OK465 : When I say that the "average" line pilot cannot recover from a deep stall I actually mean that very few of us have any training and experience in recovery from a departure in a swept wing jet.
While the majority of my trainees will have to follow some (very loud) commands from the old man behind, there are a few ones around who has the aggressive, composed attitude to keep fighting and who knows what it takes.
No doubt an airline, who would only employ Imperial Flight Test School graduates, can expect that this particular field of operations is covered (and the salaries will again be "up, where they belong"
), but we live in the real world, and my question remains:
When is enough (training) enough?
As I see it, a good many operators have a long way to go before reaching "enough"; just the fact that in the Mach-region pitch attitudes outside +5 to -2 degrees is risky business comes as big news to quite a few fellas.
So if a majority of pilots in a given airline has inadequate knowledge of the environment in which they fly, is that to be blamed on the individual pilot or is it a "system failure"?
If the pilot corps cannot deal with a 1/10.000.000 probability failure, is that to be blamed on the pilot, the airline or the manufacturer?
If you add severe weather, night, black sea, does that make it "natural causes", pilot error, system failure or design failure?
Which one will be the cheapest verdict for the huge economical interests involved here? And how do you make interim reports pointing in that direction in a subtle way?
