I’ve been reading several reports this morning about the pilots’ actions during that Air France flight 447 disaster. I’m also putting this in context with the talk First Officer Jeffrey Skiles gave at a user conference (I cannot find my original blog post) who was one of the pilots on the US Airways flight that landed in the Hudson River.

Skiles talked in detail about the training flight crews undergo and how they are trained in how to act, what to say, who’s in charge,  and so on. This was related to what we need to do in process automation especially with our operators to provide great training with simulation, appropriate visualization into the processes and explicit procedures on how to act with each type of incident.

According to reports coming out today, the Air France crew did not react to the situation with the same coordinated and procedural actions exhibited by the US Airways crew.

This shows the need for vigilance, preparation and constant training for our plant personnel. Never let up.