Professional Pilot, January 2019

Clear unambiguous communication increases collective situational awareness PROFESSIONAL PILOT January 2019 67 aircraft taking off from DET Detroit MI informed the control tower that he Had a sick one and wanted to immediately return to DET for landing The air traffi c controller who was task saturated with pattern traffi c and 2 inbound business jets thought it was a passenger with motion sickness so they honored the pilots request and placed him on a long downwind behind the jets However the sick one stated in the initial transmission was a rough running engine Thankfully the aircraft limped back to the airport and the pilot learned a lesson in more appropriate phraseology Although the pilot had a high level of SA about the impeding emergency his failure to appropriately communicate it lowered the SA of the controller Avoiding slang is especially important when conducting international operations Air traffi c controllers that are not native born English speakers are trained using ICAO standard phraseology English profi cient by aviation standards does not imply the ability to comprehend and speak the language perfectly Egregious slang like fi sh fi nder TCAS the meter altimeter setting and no joy traffi c not in sight are completely off the script and wont be understood at all Even innocuous sounding inquiries can be confusing The phrase Im looking for a clearance is a common request in the United States but has no equivalent in the ICAO vocabulary At issue is the verb looking Unless the pilot is informing the controller that he is wandering about the ramp to fi nd what was lost he would be better served by restating it as requesting ATC clearance Nitpicking Perhaps unless you happen to be in South America and are met with silence when looking for your clearance back to the states The best practice for improving CSA in international operations is to speak slower than normal eliminate nonessential words from the dialog use standard terminology eg engine failure instead of lost an engine and be specifi c when making requests Gulfstream 123 requesting FL410 instead of the conversational Wed like to go higher Hows it looking up there Standardizing communication in international operations was one of the main objectives in the development of Controller Pilot Data Link Communications CPDLC Its also why free text mode is discouraged in favor of canned phrases Standard CPDLC requests can be answered with standard responses yes no expect etc which optimizes CSA even if language skills are weak Talking to cabin attendants Another area of concern when it comes to CSA is in communicating with cabin or fl ight attendants FAs Pilots tend to be overly technical when annunciating abnormal conditions or emergency situations Sending the entire fl ight department to a Crew Resource Management CRM and general emergency course creates a team concept and establishes protocols and communication techniques to employ when things dont go according to plan There are companies that go so far as to require their FAs to ride in the secondary observer seat during a simulator session This is typically conducted as an ancillary training event after all qualifi cation requirements are met In one case a Fortune 50 company developed their own simulator based training curriculum that incorporated 5 emergency scenarios Prior to the simulator session 3 of the 5 were chosen at random so the crew couldnt predict which they would receive Although the exercise was technically a training event it was non jeopardy in the sense that certifi cations were not at stake Thus everyone was free to respond and behave in any way they deemed appropriate to address the emergency with fear of reprisal One safety caveat of a simulator in motion was that the FA would have to remain seated with her belt on To maintain as much realism as possible she would simulate her action of moving about the cabin by annunciating them to the instructor who would facilitate the debriefi ng She was also free to openly communicate with the pilots in the same way she would in a real emergency The primary goal of the exercise was to see if CSA remained high communication occurred and if the scenario played out according to the company SOPs It didnt During the 1 hour facilitated debrief the pilots and fl ight attendant had the opportunity to describe what was happening from their perspective what they did well and what could have been improved Lack of communication leading to low CSA was the primary concern In fact if the water ditching scenario simulated had been real the FA would have been standing in the aisle during touchdown as she thought the aircraft was returning to the airport with functioning engines a vastly disparate SA from that of the pilots and one that would have resulted in her being injured or worse Stay with SOPs There is no doubt that developing and adhering to SOPs promotes a safer operation The lack of SOPs or disregarding established procedures have played a signifi cant role in the accident chain The reason that SOPs increase CSA in group operations is that they provide a predictable framework baseline that can be used to identify changes and an opportunity to intervene before the situation is unrecoverable Within the cockpit a standardized procedure gives the pilot monitoring PM something to monitor