Page 66 - Simulator News Today

As they are so called theyll be able to recreate a profile of the aircraft in a simulator and see exactly what happened to that aircraft but it does seem to be severe weather event at this point in time. >> so to that point, david, if this is a severe weather event, lets think of this in terms of if it were an american flight. do you think that this plane would have been where it was? do you think that perhaps it could have been cancelled or it could have been rerouted if it had been an american...

So theyll want to examine and reconstruct the aircraft on land. but the black boxes are the prime resource of data in any aircraft accident. and in fact its so sophisticated now, theyll be able to reproduce the actual flight the last minutes of the flight in a simulator, so that investigators can see precisely the flight path that this aircraft took in his last few minutes. >> my colleague richard quest and i were commenting yet, in light of the airline accidents this year with so much mystery, ...

Stall as we saw in the case of air france 447. but yes, whats really important here is that the size the debris field is really key to come up with an idea as to whether it broke up in flight. one thing which i think we should be asking for and skt authorities for is theres plenty of primary radar coverage in that part of the world and going back to twa 800, they didnt have a lot of evidence from the black boxes because it was so sudden. one of the things that helped them determine what happened...

>> yes, i think it is a concern. >> i think the foreign pilots tend to use the auto pilot a little bit more than our people do. and certainly the airbus being an all electronic aircraft has lent itself to a more remotely-controlled aircraft. but generally, i think most pilots know, if theres an emergency, theyre going to grab those controls, thats my opinion. >> and just adding to that, these guys go through a really intense simulator course every year. they go through emergency simulator practi...

The problem is -- we found this with flight 447. that training is done in a simulator. not a live aircraft. that can feel very, very different to be in that simulator. no simulator can simulate what its like. ive felt it and its not pleasant to be in that cockpit when this sort of thing happens. its difficult to train the feel of what that feels like to be in this situation. >> what is that just the severity of the feeling of this? >> and you also know psychologically youre in a simulator and yo...

On autopilot. >> i see mary nodding her head in agreement there. you think pilots are too reliant on technology now? >> i do. and thats part of the training. and i also put some of that blame on their carriers. i mean, for example, i worked on the colgan crash. on that one it was very surprising they got very short amounts of training and some of it was just classroom training including some of their upset training occurred in a classroom. so they just relied upon the computer too much and the c...

Do you believe pilots have gotten too lazy and theyre depending on technology? >> well, i wouldnt find it as lazy. the objective of these systems is to work in conjunction with the pilot, work in harmony with the pilot. does it degrade some of our old-fashioned stick and rudder skills over time because we become dependent on it functioning in a particular way? yeah. i think theres an aspect of that. but the training has to be done so that we are operating the machinery in an appropriate form and...

On how to deal in situations like this. the mantra is to fly, navigate the airport, and then communicate. so it could well be that they have so busy flying the airplane that a call may not go out. i find it highly unlikely. >> you dont think thats likely. you think this is a situation where you run in into a problem and if or not in xhun cadn xhun cad dough, you would get a did it ists distress call out? >> ive been in a rapid decompression claim we are decompression chamber and all of a sudden ...

For hours. >> but for a storm like situation like this? how well trained are pilots for circumstances like this where youre in a moment as ari was mentioning and the pilot has to make the decision on his own. >> there are literally hundreds of combinations of emergencies that can occur. from the very basic ones such as a pito heater failure. and the crew will deal with it. it might be a circuit breaker popping. or from the severe double engine failure. what i would say is that in the simulator, ...

You get those two recorder boxes boxes. in fact it is possible also to use this data to program a simulator so future pilots can be trained to actually be in the cockpit of the aircraft that suffered an accident. i have been in some of those myself during my career. they are quite extraordinary to see just how accurate it is to put together what happened. but the first thing in order to achieve this is to get those two black boxes together. without those, one is still guessing. >> alastair thank...