Training fixes

[Fuji Abound]

"G-blah-de-blah good morning"

Now there is another point with which I agree totally! I wish so many pilots didn’t have to share their life history with us.

I think this thread is of great interest because it has become quite a detailed analysis of the way in which we react and the factors that influence us.

There are those who are "happy" to admit their mistakes, and the greater majority who I suspect are less happy. I think it is a hall mark of the professional pilot, and particularly the commercial pilot, that they are more willing to admit mistakes that the private pilot. Is this so because there has been much emphasis on the dangers of taking an ego into the workplace?

Why are the greater majority less happy to admit mistakes? Perhaps it says something about our society when in many work places admission of mistakes is seen as a weakness or is it society has just become less tolerant of small mistakes. (A speeding ticket for being 4 mph over the limit for maybe only a few hundred yards of a 30 mph zone). Perhaps our reaction to these pressures is that we resist admitting we are wrong?

I think safety has to recognise the human condition. Not a lot is to be gained by saying pilots should own up to being lost if the evidence is they are more likely to blunder on rather than admit their mistake. (and I use the word "if" carefully because I have no evidence to support my contention).

If I am correct perhaps Romeo Romeo has it - why get hung up on "forcing" a pilot to admit he is lost. A service is available to enable a pilot to confirm his position and I bet in the vast majority of cases a pilot will only seek to confirm his position because he feels he needs to.

No one, including fortunately even WWW, has suggested that when a pilot admits he is lost he should be penalised in some way. (although you could imagine the CAA might write to him suggesting some currency training would be in order!).

Hopefully, if a training fix doesn’t sort the problem out, and our pilot is dreadfully lost he will still have the sense to turn his position fix into a "help, I need vectors!" and as someone else said D and D probably have a good idea when a pilot is really getting into problems. In other words when we start to get really scared we will admit almost anything!

All of this doesn’t really solve the problem as to why people are getting lost so often. I don’t accept it is every 90 seconds but I do accept it occurs more often than it should. Training must have something to do with it and I cant help feeling the opportunity of reviewing navigation at the bi-annual is often not taken. I think pilots are also more conscious of the need to know their position more accurately that in the past because of the amount of controlled airspace, danger areas, notam restrictions etc that exist and the "threat" that uninvited incursions will be treated very seriously. Perhaps pilots on the whole fly less hours than they use to but I don’t have the evidence to support this. As others have said I agree that the powers that be have been very slow to recognise the impact of new technology - I personally think the use of a moving map GPS should be a requirement of the PPL syllabus.

As always it is only by properly understanding the problem that solutions can be found - a somewhat simple statement that seems to be all to often ignored. As I have already said I get vociferous when the knee jerk reaction (from people who should know better) is to legislate to solve a problem without apparently seeking to understand the problem and what the effect of simply changing the legislation is likely to be. In this instance I think it would be less calls to D and D, but more incursions and more pilots getting themselves into serious problems. Please WWW don't do it, don't suggest the legislation be changed , find a better way.