Complexity Of Aircraft Adding To Pilot Error

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30536, 3 September 1964, Page 7

Complexity Of Aircraft Adding To Pilot Error

(K2.Pjt. -Reuter —Copyright)

LONDON, September 2. Pilots’ limitations were rapidly being reached in modern aircraft, two Royal Air Force psychologists warned today.

Proof of this lay in the increase in aeidenU due to human error and the need for more crew members, the psychologists, Mr H. F. Huddlestone and Mr J. M. Rolfe, of the R.A.F. Insitute of Aviation Medicine, Farnborough, Mid in a paper presented to the British Association conference at Southampton. In 1961 the United States Air Force investigated 313 aircraft accidents and decided

234 were the result of human error.

Of 12 accidents to British passenger aircraft between December, 1960, and January, 1963, seven were probably caused by an error of judgment and only two by mechanical failure. In the other three there was no clear indication of the cause. An early aircraft needed only a pilot The modern airliner carried two pilots, plus, in some cases, a third pilot in command, a navigator and a flight engineer. This could lead to difficulties in telling each other what they wanted, the psychologists said. “The captain of a large airliner, wanting to correct undershooting of the glidepath, called up his flight engineer in control of the throttles and asked for ‘takeoff power’,” said the psychologists. “The engineer closed the throttles, and the aircraft crashed. Fortunately, this happened in a flight simulator, and as a result the command ‘take-off power’ was changed to ’full power’.” On improving aircraft instruments, they said a modern altimeter had three dials, but could be replaced by a meter which has been tested which gives the height in figures. A system had been developed which displayed information in pictures and symbols on the windscreen.

Machines could be made to help the pilot but he would always retain important duties. “Airline customers prefer to see something resplendent which can be identified as the ‘captain* of the airliner, even if he does act in no other role than that of a glorified machineminder,” they said.