Comprehensive In-Flight Simulation Based Advanced Maneuver & Upset Recovery Training Study

James Priest, Brian Ernisse, Ryan McMahon
2010 AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference   unpublished
This paper describes the efforts over the past twenty years of NASA and FAA funded studies that have evaluated the training effectiveness of Advanced Maneuver & Upset Recovery Training (AM-URT). Two general categories of maneuvers have been evaluated: Unusual Attitude Recovery [UAR] and Upset Event Recovery [UER]. The UAR was a recovery from an attitude defined as a pitch and/or bank angle beyond that normally encountered during line operations. UER was defined as a maneuver where some internal
more » ... failure or external event caused the aircraft to be upset such that the pilot had to adopt an alternate control strategy in order to make a successful recovery. This testing has shown that in order to execute a successful recovery from a Jet Upset, a pilot must have sufficient situational awareness to be able to recognize the state of the aircraft (i.e. attitude, airspeed, failures, etc.) and sufficient knowledge to know what to do about it. Consequently, while situational awareness is a necessary component to recovery, it is not responsible for successful recovery from Jet Upsets. The critical skill set required for a successful recovery includes an alternate control strategy necessary to deal with the upset event itself. A common thread appears in nearly all of the upset-induced accidents that we have studied where the crew was faced with an abnormal or unknown aircraft behavior and conventional techniques proved inadequate. Based on this research, a comprehensive AM-URT program must include not only training in extreme-attitude-flight, but also in analyzing and correcting such an occurrence. It is important to note that the intent is not to train the pilot to deal with or recover only from specific events or scenarios. The maneuvers trained are intended only as examples of the multitude of events that could be encountered. The broader value of the training is to teach pilots how to evaluate a never-before-seen situation, adopt the appropriate level of automation, and then correctly execute a recovery. In the end, the goal is to marry expanded situational awareness, knowledge, and judgment with the requisite 'stick and rudder' skill-set necessary to successfully master the many flying challenges faced over a pilot's career of commercial line operations.
doi:10.2514/6.2010-8009 fatcat:qtvtfmkrhjg5hbexnapeg3fpsu