Paper Example on Cockpit: Aircraft's Command Center for Navigation & Control

Introduction

Cockpit refers to a part of aircraft that offers visibility to the sides and front, offers houses to crewmembers including the pilot. The cockpit contains all displays, communications and control equipment that the pilot and the crew members need to navigate and operate the aircraft in the air and the ground, talk to other aircrafts and control or monitor the onboard equipment and systems, for example, fuel, engines, air conditioning, and tanks just to mention a few. The cockpit has undergone evolution from tradition to modern. The evolution was because the aircraft wanted to introduce the aircraft that is more comfortable than the previous one. At first, cockpit appeared uncomfortable with some of the parts being metallic and dozens of levers and pedals sticking out in various angles. The changes in the cockpit are incredibly vast. Changes in the cockpit were because of several tragedies and events. For example, the hijackers could easily hijack the aircraft. This led to the resignation of cockpit entry doors to withstand the potential intruders. The locking systems and doors were built in a way that can withstand the forced entries reducing the chances of hijacking the aircraft (Aretz, 2015).

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Pilots need to access information more quickly and efficiently. Due to this, there has been a change towards glass cockpits that replaces the analog cockpits. Moving towards the glass cockpit is significant because it allows the pilots to efficiently and quickly access the information, by making the adjustments on their displays to provide different information. Also, the cockpit has evolved and changed greatly in areas like comfort. The carpeting and comfortable seats give a better and luxurious feel to the cockpit. The controls are evolving towards a technology referred to as fly-by-wire that aids at removing the mechanical, physical connections between control surface of aircraft and the pilot and replaces the control surface with electrical control systems. Development of the cockpit has proceeded from a permanent process of monitoring new problems and technology availability and evaluating the benefits of improving the working environment of the pilots. Some pilots are affected and reluctant to reduce the extent by which they use the full automation capabilities to deal with situations that may arise. The evolution of cockpit to glass has relieved the pilots from non-rewarding and repetitive task (Luo, 2005).

What is the spatial disorientation? How does it affect pilot and how can you recognize and combat its effect?

Spatial unawareness or spatial disorientation refers to the ability to determine a person's motion, location and position relative to the environment they live in. Spatial disorientation is also the inability of pilots of interpreting the aircraft attitudes, altitudes and airspeed correctly about points of reference or the earth. Spatial disorientation mostly affects the pilots and divers but can as well be induced in normal condition. Spatial disorientation is divided into three categories. The categories are unrecognized, recognized and incapacitating. A pilot entering the above conditions quickly loses spatial orientation if there has been less training in flight. The pilots should have the instrument rating to be allowed to fly in conditions that require skills. If not corrected, spatial disorientation can affect the aircraft as it can lead to controlling flights into terrain due to loss of control. It mostly occurs when the horizon is not visible especially in the dark or in IMC (Instrumental Meteorological Condition) (Hauton, 2004).

Every day, millions of people taking a flight believe and put their lives in the hands of the pilots. The individuals both military and civilians depend on the pilot to take them safely to their destination. Spatial disorientation affects the pilot in several ways. To begin with, spatial disorientation affects the pilot in conditions where he or she can suspect the aircraft flight parameters for some period. During this period, the pilot cannot make a total concentration to the flight or the related element. Most of the accidents that occur in aircraft are believed to have been caused by spatial disorientation. When the pilot gets in the air, he or she experiences a 3-dimensional world that is very different and not familiar to the sensory organs thus causing sensory conflict to the body making what we see and feel to be unreal. When the pilot experiences spatial disorientation, he or she starts to panic as the information on the aircraft does not match with what we feel. In this case, the pilot responds to his feeling making things worse. By responding to spatial disorientation, the pilot might end up causing an accident. A person can recognize spatial disorientation due to increase in the panic caused by the pilot. The panicking can result from the way the pilot is flying and the aircraft. This can be controlled through several cases. First, transferring the control of the aircraft to the other pilot because the pilots do not experience the same feelings at the same time this will help in reducing the panic (Michael, 2004).

When the pilot is experiencing spatial disorientation that causes him or her to panic and is unable to control the aircraft, he or she can change and give the other pilot to take over the flight. This will help in controlling the panic, and the pilot can relax and take control of the state he or she saw due to spatial disorientation. More so, when flying in reduced visibility the pilots should rely on the instrument rather than the feeling to reduce the effects caused by spatial disorientation. Spatial disorientation makes the pilot imagine and see things not shown by the flight. The pilot decides to follow what he or she thinks rather than the instruments. The pilot should strictly adhere and follow the instruction of the instrument and the aircraft especially during the dark periods or the invisible time.

What is Circadian Rhythm Disruption and how does it affect personnel in the aviation industry? Make sure you give examples.

Circadian rhythm refers to anybody and biological processes that display an entrainable and endogenous oscillation of about twenty-four hours. The rhythm is driven by a circadian clock and is observed widely in plants and animals. Despite the circadian rhythms being beings endogenous, the rhythms are adjusted to the local environment by the external cues that include light, redox cycle, and temperature. Health problems result from disturbance of circadian rhythm. The rhythm influences the reticular activation systems that are crucial for the maintenance of the state of consciousness. The circadian rhythm disruption is disruptions in circadian disorders. The rhythm plays an important part in determining the sleeping times for example when an individual sleeps and when they wake up. The circadian rhythm disruption can be caused by shifting in work, changes in time zone, mental health problems, and change in the routines, for example, staying up late or sleeping in (Ciechanowski, 2012).

Circadian rhythm disruption affects the personnel in the aviation industry in different ways. The circadian rhythm disruption affects the work shift of an individual. First, it causes fatigue. This occurs when an individual ignores the signals by working and remaining awake at night and sleeping during the daytime. For example, the pilots working a night always fight and battle with the circadian rhythms because they are doing the opposite of what is expected of their circadian rhythm. When pilots are performing the night duties, they struggle to be a wake, and it may be difficult to fall asleep during the day. Although an individual can adjust to a new schedule with disciplines and consistency, there is always a threat of fatigue. Secondly, it causes sleep disorders. The shifting of work makes the pilots battle their internal clock. The individuals are likely to experience insomnia and excessive drowsiness. The difficulties of sleeping occur because the pilots want to sleep during the day because they are working at night (Peirson & Foster, 2015).

The circadian rhythm has an internal clock system that adjusts with the time and the period. When the pilot does not sleep at night but instead work, he or she will have to fight with the spatial rhythm to get sleep because the system identifies the time to sleep. Thirdly, it leads to poor reflexes - the reaction times of an individual slow down when individuals are drowsy. The effect of the fatigue is poor and leads to a dull brain reflex. This alters the functioning of the body of the pilot decreasing the creativeness and the energy of working. Thus they have to get enough sleep to rest their minds and energy. Lastly, it leads to weak immune systems and poor decision-making. Deprivation of sleep also associates with poor decision making due to the inability to think clearly and fatigue. The one night of throwing off the pattern makes the pilot have a fight of flight making irrational and non-logical decisions.

What is resilience engineering? Give an example as applied in aviation.

In construction and engineering field, resilience refers to an objective of designing, maintaining and restoring infrastructure and buildings and communities. Resilience also refers to the ability to absorb, responding and avoiding damages without suffering a complete failure of the instrument. Resilience is a multi-facet property that covers several dimension including organization, technical, economic and social dimensions. In engineering, resilience is characterized by 4 Rs. The four Rs includes resourcefulness, redundancy, robustness, and rapidity. Institutions and management regimes can be designed to expand and preserve the resilience of the systems as well as providing development opportunities. Examples of resilience include earthquakes, energy, climate, economy, education, community, tsunami, air quality, proximity, food security, water security, and wet infrastructure. Resilience system is concerned with building a system that is resilient to changes. Through analyzing what is going right, resilience engineering attempts to make an understanding of normal performances to make work easier and safer (Hollnagel & Woods, 2017).

There are several key principles of resilience engineering. First, humankind and human organizations can adapt to unforeseen disruptions, situations, and conditions. The responses or behaviors may not have been in the plans or the design. This is a clear state example of system resilience. Secondly, traditional incidents and accidents analysis base on linear models causes the consequence chains failing to model true system complexity. Over the years, resilience engineering has attracted and spread interest from academia and industries. Practitioners from aviation have realized the potentials of resilience engineering and become the early adopters of resilience. The focus of resilience engineering is the resilient performance, and the system can be termed resilient if it can adjust to prior functioning, following the events. In aviation, it is easy to recognize resilience in major events (Woods & Hollnagel, 2017).

Resilience engineering is applied in aviation through several ways for example training and adopting the principles of resilience engineering by adopting resilience engineering principles in airlines by the introduction of a new tool with developing resilience. Pilots have access to the flight story apps on their iPods and pads for submitting their stories. Behavioral markers associated with resilience engineering are used I finding patterns in effective handling of all event types in addition to safety incidents. Through resilience engineering, the p...