PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Research - Unifying admin aspects of flying
Old 10th November 2025 | 16:31
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Pilot DAR
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Joined: Aug 2006
: CPL
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From: Ontario, Canada
I remain interested in finding a problem that more people may have, and more people may want to see resolved. I love flying, and I love computer systems.
The "problem" I perceive is that for some pilots, they land, go home, and forget about aviation. Sure, family, life and work need attention, and will take that away from aviation as a recreational activity. But, modelling my accidental success early in my flying career, be at the the airport as much as you can. The "problem" is that people think that they can advance their pilot skills away from the airport. Yes, one can do valuable research at home, some in books, some on the computer, but..... I see so much nonsense available on my computer, which is actually an educational dis service, and I have to un teach when I train someone.

In the old days, as a young person, I would spend every hour I could hanging around the airport. I would scrub airplane bellies, and pump gas, just for the opportunity to be around airplanes. In hindsight, that was very well rewarded, in seeing first hand, how aviation happened, and meeting the people. I learned to fly there, in what were at the time brand new 152's and some older 150's. Indeed, I did my first solo in the first 152 imported to Canada. Back in the day, there'd be many pilots and people around to share experience with and chat. Now, I see people come, go flying, and go. I suppose that they go home to use social media on their computer. From a PPRuNe perspective, I can't complain about that, and PPRuNe is a cumulative awesome source of pilot wisdom and experience - but it is not hands on mentoring and sharing experience. It is not new person with filthy hands from cleaning an airplane, who just found a crack in a skin, and will now learn from having a small part in the process to resolve the defect.

Worse is that I am now flight testing other people's airplanes with really advanced avionics systems, and finding logic issues in the inter relationship between software design, and real world compatibility with a specific configuration of airplane. It would be unfair for me to opine on the skills of the person who developed the logic for the software, but I fear that in some cases, their pilot experience was minimal, and their flight test and human factors experience even less.

So, our "problem" is pilots using more tech to actually simply fly less. They may be PIC of an airplane, but are they flying it? Or monitoring it? In my opinion, making more software is less likely to improve that, as people actually piloting more, particularly airwork and refresher training. So, is the solution, an app on a pilot's phone which pops up before each flight to remind the pilot that it's been a while since they practiced XX maneuver, and today's flying should be devoted to that?
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