Aviation Video - Children Of The Magenta Line

Maritime Topics Marine Safety
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Children Of The Magenta Line - was mentioned on another thread by @Binbag_the_Saylore

I watched this video before here, I think @dbeierl might have posted it. The video is about levels of control of an aircraft so it’s aviation but is relevant to maritime operations as well.

The relevant discussion is how tools designed to reduce workload can in some circumstance actually increase workload. One example given in the video is failure to maintain situational awareness because the crew was prioritizing updating instruments over maintaining visual.

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This has been discussed 1,000 times on various aviation forums from two angles.
One is the workload involved in programming all the various gear and the other is the decline in basic stick and rudder skills.
My last flight review, legally required to keep my license current, was at least 50% about programming various things. It made me think back to a plane I used to fly and give flight reviews in that did not even have an electrical system at all.

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If I’ve read the history books correctly, accidents did happen before ECDIS as well. I think a large chunk of the Child of the Magenta Line phenomena could be eliminated by having mariners with a deep understanding and education in how an ECDIS works, beyond a 1 week to 1 semester course. You know, like instead of focusing on chart plot for the 3rd mate’s exam for 4 years, incorporate an ECDIS module in to the 3rd Mate’s and Chief Mate’s exam instead of chart plot. But I know this won’t happened because there is such a skills gap at all levels when it comes to ECDIS. If I had a dollar every time I had to show a captain - who had been sailing since I was in diapers - how to manually fix a position on the ECDIS, not only would I have more money than I should, but I’d have repeat customers! And then I have to explain to a skeptical Vetter that I can in fact do everything on an ECDIS that I could do on a paper chart!

And you know what else the Avation industry has? An operations control center. I’ve been batting around the idea as setting out on my own and pitching my 2nd mate skills as a consultant. In a day where nearly ever vessel has star link, or at least internet, and all the voyage plans are electronic, Why are we letting a revolving door of 2nd mates make random voyage plans and double work opening everyone up to vetting liabilities and holes in navigational safety? Pick your favorite US flagged shipping company calling on Houston or Port Ev, If you have multiple, similarly size and draft vessels calling on the same port, why are the 2nd mates independently maintaining their own sea buoy to berth voyage plans and user maps? They aren’t drawing no go zones and PI lines on their own paper charts anymore, its a file that could be in the document management system. This redundant work that can be handled by someone else with more time to actually focus on good work, and getting 8 hours of sleep, instead of relying on the crew to generator 100 pages of paperwork per voyage, and keep pilotage voyage plans up to date while working 6&6 on spot charter or something crazy like that. In reality, the voyage planning is just ignored, and you’re cobbling together whatever the vessel did last time, and hope it’s correct. (it’s rarely correct).

Give me a 6 month 1099 contract and a license for each type of ECDIS you have and I can get 90% of the piloting voyage plans accurate and standardized for the whole fleet from my house.

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I was thinking more of the ARPA. In the video Vanderburgh mimics a pilot, eyes down frantically button pushing, reminded me of green mates with the ARPA in situations where using visual with APRA assist would be much lower workload.

Once their neurons have been rewired anyway.

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I was living next door to a guy who flew for UPS. I had renewed my license and a friend had loaned me his Taylorcraft Sportman for a weekend. I invited the neighbor up but he had to be shamed into going. We flew around the Everglades, landed at a grass strip to take a leak and then over the coast total time for the outing, a couple of hours. When we got home he told me thanks, he had forgotten that flying was supposed to be fun. True, I screwed up my boating fun when I started making a living on ships. :wink:

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What you are talking about is a dispatch office. At one time I wanted to be dispatcher, it is actually a pretty cool job.
If the El Faro had had this, or what we down at the yacht end of the world call a shore team, they would not have steered into a hurricane. Even pretty low end boats now can manage a sat messenger and someone on shore tracking them and the weather.

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Getting a flying job if flying was your hobby frequently means finding a new hobby. i used to love me a challenge, but now if it is a dark and stormy night and no one is paying me to fly I’ll stay home and wait for the sun to come out.

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The younger someone is the more they seem to think the world is whatever there is on a screen and the GPS can never fail or be wrong. Teaching DR, either boat or plane version, is very hard because no one believes they will ever have to use it. They view it like teaching someone to handcrank a Model T to get a drivers license.

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In response to you picking up my remark on another thread…

… and then some!
I saw a bad case a few years ago, wrote up the facts for them to act on at the end of the voyage. I attach a sanitised, amended & appended version as an example of what has become a dangerous mindset.
Anon-Nav systems.pdf (267.3 KB)

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Here’s the text from the relevant part of the transcript:

I’m out there doing one of my once-a-month turnarounds, and so I’m flying back from Vail to Dallas, coming in from the northwest. It’s a perfect day, beautiful and clear. I have the STAR programmed up in my FMC since Colorado Springs, everything is working perfectly, and I’m all set up for a Runway 18R arrival.

Suddenly, the controller says, “Change your runway to 13R.”

At this point, what’s the appropriate level of automation?

From the highest level of automation—LNAV and VNAV—I go click, click, click, click straight to the lowest level.

Why? Because I can see the pavement, I know where I need to go, and I don’t need to be typing when I have a visual reference.

Now listen, I am not faulting my co-pilot. We created him. My co-pilot goes, “I’m flying.” I say, “Hey, would you put in the ILS for 13R? I could use a glide slope.”

There are airplanes overhead landing on 18R, a guy in front of me, and spacing issues to consider. This is not a good time to be typing.

Let me ask you this: in that scenario, with a clear day, the airport in sight, and perfect visibility, what can the computer possibly provide that I don’t already have?

Yet, we have become what I call “Children of the Magenta.”

We think we must have those magenta lines on the map and that magenta v-bar steering us, or for some reason, the plane won’t fly. I’m being facetious, but sometimes that’s exactly what happens.

You have to pick the appropriate level of automation for the task at hand.

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“well, it’s OK, we never set compass courses/headings anyway on the Autopilot. We just use “trackfollow”, and it drives us according to the plan.”

At least is a better response than “It just does that” When I press on why everything was out of wack when I signed on once.

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For the purpose of this discussion we could assume that the ECIDS and other tools are well understood and set up IAW best practice etc.

I am aware that’s not always the case but that could be a topic for another thread.

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I agree in general but not an exact analogy because maintaining a DR is (in your example) a 'just in case" thing and increases the workload. The premise of the video in the OP is using visual can, in some circumstances, lower risk and workload.

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I didn’t mean to imply one should be doing DR constantly, but that at least you should know HOW to do it if needed.
To the larger issue, very much so. I just got back from a delivery where the owner was typing and swiping himself half to death and I was like “The runway is RIGHT THERE - just LOOK”. It even has a PAPI, all the info you need is on the other side of the windscreen.
*PAPI is like a range marker but vertical

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Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. At night with those big fleets of squid boats in the S. China sea. I get called to the bridge to find the mate bent over the ARPA hitting the buttons as fast as they can. I tell them “see that big black, empty sector? Just aim for that.”

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Or leaving Manila Harbor at night, and into the bay for sea, when there are no black, empty sectors :upside_down_face:. I maneuvered out of the bay from the wing, using a pair of binoculars, and shading my eyes. I won’t name the useless Master.

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Maybe there is just a generational difference here, but I do not see an apples to apples comparison here. I have never considered the ARPA to be a laborious task on the bridge. Relative vectors and true trails, and away we go, one ship at a time. We’re not landing an airplane, most of the time, no one involved in a traffic situation would get a speeding ticket in a school zone, and we have the technology to see them miles away.

I have however, seen mariners on the wrong side of a TSS because someone reversed the route without looking, I’ve seen mariners take a tanker through a PSSA because they didn’t understand it was there, and there was that story about a year ago out of Alaska where that tug ran into a rock they thought was uncharted, only to discover it was very much on the chart.

Let me ask you this: in that scenario, with a clear day, the airport in sight, and perfect visibility, what can the computer possibly provide that I don’t already have?

  • Did that fishing boat just stop?
  • Did that fishing boat just turn around?
  • Is that fishing boat going to hit me?
  • Which of these tankers are drifting, and which ones are moving?

I can tell you a lot faster with an ARPA than monitoring the range and bearings of all the targets in the neighborhood, and it’s not even that hard.

Meanwhile, as ports are implementing more and more VATONS, and traffic patterns are more often than not just magenta lines on a chart, unmarked by buoys, yeah, the computer can tell you a lot more about where you are compared to looking out the window on a clear day.

Yet, we have become what I call “Children of the Magenta.”

We think we must have those magenta lines on the map and that magenta v-bar steering us, or for some reason, the plane won’t fly. I’m being facetious, but sometimes that’s exactly what happens.

Meanwhile the Captain loads some random route, not the one I had planned, and I come up to watch and the 3rd mate has us passing inshore of the Miami Sea Buoy for some reason on a voyage from NY to Texas.

We’re all saying the problem is a skill issue at it’s core, just not in agreement on what skill.

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The core issue:
Navigation used to be an art. You had a lot of possible inputs, DR, visual bearings, depth, sun sights, star sights, LORAN, Omega, RDF/ADF, VOR, DME, Radar, Consolan, Decca, and maybe the old Satnav that worked a couple times a day maybe. Outside of visual bearings, they all had varying degrees of accuracy and various ways for them to go wrong.
Your job was to synthesize all these inputs into your best estimate of a position. A good navigator had a feel for how good it was, say a good 3 star sight on a calm night vs. 4 days of DR in rain and fog or maybe a radar bearing on a lightship vs. crossing a weak RDF signal with a depth contour. Unless you have buoys to look at, you were never 100% sure.
Now the little symbol on the electronic map IS where you are or if it isn’t you’ll find out the hard way. All this tech has spawned a lot of automatic doing this and that and all the typing and swiping that comes with it. You lose skill on two fronts, one is basic navigation and the other is too much emphasis on learning to program the equipment vs. actually flying or sailing.

  • think back on the Navy ship that drove onto a reef some years ago, the reef was clearly visible to anyone looking over the side but they insisted on believing the electronic chart that was wrong. Think on the several incidents well known and probably a thousand more unknown where someone was just following a magenta line across a zoomed-out chart and hit something not visible at that scale.
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I can do a 3 line running fix on an ECDIS more accurately, and quicker than on a paper chart, as we all should be doing to verify position. If everything goes to shit, you absolute could still use celestial and DR on an ECDIS - or one better, if all the systems like each other and were installed correctly, the EDIS can do half the work for you when navigating shoreside, when you use EP mode in conjunction with a RADAR to stabilize the ECDIS display. You could just run with the RADAR overlay on and have an infinite number of ranges and bearings confirming your position constantly!

Navigating absolute is still an art, but instead of working with an orchestra and sheet music, we’re working with FLstudio and midi instruments.

The difference is, the folks who are in senior positions and have decision making power don’t understand what’s happening, and while the kids are playing “Hot to Go” by Chapel Roan, they say “Turn that noise off, this is real music” as I keep an hourly position log on paper for some reason.

I was on a ship that was still paper primary, with company policy that said we were to make 3 minute fixes in pilotage waters. It said that, because that’s still what is printed in Bowditch. In what world is that preferred to all this “new fangled swiping and typing?” In reality this just becomes writing down GPS coordinates every three minutes. Honestly, a lower form of automation at this point would be the ECDIS, because at least the user isn’t recording this data, it’s just automatically recorded and displayed!

We shouldn’t be relying on a handful of people who are considered to be an “Ecdis Wizz” — we should all just know how to use our equipment. As I say time and time again, If I signed on as a mate in 1995 and couldn’t put a fix on the chart, I would probably be fired, but today we let senior officers run around with no concept of how an ECDIS works.

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All good points, this goes to actually learning what the gear does vs. viewing it as a magic box.
I have this added recently, I have yet to try it. Celestial Navigation Plugin
The 3 minute thing sounds silly, running say up to Baltimore you need eyes outside a lot more than you need 3 minute fixes when you can clearly see the next channel markers. If the Ever Forward had had anyone just looking out the window the way to miss the sandbar was very clear.

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