ALPA Safety and Training Councils Gather, Discuss Best Practices
By Christopher Freeze, Senior Aviation Technical Writer
More than 60 ALPA Safety Council and Training Council pilot volunteers from 22 ALPA pilot groups assembled at the Association’s offices in McLean, Va., on February 25–27 to share their perspectives on safety and training at their carrier and across the industry.
Welcoming attendees, Capt. Bob Fox, ALPA’s first vice president and national safety coordinator, highlighted the importance of voluntary safety reporting programs. “These reports feed our robust safety management systems [SMS], which constantly analyze the data and look for ways to mitigate risk.” Citing the recent B-737 MAX Indonesian accident investigation report, Fox noted that Lion Air’s insufficient SMS training and the inability for employees to identify a hazard resulted in an incomplete postflight report regarding the problems the crewmembers experienced on the aircraft before the accident flight.
Capt. Steve Jangelis (Delta), ALPA’s Air Safety Organization (ASO) Aviation Safety chair, updated the councils on the ASO’s recent successes, including the work being done by the Health and Environment Working Group, revisions to safety management programs and data protection, pilot training program improvements, and engaging with government to adjust flight paths in response to security and noise concerns.
Capt. Ken Plunkett (Delta) and Danielle Hiltunen, a Department of Transportation researcher, discussed the preliminary results of the recent electronic flight bag survey. Funded by the FAA, the study was coordinated and created by ALPA with input from DOT researchers and stakeholders to include topics like hardware, training, charting, documents, workload, and pilot resources. The full results of the study will be published in the near future.
Dr. Randy Mumaw, a cognitive psychologist working in the Aerospace Cognitive Engineering Lab at NASA Ames, spoke about the importance of the role of “pilot monitoring” in the cockpit. “Science is showing that this function is just as important as the ‘pilot flying,’” Mumaw stated, “but we’re not training pilots to utilize their talents to maximize the benefit it provides.”
Jeff Schroeder, the FAA’s chief scientist for flight simulation systems, discussed the success of upset prevention and recovery training (UPRT) requirements, especially in light of a runway trim event that a non-ALPA-represented flight crew experienced last year. “The flight crew in that incident credited the upset training they received with preventing an accident.”
While Schroeder noted that the training varies from carrier to carrier, “The training is better than it was a year ago,” he observed. He cited that the quality of the UPRT instructor is critical to a pilot’s success in training, as well as the pilot’s attitude, “because, statistically speaking, not everyone can be better than average.”
Also addressing the topic of the “startle” reflex to surprise events, Schroeder noted that “the more trained a response is, the more likely it will be executed when startled. This is a skill pilots really need to practice, as it will help them deal with any unexpected event. We aren’t adequately leveraging training opportunities like UPRT for this, and I think that should be considered as a potential option for improvement.”
Capt. Paul Koziol (ExpressJet), ALPA’s Safety Council chair, and F/O Todd Lisak (JetBlue), ALPA’s Training Council chair, each held closed-door sessions for their respective councils, allowing pilot group representatives to brief other members on the successes and issues at their specific pilot group, as well as gain insights on best practices.
The Safety Council was briefed on recent accident investigations, unique considerations for Far North operations, smoke and fume events, and the formation of the ALPA’s Safety Advisory Group to advise and advance new safety initiatives.
The Training Council reviewed aspects of human factors and received a briefing by Dr. Kathy Abbott, the FAA’s chief scientific and technical advisor for flight deck human factors. Also discussed were training curriculums, advocacy, the FAA’s pilot records database, and the use of Level 7 simulators for certain training scenarios.
The next meeting of ALPA’s Safety and Training Councils is scheduled to be held later this year.
