Deliberate practice

Captain de Crespigny’s presentation was so popular among RAAA Convention attendees that it was standing room only in the conference room to hear his dramatic account of the QF32 incident. Listening to Captain de Crespigny’s talk, and speaking with him and his wife Coral afterwards, it was clear that here was a man who was not only experienced, thorough, methodical and logical – everything you would expect in a Qantas A380 captain – but that he has a questioning, inquisitive mind and is a lateral thinker. It was those latter qualities that probably gave the QF32 captain a more detailed than average understanding of the A380’s systems, a critical asset given just how damaged A380 VH‑OQA was after the explosive failure of the intermediate pressure turbine in the number 2 engine.

“All I can say is that the passengers are very lucky that Richard was their pilot,” Coral famously told media of her husband’s handling of QF32.

There’s no doubt those passengers were fortunate to have Captain de Crespigny in charge of an exceptionally experienced crew that day – over 75,000 hours of flight time between the captain, copilot, second officer and two check captains who happened to be on the flightdeck that day.

But while total hours are important – and without presuming any findings of the final ATSB report into QF32 – it is evident that the kind of experience is just as important as numbers in a logbook. For example, a key action Captain de Crespigny took once the A380 was stabilised was a ‘control check’, where, while still at altitude, the crew slowed the aircraft to check the functionality and range of operation of various control surfaces.

But in such circumstances a control check is not a Qantas or CASA requirement, instead it was something Captain de Crespigny had learned from his days as a RAAF Iroquois and Caribou pilot.

In his talk Captain de Crespigny also spoke about the value of ‘deliberate practice’, a term common in the sporting and business worlds, which in essence means practicing – ie gaining experience – with a specific aim in mind, rather than the practice or experience that comes from routine operations.

In the airline world this usually means simulator sessions and check rides focusing on events such as engine and systems failures. Clearly, that experience is more valuable than hours clocked in cruise at the flight levels.

This isn’t a parallel that Captain de Crespigny made in his talk, so I certainly don’t want to put words into his mouth, but the theory of deliberate practice is interesting to consider in light of the debate underway about pilot training standards following the recent Senate inquiry report, which recommended that copilots of A320/737 sized and bigger jets need an ATPL (which would effectively mandate a 1500 flight hour minimum). Earlier in the same day at the RAAA Convention, CASA head John McCormick (a credentialled pilot himself with airline experience with Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and before that a RAAF fighter pilot) spoke of CASA’s view that pilot training standards should be ‘competency based’ and not based exclusively on flight hour experience.

Interestingly, there is just such a flying training system in place, which both McCormick and Captain de Crespigny are graduates of – the Air Force.

Air Force pilots graduate as qualified pilots with their ‘wings’ with around 250 flight hours, a figure similar to that of the contentious Jetstar cadet pilot scheme. Every single RAAF pilot training mission has one or more specific aims (a key tenet of deliberate practice).

That illustrates the critical point in the pilot training debate – quality of hours and experience, not quantity – and that quality comes from deliberate practice of the decision making process when faced with failures and out of the ordinary situations.

Two other recent incidents underscore that event – the Air France AF447 A330 crash into the Atlantic Ocean is raising questions into just what pilots should be trained for in today’s world of flightdeck automation (as discussed in our ‘Black swan’ article from p44 this issue); and CASA’s recent grounding of Tiger Airways Australia, which raised questions about the ongoing simulator training Tiger pilots were receiving.

As QF32 shows, sound decision making is at the foundation of aviation safety, and the ability to make those sound decisions is the result of the deliberate practice that comes from a flying training system focused on quality of experience, not quantity.