Back to the Basics

My husband loves aviation as much as I do, but because I am the pilot, and he is a past mechanic, we each have a different perspective.  Today's post was written by him.

Aviation technology has advanced so much over the years that the skill of flying an aircraft has been taken over by computers, known as fly-by-wire.  But what happens when the computer fails and the pilot is required to do what the computer would normally have done?  Hopefully that pilot will remember the fundamental principles of flying an airplane, but as history has shown, that is not always the case.  

The "Sutter Twist" is a good example of how much aviation technology has changed over the years.  During testing when the first Boeing 747 was being developed, they found that the wings would develop a strong vibration that could have caused serious damage to the aircraft in flight.  Because of this hazard, the “father” of the 747 project, Joe Sutter, found that if he twisted the outboard wing structure by 3 degrees, 80%-90% of the loads on the wing structure would lessen, thus alleviating this dangerous vibration.  This twist came to be known as the “Sutter Twist”.

Joe Sutter and his beloved 747 - a love affair that began almost half a century ago

The new Boeing 747-8, with Joe Sutter still on the project, was recently built with a new wing design taken from the 787 Dreamliner.  During the 747-8 testing they found it to have the same vibration that happened during the first 747 design; however, because of the new fly-by-wire systems, the computers can compensate for the vibration and no “Sutter Twist” is needed.  

Though technology has come such a long way, it is still incredibly important that a pilot remember the basics, and when disaster strikes, to simply fly the airplane.  Following are a few examples of pilots who relied on their aircraft technology too much and forgot to fly.

Air France flight 447 crashed in the ocean on June 1, 2009.  After two years the black box was finally found on the ocean floor.  They found that there had been icing on the pitot tubes, which gave false speed readings to the pilots.  This caused the autopilot to disconnect, which shouldn't be a big deal, but the flight crew reacting incorrectly- the pilots ultimately caused the airplane to go into an aerodynamic stall and were unable to recover before impacting the water.  Had they remembered the symptoms of a stall, and their fundamental skills of how to recover from a stall, this fatal accident that killed 216 passengers and 12 flight crew could have been prevented.

On July 6, 2013 Asiana Flight 214 was coming in on approach into San Francisco (SFO) and crashed.  On that day, the PAPIs (lights that show the pilots if they are too high or low on approach) for the runway  were not working; however, this particular day was a very clear day and the pilots should have been able to do a visual approach and land safely without those lights.  While this 777 was coming in to land, the main landing gear and tail hit the seawall of the San Francisco Bay and caused the plane to crash.  Because the pilots forgot to go back to the basics, a multi-million dollar plane was totaled, and more importantly, 3 people were killed, 181 were injured; 12 of the injuries were critical.

It is important as pilots that you know how to fly the airplane with the equipment that the airplane has onboard, but it is also important that you are skilled at flying the airplane incase a system onboard malfunctions.  Aviation technology adds so much to the safety, but you still need to know how to fly the plane.  Remember, back to the basics!

Sources:

http://www.flightglobal.com
http://www.businessweek.com