Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
With the late December crash of AirAsia Indonesia Flight QZ8501 still fresh in the minds of travelers everywhere, NASA and San Jose State University Research Foundation experts asked the question: Just how prepared are pilots for dealing with an emergency situation?
In the report, which was published in the journal Human Factors, research psychologist Steve Casner from NASA’s Ames Research Center and pilots Richard Geven and Kent Williams tested the emergency preparedness levels of pilots using a high-fidelity Boeing 747 simulator.
As the study authors explained in a statement Wednesday, pilots are given extensive training on how to effectively handle any emergency situations that could arise in the cockpit. Yet, in several recent and highly-publicized incidents, the pilots apparently neglected to apply the skills they were taught as part of their training, resulting in fatal crashes.
Casner, Geven and Williams set out to investigate whether or not incidents like these were rare exceptions, or indicative of a deeper issue in the emergency training practices of pilots. In short, are training methods effective enough when it comes to mitigating airline disasters.
The study authors recruited 18 active 747 pilots and presented them with in-flight emergency scenarios in the simulator. The emergencies matched those that the pilots would have been exposed to during their training, and true to form, each of them provided the correct response for each emergency situation during the experiment.
Next, the researchers presented pilots with the same emergencies as those used during the first part of the study, but instead incorporated situations that different from those typically used in training. The results were quite different this time around, as when incidents were presented in ways that the pilots were not familiar with, they tended to struggle or commit critical errors.
“Emergency drills tend to be predictable exercises in which people know exactly what’s coming and when,” Casner explained. “But when confronted with the blooming, buzzing confusion of a real emergency, people often seem lost.”
Geven noted that the drills typically used in training tend to overlook the necessity of allowing pilots to practice recognizing an emergency in the multiple different forms they can take. Pilots do not innately have these recognition skills, he said. They have to learn them.
Williams added that the pilots that took part in the study occasionally became discombobulated, explaining that it is extremely difficult “to remain calm, centered, and focused in an emergency. Predictable training routines take away our opportunity to practice that.”
“We found that while pilots’ instrument scanning and aircraft control skills are reasonably well retained when automation is used, the retention of cognitive skills needed for manual flying may depend on the degree to which pilots remain actively engaged in supervising the automation,” the authors concluded in their study.
According to media reports, AirAsia Indonesia Flight QZ8501 encountered bad weather before it went down on December 28. The plane, which was carrying 162 passengers, lost contact with air traffic control less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesian to Singapore, ultimately crashing into the Java Sea. Recovery efforts are ongoing.
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