Aerospace 11 - Pilots In The Wrong Occupation

Recently, I read a very important and topical article in Aviation Week magazine that, I believe, should be diligently read, and I have copied some extracts here.

Unless you've spent your entire life shielded from all realities, you've probably heard of an aircraft pilot who shouldn't pilot;  a person who, despite having accumulated a wealth of flight hours, would be better suited to a different occupation.

Yet while most of us are determined by nature, as a group we tend to hide when it comes to exposing bad habits.  We do nothing, remain quiet, and hope that perhaps the system will sort out a truly bad pilot, or someone else will sound the alarm.

And even if you do turn somebody in for inability or negligence, such failings are hard to define and even more difficult to prove.  After all, to become a licensed pilot, one needs to have obtained a certain amount of practical flying experience and demonstrate both the knowledge and skill described by the government.  But as has been documented in many fatal accidents, faults in personality and attitude rather than a lack of technical expertise are sometimes key to a flight's failure.

"Personality needs to be considered on a level of importance right along with piloting skills.  A safe pilot needs to be able to comfortably multi-task, keep an open mind, assimilate quickly and see the big picture.  When you have a pilot with an angry, ticked-off personality, his world shrinks, and his viewpoint is narrowed before he even gets in the cockpit.  That in itself is a weakness, and for the captain -- who is the purveyor of safety -- his persona becomes a liability."says Gregory Feith, an ATP and former senior accident investigator with the NTSB.

While pilots are typically enthusiastic about flying, there are exceptions.  In some Asian countries candidates are selected to become pilots based upon their academic performance, rather than any interest or aptitude on their part to pilot airplanes.  And there are youngsters in the United States who feel compelled to become pilots because it's a family tradition.

Pilot training and testing has never been about grading performance ... it's always been a pass or fail with nothing in between.  Judging a pilot who failed a check as weak is as useless as judging a pilot with a perfect record as good. There is no objective measure of a good pilot in the system.

"Make no mistake," says Feith, "there are people sitting in cockpits today because their peer group or their personal history put them there.  They are convinced that they need to be there, rather than should be there, and there are few ways to determine until after the fact -- even on personality tests -- how these pilots are going to perform under pressure."

We must be wary of pilots who repeatedly blame others -- be they crewmembers, air traffic controllers or the weather briefer -- for what is essentially their own screw-up.  It seems that, if it's never their fault, then it's never -- in their minds -- their responsibility.  If that's the case, then maybe they're really not vested in what's happening.

In addition to being cheap to hire, a great thing about low experience pilots is they haven't been flying long enough to have made many mistakes. They look great on paper and the vetting process is easy.  And they remain in the cockpit despite, or some might argue, because of, the system.  Feith says unions can protect flawed pilots, and training companies exist to improve, not eject, pilots of all skill levels.  "They also don't relish being the bearers of bad news as to the quality of the pilots you've hired,'' Feith observes, ``and corporate flight department managers may never know if a candidate passed extraordinarily -- or barely marginally -- because it's a hard thing to objectify.''

"We are each personally accountable for enhancing safety as a whole," says Feith.  "But it's not the collective that enhances safety, it's the individuals within the collective who do so."

Thanks to Business and Commercial Aviation