Fly the Plane – Which Plane?

Three air accidents in recent times have shaken the conscience of people around the world.

First was the 27 October 2018 crash of a privately-owned AW169 soon after lift off from a football stadium in Leicester, UK. Amateur footage shows the helicopter spinning out of control, all the way to the parking lot outside where the helicopter and its five occupants met their fiery end.

Pilots world over must have let out a sigh of despair for what’s decidedly the unspoken nemesis of helicopters – loss of directional control while executing a high-performance vertical takeoff.

Second was the Indonesian low cost carrier Lion Air Flight 610 crashing into the Java Sea on 29 October 2018, that took all 189 lives onboard. Preliminary reports indicate that the Boeing 737 Max did a near vertical plunge from 5,000 feet.

Possibility of automatic systems reacting to an erroneous angle of attack (alpha) inputs by driving the elevator trim all the way ‘nose-down’ to the sea is stated to be one of the primary reasons for the loss of control.

Third was Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, again a Boeing 737 Max, that crashed soon after takeoff from Addis Ababa on 10 March 2019, killing 157 onboard.

In aviation, two plus two can be 346 as revealed by the bodybag count from two Boeing 737 Max crashes that occurred within five months.

Investigators will sift through pulverised debris for months to reach the truth. We must await their findings. Thankfully, in both cases, the fluorescent orange ‘black box’ has been recovered.

While the AW169 is a derivative of the industry workhorse AW139, the Boeing 737 MAX is a sequel to the equally successful Boeing 737 NG (‘new generation’).

One is a helicopter, another an airplane; both from different parts of the world. Both models came in the wake of ‘highly successful’ predecessors. As opposed to the old adage ‘nothing grows under a banyan tree’, aerospace successes ride greatly on past precedent. How else would we have a whole lineage of Boeings and Airbuses?

‘Marriage of Convenience’

In aviation, successful product comes at the end of a long hard process that starts from the drawing board and culminates with certification.

In between lie many traps, caveats, commercial interests, intense competition, unrelenting pressures, international law, politics, etc. Some of the brightest minds are at work here. Nobody is immune to the perils that come with a heady mix of past success and promise of billion-dollar contracts.

I recall a simple flight test program for clearing a ‘modern’ rescue hoist on a 50-year old helicopter. It was like the marriage of Hugh Hefner (may he rest in everlasting peace) with Crystal Harris.

The old rescue hoist (RH) was unsupportable and obsolete. This prepared fertile ground for an easy-looking trial. The final word lay with flight test.

Technocrats, sales and marketing teams, scientists, designers, certification personnel and many other ‘supporting’ agencies worked in tandem to mate the old lady with a new-generation rescue hoist. That the original RH boom could physically support the new hoist was serendipitous.

There was a small problem. A test pilot who noticed a minute reduction in clearance between the new RH fitment and the swirling rotors. What about low rotor RPM and blade droop? What about ‘negative ‘g’? What about the slender gap leading to a possible in-flight rendezvous, he persisted.

In a marriage of convenience, somebody was playing spoilsport. First temptation – change the test pilot. That didn’t work in this case. Navy had firm belief in this tester.

This was a minor trial nobody but the vendor and a ‘minority in authority’ could be bothered about. Trial sorties were flown, data collected, analyses presented.

It would have been easy to pass off the test pilot’s concern as alarmist or unnecessary, given that an old, pneumatic rescue hoist of considerable vintage adorned the Alouette and had served the navy’s interests well for decades. So what is the big deal? We’re modernising, after all. Why the hue and cry, one may well ask.

Well, nothing is over till the fat lady sings. In this case, the test pilot persisted. And the organisation tuned in. It was an encore that sent the winch (highly successful on other helicopters) tumbling out of the game. I was not happy or sad. What my team and I cannot touch, see or foresee, we just don’t sign.

For me, evidence from flight test data (of all possible combinations and worst-case scenarios) was a must before signing off ‘airworthiness’. I couldn’t care less if it was a rescue hoist or a fly-by-whatever.

Where is the main rotor-RH clearance data for the old pneumatic winch, somebody queried. I said I don’t know, but I’ll be glad to review it if it’s available. Extrapolation got the boot.

When one deals with commercial aeroplanes, helicopters and their certification processes, my example of a rescue hoist for Alouette may sound too simplistic.

But here’s the deal. It’s very much possible (and highly tempting) to ride on past successes and come under a ‘halo effect’.

It is also possible to pass off seemingly innocuous ‘enhancements’ in design as ‘read across’ from past programs. If certification buys the argument and flight test crew sign off, a legitimate ‘stamp of approval’ may soon follow.

‘The Manuals and Associated Literature’

What is not tested by test crew will be put to test by line pilots ill-prepared for the ‘black swan’ event that may ensue. There’s no point then seeking refuge under ‘fly the plane first’ or ‘it’s not there in the manuals because that’s basic flying’ kind of truisms – not for latest generation aircraft that have enough literature to drown you if you were sinkered with it; or have a small, innocuous note hidden somewhere between reams of bound paper.

As investigation into both accidents proceed, there’s a real need to address some seemingly innocuous concerns.

As aircraft become more and more complex, so do the manuals and associated literature. The AW139 manual for instance is over 3000 pages long and occupies most of the physical storage space in cockpit (what about a Loss of Control event, when things ‘fly’, please ask).

Then there is the Flight Crew Operating Manual (FCOM) and Quick Reference Handbook (QRH). It’s like prescribing Encyclopaedia Britannica as a remedy for stomach cramps. And the law dutifully endorses it like a panacea for all that’s wrong in the industry.

If you refer the QRH and still screw up, you’ll be skewered by lawyers baying “RFM takes precedence over QRH”.

If you can pull off a tail rotor failure or elevator trim runaway while pouring through minutiae hidden between thousands of pages entire teams took years to prepare, well, good luck to you.

Most folks just get past by shrugging their shoulders at the frailty of a commercial licence. Not everyone is Sully nor is every airplane flyable under all conditions these days.

Automation is now up against a new crop of pilots who caress smartphones and tablets more than they do the controls of an airplane.

Thousands of pages of tedious flight manuals are required to be crunched by pilots whom airlines prey upon as ‘easy buy’. Is it the pilots’ fault if they are not able to cope? What have we done to make the cockpit, rules and manuals user-friendly?

It’s so easy to blame them after they’ve gone down in seconds while we have the benefit of hindsight and rocking chairs.

For instance, is it coincidental that the NTSB recently called out NOTAMs as being a ‘bunch of garbage’, hiding small, highly relevant details within a haystack of verbose diarrhoea that flight crew are expected to sift through while flying a plane?

‘Need to Discuss Issues During Design, R&D, Training and Documentation’

I am by no means advocating dilution of piloting skills or endorsing lack of understanding of aircraft manuals. Quite opposite to that, I am asking that such issues be also addressed during design, R&D, training and documentation – where the real devils reside. When a busload of innocent passengers are driven to the ground, nothing should be off the table.

Let us bring back focus on the human with all its weaknesses, and design that must cater for ‘new generation’ pilots with not so much MAX performance at hand.

My heart goes out to every single soul on those two aircraft and their families who have the right to full, scientific & humane explanation of what went wrong and what the ‘testers’ could have done to prevent it.

It must go beyond the usual ‘it was all there in the manuals’ or ‘everything cannot be written down’ kind of explanation. Have we reached a point where there’s ‘too little airplane to fly’ on most days, breaking into ‘too much airplane to fly’ when things go horribly wrong?

The investigation into these accidents may perhaps hold the answers. Meanwhile, keep flying the plane. Also, keep asking the relevant questions.

(Capt KP Sanjeev Kumar is a former navy test pilot and blogs at www.kaypius.com. He has flown over 24 types of fixed and rotary wing aircraft and holds a dual ATP rating on the Bell 412 and AW139 helicopters. 'Kaypius' as he is widely known in his circles, flies in the offshore oil & gas division of a leading helicopter services company. This is an opinion piece. Views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)

(This piece was originally published on the author's personal blog, and has been republished, with the author's permission, in light of the recent Ethiopian airlines crash.)