Originally Posted by
Meikleour
Before I am attacked for not understanding mental issues perhaps the industry needs to rethink whether or not this career should be pursued by anyone regardless of aptitude or temperament.
Very good points, especially this very last one. Basic flight training and subsequently airline training must ensure that a candidate is suitable for the aviation environment by using all the available training methods not only to transfer the knowledge to the trainee but also to test his capability to cope with stress and unexpected changes, in short term his resilience.
For a pilot, resilience is one of the most important if not the most important trait of personality as each and every time we close the doors and start the engines we have no idea what is going to happen as in real life there is unfortunately no script like in the sim.
Exposing the trainee to a variable level of stress during his progression till reaching the "breaking point" is beneficial for everybody, as it is the best possible "snapshot" You can take of somebody aside from any psychometrical and psycho aptitude tests. The idea of seeing the trainee like a newborn baby that needs to be spoon-fed till he gets to the cockpit of an airliner is probably beneficial to the training organisation that aims to train as many pilots as possible but not to the trainee himself that has no idea of how and when he is going to raise his white flag and give up.
In my airline we have been training pilots in house for the past 50 years from 0 and we have always tried to build confidence in our trainees by showing them where, according to their stage of progression, they would reach their point of no return. Normally 90% of them would take it as a challenge to set the bar higher and think "I'll show You next time You &*^@#" and the remaining part would take it personally and stop progressing, despite all the efforts from the instructors to reassure them. Unfortunately this is how You keep screening.