Ongoing Harvard health studies need input from pilots and flight attendants

Flight attendants and pilots face unique stresses and risks due to exposures that occur in the aircraft, as well as from issues outside of the aircraft such as fatigue brought on by disrupted sleep patterns. Understanding what those risks are, and what factors are associated with those risks, is a difficult and ongoing challenge that is being addressed in part by the following two studies from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

AirSafe.com has teamed up with Harvard to encourage pilots and flight attendants to participate in a pair of studies that will help improve the scientific understanding of health issues faced by airline professionals.

Flight Attendant Health Study
All US flight attendants are encouraged to participate in this flight attendant health study by taking the survey at fahealth.org.

Past studies have found that sleep disorders, fatigue, depression and heart disease were greatly increased in female flight attendants compared to the US population. Check out the survey today to help make it both larger and more comprehensive than previous studies.

Airline Pilot Health Survey
Past studies on flight attendants showed significantly higher prevalence for some types of health risk. This current study intends to collect similar information from pilots to see if their work environment is also associated with increased health risks. All current and former airline pilots, from any country, are encouraged to visit PilotHealthStudy.org to take this anonymous survey.

About your privacy
The researchers have taken steps to ensure that your surveys will be anonymous, and that it will not be possible to link any survey to a specific individual. In addition, you can skip any questions that you do not wish to answer, or withdraw from the survey at any time.

Are people with a history of depression or suicide attempts allowed to fly? - Yes they are!

The unfolding investigation of March 2015 crash of Germanwings flight 9525 has revealed that it is very likely that the first officer locked the captain out of the cockpit, and proceeded to deliberately crash the aircraft into the French Alps. Reports by French and German authorities, as well as by Lufthansa, the parent organization of Germanwings, suggest that not only did the first officer have a history of depression, but that Lufthansa was aware of the first officer's condition. Reportedly, German investigators stated that the first officer had been recently treated for suicidal tendencies, but it was not clear if Lufthansa or Germanwings were aware of those recent treatments.

One basic question that many air travelers have is how can anyone with a documented mental illness have become a pilot for a major airline. While the answer in the case of the Germanwings crash may not be revealed until the investigation is complete, it is possible to address that question for US airlines.

The role of medical certificates
In the US, in order to fly, a person holding an airline transport pilot (ATP) certificate, which is the type of certification that any US airline pilot must have, must possess an FAA medical certificate. The specific regulatory requirements regarding mental conditions for those holding an ATP certificate holder are spelled out in the US Code of Federal Regulations (Title 14, Part 67.107). The FAA allows physicians with specialized training to be an Aviation Medical Examiner (AME), who is responsible for evaluating a pilots medical fitness. If a pilot does not pass the examination, that pilot is not legally allowed to fly.

FAA Guide for Aviation Medical Examiners
The FAA provides AMEs with detailed guidance in a number of ways, including publications like the 2015 Guide for Aviation Medical Examiners, which had an update on 19 March 2015, just five days before the Germanwings crash. The document clearly states that a pilot has to respond to a detailed medical questionnaire, and must reveal a history of mental disorders, including depression or suicide attempts. While such a revelation would lead to further investigation, it would not automatically lead to a denial of a medical certificate.

The pilot who is suspected to have deliberately crashed Germanwings flight 9525 conducted part of his airline flight training in the United States several years ago, and would have been subject to FAA regulations during that period.

What do the airlines do?
While it is clear that the FAA allows people with a history of depression or suicide attempts to fly, it is unclear what the policy of individual airlines may be with regards to a pilot with this kind of medical history. What and airline knows about a pilot's medical history will depend on what that pilot would voluntarily reveal, as well as what the airline may legally be allowed to know. Because this would largely depend on where that airline is located, it is possible that what an airline in one country can know about their pilot's medical history may be radically different from what an airline in another country may know.

Resources FAA medical certificate questions and answers
Germanwings flight 9525 crash information
Lufthansa plane crashes
Other A320 crashes
Germanwings Wikipedia page
Flight 9525 Wikipedia entry

At least seven deliberate crashes by airline pilots since 1980

24 March 2015; Germanwings A320-200; D-AIPX; flight 4U9525; near Barcelonnette, France: The aircraft was on a scheduled international flight from Barcelona, Spain to Düsseldorf, Germany. About a half hour after takeoff, while at a cruising altitude of 38,000 feet, the aircraft began losing altitude, and crashed about ten minutes later. The investigative authorities suspect that the first officer deliberately crashed the aircraft. All six crew members and 144 passengers were killed.

A review of the cockpit voice recorder made the authorities suspect that the first officer locked the cockpit door while the captain was outside of the cockpit. The online flight tracking service FlightRadar24 reported than an analysis of their data showed that the autopilot was set to the minimum altitude of 100 feet, which is well below the ground level where the crash took place.

These recent revelations of the suspected cause of the Germanwings crash highlight the reality that despite all of the changes that the airline industry has made since 9/11 to prevent passengers or other outsiders from threatening aircraft, there is still a risk that crew members have the opportunity and the ability to deliberately crash airliners.

At least seven events since 1980
Since 1980, there have been at least seven occasions where an airline pilot is suspected to have deliberately crashed an airliner. One one occasion in 1994, a FedEx DC10 crew had to fight off an off duty pilot who had intended to crash the aircraft, and were barely able to survive the attack. For more details on these eight events, please visit http://t.co/XbqXIThVjB

Related information
Lufthansa plane crashes
A320 plane crashes
Airliners deliberately crashed by a flight crew member

Review of the new fear of flying book from SOAR

The new book from long time pilot and therapist Captain Tom Bunn, Soar: The Breakthrough Treatment for Fear of Flying, takes a unique approach when it comes to dealing with a fear of flying. In short, he brings the systematic and logical approach of an aviator to address anxieties and fears that make it difficult or impossible for some people to fly. Because of this systematic approach, Captain Bunn is able to explain the foundation for his methods for treating fear of flying in terms that make sense to the average passenger.

With this book, Captain Bunn has provided both fearful flyers and other airline passengers with three distinct benefits. The first was his development of a conceptual model of how the mind experiences and deals with fear, and explaining it in terms that are understandable to someone who is not an expert in psychology or sociology. His second benefit was to explain the basics of airline operations in ways that demystifies the mechanics of flight and gives an average passenger a very clear idea of how pilots can calmly deal with situations that can lead to debilitating anxiety in a fearful flyer.

Using his conceptual model of the mind as a foundation, Captain Bunn provided his third and most significant benefit for a fearful flyer by creating numerous resources and techniques that a passenger can use to overcome flying related fears, and showing how a person can systematically use his or her mind to consciously and unconsciously control fear.

The SOAR approach to regulating emotions
The basic SOAR approach is to first help a fearful flyer understand the basis of their fears and how their mind and body reacts to fear inducing stress, and then to show them how to automatically regulate and control their flight anxiety. The book, which is based on Captain Bunn's decades of experience helping thousands of fearful flyers, asks the reader to do two things, the intellectual task of reading the book, and the emotional task of working through numerous exercises that when completed will provide a fearful passenger with numerous tools and techniques to address their anxieties before, during, and after a flight.

Combining aviation with psychology
At first glance, it may seem that aviation and psychology don't have much in common, but Captain Bunn manages to combine elements of both worlds in his book. Like a pilot who has a combination of systems to fly a plane under normal and stressful conditions, so too does a human being have multiple systems to control emotions. As with an aircraft, there may be systems that run for the most part automatically or are used for routine situations, and others that come into play during stressful situations or when primary systems fail or are overwhelmed. So too with the mind, where an automated, unconsciously controlled system for dealing with fear is moderated by several other systems that can be consciously guided and controlled by any airline passenger.

What this book provides the reader
Just like the case with an airline pilot, having multiple sophisticated control systems at your fingertips won't give you any benefit unless you have a basic understanding of how they operate, and a good working knowledge of what procedures to use and when to use them. Just as a pilot doesn't have to become an aeronautical engineer to fly a plane, a fearful passenger does not have to become a psychologist to understand how to manage their emotions. Captain Bunn's greatest gift to the reader is the way that he has successfully combined a basic explanation of how the mind deals with fear with practical instructions for how to eliminate or manage that fear.

If you are a passenger who has anxieties about flying and don't know how you can deal with it, reading this book would be a good first step toward overcoming your fear of flying.

Additional resources
Buy the book
About the SOAR fear of flying program
Fear of flying basics
Fear of flying warning signs

United Airlines captain dies after suffering heart attack during flight

26 September 2013, United Airlines; 737-900; flight 1603; near Boise, ID: A United Airlines captain suffered a heart attack while en route on a scheduled flight from Houston, TX to Seattle, WA. Although the captain received prompt treatment while in flight and after the aircraft made an unscheduled landing in Boise, ID, he was pronounced dead after arriving at a local hospital. The flight later continued onward to Seattle with a replacement pilot.

According to several media reports, after the 63-year-old pilot was stricken, two passengers, both military physicians stationed in Washington State, attended to the pilot, and the remaining pilot, as well as an off-duty United pilot who was also on board, made an emergency landing in Boise, ID. An autopsy performed the following day confirmed that the pilot had died of a heart attack.

Selected previous events
This was not the first time that an airline pilot was incapacitated during a flight. The following are just some of the more recent events:

• 20 January 2012 - A 44-year-old reserve first officer of a UTair 757 suffered a heart attack while en route from Chengdu, China to Novosibirsk, Russia. Although the pilot received prompt medical attention, including help from a passenger who was a cardiologist, the pilot died before the crew could make an emergency landing. The pilot was in the cockpit, but not at the controls, when he suffered a heart attack. In April of that same year, a UTair ATR72 crashed in Russia, killing dozens of passengers.


• 14 October 2010 - The 43-year-old captain of a Qatar Airways A330-300 suffered a massive heart attack roughly an hour after takeoff during a flight from Manila to Doha, Qatar. The first officer diverted the aircraft to Kuala Lumpur, where the pilot was pronounced dead after the plane arrived.


• 14 June 2010 - About an hour into a flight from San Francisco to Chicago, the first officer of an American Airlines 767 felt ill and was unable to continue with his flying duties. There were no off-duty pilots on board, and the captain chose to have a flight attendant with several hundred hours of flight experience provide assistance for the remainder of the flight.


• 18 June 2009 - The captain of a Continental Airlines 777-200 died while en route from Brussels, Belgium to Newark, NJ. The 60-year-old captain was replaced by a reserve first officer and the crew declared an emergency. The aircraft landed without further incident.


• 28 January 2008 - The first officer of an Air Canada 767 on a scheduled flight from Toronto to London became mentally incapacitated and the captain needed he help of several flight attendants to physically remove the first officer from the cockpit. The captain, along with the help of a flight attendant who held a commercial multiengine license, diverted the aircraft to Shannon, Ireland.

How frequent are these events?Y
While accidents involving serious injury or death to pilots or crew are routinely reported to civil aviation authorities around the world, deaths, injuries, or incapacitations due to natural causes are not. While there are many media reports of such incidents, especially in recent years with the increased use of social media, there are few formal studies of incidents of pilot incapacitations. One of them is a 2004 study from the FAA's Civil Aerospace Medical Institue, which found that in the six-year period from 1993 and 1998 there were 39 cases where a U.S. airline flight crew member was unable to perform any flight duties and 11 cases where the flight crew member was impaired and could only perform limited flight duties.

These 50 cases occurred on 47 different flights (two crew members were affected on three of the 47 flight). Four of these events involved a crew member death, all due to cardiac arrest. According to the FAA, in seven of these events the safety of the flight was seriously affected:

1. A 737 first officer experienced an alcohol-withdrawal seizure, applied full right rudder, and slumped over the control wheel, causing a loss of altitude until flight attendants could pull the first officer off the controls.


2. The foot of a DC9 first officer became lodged against a rudder pedal after his leg stiffened during a heart attack. The captain applied opposite rudder until the first officer's foot could be dislodged.


3. The flight engineer and the captain of a 727 lost consciousness after the flight engineer accidentally depressurized the aircraft. The first officer donned an oxygen mask and made an emergency descent.


4. A captain suffered an epileptic seizure while the aircraft was taxiing and applied enough force to the rudder to cause the aircraft to turn sharply and stop. The first officer removed the captain from the controls and taxied back to the gate.


5. An A300 captain suffered a cerebral infarction during approach, and neglected to lower the landing gear. After landing, the captain applied reverse thrust longer than necessary, and attempted to apply takeoff thrust on the taxiway.


6. An MD88 Delta Airlines captain, who was using unapproved contact lenses, misjudged his approach a LaGuardia Airport on 19 October 1996 during conditions of reduced visibility and struck approach lights near the end of the runway. The aircraft was substantially damaged, and three passengers received minor injuries during the evacuation.


7. The captain and first officer of a DC8 cargo flight both had their judgement affected due to fatigue, and they allowed the aircraft to enter an unrecoverable approach stall while on a approach to the airbase at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The captain, first officer, and flight engineer were all seriously injured in the 18 August 1993 crash.

Graphic: FlightAware.com

FAA suggests non-US airline crews lack basic piloting skills

On Sunday 28 July 2013, the FAA issued a recommendation that non-US airlines landing at San Francisco International airport (SFO) use their GPS systems to help guide them during landings operated under visual flight conditions at the airport's longest runways, including runway 28L, which was the one being used by the Asiana 777 that crashed at SFO on 6 July 2013 . This implies that non-US pilots may not have the basic piloting skills needed to consistently land aircraft at SFO under visual flight rules.

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Dr. Todd Curtis on new FAA recommendations

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An FAA representative stated that the recommendation was a response to concerns that some non-US airline pilots may not have sufficient experience or expertise to land an airliner using visual approach procedures, which don't rely primarily on electronic landing aids.

Neither the FAA or the NTSB has stated that the visual approach procedures were a factor in the crash of Asiana flight 214 on July 6th. However, since that crash, the FAA has revealed that an unspecified number of flights involving Asiana, EVA Air, and other non-US carriers have had more aborted landing attempts than usual at SFO.

Since last week, the FAA has instituted a different landing protocol for visual approaches on runway 28L, the intended landing runway for Asiana flight 214, and the parallel runway 28R. That protocol will have air traffic controllers at SFO requesting that non-US airliners use a GPS-based navigation system to assist those flight crews in landing on either of those runways.

In a visual approach, pilots typically don't rely on a variety of electronic aids like an instrument landing system to align the aircraft with the runway and to keep to the aircraft on the proper glide slope. On runway 28L, the glide slope system was not operable on the day of the accident, and is scheduled to be out of commission until 22 August 2013. During a visual approach, pilots may use the glide slope system, as well as other systems like the precision approach path indicator (PAPI) system, which was used by the crew on Asiana fight 214.

While the FAA did not state when the recommendation for non-US airlines would be lifted, it would likely not be necessary once the glide slope system is back in operation.

Additional information

• AirSafeNews.com 15 July 2013: Questions about the crash of Asiana flight 214
• AirSafeNews.com 13 July 2013 article summarizing the two prior NTSB press conferences
• AirSafeNews.com 10 July 2013 article on the role of the autothrottle
• AirSafeNews.com 8 July 2013 article on early findings of the crash investigation
• Other Asiana plane crashes
• Other 777 plane crashes
• Accident details from Aviation Safety Network
• Wikipedia page on this accident

Interview with Cockpit Confidential author Patrick Smith

Patrick Smith, airline pilot and author of the recently released book Cockpit Confidential, sat down with Dr. Todd Curtis of AirSafe.com to discuss his latest work, and to share his thoughts on other issues facing the airline industry.

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Listen to the Patrick Smith interview

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Buy the Book Today!

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Resources
2008 interview about crash of Spanair MD82
Earlier interview about his 2004 book, Ask the Pilot
Visit Patrick's site AskThePilot.com
Buy the book today!

FAA creates new and harsher rules concerning lasers

On 1 June 2011 the FAA announced that it will now use a rule originally used against someone on board the aircraft who interfered with a flight crew, and apply it to people on the ground who deliberately point lasers at aircraft. With this change, someone who points a laser at an aircraft can be fined up to $11,000.

While this threat to aircraft has not resulted in a major accident, flashing a laser at an aircraft could compromise aviation safety by distracting or incapacitating pilots during critical phases of flight. The FAA published a 2003 study that the effects of laser exposure may be serious for some pilots. Two years later, in 2005, the FAA published an Advisory Circular (AC-70-2) that provided guidance to air crews for reporting laser incidents.

Since 2005, the number of reported incidents has grown from 300 in 2005 to over 2,800 in 2010. Many of these events last year were reported near major airports, with almost 100 near Chicago's O'Hare airport, and nearly 200 around the four biggest airports in the Los Angeles area.

Even with this FAA change in interpreting regulations, pointing a laser at an aircraft will still be a civil rather than a criminal offense, and the FAA will still only have the power to impose fines and won't be able to put perpetrators in prison. It remains to be seen if this change will reduce the risks faced by flight crews and passengers.

BBC Interview with Dr. Todd Curtis of AirSafe.com
The program The World Today from the BBC interviewed Dr. Curtis about some the issues associated with pointing lasers at pilots (5:02).

Resources
Report laser incidents to the FAA

Air France BEA investigation update from 27 May 2011

The latest BEA update on the Air France Flight 447 investigation, which was released on 27 May 2011, is based primarily on data recovered from the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder. This update is not a full or final report on the investigation, and only provides a small amount of the data that was contained in the black boxes.

The update indicates that the aircraft experienced a stall at high altitude, and remained in a stall condition until the aircraft struck the surface of the ocean. While the update implies that combination of pilot inputs and faulty flight data may have played a role in the crash, no probable causes or contributing causes were given.

Below is a summary of the events in the latest update:


- Three pilots were on board, (two-pilot cockpit)

- Captain takes rest break about two hours after takeoff

- About eight minutes later at 2:08:07, flight crew adjusts heading to avoid area of turbulence

- Starting at about 2:10:05, the autopilot and autothrust disengaged, and the crew took over manual control of the aircraft. Shortly thereafter, the airspeed indicated in the cockpit dropped from 275 knots to 60 knots and the stall warning sounded twice. Note that the flight data recorder only recored some of the airspeed indicators in the cockpit, not all of them.

- At 2:10:16, one of the pilots stated that airspeed indication had been lost, and that the flight control system was in a condition where it would no longer automatically prevent the aircraft from going beyond an angle of attack limit. This limit prevents the aircraft from losing aerodynamic lift and entering a stall condition. The A330 would however still provide stall warnings. Note that there is no angle of attack indicator available to the pilots. Angle of attack is the angle between the airflow and the longitudinal axis (an imaginary line running through the middle of the fuselage).

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Angle of Attack
The angle of attack is the angle at which relative wind meets an airfoil. The angle is formed by the chord line of the airfoil and the the direction of the relative wind over that airfoil. The angle of attack changes during a flight as the pilot changes the direction of the aircraft. Increasing the angle of attack increases lift up to a point. Too high an angle of attack results in a loss of lift, and can cause an aircraft to stall.

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- Aircraft pitched up and climbed from about 35,000 feet to about 37,500 feet

- At about 2:10:50, one of the pilots attempted to call the Captain back to the cockpit, and about a second later the stall warning sounded again. The engines were at a high thrust setting, and the pilot flying maintained a nose-up flight control inputs and the recorded angle of attack continued to increase, with altitude increasing to about 38,000 feet and angle of attack increasing to 16 degrees at about 2:11:06.

- At about this same time, the speed recorded on a standby instrument system increased to 185 knots, and was now consistent with the speed recorded on the primary flight display.

- The Captain entered the cockpit at around 2:11:40 (about 90 seconds after the autopilot disengaged), and in the following seconds, all of the recorded speeds became invalid and the stall warning stopped. This may not indicate that the plane exited the stall condition since the flight control system considers the angle of attack value to be invalid when measured speeds are below 60 knots. Also, speed values become invalid below 30 knots.

- The aircraft rapidly lost altitude, dropping to about 35,000 feet with a vertical descent rate of -10,000 feet per minute.

- The recordings stopped at 2:14:28. The last recorded values were a vertical speed of -10,912 feet per minute, a ground speed of 107 kt, a pitch attitude of 16.2 degrees nose-up,and a roll angle of 5.3 degrees left.

- The descent lasted about three and a half minutes, during which time the airplane remained in a stalled condition, with the angle of attack increasing to and remaining above 35 degrees.

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Join the AirSafe.com Discussion on Air France flight 447
AirSafe.com has started a new LinkedIn discussion group on the crash of Air France flight 447. Whether you are a LinkedIn member or not, feel free to add your comments to the discussion.

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Related AirSafe.com and AirSafeNews.com articles

Initial AirSafe.com Reports on This Event (4:10)
Audio: MP3 | Video: iPod/MP4 | WMV | YouTube

Additional Resources
AirSafe.com Flight 447 page
Synopsis of second BEA interim report (English)
Complete second BEA interim report (English)
Complete second BEA interim report (French)
First BEA Interim Report (English)
First BEA interim report (French)
Other Air France Plane Crashes
Other Airbus A330 Plane Crashes
BEA Flight 447 page
Wikipedia Flight 447 page

Most Recent AirSafeNews.com Articles
Air France AF447 Flight Data Recorder Recovered - 1 May 2011
AirSafeNews.com article from 4 April 2011 about first sightings of wreckage

Other AirSafeNews.com Articles
Initial AirSafeNews.com article 3 June 2009
Air France Flight 447 Update 9 June 2009
Air France Flight 447 Update 10 June 2009
Air France Flight 447 Update 15 June 2009
Air France Flight 447 Update 19 June 2009
Air France Flight 447 Update 26 June 2009
Todd Curtis BBC Interview about Air France Flight 447 - 9 July 2009
FAA orders A330 pitot tube replacements - 3 September 2009
Article on Second Interim Report from the BEA - 18 December 2009

Mapping the intersection of mind and computer in the cockpit

The following is based on the article Mapping the intersection of mind and computer from guest writer Christine Negroni

Well my inbox is filling up again with emails, as it did last month when I reported the following story for The New York Times on pilot complacency and cockpit automation.

Prompting the latest flurry of comments is a June 15, 2010 article by Andy Pasztor and Daniel Michaels in the Wall Street Journal about the crash in May 2010 crash of an Afriqiyah Airways A330. Only one of the 104 people on the Airbus A330 from Johannesburg to Tripoli survived the accident.

According to Pasztor and Michaels the landing accident is being seen as one in “which confused pilots got out of sync with the plane's computerized controls and ended up flying an apparently functioning commercial jet into the ground.”

This is no one-off event. A number of studies over the past 15 years indicate pilots fail to adequately monitor what the airplane is doing in one-half to three-quarters of all accidents. So in the wake of the Afriqiyah Airways disaster, what’s the big idea being proposed? More automation. That’s right, Airbus is said to be working to “devise foolproof automated ground-collision avoidance systems” that in cases of emergency transfer control from the pilots to the airplane.

“This is very disturbing”, wrote Hugh Schoelzel, a retired captain who worked as director of safety for TWA. “The more automation we add, the more training and pilot qualification issues arise. I believe in automation, but as an adjunct to basic pilot skills, not as an ‘end-all’.”

While automation may be causing a decrease in piloting skills as Mr. Schoelzel suggests, Professor Missy Cummings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says there is another reason to be concerned about cockpit automation; boredom.

Dr. Cummings a former Navy pilot, is director of the humans and automation laboratory at MIT’s department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Not surprisingly she is a proponent of automation and envisions a future that will include at least some pilotless commercial flights. But first some extremely troublesome problems have to be wrestled to the ground, problems demonstrated by one of Dr. Cummings students, Master’s degree candidate First Lt. Christin S. Hart, who has found that too much automation can prove counter-productive.

“Increased automation can lower an operator’s workload too much, leading to mental underload, which can cause a decrement in vigilance, or sustained alertness, and lead to boredom. It has been shown that boredom produces negative effects on morale, performance, and quality of work,” she wrote in her paper, Assessing the Impact of Low Workload in Supervisory Control of Networked Unmanned Vehicles.

These findings do not surprise Dr. Cummings “The human mind craves stimulation”, she explained to me last week during a visit to her office in Cambridge. Failing to find that stimulation in the task at hand, the mind will wander.

This cuts to the heart of a number of events outlined by industry researchers but takes us at warp speed to the episode last October in which two Northwest Airlines pilots overflew their destination - the Minneapolis airport. The Northwest pilots were doing personal work on their laptops which is not allowed.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with automation,” FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt told me. “Any opportunity for distraction doesn’t have any business in the cockpit. Your focus should be on flying the airplane.”

But if I’m reading Lt. Hart’s study properly, the automation itself is an opportunity for distraction, even as it assists pilots by reducing workload and increasing the precision of calculations and navigation.

This is a conundrum. In today’s cockpit, two highly complex systems – the mind and the computer – come together, even though the contours of that intersection are still being mapped. It is not only unwise to race to a fix that fails appreciate these systems in balance, but it is unlikely to result in success.

Related Content
NTSB opens public docket on Northwest overflight

Flight Attendant Fills in for Sick Pilot

On Monday June 14, 2010, the first officer on American Airlines flight 1612, a Boeing 767 flying nonstop from San Francisco to Chicago with 225 passengers and a crew of seven, became ill about an hour into the flight and was unable to continue with his flying duties. After the captain, Jim Hunter, deemed the first officer too ill to fly, the flight's purser reviewed the passenger list for off-duty pilots, but none were on board. It turns out that two of the cabin crew members, the purser and flight attendant Patti Deluna, both had flying experience, the captain chose Deluna because she had more flying experience. She earned a commercial license in 1970 and has logged about 300 flight hours.

According to an American Airlines spokesperson, Deluna read checklist procedures to the captain as he configured the aircraft for landing, in addition to handling other tasks in the cockpit. She was in the cockpit for about the last 90 minutes of the flight.

The plane, carrying 225 passengers and seven crew members, landed safely at Chicago's O'Hare airport, at 4:24 p.m. Monday. After the aircraft landed, the first officer was taken to a local hospital where he was treated and released the next day.

Previous 767 Incapacitated Pilot Incident
This is not the first time that a flight attendant has taken over for an incapacitated pilot. In January 2008, the first officer on an Air Canada 767 on a flight from Toronto to London became incapacitated and had to be removed from the cockpit. The captain declared an emergency and completed the flight with the assistance of a flight attendant who was also a licensed pilot.

A copy of the Air Canada incident report from the Irish Air Accident Investigation Unit is available at http://www.airsafe.com/podcasts/air-canada-jan-2008.pdf.

You can hear the associated podcast at:
http://www.airsafe.com/podcasts/show75-air-canada-pilot.mp3

Pilot flying without proper licenses caught after two years on the job

Recently, a Corendon Airlines pilot who was about to fly 101 passengers from Amsterdam, Netherlands to Ankara, Turkey was arrested, allegedly because he did not have an appropriate license. According to various media reports, the pilot was a 41-year-old Swede and was in the cockpit when the Dutch police arrested him after a tip from the Swedish authorities.


The arrested pilot claims that he has been flying for 13 years and has over 10,000 hours of flying experience. He had worked for airlines in Belgium, Great Britain and Italy, and according to a lawyer for Corendon Airlines had been at that company for about two years.

The pilot did have a license, but it was not valid for the aircraft he was operating. In both the US and in most of Europe, civilian airline pilots for large jet transports like the 737 must have at least 1,500 hours of total flight time before obtaining the appropriate license, and in addition must meet additional requirements for the specific type of airliner.

While the pilot apparently did not have the correct credentials and was not certified to fly a 737 with passengers on board, it is not clear if he was unqualified to fly the aircraft. What is clear is that it was not the first time this pilot was accused of flying without the proper licenses. CNN reported that the pilot had been accused of similar infractions in his native Sweden.

Corendon Airlines is based in Turkey and was founded in 2004. According to the airline's web site, it operates a fleet of seven 737s, mostly to destinations throughout Europe. The airline has not had a fatal or serious accident.

Pilots with improper licenses are not limited to Turkey. A July 2008 article in the Sunday Times of Sri Lanka described the case of a German national used fake documentation to fly as a captain with SriLankan Airlines, operating a number of flights in the A340. According to the article, he was qualified to be a flight officer, but not a captain on an A340.

Los Angeles Times Story of Overworked and Underpaid Pilots

Pay and working conditions for pilots have been an ongoing concern, especially in the last few years as airlines have eliminated benefits and lowered pay in order to remain competitive. Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times published an article about pay and working conditions at regional airlines in the US, focusing on one pilot from regional carrier Pinnacle airlines, painted a picture of long workdays and a lifestyle that forces many pilots to commute hundreds or even thousands of miles from their homes to their airline, sometimes sleeping in their airline's crew lounge before performing their duties.

Pilot pay is a subject previously covered by AirSafeNews.com, and the LA Times illustrated the current economic reality by describing how the pilot in the story started as a first officer making $1,650 per month plus benefits, and now makes $28,000 per year, which turns out to be less than a Los Angeles bus driver.

Pinnacle, the airline featured in the LA Times article, is the parent company of regional carrier Colgan Air, which was the airline operating the aircraft involved in the fatal February 2009 Continental Connection crash in Buffalo.

Colgan Air Submits Report to NTSB About Its Fatal Crash in February 2009

The fatal 12 February crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 is still under investigation by the NTSB, but last week, the airline submitted a report to the NTSB which blamed pilot actions as the probable cause of the accident. The Bombardier Dash 8 aircraft, which was operating as a scheduled Continental Connection flight from Newark, NJ to Buffalo, NY, crashed into a house about five miles from the airport during an instrument approach to runway 23. All four crew members and 45 passengers were killed, as well as one of the three people in the house.

The NTSB launched a major investigation, which is still ongoing. The NTSB's public docket of this investigation contains over 100 items, including a report submitted by Colgan earlier this month. That report identifies the probable cause of the accident as the flight crew’s loss of situational awareness and failure to follow Colgan Air training and procedures, which led to a loss of control of the aircraft.

According to Colgan, contributing to the accident was the flight crew’s failure to follow Colgan Air procedures and training, and the lack of adequate warning systems in the aircraft.

The investigation is not yet completed, and the final NTSB report may or may not reflect the analysis or conclusions of the Colgan report. AirSafeNews.com encourages you to review the Colgan report, and other items in the public docket, as well as following information from the NTSB and AirSafe.com

Colgan Air Crash Animation (no audio)

AirSafe.com's Initial Report on this Accident
Audio: MP3 | Video: iPod/MP4 | WMV | Google Video | YouTube

Resources
Additional accident details
Colgan Air Submission to the NTSB
Other NTSB public docket documents
Other AirSafe.com Videos
Fatal Continental plane crashes
Fatal Dash 8 plane crashes

United Airlines Pilot Arrested and Charged for Being over the Alcohol Limit While on Duty

A United Airlines pilot was arrested Monday (9 November 2009) at Heathrow Airport near London, England and charged with being over the alcohol limit while on duty. According to information released by the airline and by police officials, the pilot was part of the flight crew for United's Flight 949, which was scheduled to operate from London to Chicago. He was arrested after a co-worker suspected him of being under the influence of alcohol. The flight was canceled and 124 passengers were put on other flights.

United has removed the pilot from duty pending an investigation. The pilot is scheduled to appear in a British court on November 20th.

This is not the first time that a United Airlines pilot has been arrested in the UK for an alcohol related reason. In October 2008, a United Airlines first officer was arrested on the flight deck of a United Airlines 747 that he was about to help fly from London to San Francisco. Blood tests revealed that the amount of alcohol in the pilot's blood was about three times the UK limit for pilots. In the UK, the limit 20 micrograms of alcohol for each 100 milliliters of blood in their system, or a blood alcohol concentration of 0.02 percent.

FAA Rules on Alcohol
It may surprise many passengers that it is not illegal for a pilot to operate an airliner with alcohol in his or her system. In the US, the FAA has very detailed regulations regarding the use of alcohol by airline pilots. According to Federal Aviation Regulations 121.458, flight crew members:

- Must report for duty with an alcohol concentration less than 0.04

- Are not allowed to consume alcohol while on duty

- Are not allowed to perform crew member duties within eight hours of using alcohol

When it comes to alcohol use, pilots must comply with the rules of the appropriate aviation regulatory authority, as well as the rules of their airline. While the FAA or other regulatory authorities may allow pilots to consume alcohol prior to flying, and to even have measurable amounts of alcohol in their system, individual airlines may have far stricter rules on alcohol use. To their credit, most airlines also provide resources for an intervention for alcohol abuse for employees who need it.

One final note. Please keep in mind that the pilot in the most recent alcohol related event in the UK has been arrested and charged, but has not been convicted of any crime or of any violation of any US or UK aviation regulations.

Additional Information
FAA Brochure on Alcohol Aimed at General Aviation Pilots

How Much Does a Pilot Make?

Airline pilots are a highly trained and very closely regulated group of professionals who have the lives of their passengers and crew in their hands every time they fly. Both the flying public and professional pilots often wonder how much these professionals get paid for their expertise and experience.

For many airlines, especially those in the US, pilots negotiate with their airlines to determine how much flight crew members get paid. One web site, TalkAirline.com has put the pilot contracts and pay rates for many airlines in one convenient place. There you can find out that first year first officer at Colgan Air makes $21 per hour with a guaranteed minimum of $1,575 per month (about as much as an army private), while the most well-paid senior captain at Southwest makes $198 per hour with a guaranteed minimum of $15,444 per month (about as much as a four-star general).

The next time you fly, think about how much, or how little, the folks in the front of the plane are making.

Note: 2009 military pay data from the Defense Finance and Accounting Service.

Crash of an F/A-18 Jet near San Diego

On 8 December 2008, a US Marine Corps F/A-18D jet based at the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station crashed during approach about two miles short of the runway. The pilot successfully ejected, but four people, two children, their mother, and grandmother were killed in one of the two houses destroyed by the jet. No one else on the ground was injured.

The investigation is ongoing, but reportedly the two-seat jet, flown by a single pilot on a training mission, had some kind of mechanical or flight control difficulty. The crash occurred as the pilot was returning from training on the carrier USS Lincoln, off the San Diego coast.

The F/A-18 has first entered operational service with the US Marines in 1983. The D model of the aircraft involved in the crash is used by the Marines as either a training or attack aircraft.

For the audio podcast from AirSafe.com, visit http://www.airsafe.com/podcasts/show76-f-18.mp3.


The AirSafe.com video podcast is available below:


The following video was produced by Glenn Pew.

F/A-18 Crash 8 December 2008

Risks from Incapacitated Pilots and Pilots Who May Deliberately Crash Airplanes

What an Air Canada Event Says About Incapacitated Pilots

AirSafe.com reviews the investigation into a January 2008 incident where an Air Canada pilot became mentally incapacitated and had to be removed from the cockpit. Once the first officer was removed, the captain was able to safely land the aircraft. The event caused some in the aviation community to question whether this kind of incident may have led to serious problems in the past. While a review of the available incident and accident record by AirSafe.com revealed no proven cases of a mentally incapacitated pilot deliberately causing death or serious injury to passengers, there have been several cases where such behavior was suspected, and one case where a pilot crashed an airliner on purpose.

On 19 November 2008, the Air Accident Investigation Unit of the Irish Department of Transport released their incident report on a 28 January 2008 event involving an Air Canada flight. The captain declared an emergency and diverted to Shannon, Ireland due to the incapacitation of a flight crew member.

The Air Canada 767 was on a scheduled flight from Toronto to London and carried 146 passengers and nine crew members. After the first officer became incapacitated, the captain declared an emergency and completed the flight with the assistance of a flight attendant who was also a licensed pilot.

According to the incident report, the first officer had arrived late for his flight, with the captain having already completed all preflight preparations before the first officer's arrival.

During the early phases of the flight, the first officer left the flight deck several times for short periods, and made it clear to the captain that he was tired.

At one point, the captain allowed the first officer to take a controlled rest break in cockpit. Over an hour later, as the aircraft was near the midpoint of its ocean leg, the first officer began to display unusual behavior, including rambling and disjointed conversation.

The first officer left the cockpit again, and after he returned he didn't follow proper cockpit reentry procedures, and also neglected to fasten his seat belt. It became apparent to the captain that the first officer was suffering from an unknown medical condition which impaired his ability to carry out his required duties on the flight deck. The captain summoned the lead flight attendant to get the first officer removed from the cockpit. The lead flight attendant removed the first officer with the help of other flight attendants. One of those flight attendants sustained a wrist injury during the removal.

After the removal of the first officer, the captain had the lead flight attendant check to see if there were any flight crew members among the passengers. None were on board, but one of the flight attendants held a commercial multiengine license, and she assisted the captain as the flight diverted to Shannon, Ireland.

The first officer was hospitalized in Ireland for 11 days before being transferred by air ambulance back to Canada for further treatment.

News reports about this incident focused on the more dramatic elements of the event, such as what the first officer said after being removed from the cockpit, or how and where the first officer was restrained in the cabin. However, this incident raised more serious issues in the minds of many passengers, such as whether the mental state of a pilot should be a concern, or whether a mentally unstable flight crew member has ever caused serious injuries or deaths to airline passengers.

AirSafe.com not aware of any reliable, publicly available information about the number of pilots in the US or elsewhere who have been removed from flight status due to some kind of psychological or psychiatric issue.

The information is more clear when it comes to cases where an airliner crashed as a result of deliberate flight crew actions. Quite simply, there are no proven events where an airline pilot's deliberate actions or mental state led to the deaths of one or more passengers. Correction (28 March 2012) - On February 1968, 24 passengers were killed in the crash of a JAL DC8 in Tokyo after the the captain deliberately disengaged the autopilot and flew the aircraft into Tokyo bay. All of the crew members survived, but 24 of the 166 passengers were killed. It was later reported that the captain had been suffering from schizophrenia.

There has been at least one case of a pilot deliberately crashing an airliner.
On 11 October 1999, an Air Botswana pilot, who had been grounded for medical reasons, took off alone in an Air Botswana ATR42 airliner, and crashed it into two of the airline's other ATR42s on the ground. Fortunately, there was no one else in the other two aircraft. The pilot was the only person killed in this event.

There were two other crashes that many in the aviation community suspected were caused by pilot actions, but investigative authorities found no conclusive evidence that they were deliberately caused by one of the pilots. On 31 October 1999, an EgyptAir 767 en route from New York to Cairo, crashed in the Atlantic, killing all 217 on board. The NTSB concluded that the airplane's departure from normal cruise flight and subsequent impact with the Atlantic Ocean was a result of the first officer's flight control inputs, but could not determine a reason for the first officer's actions.

On 17 December 1997, a SilkAir 737, traveling between Jakarta and Singapore, crashed into a river, killing all 104 people on board. While there was ample evidence that the captain was under great personal stress, and indications that both the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder were turned off prior to the crash, there was no evidence that either pilot deliberately brought the aircraft down.

These past events, as well as the most recent event involving Air Canada, remind the public that while there's always a possibility that a pilot would deliberately put passengers or aircraft at risk, there have been no passenger deaths or serious injuries associated with incidents where such behavior was proven.


A copy of the Air Canada incident report from the Irish Air Accident Investigation Unit is available at http://www.airsafe.com/podcasts/air-canada-jan-2008.pdf.

You can hear the associated podcast at:
http://www.airsafe.com/podcasts/show75-air-canada-pilot.mp3

Interview with Airline Pilot Patrick Smith, Author of the Book "Ask the Pilot"

Patrick Smith,in addition to being a pilot for a major U.S. airline, is also an air travel columnist and author of the 2004 book "Ask the Pilot."
In this Conversation, Patrick Smith and Dr. Todd Curtis discuss several issues, including popular misconceptions about airline safety, the role of the Internet in shaping the public's perception of airline safety, as well as how the TSA should be changed in order to enhance airline security.

You can download the episode directly at http://www.airsafe.com/podcasts/show41_patrick_smith.
You can also find other AirSafe.com podcasts at podcast.airsafe.org

Related Resources
Notes page from the interview
Buy the book "Ask the Pilot"