was considered to contribute to the EK521 events and whether UAE laws and guidance were amended when the US FAA rules were amended.

The only casualty in the Emirates accident was a firefighter. How did someone who helped save so many following the evacuation of EK521 come to lose his own life in the process?

While no firefighters died in their response to the Asiana crash, one passenger did when the firefighting crew failed to check for vital signs of a Chinese teenager and subsequently drove over her.

One of the NTSB recommendations was that officers placed in command of an accident be given aircraft rescue and firefighting (ARFF) training.

The arriving incident commander placed an officer in charge of the fire attack for OK214 who had not received ARFF training, and this was considered to have introduced unnecessary challenges.

There was, in fact, no guidance in place or protocol to ensure the safety of passengers and crew at risk of being hit or driven over by a vehicle during ARFF operations.
Among contributing causes in the Asiana crash, according to the NTSB are “(1) the complexities of the autothrottle and autopilot flight director systems that were inadequately described in Boeing’s documentation and Asiana’s pilot training … increased the ­likelihood of mode error …” and “(5) flight crew fatigue which ­likely degraded (the pilots’) performance”.

In light of media reports after the Flydubai accident at Rostov-on-Don, Russia on March 19 that implicated pilot fatigue as a contributing cause, this factor will also be watched with interest by the aviation industry following the events that led to EK521’s destruction.

As recently as this week British media published leaked documents from Flydubai pilots suggesting they were unsafely urged to work beyond their flight and duty time limitations even when they had warned their employers it would be unsafe.

All eyes will be on the outcome of a UAE General Civil Aviation Authority investigation into EK521 with professional interest, to see if fatigue played a role.

Joseph Wheeler is the principal of aviation and aerospace law firm IALPG and aviation counsel to Maurice Blackburn lawyers and the Australian Federation of Air Pilots.

Of course it is all idle speculation at this stage but JW does bring into the mix some very interesting observations on the possible liability issues associated with these high profile accidents, where it can be shown that the relevant authorities have not taken on-board or proactively risk mitigated identified safety issues from past accident investigations.

Also of interest, & perhaps another potential hole in the Swiss cheese, with the Dubai Emirates accident is again a Flight.org article which Ventus linked to in the AP 'Accidents - Overseas' thread mentioned earlier:

12
Apr
Low Missed Approach Altitude Restrictions
2 comments

A question concerning a recent change to the missed approach procedures in Dubai UAE (OMDB) has raised some interesting points about the 777 in this flight regime: high thrust, low altitude, high pilot workload, and ATC procedures that would seem to be not too well thought out.

  
Not that our pollies or bureaucrats seem to give a toss but in the interests of 'closing the safety loop' and mitigating safety risk, on what seems to be re-occurring modern day international aviation safety issues, perhaps we need to identify where we (Australia) sit on the auto-dependency spectrum...
MTF...P2