How Safe Is Flying?

While chatting on the golf course, someone mentioned how few airline accidents there were. I was surprised by his comment, because I believe there are far too many airline accidents and incidents. But then I realized unless they hit the media people don’t know. Perhaps they are so frequent these days, they become white noise. I just happen to visit the Aeroinside website often to see what’s happening, and the numbers shock me. I also know of incidents and an accident that did not make it to this site for one of these big four, because nobody died and the company hid it. Therefore, these numbers might reflect lower than the actual numbers. Below is what is what I learned from 2022 to present time.

Data of the Big Four

The greatest takeaway, is the industry is not getting better. In fact, the incidents appear to be on the rise and the accidents are far too many. Why? It’s never just one thing, but often many. I believe that reduced training in combination with forced retirements is reflected in these results.

FAA CUTS TRAINING

The FAA cut the training footprint back in 2005 by allowing for the Advanced Qualification Program (AQP) as 14 CFR Part 121. This is a voluntary regulation that enabled the airlines to shorten the footprint and train to “proficiency” not necessarily compentancy.

Thus assertions that the pilot shortage is creating substandard training, I would contend no. The FAA allowed for this reduction in training for airlines profitability. Yet, they justified it. Accident reports identified that poor crew communications were contributing to accidents. Therefore, if we trained “crews” under AQP, and not individual performance under Appendix F, then we would train out those communication problems.

Each airline could make their own program, but there were a few requirements: Train like you fly and ensure a crew complement were two. When I first began flying the wide body two-person jets, there was a requirement for four pilots. That shifted to three pilots depending upon departure and duty times. Some still require four pilots. However, the three pilot crews were staffed with one captain and two first officers to save money. I’ve explained AQP in more detail in my recent AIR21 book.

This imbalance created added training expense if the airlines were to follow the crew complement requirement, because they had more first officers than captains. Thus, they had to place a training captain in the seat if they did not have captain. This is how I conducted my A350 training, without doing my required pilot monitoring duties.

The rationale the FAA gave for the reduction of the footprint was 50% of the pilot’s learning was their Pilot Not Flying duties (PNF). This term, pilot not flying, became a contention for some, so many airlines use the term Pilot Monitoring (PM). I would assert that sometimes the PMs job is the most difficult due to multitasking of ATC communications, programming the computer, and if the pilot happens to hand fly, ensuring all ATC directives are inserted into the mode control panel (MCP) or flight control unit (FCU). Not to mention the PM is also responsible for situational awareness.

With a crew complement, 50% of this shortened footprint was supposed to be those PM duties. But what happens when two first officers are paired together? The PM duties are in the wrong seat. Therefore these pilots get no operational experience in their respective seat. This means that pilots training is further diminished.

For awhile this might have been okay. But with a new generation of pilots onboarding without experience combined with ageism and archaic thinking, the senior pilots with 30 years plus of experience are being forced to retire. I do not believe that our current training is adequate for the new generation of pilots. When the FAA allowed airlines to cut the footprint, those old guys understood the planes, had a plethora of experience and this did not impact them.

I Know a Guy….

Yes we all know a guy who is old and should not be flying. I also know many young pilots who I would put my life in their hands. But these are the outliers and not the norm. Performance should never be measured by hours, age, race or sex. Anyone who creates a metric to decide who should fly because of a “category” misses the point of safety. Performance is the key and the statistics show we are getting worse, not better.

Immediate Solution

Extend the age requirement to 68. Because of forced retirement of senior pilots, some of those new guys are also jumping into a captain position as a new hire. A pilot bringing experience to the table, there is no problem. But those coming form colleges who are allowed reduced flight hours and learned from other students building their time, might not fit that mold.

Longterm Solution: Fix training!

While the FAA identified communication issues that attributed to pilot error to justify AQP, what they failed to explain is that the NTSB has also identified lack of understanding to be a contributing factor. My research identifies this to be true, and the more pilots train their performance decreases. Yet the FAA has approved, at least at Delta, a teach yourself at home, by memorizing a “Learning objective document” (LOD) and take a test. A pilot today can zip through airline training and earn a type rating in 4-6 weeks. Of which once took many months.

DATA from Regionals

When people ask me who they should fly on, I never tell them who “not” to fly, but I have always said Alaska has great culture and phenomenal training. They put an effort into the level of understanding, the need to hand fly, and the importance of information sharing. While management at a new hire class of one of the big 4 will say, “This is what a pilot looks like” with their hat proudly perched, or “don’t call in fatigued, it’s the other f word,” Alaska management tells their pilots they value their input because they are new eyes. And they mean it. This is a difference between a positive culture, and training. Zero accidents and a decrease from two incidents to none over four years is something to be proud of. But until other airlines get their training under control, we need to retain those senior pilots. I am certain Alaska’s culture would want to retain theirs as well.

Endeavor Air Perfomance

What is most interesting about Endeavor’s performance is that all three accidents were occurred on landing. The first two hitting the wing, the third ripped it off. But, these were landing issues.

Each event, accident and incident is an opportunity for airlines to fix a problem. Clearly Endeavor could have identified there might be a problem with landing. Did they improve training? It does not look like they solved the problem. This is one of those examples that when there is an issue airline management needs to be accountable, admit perhaps they have not provided the pilots the proper tools, and improve training. One strike. Two strike. Three they crash.

What Do You Think?

Does anyone think that in today’s world that accidents and incidents should be increasing? They say regulations are written in blood, but this is now taking on a new meaning. What do you think the problems are? Could we benefit from improving training and the level of understanding? Would retaining experienced pilots help?

I’m warning all you pilots, and unions, who don’t think there is a problem. If this trajectory meets up with NextGen and they get the security challenges resolved, then pilots will become obsolete. Automation will be safer than the pilot. The only thing that pilots can do beyond automation is think and exercise judgement. If the current cadre of pilots are learning by rote memorization and continue to increase incidents and pilot error, you will be replaced. Don’t let that happened. Demand to learn more about the equipment you fly. Do not object to those senior pilots sitting to your left for a couple years, learn from them.