George’s Point of View

Remember that old Herodotus misquote inscribed on the James A Farley Post Office Building: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.“?

The iconic postman is viewed as being the superman of civil servants, intrepid deliverers, come what may. (For those of you born after 1997, the mythos of the intrepid postal carrier predates the movie. Bless Kevin Costner’s heart)

That iconoclastic perspective will stand unchallenged by pilots if the FAA goes ahead in its move to impose stringent regulations limiting pilot flight time. The bill includes some $8 billion for airport construction and pilot scheduling limitations designed to lessen the incidence of accidents related to pilot fatigue.

However the effectiveness of this bill may be challenged by an amendment exempting some pilots (those flying for nonscheduled carriers and charter flights carrying commercial cargo) from the amendments intended “fatigue protection.”

Are cargo pilots and charter pilots built of sterner stuff? Are they eating their Wheaties and consuming super-charged vitamins? Are they really supermen who are not affected by the debilitating fatigue of lesser men? Is the biology of this select group of pilots different from all other pilots so that they are immune?

What do you think?

Maybe, just maybe, this new amendment is designed to sacrifice safety concerns in favor of profit.

No kidding.

There is no place for exemptions in this bill.

However, that said, one hopes common sense will be applied in military situations. Say, for example, it is wartime. Can you see some 2011 era John Wayne pilot watching the second hand on his stopwatch and scrubbing a mission based on a peacetime standard? Is some squad somewhere going to have to stop in mid-mission due to a peacetime regulation? How doubly stupid would it be to give any faction opposing us the foreknowledge of such controlling factors. It’s the 2011 equivalent of the British sending their troops out in formation, to be picked off by guerilla fighting Americans. Are we the stupid ones with targets on our chests now?

Let pilots flying commercial aviation have their reasonable hours, and leave the heroism and exemptions up to the military.

And to mailmen too, of course—long may they be by snow, rain, heat and gloom of night, “unstayed.”

According to the people who ought to know—the NTSB, Flight Safety Foundation, Boeing—recent studies indicate that the biggest threat to aviation safety is pilots not doing go-arounds.

Excuse me?

Apparently,pilots need to recognize and respond faster to unstabilized approaches (approaches that need correction in heading, speed and/or altitude.)

Pilots tend to want to land when they come in for a landing; and surveys indicate that although airline requirements are to abort landings if their approaches are unstable, go-arounds happen proportionally less often than they should. The Director of Global Programs at Flight Safety Foundation, Rudy Quevedo, “The physics of landing mean that the plane should be centered, on the correct trajectory, the correct descent rate and the right speed.”

I would not presume to say that I know if weather, mechanical failures or human failures are most frequently responsible for aviation disasters. I do know that problems tend to occur together.

I know, for example, that there are countries (like India where a recent aviation school scandal revealed the licensing of pilots who cannot fly or pass flying exams.) When a pilot who couldn’t pass his flying exam has an accident, a go round would not have helped.

And as for a crash like the Boeing 777 operated by Asiana Airlines that crash landed at San Francisco International Airport–the plane flown by someone unfamiliar with the airport and the plane he was flying came in too low and hit the seawall (among other things.) How can one say that failing to make a go around was the problem–when the plane was too low and at the wrong angle even before reaching the runway.

It is easy for a statistician to say some of these accidents could have been prevented with a go-around; but in how many of these accidents was a go around actually an option? Planes hit seawalls, encounter wake turbulence, strike cables, have flat tires, flap failures, bird strikes, suffer wind shear, idiots who attempt to open doors in mid-flight, and hundreds of other problems. A go-around is not always an option.

Undoubtably, especially on small planes, a second or even third shot at landing will correct minor landing physics issues. It’s probably somewhat easier on a small plane than a 777, And if you ask a pilot that had a runway overrun, he will probably tell you the exact instant when he should have gone for the go-around, and knew when it was too late.

It should be noted that sometimes when the plane is on a wrong trajectory, incorrect descent rate, and wrong speed, it might not be possible to manage a go-around; there may well be a factor like a bird strike, mechanical failure, faulty flight indication, or icing crimping the physics.

It’s very easy for a guy with a pencil in his hand to say pilots should have aborted their landings at the first sign of trouble. Sometimes we should look at surveys and statistics like Mark Twain, and realize that “There are lies, damned likes and statistics.”