What Upset Prevention Recovery Training means for aviation safety

At the time of the fatal accident, Garvey was juggling flying, studying and working as a company director all while mothering two young children. She had learnt her basic flight training two years before, and very early on was taught via a simulator how to prevent and recover from an aircraft upset – or as her instructor liked to call it, “I’m teaching you how to not kill yourself”.

Yet years after the accident, it was evident to her that the training the pilot had undergone was not enough. “As expected, when the engine power loss occurred at 100 feet, the pilot was in a startle and surprise situation and unfortunately he did not respond,” Garvey says, and it was made clearer when the investigation report was released, revealing that a passenger who survived said the pilot ‘froze’ in shock. In 2006, according to Garvey, pilots were not adequately trained to overcome the inevitable neurological response to an upset for a safe recovery.

“I have always wanted to take our horrific accident and somehow turn this tragedy into a change that I believe needed to happen in the industry,” Garvey says. It took her years to mentally and emotionally recover – to which now she remembers it like a bad movie she watched, without the anxiety or trauma that previously came with it – but in 2020, she began flying again. She was yet to find the answers, but decided it was time to get back into things.

Only months ago, Garvey said she reached a “turning point” when she completed a formation endorsement at UPRT Australia, a specialist company that teaches Upset Prevention Recovery Training, founded in mid-2020 by aviation veterans trying to fill a gap. She walked in, expecting little, but left with much. She says she never knew what UPRT was, but the information she heard was like music to her ears and food for her soul.

“Less than five minutes into the brief it hit me like a ton of bricks – this was the answer I had been seeking for over a decade! This was it!” Garvey says. “UPRT is the additional specialist training that all pilots should have to ensure they know how to respond appropriately if they inadvertently find themselves in a startle/surprise LOC-I situation.” Garvey says that without pilots learning UPRT thoroughly, fatal accidents would continue to rise, just like the one she witnessed all those years ago.

Upset Prevention Recovery Training

UPRT is a combination of theoretical and practical training to provide pilots with skills to prevent and recover from an airplane upset. The FAA defines it as an aircraft unintentionally exceeding the parameters normally experienced in flight, including pitch altitude greater than 25 degrees up, a pitch altitude greater than 10 degrees nose down, or a bank angle greater than 45 degrees. Ideally, pilots are trained how to prevent an upset all together, but when one occurs, a pilot’s natural response is to be shocked, and startled. UPRT is to take the training a step further, by teaching pilots how to manage their emotions while recovering the aircraft.

“I have always wanted to take our horrific accident and somehow turn this tragedy into a change that I believe needed to happen in the industry.”

The startle remains the real culprit

Overall, an upset is uncommon. So uncommon that introducing UPRT as mandatory training has been an uphill battle for over a decade. However, when an upset takes place, it often leads to what’s known as ‘Loss of Control In-Flight’ (LOC-I), which is now the leading cause of fatal accidents worldwide. To put it plainly, from 2009 to 2018, IATA found that 64 LOC-I accidents occurred over the decade – and 94 per cent of them involved deaths of passengers and flight crew.

LOC-I is often not by the pilot’s hand, but by the aircraft’s. They are usually initiated from engine failures, icing, or stalls, and pilots typically lack the skills to recover from the psychological shock from it. Inevitably – in most cases – it is not upset that leads to a fatal blow, but the inability to recover from the mental shock. It is widely heralded that while there is only a small chance of an upset occurring, without the proper training, pilots will likely lose control of the aircraft without recovering.

The two crashes that sparked a UPRT movement

On 12 February 2009, a Colgan Air Flight departing from Newark set for New York crashed into a house, killing all 45 passengers, two pilots, two flight attendants, and one person living inside the house. A year later, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) published a report that showed the captain of the Bombardier Q400 inappropriately responded to the activation of the stick shaker, which led to an aerodynamic stall. The report added the flight crew’s failure to monitor airspeed, adhere to sterile cockpit procedures and the captain’s failure to manage the flight contributed to the deadly crash. The captain was 47-year-old Marvin Renslow, beside the pilot in command, 24-year-old Rebecca Lynne Shaw.

Only months later, on 1 June, a second crash occurred in similar circumstances. The Air France Flight 447 was on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, when the Airbus A330 stalled, with the pilot struggling to recover. In total, 228 passengers and aircrew died that day after crashing into the sea.

In a report released in 2011 – following a two-year investigation due to a shortage of evidence – the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) said just over two hours into the flight, the crew made a course change of 12 degrees, to presumably avoid returns detected by the weather radar. Likely followed by the obstruction of the pilot probes by ice crystals, the speed indications were incorrect, automatic systems disconnected and 30 minutes later, the aircraft stalled until it hit the ocean. The captain’s name was Marc Dubois, who notched over 11,000 flight hours at that point. Next to him as co-pilots were Pierre Cedric Bonin and David Robert.

The crashes occurred on different aircraft and with different airlines, yet both incidents were revealed to be starkly similar. These infamous crashes led to the wider consideration of Upset Prevention Recovery within the industry, and why specialised training is paramount to saving lives.

A global outlook on UPRT

Europe and the US have spearheaded the training in aviation guidelines long before Australia. While the US has not mandated it as a whole, UPRT is a requirement in its Part 121 regulations. When the Air France and Colgan Air incidents occurred, ICAO held a conference inviting hundreds of industry representatives in 2011 to its headquarters in Montreal, Canada, to discuss and define UPRT, according to Randall Brooks, the vice president of training and business development at Aviation Performance Solutions in the US. This marked a defining moment in aviation history, as the industry began to seek answers from the rawest of human error.

“The ICAO group actually made the recommendation for UPRT to be put in actual flight, meaning, not in a simulator, but in an airplane prior to commercial licensing,” Brooks says. Before this conference, UPRT was barely considered, however because the crashes were oddly similar, it led to the industry taking a deeper look into the root cause. Brooks says while the FAA did not initially implement it, IATA in Europe did.

In December 2018, the European Union Aviation Safety Authority (EASA) introduced requirements of UPRT for pilots in its Annex I, under Part-FCL.745.A. This training became mandatory from 20 December 2019. All training pilots were then required to undergo UPRT.

UPRT in Australia

While Australia has the opportunity to be the leader of UPRT due to its geographical location and wide airspace, according to many industry leaders, the nation has fallen short on pioneering the training for over a decade, with Europe and the US steering ahead. While this is true, 2021 could be the year it will change. From 2 December, the CASA Part 121 regulation will mandate all aircraft with 30 or more passengers to implement UPRT in pilot training manuals. The landmark change follows a decade of research and development by Australia’s safety authority, after sending representatives to the US to meet with the FAA and visit training centres seven years ago to begin developing the local regime.

CASA told Australian Aviation it has worked with all relevant operators on the development and implementation of the regulations. “We will be soon having ‘catch up’ sessions for relevant air operators whose operations ceased or were downsized during the COVID period.”

A type rating UPRT program would include emphasis on causes, contributing factors, safety reviews, demonstrations, upsets and energy management. CASA says Australia has been largely influenced by ICAO and FAA guidelines in establishing its own model of UPRT, despite COVID being a “major impediment” to its implementation. Numerous reasons such as logistics issues and a significant number of pilots being stood down plagued rapid progression – which was largely impacted by border closures and lockdowns. “Delays in getting upgrades to simulators, for example, came from difficulties in travel for engineers and there have been logistics delays in obtaining simulator upgrade packages,” CASA says.

While this is a needed implementation, industry representatives are concerned it doesn’t hit the benchmark. Shane Tobin, a former Qantas 787 pilot and first officer for 20 years, says while he welcomes the news, there remains “major issues still outstanding” in the regulatory change. He says one of the primary holes is that it only applies to high-capacity aircraft and excludes general aviation training. This is significant because most deadly crashes resulting from loss of control have been found in smaller aircraft. The lack of training across the entire aviation industry led Tobin and his business partner Jeremy Miller – also an industry veteran – to launch UPRT Australia in 2020, the only company providing UPRT specialist training in the AsiaPacific region, and also where Angela Garvey found the answer to questions she had for years.

Tobin says the new regulation will only be effective for companies with access to simulators – which most companies do not have – and still lacks in addressing the “negative psychological and physiological effects an upset will have on a pilot”, he says. It needs to be taken out of simulators and into aircraft, Tobin insists. “Simulated upsets do not help the thousands of private pilots and operators of smaller commercial aircraft that do not have access to simulators.” While the industry may continue to increase pressure on CASA to further develop the training solution, the regulator has touted it believes it has created a thorough regulation to begin with.

One of the lucky ones: Misty Kime

40-year-old Misty Kime, in her words, is what you call a ‘late bloomer’ as an aviator. She is currently a private pilot based in Sydney and began her flying career at 34 years old, after originally pursuing an occupation as an IVF scientist. Early into her career, she had completed minimum requirement Aerobatics and Spin Endorsements training with the Australian Aerobatic Academy, and without perfecting these skills in solo scenarios, Kime moved straight to Private Pilot Licence (PPL) navigation training. She says being able to recover from a stall is a “basic skill” for pilots to achieve a PPL – but what still remains undertaught is how to recover from a mental shock.

“On this particular attempt, I allowed the aircraft to very deeply stall and in the process inadvertently initiated an incredibly abrupt and aggressive left-wing drop,” Kime says. Her initial reaction was to raise the left wing with aileron – steer right – but the move initiated an unintentional spin. “It took probably half a rotation of shock for me to identify my aircraft upset as an incipient spin and instantly took action… ‘IDLE, IDENTIFY, RUDDER’,” she says. Kime was able to recover the aircraft with no damage to herself or the aircraft, but she remains one of the very few.

“I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever, had I not had that UPRT/Spin training, I would not be here today to tell this story,” Kime says. Although she had developed skills for recovering from spins, unusual attitudes, and basic aerobatic manoeuvres, in the “heat of the moment” she struggled to overcome her natural reaction. “This behaviour needs to be thoroughly trained out and the correct, counter-intuitive, actions firmly imprinted.”

Kime says in her initial training, recovering from an upset often felt like a “box-ticking exercise” and was not considered something that could save a life. “There are no words in any textbook that could ever possibly prepare you for the physical and mental overload experienced in that moment,” she says. “It was so aggressive and abrupt that the shock alone would not allow the clarity of thinking to recall some token notes in a textbook.”

While she was able to find specialist training via a Google search, the vast majority of pilots in Australia would be unaware UPRT exists, she believes. “For those that do seek it out, particularly outside of Sydney, Brisbane, Darwin or Perth, I imagine the inconvenience is fairly prohibitive,” she says. “Aside from the aforementioned inconvenience for the majority of pilots, I believe the most limiting factors are the lack of highly specialised instructors and aircraft required to perform this training.”

‘If you get it wrong, you can probably do more harm than good,’ industry leaders say

While the new CASA regulations seek to solve some of the deadliest situations pilots may face, industry veterans resoundingly believe it only addresses the tip of the iceberg. Angela Garvey says the CASA syllabus does not provide enough non-standard emergency LOC-I training. While Australia is catching up to speed with its new regulations, having UPRT introduced “more broadly across the industry” would be the next goal to strive for, including smaller aircraft operators where these incidents take place more often.

One of the largest holes found in the new regulation is the lack of guidance for the instructor, Shane Tobin says. A careful selection process of instructors should be required for an ideal UPRT regulation, but Australia lacks in industry-wide high-level instructors, he adds. Jeremy Miller, Tobin’s business partner, says, “The problem in Australia is we don’t have sufficient aircraft and experienced instructors to be able to teach this training.”

“It’s a type of training where if you get it wrong, you can actually do more harm than good,” Miller added. Tobin and Miller strongly believe a shallow UPRT regime can be worse than creating one at all.

“I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever, had I not had that UPRT/SPIN Training, I would not be here today to tell this story.”

While numerous industry leaders have expressed the need for further thawing of the regulation, a change such as this is an expensive business, especially when applied to big-money airlines such as Qantas and Virgin. “Regulators have an uphill battle in pretty much every country, but in Australia, maybe more,” says Randall Brooks. Brooks agrees with the reigning notion that Australia is simply lacking in skilled instructors with thousands of hours in their back pocket: “They’re undermanned and outgunned in terms of trying to get the job done”.

While this has been an ongoing conversation in the Australian aviation industry – especially since the COVID-19 pandemic – CASA believes the country is abundant with pilots. “CASA has not identified any shortcomings in this area at all,” the regulator says. “CASA has worked over a number of years with the aviation industry on UPRT and great progress has been made … Australia’s aviation community has shown a strong commitment to UPRT and CASA thanks all the operators who have invested time, money and people in this important safety area.”

With every new regulation, protocol or rule, the industry will always have credible recommendations for improvement. While this is true – there will always be more to be done – until the dust settles with this new mandate, it is clear that CASA made the right decision seven years ago to explore what UPRT was, and how it can save lives. “Our best defence to increase our own personal safety margins is a renewed focus on the fundamentals of hands-on flying, recognition and recovery that UPRT provides,” says Garvey. “UPRT is a cheap insurance policy to take out against disaster!”