SAA puts pilots in a real spin in new training initiative

The latest trend in training pilots to fly commercial jets features the practicing of extreme maneuvers in small, propeller-powered aircraft.

Using a technique unheard of until recently, carriers such as Delta Air Lines Inc.and South African Airways are sending some of their most experienced flight instructors back to flight school to learn how to recognize and recover from airborne upsets.

The efforts are part of a world-wide trend to step up so-called upset recovery and stall training, prompted by a series of deadly accidents that have raised concerns about an erosion of manual flying skills in the cockpit. Simulators generally are considered less effective at depicting extreme aircraft behavior.

“We wanted our instructors to really understand the concepts” through actual flying experiences, said Brad Bennetts, an Airbus A340 captain who is in charge of the initiative for the South African carrier. “The feedback from pilots has been unbelievably positive.”

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The focus reflects lessons learned from the June 2009 crash of an Air France Airbus A330 jet in the Atlantic after the crew failed to understand they were in a high-altitude stall. Earlier that year, the crash of a Colgan Air turboprop approaching Buffalo also pointed to training lapses regarding stall recognition and recovery.

Although stalls are a rare occurrence for commercial aircraft, requirements for stall training were among topics that came up repeatedly during discussions with safety experts at the just-ended Paris Air Show, which brought together airline and aerospace executives for the industry’s premier sales event.

With upset-recovery training figuring prominently on the global air-safety agenda, regulators on both sides of the Atlantic are mandating more simulator sessions in coming years to ensure pilots know what to do if their planes end up in unusual attitudes, causing them to fly too slowly and lose aerodynamic lift.

Makers of simulators, which currently can’t precisely recreate such conditions on the ground, are working to improve the fidelity of virtual tools. And airlines are adjusting simulator-training sessions to reflect new insights about how to avoid and escape from stalls.

Delta and South African Airways have opted to go well beyond simulators and government mandates.

The airlines’ training managers say nothing is as effective as having pilots sit behind the controls of an aircraft in flight to experience the violent buffeting, loss of control and sometimes abrupt spins associated with upsets and stalls.

Air New Zealand,Emirates Airline and others carriers have asked for information about the program, Mr. Bennetts said. The program, which takes place at an Arizona flight school, entails intensive, roughly one-week courses that combine ground school and simulator exercises, capped by training in aircraft. Pilots may practice as many as four dozen real-world upsets as part of the instruction.

block_quotes_start Flight-school experience is especially important because it helps pilot break from what comes naturally when necessary block_quotes_end

Those who go through the program return to their home base to teach fellow simulator instructors, who in turn pass on the principles to other pilots.

“It really does serve to make the academics come alive,” said John Tovani, Delta managing director responsible for flight training.

The in-plane experiences are intended to help pilots avoid freezing up or instinctively pulling back on the controls at the sudden onset of a stall. Military pilots routinely experience airborne upsets as part of their normal training, but changing pilot demographics means many aviators currently flying passengers have had more limited exposure to abnormal aircraft behavior.

The in-plane training “helps pass the torch to the next generation of pilots,” according to Mr. Tovani.

In a stall, planes shake, often roll unpredictably from side to side and sometimes even flip over. Pilots are taught to push the nose down and then advance the throttles to regain speed, even if the plane is flying upside down, twisting sharply or already in a dive.

That is the only way to predictably recover from an aerodynamic stall, said Sunjoo Advani, a consultant to South Africa Airways, so “it is all about psychology.”

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Mr. Advani, one of the leading proponents of stall training, said the flight-school experience is especially important because it helps pilot break from what comes naturally when necessary.

Pushing down the nose further in a dive to ensure the wings have greater lift may seem counterintuitive, he said, “but it is what you have to do to get out of the situation.”

Fledgling private pilots routinely spend some time practicing aerodynamic stalls in single-engine, propeller-powered planes before they get their license.

Regulators in Europe have gone a step further. Under Patrick Ky, the European Union’s top air-safety official, regulators in March for the first time mandated additional stall-recovery practice in the air for pilots training to get initial approval for a commercial license.

One question is at which stage in their training pilots should be exposed to enhanced stall-recovery maneuvers. The latest rules, Mr. Ky said in an interview earlier this month, require that “all pilots will have to be trained in real aircraft” before they are cleared to start flying passengers.

Insurers for the South African carrier agreed to pay for some of the flight-school tuition, once they were convinced about the safety benefits.

Several other airlines are talking to their insurance companies to try to follow the lead of South African Airways, Mr. Advani said.

This article was originally published on 16-06-2015 on The Wall Street Journal

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