Energy Management Awareness Tool

It's proven time and time again that for all airframes, landing is generally the toughest part of flying. More than 60% of aviation accidents occur during landing, and even with the technology we have available to assist, fatal accidents continue to occur due to the inability to employ proper energy management techniques. While we recognize these accidents are a clear loss of valuable aviation resources, the most devastating loss is that of our human capital. It is our friends, family, and coworkers that are too often paying the price of this dangerous trend.

Many of these accidents are preventable, and there are systems in place to try to reduce the likelihood of these deadly occurrences, yet they continue to make headlines around the globe. Most notably, loss of airspeed occurring when pilots lose situational awareness is a common thread amongst many fatal accident reports. How can this be?

Many aircraft are equipped with a stall warning system, or a low airspeed/stall alerting system, but unfortunately, these systems don’t always respond with enough time to allow the pilot to make necessary corrections to save the aircraft. What can we do to solve this problem?

A 2010 amendment to 14 CFR Part 25.1322 (Flight Crew Alerting) required aircraft certified after this to have a multi-sensory low airspeed alerting system. There have been many calls recently from senior aviation professionals for the FAA to go a bit further. Many believe a retrofit mandate should be enacted as well to save the lives of those aviation crews flying the remaining aircraft that exist outside of this specification. Even while the NTSB has repeated numerous times that "an installation of low-airspeed alert systems could substantially reduce the number of accidents involving flight-crew failure to maintain airspeed," we are still allowing many aircraft to fall between the cracks and potentially cost lives in our community.

Enter a new flight energy awareness display – the Q-Alpha produced by Skov Aero. This system is designed to give pilots more reaction time on the flight deck so they may then be able to correct aircraft altitude and airspeed in time to manage a safe landing.

The Q-Alpha is designed to be easily recognizable by the flight crew with an intuitive display, and most importantly, comes on early enough to provide the much needed and incredibly precious extra seconds of reaction time. The system is easily retrofitted into existing aircraft and has been successfully tested on the Boeing 737-800, Gulfstream G550, and Cessna 182.

Some say the most precious commodity we have is time. The time we spend on hobbies or with those we love are things that often mean the most. While we don't actually know how much time each of us might have, we can agree that it's important to make every second count. Not just the seconds that comprise our happier moments, but perhaps making better use of the time we have to prevent or respond to disaster. Those precious seconds are the gateway to more sunrises, more laughter, and more time spent toward a life worth living.

The Q-Alpha may be the key we need to preserve time both in and out of the flight deck. To find out more about this system, visit https://www.skovaero.com/q-alpha.