How to make sharper pilots:

[protectthehornet]

I would like to start a thread concerning the process of making or becoming a ''good'' pilot.

what is a good pilot?

Just how do we convince pilots to make the effort to be "good"?

[framer]

Someone somewhere along the track has to inspire them to be good.
Someone (training Captain, friend, line captain, boss) has to invest time and effort into teaching them things that took years and years for them themselves to learn.

[Fantome]

A lot is to be gained by a close reading of those books written by pilots who had the gift of conveying the essence of their chosen discipline. They will leave you in no doubt that there are various rites of passage that can only be appreciated and attained after much time and application. It helps if you define your goals carefully and review them as necessary, and of course be highly disciplined allocating time to necessary tasks. This should include a review of what you have gleaned about the essentials of what used to be called pilotage. The training syllabuses, all the well laid out sequences of the theory and the practical, are only a part. Much the pity, gone are the days when it was a relatively simple thing for a student to contrive a ride in the jumpseat and watch the old and practised hands make it all appear so simple, but at the same time alertly picking up and storing away invaluable tips. As far as reading those rich, personal accounts go, if you are a serious student you will make notes as you go, selecting those passages that resonate for you. Valuable references are those that encapsulate the nature of a high state of alertness combined with a certain physical relaxation, a looseness in a sense that equates well with the mastery of many other pursuits such as in sport and musicianship and particularly horse riding. The best pilots in the First World War were more often than not highly competent riders.

http://www.pprune.org/aviation-history-nostalgia/398819-books-like-fate-hunter-2.html

[Tmbstory]

Fantome:

Agree with your post.

As you may also remember I used to push EKG 's " Fate is the Hunter" to all the people that I had a hand in training. It certainly helped me and I hope many others.

Regards

Tmb

[Fantome]

Flying by the numbers vs. being an artist
is a thread currently running in JB.


corsair


I too would have been a bit clunky, unnatural and overly cautious, sometimes a bit scared of flying. In fact when I let my CPL lapse and had to do a retest the examiner described my flying as 'agricultural but safe'. The fact I had only flown 1.5 hours in the five months before the test, forty minutes of which was the previous month, may have had something to do with it.

But that has changed. I'm completely comfortable with the aircraft I currently fly. That may be down to my natural talent should it exist or a combination of currency, practice and a bit of talent. It has become part of me as well it should when I've spent up to eight hours strapped in it's seat. Now it's not a complex aircraft so that helps. But I'm pleased with myself. Nevertheless how much of it is natural talent, I don't know.

But ultimately to be good pilot you really need a bit of both, plenty of practice and a modicum of talent. It's the same for most things. Raw talent helps but practice, practice, practice can make all the difference. It can also work in the most trivial of jobs. I worked in an office for the guts of 14 years. By the end I found I could pick up the exact quantity of sheets of paper I needed as long as I didn't think about it. It was the same in another job which involved quantifying a number of plastic gidgets by weight. It got so that I would get virtually the exact weight of plastic bits needed most of the time, quite often bang on the nose. Talent? No way just practice.

Still I like to imagine I have a certain raw talent as a pilot. This I like to believe, has lain undiscovered for my entire non career thanks to indifferent training, poor continuity, lack of money and never having had any form of mentor. Something I think is quite important in nurturing talent. Doing anything alone never quite works. With someone overlooking you, it can only help. The racing driver Lewis Hamilton may be a raw talent but without all the help he would probably be driving trucks.

(Apologies to corsair for slight editing of his post.)

[alf5071h]

What is a good pilot?
There may be several definitions of this depending on how you interpret ‘good’.
I think that good involves being a professional, particularly where you never stop learning and always seek to better yourself; this view provides a useful starting point for the other questions.
How do you convince anyone of anything, or what process makes or enables a good pilot?

Professionalism is synonymous with airmanship; “Airmanship is the ability to act wisely in the conduct of flight operations under difficult conditions.”
I use Tony Kern’s elements of airmanship – Discipline, Skill and Proficiency, Knowledge, Situation Awareness, and Judgement.

The constituents of ‘what is good’ appear relatively easy to define, but ‘how to achieve’ these and excel at them is a different issue.
My early experience was military, thus I would describe the bedrock of airmanship - discipline – in ‘classical’ terms. A disciplined mind provides the basis for disciplined action and vice versa.
There is no reason that a reputable civil training program should not achieve similar results. Both civil and military programs start with the choice of people – select for attitude, train for aptitude. Thus with appropriate attitude, discipline can be developed. Respect for experience, appearance, and behaviour; Training Captains are ‘sir’, pride in uniform, equipment, knowledge, and thought.

Skill and proficiency require ‘practice’, ‘practice’, ‘practice’. Nowadays training requirements might limit the range of handling skills and in operations there may be fewer opportunities for practice; however there is always time for mental rehearsal and opportunity to improve thinking skills. Note how most of the characteristics are or involve mental activity.

The quest for knowledge should never end. Pilots need both know what (factual) and know how (technique). The latter (tacit knowledge) may only be gained from ‘hands on’ experience – ‘in situation’; something not always available from simulation. Pilots should be taught how to remember and recall information – how to associate information with situations (what, when, why). Knowledge must include awareness of human limitations and need for controlled thought.

Situation awareness is another mental skill, a high order thinking skill associated with critical thinking, decision making, and judgment. Pilots need formal teaching in analysis, synthesis, and evaluation during actual operations – a link with tacit knowledge.

Judgment is the primary mental control over the previous activities, the ability to select or combine aspects according to the situation, to assess risk and decide on a suitable course of action, etc, etc. How do we gain and improve this? By being there?
By thinking about the situation and thinking about individual performance, behavior, and knowledge (knowing what you don’t know).
By debriefing, self reflection, an open and honest review of what occurred and what has still to be learnt.

How do we convince pilots … … pilots have to want to change, want to improve, want to learn.

“Airmanship is a personal attitude to flying, why we do it, how we do it. Airmanship must grow with training, experience, and personal exposure. It is not just about staying alive or not bending the airplane or yourself, it is about walking off the airfield knowing that you have both performed and crafted an activity. You have been totally aware of what you have done and why you enjoyed it, and at that point you owe nothing to anyone.”
Tony Hayes, CFI Brisbane Valley Leisure Aviation Centre.

A wider view of a good pilot requires us to include the operational situation. A poor pilot might look good in a well protected and easy situation, yet a better pilot in the same situation may suffer error, which with human bias might be judged not so good. Safety is maximized by requiring both a ‘good’ pilot and a ‘good’ situation. Then what is a good situation ... ... ?

“With growing experience Airmanship may grow and blossom into a comfortable protective cloak, resting light upon the shoulders, worn perhaps with pride, but never in vanity, but never giving the protection of 2 inch armour plate.”

“Flying is fun; a pile of wreckage is neither flying nor fun. Between these two extremes is the ultimate expression of airmanship”

[A37575]

Raw talent helps but practice, practice, practice can make all the difference.

Cynical perhaps, but I hope those that are automatics complacent will heed those words if they ever happen to be allowed by their airline to fly manually to keep up their skills.

[protectthehornet]

one of my first instructors and I met years later, flying for a crappy regional airline.

he had become a terrible pilot...I honestly feared for his safety and those who trusted him.

I asked him, in some form, a question about being good and he said: they don't pay the best pilot any more than the worst pilot at this joint, what difference does it make?

think about it.

yikes!

[robin]

I asked him, in some form, a question about being good and he said: they don't pay the best pilot any more than the worst pilot at this joint, what difference does it make?

think about it.

When a company has a culture that does not encourage excellence, no matter how high your own standards are, they will drop. It isn't necessarily about money either.

You have to be very strong personally to work at doing things well without support or acknowledgment and, in certain cases, active hostility.

I worked in an industry that had high standards and made sure we kept to them - UNTIL the bean counters moved in and we were broken up and sold on to asset strippers.

After that the accident rate went through the roof and anyone who wanted to keep the standards high was eased out. Cheapness was the order of the day, and experience and skill costs money.

[Skittles]

I like threads like this, and follow them vehemently.

I tend to remember little snippets and quotes. One that jumps to mind for example is that you should always keep something in reserve - both in terms of your abilities as a pilot and in your aircrafts performance. That way, in an adverse situation you always have something extra in the bank.

Another one - that when performing aerobatics of any kind, allow yourself the '2 mistakes' rule. In any manouvre, give yourself height to;

1. Recover from the failure of the manouvre
2. Recover from the failure of the recovery.

[protectthehornet]

thanks for coming to the thread.

you concept of keeping in reserve ''something'' is a good one. I actually have had two careers...35 years as a pilot (major airline) even longer as a drummer.

I learned as a drummer : always save something. More volume, more speed etc.

a similiar concept in flying is : always keep an ''out''.

a way out...etc.

all the best

[4Greens]

Be very, very, cautious. I was never the best pilot in the military or anywhere else. I'm alive, never lost anyone or crashed an aircraft.

[Tmbstory]

In my past long Career in Check and Training, I found that it was best to operate the aircraft to the standard of the pilot being checked or trained. If a situation deteriorates to the extent where that pilot was not able to learn or recover and you had to take over, then the exercise was wasted. Do not let a situation continue until it tests your own ability to handle it.

The present emphasis on low experienced pilots occupying the right hand seat of Airliners that are highly Automated, makes the above paragraph even more important.

Tmb

[protectthehornet]

tmbstory

good advice indeed...I tried to make this concept a rule in our airline but the powers that be laughed.

if your copilot is new, inexperienced and a dope...don't push things too hard because you might end up over your head.

[411A]

After over forty years at the pointy end (mostly in command) and nearing retirement, I have decided that each flight that I do now is as fine a job that I can possibly do, and if it turns out OK (IE: to my complete satisfaction) then I have accomplished my goal....and...the remaining sectors belong to the First Officer, because...he needs more practise than me, and besides, his command is just around the corner.
Our First Officer can now roll the 'ole Lockheed tri-motor on very smoothly every time (even when very light...not easy) so...what more can I ask?:}

PS.
He also flies the A319 on occasion, and says...'the Airboos is a pile of dog cr*p compared to this Lockheed airplane.'
His words, not mine.;)

[Dreadful]

:rolleyes:

[BizJetJock]

"A good pilot is one who uses his superior airmanship to avoid situations that require his superior skill"

[olster]

When plan A does not work always have a plan B,C,D,E.....stay ahead of the machine.

atb

[bfisk]

what is a good pilot?

IMHO a good pilot knows that he isn't all that good. It's really hard to admit one's own shortcomings to oneself and others and I admire those who can say "this is too much for me".

[A37575]

What makes a good pilot? Attitude. During type rating training in the simulator I used to offer my students a whole lot of (from personal experience) reading matter applicable to the aircraft they were learning to fly. Abbreviated accident reports, hints on weather radar use, snippets like reduce V1 by seven knots gives you 700 ft extra stopping distance, the danger of cruising too high too heavy, slippery runway operations and so on. These were taken from varied reputable aviation magazines and from early Boeing Flight Symposium Meetings.

I recommend the students try to read as many as they can of these good gen articles in between their type rating study. Of course one was careful not to go overboard on this extra curricular reading since there is already heavy study needed over the time of the typical jet transport type rating course.

But in my view the stuff was priceless and even now, once every few months I settle down for a good read of that lot to refresh my knowledge.

Having said that I continue to be so disappointed when I discover all this wonderful aviation lore was never read by the students. The excuse being they already have enough type rating theory subjects to absorb during the month long course that constitutes the course.

Perhaps they are right but I have lingering doubts that they are simply not interested.

[protectthehornet]

nice post!

did you know that in windshear conditions, one can increase the takeoff speed to insure that you have more energy available ? simply use the max legal weight takeoff numbers if you are below that weight for takeoff.
in this way, you have more energy before you leave the ground...just in case...of course avoid windshear whenever possible.

[anotherthing]

Make pilot training more difficult!!!

What do I mean? Don't allow people to throw money at it hour building between level checks/licence examinations. I don't just mean when assessing how someone poles the stick, but assessing all aspects of airmanship.

The Mil has a very good training regime whereby after a certain amount of hours at each stage etc, if you fail to make the grade, you are out on your ear.

There are probably many civilian pilots who are as good as, if not better, than mil ones - but I'd be more than happy to claim without any anecdotal evidence at my fingertips that the average mil pilot is better than the average civilian pilot.

Within such a system, there is plenty of scope for giving people extra hours if promise is shown, but they have not yet quite reached the required level. Knowing when to stop such training is the key.

However as with most skills in life, if you spend long enough training, you will eventually get there. These people though are the ones who will have no spare capacity when things go wrong - probably even more of an issue in todays airliners that are hugely automated.

To my mind, when the poo hits the fan nowadays it can be a huge diversion from the norm - the reliance on automation, although a good advance in safety, sometimes means that when questions are asked of a pilot, they may be found wanting.

Having said all that, I appreciate that with the number of schools out there etc, actually policing an competency scheme versus hours during training could be very difficult if people flitted from flight school to flight school.

Furthermore there is the problem that most training is through self funding, people are not going to be happy to be told 'you are just not good enough' or 'good enough' is not good enough if they have spent lots of money.

[philc1983]

Regarding any decisions that need to be made:

"If in doubt, there's no doubt"

That was always a favourite of mine.

[AEST]

According to the AirForce speed helps:

The U.S. Military Needs Its Speed (http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2003/02/57434)

Ofcourse us mortals are not allowed going that fast:)