Another major problem seems to be the 1500 hour rule: you must have 1500 hours of flight time before you qualify for a commercial pilot’s license.
I blame the death of General Aviation. Who wants to fly airplanes for fun or for a living, when you can ‘fly’ much cooler planes in VR and blast aliens in them? It’s a lot cheaper too.
Honestly, by 65-70 a lot of people would be eliminated by the usual deficits of aging. I don’t care how healthy you are, how good your genes, how well you take care of yourself - by that point in time your reaction time is decreasing, your vision, especially your night vision, is deteriorating, and you’re less resilient in general. While there are some exceptional people who can maintain the required standards into their 70’s they are very few. Extending the retirement age only benefits a very small fraction of pilots and will NOT solve the pilot shortage problems.
The retirement age we speak of applies ONLY to a certain category of pilots. Call them “airline pilots” (because I don’t want to bog down in details). Any of those people who wish to continue flying are welcome to continue obtaining their 2nd class medicals and continue flying commercially in areas like charter. Heck, once knew a fine lady who was still allowed to fly commercially into her 90’s… but not as an airline pilot. So, the “strong physical exam” option does exist, but not for those flying the airlines.
Now, we may wish to debate if that highest standard really is required to fly an airplane carrying several hundred passengers or not. But that’s a slightly different question than I’ve been addressing the past few posts.
It’s a hell of a lot cheaper!
Just due to finances I don’t expect to ever take the stick again. It’s not from lack of desire or lack of ability, I just don’t have the money to burn.
Yes, the demise of GA is part of the problem, it make it much, much more difficult to gain to required hours. Cost is a huge problem. Low wages for the bottom rungs of the profession are a problem. No one seems to have any interest in fixing any of this.
There’s also an issue with the supply line for new air traffic controllers.
I sometimes think the folks with the money/running the companies are expecting to replace the pilots and ATC with AI and robots, and maybe they will, but until that time we still need trained humans. Without them the whole system comes to a halt.
I think this is the biggest problem. I know I’ve ranted in the past about how GA manufacturers shot themselves in the foot by not making piston singles for 11 years. It was pointed out that the manufacturers were competing against their own products, as old planes are just as good as new ones. (Nevertheless, it was common in the '70s for FBOs to replace their planes at around 5,000 hours and buy new ones.) Unfortunately, the hiatus came at a particularly bad time. By the time GARA was passed, used aircraft were too expensive because of the lack of new ones, and new ones were too expensive because of minuscule production. Having been too expensive for years, many, many people never considered learning to fly. And in 1994 there were other things to do. The year before, the Internet was made available to the public. Cable TV networks were expanding and providing a gazillion channels at which people could spend their time. Personal watercraft and quadrunners had been around for a decade or so, and they were becoming ever more popular. Video games were becoming better and better.
There were (and are) just too many distractions for people to have the desire to fly, or even consider flying. (And I agree with you. I’m not flying because I can’t afford it. If I could, I’d be flying every day.)
The NTSB found that pilot distraction created by posting to social media in flight during a low-altitude pipeline patrol was the probable cause of a 2021 crash involving a Cessna 182 that struck a radio tower guy wire in St. Louis, Michigan. The accident killed the 23-year-old pilot and sole occupant, Slade Martin. …
[T]he NTSB determined the video was posted 35 seconds before the accident.
Don’t text and drive fly.
A strong physical would help. But the thing the Feds are most worried but with the meatspace component of aviation is sudden incapacitation. As one gets older the odds go up greatly.
For roughly 25% of heart disease patients the first sign of a problem is their heart stopping permanently. The point being that medical science cannot yet detect many impending catastrophic failure modes.
Just like we don’t try to inspect wing spars for cracks. Instead we say they’re good for 15,000 hours or whatever and throw them away after that. Where you can’t inspect in reliability you need to start by building reliability in as best you can, then mitigate the early failure threat by cutting off the long tail real early. Much too early in most cases, but just barely in time for the worst case.
Flight medicals don’t scan fro clogged arteries. If a pilot’'s heart is beating normally then all is well.
Not quite, but you’re much more right than wrong.
You’re right that for a second or third class medical (IOW non-airline) if your heart sounds normal enough through a stethoscope and your BP isn’t insane you’re good to go.
An EKG is required for a first class medical (IOW airline) at age 35 and annually at/after age 40. Which EKG can’t directly detect clogged coronary arteries, but can detect some of the consequences of clogged arteries and other common cardiac deteriorations. EKG abnormalities are a common cause of non-issuance followed by further deeper investigation and then issuance if all is OK, or treatment, rehab, then reexamination if all is not OK.
One of my friends (a singer) posted this on Facebook.
Unfortunately, tragedy has struck our event. One of the acrobatic planes crashed. The pilot ejected, but the resulting shrapnel hit a family in a car. A girl was killed. The rest of the event, including the concert, has been canceled.
Ouch. Two observations from the vid:
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The nose of the aircraft pitched down sharply as he ejected. Perhaps “recoil” from the seat exhaust impinging on the cckpit & forward fuselage. Perhaps just nose-down trim taking effect as he released the stick, but it was a more abrupt transition than I’d expect for that.
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The two cars that passed by the camera position early in the thread would have been near where the fireball ended at the time it got there. Those frames may be the last pictures of that family intact. Or not. No way for us to know until somebody there works it out one way or the other.
yes
I lost a close friend because of this. It was compounded by ignoring symptoms. He had a massive heart attack and waited too long to seek help. Pilots will often ignore anything that might draw the attention of Doctors. He exercised and ate right.
I would advise airline pilots to get their arteries scanned away from the prying eyes of the FAA.
I’m wondering if the pilot trimmed it nose down in an attempt to drive it into the airport grounds.
Maybe. I’d sooner expect it was in trim at the time of the problem onset (I assume engine failure) and he bled off speed semi-maintaining altitude as he was sorting out his problem then decided to bail. By then the aircraft might be 20 or 30 knots slower than trimmed.
It’s generally desirable to bail out with the nose rising, not falling. You want positive G on the airplane as the seat fires. If you’re at all light in the saddle when the seat fires, it’ll collide more violently with your rump and stretched out spine greatly increasing the odds of a spinal injury.
I have read in various sources in various eras that some of the jet aerobatic teams fly the group formation with a bunch of nose-down trim all the time. Which might be what we saw in the vid.
Supposedly that gives a more precise ability to maintain ultra-tight formation. I was sure no Thunderbird, but that seems a bit counter-intuitive to me. What it would do in the case of a diamond or 1-2-3 triangle formation or even a larger gaggle is cause any pilot suffering incapacitation or simple momentary inattention to tend to fall out the bottom of the formation promptly, thereby protecting the rest of the formation from an instant multi-jet fireball. So even if it makes maintaining position more difficult, not easier, it might be a form of safety insurance the team is willing to pay.
As my AME often said: It’s more important to keep you alive than keep you employed. You’re totally right that many pilots have that attitude. It’s also short-sighted and foolish. Not to mention strictly speaking illegal.
I hope the extent of that attitude is dying off with my generation. I don’t know that it is or isn’t. But the FAA is definitely working hard at being a lot more understanding of medically manageable problems. So for every 20 guys who do as your friend did, 19 of them would die unnecessarily, being able to both keep their career and be treated for their heart problems if only they’d tried.
I’m sorry your pal died in fear of the FAA.
Thanks. That of course was my opinion of what happened. His income would have been insured so it wasn’t the loss of an airline job. Flying was his life.
For the Blue Angels at least, it’s not trim, but a spring. I went to a talk where one of the pilots said it was in part to dial out the small amount of slop found at neutral-forces dead center. This video describes it more as the safety feature you’re proposing.
The “Spring” is the Artificial Feel System. Prior to the F-18 all of the aircraft the Blues flew had manual trim…which allowed the pilots to dial in trim that would push them away from the formation if they relaxed the pressure on the control stick. This provided a safety mechanism. But the F-18A/C/D didn’t have manual trim so in order to provide this pressure on the stick they installed a spring called the AFS. It has four levels of push in multiples of 8 pounds of pressure…from 8 pounds up to 32 pounds. The Blues fly their display with 32 pounds of pressure on the stick. The AFS is first discussed at the 30 minute mark.
thanks for posting that. I can’t imagine 32 lbs of stick force but it makes sense to take out neutral trim slop… Maybe there’s more to the explanation.
I figure I’ve been to near 40 of the 60-odd years of Reno Air Race, and never was present for a crash till the last two years in a row. Well, no more. It’s over. Hate to have it go down like that.