Accordingly, I believe that the examiner nav also failed by
allowing/awarding a marginal grade for the tuning ommission rather than
the crew work ommission.
Cheers.
Stephen J. Phillips
Lecturer in Aviation
School of Engineering
Edith Cowan University
Mt Lawley
PERTH 6050
WESTERN AUSTRALIA
Ph 08 9370 6680
From: "Neil C. Krey" <neilkrey_at_mail.airmail.net>, on 12/12/97 6:20 PM:
The following is being forwarded to the list after it bounced for technical
reasons.
Neil
----------------
From: CRMDEEN <CRMDEEN_at_aol.com>
Message-ID: <5a0c9a62.3491bf91_at_aol.com>
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 17:49:45 EST
To: crm-devel_at_db.erau.edu
Subject: Request for Opinion
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Hello CRMer's
Recently I was consulted by a young aviator who is a student receiving
training at this facility. He had an interesting story of his end-of-course
flight evaluation, and was curious as to my "interpretation" of what
happened.
The flight was a cargo mission on which two navigator students were
receiving their final end-of-training flight evaluation. On this particular
morning, the aircraft departure was delayed approximately six hours.
(Training regulations require training missions to cancel if aircraft is not
ready for departure within 4). Due to the extreme cold of the climate, and
the effect that would possibly have on the propeller systems, the PIC
elected
to not cancel the flight, as required. They flew to an airfield, loaded
cargo, and the proceeded to their destination of the day. It was upon
arrival
here that things got exciting.
Although the flight was only about six hours long, the crew was now
approximately 14 hours into their crew duty day (student training days are
regulated to 12). The pilots were allowing the autopilot to fly the
airplane
for the route, with the autopilot coupled to the INS computer. The PIC, who
had earlier announced that it was "his leg", decided to utilize the approach
function of the INS system, thereby attempting an "automated" approach.
Specific task delegation is not published, but the usual habits of our
crews is that the copilot sets the radio and navigational frequencies
into the
FMS, and the navigator programs the waypoints and mode sequences.
The airfield the crew is arriving at is in very mountainous terrain, the
arrival weather was slightly better than non-precision approach
minimums, and,
of course, it was nighttime. The navigator becomes quite busy
monitoring the
approach with the radar, paying particular attention to the terrain. During
the descent, the aircraft broke clouds, and the copilot recognized the
field,
not in the front of the aircraft, but several miles toward the 2 o'clock
position. The pilots were alarmed that the aircraft was not well
aligned with
the runway. The copilot checked the navaid frequency page and noted
that the
VOR frequency was tuned, whereas the Localizer frequency should have been.
The pilots said that they had told the navigator to do a localizer
approach, and assumed the navigator would tune the proper frequency. The
navigator recalled the pilot briefing a localizer approach, but did not hear
the pilot direct him to set the frequency. The flight examiner
navigator did
not hear this either. The copilot assumed the nav would set the frequency,
even though that is normally done by the copilot.
The aircraft landed without incident. The navigator received a grade of
"marginal" for failing to tune the localizer frequency. The pilots received
no admonishment.
Opinion?
Greg Deen
HTI
Best regards,
Neil Krey
neilkrey_at_mail.airmail.net
http://users.why.net/neilkrey/