AIRWAYS INTERVIEW Kam Majd
Captain Majd sat down with Airways to talk about his career from Pilot to writer , flying automation , and the role of women in aviation .
How did your background shape you and your career path ? I flew for about 45 years , and flying was something I had loved since I was a kid . The writing portion of my career is similar . As a Pilot , being in the cockpit and having all those many hours between flights and between places , my mind started to wander . One of the places to which it wandered pertained to how technology has made aviation so much easier , so much more automated . I wondered , “ What if all this automation goes wrong somewhere along the line ?” That led me down a rabbit hole and a story began to form .
What is your backstory in regard to your interest in aviation , and what aircraft did you fly during your career ? Throughout my 35 years with American Airlines , I flew all of the Boeings and most of the Airbus aircraft in its fleet . I was a Captain on the 777 and on the Airbus A319 , A320 , and A321 , and a First Officer on the 777 , 767 , 757 , MD-80 , and DC-10 .
Prior to that , I had flown general aviation aircraft , from single engine Cessnas to King Airs , to Learjets . Like most people , I worked my way toward heavier equipment to get the experience to eventually fly for the airlines . Most people got their start at the airlines this way in the 1980s and 1990s .
Automation dependency is perhaps one of the most complex subjects in aviation today . In your opinion , have manufacturers gone too far ? Are “ The Children of the Magenta Line ’’, as defined by Warren Vanderburgh ( 1941- 2016 ), an unconsidered safety issue ? In just a single generation , aviation automation has come a long way . Aircraft have gone from having three Pilots to two , but it has also made things simpler for Pilots . If there is a problem on an airplane now , most of the time , the system will tell you what that problem is , rather than you having to decipher it .
Also , with that automation comes a substantial amount of dependency on computerization and electronics . Automation has also made air travel safer . This is evident by just looking at the safety records of the airlines today versus 20 or 30 years ago .
Most Pilots are very familiar with the magenta line , which is a road map to the destination from point A to point B . It tells you where you ’ re going , and if you ’ re off the magenta line , then you ’ re off course . The magenta line has made flying a lot simpler . Prior to it , pilots would navigate based on point to point ground-based navigation equipment . We don ’ t have that anymore .
Everything is handled internally through the GPS systems that are installed on the aircraft . They tell us where we are , so we are not dependent on anything on the ground anymore . They have made things a lot safer and better , but they have also made us significantly more dependent on automation . That is the question underpinning the book : what happens if any of this automation fails ?
We now have computers that check the work of other computers before they accept the information they ’ ve been fed . The book considers what would happen if a computer received bad information , but didn ’ t know because it had been programmed to accept the information as a result of a computer virus .
A 2011 FAA study found that more than 60 % of all accidents has to do with automation dependency . How can Pilots pick the appropriate level of automation for certain tasks , such as landing ? Pilots are able to choose the level of automation they want to use . For example , when most Pilots fly from A to B , 90 to 95 % of that distance is going to be flown on autopilot . Some even use it for 99 % of the flight . When they take off , they get to 500ft , and then they turn on the autopilot .
At the point right before landing , they take back manual control . Pilots may keep the automation off for the first 20 minutes or an hour of the flight and again during the last hour of the flight . Most Pilots do not want to be flying manually all the way to their destination , but it ’ s up to them to choose . Part of the training administered by the airlines involves learning the manual portion in the event that things do go wrong .
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