Contributing to Safety

During the General Aviation Awards webinar this week, Greg Feith, former Senior Air Safety Investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, observed, sadly, that this has been a tough month for aviation. Unfortunately, this is true. Losses ranged from a California accident on Super Bowl Sunday that left a pilot and four people on the ground dead, to the Texas crash of an Atlas 767 flying cargo for Amazon a few days ago that left its crew of three dead.   All of these have been tragic and our hearts go out to the families of the lost.

The temptation is always strong to try to figure out what went wrong. That seems to be particularly true with pilots. Perhaps it is because we tend to be analytical or perhaps, to borrow a page from Ernest K. Gann, we try to understand why something about which we are so passionate has caused such grief. Or, most likely, it's a combination of both. I don't know for certain. What is certain, though, is that it is far too early in the investigative process to speculate. The NTSB and FAA will likely find answers and, hopefully, make recommendations that will help prevent future tragedies.

Teaching the World How to Fly

In both eMentor and Mentor magazine, I have gone out of my way to avoid telling you what my favorite products might be. I consider this both good manners and good business. Good manners because my opinion is just that - my opinion. I'm sure that in a group as large as NAFI's membership, someone will differ with me and I just don't see a reason to needlessly offend anyone. It's good business because we have many sponsors, some of whom compete for your dollars, and I don't want to be perceived as endorsing, or give the impression that NAFI is endorsing, one fine product over another. These are choices you make as individuals.

Because the exception often proves the rule, and because a headline caught my eye, I'm going to deviate from my policy. EAA recently issued a press release saying it would be honoring the Boeing 747's 50th anniversary at AirVenture 2019. I will say, without apology to anyone, and with all due respect to the fans of the Constellation, DC-3, L1011, Airbus, etc., that the Boeing 747, in all its variants, is the most beautiful transport category aircraft ever built, bar none. The only concession I'll make in this regard is the Dreamlifter - its beauty is on the order of that of the Super Guppy, mainly because their form fills a very special function.

Procedure vs. Technique

Like many of you, I perform stage checks for other instructors, helping them evaluate and validate their students' progress. I also ask other instructors to do the same for me. Doing this helps ensure that there is objectivity in the process, allows the student to experience flying with another instructor in the airplane, which will be beneficial during the practical test, and provides both the instructor and the student fresh perspective.

I was recently reminded of this when I conducted a simulator session with another instructor's student. Although an advanced aviation training device is not the perfect substitute for the real thing, it did allow me to observe and evaluate the student's procedures, situational awareness, and their ability to handle situations under pressure. This particular student did very well, with a minimum of suggested corrective actions, mostly about more efficient emergency procedures.

More Than Math

I recently read a great conversation in the Facebook group "CFI Discussion Group, Certificated Flight Instructor" regarding the use of the venerable E6B. The original poster stated that they had come back to aviation after an over 20-year hiatus and used an electronic E6B during his currency training. His CFI accepted it but admonished him to re-learn the manual "whiz wheel."

A lot of the resulting conversation revolved around the reliability of the manual E6B ("doesn't need batteries!") vs. the accuracy and ease of entering numbers into an electronic device. Being of an age where I can use both a slide rule and a high-end calculator, or, if you prefer, remember how to use a rotary phone while being comfortable with a smart phone, I find these discussions intriguing because I can see both sides. And, to be honest, I use Foreflight for my own charts and flight planning, because it is convenient, easy, and accurate.

Federal Bureaucracy Returning to Normal

It will be interesting to see how quickly things return to normal after the longest partial shutdown of the federal government shutdown in U.S. history. Throughout the shutdown there were many concerns expressed and solutions found for such issues as the expiration of temporary pilot and flight instructor certificates. Hopefully, most of that will be behind us soon, if not already.

Normal business with the FAA and other agencies was disrupted, of course. One example of such disruption was the postponement of the FAA UAS Symposium in late February, a major event. Those of us involved in that industry are still waiting the rescheduled date. Other, less dramatic examples are the inability to contact FSDOs, regional and national headquarters, etc. Fortunately, ATC was able to function for the most part, although there was a snarl on the East Coast most notably at New York's LaGuardia, when staffing levels at facilities fell below normal levels due to controllers calling in sick. Additionally, TSA facilities were strained, with some checkpoints closed at some airports, due to higher than normal sick calls. Fortunately, there were no incidents or air accidents related to the shutdown, as nearly as I can determine.

Do What's Right

I've just seen an accident report for something that happened near Gatlinburg-Pigeon Forge airport a couple of years ago. According to the NTSB report, a non-IFR pilot descended through an undercast and, at 5,400 feet MSL, according to the radar track, hit a mountain with a 6,500-foot elevation. The pilot apparently had a history of flouting the rules and had been counseled about his behavior by an experienced instructor several times in the past. Sadly, there were two innocent passengers who also perished in the crash. You can read the report here.

This event caught my attention because I've been to that airport, spending a weekend at a time-share with my wife. We flew in when the weather was VMC and, although the Smoky Mountains don't have the high jagged peaks that characterize the mountains of the west, they are very impressive. The minimum safe altitudes for both airway and off-airway navigation highlight the need for being circumspect in navigating the area. A descent into an undercast is always fraught with risks that need to be mitigated, but doing so blindly without knowing why and how the IFR system works strikes me as foolhardy at best and suicidal at worst.

More About Waypoints

Even Santa Practices

We flight instructors encourage our students, regardless of their level of achievement, to stay proficient. Whether we want a new student to practice landings, encourage a more advanced pilot to learn more about the aircraft they fly, or ensure that the fundamentals aren't forgotten, we want those we touch to be better pilots. This usually results in a pilot spending a lifetime working to get better at their craft, not unlike a musician practicing pieces they have already played hundreds of times before.

Think of it. How many times have you flown the same instrument approaches? They're familiar, like a good book revisited, but, like rereading that book, we seek nuances and new enjoyment. Hold the course more precisely; maintain airspeed while staying on the glideslope, freezing the needles in the center while striving to land on the exact mark on the runway once we've completed the approach. What a great feeling of satisfaction.

You Might Save A Life

I had a biennial last week. No, not a flight review. Rather, I needed to complete my recertification in CPR and first aid, something that is required by my employer. This is a wonderful course that teaches us how to perform CPR, the proper use of automatic external defibrillators (also known as AEDs), and how to perform first aid. Like flight training, it's not necessarily easy to learn and remember these skills, but, once you know them, they stay with you.

Our instructor did bring up some sobering statistics, which you can find here, and where you can also find a course to take. There are more than 350,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the United States each year, 70 percent of which are in the home. There is a 90 percent mortality rate for victims prior to reaching the hospital. Effective CPR in the first few minutes of cardiac arrest can increase the chance of survival by 2 or 3 times. If CPR is not performed right away, the chances of survival go down 7 percent for every minute of delay. Fewer than 20 percent of Americans are equipped to perform CPR in an emergency.

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Giving Thanks: How You Can Help

The Common Good

One of the truisms of becoming flight instructors is that we learn more about flying and about ourselves than we ever thought possible. This is something I say to CFI candidates and inexperienced CFIs all the time, but it's easy to forget.

I was perusing a thread in the Facebook "CFI Discussion Group" launched back in September by a new instructor. He was musing about it being hard to let a new student touch the controls. And I think that was true for a lot of us.

LSA Changes, Source Says - Discuss

It doesn't take much to get a bunch of pilots, let alone instructors, engaged in a good healthy round of hangar talk. Recently, AvWeb published an article quoting a source saying the FAA is entertaining changing the Light Sport Rules. One of the ideas on the table is possibly increasing the weight limit of a Light Sport Aircraft to 3600 pounds.

The possibility of increasing the maximum gross weight of an LSA is what really caught the attention of the members of one of the CFI Facebook groups I follow. Opinions ranged from this being a good idea to stimulate new construction and/or pilot starts to this being way too much airplane for a beginner. As for "being too much airplane," the counter argument was that, if this is where a pilot starts, they wouldn't know any differently anyway. Another concern that was raised was that this might mean an influx of students that expect to fly Saratogas or Cessna 206s with only 20 hours of training. The response, as you might expect, was that flight training is performance-based and that no good flight instructor would allow a pilot to go on a checkride before they were ready.

Helping New CFIs

I happened upon a column this week in the Nebraska Department of Transportation's PIREPS electronic October/November 2018 newsletter. The article was written by Lee Svobada, a well-respected designated examiner in the Omaha area and can be found here.  It was entitled "Delinquent Items" and was a brief listing of the things he has found missing in logbooks and records, be they the applicant's or the aircraft's. In full disclosure, I once sent him a candidate for a single-engine commercial add-on and forgot the endorsement that certified the candidate had received and logged training time from me in the previous two calendar months. That was an embarrassing lesson learned.

Some of items Svoboda passes on in his article are things like an aircraft missing placards, student pilot certificates not having been signed, the applicant checking the wrong class of aircraft (although I'm not sure how that can happen in IACRA) and the CFI has not signed off on the application and so on. Larry Bothe, writing in NAFI's Mentor magazine has made many similar, if not the same points.

What Should We Do?

The recent event in Melbourne, Florida, where a student pilot attempted to steal an American Airlines Airbus prompted discussion in the flight instructor forums I frequent. In this case, before things got too far, the maintenance crews intercepted the perpetrator and prevented another possible tragedy.

So, as I asked a few weeks ago after the suicide-by-airplane event in Seattle, what is our responsibility as flight instructors? We are the people who have the closest contact with our students, so I suspect that we would notice behavior that is indicative of stress or other issues in their lives. But most of us are not mental health or behavioral experts. Besides, one person's out-of-norm behavior is someone else's eccentricity. In my own case, I think people would be worried about me if I showed up at an aviation event
without one of my cowboy hats.

Good Instruction and Kudos to Maggie

By now most of you have heard the story of Maggie Taraska, the 17-year old student pilot who, at the start of a solo cross-country flight, experienced an emergency that most of us have never faced. Shortly after takeoff from Beverly Regional Airport in Massachusetts, the pilot of a Waco that was to depart behind her reported to the tower that the right main gear of the Piper Warrior Taraska was flying had fallen off.

When you listen to the audio of the tower communications here, you'll recognize that Taraska was very anxious to find herself in this situation. And, to be perfectly frank, I think most, if not all, of us would be too. I know I would. At this point, things could easily have gone badly, but they didn't.

Advice for the Grounded

One of the bigger challenges I face as chair of NAFI's Board of Directors is filling this space. I am always conscious of the fact that what I write has to be of some interest to NAFI's membership as well as relevant to being flight instructors. Often, these missives are observations that I've made while talking to other pilots, flying with students, flying myself or on commercial airlines for work. I enjoy the challenge and most of your feedback has been positive, for which I'm grateful.

As some of you may know, I'm stuck on the ground for another few months because of a health issue that surfaced back in July. I've been assured that there will be no problems with my flying once I get re-assessed in October, but in the meantime I'm not even allowed to fly on a commercial aircraft, let alone exercise my privileges as a pilot or flight instructor. I find myself spending a lot of my outdoor time looking up when I hear something fly by.

How to Be Wrong

Randall Munroe publishes an Internet cartoon strip called "xkcd." A few years ago, he published one that struck me as particularly insightful and funny because the punch line was: "Someone is wrong on the Internet." You can see it here.

The reason that particular cartoon resonated with me is because I've been that guy. Moreover, I think we've all been that guy. And not necessarily when we participate in flame wars on social media.

A Ways to Go

In a recent conversation with a friend, we started comparing notes about aviation accidents and incidents in the news. I think it started as part of the conversation about last week's successful emergency landing of rapper Post Malone's Gulfstream G-IV after it lost two tires on takeoff from New Jersey's Teterboro Airport. The crew landed the jet safely at Stewart International Airport near Newburgh, New York after circling for several hours to burn off the fuel load it carried for its planned trip to London, England. This was nationwide news, due to the celebrity of the passenger and his entourage of about 16 souls, along with the fact that it was a "slow motion" emergency. That is, one that played out slowly enough to where the news services could get into position to cover it live.

From there, our conversation continued into the fact that there are a lot of incidents and accidents that don't rise to that level of public awareness, for whatever reason. I've become somewhat more aware of them due to social media. In the various groups to which I belong, there are many stories from around the world where we share what has happened recently, all too often sharing condolences.

About Flight Reviews

Periodically, the subject of flight reviews and whether or not a pilot "passes" one comes up in conversation or shows up in social media. This is one of those areas of flight instruction that necessitates a business discussion about time and pricing -- the bottom line for me is really about communication, and how good a job we do explaining the flight review process, the time it may take and what it might cost.
 
To damp down any possible confusion among older pilots, I'm talking about what the FAA previously referred to as a biennial flight review, abbreviated BFR. Information directly from the FAA about conducting an effective flight review can be found here. Meanwhile, a discussion of the separate but related subject of "stage checks," and how members feel about them appears in the next issue of Mentor's Feedback/Briefs section which you'll be seeing in September.
 
The most recent example I have comes from the Facebook group CFI Discussion Group, Certificated Flight Instructor. One of its members described a situation where a client didn't meet the minimum standards for a flight review, and how that client felt that they were being cheated by the instructor, particularly after that instructor told the client he'd be happy to provide additional training at the hourly rate.
 
Having been in this situation myself, I'm going to take the instructor at his word. I've withheld a flight review endorsement on the basis of performance. As the author of the post pointed out, if something happens to someone after I give them the endorsement, I'll likely have to spend a fair amount of time answering questions, at the very least. More importantly, I take the moral obligation of ensuring that a pilot is competent to fly and be safe in the National Airspace System pretty seriously. After all, these are people with family and friends who count on them, and we all share in the use of the sky.
 
Frankly, for the ground portion of the review, I have a lot of difficulty understanding how we can meet the requirements of 14CFR61.56 in only one hour. It usually takes me about two hours to go through the material recommended by the FAA publication
Conducting an Effective Flight Review, which I linked to above. As for the flight portion, by the time we get out to the practice area, do the maneuvers the pilot and I discussed, and come back and land, we're looking at about 1.3 to 1.5 hours. And this is assuming that all of the activity meets standards. If there's an area that needs work, the time needed goes up accordingly.
 
My strategy is to advise the pilot up front that this will take more than the minimum of one hour on the ground and in the air. I also let them know that there is no guarantee that I will sign them off. I also let them know that we will both assess their performance, but that I am the final arbiter. I've found that establishing ground rules in this manner saves a lot of heartache later. I can't think of a time when someone gave me grief about a flight review that needed extra time.
 
This all leads me to the question of the pilot who feels aggrieved that they didn't pass in the minimums or didn't pass at all. We've all heard stories of pilots that "go shopping" for someone that will just sign them off. Given the current regulations, that kind of behavior probably can't be stopped. So how do we encourage pilots to take the opportunity to improve their skills and instructors to uphold high standards during flight reviews? I'd love to hear your thoughts.