Former Brazilian Air Force Pilot Tells Single-Pilot Standdown to Know Automation's Limits and When to Intervene

Former Brazilian Air Force instructor pilot Alex Fiorini, a member of the NBAA Safety Committee who flies for a large fractional jet operator, said pilots should regard understanding cockpit automation as a skill and know when to intervene to correct a flight. He spoke at the opening of the NBAA-BACE Single-Pilot Safety Standdown in Las Vegas on Oct. 19.

Fiorini advised pilots to use automation properly and to recognize when it has stopped helping, for example by justifying a go-around or asking air traffic control for new vectors. Automation is often sold, correctly, as a workload-reduction tool, he said, but it does not necessarily remove the workload; pilots shift to monitoring, anticipating, programming and sometimes troubleshooting. Drawing on the 1997 Parasuraman and Riley study "Humans and Automation: Use, Misuse, Disuse, Abuse," which he said remains relevant, he noted that automation sometimes assists, sometimes recommends and sometimes executes. As more authority moves toward the automation, the human's ability to understand and intervene becomes increasingly important.

He suggested pilots ask what the automation is doing now, what it will do next and, if the answer is a surprise, what their simplest, safest option is. He also recommended verbalizing what the aircraft is doing even when flying alone, setting personal gates such as when to go around, and practicing reverting to simpler levels of automation, including hand-flying. Fiorini acknowledged that being told to cancel an approach clearance can feel like a failure, but said pilots should treat it as a second chance to review everything and fix any error. If a pilot does not think an approach is safe, he said, go around.