Could Covid-19 “Rust” Make Pilots Less Prepared?

(CNN) — If the pandemic has made you almost forget what the inside of an airplane looks like, you’re not alone. Covid-19 has grounded commercial airline fleets around the world, making it difficult for the aviation industry to recover.

The omicron variant halted its comeback, and a full return to pre-pandemic air traffic levels may take between one and two and a half years, according to various estimates. However, international travel they are recoveringborders are reopening and more and more planes are flying again.

Many airline and airport workers have been laid off or furloughed in the past two years, and for some that has now meant returning to work after an enforced hiatus, an especially sensitive proposition for pilots. Can long periods away from the cockpit affect pilots’ confidence or performance?

unstable approximations

In a report Regarding an incident that occurred in September 2021 at Aberdeen Airport (Scotland), the UK Air Accidents Inquiry Bureau (AAIB) suggests that this is possible.

A Boeing 737 approaching the airport was ordered to make a “go around“, that is, an aborted landing where the plane goes back up, goes around and tries again. It can happen for various reasons, such as bad weather or obstacles on the runway.

The plane should have climbed to 3,000 feet before circling to approach the runway again, but instead “deviated significantly from its intended flight path,” the report said, descending rapidly and with an “undesirable” rise. ” of the air speed that was not corrected soon enough. The pilots took about a minute to correct the error before landing safely.

The report notes that the crew had not consistently flown regularly in the previous 18 months, although flight simulators were used to help maintain skills. “The real-world environment,” it reads, “creates different demands on aircrews, and it is possible that this event illustrates that a lack of recent exposure to the real-world environment can erode the ability of aircrews to deal effectively with those challenges”.

The report also states that “the safety benefits of simulator training are well established”, stressing that a link “between this event and the lack of online flights” has not been established, but says that it is “clearly a posibility”.

Although the report only suggests a connection between the event and the failure to fly, Paul Dickens, a psychologist at Core Aviation Psychologywhich provides psychological services to airlines, believes that this is more than anything to be on the diplomatic side: “It certainly seems to me that this and other incidents that occurred earlier in the pandemic were very directly related to the lack of practice of flying in the real life”.

In July 2020, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) published an advisory to inform the aviation industry of a growing number of “unstable approximations“, or landing attempts in which the aircraft’s speed, direction, or rate of descent were incorrect. They had more than doubled compared to pre-pandemic levels.

In a leaked memo and which was obtained by the Australian press, the national airline Qantas detailed the mistakes made by its pilots after long periods of inactivity due to covid, such as starting a takeoff with the brakes still on.

Similar reports have appeared around the world, many of them through the Aviation Safety Reporting System NASA, a platform where industry professionals can record incidents anonymously, so that the community at large can discuss them. A analysis of the platform carried out by CNN found several errors related to covid, one of which involved landing a plane without having obtained permission to do so. “Since the outbreak of covid-19, I have not been flying as often as before,” wrote one of the pilots on that flight. “I think this played into this incident.”

lose the “validity”

According to Dickens, anyone who hasn’t been practicing their skills in the real world is going to have some level of skill degradation, but that’s not specific to pilots and it happens in any profession: “It happens to anyone who has a of sick leave, even more so during the pandemic, when that time off work was so unusual.

Typically, pilots must log a set number of takeoffs and landings every 90 days and pass a semi-annual training evaluation to maintain “current,” a term used in the aviation industry to indicate recent experience.

Patrick Smith, airline pilot who flies Boeing 767s and author of the popular book and blog “Ask the Pilot“, agrees that lack of knowledge, in any profession, can affect performance and level of preparation. However, he stops short of considering it a safety issue.

“I think it’s a fair debate, but maybe not to the extent that people are led to believe,” he says. “A certain amount of oxidation is going to remain, there’s just no way around it. Does that translate to an unsafe flight? No.”

When pilots cease to be pilots, they have to retrain, usually in a simulator, as well as undergo physical and psychological evaluations, although there is no universal rule on when and how this happens: “It varies by airline and country.” Dickens says. “In the European Union [donde trabajo] All pilots are required to go through a psychological evaluation before they start operating online and I am seeing many pilots returning to flying who have often been doing other things for up to two years.”

But what happens to a pilot who hasn’t flown for so long? “They can lose situational awareness, which is the knowledge of where you are in the air, being able to see you in the cockpit space and also in the airspace. They can also suffer in decision making and problem solving, due to that are out of the decision-making loop in the line that they normally make during operational time,” says Dickens.

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), in a security report published last year, raises a similar concern: “With little or no contact with flight tasks for an extended period, flight crews are likely to experience a high demand for cognitive tasks when they return to the cockpit. In the context In a highly prescriptive, procedure-laden work environment, the risk of slips, lapses and errors can be significant.”

The report also states that “competence decline can create a direct safety risk, as the accuracy, speed, and ultimately the effectiveness of task execution deteriorate with lack of practice.”

Ready to fly?

Whether a pilot feels fully competent returning to work after a break may also have to do with factors that are unique to each individual, such as how long they’ve been flying, on which plane, as well as their mental and overall physique.

“I’ve been working fairly steadily during the pandemic, but I’ve had stretches where I haven’t flown for several weeks,” says Smith, who has been a pilot for more than 30 years. “I never felt that I couldn’t deliver what was required of me.”

So how can pilots properly get back up to speed? “A simulator is by far the best tool,” says Smith, “and for the most part, that’s what airlines have been doing when pilots are out or grounded for long periods.”

However, the availability of simulators was also affected by the pandemic due to travel restrictions—pilots couldn’t get to the location of the simulator—or social distancing restrictions.

“Access to these simulators is and will probably continue to be a problem in the future due to the prevailing health measures, which limit the number of places available worldwide,” says the EASA report. To mitigate the problem, EASA began approving alternative technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR), which is easier to implement than traditional simulators, which are full-scale replicas of cockpits.

Other ways to minimize risk to returning crews is to pair a pilot who hasn’t worked in a while with one who has recent flight experience, and to avoid challenging airports, for example with difficult landings or short runways.

IATA published various documents with guidance for flight crews returning to work, and EASA launched a campaign called “Be Ready – Stay Safe” which includes specific tips for pilots. For example, perform mental rehearsals, pay more attention to the aircraft and the flight path than you were used to, and review SOPs, or Standard Operating Procedures, a step-by-step guide to carry out operations safely – before reporting to work.

Once back at the controls during an actual flight, pilots have another way to regain familiarity with the aircraft more quickly: rely less on automation and pilot the aircraft manually, for example during airport approach.

“It’s a way of making sure their skills are put to use, rather than turning on auto mode and letting the plane go by itself, because they’re not going to gain anything from that. The physical action brings the skills back a little faster.” Dickens says.

Although this is a complex question with multiple factors at play, should it be on your mind when you board your next plane?

“It depends on the airline,” says Dickens. “I’m sure there are one or two that have been less rigorous with this process, but to be honest, most scheduled airlines know this is an important issue, and they take it very seriously.”