cosell@BBN-UNIX@sri-unix (08/05/82)
From: Bernie Cosell <cosell at BBN-UNIX>
I think that there are three orthogonal components to the commentary: first
a question of the quality of the design of the airframes and powerplants,
second a matter of the inappropriateness of the FARs, and third the inadequacy
of pilot training.
[Note - all of these comments relate ONLY to part 91 operations. I don't know
hardly anything about the equipment or procedural requirements carriers and
commuters]
On the first one, even if the aviation data are obsolete, the roughly
equivalent experience with automobile safety equipment should be adequately
instructive: mostly, for whatever reason, people don't much like safety
equipment - if you force them to have the equipment, then they will tend to
ignore it unless you force them to use it. In the end, it boils down to a
`holier than thou' argument: an outside influence has to come along and dictate
to people what it good for themselves, regardless of their own opinions on the
matter. On this on, I think I side with Bond's early statement on the matter:
mostly you can't stop people from commiting suicide in airplanes, and so it is
probably not worth much to harass folk and try. I do believe that all of the
relevant data on the airplanes should be made avaiable so that one can
intelligently comparison shop and/or upgrade and/or order the right options.
I regret that I fell this way about the matter, since given what I know about
human nature I think that this will preclude, or at least make very difficult,
my being able to buy a decently safe airplane. But, I think that I have to
live with that becuase I don't know of any way to draw the line, and mostly I
would just as soon still have my freedom of choice, even if it a choice among
somewhat inferior alternatives.
On the second one, I think that the FARs are basically wonderful. They have
some problems, but I could hardly presume to even outline a better set of
rules, except perhaps to excise some of the recent areas in which
overzealousness has resulted in over-regulation, and some places where they
have lagged behind the available navigation technology. But mostly, overall, I
consider them a model of rationality and effectiveness and wish that the motor
vehicle laws were half so good. The thing I like about them is that the are
bare bones minimum about almost everything, leaving it to the pilot's judgment
to provide sensible safety factors. In most of my operations I have found that
the FAR prescibed limits are pretty conservative and so give me some advice on
what makes sense in a given situation, but still leave it to my judgment to
evalutate the situation at hand and do what is appropriate - sometimes the FAR
limit are too foolhardy, other times one must `bend' them in the nterest of the
more overall safety picture. I truly don't know quite what you could do to the
FARs that would still leave the pilot `in command' as cleanly as he is now.
On the third, I can but agree that mostly people are under-trained. This goes
right back to my opinion on the FARs, though: mostly the training standards are
absolute MINIMUMS. If you are going to fly piper cubs on fields in Iowa, then
anything much heavier than the current regs would be preposterous - if you fly
the Logan/Hanscom area (as I mostly do), you can hardly get by with less than
an instrument rating. The same is true for currency requirements: folk who
adhere to the instrument currency minimums and fly hard, turbulent IFR are
CRAZY. On the other hand, being able to file IFR to be able to legally (and
safely) cross a 100 foot cloud deck hardly requires hair-splitting accuracy.
Again, I think that letting people choose has got to be the right answer. I
tried several instructors for both my private and my instrument ratings before I
found the ones with whom I felt comfortable enough. On the other hand, I was
somewhat more casual about my choice of instructor for a recent BFR. Mostly I
think that I, personally, am in the best position to judge both my own currency
needs and the quality of the instructor I am with -- certainly one needs an
outside observer to get a useful critique of one's techinque, but on the other
hand if one need a regulation to clue you in that you are rusty you probably
need more help than an hour of dual will get you. [I note that the best pilots
I've known have ALWAYS flown regularly with instructors and with each other,
even in the absence of a regulation mandating a BFR. When I am hanging around
with that company, it is clear that the BFR regulation is just an
not-so-welcome bit of bureaucratic intrusion - fortunately the FAA kept the
actual bureaucratic requirements of the BFR to a mimimum, so that it is up to
the instructor to determine just what YOUR bfr will really be according to his
perception of your needs]
In the unlikely event that any of you have slogged through all this mouthing
off and made it this far, let me briefly deal with the WSJ article: I believe
that the easiest and least intrusive way to deal with the highway/airway
fatality figures to make the Nader-clones go away is to have the [NHTSA/NTSB]
adopt the following policy for accidents: investigate them to determine their
cause (as now), and try to determine where the fault lies: if the fault lies
wihint the area of the pilots/drivers judgment and the accident principally
involved the pilot, his plane and voluntary passengers, the accident should
simply be excluded from the figures and put in some other category. Certainly
you want to still analyze such accidents (flying while intoxicated, forgetting
to turn the gas on, etc) so that you can inform pilots of likely screwups they
might make so that they can try to monitor their own techniques and purge
themselves of bad/foolhardy habits, and there are genuine safety hazards that
still must be identified (e.g., identifying and notifying pilots of wind shear
and wingtip vortices, determining that a particular design of some piece of
gear is patently unsafe - and even there one has to determine what the proper
recourse is). Thus, I view articles like thw WSJ's as potentially harmful
attempts at rabble rousing with emotional arguments that are completely off the
mark.
/Berniewolit (08/06/82)
I agree that there's nothing very new or surprising in the articles.
Their semi-hysterical tone, however, does serve to point up an
interesting disparity that exists in the attitude of the general public
(and also among many in the aviation community) toward flying as
opposed to other forms of transportation. People demand an
extraordinarily high level of safety, training, and professionalism in
flying that they neither expect nor even desire in bus, train, sea, or
automobile travel. They see flying as being done in meticulously
maintained, state-of-the-art vehicles, guided by a team of computers
and human experts in the air and on the ground. At the same time,
they ASSUME that the buses and trains in which they ride are barely
holding together, and are driven by everyday people like themselves.
They get in their cars or boats, without fastening seat belts and
often drunk, drive off without the slightest pretense of an inspection,
and navigate within ten feet of other vehicles at relative speeds in
excess of 120 mph, and yet are outraged to learn that builders of
small planes don't make them able to withstand 40g crashes.
General aviation pilots feed this myth, partly to reassure nervous
friends and relatives, partly to reassure themselves ("whistling past
the graveyard"), by supporting the idea of the perfection of aircraft
and air traffic control technology, often stressing that what they do
is the same as what airline pilots do.
Certainly, no one connected with the aviation industry is going to try
to debunk this mythology. The government, the airlines, the makers of
airplanes (both big and small) benefit greatly from it. I, for one,
would find it difficult to tell my parents, for example, that I'm
about as well trained to fly a plane as I am to drive a car
(recognizing the relative difficulties of these tasks), or that, in
order to make it light enough to fly and cheap (!) enough to buy, the
people who made my plane made it LESS crashworthy than Toyota made my
car.
OF COURSE, if every FBO had a simulator for its 152's of the kind that
the airlines use for their 747's (if such a thing existed), student
pilots would be better equipped to fly them safely. The problem is,
there would be no student pilots who could afford the training (which
explains why there are no such simulators around).
Perhaps we should take a more realistic approach to answering
challenges such as those presented by these articles. Instead of
juggling statistics around (useful if you want to confuse the
opposition, but otherwise meaningless), we should say, "Yes, general
aviation does not have an admirable safety record. Neither does
automobile or motorcycle driving. We try to do the best with what we
have to work with, but recognize that we are human, and have limited
financial resources, just like you."