Pilot Debrief.

[Gmc28]

On 1/31/2025 at 6:26 PM, p6x said:

@Gmc28

Again, during my training, one of the key was to avoid complacency at all costs, and to be on the look out at all times. Which we know is extremely difficult to achieve because human beings are unable to focus for long period of times. Hence, the reason why when you are on guard, there are frequent changes.

This is why our specific training was always different, and never predictable, so we could never start to be cosy and keeping on our toes at all times.

I believe that civil aviation has become a real snooze compared to what it used to be. There are too many aids that somehow diminish your ability to use the skills that you worked so hard to get during your training.

I will only give you an example: AF447...

Cruising altitude, auto-pilot, suddenly pitot tubes freeze, no more airspeed indication, auto-pilot exits, and none of the flight crew managed to recover, the FO was pulling on the stick, stalling the aircraft until they hit the water. Since then, AF has instigated scheduled training for pilots to manage situations which are very seldom encountered or never encountered.

Since you seem to be an aviator, tell me; is there any specific training for TCAS warnings in flight simulators? situations where you have minimum response time?

complacency is unquestionably our #1 issue, based on industry data, as well as data from within my own company, where during this last big pilot shortage everyone became afraid of allowing such low time pilots into the professional ranks due to necessity.  but turns out the strong majority of issues that are captured in our SMS are not from inexperienced pilots, but from highly experienced pilots being complacent. 

as you note, battling complacency is a real challenge.  I don’t have the answers, just lots of little things we all do. 

that air france thing, ugh.  there’s usually more to the story, and I get that, but from where i sit that right seater had no business being there, hauling back on the stick in panic/animal-reflex like he was.  Thats actually something i thought our industry was doing a good job, training that out of people…. “i need to go up, so pull up”, which of course is all wrong in a stall.  sim training (etc) seems to have generally done a good job training that out of people, but apparently not good enough.  And so thats where experience does play into safety…. pilots who have never had to see what they’ll do under true, unanticipated issues, are real wildcards in my mind.  Darwin at work… you need to see some real action/issues before you and the rest of the world will know how you’re wired.  then after that, yes, proper training.  but there are so, so many pilots flying, and with such an astronomically fantastic safety record compared to any other normal transport mode, it sort of falls into the “it’s going to happen now and then” category, though that understandably sounds disrespectful to those who died. 

the repetition which leads to complacency is co-mingled with great habits that are formed, which are part of “experience”.  we achieve the experience to be able to be comfortable and competent, no longer the wound-up, slightly anxious, “low timer”, but with that comes a natural regression into some degree of complacency.  There’s no substitute for self discipline.  beyond that, i do think that AI will be a true plus here, though it will take forever to benefit us, as it takes soooo long for the FAA and our litigious society to get anything done in commercial aviation.  that said, as alluded earlier, the overall safety record is so good there actually shouldn’t be any panic-type approach to any of this.  

in fact, i don’t have near enough info for a qualified final opinion, but i don’t know in this case what I would change on the side of CRJ crew/industry side.  any changes made to address this specific issue would probably have negative effects on other scenarios.  its the military side in this case that probably needs to be looked at for possible enhancements, or more simplistically, just re-configuration of the airspace.  that airspace is undeniably crazy.  we lived without it for years after 9-11, but Reagan national re-opened, which i suppose is good, but regardless of all else that’s what allowed this scenario to play out as it did. 

Edited February 2 by Gmc28

[Gmc28]

i did carry-on there quite a bit on that last post :->

A shorter version of an answer is that yes, complacency kills, and I preach at every new hire class and every annual recurrent that “if you’re too nervous when you fly (and preparing to fly) then you’re probably in the wrong job, and if you’re not nervous at all when you fly, then you're definitely in the wrong job”.

[audiomick]

2 hours ago, Gmc28 said:

... “if you’re too nervous when you fly (and preparing to fly) then you’re probably in the wrong job, and if you’re not nervous at all when you fly, then you're definitely in the wrong job”.

Reading all that, I felt an echo regarding my job. OK, when I get something wrong, nobody dies. But it (sound engineer, i.e. the bloke at the desk in the middle of the auditorium) is a "high stress" job. When it goes wrong, everyone in the audience looks at you, and the client wants to know what you did wrong.

So the same things apply: if you're going to do the job, know that you can do it, and make sure your really can do it. Be relaxed and confident, and never lose your concentration.

[Pressureangle]

From Newsweek;

'The search effort continues to find the bodies of the three soldiers as well as the remaining passengers of American Airlines Flight 5342, of which around 20 remain missing at this time.'

Has anyone here ever flown in a Blackhawk and familiar with pilot and passenger restraint systems?

I still smell tin foil

[gstallons]

I'm not ready to go there yet.  My thought is the rotor pilot veering right and climbing up into the passenger jet path . IDK if he knew the passenger jet had been diverted from Runway 1 to runway 33 ? I know ATC instructed him to go behind the passenger jet . It will all have to be pieced together . A LOT of small movements making one big problem .

[audiomick]

1 hour ago, Pressureangle said:

Has anyone here ever flown in a Blackhawk and familiar with pilot and passenger restraint systems?

I'm not, but somehow I can't imagine that they would allow the people to just fall out of the vehicle in an accident.

 

Whatever, I'm not reaching for the tin foil yet, either. I (still) think it was just the inevitable clusterfuck in too-crowded airspace.

[p6x]

On 2/3/2025 at 12:00 PM, audiomick said:

I (still) think it was just the inevitable clusterfuck in too-crowded airspace.

Unfortunately, the required accident to enforce changes that otherwise were never considered. This is the sadest part of it. Many pilots, allegedly had already avoided similar incidents in the past, with no immediate action.

You see, in my company, some of our annual objectives were to report near-miss incident, so they could trigger mitigation measures before they would become accidents.

You can see, that in recent years, we have seen several cases of runway intrusions, aircraft hits on tarmac, and traffic issues. I don't see that many happening outside of the USA. Possibly because they are not reported as much? I don't know.

But if you are old enough to remember the Tenerife airport disaster in 1977, when two airplanes collided, we don't want to see this happen again.

It just did...