“Most accidents originate in actions committed by reasonable, rational individuals who were acting to achieve an assigned task in what they perceived to be a responsible and professional manner. They have probably committed these same unsafe acts before without negative consequences because the existing conditions at the time did not favour an interaction of the flawed decisions or deficiences present in the system.”
Peter Harle, Director of Accident Prevention, Transportation Safety Board of Canada and former RCAF pilot, ‘Investigation of human factors: The link to accident prevention.’ In Johnston, N., McDonald, N., & Fuller, R. (Eds.), Aviation Psychology in Practice, 1994.
It’s too easy to read accident reports and quickly blame the pilot. We must remember that flying is complex, and there are few solid bright lines of right/wrong. As investigators and managers, we should strive to understand and improve the systems. And as pilots not dismiss accident and incident reports as ‘bad apples’ or ‘weak sticks’, but have an open mind and resolve to make our own personal safety systems better.
An electrifying movie about the Rolling Stones recent South American tour has awesome concert footage, and some reflective thoughts from all the band members after 55+ years of working towards excellence and mastery:
“At the start of a tour, it’s like being on a tightrope, that once you’ve set foot on it, that rope widens and becomes a bridge that you can run across.”
~ Ronnie Wood.
“I felt I’d been given a very complicated puzzle to solve. And that I could just figure a little bit more out every time, then there was another big of the puzzle solved. I’m still doing it, it still mystifies me, the damn thing.”
~ Keith Richards, talking about his relationship with guitars.
“I’m just doing the best I can.”
~ Charlie Watts.
“You’ve got to be ready in life for unpredictable things to happen.”
~ Mick Jagger.
“The rain stick is not infallible.”
~ Keith Richards.
“I think one of the great gifts for a long life is that you’re always learning and always discovering.”
~ Ronnie Wood.
All quotations and both photos from: Olé Olé Olé!: A Trip Across Latin America (2016), available on Netflix and iTunes.
I was lucky enough to receive an advance promotional copy of a new book: TOPGUN: An American Story, written by Dan Pedersen, founder of the famed US Navy Fighter Weapons School. It’s a good read. Written with the smooth wisdom of an eighty-three-year-old, who is proud of Navy aviation and his dog-fighting days, but isn’t just writing for wide-eyed and hair-on-fire teenagers dreaming of Mach 2.
Now, understand this is an autobiography of a full navy career, not really a standalone history of the Topgun (and word to the wise, that’s one word, not two like the movie) fighter weapons school . The Topgun part doesn’t even start till page 97. But Dan ‘Yankee’ Pedersen started the school and has valuable insights into fighter tactics, aircraft performance, Yankee Station, Vietnam flying, combat losses, graduate pilot training, MiGs, the F-4 and F-14, the rise and fall of Topgun, and the future of warfare. It ends with commanding ships, eventually becoming captain of a 5000 sailer supercarrier.
There are a lot of books and seminars and other dubious whatnot by guys who went to Topgun and are now trying to cash in on the movie and the mystique; now peddling courses on how to sell cars or lose weight. And there are lots of pilot autobiographies that plod through I flew this, I did that, I flew there. This is different. Better. This is the original boss, bro number one, who hired the initial subject matter experts and pilots, liberated used chairs and desks for the classroom, designed the course and then flew hundreds of instructional flights. Lucky for us, he shares a few high-performance piloting truths:
“The way to true mastery of anything is to learn it to the point that you can teach it to someone else.”
Yep.
“You have to think a step or two ahead at all times, or the speed simply overwhelms your ability to respond. Get behind the aircraft, and the struggle to catch up will make you mistake-prone. The best pilots ride the wave and are always thinking a move or two ahead of the aircraft.”
Along the way, we learn a lot about US Navy politics, air combat, marriage challenges at home, some reality of wild skirt chasers, the making of the movie, and a Navy career life. It’s not a recruitment poster and it’s not a breathless exposé. It’s not high literature or academic research, and it’s not paperback pulp. It is the calm recollections and understandings of a full life well lived. Easy to read, flowing, insightful.
Getting back to flying. If we get good, how do we stay good or even maybe get better?
“It’s important to have a sincere interest in the history and lore of your calling. Good pilots strive constantly for self-improvement.”
and on another page,
“Flying is a perishable skill. It has to be practiced constantly and maintained on a consistant basis.”
Oh. So no secret pills? No magic patch on a leather jacket?
We knew that, but it’s good to be reminded of flying truths by someone who really knows what they are talking about. See you at the merge . . .
The North American X-15 was a hypersonic rocket-powered experimental aircraft flown by the USAF and NASA in the 1960’s. The X-15 holds the official world record for the highest speed ever recorded by a manned aircraft, set in October 1967 when test pilot William J. Knight at 102,100 feet flew Mach 6.70.
Clearly it was a hot rod rocket ride, and obviously important to the advancement of high speed and high altitude aeronautical engineering. But it was also important in understanding the role of the pilot in new highly dynamic systems, and what machine-human interfaces would be functional in those relms (see NASA history page). It’s a theme touched on in the book and movie The Right Stuff — would capsule occupants be spam in a can or pilots in command?
During extensive testing, the X-15 program did show the value of a human in the direct control loop. NASA says “analysis of the first 44 flights showed that 13 would have failed in the absence of a human pilot together with the various redundant systems provided in the vehicle.”
Neil Armstrong, X-15 pilot.
When an X-15 was donated to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, where it now hangs in the main hall, the press release stated its human factors importance beyond flying Mach 6:
“The capability of the human pilot for sensing, judging, coping with the unexpected, and employing a fantastic variety of acquired skills remains essentially undiminished in all of the key problem areas of aerospace flight.”
They knew that increasingly complex computers would supplement stick and rudder. Pilots would become more monitors and system managers, but should ultimately be in control. NASA states:
“The program shows clearly that, given precise displays, the pilot can fly rocket-boosted vehicles into space with great accuracy. He cannot do any better than completely automated systems, however. Perhaps his best role will be as a monitor of automatic systems able to contend with malfunctions or to make trajectory changes as needed.
This understanding of the value of pilots was later validated by the success of the Apollo Moon missions. When, for example, a former X-15 test pilot clicked off the autopilot, changed course, and gently hand-flew the Apollo 11 LM on to the surface of the Moon — at a spot where there weren’t boulders the size of houses.
Now, with the B-737 MCAS on our mind, might be a good time to meditate on the fifty-year-old lessons of the X-15. It has come to be that spacecraft launch and dock autonomously. My Tesla Model 3 has new beta software that will drive itself to me in a parking lot, and change lanes on a highway without my input. Airliners are now multiplexed datalinked and geewizzed like a science fiction story.
But clearly pilots are still required.
And to do the job of a pilot we need education on all the critical systems of their ship. And, as required to make sense of the first NASA quote, we need training to acquire the “fantastic variety of acquired skills” required to override automation. Now, none of us is going to be as good as Neil Armstrong; but Boeing, the airlines, and flight training managers can all do better.
“Ships are to little purpose without skillful Sea Men.”
Richard Hakluyt, 1589.
As a piloting quote, these words ring true across five centuries. And as a quick social media meme they seem true for many activities we humans want to feel important about. And that’s good. But there’s a lot more here than just a two-second meme.
Richard Hakluyt (1553 – 1616) was an English writer known for promoting the English colonization of North America. He wrote (with Edmund Goldsmid) the 16 volume opus The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (online Gutenberg). It was in here he wrote about the high cost of gross ignorance in marine accidents, the value of apprenticeships for sailors, the need for formal education, and grey hairs. The language is hard for us, but I think it’s worthwhile to plow through and consider how much of this is still true after 500 years of progress:
