Germanwings plane forced to land in Venice after fears over cabin crew member's health | Daily Mail Online


Here is a prime example of inaccurate and completely unresponsible reporting.

The headlines reads that two emergency landings were performed.

One was a precautionary engine shutdown and the other was a standard medical diversion. (Almost certainly caused by the mass illogical fear and panic the media propagates). There was no emergency landing.


In both cases, as usual, the pilots performed splendidly.

I'm for freedom of the press, but when will we somehow cease to allow hacks like this from praying on public fears to sell advertising spots?

One of these so-called emergency landings was almost certainly created by the media. Instead they should be covering heart disease and car crashes in the same proportion as to which they are killing the public.

re post #3144 "People develop their character and become 'professional' through training and experience. " Exactly.

"Training in any industry should not simply be focused on teaching a skill but also in building character." Right on.

"Does the present day airline industry have such a training schedule?"

Maybe. Sometimes. Maybe not. It depends on the specific airline and it's plans.

Lufthansa has trained their pilots Ab-Initio since 1955, so they got their schedule figured out pretty much to their liking.
Then, Lufthansa switched to the Multi Crew Pilot License program in 2008, as noted.
The MPL training schedule at LFT is the following: (212.5 sim, 99 hrs aircraft, course length 23 months)
- Ground school 813 hrs, like ATPL ground school
- Core phase 87 hrs aircraft with 20 hrs solo flight time and 3.5 hrs upset recovery training included. FNPT II 28.5 hrs
- Basic phase 12 hrs aircraft CJ1+. FNPT II CJ1+/MCC 100 hrs
- Intermediate phase FFS A320/B737 20 hrs
- Advanced phase FFS 64 A320/B737/EMB 64 hrs
- LT 12 TO/LDG
- IOE 40-60 sectors

Out of 1326 MPL students 528 MPL graduates produced as of May 2014.

As an alternative and new system of training, the MPL program has not yet come under careful scrutiny and evaluation. Most people have not even heard of it, have not met any MPL holders, and those that have cannot relate, or don't even give a second thought. Although, the MPL program may prove to have merits, it will also carry hindrances. To put it bluntly, it's a corporate experiment, and the participants are corporate guinea pigs.

Interesting that in today's news, the head of Lufthansa appears to be making a strong apology for the 'accident'. And separately, the German aviation authority has been criticised for its under-scrutiny of aircrews.
The latter should, imho, have been in the public domain before now. I wonder if any other authorities are similarly underperforming.

ChissayLuke,
Yes, 149 innocent people have been murdered by the hands of a 'pilot'.
We are all searching for answers to this unbelievable crime, but...

Unrealistic, out-of-touch suggestions such as yours deserve clear, simple (not simplistic) explanations as to why simplistic knee-jerk solutions are unlikely to improve the safety of the public.

Safer air transport is a work-in-progress. We are always improving our understanding of what causes crashes. The large effort that has gone into improving safety the last 50 years or so is one we should be immensely proud of. No mediocrity there.

PS Your suggestion that pilots should be trained 'to meet every scenario' helps me to understand the depth of knowledge you may or may not have about the subject. :rolleyes:

Tom,

Good suggestion. It was probably a poor choice in media to frame my point but that story with all the same hype is running all over the place.

The media exploits our collective risk illiteracy and the result is less overall public safety than if they were to cover real risk, even if it were just in approximate proportion.

It's making the public neurotic about things they should have confidence in and that detracts from addressing more deadly risks.

It was a psychological test, also - at the time - known as a 'speed test'. In the long distance past it was one of my 'majors' specialist subjects.

There is a lot of work put into designing those tests. Asking questions twice with different semantics that 'beg' a particular but different response will flag up those who are trying to 'look good' in their answers. Others will ask questions that cannot be true such as: True or False - I am always early for meetings. Again shows up someone wanting to answer what they believe is wanted. These questions are added to what Eysenck called a 'lie scale' once the value on the lie scale goes above a certain level then the subject fails the test.

There are 'spot the odd one out' questions where every one of the 5 examples could be the odd one out dependent on how your brain works. (imagine a list of animals - each odd one out: only single syllable word, only word that is more than 7 characters, only bird, only domesticated, only carnivorous etc etc) These are very very hard to create.

The 'subject' is then given say 120 seconds to answer 100 mixed questions and told that the number answered is one of the test criteria. Just reading the test may take 3 minutes, so you know that the subject cannot finish but the point is to not have them give considered answers.

These days the tests are more likely to be flashed up or scrolled on a computer screen at a particular rate which provides a similar metric.

These tests will not identify empathy, sociopathic tendencies etc. There are tests that can do that as there are brain scans that can show potential sociopaths. But these tests are not very effective. For example not all sociopaths will be picked up by the tests and scans and some that are picked up are demonstrably not sociopathic. So there are many false positives and false negatives.

Anyone putting their faith in tests of emotions and mental states of subjects will be sorely disappointed. They are far more likely to be counter productive by alienating the flight crew community.

Thank you, 737er, for posting that piece from The New Yorker by psychiatrist Gary Greenberg. I'm no psychiatrist or psychologist but there's no mistaking good common sense, of which you can never get enough. Kudos to Mr Greenberg!
I hope Lufthansa and Germanwings will not be pilloried to kingdom come.

Don't put words into my mouth. I do not have a low opinion of cabin crew.

How many crew have you spoken to about this recently? I've asked four if they'd know what I was doing and how to stop me and ALL of them admitted they wouldn't have a clue. They wouldn't open the door if I asked them not to. The two person in the FD rule will not stop a recurrence of Lubitz.

And I'm speaking as someone who has flown for two airlines who have had the two person rule since 9/11 and I don't have a problem with it.

I expect we will have to agree to disagree, I would have thought with the captain outside asking to be let in, screaming/panicking flight attendants and passengers (probably visible to the cockpit flight attendant) and the aircraft in rapid descent toward mountains, most flight attendants in the cockpit would take a little more reassurance than you telling them not to let the captain in. Indeed, I would think it would be extremely unlikely now that they would not let the captain in after Lubitz flew the GermanWings A320 into the ground. That's what happens when you have lost people's trust.

Yes, absolutely.
But ridiculous expectations like pilots trained for any possible scenario and no risk at all? Please.

According to the German newspaper "Welt Am Sonntag". http://www.welt.de/vermischtes/artic...erungsnot.html

Laut EU-Verordnung 1178/2011, die seit April 2013 auch in Deutschland umgesetzt ist, müssen Fliegerärzte das Amt von einer Depression informieren und den Fall ans LBA verweisen. Nun können die Lufthansa-Fliegerärzte zwar behaupten, L. sei geheilt gewesen, so dass es keinen Grund mehr für eine Verweisung gegeben habe. Aber es gab ja immer noch den SIC-Eintrag in der Lizenz. Ganz gleich, wie man es wendet: Es sieht nicht gut aus für die Lufthansa und ihre Ärzte.

Translation

According to the EU Regulation 1178/2011, which is implemented in Germany since April 2013 Aeromedical Examiners must inform the Office of a depression and refer the case to the LBA. Now the Lufthansa Flyer doctors can indeed say that L. had been healed, so that there was no reason for referral. But there was still the SIC entry in the license. No matter how you turn it: It does not look good for Lufthansa and their physicians.

'ridiculous expectations'?
Hardly.
Seems an entry-level requirement to me.
Would any genuine commercial pilot beg to differ?

The physicians actually have nothing to do with it. They do not see the license and don't need to. They do see the medical which is the only place that should carry the SIC entry, which it didn't in Lübitz' case. The german LBA is sometimes not working to its rules, in my first EASA license they had my medical restrictions entered as well, in the next one i got issued half a year later they were gone and remain solely in the medical where they belong.

An SIC entry in the license is just an "for information only" and not binding, the only place where it is binding is in the medical. The EASA license doesn't have an expiration date whereas the medical has.

Questions:

a) in the beginning, there was a reference that an oxygen-mask was worn by the copilot.
>>> has that been confirmed, or not ?

b) in some german news, it was stated he wanted to marry soon.
>>> confirmed, true, or rumor ?

Thanks.

Yes... if someone who has just done 6+hrs LHS A320 today satisfies your criteria?

I refer back to my previous post (which you described as 'mediocrity') to give, IMO, an accurate response to your points.

Since you either did not like or understand my response, please could you expand on your post's questions:e.g. by saying how you think they either are, or should be conducted?

The genuine passengers I met today expressed their thanks for their flights today, and getting them to their destinations safely and comfortably. I saw no sign of the lack of trust expressed by "passengers who pay our wages" on here ;)

Absolutely. I also believe that this very sad event has made our passengers appreciate us more. On the few flights that I've operated since the event far more passengers than usual are expressing their thanks and coming out with statements like "Thank You for getting us home safely"

I consider myself to be one of those genuine pax you're speaking of, and this crash hasn't altered my opinion of pilots and safety one bit. I know I have more to fear from the average idiot on the highway.

The FA stepping in for a pilot leaving the flight deck seems to be working fine in the US, and it might provide a small deterrent in some cases.

Better screening might help as well.

After all, every little bit helps - and as someone up-thread mentioned, air safety is a work in progress.

Mental health screenings for pilots
 

I have been asked many times in the past week about why don't we screen you pilots to avoid this kind of problem. I simply report what the Aerospace Medical Association says. (This is the professional society for flight surgeons.)

Following a March 27, 2012, incident in which a pilot of a major commercial airline experienced a serious disturbance in his mental health, the Aerospace Medical Association formed an Ad Hoc Working Group on Pilot Mental Health. The working group met several times and analyzed current medical standards for evaluating pilot mental health. The result of the working group was a letter sent to the FAA and other organizations worldwide interested in mental standards. The Committee found that it is neither productive nor cost effective to perform extensive psychiatric evaluations as part of the routine pilot aeromedical assessment. However it did recommend greater attention be given to mental health issues be aeromedical examiners, especially to the more common and detectable mental health conditions and life stressors than can affect pilots and flight performance. They encouraged this through increased education and global recognition of the importance of mental health in aviation safety.
published in Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine: 83, 2012, pp 1185-1186

Everyone keeps referring to the U.S. In regards to it works there, so why not use it elsewhere. As has been posted on here at least twice, there is a study of US pilots where it is shown that only about 25% of US pilots actually following the rule about having 2 person on the flight deck at any given time.

If only 25% of US pilots obey the 2 in the cockpit rule..... it still seems to work!