A nice story I came across today.
Telling It Like It Is — One Captain’s Opinion A confusing departure chart and what the Captain characterized as over-reliance on automation resulted in a track deviation and traffic conflict for this air carrier Flight Crew. The Captain elaborates on his assessment of automation dependency and cluttered charts. ? Two major points here: 1) I’m tired of flying around with people who are predisposed to let LNAV and automation lead them around by the nose and, 2) charts have gotten ridiculous…. It was the First Officer’s leg. We were late, but I really try to provide a laid back, don’t rush CRM posture. We did all the things we were supposed to do, but I guess we didn’t spend 15 minutes reading every word on the NEWARK ONE 22L/R departure page. This chart is a triple folded, 10-inch wide encyclopedia. The important piece of information is what to do on takeoff, yet it’s practically hidden in a box towards the bottom of the page…. When you consider the congested airspace in that area, it’s critical that you don’t turn the wrong way after takeoff, but that’s exactly what we did. Why we did that, I don’t know. We’re human I guess. At 400 feet the First Officer said, “LNAV.” I furrowed my brow…and thought, “Okay, maybe I missed something.” But I went ahead and punched LNAV and looked down at the LEGS page on my side and saw LANNA at the top. I said something like, “That doesn’t sound right.” Meanwhile our VSI was pegged because we were climbing like a fighter since we only had twenty-some people onboard. While we were in the right turn, obviously towards the wrong place…I’m feeling like this is not going well while the First Officer is climbing and turning right toward an aircraft crossing our nose from left to right. He’s still a bit away, but…this looks like it’s going to be unusually close. I say…“Watch that guy,” pointing at the traffic, when I hear Departure say, “Did Tower give you a heading?” All my senses now tell me my first gut feeling was correct and I answer, “Ah, we’re checking,” while Departure rapidly rattles off, “Stop at 4,000 feet; turn left to 270; traffic 12 o’clock.” I told him we had the traffic in sight and he says, “You guys need to be careful.” So, back to point number one. When I first was blessed to be a part of this fine group of pilots, the Captains I flew with all told me, “Never trust that box.” And we didn’t. We used our brains to fly the airplane. Now however, we bow to that thing! This is the second time this has happened to me and yes, of course it’s “my fault,” but both times it’s because [pilots] just let LNAV lead them around. These are not RNAV departures, they are ‘heading’ departures, but we’ve brainwashed everyone to think, “Just hit LNAV and it will be all right.” It’s not. Please don’t tell me, a “proper briefing” would’ve solved all this because we’ve reached briefing overload. [Pilots] are more worried about doing all the briefings than paying attention to actually flying the airplane…. The First Officer didn’t see the traffic because he was face down in the instrument panel following the FD LNAV guidance. When all this happened, his first reaction was to put on the autopilot and start reading the departure chart to see where we screwed up. I had to ask him to let it go until we got higher.
Telling It Like It Is — One Captain’s Opinion A confusing departure chart and what the Captain characterized as over-reliance on automation resulted in a track deviation and traffic conflict for this air carrier Flight Crew. The Captain elaborates on his assessment of automation dependency and cluttered charts. ? Two major points here: 1) I’m tired of flying around with people who are predisposed to let LNAV and automation lead them around by the nose and, 2) charts have gotten ridiculous…. It was the First Officer’s leg. We were late, but I really try to provide a laid back, don’t rush CRM posture. We did all the things we were supposed to do, but I guess we didn’t spend 15 minutes reading every word on the NEWARK ONE 22L/R departure page. This chart is a triple folded, 10-inch wide encyclopedia. The important piece of information is what to do on takeoff, yet it’s practically hidden in a box towards the bottom of the page…. When you consider the congested airspace in that area, it’s critical that you don’t turn the wrong way after takeoff, but that’s exactly what we did. Why we did that, I don’t know. We’re human I guess. At 400 feet the First Officer said, “LNAV.” I furrowed my brow…and thought, “Okay, maybe I missed something.” But I went ahead and punched LNAV and looked down at the LEGS page on my side and saw LANNA at the top. I said something like, “That doesn’t sound right.” Meanwhile our VSI was pegged because we were climbing like a fighter since we only had twenty-some people onboard. While we were in the right turn, obviously towards the wrong place…I’m feeling like this is not going well while the First Officer is climbing and turning right toward an aircraft crossing our nose from left to right. He’s still a bit away, but…this looks like it’s going to be unusually close. I say…“Watch that guy,” pointing at the traffic, when I hear Departure say, “Did Tower give you a heading?” All my senses now tell me my first gut feeling was correct and I answer, “Ah, we’re checking,” while Departure rapidly rattles off, “Stop at 4,000 feet; turn left to 270; traffic 12 o’clock.” I told him we had the traffic in sight and he says, “You guys need to be careful.” So, back to point number one. When I first was blessed to be a part of this fine group of pilots, the Captains I flew with all told me, “Never trust that box.” And we didn’t. We used our brains to fly the airplane. Now however, we bow to that thing! This is the second time this has happened to me and yes, of course it’s “my fault,” but both times it’s because [pilots] just let LNAV lead them around. These are not RNAV departures, they are ‘heading’ departures, but we’ve brainwashed everyone to think, “Just hit LNAV and it will be all right.” It’s not. Please don’t tell me, a “proper briefing” would’ve solved all this because we’ve reached briefing overload. [Pilots] are more worried about doing all the briefings than paying attention to actually flying the airplane…. The First Officer didn’t see the traffic because he was face down in the instrument panel following the FD LNAV guidance. When all this happened, his first reaction was to put on the autopilot and start reading the departure chart to see where we screwed up. I had to ask him to let it go until we got higher.
