Single Pilot Cockpit Techniques, Part I

We all start out in single pilot aircraft. That doesn’t mean single seat aircraft, it means aircraft that only require one pilot to be flown. (And that doesn’t mean they can’t be flown by two pilots—most aircraft do have dual controls—only that they were designed to be flown by a single pilot.) We first encounter the reality of a single pilot aircraft on the day our flight instructor steps out and says, “I think you’re ready to do this on your own. Take it around three times and taxi back here. Have fun.” Suddenly the airplane is empty and you have your first experience with single pilot operation.

Aircraft that require two pilots come in two varieties, those that are designed that way from the beginning, and those that are required to be operated that way by the regulatory part under which they are operated. Those that are designed to be operated by two pilots do not have to have all pilot controllable items—switches, levers, circuit breakers, knobs—accessible from the left seat, they only have to be accessible from one seat or the other. A dead give away to whether an aircraft was designed to be flown by one pilot or two is to look at the gear control lever: if it’s on the left side of the cockpit it’s a single pilot aircraft; if it’s on the right side it’s a two pilot aircraft. (Professional pilots often use the phrase, “I pulled gear for so and so…,” meaning “I was a copilot for so and so.”) Aircraft flown by two pilots have what every first solo pilot wants: someone to help. So for the pilot going from a single pilot aircraft to a dual pilot aircraft, the transition is fairly straight forward and simple: just keep doing what you always have, but let your copilot help. Help can include everything from “pulling gear,” letting you concentrate on flying and not having to reach blindly for the gear handle or glance away at a critical moment, to handling the radios, keeping track of the flight log and fuel management, programming nav computers, digging approach plates out, or anything else you want him or her to do. In professional practice, pilot often “swap legs”, alternating flying and non flying duties, and in the co-captains arrangement (my least favorite mode of crewing) they alternate seats as well, the captain for each leg alternating and sitting in the left seat. (It is my least favorite because it often leads to blurring the line between the pilot in command and the second in command. But that’s a story for another day.)

There aren’t any aircraft being designed any more for a three man crew (I guess I have to say “three person crew,” but when these aircraft were being designed, “three man crew” was how they were described), but there used to be lots, in fact the three man crew was a crew member or two less than those before them that also had navigators and radio operators. The third crewmember was a flight engineer, a non flying position, and his (or her) primary job responsibility was aircraft systems management, primarily the engines but also all systems associated with those engines: electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic, fuel, pressurization. It was a big job because these were big airplanes with very complex systems, multiple redundancies, and very specific troubleshooting and reconfiguring checklists. The transition from a two man aircraft to a three man aircraft was not so simple: you had more help, but how you put that help to work, and how you divided the duties while insuring that someone was still primarily responsible for flying the aircraft and nothing else wasn’t obvious: it had to be learned.

To see how this works, imagine yourself as the Captain in the left seat of an L-1011 at cruise altitude and everything is going along just fine, nice and quiet, when suddenly your flight engineer says, “Hey boss, I think we’re losing C system—the fluid level is less than half and dropping steadily.” Exactly what this means isn’t the point: in fact, the C system on the 1011 is the main hydraulic system, the one that powers all the flight controls and operates the gear and the nose wheel steering, and while there are backups, and while the gear can still be manually lowered (but not raised) and while the aircraft can still be controlled (by any one of three other hydraulic systems) even if the system is lost completely, losing C system is one of the big ones. (“Big ones” as in the Gary Larson cartoon where the captain announces to the passengers, “Well folks, we’ve got a warning light on up here, and dare if it isn’t one of the big ones.”)

The point is, how are you going to handle the problem? Just before this problem arose, you were the pilot flying—it was “your leg”—the copilot was the pilot not flying, the one handling the radios and the paperwork, and the engineer was leaning back in his chair with his feet on his desk looking at his panel like he always does. So what do you do now? If you try to help the engineer out, who’s flying the airplane? You could have the copilot try to help him out, but as a practical matter it is a lot harder for the right seat pilot to turn around and see what the engineer is doing than it is for you, you just have to turn sideways in your seat, and in any case, do you really want to just turn this problem over to the two of them while you just sit there? Probably not, so what you do is you say to the copilot, “I’m going to work the problem with the engineer. Your airplane.” meaning you, the copilot, are now the pilot flying, and the copilot would acknowledge the transfer by saying, “My airplane.” This means he has to handle the radios and paperwork as well for awhile, but at cruise that shouldn’t be a problem, and he can always ask for a little help if he gets overloaded, and it leaves you free to turn around in your seat and work with the engineer on the problem, going through the checklist carefully, agreeing on what you are seeing—a lot of checklists are, in reality, troubleshooting trees, with lots of “If this, then do this, if not, then do this” type commands—and confirming that he has his finger on the correct switch before pushing it: this would not be a good time to inadvertently disconnect one of the other hydraulic systems. So a big part of being a captain with a three man crew is learning how to best manage that crew, and the best way to learn it is as a copilot, watching captains deal with the problems that do come up. The next best way is in training, and the least best way is The Hard Way, or what we euphemistically call “experience”. The point is, going from a single pilot operation to a two pilot operation was fairly intuitive, but going on to a three crew operation was not.

So traditionally, meaning during the time I was coming up as a pilot, the normal progression was from student pilot to single pilot in command, then to copilot and captain of a two man operation and then eventually at some point usually through the same steps to captain of a three man crew (often with a stop along the way as the second officer, as pilots who are trained and serve as flight engineers are called in airline jargon). But over time things changed; As manufacturers learned to take advantage of computers and more robust, more reliable, and ultimately simpler aircraft systems, the flight engineer, or second officer, was eliminated, first on large two engine aircraft such as the Boeing 757 and 767, and then on all aircraft, Airbus 330/340s, MD-11s, 777s, even later models of the 747. And crews that had flown for years with three crew members, and who had gotten good at working together and relying on each other, had to learn to make do with just two crewmembers again. And that turned out to be a whole lot harder than learning to go from a single pilot to a dual pilot operation.

The main difference between going from a single pilot operation to a two pilot operation, versus going from a three man crew back to a two pilot operation, is that the single pilot is already used to having to do everything himself, whereas the pilot of a three man crew is used to having, and working with, lots of help. The single pilot who suddenly finds himself with a copilot has to learn to use that help, and the pilot who suddenly loses his flight engineer has to learn to make do with just the two of them. Each has some learning to do, but it is very different for each.

One of the main differences is that the three man crew is used to having back up: with three crew members, someone is always looking out for the other two, whether it is the flight engineer monitoring the radios or the captain backing up the flight engineer on his panel or the copilot monitoring the captain as he flies an approach. A good sort of dependency develops among an experienced crew—I can’t begin to count the number of times in my 727 or 1011 flying where one crewmember caught a mistake that the two others had overlooked, and no one crewmember had a monopoly on it—each made mistakes, and each caught mistakes. I used to say, as part of my standard crew briefing with pilots and flight engineers I hadn’t flown with before, “If you see something you don’t like or don’t understand or something that doesn’t seem to make sense, speak up. If it’s a mistake developing and we can correct it and keep it right here in the cockpit, it isn’t a mistake,” meaning if we can correct it before there are any negative consequences—something someone outside the cockpit is aware of—we’ve done our job.

The problem with that, with what I call a beneficial dependency, is that when you go back to the two man crew, you have to learn certain techniques to compensate for the fact that you don’t have that backup anymore. With a two man crew you are, of course, aware of what the other pilot is doing, but each has his job responsibilities and neither has the luxury of being able to just sit back and monitor the other. The airlines were very concerned with this lack of backup capability when the two man aircraft came back into their fleets, much more so than they were with the more obvious question of whether the aircraft could be flown safely and reliably without a flight engineer. So they developed some very specific policies and procedures to insure flight safety with just two pilots. Those policies and procedures are the subject of my next post, “Single Pilot Cockpit Techniques, Part II,” because those techniques also apply to pilots flying by themselves without any help at all.

Bonding

About to head out for Day Three marshaling for The Presidents Cup, and wanted to let you know that yesterday, before the start of play, I had a nice long conversation with Freddie Couples. He was on his way to the driving range and as he went by my position I said, “Good luck,” and he said, “Thank you.” And Michael Jordan in one cart, and Greg Norman in another, almost ran me down on the 18th fairway in a hurry to get to 17 where an important match was winding down. It’s a big fairway and I still somehow managed to find the one spot where they needed to go. But they smiled as they went by and we’re all still pals. All in all, I’m having a pretty good time.

Cleared for The Break

This post is about aviation, but it starts out with golf.

Specifically, it starts out with the first practice day, Tuesday, October 6, 2009, for The Presidents’ Cup golf tournament, held at Harding Park in San Francisco, California. This is a match play event between the 12 highest ranking golfers from the United States versus the 12 highest ranking golfers from the rest of the world, except Europe. (The reason Europe is excluded is because the more famous Ryder Cup pits the US versus the best European golfers. The Presidents’ Cup is, therefore, a “Ryder Cup” for the rest of the world.)

My wife and I volunteered to be marshals for the event, marshals being the people who control the foot traffic and tell people to be quiet and stand still while the golfers are hitting and putting, and yesterday we were assigned the task of controlling a fairway pedestrian crossover, using ropes to open the crossway when there were no golfers taking shots or walking down the fairway. All in all, a great way to see a lot of great golf, and great golfers. (And celebrities too. Michael Jordan for one, former Presidents Bill Clinton and George HW Bush for another.) But, and this is big, this is also Fleet Week in San Francisco, meaning the Blue Angels are in town. And, in fact, manning my gate early on with nothing much to do because the golfers were still several holes away, I heard an aircraft noise that had that sound that is hard to describe but is the sound that military fighter aircraft have and civilian air transports do not. I looked up, and there, out past the golf course running north up the shore line, were seven gold and blue F-18s, six in tight formation, one solo behind: The Blue Angels demonstration team plus the two seat, support and training aircraft. I mean, here I am, on a great golf course, a beautiful fall day with temperatures in the high 60’s, watching some of the most famous golfers in the world (yes, Tiger Woods, but also Freddie Couples, Greg Norman, Ernie Els), while The Blue Angels fly by. For me, at least, you just couldn’t make up a more perfect setting.

That evening, watching the local news, both to see what they covered of the first day of golf but also to see if they had anything on The Blue Angels, there were pieces on both, and for the Blue Angels they noted that they had arrived at San Francisco International Airport (KSFO/SFO) after having done a flyby up the coast and over The Bay. The film coverage showed the flight of six as they made their break for their visual approach and landing. It was a beautiful sight, as only a precision break can be, and it got me to thinking about breaks in general and memories of specific breaks.

The first question that always comes up is, “What is a break?”, and the second is, “Why do they do them?” (other than that they just look like an awful lot of fun to do, and they can, so they do). The Break was originally developed as a tactical maneuver to avoid enemy fire around the base when returning from a mission. The idea was to approach the field, in formation, at pattern altitude but at a high rate of speed. This obviously made it harder for ground fire to hit the aircraft, but left them still in formation and going too fast to land. The maneuver that resulted in their being separated, in trail, and slowed down, was called The Break, and it was done by having each aircraft, one at a time, roll into a 90 degree bank angle, turn 180 degrees, and roll out level on downwind. The 90 degree banked turn dissipated the speed very quickly—an airplane generates essentially zero lift at 90 degrees of bank so the only way to maintain level flight is to trade a lot of airspeed—and, it kept the aircraft within the general confines of the base. With each aircraft breaking off in a carefully timed sequence it put the formation in trail, and from that point on the approach and landing was conventional, a descending base leg, lined up and on speed/on glide path on final, flare over the numbers, landing one after the other.

Whether The Break is still a necessary return to base maneuver is a good question—most bases, both Air Force and Navy, are located well away from any potential enemy—but the tradition continues: fighters always arrive in formation and land after having been cleared for The Break. I saw this on a regular basis after I first upgraded to Boeing 727 Captain at ATA. ATA had a contract with the Air Force to fly personnel to and from Nellis Air Base, North Las Vegas, to Tonopah Air Base, which was near the little town of Tonopah, Nevada, but was, in fact, actually part of a giant restricted area in the interior of Nevada. Tonopah air base was a highly classified test center for stealth aircraft, but the area included everything from underground nuclear test sites to high speed, low level training runs. By the time ATA had the contract to ferry people back and forth the stealth program at Tonopah was publicly acknowledged, but still, parts were highly classified, a base within a base that you could see from the flight line but no one went into without proper clearance. And I mean no one. It was surrounded by fences, spot lights, guard towers, warnings about mines between the fences and machine guns armed to fire at any intruder. So I never got to go in there. But I did get to see a lot of aircraft departing and arriving, both F-117s at Tonopah, and F-16s and F-15s at Nellis. Since Nellis was also the home of the Thunderbirds, the Air Force demonstration team, we occasionally got to see The Break done to perfection, but it was always a sight to see, no matter who was doing it.

Later on I transitioned to Captain on the L-1011, which went all over the world. One of my favorite stops was Naval Station Rota. Rota is near the ocean in southwest Spain, orange, olive, Sherry and Flamenco country. Rota is a joint Spanish-US base (see previous post, “Azores,” for more on joint air bases) and the Spanish had a squadron of Harrier fighters based there. The Harrier is a vertical takeoff and landing fighter, and you have to see these things to believe them, flying fast like a fighter one second, and hovering and taxiing like a helicopter the next. The Break, for them, started normally, approaching the field in formation at high speed, just like fighters always do, breaking off one by one to line up downwind. But when they came across the threshold to land they were still about 50 feet in the air, doing about 50 knots. They decelerated to zero knots by the end of the runway, and, from a hover, rotated in place 90 degrees and taxied in to their spot on the ramp, descended the last 50 feet, and shut down. You just couldn’t believe your eyes: the fighter you just saw going by at 250 knots or so slowing to zero and landing from a hover.

On one of my last trips to the simulator for B-757 training we had some extra time at the end and the instructor asked if there was anything I wanted to try with the remaining time. I said, “Sure, I’d like to see what it’s like to fly The Break. So I lined it up with the runway several miles out at 1500 feet, shoved the throttles forward to accelerate to red line speed, chopped the power over the far end of the runway, rolled into a 90 degree turn, rolled out on downwind below maximum flap extension speed and from there on it was just another visual approach. Kind of disappointing. I think the thrill of The Break comes from, first, being in formation: this is the wolf pack coming back from the kill, with the Alpha Wolf leading the break with his pals following; second, it’s just a lot more exciting to see aircraft roll into 90 degree banked turns, one after the other, than it is to actually do one. Still, it’s got to be a thrill to come back to the field at high speed, in formation, and to hear the controller say, “Cleared for The Break.”