MY2 CENTS WORTH KNOW YOUR AIRCRAFT By Randy Mains
I taught a CRM class at a helicopter air medical flight program recently, and something occurred that reminded me why it’s imperative that pilots know their aircraft.
The incident happened when I was given a tour of the hospital’s aircraft by the program director and one of the pilots on duty, who was a former Black Hawk pilot in the Army. The aircraft looked brand new, and I could see it had everything a pilot could want while flying in VMC or IMC conditions.
Drawing blanks
Because it was quite a new-generation aircraft, and because I didn’t know much about this model, I asked the pilot, “What make of engines does it have?” He got this dull look on his face as he tried to recall, finally admitting sheepishly, “I don’t know.” Trying to get him off the hook as a way to keep him from further embarrassing himself in front of his boss I asked, “How many shaft horsepower do you have per engine?” Again, I got that blank look accompanied by a now very red face. He said apologetically, “I don’t know.” In an effort to ask a question he may know I asked, “What’s your endurance?” Fully embarrassed now, he admitted that he didn’t know. I stopped asking questions because I could tell he was flustered and looking foolish in front his boss.
To say I was shocked at his lack of familiarity with his aircraft would be a colossal understatement. His lack of knowledge about these very basic questions caused me to wonder what other technical information this pilot might not know. Admittedly, not knowing the answers to these relatively trivial questions wouldn’t kill him. However, it would be nice to know how long you could fly on a tank of gas. Donning my flight examiner’s hat, I thought
8 May/June 2019
if I were giving this young man a checkride I would have dug deeper to find the depth of his lack of knowledge.
Even a layman knows why a pilot needs to know their aircraft and its systems. One only has to look at the recent Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 crashes that recently filled the headlines.
Infamous incidents
There have been earlier accidents, quite infamous ones in fact, where lack of knowledge about the differences between models of the same type of aircraft caused loss of life.
One aviation disaster stands out in my memory. On Jan. 8, 1989, British Midland Flight 92, a Boeing 737-400, crashed on the embankment of the M1 motorway near Kegworth, Leicestershire, England, while attempting to make an emergency landing at East Midlands Airport. Several links in the error chain contributed to the accident, but the root cause of the crash wasn’t the engine failure and subsequent engine fire. The root cause was the crew misdiagnosing the emergency and shutting down the good engine because they didn’t know the new 737-400’s systems. Instead of the number-one engine driving a single air conditioning system, the number-two engine also drove a second air conditioning system. Who would ever imagine not knowing something so seemingly trivial would cause a fatal crash?
They were on a flight from London Heathrow Airport to Belfast Airport when a fan blade fractured in the left engine. This filled the flight deck with smoke by disrupting the air conditioning system. The pilots wrongly believed that the smoke indicated a fault in the right engine, since they flew earlier
models of the 737 that ventilated the flight deck from the right engine. Their mistake would prove fatal for 47 of the 127 people on board, and seriously injure 74 others. The two pilots’ misdiagnosis became fatal because the newer model 737–400 that they were flying used a different system that ventilated the flight deck from the right-hand and left-hand engines. Wedded to their perception that the problem had to be the right engine when smoke entered the cockpit, as it would have been in earlier models, they took their misperception to the next step and shut down the functioning engine, causing more fuel to be pumped into the malfunctioning engine so it burst into flames.
As a Level-D flight simulator instructor and examiner at CAE in Dubai, I have witnessed numerous mistakes made by pilots who did not understand their aircraft: wrong fuel switches turned off, misuse of the autopilot, and emergencies misdiagnosed with predictable results, that sometimes became catastrophic.
An example in our world of helicopters occurred when pilots of AS350 series helicopters took off with their yaw servo hydraulic switches in the “off” position. After two accidents occurred (one fatal), Airbus Helicopters issued a safety information notice for pilots flying aircraft equipped with dual hydraulic systems to remind them of the procedures and indications for the run- up hydraulic checks, and the importance of strict compliance with the pre-takeoff checklist.
What if?
May I suggest in your quiet moments, maybe when on standby for a flight, ask yourself: what would I do if (fill in the blank) happened? Then turn to the flight manual,
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