Asiana Crash Landing At Sfo Saturday

[inchman]

I'm glad to see your comments on this, Don. I may be wrong, but I was always under the impression that your position was that poor pilots were caused almost solely by poor training, but you seem to acknowledge that some people just don't have "the right stuff" (in lower case) to be pilots. And that's good.

Cultural differences are an easy target, though, which is a lot of what this thread has turned into. While there seems to definitely be an issue in this regard, the unspoken side of this at "first world" carriers is that we allow those without "it" to continue in the business and blame a lack of proper training for their lack of ability. We all know people that should probably never have been hired in the first place and give a sigh of relief when they forego trying for their left seat or make it through but retire without incident. But what happens when the guy in the left seat becomes incapacitated or dies with someone who failed even the train to standard upgrade sitting in the right seat?. Now you have someone in the right seat that wasn't able to handle the command of an aircraft with a functioning FO who now has to try to handle an extremely stressful situation all by themselves. I always assume that my FOs are capable of being captains, but now we have people sitting there who have proven that they are not.

The "train to standard" system is one of those things that I have serious concerns about. It keeps people on the training treadmill until they are able to squeak by in the sim or a line check, but doesn't address the issue that they probably shouldn't have gotten as far as they have in the first place.

In countries with the cultural issues being discussed here. it seems it is not so much "train to standard" but "pass to avoid embarrassment" but has almost the same result.

[Don Hudson]

Hi inchman;

Re "train-to-standard", I recall the relatively narrow circumstances some years ago (mid-late 90's) which gave rise to the notion and at the time it seemed a solution to the specific problem which wasn't "competency" per se.

I believe in strong training regimes and sufficiently high standards, (nothing magic or top-gun-ish but realistic), but having instructed I know from experience that some aren't suited to flying, so I agree with you completely - just haven't emphasized that side of the issue. That side of the business, however, has a lot to do with the selection process and the available pool of qualified, suitable candidates. That in turn is about economics, politics and "cheaper-better", among which the MCPL is one (poor, in my view) solution, and the traditional sources for highly-qualified candidates, the air force, for whatever reasons, are not producing (or permitting) their expensive resources to leave for the airlines.

One assumes that the selection process is robust. Once one has been selected, then it is a commitment to sufficient training, (which is not "train-to-standard") to ensure initial and ongoing "airworthy" certification of the candidate's license. The Colgan example is a classic case where both approaches failed. Might the cadet & selection process have highlighted any of the AF447 crew? We will never know but I think it is a question to ponder.

As with any professional organization, defining "failure to perform" and then determining under what circumstances that may or may not apply is extremely difficult both socially and tactically. The "Peter Principle" doesn't normally apply in a system such as ours as there is no bureacracy or military heirarchy in which promotion is a matter of process. The seniority system does permit some latitude (known as "discretion") where a candidate either chooses to stay in the right seat or is, by contract or agreement, placed and kept in the right seat or in rare cases retired. Professional organizations for the legal, engineering and medical professions have their own processes for handling the infinite variabilities of allegations or clear examples of incompetence and negligence. None of these are resolved just by "more training" alone and so I suspect we are of the same views.

I think the "pass to avoid embarrassment" used to apply in western cultures until the 90's. It began to change because some very good people with a clear vision of accident causation and who were mainly sociologists, psychologists, computer engineers and heavy-duty academics doing first studies on causation, (Peter Ladkin, for example), began to realize that human factors was becoming a primary cause vice the list I provided in the above note. Charles Perrow was among the earliest to see both human factors and something new: "Organizataional factors", when he wrote "Normal Accidents" in 1984. Perrow is a sociologist in California - his latest is "The Next Catastrophe", out in 2007.

I'm none of those categories described in the last sentences, I just do data analysis, but like a lot of others here and in other places who fly/have flown professionally, I can see where the solutions might lie, above and beyond the "not suited to the cockpit" category, (and I certainly believe in that category). But papers, books, conferences etc are only the beginning.

One last point: I hear complaints about (or from), the ongoing criticims of "newbie MBAs" and their effects upon airlines' development regarding processes far away from the coal face and foreign to their world of knowledge of aviation. You know well my views on "the principles of aviation" and knowledge of same by those who have even an indirect input into how an airline will conduct its business.

The ultimate arrogance is assuming that because one has a business degree alongside one's arts (or, less frequently, science or engineering degree), and perhaps a private or dormant commercial license or an expired instrument rating that one can effectively decide on things without further awareness or comprehension of the human factors side of the business. It is my view that the real "coal face", the cockpit environment, must always be foremost in everyone's mind, the closer to the cockpit, the better the comprehension of the effects of one's decisions upon that very "local" environment. The business is designed with many layers of defence and most of the time it works exceedingly well, sometimes in spite of human failings - that's a success I think. But the assumption that one's own decisions made in one's cubicle do not affect the cockpit environment in some way, is in the same class described above - the question for everyone being, "Are we safe today? - Is what I am doing contributing to that safety?"

Thanks for your thoughtful response!

[Lakelad]

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http://youtu.be/cUhBHK0XKH0