LEFT RIGHT CONFUSION

 

 

LEFT- RIGHT CONFUSION

“Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons (120,000) that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand.”--- Book of Jonah (4:11)

                        While carrying out a tight anticlockwise turn in the IL-76 on a small turning pad I opened asymmetric power to assist the turn. After switch off the copilot, fairly junior, asked me the reason for opening the power on inboard engines during the turn. I was surprised as I thought I had opened power on the outer engines. Only a few months later I was doing the same exercise and wanted to open power on one side to aid the turn. When I advanced the throttle, the copilot promptly informed me that I was opening the wrong side power. The incidents exposed me to one more of the many human limitations I was vulnerable to. On 04Feb 2015 Trans Asia Flight 235 (an ATR) crashed after takeoff when the Captain switched off the working left engine after suffering right engine failure. A blunder, that resulted in the death of 43 people in Taiwan. The last words of the pilot Liao Jian-Zong, on CVR were, "Wow, pulled back the wrong side throttle”. In spite of the Co-pilot verbalizing the correct engine that had faulted, the Captain reduced power on live engine and finally shut it down. On 07^th April 2016 a DC-3 aircraft operated by ‘Arall Colombia’ airlines had to force land. The crew heard an explosion from No.1 engine on rotation and the pilot visually saw the No.1engine cover tearing away and hitting the propeller blades. However the pilot reduced the operative engine No.2 which resulted in aircraft losing height and force landing in a field. The aircraft caught fire and was destroyed. The investigation report confirmed that the pilot inadvertently and accidently closed RPM lever No.2 instead of lever No.1. On 21 June 2017 No.2 engine of a Go Air flight from Delhi to Mumbai had a bird hit. The pilots wrongly shut down engine No.1. The aircraft climbed on the damaged engine but fortunately the crew realized their mistake before the damaged engine lost all power. They were able to restart the engine and landed back on single engine. There have been many accidents and incidents reported as well as not reported where the pilot went for the wrong engine in case of emergency. Why?

            The answer lies in well defined and documented but little understood phenomenon called Left Right discrimination problem. It looks easy and natural but telling left from right necessitates complex brain processes that include spatial perceptions, memory, language, and the integration of sensory information. For many, telling left from right is a serious problem. In various studies carried out it was observed that almost 9 % males and 17% females exhibited this problem. It is a problem of thought process that results in confusion when deciding in spatial relations especially between left and right. This thought process causes reversals, memory problems and confusion. This is easier to understand if we start by looking at young children who confuse their left and right. Many of these children put their shoes on the wrong feet, confuse their left and right sides and write numbers and letters backwards. Most of them finally overcome these limitations but some continue to get haunted by this problem of laterality. Many of them might not even know that they have this limitation till they find themselves perplexed in tight situations where they have to decide quickly between left and right. The field of medicine has many reported as well as non reported serious laterality induced mishaps. A 2011 report estimates that there are 40 wrong site surgeries done weekly in the US and many of these involve mixing up with patients left and right. Health care professionals work in tricky circumstances that make laterality harder for them. For them distinguishing left from right almost always requires rotation. Patient may be sitting but soon he may be lying on back or stomach. Another study in 2015 of medical students found that distracting people with sounds impacted their ability to tell left from right and interrupting them with cognitive tasks made matters worse. It is widely accepted that problem of laterality increases under conditions of high stress and workload.

            The ability to distinguish between left and right and to be able to coordinate eye and hand in response to this knowledge clearly varies between individual to individual and is generally considered by psychologists to be innate. Everyone will at some or other time get confused between left and right but some people are more prone to it. Some studies indicate a pattern that left handed people or people who are even slightly dyslexic may be more prone to this problem. However many other studies fail to identify any strong link between left handedness and laterality problem. A psychological study of pilots (Gerhardt, 1959) for the Norwegian Air Force by Rolf Gerhardt, chief psychologist to the Norwegian Forces, found that laterality problem was not uncommon among the group of pilots studied. A number of pilots had difficulties in identifying left and right. He found connections between laterality and maladjustment in military pilots. He quoted many cases like one fighter pilot feared close-formation flying because in that situation he was uncertain which way to turn. “We found this pilot to be ambivalent about hand preferences. In the aero plane he had to look for his wedding ring to identify left and right.” He believes such a laterality pattern may be present in considerable number of people and over learning has made them carry out such actions “normally”. Only when surprised and under stress will they revert to their laterality pattern in certain behavior situations. (Information about this study is taken from the book “The Naked Pilot” by David Beaty)           

            The United States Army conducted a study to examine errors that led pilots to shutting down the wrong engine during emergencies in dual engine helicopters. The research involved the use of surveys and simulator testing. Over 70 % of survey respondents believed there was the potential for shutting down the wrong engine and 40 % confirmed that they had, during actual or simulated emergency situations, confused the power control levers (PCLs). In addition, 50% of those who recounted confusion confirmed they had shut down the “good engine” or moved the good engine’s PCL.  The author of this article spoke to many pilots, most of whom were Ex IAF and presently active in civil flying about the prevalence of Left Right confusion amongst pilots. All barring one said that they never experienced this confusion and were also not aware of any one else having it or having knowledge of any incident due to left right confusion. The only one who confessed said, “I always had Left right confusion from childhood. I have a black spot on the face of my right hand and would refer to it to know Left from right. During basic training stage this confusion continued. I would put a black spot on my right glove to help me know my left right if I ever got confused. I never had any incident though, may be because I was so aware of my limitation”.  He also gave a specific case where during an air test both engine were shut down due to confusion as copilot brought back wrong HP after they had shut down an engine as per profile of the air test. Since they had enough height the engines were restarted with ease. The general response though was to deny existence of such confusion. The ‘Aviation Safety Network’ a web based site has a long list of accidents where the flight crew shut down the wrong, working engine following engine problem. The data contained on the web page as well as scores of research papers freely available on the net on the subject are enough to prove that it is a fairly common and wide spread occurrence. The conclusion the author could draw from his informal research regarding prevalence of laterality problem was that there is a reluctance to admit and share such incidents, may be, due to general shame/embarrassment associated with such limitations. There is an urgent need to get out of ostrich effect and accept the prevalence of this human error to ensure that there are less of incidents/accidents due to laterality problem.

            Acceptance, awareness and education are the steps to deal with this problem. There is the need to recognize the fact that it is easy to get confused between left and right especially in situations of high stress like on board emergency. Acceptance of this as a human factor would encourage people to share such incidents/experiences thus removing the general shame/embarrassment associated with them. Getting confused between left and right may not only be the result of laterality problem. Research in neuroscience tells that multi tasking is a myth i.e. humans are poor at multitasking. Our brain can effectively process only one task at a time. Multiple tasks are done on time sharing basis i.e. the brain keeps shifting from one task to another giving an impression that the task is being carried out concurrently, however the brain is processing only one task at a time and leaving the other unattended during that period. We do not appreciate it much as most of our tasks do not require continuous focused attention and can be carried out easily on time sharing basis. However this limited mental processing capability can present problems when there is a requirement to attend concurrently to two sources of information needing focused attention as in an in-flight emergency like engine failure after takeoff.  In such situations the pilot has two important tasks which need to be done almost concurrently and quickly. The first task is to keep the aircraft flying safely which require manipulating engine power as well as controls catering to asymmetric thrust. The second task is to analyze the abnormality through visual warnings and enunciators and come out with an action plan. Both these tasks are further divided into multiple subtasks. The pilot, in such emergency, is thus faced with multiple complicated tasks each of which require concerted effort and focus from the brain. To make matters further complicated the emergencies hardly strike in the form in which they are practiced or written in Checklists. The actual emergency with sounds and visuals which a pilot had never before experienced creates startle effect stunning the mind momentarily. Here if the pilot acts hurriedly he might make mistake like shutting down the wrong engine. Such errors take place not because the pilot was incompetent or reckless but due to the fact that our brain is simply not capable of handling so many variables in such a short time. Hence this confusion needs to be classified as a ‘human factor’.

             A study of actual emergencies reveals that majority of them give adequate time for response. Even engine failures at most critical times are progressive in nature and gives ample time for reaction. There have been far more emergencies mishandled due to hurried actions by pilots. A deliberate delay of few seconds would have prevented many such accidents. The genesis of the fault could be tracked back to our training pattern where emergencies especially critical ones like fire and engine failure after takeoff are taught as react events. On the contrary such events require critical thinking in demanding environment necessitating buying time to observe before doing anything. Many organization and pilots agree that the first rule of any emergency is to ‘DO NOTHING’ for initial few moments followed by careful observation and analysis. The emergencies and flight events need to be responded calmly and not reacted upon. This aspect may be relooked in the training. Many operators have rules where the pilots are not doing anything except concentrating on flying below 400 feet, even in case of serious emergency like engine fire. In fact many aircrafts have inhibited all warnings below 400 feet. It indicates that the organizations are aware of our limitations. So why not be more vocal in accepting it? The mindset that the ‘right stuff’ does not make such mistakes needs serious reflection. It took many lives and many years to realize that disorientation and illusions in flying affect everyone including the so called ‘experts’. Laterality problem too need the same acceptance. Not many would know that the primary reason for introducing ‘auto feather’ was NOT to immediately reduce drag BUT to prevent the pilots from going for the wrong engine shut down/feathering following engine failure especially during critical times. Initially lot of pilots, who trusted their own instincts over automation, would disable the auto-feathering system before takeoff. They though, had reasonable excuse for that time the technology was in infancy and there were quite a few engine shut downs due to malfunctioning of auto-feathering system.