FLIGHT SIMULATORS IN PREVENTION OF AVIATION CRISIS

Abstract

Every day over 102,000 commercial passenger flights take place on a global scale above our heads. Because of that many questions arise in the areas of safety and security in massive air traffic. If aviation companies use crisis management, any activity concerning the preparation of the crew and the aircraft for a particular task-flight gets more significance and importance. During the flight, the pilot - the captain of the aircraft, is the key person of any company activity that includes transport of people and goods, and that is the reason why a pilot's psycho-physical abilities and flying performance must be constantly checked, evaluated and improved. The main value of this perception lies in the fact that everyone has to accept their part of the responsibility for the safety of the flight, but the aviation authorities and airlines primarily. In a plane crash near Macedonia's capital city, Skopje, the aviation authorities discovered a number of serious failures in pilot training that led to the fall of a private Cessna 340 aircraft piloted by an Austrian professional pilot. The investigation revealed that although the pilot was certificated to fly in instrument meteorological conditions, his actions in the air indicate that he was not well trained. The results of the investigations by the air crash investigators for this and similar accidents raise a number of questions related to the training of the pilots and obtaining individual licences. European and American aviation authorities have clear legal regulations regarding the training and certification for individual flight categories as well as a categorized simulation technique where pilots exercise before they get one of the flying categories. Flight simulators play an essential role in the training of the future pilots for both visual and instrumental flight conditions.