Bigger pilot safety issue: Automation or fatigue?

As jetliners become ever more reliant on automation to navigate crowded skies, some safety officials worry there will be more deadly accidents traced to pilots who have lost their hands-on instincts in the air.

Some pilots, such as Rory Kay, an airline captain and co-chairman of a Federal Aviation Administration committee on training, worry that "we're forgetting how to fly," but colleagues among the hundreds of pilots based in the Salt Lake City area contend that fatigue, not automation, is a bigger safety issue.

Hundreds of people have died over the past five years in "loss of control" accidents in which planes stalled during flight or got into unusual positions that pilots could not correct. In some cases, pilots made the wrong split-second decisions, with catastrophic results -- for example, steering the plane's nose skyward into a stall instead of down to regain stable flight.

Spurred in part by federal regulations that require greater reliance on computerized flying, the airline industry is suffering from "automation addiction," contends Kay. "We're seeing a new breed of accident with these state-of-the art planes."

Pilots use automated systems to fly airliners for all but about three minutes of a flight, the takeoff and landing. Most of the time pilots are programming navigation directions into computers rather than using their hands on controls to fly the plane, Kay's advisory committee warns. They have few opportunities to maintain their skills by flying manually.

Fatal airline accidents have decreased dramatically in the U.S. over the past decade. However, The Associated Press interviewed pilots, industry officials and aviation safety experts who expressed concern about the implications of decreased opportunities for manual flight and reviewed more than a dozen loss-of-control accidents around the world.

But some pilots scoff at the suggestion that their flying skills are withering as planes become more reliant on automated flight systems.

"Automation in cockpits is there to assist pilots in maintaining the highest level of safety, and that's why it's there. If the autopilot failed, it would be no problem for the pilot," said Mike Spain, a Delta Air Lines captain stationed at the carrier's hub in Salt Lake City.

He maintains that pilots train regularly on simulators to hone manual skills and manage situations that could arise if a plane's automated systems fail.

But a draft FAA study found pilots sometimes "abdicate too much responsibility to automated systems." Because these systems are so integrated in today's planes, one malfunctioning piece of equipment or a single bad computer instruction can suddenly cascade into a series of other failures, unnerving pilots who have been trained to rely on the equipment.

Airlines and regulators discourage or even prohibit pilots from turning off the autopilot and flying planes themselves, the FAA committee said. Safety experts say they're seeing cases in which pilots who are suddenly confronted with a loss of computerized flight controls don't appear to know how to respond immediately, or they make errors -- sometimes fatally so.

The study examined 46 accidents and major incidents, 734 voluntary reports by pilots and others, as well as data from more than 9,000 flights in which a safety official rode in the cockpit to observe pilots in action. It found that in more than 60 percent of accidents, and 30 percent of major incidents, pilots had trouble manually flying the plane or made mistakes with automated flight controls.

A typical mistake was not recognizing that either the autopilot or the auto-throttle -- which controls power to the engines -- had disconnected. Others failed to take the proper steps to recover from a stall in flight or to monitor and maintain airspeed.

Those assertions notwithstanding, pilots based in the Salt Lake area say the focus on automation diverts attention from a more pressing safety concern -- pilot fatigue.

Rules for domestic flights don't explicitly address the amount of time a pilot can be on duty, they say. Pilots on international routes can stay at the controls for 12 hours. Spain said the long hours contribute to fatigue.

"Flight times should be dictated by science and circadian rhythms," Spain said. "If I show up to fly an airplane at 7 a.m., I'll be more rested than if I show up at 7 p.m."

Last year, the FAA proposed rules to help cut pilot fatigue. One would set a nine-hour minimum rest period before a pilot starts a shift, a one-hour increase over the current minimum. Other rules would set different rest requirements for pilots based on the time of day, types of flights, time zones and other factors.

The changes were resisted by the Air Transportation Association, which represents the nation's airlines. Earlier this month the ATA issued a statement contending, among other things, that the proposed FAA rule would increase the industry's costs up to $2 billion a year, not improve safety and would imperil more than 400,000 aviation and travel-related jobs.

Pilots who live locally say the FAA proposals would make the skies safer.

"If the new rule is adopted, that's going to [yield] one of the greatest increases in safety margins in 30 years," said Ed Thiel, a Delta pilot who lives in Park City and flies long-haul overseas routes from the airline's Detroit hub.

"I would say the greater risk that we are facing right now is fatigue."

There would appear to be arguments to support both sides of the issue.

In the most recent fatal airline crash in the U.S., in 2009 near Buffalo, N.Y., the co-pilot of a regional airliner programmed incorrect information into the plane's computers, causing it to slow to an unsafe speed. That triggered a stall warning. The startled captain, who hadn't noticed the plane had slowed too much, responded by repeatedly pulling back on the control yoke, overriding two safety systems, when the correct procedure was to push forward.

An investigation later found there were no mechanical or structural problems that would have prevented the plane from flying if the captain had responded correctly. Instead, his actions caused an aerodynamic stall. The plane plummeted, killing all 49 people aboard and one on the ground.

But the accident was also attributed to pilot fatigue.

Last month, French investigators recommended that all pilots get mandatory training in manual flying and handling a high-altitude stall. The recommendations were in response to the 2009 crash of an Air France jet flying from Brazil to Paris. All 228 people aboard were killed.

An investigation found that airspeed sensors fed bad information to the Airbus A330's computers. That caused the autopilot to disengage suddenly and a stall warning to activate.

The co-pilot at the controls struggled to save the plane, but because he kept pointing the plane's nose up, he actually caused the stall instead of preventing it, experts said. Despite the bad airspeed information, which lasted for less than a minute, there was nothing to prevent the plane from continuing to fly if the pilot had followed the correct procedure for such circumstances, which is to continue to fly levelly in the same direction at the same speed while trying to determine the nature of the problem, they said.

In such cases, the pilots and the technology are failing together, said former US Airways Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, whose precision flying is credited with saving all 155 people aboard an Airbus A320 after it lost power in a collision with Canada geese shortly after takeoff from New York's LaGuardia Airport two years ago.

"If we only look at the pilots -- the human factor -- then we are ignoring other important factors," he said. "We have to look at how they work together." Alt Heads:

Safety in the skies: Is automation or pilot fatigue a bigger threat?