TAA Ruin Your Scan

Situational awareness is critical when youre on the gauges, right? Few of us will argue that with a good EFIS its childs play to maintain that situational awareness, regardless of the quality of your scan. So far, so good.

Frank Bowlin

Friday, July 14, 2017 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

Modern EFIS/PFD systems and autopilot reliance can lead to complacency and a degraded instrument scan, as the author experienced during a recent Instrument Proficiency Check (IPC).
Despite consolidated information on a single PFD, pilots must actively and continuously scan all critical flight parameters (attitude, airspeed, altitude, heading, NAV) to maintain primary control.
To combat this, pilots should discipline themselves to hand-fly more often, even in VMC, and consciously force a comprehensive scan of the PFD to maintain proficiency and prevent the loss of fundamental instrument flying skills.

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Situational awareness is critical when you’re on the gauges, right? Few of us will argue that with a good EFIS it’s child’s play to maintain that situational awareness, regardless of the quality of your scan. So far, so good.

But, situational awareness is supplemental to the primary tasks of instrument flying—maintaining course, altitude and airspeed. For that, you need to be constantly cross checking your three primary instruments. It doesn’t matter whether those three are discreet instruments each more than three inches from its closest neighbor, or whether they’re clustered together over a background of a synthetic view of the ground on your primary flight display. You’ve still gotta keep an eye on your heading, your altitude and your airspeed. Of course, including attitude in that scan will help you keep the other parameters in check.