Wednesday, January 05, 2022
Lack of flight practice due to Corona
Qantas report reveals pilot errors
At the beginning of the corona pandemic, many countries are severely restricting air traffic. Vacation trips hardly take place any more. When it starts again on the runways of this world, a not entirely insignificant problem becomes apparent: the pilots lack practice.
Forgotten brakes and confusion about altitude and speed: Two years of the corona pandemic and the associated drastic reduction in air traffic have left their mark. Australian media report on an internal report by the airline Qantas, which reveals that pilots sometimes make fatal mistakes after long breaks in flights.
As the newspapers “Sydney Morning Herald” and “Melbourne’s Age” write, it happened, among other things, that pilots forgot to release the parking brakes on take-off and mixed up the altitude and speed of the aircraft. It also happened that switches in the cockpit were in the wrong position and external inspections of the machine before take-off were not concentrated.
Routine tasks that had previously been done with minimal effort now sometimes require more time and thereby impaired attention, the internal letter warned. The sometimes long breaks for the pilots due to the corona pandemic led to less up-to-date flight experience and thus to a reduced “cognitive ability” of the staff.
A spokeswoman for Qantas said that airlines worldwide are now facing the “complex process of returning to pre-Corona times”. This also includes getting pilots who have been on the ground back used to work. Qantas quickly realized that special reintegration programs were necessary and initiated them. “Safety is our number one priority,” she affirmed.