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Unusual Attitudes: One of the Trusted

How can the airlines find the right pilot training balance?

I’m haunted by the sky … by wind and clouds, by airplanes and fliers. It’s been a gift, a blessing: struggling to acquire and hone skills; taking written exams and practicing for check rides; feeling the pride of earning a certificate or rating and the gloom of a less-than-stellar performance; teaching neophytes how to land and advanced students how to do lazy eights, enter holds or fly back-course approaches; testing sport pilots in J-3s and veterans in King Airs, Beech 18s and DC-3s; mustering the self-confidence to fly a bigger or faster airplane, or one with new and complex systems; knowing the joy of a great crosswind landing in an AT-6, or taxiing in — face red — after bounding down a runway in the 180; sweating but slowing and hunkering down for a rough ride through some weather. It’s a love/hate relationship in which I’ve felt relief because a difficult flight was canceled and self-disgust at my cowardice.

If you love flying and airplanes, you know what I mean. And if your heroes are great pilots — the Herman “Fish” Salmons and Bob Hoovers, the Ernie Ganns and Bob Bucks, the Al Hayneses and Noel Wiens, the Charles Lindberghs, Edwin Musicks, Jimmy Doolittles and Beverly “Bevo” Howards — then you’re as saddened, appalled and ashamed as I am about any airmen who betray the faith and trust that are a flier’s hallmark by poor training, lack of skill or some senseless thing like a suicide.

Air carrier world is way above my pay scale, and I don’t know much about the qualification mechanisms of non-U.S. air carriers. But I do know a lot about training and about pilots, and I can’t help questioning the wisdom of “ab initio” pilot training and the MPL (Multi-Crew Pilot License). I’ve talked to flying friends all over the planet — instructors, current and retired U.S. and foreign air carrier pilots, and military, corporate and private airplane drivers. We all know that the recent “high visibility” air carrier accidents have had multiple causes, including cockpit (over)automation, pilot training and competency and, in a few, the incredibly chilling issue of the pilot’s mental health.

I was curious about airlines’ recruiting standards and what this MPL training process involves. I delved into the “state of the art” in dealing with substance abuse, depression and general mental health by talking to my AME (aviation medical examiner) friends … heck, even to my nonflying nephew who’s an amazingly sane and normal psychologist.

From what I gather, the International Civil Aviation Organization has approved a process that allows carriers to recruit young college graduates (in Europe and Asia that usually presupposes family money) and send them for concentrated training to some sunny place like Arizona or Australia after passing several days of “rigorous psychological, coordination, scholarly aptitude and technical evaluations.” The standard course is a two-year, 240-hour training program that includes only 60 hours in a “real” airplane with as few as 12 landings, no actual IFR exposure and no real-world interaction with ATC. Nor is there any provision to hone and upgrade an applicant’s basic flying skills (which, at 60 hours, have got to be minimal). MPL licensees are highly competent in dealing with the intricacies of programming onboard computers, pushing buttons and typing, which supposedly qualify them to climb into the right seat of an Airbus or Boeing. The rationale is that, in Europe and Asia, there’s little or no pilot pool from which to draw because of the tremendous expense and the lack of general aviation activity. With between $100,000 and $150,000 invested in his training, the airline needs this new hire to complete the program and be on board as quickly as possible.

The United States hasn’t adopted the quick-track ab initio and MPL concept. In fact, as a result of the Colgan Air crash and similar events, standards were raised considerably; to be hired by a Part 121 air carrier you need an ATP certificate, which means a minimum of 1,500 hours of flight time (1,000 or 1,250 hours in some approved programs leading to an ATP with restricted privileges). That’s overly restrictive to some but certainly better than 240 hours.

Is the Multi-Pilot Crew License a good idea? Even the European Cockpit Association calls current ab initio training “a shortcut to the cockpit at a lower price for the airline [that produces] pilots who only function within standard operating procedures and when the skies are gentle but do not possess what is really needed to ensure safe operations: airmanship.”

A retired airline captain and current International Air Transport Association auditor told me that it’s common policy for air carriers to “outlaw” hand-flying and mandate that the more efficient computers “fly” them from A to B — including approaches and landings. A Flight Operational Quality Assurance (FOQA) program records deviations from preplanned profiles — airspeeds, headings, altitudes, rates of climb and descent, vertical and lateral approach paths, long or short touchdowns and hard landings. This information is reviewed, and on at least one carrier in China, if the pilot is “guilty” of hand-flying he’s charged $500 per event. What airmanship skills even an experienced pilot may have had quickly atrophy and are unavailable if and when needed.

I guess the reality is that 999,999 times out of a million the computers and automated systems do a better job than a human pilot does. But does the “millionth” case become Air France 447 in the Atlantic, Asiana Airlines Flight 214 landing at San Francisco or the mysterious, “lost” Malaysia Airlines 370?

Of course it wasn’t automation, ­accelerated training or the pilot’s lack of skill or experience that caused the Germanwings Airbus crash … and it wasn’t the first suicide accident. This person was all too aware of which buttons to push and how to disable cockpit door locks. The issue here is mental health and what was or wasn’t known beforehand about him. My ­go-to guy for sensible and knowledgeable assessments of pilot medical issues is a retired but still consulting AME named Paul W. “Bill” Terrell, a retired Air Force doctor, county coroner and pilot who’s done thousands of military and FAA air carrier pilot medicals.

“Having another crew member in the cockpit may have prevented this event, but the deeper issue is trust. The FAA trusts the pilot to be honest, the ATC system trusts the pilot, the pilot trusts the guy who calibrated his altimeter, the AME trusts the pilot to be honest, and the passengers trust the airline to employ skilled and sane pilots. There’s just no way you can regulate the system to be perfect. Aviation is principled on trust.”

Nearly everybody suffers temporary episodes of depression, but Bill says that pilots are especially good at compartmentalizing emotions, as in “Yeah, she filed for divorce this morning but I have a flight to finish so I’ll deal with it when I get back. But,” he adds, “a suicidal person who takes others with him is very sick and very rarely a total surprise to others around them.

“In 48-plus years of ‘counting eyes and telling lies,’ I always scheduled enough time for some flying conversation with the pilot. And my 3,500 hours of flying and 1,500 back-seat hours in the military (going from backwards to Mach 2) make it easy to put my feet up on the exam table and talk about flying, airplanes, the family and personal issues. In all those years, two or three pilots shared concerns about dealing with a problem — loss of sleep, excessive worry and even transitory suicidal thoughts. We were able to arrange time off from flying and a return to work in due time.”

My editor is probably cringing as I editorialize about these issues, but are fast-track training, overdependence on automation and a crew member’s mental health totally separate issues, or has the foreign air carrier industry gone too far with an eye on the “bottom line” to make it easier for somebody on the edge to slip through the cracks? Conventional pilot training — at the local airport or in a college program — involves years of developing and demonstrating airmanship skills with “real” hours, exposure to lots of people and decision-making experience in actual conditions. The chances for a person with poor basic pilot skills or one who is profoundly troubled or depressed to make it through unnoticed would be far less likely.

Rereading some of the words in Gill Robb Wilson’s poem “One of the Trusted”:

They come because they trust you —

you the pilot. They turn over their lives

and their loved ones

and their hopes and dreams

to you for safekeeping.

To be a pilot means to be one of

the trusted …

to hold life in your hands —

to be worthy of faith.”

That makes me think we can do better.

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