Report reveals FAA currently failing to ensure manual flying skills

A report by the Transportation Department’s Office of the Director General has revealed that the FAA is failing to ensure that airline pilots maintain a sufficient level of flying skills enabling them to take control of an aircraft from an automated system in an unexpected event. The report also concluded that the FAA is unable to determine how often pilots fly manually, while also failing to ensure that airline training focuses sufficiently on manual skills.
The government watchdog also discovered that the US aviation regulatory agency does not have the ability to ensure that pilots are fully trained to enable them to correctly use and monitor all automated flight systems. On average pilots allow planes to fly 90% of the time using automated systems, taking manual control solely for take-offs and landings. Though safety has certainly increased with automated systems, the complexity of these automated systems necessitates increased pilot training.
According to the report, “The agency is missing important opportunities to ensure that pilots maintain skills needed to safely fly and recover in the event of a failure with flight deck automation or an unexpected event.”
Though an FAA spokesman declined to comment, they identified an FAA memorandum within the report where the agency shared the inspector general’s concerns and indicated that training guidelines were being developed while discussing matters with industry stakeholders such as airlines, pilots and flight attendants.
In 2014 the NTSB identified the cause of the crash involving an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 in 2013 could be attributed to a lack of critical pilot skills and an overreliance on automated systems. In 2009 the NTSB identified the crew’s inability to monitor a Colgan Air Bombardier DHC-8-400’s slowing speed on approaching Buffalo-Niagara Airport in upstate New York, nor reacting correctly to an automated warning of imminent stall, as the result of which all 49 passengers and crew, plus one person on the ground, perished in the subsequent crash.