Capt. “Sully” Sullenberger is known for landing a US Airways plane on the Hudson River in 2009. He was most recently the U.S. ambassador and permanent representative to the International Civil Aviation Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations, and is a safety expert, author and speaker on leadership and culture.
Published today in the Chicago Tribune...
In backrooms and dark corners, airline lobbyists, particularly the Regional Airline Association, are scurrying all over Washington, still trying to undo all the hard work that has been done to make air travel the safest form of transportation in human history. They’re doing this for the usual reasons. They want to try to cheapen pilot training and levels of experience for their own financial gain and expedience. They’re trying to do what is easier and cheaper for them, not what is best for passengers or crews, or for their industry.
Once again, it is necessary that those of us who deeply understand that safety really must be the priority are having to refight the same battles that we have had to fight too many times before.
This time around, the lobbyists are trying to weaken pilot experience requirements by seeking super credits for certain training experiences and, in so doing, substantially lower the number of actual pilot flying hours required. This subterfuge is trotted out as a way of achieving their goal of cheapening and quickening flight training without appearing to lower the total 1,500 hours required. But with super credits, the total flight hours would be much less, as much as 50% less. If we were trying to provide more physicians to serve rural areas, would we suggest that the answer would be to cut medical school in half from four years to two years? No! We’d say that would be crazy — because it is crazy.
When pilots have only a few hundred hours of flight experience, it means they have experienced only one cycle of the seasons as a pilot: one spring of gusty crosswinds, one summer of thunderstorms, one fall of fog and frost, and one winter of ice and snow. And if their flight training was all conducted in Florida, they would not have experienced a real winter. If their training was in Arizona, they might not ever have flown in a cloud! The first time they encounter real weather should not be when they are flying paying passengers, unwitting and unwilling test subjects.
The way pilots develop the critically important judgment they must have is through effective experience in the real world of operational flying, with its challenges and ambiguities, not in the hand-holding of the sterile training environment and not just in simulated flight.
The lobbyists are also pulling an old debater’s trick, posing a false choice between quantity and quality of flight training and experience. They are trying to convince us that if the quality of training is good enough, then less of it should be required, when in reality, we can and we must have both.
[ Editorial: Don’t compromise safety to ease airline pilot shortage ]
On US Airways Flight 1549 on Jan. 15, 2009, First Officer Jeff Skiles, now a captain, had 20,000 hours of flight time like I did. He and I had only 208 seconds from losing thrust after being struck by a flock of birds to when we landed in the Hudson River. We did not have time to discuss what had happened and what to do about it. I had to rely on him immediately and intuitively knowing what he should do to help me. We had to be able to collaborate wordlessly. If he had been a lot less experienced, we could not have had as good an outcome or managed to save every life.
It is not only in extreme emergencies that airline flying requires two fully trained, qualified and experienced pilots in every cockpit. At the other end of the spectrum, those same aptitudes, traits and qualities must be present as well. In fact, one of the biggest challenges in airline flying is how often it is routine, and it is in those situations that each crew of pilots must have the professionalism and diligence to avoid complacency and ensure that best practices are adhered to on every hour of every flight, every day, every week, every month and every year, for decadeslong careers.
So, I am calling on everyone who flies to loudly and forthrightly tell the airline lobbyists that we’re on to them and their subterfuge, and we’re not having it. We are not going to allow them to turn back the clock to the days not that many years ago when there were dozens of airline crashes resulting in hundreds of deaths each year.
Our message is clear: Pilots must have the aptitude and the diligence to strive for excellence and become the best of the best. And we must arm them with the knowledge, skill, experience and judgment necessary to handle whatever challenges they will face.
High levels of pilot training and experience literally make the difference between success and failure, life and death. And in safety-critical domains like aviation, everyone involved must have a deep understanding that “just good enough” — isn’t.
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Master Instructors is honored to announce that David St. George of Ithaca, New York has earned his 13th Master Flight Instructor accreditation from the original MCFI program (accrediting professional aviators for 25 years). David also serves the FAA as a Designated Pilot Examiner and is privileged to still fly as a jet charter captain. He is the current Executive Director of the Society of Aviation and Flight Educators (SAFE) and is the author of the popular 
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The challenges are intended to inspire pilots to elevate their skills by pursuing ever-increasing standards of proficiency, pushing pilots beyond their comfort zones while focusing on skills that will increase their enjoyment of and success during Epic flight training. The skills development program provides a complete roadmap for conducting this training but for brevity the program will not be fully outlined at this time. The following are the eight challenges that comprise the Epic Challenge:
Most of what I have shared has been focused on an upgrading pilot. If you are a Flight Instructor, wanting to enhance your skills, you should consider this program as a way to improve. To find a qualified instructor may take some time and patience. In addition to your personal contacts try professional aviation educator organizations.
The day before our first weekend we spent several hours discussing our plan, being clear as to the standards for performance (which are outlined in the guidelines for the program) and how we would integrate each of the scenarios into the flight.
Scenario-based training
The 
So if I am dealing with a Cornell aerospace student, a plausible scenario might start with “You are back at the 
And how do you create those mountains? Perhaps after some low level ground reference maneuvering, impose a hypothetical “service ceiling” on your plane in MSL (2000 over the terrain but below the hilltops) Then limit the airplane power to 2100rpm (density altitude) and now transit the “mountains”. “Can we safely transition through the hills to our home airport? Should we divert instead>” Similarly you can impose a solid cloud ceiling and leave the weather decision to the student. Then accept the client’s decision -good or bad- if conditions are within your minimums and you can keep the flight safe and legal. Once you are flying with too much wind or too low clouds, the client experiences the consequences of their folly (and perhaps log some actual or get some good crosswinds) within a safe environment (watchful eye of the educator). Share your favorite scnarios in the comments below.
I have been giving a lot of private checkrides lately and obviously a private pilot applicant must know Class G airspace and the basic legal weather minimums. But if they tell me they would go flying in this scary weather, they are not adequately managing risk. Similarly, FAA minimum flight instrumentation (day and night) requires only an airpseed indicator, altimeter (not even adjustable) and a compass. Again, every pilot should know this legal minimum, but should also be aware such primitive guidance is not adequate for most flights (especially at night). Building a margin by requiring more complete instrumentation, equipment, preparation and suitable weather is the basis for managing risk and building safety.
And speaking of minimums, the current “rush to ratings” clearly is eliminating any “extras” and fun in the flight training experience. The required 5 hours of solo X-C for the private pilots now seems to often only involve one long flight on a very nice day. When I see a pilot applications with absolute minimum hours all I can think is “don’t you like flying?” Can’t we add a little more than the absolute minimum experience and build a margin of safety here too? Exposing students to more than one X-C flight or working with more crosswind allows them to experience and internalize different weather, expand personal capacities and enhance their skills for a greater safety margin. They are going to need these hours and experience in the future anyway.
Our 
exhibiting a lack of stability, ground track control and overall discipline. The physical problems with patterns are obvious but they are driven by a lack of understanding risk and knowledge of the forces at work. This lack of stability and control continues directly into professional piloting where unstable approaches and overrun accidents are the #1 cause of accidents in corporate jets. As aviation educators (and pilots) we need to do better. Understanding some basic flight dynamics is critical to success.
In our initial flight instruction teaching the basic level turn, we emphasize that when a plane is banked, the lift vector is redirected to the horizontal (to create the turn) and no longer entirely opposes gravity. Consequently, some back-pressure is necessary to maintain altitude in a level turn. And during initial flight training, we build up this rote, muscle memory “bank and add pressure” response through repetition. But when we move on to the descending turns, is essential to emphasize this previously memorized script is incorrect.
