General Aviation: Flight Safety Beyond Regulations

The Flying Engineer looked at the rules on flight recorders in India, and at how a common avionics suite lets an operator work on flight safety without any rule forcing it to. The example was Deccan Charters' VT-DCE, which has a Garmin G1000 flight deck. The G1000 logs enough data for flight data monitoring (FDM) and flight operations quality assurance (FOQA).

What the rules said

India's DGCA covered flight data recorders (FDR) in CAR Section 2, Series I, Part V, Issue II, dated 23 January 2013. It described an FDR as a recorder fitted to help with accident and incident investigation. The rule said nothing about FDRs for single engine aircraft. The nearest thing was a recommendation that turbine aircraft of 5,700 kg or less maximum takeoff mass, with a first certificate of airworthiness on or after 1 January 2016, carry a Type II FDR, a class C airborne image recorder, or an aircraft data recording system (ADRS). A recommendation cannot be enforced, and single engine piston aircraft were not covered at all. The only firm rule was for multi engine turbine aircraft of the same size class first certified on or after 1 January 1989, which had to carry a Type II FDR by 31 December 2013. Piston aircraft, single or multi, were left out.

Oddly, CAR Section 3 (Air Transport), Series C, Part III, Issue II, dated 1 June 2010, covers the minimum needs for a non scheduled operator permit (NSOP). It includes single engine turbine and piston aircraft, and says the operator must show a FOQA and CVR/FDR monitoring system. So the DGCA saw how important FDM and FOQA were for every aircraft type, yet did not require FDRs on single engine aircraft. Perhaps it assumed pistons had no future.

Why flight data monitoring matters

FDM is the active use of recorded data from normal flights to improve safety. Reviewing it shows deviations and exceedances that can be fixed with training. It helps catch an incident before it grows into an accident. It helps everyone from student pilots to airline pilots. A student who pulls a high G maneuver may have stressed the airframe, and if that happens several times before an inspection, a failure could follow. A private pilot with 50 to 60 hours may make mistakes that nobody notices unless an experienced person reviews the data.

Recording data without an FDR

Many makers fit the Garmin G1000 as standard. Cessna offers it from the 172R up to its turbine singles, including the Grand Caravan. The G1000 has flight data logging, which is not an FDR but can serve FDM and FOQA. On the Cessna 172 with the G1000 NAV III, it logs 64 parameters once a second. That covers and goes beyond the ADRS needs in the rules, except for two things: some data should be recorded every 250 milliseconds, and the positions of the primary and secondary flight controls are not recorded.

The Garmin manual says the system stores flight and engine data on an SD card in the top card slot of the multi function display, with room for about 4,000 flight hours. Garmin also provides free software that turns a log file into a Google Earth path in a few clicks, so the flight can be seen in 3D. In one photo, two aircraft sat side by side, one with the card inserted and one without, losing the benefit of FDM.

The Flying Engineer held logs from a Cessna 172R covering two flights of over two hours, and the data was detailed enough to support academic use. VT-FGE, the Diamond DA40CS lost on a training flight in December 2013, also had logging. Its log would show what went wrong, and replaying it could stop other students from repeating the mistake. Sadly, some schools and private operators record the data but have no program to review every flight, every day, and so miss a chance to learn and improve safety.