Australian report shows many errors by pilots who were idle during the pandemic

Qantas Airlines finds pilots struggling to get back to work. With a sometimes long time on the ground, due to a pandemic, they forgot the automatisms and reflexes of the profession.

A study issued by Qantas examines the professional behaviour of the company’s pilots. With sometimes long breaks or inactivity due to the pandemic, the pilots seem to have difficulty getting back to work. The report says pilots make gross mistakes, such as “commencing take-off with park brake set“, or “misidentification of altitude as airspeed“, and they need more time for routine procedures.

“Routine items that used to be completed with a minimum of effort now occupy more time and divert attention away from flying the aircraft,” the document explains. It mentions, for example, switches engaged in the reverse direction, or even errors that pilots make during the exterior inspection of the aircraft.

Once in the air, the worries continued as well. The report notes “preflight switching errors that then led to larger in-flight issues.” Last June, pilots of a Qantas Boeing 787 were unable to retract the plane’s landing gear shortly after taking off from Sydney because two gear pins had not been removed before departure. After the fact, the pilots did not even admit to being overloaded and said they were unaware of the errors or of the situation.

The report does not mince words and speaks of a “subsequent reduction in the cognitive ability” of the pilots. In two years of the pandemic, the pilots have lost their automatisms and reflexes, and are numb. It should be added that in Australia, travel bans have been in effect longer than in Europe or the United States, for example. Strict lockdowns were also repeated more often.

For Qantas, safety remains the priority, says a spokesperson. The company then sets up refamiliarization programmes adapted to the situation. The company believes this is a normal consequence of downtime, and other airlines are affected as well.

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald