Accidents due to Spatial Disorientation (SD), in military and general aviation, reportedly vary between 2.1 to 31% [1 – 11]. Despite of physiological limitations of the ‘human’ operator, accident statistics do not correctly reflect SD as a cause, as commonly as expected, especially in the military aviation. In fact, in a review of accidents due …
Investigating the crash of Air France Flight 447 [1], from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, into the Atlantic Ocean on 01 June 2009, the French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA = Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses pour la Sécurité de l’Aviation Civile) released an interim report on 29 Jul 11. This …
James Doolittle made history on 24 September 1929, when he took off, flew a distance of 20 miles and landed an airplane by instruments alone [1]. The array of instruments included the Sperry Horizon, precursor of the artificial horizon, which still remains the essential instrument for maintaining orientation in flight.
Despite the wide scale acceptance and use of flight simulators, some doubts may continue being raised about their limitations in the transfer of learning, especially whenever there is an aircraft accident.
Once the decision to abandon the aircraft is taken, the only action required is to fire the seat by pulling the seat-firing handle. This does not take more than a second or two, yet Air Forces the world over have lost pilots, experienced and rookie, because they waited too long to eject. The human factors …