Electronic flight instrument failures blamed for December 747 crash in London and January Crossair passenger airlines crash near Zurich

Excerpts from report below:

"The failure of the aircraft's artificial horizon, which shows pilots the altitude of the aircraft, is now being blamed for the fatal accident of a Korean Air Boeing 747 freighter while taking off from London Stansted Airport three days before Christmas.

In the Korean example, the pilot's and co-pilot's instruments started to show different indications.

Although a warning sounded, they were unable to take action before the aircraft nose-dived into the ground. "

"Early in January, misleading information from the electronic flight instrument system led to the loss of a Crossair Saab 340 regional turboprop airliner as it took off from Zurich. Crossair, the regional subsidiary of the Swiss national airline Swissair, has an excellent safety record, in contrast to Korean Air, and this has set alarm bells ringing throughout the industry. "

Air safety fears as pilots fail to identify danger

Source: The Sunday Herald Publication date: Feb 27, 2000

Airline pilots are being pressed to undertake more rigorous safety training which will enable them to cope with engine shutdowns or instrument failure following a series of accidents in which pilots have not been able to recognise that their aircraft is in danger.

Airlines and air safety regulators are being urged to revise the content of airline pilot training, especially refresher training and flight simulation, to test them on mid-air emergencies.

Currently pilots are tested in a simulator every six months. The one emergency always included is the failure of an engine during take- off. All modern airliners, including those with just two engines, are designed to be able to continue a take-off even if one engine has failed. Continuing to take-off with one engine failed requires pilots to make adjustments to the aircraft and the rate of climb to reflect the loss of power.

Now, the influential journal Flight International is urging that refresher training and assessment should also take in to account instrument failures and malfunctions.

The failure of the aircraft's artificial horizon, which shows pilots the altitude of the aircraft, is now being blamed for the fatal accident of a Korean Air Boeing 747 freighter while taking off from London Stansted Airport three days before Christmas.

In the Korean example, the pilot's and co-pilot's instruments started to show different indications.

Although a warning sounded, they were unable to take action before the aircraft nose-dived into the ground.

Early in January, misleading information from the electronic flight instrument system led to the loss of a Crossair Saab 340 regional turboprop airliner as it took off from Zurich. Crossair, the regional subsidiary of the Swiss national airline Swissair, has an excellent safety record, in contrast to Korean Air, and this has set alarm bells ringing throughout the industry.

Part of the problem lies in the mass of information on airliner instrument panels. The end result is a vast array of dials and switches, which can leave the standby instruments in parts of the instrument panel which are not easy to see.

Pilots are seldom familiar with their positions. The situation is not much easier on more modern aircraft, with information displayed on screens. There is little room freed up by the screens, and these have been criticised for not presenting information in a way that a pilot can quickly scan the instruments for required data.

"Trainers should spring it on every pilot during at least one take- off in every recurrent training session," Flight International argues. "It's easy to say that, in a vigilant crew, the non-handling pilot would notice the divergence on his instruments and that good cockpit resource management training will take care of that."

The magazine also questions the ability of many pilots to notice the gradual loss of power from one engine quickly enough. In many cases this comes to their attention once it is too late to recover the aircraft.

In extreme examples, the failure of pilots to recognise that a problem is developing can lead to bizarre accidents. In one case, after taking off in the dark, the pilots of a small airliner failed to realise that the aircraft was flying upside down. Air traffic control wondered why the aircraft turned in the opposite direction each time an instruction was given. Eventually control was lost and it crashed.

These difficulties will also fuel fears among older pilots that modern technology is being left to take too much of the burden. "Too few pilots today really know how their aircraft feels in all phases of flight," one retired captain said.

The controversy has refuelled fears about airline safety. During the 1990s, the number of accidents and the number of lives lost rose compared to the previous decade, though, the number of accidents and fatalities fell slightly as a percentage of flying hours and people carried. Many in the industry have been disappointed that the fall was not greater because of improvements in aircraft and new systems designed to make flying safer.

After the loss of the Egyptair Boeing 767 late last year, with controversy over whether or not one of the pilots crashed the aircraft in a suicide attempt, many are now arguing that, in addition to cockpit voice recorders and flight data recorders, airliners should also have cockpit video recorders. This would be one way of ending any ambiguity over the meaning of conversations between pilots, but might be resisted as a "spy in the sky".

Publication date: Feb 27, 2000 ) 2000, NewsReal, Inc.

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-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 28, 2000