AP: PILOTS "FORGETTING HOW TO FLY"
The airline industry is suffering from "automation addiction," Rory Kay, co-chair of an FAA committee that is examining pilot training, said in an Associated Press story published on Tuesday. "We're seeing a new breed of accident with these state-of-the-art planes," said Kay. "We're forgetting how to fly." Pilot skills have been cited by investigators in two recent major accidents, the Buffalo crash of a regional airliner in 2009, and the 2009 Air France crash of an Airbus A330. How pilots respond to the sudden loss of automated aircraft systems "is the big issue that we can no longer hide from in aviation," Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation, told the AP. "We've been very slow to recognize the consequence of it and deal with it."

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