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Spatial disorientation (SD) is the leading aeromedical cause of Class A mishaps not only throughout DoD aviation, but in commercial flying as well including problems coping with the Black Hole Illusion, or BHI – when a pilot on a nighttime runway approach in a poorly lit area perceives he is higher than he should be and descends to a lower approach. So what causes this visual illusion? Perception scientists don’t exactly know for sure. There is disagreement as to the exact cause and probably no one theory alone fully explains the phenomenon. Across the services, SD related mishaps result in average annual losses of 25 lives and $400 million in aircraft. Now Bryant Jordan reports from Defense Tech that researchers have developed new simulation and training programs to help all Defense Department pilots avoid BHI and another potentially fatal spatial misperception. The unit tested a team of 38 pilots in day– and nighttime simulation landings, finding that they all flew near perfect approaching in the daylight. But 92 percent made “significantly low BHI approaches” in the nighttime simulation, the report said. On average, they were 148 feet too low when 1.5 nautical miles from the runaway, it said. “If unlit high terrain or obstacles are near the approach path the results can be fatal,” says Henry P. Williams, a researcher with the Naval Medical Research Unit-Dayton. After BHI training pilots were, on average, just three feet too low at the same distance from the runway.
Another spatial disorientation problem tackled in the same study was Control Reversal Error, or CRE, which occurs when pilots lose visuals on a lead aircraft while making turns – as will happen flying into clouds. When that happens pilots swap over to instrument control to recover from the turn, but in nearly a quarter of the cases pilots turned in the wrong direction and steepened the angle of bank (PDF), researchers found. "This error can be extremely dangerous in actual instrument flight, leading to incapacitating [spatial disorientation] and a fatal departure from controlled flight."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 08 2014, @02:24PM
So in summary, they try to improve how pilots handle those situations by training in a simulator, simulating exactly those situations.
I guess the actual news is that up to now they underestimated how widespread the problem is (at least that's the impression I get from the summary, although it's not explicitly stated).
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday December 08 2014, @06:08PM
> So what causes this visual illusion? Perception scientists don’t exactly know for sure.
Without RTFAing, I'm guessing it might be hard to 2D simulate the exact 3D environment in which something happens when you don't quite know what's causing a visual miscue.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday December 08 2014, @07:36PM
I think its loss of horizon in night flying.
My limited experience with this many years ago, suggests there are two things you need, one is the local ground plane, for which you have only the runway lights in rural locations with minimal street lights, and the second is the actual horizon.
Without the horizon, and something to connect the local ground plane to that horizon, you end up with this smallish island of lighted ground plane and nothing to tie it to the land forms around you.
I've actually seen this in rural small plane flying to rural airports (with lights) but never experienced it in urban/suburban airports where there is a larger ground plane.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.