Trump Administration Readies Airline Bailout

The four largest US airlines collectively earned a net profit of more than $10 billion in 2018. Three months into 2020 and mere weeks after the onset of America’s Coronavirus scare they are looking for a bailout.

Airlines have been forced to cancel thousands of planned flights both as part of containment measures and because few people want to be in close proximity to travelers from who-knows-where as they pass through airport terminals and airline cabins. Revenue forecasts have not been updated but they must be plummeting. Delta alone has announced plans to cut flights by 40 percent and park 300 airplanes.

But airlines have high fixed costs. Even when passengers are not buying tickets, the companies still must make lease payments on airplanes that are not generating revenue. Employees must still be paid unless the crisis extends long enough to justify furloughs. Even furloughs entail costs for retraining crews. For the moment, Delta and its pilot union have agreed to a plan to allow some pilots to voluntarily take time off with partial pay as a stopgap measure.

Even with cost-cutting, the airlines will be burning through their cash reserves at an alarming rate. Industry groups say that most of the world’s airlines will be bankrupt by May.

The situation is similar to what occurred after the September 11 attacks when airlines were shut down for several days and then the public avoided flying. Despite a $15 billion federal bailout, a wave of airline bankruptcies occurred in the years following the terrorist attacks. This year, the leaner airlines will benefit from the reorganizations that resulted from those bankruptcies.

This year, the airlines are also asking for much more than the $15 billion they received 19 years ago. Airlines are currently seeking a $50 billion package that includes grant money, loan guarantees, and tax relief.

The Trump Administration appears ready to sign onto the plan.

“As far as the airlines are concerned, the airlines, we’re going to back the airlines 100 percent,” President Trump said yesterday. “It’s not their fault. We’ve told the airlines we’re going to help them. We’re going to be helping them very much. It’s very important.”

The question is how far the Administration is prepared to go. The effects of the Coronavirus downturn will extend far beyond the travel industry. Movie theaters are shut down, restaurants and bars are closed or are urged to provide carryout and delivery only, and untold numbers of other businesses are being affected as consumers take a wait-and-see attitude to spending on everything except food and toilet paper. Where should the line for federal aid be drawn?

It would be easy – and if we are honest likely – for Congress to choose political considerations over effectiveness in the virus relief bill. In the past, crony capitalism has often ruled the day and we should expect no different in a contentious election year.

In 1887, President Grover Cleveland issued a veto of a bill to provide federal funds for drought-stricken Texas farmers. In his veto message, Cleveland argued that charity for individuals was not the role of the federal government even though the cause was good.

“I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit,” Cleveland said, adding, “The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune.”

For better or worse, both parties abandoned Cleveland’s conservatism and reliance on individual charity long ago. And possibly with good reason. A localized drought in Texas is one thing, but a nationwide pandemic is another. It’s impossible for individuals to bail out the airlines or help one another when they are confined to their homes and not earning a paycheck themselves.

“Unlike in 2008, unlike 2001 – there is not one or two particular industries we are talking about, and the economic pain that we as a society are going to face is widespread,” said Matt Dallek, a political history professor at George Washington University. “Because if you bail out the travel industries — well, what about the restaurants and bars that are going to go under? What about the taxi drivers and Uber and Lyft drivers? What about other people who are being laid off in other industries that are threatened.”

A much bigger question is how much a nation that is $23 trillion in debt and that was running a $1 trillion annual deficit before the current crisis can do to bail out its entire economy. Thanks to generations of profligate spending, we may find ourselves moving from a public health crisis to a debt crisis.

Originally published on The Resurgent

The Iranian Shootdown And Man-Caused Air Disasters

The apparent shootdown of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 in Iran earlier this week made me think about previous shootdowns of civilian airliners. I could remember offhand three additional shootdowns, one of which occurred only about five years ago. That made me speculate that guided missiles may have been one of the largest causes of air disasters in recent history.

I was curious enough that I looked up a list of air crashes by year and tallied up the total number of passenger airline fatalities around the world for the past six years. The numbers that I came up with were:

2014 – 920

2015 – 525

2016 – 302

2017- 68 (including 35 on the ground)

2018 – 520

2019 – 324 (including 10 on the ground)

2020 to date – 176

My first reaction was that the average death toll of 473 people (including the victims of the Ukrainian crash in Iran) is far higher than I would have thought. The good news is that very few of those fatalities were in the United States. Many were in third-world countries and quite a few were in Russia. Relatively few were on major airlines as well. Turboprops and regional jet airliners made up a significant portion of the total. Older aircraft were also well-represented in the list of fatal crashes.

In addition to the 176 people killed in the Iranian shootdown, I also remembered that a Malaysian Airlines 777 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile fired by Russian-backed separatists in July 2014. All of the 283 passengers and 15 crew were killed.

Admittedly, the time span that I examined was somewhat arbitrary, but the 474 fatalities from the two shootdowns represent more than 16 percent of the total. To borrow an Obama-era phrase, these “man-caused disasters” represent a significant share of airline deaths over the past half-decade.

Shootdowns are not the only man-caused air disasters, however. An ISIS suicide bomber brought down a Russian airliner over Egypt in October 2015 killing 224. A Germanwings pilot committed suicide with his airplane in March 2015, killing 150. An employee of US regional airline Horizon stole a turboprop airliner and killed himself in 2018. Pilot suicide is also suspected in the disappearance of another Malaysian airliner in March 2014 with 239 passengers and crew. If we add these deaths, the share of airline fatalities since 2014 that was the result of foul play climbs to 38 percent.

While the number of foul play crashes was comparatively small, they typically occurred high-capacity airplanes with no survivors. So while there were more accidents involving small airplanes, these resulted in comparatively smaller losses of life. This is due both to the smaller capacity of these aircraft and the fact that many of the small-aircraft accidents were more survivable.

By way of comparison, the much-maligned Boeing 737 Max 8 was involved in two crashes that killed 189 and 157 people respectively. This translates into about 12 percent of the total.

Technology is making airliners much safer, the Max 8 notwithstanding. Air crashes that are the result of mechanical failures or maintenance problems are becoming increasingly rare.

As the machines become more reliable, human factors make up a larger share of air disasters. Some of those crashes are attributable to pilot error but, in our modern world, murder, suicide, and accidental shootdowns represent significant threats to airline safety.

Shootdowns are not only a third-world problem. A US Navy ship accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner back in 1988 killing 290. Five years earlier, a Russian MiG fighter shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 killing 269 including a US congressman.

The core problem is technology that allows missiles to engage targets beyond visual range as well as human beings that can be careless, make wrong assumptions, or simply want to kill.

Technology and training can be improved. We can build airplanes and engines that are so reliable that failures are statistically insignificant. An old pilot joke is that new airplanes will carry a crew of one human pilot and a dog. The dog is there to bite the pilot if he touches anything. We probably aren’t that far from that joke becoming reality.

We can also improve training to help eliminate pilot error. Simulators teach pilots to handle the rare emergencies much better than training flights in airplanes can. Beyond teaching basic flying skills, standard operating procedures and line-oriented training attempt to instill good judgment into pilots so that they stay out of trouble in the first place.

These safety enhancements work pretty well, particularly with first-world airlines. Our Achilles heel is people: People who want to kill themselves and others and people who are at the controls of weapons systems who make bad decisions. As long as people are involved, there will be air disasters. The most we can hope to do is minimize them.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Few Clues In Houston Crash Of Atlas 767

As yet, there are few clues as to what caused a Boeing 767 jet freighter to crash on arrival into Houston Intercontinental airport on Saturday afternoon. The 767 was operated by Atlas Air, Inc., a cargo airline headquartered in New York. The three crewmembers on board are presumed dead.

The accident aircraft, N1217A, was flying as Amazon Air but was operated by Atlas. Amazon started its cargo airline in 2015 and took delivery of the freighter in April 2017. The airplane was 26 years old and had accumulated more than 90,000 hours over 23,000 flights per the FAA. Amazon Air was originally called Prime Air and some airplanes still carry the old livery. Leasing aircraft and crews is not uncommon in the aviation industry.

Flight tracking on FlightAware.com shows that the Atlas 3591 departed Miami International at 11:33 a.m. on Saturday. Two hours and 19 minutes later, it crashed into the marshes southeast of Houston Intercontinental at about 12:45 Central Time. The flight was only minutes away from landing when air traffic control lost communications with the pilots.

Witnesses reported to Houston’s Channel Two that the 767 crashed nose first into 2-4 feet of water on the east side of Trinity Bay near Anahuac, Texas. Aerial photos showed a trail of debris up to a mile long, which indicates that the airplane was still flying forward when impacted, rather than crashing vertically, which would have left a smaller debris field. This is supported by a video on Instagram that shows the plane losing altitude but still under control as it flew over the bay.

Weather reports at Houston were not available from the time of the accident, but reports from earlier in the morning showed cloud ceilings in multiple layers with bases at approximately 1,000 feet above the ground. Galveston, closer to the accident site, reported a broken 400-foot ceiling with an overcast layer at 2,000 feet at the time of the crash. Neither airport reported significant winds but there were small rain showers and thunderstorms in the area. The video shows higher ceilings than those that were reported at the Houston and Galveston airports. The weather was not abnormally bad and would have been easily handled by the experienced crew.

Information about the flight crew was not available. Their names have not yet been released but the sheriff of Chambers County, Texas told KHOU that human remains had been recovered from the crash site.

Although there have been a number of high-profile airline disasters around the world in recent years, the United States has not suffered an airline crash since UPS Flight 1354 crashed at Birmingham, Alabama on August 14, 2013. That same year, Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crashed short of the runway at San Francisco killing three people and National Airlines Flight 102, another American cargo aircraft, crashed after takeoff from Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan killing seven.

Cargo airlines operate under the same Federal Aviation Regulations that govern passenger carriers. Pilots for cargo airlines meet the same qualifications as passenger airline pilots and, after more than a decade of upheaval in the passenger airline industry, pilot jobs with cargo carriers have been in high demand for their stability and competitive pay.

Companies that fly cargo do face challenges that companies that exclusively carry passengers do not. There are stringent rules for shipping hazardous materials but it is impossible to check every package and improperly shipped cargo can be deadly. In 1996, ValuJet 592 crashed into the Everglades after oxygen generators in the cargo compartment caught fire. The crash of the plane, which also carried passengers, killed 110 people. The National Airlines crash was due to an armored vehicle in the cargo bay that broke loose, damaging the hydraulic systems and shifting the plane’s center of gravity out of limits. A chilling video shows the 747 stall and fall off on to one side before diving into the ground and exploding into a fireball.

Cargo carriers also suffer from the same problems as other airlines. Pilot error and crew fatigue were ruled to be the causes of the crash of UPS Flight 1354. Even when flights occur during the day, crews may be fatigued from traveling across time zones or long duty days that began before the sun came up.

FlightAware shows that the N1217A started the day in Ontario, Ca. with a departure at 2:26 a.m. local time to Miami. It is not known whether the accident crew flew the earlier flight as well.

Although there are many possibilities, the cause of the crash is a mystery at this point. The National Transportation Safety Board is sending investigators to the scene, but the results of the investigation may not be available for months.

Originally published on The Resurgent

How to Steal An Airliner

The theft and subsequent crash of a Horizon Air Q400 airliner over the weekend has left many people wondering how it would be possible to steal an airliner from one of the nation’s largest airports in the post-9/11 world. The surprising answer is that is probably easier than you think.

What made Richard Russell’s theft easy to carry out on an apparent whim was that Russell was an airline employee. Russell had worked as a ground service crewman for Horizon for 3-1/2 years prior to Friday’s incident. To be employed in secure areas of the airport, he would have had to pass a five-year background check that included a review of his criminal history as well as prior work history. While aviation background checks don’t delve into an applicant’s mental state, if any psychological problems were apparent they probably would have been noticed during training if they had not been uncovered when Horizon contacted Russell’s previous employers. Russell’s psychological problems probably manifested after he was already on the job and cleared for access to the flight line.

Once he became a Horizon employee, Russell would have been issued a badge that would allow him to access secure areas of the Seattle-Tacoma airport where he worked. Since Russell was an employee who had a legitimate reason to have access to the areas of the airport where the airplanes were parked, getting to the airplane would have been the easy part.

The tricky part would have been starting the engines and taking off, but even that is not as hard as it sounds. The Bombardier Q400 is a turboprop airliner. Jet airliners typically nose into the gate and passengers embark via the retractable jetway. Since turboprop airliners have propellers, they don’t use jetways. Normally turboprops park away from the terminal and passengers walk outside across the open ramp to get onboard. In the case of Russell’s airplane, N449QX was parked in a maintenance area, not at the passenger terminal. Russell used a tug, which he was trained to use as part of his normal duties, to turn the airplane 180 degrees before he took it.

Airliners don’t typically have lockable exterior doors so getting into the plane was also easy. From his job, Russell undoubtedly knew how to open and close the door. After September 11, airliners were required to have lockable cockpit doors, but they are normally only locked during flight.

Airliners also don’t have keyed ignitions as cars do. Much has been made of the intricate sequence of setting cockpit controls to start the engines. This also is not as hard as it sounds. The Bombardier Q400 is a new version of the Dash 8, originally built by de Havilland Canada in the 1980s. The Q400 version first flew in 2000 and has modern avionics and engine controls, which are much simpler than in older airplanes.

The Q400 engines include FADEC, full authority digital electronic engine controls, that greatly simplify managing the engines. While I don’t have any firsthand experience with the Q400, I have flown a variety of turbine airplanes both with and without FADECs. A Beechcraft King Air turboprop without a FADEC has three sets of levers for its two engines: The throttles, the prop controls and the fuel levers. Online pictures of Q400 cockpits show only two levers, the throttles. Starting the engines was probably just a matter of turning on the aircraft batteries and pressing the starter button.

Airplane cockpits are checklist-driven environments. Russell could have found a checklist in the airplane and simply followed the steps to help start the engines and set up the airplane for flight. While this would have required some minimal knowledge, such as knowing where controls are and what they are called, it would not have been an insurmountable obstacle for someone who was around the airplanes on a daily basis. The landing gear control is typically one of the easiest things to find in a cockpit. It is normally a big handle that is shaped like a wheel.

Russell’s website also indicates that he took airline trips in his spare time. A fringe benefit for airline employees is the ability to travel on standby tickets at little or no cost. Russell may have been able to observe pilots on some of these trips, perhaps from the jump seat (a third seat in the cockpit behind the pilots).

Once the engines were started, taxiing and taking off would have been relatively easy. You just push the throttles forward, wait for the airplane to accelerate and pull back on the control yoke to raise the nose. Russell’s flying probably wasn’t smooth and professional, but it didn’t have to be. He just had to get the airplane off the ground and high enough to avoid obstacles.

Russell could have been aided by flight simulator software. Microsoft Flight Simulator is a PC-based game that has undergone many revisions since the 1980s. Current versions allow upgrades so that users can pretend to fly many different aircraft, including the Q400.

As a former simulator instructor, I can say that even nonpilots can fly a simulator with a little coaching. It isn’t uncommon for a novice to be able to do loops and rolls in a simulator. Russell reportedly executed aerobatic maneuvers like these with the Q400 and may well have learned them on a PC-based flight simulator. The Q400 is not built to fly aerobatics, however, and there is good chance that Russell could have killed himself earlier in attempting these maneuvers. The flight instrument displays on five screens in the Q400 cockpit really do look like a video game.

Landing is much more difficult than taking off. Landing an airplane is a combination of art and science. The plane’s autopilot could have helped Russell land the plane, but the final seconds of the flight, the landing flare, touchdown and rollout on the runway would have been in his hands. Large jets have autoland, but a regional airline turboprop would not be equipped with such a system.

It seems likely that Richard Russell was intent on ending his life when he took off. There have been several cases of pilots using their airplanes to commit suicide. It seems likely that this was Russell’s goal all along.

Despite all the precautions and security measures, it is impossible to foresee every scenario. If an airline employee passes a background check and gains trust through years of experience on the job, there is no reason to suspect that he would decide to take an airliner for a fatal joyride. Thankfully, most aviation employees are responsible people for whom bending an airplane and using it to hurt people is unthinkable.

Originally published on The Resurgent

New Details on Southwest 1380

There are new details emerging about the deadly Southwest Airlines engine failure yesterday. The NTSB reports that a fan blade on the engine was missing and there are striking parallels between yesterday's accident and a 2016 incident on another Southwest 737.

The 737-700 uses CFM 56-7B engines manufactured by CFM International, a joint venture between GE and Safran Aircraft Engines. The original CFM 56 first ran in 1974 and has been continuously updated since then. The -7 version of the engine dates back to 1995 and is used on a large number of 737 variants. The shutdown rate of the CFM 56 is reported to be only only one for every 333,333 hours and the engines log an average of one million flight hours every eight days.

The CFM 56 is classified as high bypass turbofan, meaning that most of the air that passes through the engine flows around the sides through bypass ducts rather than through the engine's combustion section. The engine's fan is the large rotating set of blades that can be seen at the engine inlet. Behind the fan is a series of compressors, turbines and igniters that first compress the intake air, mix it with jet fuel and then it burn it under high pressure to create thrust.

The CFM 56 has had a history of fan blade problems, although most of the incidents occurred with older versions of the engine. In 1989, a 737-400 fitted with CFM 56-3C engines suffered a fan blade failure. The pilots of the British Midlands jet shut down the wrong engine and the damaged engine subsequently quit completely. The resulting crash killed 47 people and injured 74 in what became known as the Kegworth air disaster. Two other 737-400s fitted with the same engines experienced fan blade problems shortly after, resulting in a fleet wide grounding of all 737-400s while fans were replaced and engine controls were modified to reduce the engine's maximum thrust.

The -7 version of the engine experienced a comparable problem in 2016 when Southwest Flight 3472 experienced a fan blade separation very similar to yesterday's incident. On the flight from New Orleans to Orlando, the 737-700 suffered a fan blade failure that also caused engine parts to puncture the cabin pressure vessel and led to a depressurization. There were no serious injuries and the incident led to a requirement to inspect fan blades for corrosion and cracks caused by metal fatigue.

CNN reports today that NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said that one of the accident aircraft engine's 24 fan blades was missing and that there was evidence of metal fatigue where the blade attached to the spinner hub.

Sumwalt cautioned against drawing conclusions based on the earlier Southwest incident. “We want to look at this particular event and see what the factors are surrounding this and maybe they’re related and maybe not,” he told Flight Global. “We need to understand what’s going on here.”

Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said after the incident that the engine had been inspected on April 15 and returned to service. It is not clear if the recent inspection included checks for metal fatigue or focused on the fan blades.

Although it is still early in the investigation, it seems that fan blade separation due to metal fatigue is the likely cause of the accident. If this is confirmed, the NTSB and FAA may issue an inspection directive similar to 2016. With the CFM 56-7B powering some 13,400 airliners worldwide, inspections could be an expensive proposition in terms of both compliance and scheduling. In addition to Southwest, the 737-700 is operated in the US by several other carriers including Delta, United and Alaska Airlines.

When asked about the parallels between Southwest 3472 and whether the NTSB would recommend a fix or inspection for fatigue in the fan section, Sumwalt answered, “I don’t have that information right now. Our focus is getting out the door at headquarters and getting on this airplane so we can get up to Philadelphia.”

Originally published on The Resurgent

Southwest Engine Failure Kills Passenger

A Southwest Airlines flight from New York's LaGuardia airport to Dallas suffered a catastrophic engine failure yesterday that left one woman dead. The fatality was the first US airline death in nine years.

Southwest 1380 was a Boeing 737-700 twin-engine airliner operated by the Dallas-based, low fare airline. The flight is typically scheduled to take just under four hours. The aircraft left the gate at LaGuardia at 10:27 a.m., three minutes early, and took off 16 minutes later.

As the airplane climbed to its planned cruising altitude of 38,000 feet, it suffered what appears to be an uncontained failure of the left engine. Radar data from FlightAware.com shows that the plane only attained an altitude of about 32,000 feet before it started its descent. By this point, the plane was northwest of Philadelphia and about 20 minutes into the flight.

Generally, when pilots say they “lost an engine” they mean they lost power on the engine. In this case, it looks as though the Southwest crew lost large pieces of their engine. Pictures of the engine show the cowling at the front the engine nacelle peeled back or missing with much of engine's interior exposed.

On the portion of the air-traffic audio that has been released, a Southwest pilot tells the controller, “We have a part of the aircraft missing, so we're going to need to slow down a bit.” This indicates that the crew suspected structural damage after the engine explosion and didn't want to stress the airplane with high speed flight.

Jet engines contain a number of fans and turbines that spin at a high rate inside the engine cowling. In the case of Southwest 1380, it appears that finely-machined guts of the jet engine came apart violently, turning fan blades and other engine parts into shrapnel that peppered the fuselage. One of the pieces of engine hit a cabin window, causing a small hole and injuring a female passenger. A passenger reported that the crew was trying to plug the hole when the window completely shattered, pulling the female passenger partly outside the plane.

The woman's head and arms were outside the window and “passengers right next to her were holding onto her. And meanwhile, there was blood all over this man's hands. He was tending to her,” passenger Marty Martinez told CNN.

Airline cabins are pressurized by excess air from the engines. Contrary to popular belief, it takes a large hole to affect the cabin pressure. There are even holes built into the fuselage called outflow valves that allow excess cabin air to be dumped overboard to prevent overpressurization. In the case of window breaking, the engine air cannot keep up with the pressurization demands of the cabin and the airplane experiences a rapid decompression.

In a rapid decompression, the air inside the airplane rushes out quickly with a loud noise and the temperature quickly drops to below freezing. Wind and engine noise through the open window add to the chaos.

A rapid decompression is a maneuver that jet pilots routinely train for in the simulator. The pilots first don their oxygen masks since the thin air at high altitudes will render a person unconscious in a matter of seconds. The next step is to put the airplane into a steep dive to a safe lower altitude while making sure that the passenger oxygen masks have deployed in the cabin.

This steep, controlled dive may have given some passengers the incorrect idea that the airplane was descending out of control. FlightAware shows that the airplane descended from 30,000 to 10,000 feet, which is considered a safe altitude for an unpressurized aircraft, in about five minutes as it turned toward Philadelphia.

As the crew approached the airport, the pilot said, “Could you have the medical meet us there on the runway as well? We've got injured passengers.” She said that airplane was not on fire, but repeated, “Part of it's missing.”

“They said there's a hole and someone went out,” she added.

The plane landed uneventfully in Philadelphia about 20 minutes after the engine failure. One passenger was killed, but there were no other serious injuries reported among the 143 passengers and 5 crew members. Seven passengers reported minor injuries. The entire flight lasted only 40 minutes.

The only fatality was Jennifer Riordan, of Albuquerque, N.M., the New York Daily News reported. Riordan, vice president of community relations at Wells Fargo, is assumed to be the female passenger who was pulled partially out of the window, but this has not been confirmed.

US airline accidents have become exceedingly rare. The last fatal accident was in 2009 when the crash of Colgan 3407 left 49 passengers and crew dead as well as one person on the ground.

There have been similar accidents in US history where the endings were more tragic than Southwest 1380. In 1989, an engine exploded on a United Airlines DC-10, severing the flight controls and leaving the crew airborne with no way to control the airplane. Using the throttles for the remaining engines, the crew of United 232 was able to steer the plane to a crash landing in Sioux City, Iowa that left 111 of the 296 passengers and crew dead.

A year earlier in 1988, Aloha Airlines Flight 243 suffered a rapid decompression when a section of the cabin ceiling peeled off the aircraft at 23,000 feet. A flight attendant was sucked out of the 737-200 over the Pacific Ocean near Maui and her body was never recovered. The crew safely landed the airplane with no further deaths.

Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said that the engine had been inspected on April 15 and had flown about 40,000 cycles. It had been about 10,000 cycles since the engine's last overhaul.

“I'm not aware of any issues with the airplane or any issues with the engine involved,” Kelly said.

The cause of the catastrophic engine failure is not known. While extremely reliable, jet engines are not infallible. National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt said that board sees “about three or four [uncontained failures] a year, but not all involve US airlines. With airlines flying about 17 million hours annually, three or four failures is about as close to error-free as any transportation system can get.

In fact, aviation machines are so reliable that the weak link often lies with pilots and maintenance personnel. Southwest has been fined several times by the FAA for maintenance violations, but this is not unusual in itself. Many of the violations are technical and other airlines such as United and Delta have also been fined by the FAA.

In modern times, our machines are so reliable that we forget that flying five miles above in the earth in a pressurized metal tube that hurtles along 500 miles per hour is inherently dangerous. Things can and do go wrong, sometimes for no apparent reason and with no one to blame. It is at that time that the pilots truly earn their pay. The pilots of Southwest 1380 certainly earned theirs.

Originally published on The Resurgent

United email sheds light on dragging incident

The nation was shocked yesterday by the sight of a man being dragged down the aisle of a United airliner. Now an email from United CEO Oscar Munoz to United employees sheds light on the other side of the story. The Munoz email was revealed by CNBC’s Ryan Ruggiero in a tweet that reprints the letter to employees.

According to Munoz, the incident occurred on Sunday, April 9, at Chicago’s O’Hare airport (KORD) on United Express Flight 3411. It is important to note here that a United Express flight is not an actual United Airlines flight, but a codeshare. The flight status tool on United’s website reveals that the flight was operated by Republic Airlines, a regional airline based in Indianapolis.

That the flight was on board a regional airline is apparent at a glance in the video from the seating arrangements, which are clearly on board a regional jet. Although most passengers don’t realize it, if you fly on anything smaller than a Boeing 737 or Airbus A319, you are probably not flying with the airline that you bought the ticket from, but with one of their regional contractors. Regional employees are generally less experienced and less well trained than mainline carrier employees. Because this incident did occur at a United hub, mainline United customer service agents may have been involved as well.

Munoz goes on to say that the problem arose when gate agents were informed that four Republic crewmembers needed to board the flight to Louisville, Kentucky (KSDF). This apparently occurred after the passengers had already been boarded.

A confidential source within United Airlines says that crewmembers were deadheading. This means that they were traveling while on official airline duty to fly a return flight the next day. Ordinarily, deadheading crewmembers are assigned seats before passengers are boarded to avoid problems like the one Sunday. This “shouldn't have happened since an out-of-place crew situation is usually known before boarding starts.”

The passenger was not bumped due to airline passengers with buddy passes. Passengers who travel on buddy passes have the lowest boarding priority. These are also called “nonrev” or “nonrevenue” passengers and airlines will not bump a revenue passenger for them. As an airline pilot, I remember being pushed back from the gate and seeing my wife and newborn son staring glumly at the departing plane after their nonrev/space available seats were taken by paying passengers from a canceled flight.

Munoz wrote, “We sought volunteers and then followed our involuntary denial of boarding process (including offering up to $1,000 in compensation) and when we approached one of these passengers to explain apologetically that he was being denied boarding, he raised his voice and refused to comply with crewmember instructions.”

“He was approached a few more times after that in order to gain his compliance to come off the aircraft, and each time he refused and became more and more disruptive and belligerent,” Munoz continued. “Our agents were left with no choice but to call Chicago Aviation Security Officers to assist in removing the customer from the flight. He repeatedly declined to leave.”

“Chicago Aviation Security Officers were unable to gain his cooperation and physically removed him from the flight as he continued to resist,” Munoz said. He even claims the man was “running back onto the aircraft in defiance of both our crew and security officials.”

The videos released so far begin with the security officers removing the man from his seat and do not corroborate Munoz’s claims that the passenger was belligerent to United employees. If a passenger videoed the earlier exchanges, those clips may be forthcoming. In any case, the other passengers will probably be questioned by authorities to determine what led up to the incident.

Once the man became belligerent and refused to comply with instructions, there was no way that he was going to stay on the plane. Airline captains have always had wide latitude to remove unruly and disruptive passengers. This is especially true in the post 9/11 world. No flight crew wants to deal with an aggressive and uncompliant passenger at 35,000 feet.

Removal of disruptive passengers is for their safety as well as everyone else’s. If a passenger becomes uncontrollable in the air, they might end up dead. In several cases, aggressive passengers have been restrained by crew and other passengers. Sometimes those passengers have died while being restrained. Uncontrollable passengers might also be shot by an air marshal. This happened in Miami in 2005. If the unruly passenger survives, they can be fined up to $25,000 by the FAA.

In aviation, we talk about “accident chains.” It usually isn’t one thing that leads to an accident and that was the case here. The problem started with United choosing to use contractors instead of its own employees. There was an apparent breakdown in communication that led the gate agent to board the passengers before assigning seats to the deadhead crew. None of the passengers volunteered to take the later flight which required that the airline pick people to bump. The alternative was canceling a flight full of passengers the next day. There was also an apparent failure by the security officers to follow proper procedure while removing the passenger. Finally, there was the choice by the passenger to refuse to follow lawful instructions and to resist orders.

As the United source asked, “Why this guy couldn't just get up and call his lawyer on a $300 Uber ride to Louisville, I don't know. What is wrong with grown adults who in the face of law-enforcement officers, refuse to comply with instructions? And then they are shocked when it gets ugly.”

An additional lesson from the incident is that cellphone videos, while often compelling and sometimes appalling, seldom tell the whole story. In this situation, like many police shootings and fights, the camera records the moment of violence, but without the context of why it occurred. Without the full story, it’s impossible to determine what really happened or why. 

Originally published on The Resurgent

How Mentally Ill Esteban Santiago Flew His Gun Across the Country… Legally

After Esteban Santiago murdered five people in the Fort Lauderdale airport last week, the obvious question to emerge is how Santiago managed to get a gun through airport security. The question of Santiago’s weapon is two-fold since there are reports that he had shown signs of mental illness as well as the fact that the shooting occurred in an airport, normally considered to be a gun-free zone.

Santiago, an Iraq War veteran who served with the Puerto Rico National Guard, reportedly visited the FBI office in Anchorage, Alaska and complained, according to an FBI spokesman, “that his mind was being controlled by US intelligence agencies. During the interview, Mr. Santiago appeared agitated, incoherent and made disjointed statements. Although, he stated he did not wish to harm anyone, as a result of his erratic behavior, our [FBI] agents contacted local authorities who took custody of Mr. Santiago and transported him a local medical facility for evaluation.”

The spokesman said that Mr. Santiago, who had lived in Alaska for several years and worked there as a security guard and a member of the Alaska National Guard, was not placed on a no-fly list. “During our initial investigation, we found no ties to terrorism. There is currently no indication that Mr. Santiago was working with other individuals when he planned and carried out yesterday’s attack.”

With respect to Santiago’s mental health, a spokesman noted, “There is a federal law with regard to having a gun by somebody who is mentally ill, but the law requires that the person be ‘adjudicated mentally ill,’ which is a difficult standard. This is not someone who would have been prohibited [from owning or possessing a gun] based on the laws that they had. I think that law enforcement acted within the laws that they had. We’re a country of laws and they operated within them.”

There are laws that prevent the mentally ill from possessing guns, but the right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right and due process must be followed to restrict that right. Federal and Alaska law state that firearms ownership and possession are prohibited if a person has been “adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to a mental institution.” Neither seems to have applied to Santiago, whose gun was returned after a mental health screening in connection with his statements at the FBI office according to the Anchorage Daily News.

“Unless there was some sort of a court order requiring involuntary commitment for mental health treatment, under existing gun control legislation, he could not be deprived of his constitutional right to possess a weapon,” Paul Callan, former New York homicide prosecutor told CNN. “People who submit to voluntary mental health treatment don't lose their right to possess firearms under current US law.”

Health care workers are required to notify authorities if they believe a patient may pose a danger to themselves or others. Privacy laws may conflict with this duty to warn, however. With many mass shootings in recent years, the perpetrators have exhibited signs of mental illness before their shooting sprees. Until a law is broken, such as making a threat, people who are mentally ill and potentially dangerous must voluntarily seek treatment.

Since Santiago was not committed or judged to be mentally ill, he had broken no laws and was free to travel. Esteban placed his weapon in a checked bag for his flight to Florida. NBC News reports that the Glock 9mm pistol was in a gun case that was carried in the baggage compartment of the airliners that flew Esteban from Anchorage to Minneapolis and Fort Lauderdale.

According to TSA rules, guns and ammunition are allowed on airliners if they are placed in a checked bag that is hard-sided and kept locked. Passengers cannot carry guns, ammunition or parts of guns such as magazines or clips in the cabin of the airliner. Ammunition can be placed in the same locked container as the gun.

Esteban would have checked his gun case and declared his firearm when he checked in at the airport. He would then have gone through the TSA security screening and traveled unarmed. Baggage claim areas are outside of the secure area of the airport.

Esteban reported left the secure area of the airport and retrieved his gun case at baggage claim upon arrival in Fort Lauderdale. At that point, he took the gun and ammunition out of the case and killed five people.

At this point, it seems that gun laws were followed in the case of Esteban Santiago. The gun was legal, Santiago owned and possessed it legally and he legally transported it across the country.

The failure in Fort Lauderdale seems to the same failure that contributed to so many shootings in the past few years. Law enforcement and the mental health system failed to identify a troubled individual who was in need of treatment. Perhaps instead of calling for more gun control, we should revisit privacy laws that prevent doctors, employers and law enforcement agencies from sharing information about potential killers. Consideration should also be given to reforming commitment laws so that potentially dangerous people can be given treatment without their consent.

Keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill is not a gun control issue. It is a public safety issue. If mass shootings continue unabated, the left’s outcry for more gun control may lead to sweeping laws like those of New York that restrict all gun ownership, rather than sensible laws that target the real problem.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Pilot suicides

Yesterday’s revelation that the recent crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 was caused by an apparent pilot suicide shocked the world. First Officer Andreus Lubitz reportedly locked the captain out of the cockpit and calmly flew the airplane with its 150 passengers into the side of a French mountain, killing everyone on board.

The act of suicide by an airline pilot while flying is not common, but has happened more than most people think. The most well-known suicide pilots, the Japanese kamikazes of World War II, carried no passengers, although the September 11 suicide hijackers did. The Aviation Safety Network lists nine crashes dating back to 1976 that were confirmed to be suicides. Additionally, ABC News notes that a Japan Air Lines pilot crashed his DC-8 in 1982, killing 24 people, but surviving the crash himself. Last year’s disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370 is widely believed to have been due to a pilot suicide as well.

Airline suicide crashes are usually not well known because they have primarily occurred in the third world. The sole suicide crash before Germanwings that affected a Western country was EgyptAir 990, which crashed off the island of Nantucket, Mass. in 1999. The American NTSB determined that a relief first officer crashed the plane into the ocean, killing all 217 people on board, but Egypt disputed the conclusion.

For most people, there are strong psychological barriers against killing oneself or others. A pilot who intentionally crashes his plane has obviously overcome these strong taboos against killing and suicide. While pilots are normal people with normal problems, few people who commit suicide do so while taking hundreds of other lives at the same time. Nevertheless, one study cited by Air & Space Magazine found that suicide was suspected in .33 percent of fatal crashes over 20 years. This is slightly more than one crash per year, mostly involving small airplanes.

Flying is a high stress occupation. Being an airline pilot involves long periods of time away from home and family, which leads to a high divorce rate. The airline industry is often unstable and furloughs (layoffs) or demotions can come suddenly and last years, leading to financial problems. Add to that a grueling schedule with irregular work hours, regular flight tests and medical exams that can quickly end a career, and the knowledge that a momentary lapse can kill or lead to a violation by regulatory authorities and it is easy to understand how a pilot could suffer from depression or substance abuse. In spite of the stress, suicide is not demonstrably higher for pilots according to most studies.

“It's a special job. You are working at irregular times; if you have a family, you are often not there [or] may be at home when everyone is at work,” said Dr. Andre Droog, president of the European Association for Aviation Psychology on Voice of America. “If you are flying intercontinental flights, you may build up jet lag and fatigue and of course you have to manage your life very well.”

In spite of policies at many airlines that encourage pilots to self-report addiction or mental health issues, many pilots are fearful that doing so will cost them their jobs. In 2010, the FAA changed its policy to allow pilots to take antidepressants for mild to moderate depression, but the current policy stipulates that approval is on a case-by-case basis and requires successful treatment for six months, during which time they would not be legal to fly. This effectively means that pilots have to either forgo treatment, fly illegally, or take a six month leave of absence.

In Asia, where several suicide crashes have taken place, many airlines now subject their pilots to psychological testing. “They ask about your mental health, about events that could affect you psychologically,” one captain from an Asian airline told CNBC. “But who willingly admits to anything that could lead to a suspension of their license? I won't. I need my job.”

Since airline crewmembers know each other best, flight crews are encouraged to report any potential problems that they observe. In the United States, many pilot unions have professional standards committees to help resolve interpersonal conflicts. Concerned crewmembers can talk to representatives on these committees without involving company representatives and threatening jobs.

“Never leave a person alone - that's probably the most effective suicide prevention technique there is," said Tony Catanese, a clinical psychologist at Glen Iris Psychology in Melbourne on CNBC.

Federal aviation regulations already require that both pilots remain in the cockpit, but contains an exception for “physiological needs.” For flights lasting from six to eight hours, it is unrealistic to assume that neither pilot would ever have to visit the lavatory. On most flights, there are no relief crews to fill the empty seat for a few minutes. Cockpit doors have been strengthened since the September 11 attacks to resist forcible entry, making it difficult for the second pilot to break back in.

One solution might be for a flight attendant enter the cockpit when one pilot leaves. The Flight Attendant would probably not be able to wrestle the controls from a suicidal pilot, but might be able to at least prevent him from locking the other pilot out.

Ultimately, there is no way to effectively prevent any possibility of future airline pilot suicides. At present, even though the shock of the Germanwings crash is still fresh, the problem of suicides by pilots is a tiny statistical blip. The vast majority of airline pilots around the world are professionals who have learned to cope with life’s problems and keep them out of the cockpit.

 

Read the full article on Aviation Examiner

Chilling video shows plane crash in Taiwan

The crash of a TransAsia ATR-72 today in Taiwan was captured in a dramatic video from a dashboard camera in a taxi. The 25 second video, along with another longer but more distant video, can be seen on Uproxx.com.

The video shows the turboprop airliner descending rapidly across a bridge in front of the taxi. As it descends, the airplane rolls approximately 90 degrees onto its left wing. As the plane passes in front of the taxi, its left wingtip and tail strike the road in front of the car before it disappears from view.

According to a report from BBC, TransAsia Airways Flight 235, also referred to as GE235, crashed shortly after takeoff from Taipei Shongshan Airport. Pilots radioed that there was an “engine flameout” according a New York Times report. After passing in front of the taxi’s camera, the airplane came to rest in the Keelung River, a short distance from the airport. The flight was enroute to Kinmen and carried 53 passengers and five crew. At least 19 people are reported dead.

The New York Times reported that both pilots were very experienced. The 42-year-old captain had 4,914 hours including 3,400 in the ATR. The first officer was 45-years-old and had 6,922 hours with 6,500 in ATRs. Nevertheless, preliminary information appears to indicate that the airplane suffered an engine failure on takeoff and that the crew was not able to maintain control.

This is the second fatal crash for TransAsia in six months. Last July, another ATR crashed while landing in a monsoon. That crash killed 48 people.

The ATR 72 is built by the French and Italian company, ATR. The type first flew in 1988, but the New Times reports that the accident aircraft, an ATR 72-600, was only a year old. Although the ATR was once flown by American airlines, it is now principally operated in the US as a cargo freighter by FedEx. In 1994, an American Eagle ATR crashed in Roselawn, Ind. That crash was attributed to airframe icing.

Recovery efforts are still underway in the TransAsia crash. Several of the plane’s passengers are still missing.

 

Read the full article on Examiner.com

The lost of generation of pilots

A friend and former coworker recently remarked to me that, as professional pilots who were starting our careers in the late 1990s and early 2000s, we were part of a lost generation of pilots. We began our flight training with the plan to move quickly from the regional airlines to the cockpit of “heavy iron” at the majors. Everything changed after September 11, 2001.

Aviation’s lost decade started with the terrorist attacks of September 11. Almost immediately, airlines stopped hiring and started furloughing pilots. Less than a year after the attacks, the airline bankruptcies started with a filing by US Airways in August 2002. Many airlines were only beginning to recover when the second half of the one-two punch, the 2008 recession, landed. Before the wave of bankruptcies was over, almost every major airline would be affected.

The airlines used the bankruptcies to negotiate with unions for reductions in employee pay and work rules. Pay rates were decreased at most companies. For some pilots who were downgraded from captain to first officer, the cut in pay approached 50 percent according to the N.Y. Times. Changes to union contracts meant that pilots worked more for less pay. Generous pension plans were dissolved and replaced with 401(k) plans.

The economic crisis also set off a wave of airline mergers as companies sought strength in combining operations. Amid falling ticket prices, companies merged to strengthen their route structures and reduce the number of seats available in hopes of driving up prices. The smaller number of airlines also meant that fewer pilots were needed.

Pay cuts and loss of pensions may have contributed to the decision to change the “Age 60 Rule” as well. This controversial rule, first established by the FAA in the 1950s, required that airline pilots retire when they turned 60. In 2007, President Bush signed a bill into law that changed the mandatory retirement age for airline pilots to age 65. Overnight, the airline hiring outlook changed drastically as thousands of senior airline pilots nearing retirement found their careers extended by five years. This meant that, with little growth in the industry, airlines could put off hiring new pilots for another five years. For first officers already flying with the airlines, it also meant that their upgrades to captain would take years longer than expected.

By 2012, when senior airline captains began turning 65, a career at a major airline wasn’t as attractive as it had been. Pilots who now had stable corporate flying jobs or who were senior at regional airlines often did not want to take the cut in pay or to lose their good schedules to start over at a major airline.

Airline Pilot Central reports that the current first year pay for a United Airlines pilot is $66 per hour. This sounds like a lot at first, but the pay is for flight hours only. The United contract specifies a minimum pay of 70 hours per month. This works out to about $55,000 per year. For most pilots, it would take years return to their old pay rates.

Airline Pilot Central also reports that the most junior captain at United was hired in 1996. As retirements increase, future new hires might upgrade quicker, but most can expect to spend a long time in the right seat. The numbers for other major airlines are similar to those of United. For companies like Southwest, Spirit, and JetBlue, the upgrade might be quicker but starting pay is lower.

In addition to the pay cuts and quality of life issues, many pilots of the Lost Generation are skeptical of the stability of the airlines. After having seen two horrific cycles of long-term furloughs, few are willing to risk a stable corporate or charter flying job to go to the bottom of an airline seniority list. Airline seniority means “last hired, first fired.”

Returning to the airlines would also likely mean the loss of precious free time to pilots of the Lost Generation. Airline pilots can live anywhere, but they must commute on their own time. For many, this would mean spending days off commuting on airliners. With the high passenger loads common in today’s airline industry, commuting as a standby passenger would be an uncertain and frustrating way to get to work. The alternative would be to move to a lower paying job.

Along with good salaries and quality of life, many of the pilots of the Lost Generation have found that our priorities have changed. As we have aged, flying heavy airliners to the far corners of the world is less important than being home to watch our children grow up and making a life with our spouse. Flying is not as important as it was when we were 20 years younger and our logbooks were several thousand hours lighter. It has become a means to an end rather than an end in itself.

For pilots who give up their current jobs, willingly or not, the airlines still provide an attractive career path. For those who take this path, the rewards can be attractive. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that airline pilots and flight engineers (themselves an endangered species) earn a median income of $114,200 annually. For those at the top of the profession, captains of large jets, Salary.com shows a median income of $122,014. As airline pilots gain seniority, they typically work less as well. A crewmember on a heavy airliner on transoceanic trips might reach his maximum monthly flight time in two or three trips.

As more and more airline captains reach the cutoff age of 65, the airlines will have to look harder and harder to qualified pilots to fill their cockpit seats. Recent rule changes that require more flight experience and a reduction in flight training since 2001 mean that those seats will soon be hard to fill. The shortage of qualified pilots may exert some upward pressure on pilot salaries.

Nevertheless, for many pilots of the Lost Generation, an airline career is not in our future. It simply wouldn’t be worth the reduction in pay and the upheaval in our lives. After more than decade of watching our industry undergo gut wrenching change – and finding ourselves changed in the process – we’re okay with that.

Are you a pilot of the Lost Generation with a story to tell? Comment below. I will tell my story next week.

This article is dedicated to my friends and former coworkers at Independence Air and CitationAir, many of whom are part of the Lost Generation.

Read the full article on Examiner.com

Chicago gets first RNP approach

Chicago’s O’Hare airport recently implemented its first RNP (required navigation performance) instrument approach. The satellite-based precision approach is part of the new generation of GPS approaches popping up at airports around the nation and the world. Chris Baur, president and CEO of Hughes Aerospace, the company that developed the approach, told Examiner on Wednesday that the new approach is an environmentally friendly alternative to current land-based approaches.

Instrument approaches are the procedures used by pilots to locate the landing runway when the weather precludes a visual approach. At large airports like O’Hare (KORD), the typical method of tracking to the runway involves an ILS (instrument landing system) approach. ILS approaches use land-based transmitters to send signals to the pilots that bring the airplanes to the touchdown point on the runway both laterally (with a localizer) and vertically (with a glideslope). This requires two separate transmitter facilities for each runway that utilizes an ILS. This can be cost-prohibitive for small airports.

RNP approaches utilize satellite navigation technology instead of ground-based navigational facilities. The aircraft’s flight management computer is programmed to fly a predetermined course along a series of waypoints, locations on a map that do not have to coincide with any geographic feature, toward the runway. Because the airplane is following GPS waypoints, approaches can easily be planned to avoid terrain features or noise sensitive areas. They can also be developed over water where land-based facilities are impractical. At some airports, RNP approaches even follow a curved path to the runway using RF (radius to fix) segments, such as this approach at Atlanta’s Peachtree-DeKalb airport (KPDK).

The RNP, required navigation performance of the approach, determines the accuracy of the approach and has an effect on the minimums, how low the pilot can go without seeing the runway. The required navigation performance for approaches can be as low as 0.1. This means that an airplane’s navigational system must be accurate to with 0.1 nautical mile radius 95 percent of the time. This is referred to as performance-based navigation (PBN).

Baur says the new approach has several advantages over traditional ILS approaches. The RNP approach uses GPS satellites so there are no “costly ground based Infrastructure, architectural weakness and repetitive flight inspections” that are required of traditional ILS facilities. This can reduce costs for maintaining the approach.

Ground-based facilities are also subject to interference from local weather conditions. Baur notes that snow from the infamous Chicago winters can accumulate on antennas and cause a degradation of the navigation signals just when accuracy is needed most. “In the event of the loss or degradation of the ILS, traffic flows and arrival rates can be maintained” with RNP approaches, Baur says. This can translate into fewer delayed or canceled flights for airline passengers. Baur also points out that, because RNP approaches are designed with the stabilized approach concept in mind, they will likely result in fewer missed approaches or “go-arounds.”

“Collectively this reduces the overall environmental impact to the airport and surrounding community,” Baur says.

There are some disadvantages to RNP approaches as well. RNP approaches require special pilot and aircraft certification. Baur notes that many, but not all, modern airliners are equipped with avionics that are capable of RNP approaches. Many airlines have already incorporated RNP approaches into their training programs. Many, if not most, private airplanes are not equipped to fly RNP approaches. This means that smaller aircraft flying into smaller, rural airports cannot benefit from RNP approaches where their value could be greatest.

Further, RNP approaches are nearly, but not quite, as accurate as an ILS. An ILS typically has minimums of 200 feet and ½ mile visibility, but can go even lower in some cases. This means that the airplane can descend as low as 200 feet above the ground without making visual contact with the runway. The RNP approach at O’Hare has minimums of 330 feet and ¾ mile visibility. In most cases, the higher minimum will not make a difference, but in a snowstorm or fog, the extra 130 feet might make the difference between landing and going around.

In spite of the drawbacks, Baur feels that RNP and PBN are the future of aviation. “Today most of the major US Airlines and many of the foreign airlines have received authorization for RNP AR [arrival] procedures, as well as many corporate operators,” he says. “I feel RNAV (RNP) as well as RNP AR will continue to grow and provide benefits.  The number of participating operators will also increase with improved access through avionics.”

Hughes Aerospace has already developed RNP approaches in numerous countries around the world. Baur notes that the approaches would be valuable to airports that are concerned with terrain, noise abatement, airspace restrictions or maintaining arrival rates in the event of a disruption of ground-based facilities. They are also an alternative to the high cost of traditional ground-based approach facilities. As technology improves as entry costs for RNP-capable avionics improve, RNP approaches will become more and more common around the world.

Read the full article on Aviation Examiner

How to annoy your First Officer

My career as a pilot involved spending more than a decade as a First Officer, a copilot to those not initiated into the terms of aviation. After more than ten years and 4,000 hours of flying as an FO at four different companies, I am uniquely qualified to speak on behalf of FOs everywhere and explain to captains what rubs their second-in-command the wrong way. Read on and discover how to annoy your FO.

1. Keep your hand on the flap handle on an approach. This is a common move for both experienced and inexperienced captains. While flying an approach, when the captain feels that it is time to lower the flaps, I would often notice the captain place his hand on the flap handle, just waiting for the second when I, as the flying pilot, would call for the flaps.

I don’t know whether they thought I would forget to call for the flaps, wanted to give me a subtle reminder, or just wanted to keep themselves from forgetting. Regardless, I found it annoying and would often delay calling for the flaps just make them keep their hand in an uncomfortable position.

If the landing checklist is completed properly, the flaps will not be forgotten. As long as flying pilot complies with aircraft limitations and company standard operating procedures, the flying pilot has discretion on when to call for the flaps. If the nonflying pilot believes that the flaps have been forgotten, a better way to remind them is verbally, stating, for example, “We are still at flaps 20.”

2. Never let him fly. FOs are qualified pilots. Often, since aviation new hires typically go to the bottom of the seniority list, the FO might even be more qualified than the captain. The vast majority of FOs are more than capable of safely flying the airplane.

FOs are supposed to be able to land the airplane successfully, not just lower the landing gear and work the radios. Nevertheless, flying is a perishable skill. How can an FO improve and stay current if he never touches the controls? Your life may one day depend upon your FO’s ability to fly an approach to minimums or land in a strong crosswind.

As an instructor, I saw a number of pilots who had logged hundreds of hours in an aircraft type, but who had very little actual experience flying it. This caused difficulty and more than a few problems in simulator training when a First Officer upgraded to captain.

The captain who never lets his FO fly or only rarely throws them a bone with a short leg does his fellow pilots a disservice. The fairest way to divide legs is the way that most airlines do it, by alternating each leg. This helps both pilots to maintain proficiency and interest.

3. Don’t keep him in the loop. CRM (cockpit resource management) is not just three random letters from the alphabet. If your FO going to effectively back you up, he needs to know what’s going on. This includes planning items like changes to flight plans and weather forecasts as well as more basic things like announcing what switches you are flipping. Particularly if the captain is the nonflying pilot, it matters if you do something like switch the anti-ice on or off. Don’t just do things and expect your FO to automatically know what you’re doing and thinking.

Most FOs can’t read their wife’s mind; they certainly can’t read yours.

4. Don’t start a radio conversation and expect him to finish it. Many times, even though the FO is the pilot monitoring, the captain will initiate a radio conversation with ATC. This in itself is not a problem. Sometimes it is simply more expedient to say something yourself than relay it through your fellow pilot.

The problem comes when the captain initiates an exchange and then fails to follow through. Often the initial exchange is followed immediately by an altitude or frequency change, leaving the FO to wonder “will he respond or not?” Usually there is a pregnant pause while neither pilot answers and the FO scrambles to acknowledge the instruction. It would be much easier for the captain to respond since he was already talking to the controller.

5. Don’t share the paperwork. Typically programming the flight plan is an FO duty, but how can he put in an “as filed” route if you squirrel away the flight plan in an undisclosed location on the left side of the cockpit? Further, as mentioned earlier, the FO cannot cross check the captain if he doesn’t know what the captain’s plan is. For example, without the flight plan or dispatch release showing the amount of fuel required for the flight, the FO cannot verify that the aircraft is properly fueled.

A good captain puts the paperwork in the middle where both pilots can check it as needed. A great captain makes the FO his own copy. Captains who don’t print out flight plans make FOs want to pull their hair out.

6. Act like a check airman. The captain and FO may not be equals, but it is not the captain’s job to test my knowledge. The FO not required to let you quiz him on memory items and aircraft limitations. I have learned a lot from some great captains, but they didn’t act like instructors, let alone check airmen. If every flight feels like a checkride, the crew is going to have a miserable time together. Unless you are a check airman, don’t act like one.

7. Try to do his job. A competent FOs knows his flows. He can run a checklist. He is trained to program the FMS and work the radios. Let him do his job. Don’t try to do it for him. CRM teaches that both pilots have their role and should stick to it.

When you try to do the FO’s job as well as yours, you break his routine and increase the chance of errors and mistakes. Do you really want the FO to try to race you to retract the flaps after landing? There are very few things that need to be done quickly in an airplane and having both pilots competing to reach the same control first is a recipe for disaster.

The other extreme is the FO who will let the captain take his duties. This may work well until the first time the captain misses and item and the FO, who is now simply along for the ride, doesn’t catch it either.

8. Use nonstandard procedures. You will be captain on the next trip, but odds are that your FO will be flying with a different captain. Make it easy for him. Use standard procedures. If he spend several days getting used to your nonstandard way of doing things, he’s going to have to relearn the right way to do things next week or next month.

The whole idea of standardization is that everyone does things the same way and that any two crew members can be comfortable together without a long period of adaptation. Keep it standard. He’s an FO, not a chameleon.

9. Shut him down. Your FO your backup. His job is to question you when something seems amiss. This requires open lines of communication. Countless airplanes and lives have been lost because First Officers didn’t speak up. In some cases, captains intimidated their First Officers into silence. CRM has been around for nearly half a century, but there are still captains with this sort of god complex.

It is in your interest for your FO to speak up. It requires teamwork to safely and efficiently fly a turbine airplane. If you intimidate your crew into silence, you may both pay the ultimate price.

10. Lose his trust. Both crewmembers are professionals. Our wellbeing and careers depend upon a certain level of competence. Everyone makes mistakes, but if you repeatedly get your FO into trouble he will spend more time crosschecking you than doing his own job. This is just as bad as when the captain tries to do both jobs.

To be an effective captain, the captain must be familiar with basic knowledge items such as aircraft limitations and FARs. NOTAMs should be closely checked before each flight in addition to the weather. Before flying an arrival or departure procedure, check the plate closely and be sure to look for notes, crossing restrictions and speeds. The captain should also possess basic airmanship skills. This may seem basic, but it is the cause for many mistakes and violations.

If the crew is to be an effective team, both pilots need to be able to depend on each other. If you and your FO have a long history of filing NASA or ASAP reports, you probably need to evaluate our performance as a team.

When considering how to treat your FO, it is important to ask yourself how your actions affect safety and CRM (for more information on CRM, consult GlobalAir.com’s Aviation Directory for courses on cockpit resource management). While safety is paramount on any flight, it will normally be enhanced by making FO more involved in the decision making process and showing that your value and respect his opinion and skills.

Read the full article on Aviation Examiner