Safety fears over flight simulator training

Fatal plane crashes this year in Indonesia and Thailand have put the issue of pilot competency in the spotlight, and in Australia there are warnings that our own commercial air safety could be compromised by a proposed new licensing system for copilots.
By any standard, 2007 has been a horror year for commercial air safety. It started on New Year’s Day when an Indonesian 737 crashed, killing everyone on board.
Two months later in Yogyakarta, another Indonesian airliner exploded after careering off the end of a runway. Twenty-two people, including five Australians, died.
Earlier this month, 89 people were killed when a Thai plane crashed in bad weather on the resort island of Phuket.
Australia’s air safety watchdog is overseeing a trial in Brisbane of a new system that involves a greater emphasis on flight simulators than on actual air time.
The trial is being carried out by the Airline Academy of Australia, in conjunction with Boeing, and involves one of the most advanced flight simulators in the world.
Its supporters say it gives budding pilots a better idea of extreme conditions behind the controls.
But critics say it means trainees with just 10 hours’ actual flying time could receive what is called a multi-crew pilot’s licence, or MPL.
Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) spokesman Peter Gibson says human error can be reduced by the scheme.
“Now if we can train our crews from day one in their pilot training to look for those errors that they’re making, to look for the mistakes they can make, to look for the threats to safety and to identify those accurately and take actions to avoid them, then we can avoid accidents.”
If the new regime is implemented in line with International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) guidelines, trainees could qualify for a commercial copilot’s licence after just 10 hours solo flying in an actual plane.
The news editor of Travel Weekly, Justin Wastnage, says the new scheme “spits out” copilots.
With the economies of China and India booming, and more people flying than ever before, there is a huge shortage of pilots, meaning the pressure is on to train more.
“If we look at what the national civil aviation organisation is telling us, for the next 18 years or thereabouts we’re looking at a deficit of about 80,000-odd pilots,” Former RAAF commander Stewart Cameron said.
Richard Chen from Taiwan hopes to graduate from the Airline Academy of Australia in six months and then head home to fulfil his passion for flying while also landing a lucrative job.
“ICAO has introduced this new class of licence called a multi-crew pilot’s licence, which really is a speeded-up version of the commercial pilot’s licence, essentially spitting out some copilots rather than fully-trained captains with a lot of work done in simulators rather than flying small aircraft,” he said.
This sounds like a great plan to turn out a lot of pilots rapidly, but some observers are concerned it may compromise safety.
Former RAAF commander Stewart Cameron is the chief executive officer of the Airline Academy of Australia and is the man in charge of the trial.
“This is the first time in nearly 50 years we’ve actually looked at a way of changing the training,” he said.
The academy simulator can certainly test would-be pilots by replicating some of the most challenging flying conditions.
Pilots can do battle with blinding rain and severe cross-winds, but old hands like Mr Somerville warn that nothing beats the real thing.
But CASA’s Peter Gibson says modern simulators are incredibly sophisticated.
“You can do things in them that you simply can’t do in an aircraft,” he said.
“You can pretend you’ve got an engine failure in a 737 by shutting down the engine and making the pilots go through that drill. You can’t do that in a real aircraft.”
But Mr Gibson argues that under the current system, many would-be commercial pilots spend too much time flying irrelevant, single-engine aircraft.
“It’s a mix of flying in aircraft. You’ve still got to do your basic flying training, but then you’ll move more quickly into simulator where you can learn to fly in the environment that you’re going to be operating in, in other words in 737s, 747s and most importantly, with two pilots, learn to work as a crew,” he said.
The trial of the multi-crew pilots licensing system will wrap up next year, and CASA will then invite the community to comment on it. Mr Gibson says after that, the decision will be made whether or not to implement it.
25/09/07 Mark Willacy/ABC Online, Australia