AF447 fallout - `bout time!

FAA moves to address pilot training on stalls, surprises

The head of the Federal Aviation Administration said Thursday a rule under development will require pilots to get training to react better to stalls and surprises, following a recent report detailing those problems with an Air France crash.

Michael Huerta, FAA's acting administrator, said after lengthy development that the rule would be completed in 2013. But he said airlines can begin updating their simulator training now so that pilots become more familiar with recovering from stalls.

"We want to give pilots more and better training on how to recognize and recover from stalls and aircraft upsets," Huerta told a conference of the Air Line Pilots Association.

The pace of improving pilot training has frustrated relatives of the 50 people killed in the Colgan Air in February 2009, the last commercial fatalities in the United States.

The National Transportation Safety Board blamed the Buffalo crash on pilots overreacting to warnings the plane was going too slow and yanking up on the turbo-prop's controls.

In a July 5 report, French investigators blamed an Air France crash that killed 228 people in June 2009 on pilots stalling their plane and failing to recover after several pieces of air-speed equipment froze. The plane's engines worked fine as it fell for more than 3 minutes before crashing into the Atlantic.

Scott Maurer of Moore, S.C., who has pushed for safety measures since his daughter Lorin died in the Colgan crash, said the Air France report "underscores the dramatic need to better train our pilots to react to emergency situations, and in particular to not be so heavily reliant on the automation in the cockpit."

Huerta told pilots that new training under the rule that is being developed would simulate problems that might happen in actual flight, rather than in a highly choreographed scenarios of current training.

"We can't lose sight of the importance of training on the core aspects of flying, such as crew management, stall recovery or other events that could occur when there is a change or a loss in automation," Huerta said.