Air Pilots and Accidents
By OLIVER STEWART
NEW ways of assigning responsibility for aircraft accidents are needed. This was shown by the extraordinary statement made in the House of Commons by the Secretary of State, for Air on the Vulcan crash at London Airport (Hansard, December 20, column 1480). The Minister, speaking both for himself and for the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, placed part of the blame on the pilot without offering adequate evidence that the pilot was, in fact, blameworthy.
The statement resembled the report on the Viscount airliner accident—also at London Air- port—on January 16, 1955, in that it had the appearance of being preoccupied with shielding airport officials and equipment from adverse criticism. Thousands of times pilots have been blamed for air accidents without sufficient sup- porting evidence. It is an almost automatic pro- cedure, and, as pilots wryly remark, it has the advantage for the investigating authority that, as the condemned man is usually dead, he is unable to answer back. When he survives, however, the distribution of responsibility can be examined more closely.
On October 1 the Vulcan four-jet bomber was descending through bad weather under the guidance of Ground Controlled Approach, which is an approach and not a landing system. The aircraft is watched by radar and its captain is told how to adjust his course in azimuth and in rate of descent so that he may approach on a gentle gradient to a predetermined touch-down point on the runway where the round-out is com- pleted and the normal tangential landing made. Before committing himself to the GCA con- troller, the captain sets his altimeters according to the pressure information given him from the ground and determines his break-off height—the height at which he may break off his descent and fly to an alternative airport or go round again. Pilots have often been talked down to a point quite close to the ground.
After he has committed himself to GCA, the pilot devotes himself to obeying the indications given him. He must put absolute faith in the con- troller. His instruments and the voice which comes to him over the air are his sole means of knowing where he is. His duties are extra- ordinarily complex. Eyes, ears, hands and feet are fully engaged. Trussed up, and narrowly boxed in, the pilot, during a bad-weather descent in a large modern aircraft, is like a man who must work a complicated switchboard while reading a battery of three-handed clocks, listening to the world's worst radio set, peering through a stream- ing windscreen, playing the 1812 overture on the electric organ and answering the $64,000 question all at the same time.
Before the Vulcan crashed the GCA controller had given azimuth corrections and kept the air- craft on the right heading, but, according to the Ministers, he had not given the proper glide-path corrections. He let the pilot think that he had more air-space beneath him than he had. He told him that he was eighty feet above the glide- path, but did not tell him, he had gone below it.
Here, in the statement in Parliament, are the signs of special pleading, for Dr. Touch, an electronic specialist, is brought in to express the view that, if the controller had warned the pilot that he was going below the glide-path, it would have been too late. This is a speculation about the pilotage of a Vulcan by an electronics expert and can only be looked• upon as an unfortunate irrelevance.
The Ministers say that the pilot made an error of judgement in setting himself a break-off height of 300 feet. They do not say why. Break-off height has always been left to the judgement of the air- craft captain, but, as the airport weather condi- tions are better known to the air traffic controllers, there is justification for the suggestion that they should indicate the appropriate break-off height.
In fairness to the pilot some means of weighing the ministerial conclusions against the evidence is desirable. But the report of the Royal Air Force court of inquiry has not been published. In the Viscount accident, to which I have referred, it was possible to appraise the official conclusion because the report was published in full. Thus it could be seen that, although the London Airport runways were inadequately marked, although two controllers were not fully aware of the information in each other's hands, although another controller was uncertain what was hap- pening and although the aircraft pilot was given clearance to take off by the controllers, the court came to the astonishing decision that the pilot and co-pilot were to blame. The pilot, it seemed, was expected to divine that the information being fed to him from the tower was erroneous.
The Vulcan crash also resembles the Comet crash at Karachi on March 3, 1953, in that the captain was blamed, but the evidence published was insufficient to establish whether that was a fair conclusion. In the Karachi crash the Inter- national Federation of Air Line Pilots' Associa- tions, convinced that the pilot was not to blame, took up the matter and made an official request for evidence, which was refused.
It is in frankness about the facts that reform is so desirable. If the pilot is to be blamed, the evidence must be published, and published in full. That is the only way of ensuring that, in future, the suspicion—prevalent among those whose business is aviation—that officials are too ready to place the blame for air accidents upon the pilot is finally removed.
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