Comment by roryirvine 7 hours ago
During engine failure / fire situations, I would expect that pilots are likely to be too busy to have any time left over for peering at a video feed, trying to assess the state of the wing.
In emergencies, information overload tends to make things worse, not better.
This would need to be tested. There's a lot going on already during normal take-offs. Now you're in a situation where the engine fire alarm is going off, probably a few other alarms, you got so many messages on your display that it only shows the most urgent one, you're taking quick glances at 50 points in the cockpit already.
And how would the cameras even work? Are the pilots supposed to switch between multiple camera feeds, or do we install dozens of screens? And then what, they see lots of black smoke on one camera, does that really tell them that much more than the ENG FIRE alert blaring in the background?
Maybe this could help during stable flight, but in this situation, when the pilots were likely already overloaded and probably had only a few seconds to escape this situation - if it was possible at all - I can't imagine it being helpful.
You know how the tail camera works on the new planes? Something like that, which can be far away from the wings, but get the full picture. Am I saying it's the solution for everything? No. But after you go through the memory committed items during an emergency, you can take a look outside and be like "ah, I see better what the problem is".
If we don't try to see how it goes, we won't know if it is a good idea or not.
It'd certainly need more thought put into it than just showing the camera view from the entertainment system. Either just one camera on the tail pointed forwards, so you have one single camera that can show the whole plane, or two cameras in the front, one pointed at each wing. Two cameras is worse than one, but they are less likely to be affected by smoke or blood splatters or whatever. Maybe give each pilot one of the camera feeds. And you'd have to fit a dedicated screen for the video feed so pilots don't need to switch through screens in an emergency.
It'd take lots of testing and engineering. But especially in cases where you have multiple warnings going off I imagine that a quick view at an exterior camera can often give you a clearer/faster indication of the situation
> Having cameras pointed at the engines/wings like rearview mirrors would be helpful.
Helpful in what way? What are the pilots going to do with the information?
They won't have to rely on cabin crew description of what they see over the wings or have to send one of the pilots to take a look (see UA1175).
its super weird to me this isn't a thing, and there's resistence to the idea. I mean, if they are already masters at glacing at 100000 differnent indicators and warning messages etc. and processing them at super speeds (they really do!) then i'd say a monitor with a bunch of buttons below it to switch feeds (maybe a little more elaborate, but not tooo...) would be helpful.
the problem might be getting trained and experienced pilots to adjust to it since they are already in a certain flow of habits and skills to apply in their job, but new pilots surely could learn it as they aren't so set on their ways yet and have the opportunity to build this new data into their skillset / habits.
Okay. So you mean in general it would help in some cases. Not that in this case it would have helped.
> see UA1175
I'm familiar with the case you are mentioning. I'm also aware that they sent a jump seater to look at the engine. But did seeing the engine provide them with any actionable information? Did they fly the airplane differently than if they would have just seen the indications available in the cockpit?
Yes, the cameras would not have helped here, but it dorsn’t mean they are useless in general.
Stupid car analogy: airbags help in most cases, but not all. Are they useless?
Regarding UA1175, they had someone extra, but not all flights happen to have someone extra in the cockpit.
Having cameras pointed at the engines/wings like rearview mirrors would be helpful. It does not add that much workload if you take a quick glance in the “mirror” and figure out what the problem exactly is.
And now we have technology that allows for cameras everywhere to give a better situational awareness across all critical aircraft surfaces and systems.
It is going to take a little bit of adjusting to, but it will help improve safety in a tremendous way.