The problem with pilots

Finished reading an amazing book that was published last year— The Problem with Pilots: How Physicians, Engineers, and Airpower Enthusiasts Redefined Flight, by former USAF U2 instructor pilot and dean of their school of Advanced Air and Space Studies, Colonel Timothy P. Schultz, PhD. It covers the history of automation in aircraft, the replacement and extension of piloting skills into faster, higher, more precise aerial machines. It’s a must-read for people interested in aviation history, human factors engineering, or understanding the history of automated flying. Full of original research, fully referenced, deeply academic yet written in easy flowing English. And as you can figure from the title, it’s fun and smart.

“A modern pilot is like the corpse at a funeral: his presence is traditionally expected, but he doesn’t do much.”

“In acceleration, temperature, endurance, multiplicity of functions, courage, and many other pilot requirements, we are reaching human limits.”

~ General Curtis LeMay, memo to General Carl Spaatz, 1946.

Edmund Beard, Developing the ICBM: A Study in Bureaucratic Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 39.

For what seems to us like such a modern issue, automation started very early in aviation. Autopilots were more than aids or crutches, and in important tasks like precision bombing, they could soon perform better than human pilots and were required for mission success. The delicate humans in planes needed heating and cooling and pressurization and better instrumentation to keep up with rapid advances in aeronautical engineering. The human factor became limiting. By the end of World War II, the commanding general of the US Army Air Forces declared:

“I think the time is coming when we won’t have any men in a bomber.”

~ General H. H. Arnold, 1945.

The New York Times, 18 August 1945.

That didn’t happen for a long time. Right now commercial airliners come close to automatic flight, but still need pilots to operate them. However, with drones and advances in self-driving cars, this is a great time to review the history here. I can think of no finer book on the subject. Most of the attention is given to the early days, and most of the examples are from military aviation, but it is bought right up to date with Air France 447 and Sully Sullenberger. I would like to have read more about aircraft like the F-4 that straddle early jets and modern computers, and more about the manned space programs that had to define the job of the astronaut. But this is a criticism similar to happily finishing a great novel and wanting to read more about the same characters.

“We believe that the Air Force stands at the threshold of a new era. Whereas in the past it has been largely a corps of flying men, in the future, certainly, ten to fifteen years from now, it will be more nearly a corps of technicians and scientists.”

~ Lieutenant General Ira Eaker, 1947.

Herman S. Wolk, Fulcrum of Power: Essays on the United States Air Force and National Security (Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 2003), 115.

The book covers the adaptions for hypoxia, g-loads, blind-flying; but doesn’t really talk about current commercial issues like fatigue on red-eyes and on ultra-long-haul sectors. I understand the book is not really for us ‘meat sprocket’ pilots, not really for understanding how we learn to control our new automated ships, but more discussion of the advantages of a pilot-in-command, topics like flexibility and resilience, would have been nice. Criticisms aside though, if you want to understand aviation automation you need to read this book.

“We are seeing a situation where we have pilots that can’t understand what the airplane is doing unless a computer interprets it for them.”

~ William R. Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation, 2012.

The New York Times, 6 July 2012.

“Wonderful has been the development of the airplane — inconceivable has been the neglect of the MAN in the airplane.”

~ Army’s Office of the Surgeon General in the Division of Military Aeronautics, 1919.

Air Service Medical (Washington, DC: War Department, Air Service Division of Military Aeronautics, 1919), 3, 12.

It’s wild to read about issues directly appling to our modern problems of flying, pilots and automation— then realize the quotes are over a hundred years old.

“The engine and controls of the airplane must be made a part of the aviator’s own body.”

~ Edward C. Schneider, 1924.

The Human Machine in Aviation, Air Service Information Circular 5, no. 462, (1 May 1924).

As computerized autonomous flying rapidly evolves we all see things that make us wonder if humans can keep up. We have hard physiological and cognitive limits. The book concludes we must keep up, and that “human imagination and intellectual mastery still matter.” Let’s hope so.

For now, for me, when I understand what automation does better than humans, I can start to work on what we do better than machines.

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All quotes from The Problem with Pilots: How Physicians, Engineers, and Airpower Enthusiasts Redefined Flight, by Timothy P. Schultz, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2018.