
How Airline Pilots Lost the Basic Skills - lisper
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richie-davidson/how-airline-pilots-lost-the-basic-skills_b_9415270.html
======
api_or_ipa
I was lucky enough to have a father as a pilot who paid for me to get my
private pilots license. Despite the exorbitant price tag, I look back on that
education as immensely and uniquely beneficial to my development.

As per his demands, I would complete a solo circuit* in an airplane before I
drove a car solo. It didn't help that the airport I was learning was nestled
in a tight mountain valley and notorious for it's shifty winds. The best
lesson I learned was one of immense personal responsibility. It didn't matter
what caused the accident if you ended up dead. That kind of responsibility-at-
all-costs mentality has stuck with me to this day. Don't put yourself in a
position where something or someone else can cause you to suffer. Check that
the fuel attendant put the right amount of fuel you asked for in your
airplane. Check that the mechanic wired the flight controls correctly. Check
that the weather forecast is rational. The meteorologist isn't going to climb
into your airplane and fly into that region-- you are.

This holds true for every part of my life. I don't follow cars close enough so
that I depend on their judgement.

If you've got the money, I strongly recommend anyone to get their wings. It's
the best education I've ever received.

* American pilots will know this as a 'pattern': takeoff, loop around the airport and immediately land. The shortest complete flight possible.

~~~
dionidium
Your diligence was not unwarranted. Before anybody runs out to _get their
wings_ , realize that general aviation is quite dangerous. Here are two links
that use similar math to arrive at the same 20x-more-dangerous-than-driving
figure:

[http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/198/how-
dangerou...](http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/198/how-dangerous-is-
flying-in-a-single-engine-plane)

[http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/safety](http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/safety)

~~~
lisper
"flying is no more than 10 times as dangerous per mile of travel."

That may sound like flying is considerably more dangerous than driving, but
this is an overall statistic. Most GA accidents happen because the pilot did
something stupid like taking off without enough fuel, or flying into weather
they weren't equipped to handle. So if you avoid doing stupid things, you can
stack the odds considerably in your favor. The risk of flying can be
comparable to the risk of driving.

~~~
mikeash
That's true, but not particularly actionable. "Avoid doing stupid things"
isn't something you can just decide to do directly. It's a good goal, but you
need to find more specific ways to achieve that goal.

There are long established ways to reduce the incidence of stupidity. Always
using checklists, always getting a weather brief, establishing personal
minimums, etc. Of course, all of this will be covered as a standard part of
any flying safety course.

IMO just saying "avoid doing stupid things" is dangerous. It's too easy to
take that advice and say, well, I'm obviously not stupid, so I'm safe. And
then you fly into a thunderstorm or stall while turning final or forget to
connect a control surface, because avoiding stupidity has little if anything
to do with being smart.

You can definitely stack the odds heavily in your favor, but it takes a lot of
effort.

~~~
lisper
I didn't mean to imply that not doing stupid things is easy, merely that it's
possible.

------
steven777400
Many airlines have policies against hand-flying the airplane. Like the
discussion with self-driving cars; the computer is much safer overall to fly
than a human pilot. However, the failure modes of the computer don't resemble
the failure modes of the human pilot.

Since human pilots (on commercial flights) are either discouraged or
prohibited from actually flying (for legitimate safety reasons), when the
computer does experience a failure, the human is unskilled to take over. Yet,
ironically, it appears that if we encouraged the human pilots to hand fly
more, the accident rate would probably increase.

~~~
draw_down
That's why the situation with computer-driven cars right now is so strange to
me. Even if they're not free of flaws yet, they seem demonstrably much better
drivers than humans already, because humans are so bad at it. But everything
seems to be proceeding very slowly and cautiously, even though the number
casualties from accidents warrants the opposite.

~~~
mikeash
I think it's to avoid spooking the public.

Imagine if self-driving cars were at a point where they were 10% better (in
terms of fatalities caused) than human drivers. You start flooding the roads
with them, and fatalities decrease.

Then the news stories start. "Mother of Four Killed by Self-Driving Car."
Video of the grieving children. News shows host "experts" who go on at length
about the deficits in computer judgment. The family sues, with their lawyer
saying that this death would not have happened with a human at the controls.
(And he might be right! Even if better than humans, computers will probably
get into _different_ accidents, not just fewer.) Restrictive regulations or
even bans start being discussed in Congress.

Maybe it wouldn't happen this way, but it could potentially set things back by
years. Looking at the technology, pushing for early adoption might save lives.
But looking at the politics, pushing too hard could cost lives, by making
people unwilling to accept the technology.

~~~
ghaff
There's a lot required before they're ready in any case. (How much probably
depends a fair bit on where and under what circumstances they're allowed to be
on full auto-pilot.) But you're absolutely right on your basic point. And even
if they're safer than humans overall, if they have a tendency (even if rarely)
to get into serious accidents in which they self-evidently did something dumb
(from a human's perspective), that would be a big issue.

~~~
mikeash
It's interesting to imagine an extreme case. Imagine if self-driving cars were
absolutely perfect drivers, except every 100 billion miles the car accelerates
to top speed and then drives straight into a bridge support.

Such a car would be immensely safer than what we have now. Would people
willingly ride in one?

I think I'm pretty good at rationally weighing the risks, but just imagining
this still gives me the willies.

------
coldcode
What the heck did "Emotionally distraught family members grasped at resolution
while the pilots of the crash on the Hudson supported solutions founded in
myth" mean? Perhaps this author should spend less time flying planes and more
time learning how to write.

~~~
jimrandomh
Making "the crash on the Hudson" a link would've helped a lot. I guess for
that the article's main audience, aviators and aviation bureaucrats, this is
well known?

~~~
notahacker
I thought this was pretty well known
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549)

~~~
dkrich
I knew what crash he was referring to and even so, his statement made no sense
to me because he didn't really explain what he was saying at all.

------
swingbridge
In many ways the weekend warrior that flies his Cessna 172 around for fun is
probably a better pilot that a lot of guys flying the big jets. One hand flies
everything the other mostly just kicks on the autopilot and sits back.

There are certainly airline pilots that still have a passion for aviation...
some even still teach in their down time, but it's increasingly uncommon. Too
many don't do enough 'real' flying anymore. They're mostly just sitting up
front to make sure the autopilot doesn't screw up... and sadly accident data
shows when the autopilot does screw up the pilot forgets what to do (see
accident reports where the autopilot stalls the plane and pilots forget basic
stall recovery procedures).

~~~
pc86
If you honestly believe ATPs "kick on the autopilot and sit back" you have
absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

------
Animats
Note that the author is an "airport owner". So he has a direct interest in
more general aviation.

Airline pilots today rarely fly light aircraft recreationally because they
can't afford to. Airline pilots are paid much less than they used to be.[1]
Regional airline pilots make $30K - $60K. Some bus drivers are paid more. Only
senior pilots of major airlines break $100K today. Also, in the US, pilots
usually have to pay for their own training.

As for "losing the basic skills", the author doesn't mention the best known
example - the crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 at SFO. The pilots had to
make a manual landing in clear weather, instead of using autoland, and they
undershot the runway. Some of that was a lack of manual piloting skills, and
some of that was mode trouble with cockpit automation. (This is a huge issue.
Read crash reports, and all too often part of the problem was something being
in the wrong mode.) On the other hand, the "miracle on the Hudson" of US
Airways Flight 1549, which he does mention, was a triumph of automatic control
- once the pilot decided to land on the river, the Airbus control system did a
very good job of providing a smooth descent.[2]

[1] [http://thetruthabouttheprofession.weebly.com/professional-
pi...](http://thetruthabouttheprofession.weebly.com/professional-pilot-
salaries.html) [2] [http://www.amazon.com/Fly-Wire-Geese-Miracle-
Hudson/dp/03126...](http://www.amazon.com/Fly-Wire-Geese-Miracle-
Hudson/dp/031265538X)

~~~
pc86
> _Also, in the US, pilots usually have to pay for their own training._

This is half true. If you're in HS and you want to get a job as a commercial
pilot (ATP) right out of the gate, yes you will need to pay for your flight
training.

However, the _vast_ majority of ATPs received their flight training in the
military, for which they obviously did not have to pay. Part of this is the
sheer number of hours you need to even apply for ATP jobs.

------
arnold_palmur
I have a huge fear of flying (that seems to be increasing), and it's beginning
to affect my life. For example, I have the opportunity to go to Portland for a
conference at the end of the month but I am convincing myself not to go
because I don't know if I can handle a two 6 hour flights in a span of 2 days.
I literally have another tab open on delta.com with flights that I _should_
book, but it's more likely that I won't.

I have a doctor who has prescribed me Xanax strictly for flying, in which case
I take a lot and it sort of just knocks me out. The problem however is that
roughly three weeks out, if I know I have a flight, I will start to really
stress, obsess about the upcoming flight, have difficulty sleeping, etc... And
like most of us here on HN, I consider myself a logical person who understands
the safety of flying, the statistics and the likelihood of events, yadda
yadda, but it doesn't change the fact that for me, I feel _extremely_
uncomfortable flying. I don't know whether it's the lack of control or the
anonymity of whoever is in the cockpit, but sitting on a commercial jet
coincides with me feeling panic.

~~~
lisper
FWIW, commercial airliners are actually incredibly safe. The most dangerous
part of flying on a commercial flight is driving to and from the airport.

~~~
mikeash
"...I consider myself a logical person who understands the safety of flying,
the statistics and the likelihood of events..."

They know. Sometimes that knowledge just doesn't help.

------
dkrich
What the author specifies in the article all makes sense. There's one
important thing missing, however- any evidence to support his argument.

I didn't see a single data point that indicates that commercial aircraft are
less safe than they were at any previous point in time. With more flights
taking off now than 40 years ago and avoidable crashes occurring due to pilot
error being few and far between, this seems like nothing more than a guy with
an opinion pontificating on a blog as he gazes out his window.

~~~
exelius
Right; and the biggest high-profile accidents in the last decade have been
caused when the complexity of the automation overwhelmed the pilots and caused
them to make bad decisions because they did not know if they could trust the
values the computer was giving them.

Basic flying skills won't help you fix that -- if you're over the middle of
the ocean at night at altitude in the middle of a storm with strong updrafts
and your instruments are giving you strange readings, it can be really hard to
"feel" whether you're actually in a stall. Especially if your airspeed
indicators had been acting up earlier in the flight, so you knew you couldn't
trust that reading. It's ultimately an interface design problem: with new
control systems, it's not always apparent what interface will be required in
every edge case.

But ultimately, you're right. Flying is so safe now that major commercial
airline accidents require 5 or 6 cascading failures in many different parts of
the system (maintenance, design, security, pilots, ATC, etc) to occur. Even in
the accidents I mention above there were other failures that happened outside
the plane: the plane wasn't de-iced properly, or ATC routed them through a
storm they really shouldn't have.

------
gnicholasgreen
These threads come up often in various news aggregation sites, and I feel that
the comments tend to overflow with people that have no commercial flying
experience stating things like, "commercial pilots don't do REAL flying like
small aircraft pilots do, they just turn on the autopilot and watch."

This is only true in the sense that there is less hands-on-the-flight-controls
time. Flying a large commercial aircraft is actually very difficult - so
difficult, in fact, that the menial tasks like physically handling the
controls can be better delegated to an autopilot most of the time. The control
of the aircraft has been abstracted out into much higher-level management of
systems. It's more like the manager who has one eye on where the company is
headed and one eye on what tasks his employees are completing, and it is his
responsibility to make sure those things match.

I try to explain this relationship to my friends by likening the autopilot to
something more like cruise control in the car: when you turn on cruise
control, it allows you to take your foot off the gas pedal, but by no means
does it mean you aren't actively managing the safe outcome of the trip; it's
just a different tool. Sure, autopilots are more complex than cruise control,
but that doesn't adulterate my main point.

Don't get me wrong, it has always been a struggle to make sure that pilots of
large aircraft get enough stick time and emergency training; you have to fit
recurrent training into an already very busy schedule and spend lots of money
on expensive simulators. That being said, the FAA (USA) regulates pretty
heavily how much and exactly what types of recurrent training is necessary to
maintain your position, and stall recovery is one of them.

This statement: "many pilots struggle to perform the most basic and critical
maneuver, a stall recovery" seems like pure applesauce, and if they want to
back that up with some better data about how that has changed over time and
how it has affected airline safety over the years, I'd love to see it. We are
in a relatively safe period of airline travel, and I believe we will continue
to be.. [http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/07/travel/aviation-
data/](http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/07/travel/aviation-data/)

------
dmh2000
Myabe i was just paranoid, but i quit flying private after about 1000 hours
because of the ever present opportunity to make a mistake and have the FAA
come down on me. A private pilot is under the bloodshot eye of the FAA from
the time he sets foot on the airport to when he leaves it.

------
lutorm
The enforcement focus for the FAA seems to be changing, though. The new FAA
administrator has stated that they will move from the punishment-focused
enforcement to a "standards compliance" focus, where education and training
can be a more effective tool than just enforcement. Seems like a promising
change.

See e.g. [http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-
aviation/201...](http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-
aviation/2015-08-06/huerta-new-faa-enforcement-policy-big-big-change)

------
curtis
> A decade later, many pilots struggle to perform the most basic and critical
> maneuver, a stall recovery, and ...

I just flat out don't believe that modern airline pilots have more trouble
with stall recovery than pilots of earlier years.

Now I might be wrong, I'm just a layperson here, but my understanding is that
airline pilots _have_ to practice stall recovery in flight simulators. A
flight simulator can't be 100% accurate to a real aircraft's behavior in a
real stall, but my impression is that modern flight simulators are quite
realistic.

~~~
lisper
Most of the emergency training that jet pilots go through are system failures
-- engine failures, fires, and whatnot. Also, a stall in a sim is a very
different experience than a stall in a real plane because in the back of your
mind you know that your life is not on the line in a sim. That emotional
factor can make a big difference when you have to recover from an unintended
stall in a real airplane.

------
upofadown
>However, what if you were a passenger on a commercial jetliner that had run
out of gas?

Probably a reference to the Gimli Glider. Airliner ran out of fuel and the
pilot used his general aviation background to forward slip it on to an auto
race track.

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider)

