to take prompt and correct action before the situation becomes unrecoverable,” he said. “This is done by learning when disorientation is likely to occur and being ready for it. The worst thing a pilot can do is assume it will never happen to them.” TRUST THE INSTRUMENTS NBAA Safety Committee member Norman Dequier, director of flight operations at Aviation Performance Solutions, noted that APS has been providing the type of training referenced in the FAA InFO for many years, emphasizing the basic mantra of “trust the instruments,” which has been drilled into pilots since primary training. “When a pilot becomes overloaded in a spatial disorientation event, the ability to ‘trust the instruments’ becomes far more difficult, as pilots may be interpreting and relying on instrument indications they have never previously experienced in flight,” Dequier said.“This increases the likelihood of reverting to instinct and sensory input rather than instrument data. “Notably, approximately 90% of loss-of-control inflight events occur while operating on instruments,” added Dequier. “If pilots are to be adequately prepared for this reality, they must be exposed to upset recognition and recovery while flying on instruments – not solely in visual conditions.” Instrument-based upset recovery training is essential, Dequier said, both to build competence in interpreting unfamiliar instrument presentations and to develop the confidence required to act decisively when visual cues are absent or misleading.That includes training pilots to rapidly diagnose the situation and execute a predefined recovery sequence to return the aircraft to a stabilized condition. “While simulation is an essential component, a blended approach using both simulator and in-aircraft training is markedly more effective,” Dequier said. “Inflight training exposes pilots to the sensory effects of load, pitch and bank excursions under instrument conditions, while simulators allow safe exposure to class-specific scenarios that cannot be practiced airborne, such as IMC, night or proximity to terrain.” As with all flight training, the more pilots practice a scenario, the better they become at addressing it in the real world. motion simulators where they can experience spatial disorientation in a controlled environment. Scenarios culled from actual accidents – like the California accident that killed basketball legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter and seven others in 2020 – are used in the training.Awareness of the situations that can lead to spatial disorientation is key, Zeidlik said. “We constantly drive home the phrase ‘recognize and recover,’” Zeidlik added, noting that even when students know something is coming, they can still end up in a situation where they fight hard to recover but are unsuccessful. “The focus of the training is to get to the point that you can recognize spatial disorientation early enough 16 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 13, ISSUE 02
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