Pilot skills eroding (commercial, mechanic, training, military)

[Cida]

Now, that's worrisome.


A Worry for Some Pilots: Their Hands-On Flying Skills Are Lacking

Pilots now spend more time learning these automated systems than practicing hands-on flying, so newer pilots are less comfortable with taking manual control when the computer steers them wrong...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/b...ed-planes.html

The Plane Can Fly Itself. Is That Always a Good Thing? - FTA Bin Files Servers LinkBox Pinwheel DreamLink Jynxbox IPTV

[StealthRabbit]

This is to be expected... (a real airplane works just like a video game... right?... get in sit down, recite the check list, and GO)

...Been to an auto parts store lately? If it is not listed on the computer, it can't be fixed / found... !!! (the old timers (yesterday) always just went to the back room and brought out something that would work (as it did for last 50 yrs)). Current generation has no concept of what will work, because they have never tangibly FIXED anything!.

I hire international mechanical engineers.

For past 5+ yrs, no (few) grads have ever done any 'tinkering'... a far cry from hiring a farm kid that has been welding and fabbing for 10 yrs before applying for a job. Not one of the last (7) I interviewed had done anything more complicated than change a tire on a car. (And I don't mean running a tire machine!).

On the 'training' end... Many pilots learned / earned their stripes under extreme pressure, discipline, and being placed in many 'do-it-wrong-and die' situations (Military / Bush pilots). You don't 'learn' this type of 'creative' / effective FAST response without that type of experience. (and it isn't always fun, and never easy).

There are lots of studies on this.
We (society) is in a major transition. From 'doing / purposeful solutions' - to 'expecting everything to just work out as it is supposed to'...

Flying OFTEN works out well (We have become accustomed to that)
Not always.

When you need a creative solution, it better be on the top of your head, and you better be at the top of your game, and actually PRACTICED / expecting that to happen someday. You remember Sully mentioning that... He had trained again and again, and trained others again and again to formulate and be prepared to execute an unconventional but immediately necessary response.

[Hulsker 1856]

Originally Posted by Cida

Now, that's worrisome.

A Worry for Some Pilots: Their Hands-On Flying Skills Are Lacking

Pilots now spend more time learning these automated systems than practicing hands-on flying, so newer pilots are less comfortable with taking manual control when the computer steers them wrong...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/b...ed-planes.html

The Plane Can Fly Itself. Is That Always a Good Thing? - FTA Bin Files Servers LinkBox Pinwheel DreamLink Jynxbox IPTV

Note, of course, that all of this has made flying more safe. That's why the headlines aren't a parade numerous airliners going down every year in the United States, like when I was a kid in the 1980s, despite the fact that today there are far more flights.

There's a big picture here, and it's good.

[SluggoF16]

My nephew is an aspiring airline pilot, now working on his commercial certificate. He is learning at a university aviation school with a fleet of glass cockpit Warriors and Seminoles. My brother in law is also learning to fly, something he always wanted to do and now that his financial situation allows it, he's learning in a round-gauge 172. At Christmas we were all together, talking aviation, and I pulled out my phone and called up SkyVector. We looked at various airspaces (including DFW's Class B with both the sectional and expanded Terminal Area Chart) and I realized that my BIL was very much aware of what he was seeing, talking excitedly about this and that, while my nephew was frankly bamboozled, with that dog-looking-at-a-wristwatch appearance. I asked how he navigated when he flew a long XC to Kansas City; he said he programmed the Avidyne Entegra and flew the magenta line, since his instructors said it was more efficient and it's what he would see five years from now in his RJ. The basics are being taught, he needed the skills to pass the PVT certification, but in the last year since then his map-reading skills have eroded in favor of following a programmed line.

When the tech fails, now what? There have been several crashes where the tech has failed and the pilots have been unable to take control and, to quote Goose in Top Gun, "...do some of that pilot sh1t!" in part because the basics are not being taught with the vigor they used to be.

[kell490]

Reminds me of air France 447 the least experienced pilot could not understand what was going on kept holding the stick back.