DUAS16

The aircraft was undergoing test flights – the pilot in charge was inexperienced and had only recently been promoted to test pilot. The FTS (Flight Termination System) deployed with no warning and there was no immediate reason for this.

Following the initial report to CHIRP there was some further communication which is re-printed below in its entirety, so the context can be better understood.

CHIRP email to reporter:

Firstly, many thanks for your report, which CHIRP is pleased to accept. In order to learn from it, I wondered if you would be kind enough to give us a little more detail on what happened?

1. You state that the parachute deployed without warning. This implies that there was a technical problem and human error was not involved. Were there in your opinion any human factors involved in the occurrence or was it entirely technical? Perhaps you would be able to give me your view on this aspect?
2. You have mentioned that the pilot was inexperienced. However, from the submitted report, the pilot has 300 hours of flying, which for small UAVs is relatively experienced. Given that this was a test flight and only the second flight of the XXX I take it that you mean inexperienced on type or on flight testing. Perhaps you could just confirm this aspect?
3. Were there in your view any lessons to be learnt regarding the training available, or explanation of how the aircraft works, prior to undertaking the test flights?
4. Are there any other aspects connected with the occurrence that would be useful to learn from and that involved Human Factors or a Just Culture?

Response email from the reporter:

Thanks for the reply, I’ve answered your points below:

1. Human factors were not involved in this occurrence, the system initiated entirely uncommanded by any team/crew member.
2. I may not have explained that correctly. I have around 300 hours of UAS flying, but I was not pilot in command. In fact, I had essentially refused to fly the aircraft due to safety concerns. The newly-promoted test pilot was one of the engineer team and had a small number of hours of UAS flying. As you surmised, there is nobody with any experience on type as this was the second flight.
3. The test program was being rushed and undue pressure to perform was being placed on the whole team due to commercial considerations. The team was very often having very early starts before spending large amounts of ‘down’ time at the airfield due to weather being out of limits for the aircraft, generally in line with weather forecasts.

These are mainly my opinions and I have not been party to the full internal investigation as I no longer work for the company. I am still amazed that the company has never been audited by the CAA (terrible accident rate in the 6 months prior to this event) and that AAIB did not pick up this issue, despite all occurrences being reported through the correct channels. There had been a significant deterioration in safety culture as was highlighted during an independent audit, but I believe that the findings were never escalated to the Senior team and therefore not acted upon in a timely manner.