do engineers make good pilots?

jtheune said:
Actually the best engineers I know are incredible intuitive as well as analytical. The ability to make the jump from a few facts to a new answer and the ability to back up that jump with facts is what make a great engineer.
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+1000

I get so many "engineers" who cannot even reason deductively in an interview. When I get one who can use experience and intuition to form hypotheses and then test them to solve a problem, I hire them before the competition does.

You'd be amazed at how many "geeks" are also musicians and artists - the two are not mutually exclusive.
 
rainsux said:
Chemical engineers, not so much. I think it's the fumes!
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:frown2: Whoa there Mr. Rainsux! Ya got any data to back that up?? :D

Personally don't believe there is any correlation in being an engineer and pilot abilities. Does seem to be a lot of engineers in the aviation field.

Gary
 
mantakos said:
In my own experience, as one so afflicted, I'll note that a lot of time was consumed in "I can do as taught only once I know _why_" whereas a normal human might be more inclined toward "I can do as taught". It isn't clear that knowing _why_ was helpful to actually flying the damn plane.
-harry
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I find this interesting. Part of what I learned in engineering is to accept and then understand. For ME, while much engineering built complex concepts from the ground up, there were other areas where I simply accepted and duplicated, with understanding coming later. I explained this to my kids that it was kind of like making a puzzle without seeing the picture first. The professor would give you a couple of important pieces and put them in place. You'd assemble the rest of the puzzle around those pieces, and it wasn't until it was done that you knew what the picture was. It was only at the end that I understood. I always thought this was one of the most important learning skills I developed in school.
 
Don't quit your day job.

Jim Logajan said:
To avoid being categorized as having any scientific or engineering tendencies, I've taken up trying to post humorous messages to web forums. Now I can't balance anything.
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Of the top ten pilots I've instructed, none have been engineers. I think they all could have been engineers if they had chosen to do so, but most couldn't afford the lobotomy.

Cirrusly, I think flying an airplane has many similarities to playing golf. One of the golf magazines conducted a study using brain-lobe activity sensors to determine whether the best golfers were predominantly "left-brain analytical" or "right-brain athletes" with respect to hitting the required shots.

They found that the best golfers (somewhat surprisingly to them) made extensive use of both sides. The engineer side was called upon to compute all the wind triangles, vectors, gradients, slopes, friction coefficients and all that stuff. But once that gobbledygook was all internalized, the left side was turned off and the athlete was asked to visualize and execute the shot.

I suspect that most of the klutzy engineers probably stay away from the airport and the golf course.
 
"Beware the lessons of a fighter pilot who would rather fly a slide rule than kick your ass."...John Boyd
 
wabower said:
Of the top ten pilots I've instructed, none have been engineers. I think they all could have been engineers if they had chosen to do so, but most couldn't afford the lobotomy.

Cirrusly, I think flying an airplane has many similarities to playing golf. One of the golf magazines conducted a study using brain-lobe activity sensors to determine whether the best golfers were predominantly "left-brain analytical" or "right-brain athletes" with respect to hitting the required shots.

They found that the best golfers (somewhat surprisingly to them) made extensive use of both sides. The engineer side was called upon to compute all the wind triangles, vectors, gradients, slopes, friction coefficients and all that stuff. But once that gobbledygook was all internalized, the left side was turned off and the athlete was asked to visualize and execute the shot.
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I've always felt this was the way the best pilots flew. I know a lot of people who are good sticks, but then can screw up technical stuff. Then I know the highly technical pilots who can't land in a crosswind. The best pilots I've seen are the ones who've got the book knowledge and brain power to do all these calculations, and know when to turn that off and fly the plane.

I suspect that most of the klutzy engineers probably stay away from the airport and the golf course.
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In Brooklyn, the best use of a golf club is as the one weapon you can legally carry.
 
Gary said:
Does seem to be a lot of engineers in the aviation field.
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Perhaps the traits that push one into engineering are coupled with the desire to master mechanical things like airplanes.

I think it would be interesting to learn if engineer/pilots tend to be better engineers.
 
Let me add my .02 cents worth..

All humans are engineers in one way of the other. Mankind would not have progressed to the point it is at now if that were not the case. Caveman were cold... they figured out fire, cavemen got tired of pushing stuff into the cave so they invented the wheel. Etc..... Some people just barely get through life by doing the least amount possible to fix a problem. On the far other end is the farmer, 200 miles from the closest equipment dealer,can not only fix a combine or other piece of equipment by ' field engineering' a repair but improve on the function of it.

I am a commercial / residential contractor and my complaint is the
current batch of "keyboard" engineers who are able to pass a test that gets them a license. They then hang out their shingle and proceed to fill the void..... Unfortunately that is complimented by the fact that most municipalities have now written into law all building plans that cross their desk need a engineers stamp. My guess is that 98 % of these new engineers have NEVER even nailed two boards together, never the less actually built any kind of structure, including a doghouse...... These people set up shop, buy a nifty computer CAD program and start 'engineering' stuff that they are able to use their new found stamp on.

Problem is alot of those CAD programs will generate prints that show a completed structure by 'fudging' the dimensions. The planning/building dept just looks at those fancy drawings, notes the engineers stamp and approves the building. Keep in mind in a place like Jackson Hole the architect and engineer both get 10 -15 % of the estimated cost of the structure each, up front... So say the building is 2 million, the first 500,000 to 600,000 of the entire budget is paid out before I even dig the hole.. Usually the 'mistakes' start showing up in the foundation stage and it is a up hill battle from there. One of the biggest failures in the CAD programs is in the roof system. Seems like they all will generate real pretty finished drawing of the completed building. Alot of the time making the rafters die into the facia /soffit area is not possible... Looks great on paper,, impossible to build as designed... The architects and engineers don't really give a crap as they have already cashed their checks. Us builders get the challange of massaging the design to have it all work out,,, at a fraction of the price the arch/eng charged....... In fact there are a few local firms I will absolutely not work with....

Rant off.... Ok I feel just a little better now. :incazzato::goofy:B)

Ben.

Ps. of the 60 + planes based at Jackson Hole there is only one engineer I know of... Go figure................:dunno:
 
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There's a time to think about why, and a time to think about what. Engineers as a group are no more or less likely to pick the right time for either activity than anyone else, as far as I can tell.

But I do think that learning to fly can help with that... do pilots make better engineers? :D

I feel for those who've complained here about "keyboard' engineers (and architects)... in the A/V industry in particular there seems to be a glut of people who "really rock with CAD" but don't seem to understand that you can't plug an input into another input. :rolleyes2:
 
N801BH said:
Let me add my .02 cents worth..

All humans are engineers in one way of the other. Mankind would not have progressed to the point it is at now if that were not the case. Caveman were cold... they figured out fire, cavemen got tired of pushing stuff into the cave so they invented the wheel. Etc..... Some people just barely get through life by doing the least amount possible to fix a problem. On the far other end is the farmer, 200 miles from the closest equipment dealer,can not only fix a combine or other piece of equipment by ' field engineering' a repair but improve on the function of it.
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I disagree with the "all" - There are plenty of folks out there who simply use the solutions others create for them. (Like my roommate - I sometimes think changing a light bulb is too technical for him! :eek:)

I am a commercial / residential contractor and my complaint is the
current batch of "keyboard" engineers who are able to pass a test that gets them a license. They then hang out their shingle and proceed to fill the void...
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Hell, they don't even have to pass a test - They get a degree. In most areas, they're quickly weeded out. Those that pass the test, maybe not so much so. But, there are plenty of people with engineering degrees that are great at solving "book" problems, but when it comes time to solve a real-world problem, they lack the problem-solving skill to break their big real-world problem into a thousand book-sized problems, and they fail to complete the work. Luckily, I think that this is a fairly small percentage of the people who get the degree - Somewhere in the single digits, I would guess. (I hope.)
 
Ben, that was not a rant. Even mighty Caterpillar has the same problem. That's why they keep senior engineers around.... they know it's much more than putting a number in the spreadsheet and throwing it over the wall, just to have the manufacturing and the sandlot test people throw it back over.

That problem exists in every level of our making ANYTHING in the good old US of A.

Solution: hire an engineer. That's like when insurance plans got to be too much of a burden- they all said, hire a reimbursement specialist.....it's the first step on the road to.....Sigh. :(
 
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I agree with Joe on the kinesthetic aspect. I'm like Dilbert in Bruce's video link.

At age 3, I was taking apart phones, phone lines, etc. Age 6 got a computer (C64!). By around age 8 I could generally put things back together after taking them apart, or at least know where my limits were when I reached them.

So, I'll be 36 in a few months, and for procedures, I am a master of making checklists. I do it for everything in non-pilot life. Huge text files listing procedures and exact command syntaxen.

Doing is the best way for me to learn. I can read and extrapolate an applied methodology, but then I end up with a huge checklist unless I keep refactoring it until it's memorized.

In the plane, a huge checklist sucks because I can't memorize it. But if I have a small checklist, and someone to help me walk through the details while I'm doing it, then it's all good.
 
GeorgeC said:
For those among us with scientific/engineering tendencies, how do you balance the analytical vs. the intuitive aspects of flying?
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Perhaps someone with a mechanical engineering aptitude could make a better pilot, but since you said scientific/engineering, that includes things like chemistry, biology, astronomy etc.. which really don't have anything to do with the abilities needed to be a pilot.
 
Well, I'm not positive that engineers make good pilots but...

I've flown with a few English majors and won't make that mistake again!

I enjoy life and have a strong desire to continue to do so.
 
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timwinters said:
Well, I'm not positive that engineers make good pilots but...

I've flown with a few English majors and won't make that mistake again!

I enjoy life and wish to continue to do so.
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I always thought you got bonus points from NTSB for proper subject-verb conjugation just before a crash. However, the South of I-44 rally cry of "Hey Y'all, watch this!", might not qualify...:D
 
timwinters said:
Well, I'm not positive that engineers make good pilots but...

I've flown with a few English majors and won't make that mistake again!

I enjoy life and have a strong desire to continue to do so.
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So what's wrong with English majors?
The big problem with engineers is that with only a little bit of knowledge, they think that they're smart enough to re-write proven procedures. :mad3:
 
Bobcat1 said:
The big problem with engineers is that with only a little bit of knowledge, they think that they're smart enough to re-write proven procedures. :mad3:
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When I was in school the difference between architects and engineers was explained thusly:

An architect is a generalist. He graduates with a little knowledge about many things. As his career progresses he learns less and less about more and more until, finally, he knows nothing about everything.

An engineer, on the other hand, is a specialist. He graduates with a lot of knowledge about very few things. As his career progresses he learns more and more about less and less until, finally, he knows everything about nothing.

There you have it!
:wink2:
 
Although my formal education is in engineering, I don't think said background in it of itself gave me a leg up on the flying bit. Self-motivation, MS flight simulator and falcon 3.0 (remember those games in the 90s? lol) did much more to prepare me. Engineering did make it easier to pretty much waltz through any aircraft systems course the FAA or the USAF has ever required me to take. Same for the math, and I admit, I'm very average for an engineer as far as arithmetic is concerned. Pilot math is inherently round-off-error laden, which is why I love it. I can spit out a 20% off number as quick as the machine can spit out the right answer, and that's why I'm a big deal up there ;) Pilot math... It may be wrong, but it gets ya home like a champ!

Which is also why I would have been an average engineer. I didn't have a passion for it. Understood the concepts, had the boredom tolerance to go through the syllabus and even excel academically. Loved the theory, but the workplace and expected day to day duties depressed me. So what if my current occupation lowers my life expectancy (all that RF exposure can't possibly be good for me), die with your hair on fire and your boots on, or don't show at all. :) The cubicle life and the "we haven't done anything really revolutionary since Apollo, so here's the 32 decimal place data mining babysitting of the same stuff we did for panel #345 on the 737, welcome to your job" shift in job duties from those of the golden days, kinda knocked the wind from my sails and cemented my desire to fly more.

As to TPS, I don't think that the AF actually considers that to be true (engineers make better pilots), it's that for TPS the role of a test pilot requires constant interaction with dedicated engineers, thus having an understanding of the thought process of engineers is essential for a test pilot to be able to communicate (and also possess the technical writing format knowledge that is useful to said engineers making design corrections) with that group of people. That's really the jist of the TPS requirement of an engineering or quant-based science degree.

I've met real sierra hotel sticks on both quant. and liberal art educated folks. So it doesn't give you an edge on the flying. Remember WWII? We put monkeys out of a farm in Iowa and these young men managed to do things in the sky we still try to inspire children with. Book knowledge doesn't translate in a "make it or break it" way to the mechanics of operating machinery; be airplanes, cranes, ground vehicles et al.
 
bbchien said:
I refer you to this excellent charicature: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOtoujYOWw0&feature=fvst
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This reminds me of a negotiation at Westinghouse , San Jose, CA many years ago. I had brought the project engineer with me for technical backup. While my counterpart and I were busy figuring out how to reach an agreement on price, this fellow got extremely bored and to pass the time had taken out his swiss army knife and quietly taken apart the overhead projector without us noticing anything...
 
Herman vanOoijen said:
This reminds me of a negotiation at Westinghouse , San Jose, CA many years ago. I had brought the project engineer with me for technical backup. While my counterpart and I were busy figuring out how to reach an agreement on price, this fellow got extremely bored and to pass the time had taken out his swiss army knife and quietly taken apart the overhead projector without us noticing anything...
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In junior high I took a "touch typing" class. After a few weeks I got kinda boored and in one class I partially disassembled the typewriter I was supposed to be practicing on and barely managed to get it back together by the end of the period.
 
gismo said:
In junior high I took a "touch typing" class. After a few weeks I got kinda boored and in one class I partially disassembled the typewriter I was supposed to be practicing on and barely managed to get it back together by the end of the period.
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Fortunately, most engineers don't try to disassemble their planes out of boredom while flying. :)
 
Ted DuPuis said:
Fortunately, most engineers don't try to disassemble their planes out of boredom while flying. :)
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Well don't tell anyone but I may have made some repairs involving some dissassembly to the seatback adjuster on an airliner I was riding in due to a combination of boredom and discomfort.
 
gismo said:
Well don't tell anyone but I may have made some repairs involving some dissassembly to the seatback adjuster on an airliner I was riding in due to a combination of boredom and discomfort.
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I was a lot less bored on commercial airliners before they took my Leatherman away.
 
GeorgeC said:
For those among us with scientific/engineering tendencies, how do you balance the analytical vs. the intuitive aspects of flying?
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Not an engineer, but had one for a copilot for almost 20 years. If they can roller skate or play tennis well--they'll do all right.

dtuuri
 
mantakos said:
In my own experience, as one so afflicted, I'll note that a lot of time was consumed in "I can do as taught only once I know _why_" whereas a normal human might be more inclined toward "I can do as taught". It isn't clear that knowing _why_ was helpful to actually flying the damn plane.
-harry
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It would be interesting to hear Chuck Yeager's response to this statement. Although only high school educated, many who flew with him and worked with him over his career said that he was a born engineer and knew/understood the inner workings of every subsystem in every aircraft he ever flew. Many who made these statements were highly educated and experienced engineers themselves.

This in depth technical knowledge and curiosity about how everything worked, saved his life on numerous occasions. Of course his superior stick and rudder skills also saved his life on many other occasions. Best of both worlds.

I am NOT saying that having such knowledge should be required by the FAA. I am only saying that having a thorough understanding of all aspects of the machine you are flying is NOT a bad thing.

Doc
 
^^^ Yeager proves that you don't need to be formally educated to be an engineer. Although as an engineer, I would say it helps to have the exposure during College to many different subjects, to broaden the horizon. Ive seen both bad engineers, who couldn't get out of a paper bag...... and good "non-engineers" that I would trust making a complex design.

Unfortunately you don't know, what you don't know. So being real world educated means someone might have missed important parts of the design.

An engineer, on the other hand, is a specialist. He graduates with a lot of knowledge about very few things. As his career progresses he learns more and more about less and less until, finally, he knows everything about nothing.
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I would actually argue the opposite. An engineer has a lot of knowledge about a lot of things. Not everything can be pulled up from memory, but they understand the concept and what to look for. As their career progresses, he learns more and more about more and more. Until he realizes that he knows nothing about everything.

The more I learn, the more I learn how little I know. -- Socrates
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Being an engineer has helped me become a pilot. But it has also hindered me. Like others have mentioned, I thought I KNEW what to do, but in reality I didn't. And honestly, learning to land (and get my pilots license) has been one of the more difficult adventures Ive done.
 
Query: "Do engineers make good pilots?"

Answer: "Only if they're physically attracted to each other." (rimshot)

We're here all week - don't forget to take care of your waiter!
 
TripleZ said:
5 years of undergraduate, masters degree, and they STILL won't let me drive the damn train. :rofl:
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You laugh, but my first job was in the semiconductor industry, and many people thought it had to do with trains. :facepalm:
 
Growing up I was always the take apart, put back together kind of person. I fiddled with engines and built radios and stuff. I got my ham radio license when I was 12. I always wanted to go to the science museum and have engineer written all over me.

This helped some when learning to fly, I had a good fundamental understanding of aerodynamics and how airplanes worked (what controls did what, etc..) before ever setting foot in the cockpit.

That said, It didn't really help that much with flying. I picked it up very fast, what really helped the most, and what skills I consider most valuable are... motor skills. I raced motocross competitively from the time I was 13 until 21 years old and I draw more from that experience when flying than I do my engineering background. I'm also quite a natural with a boat. Energy management, having good seat of the pants sense of where you are, and what's going on in your environment around you without having to think are paramount in light plane flying.

Things can happen too fast sometimes for you just to think about them. Acrobatic flying, or just horsing around with steep turns, spins and stalls can help keep a pilot's senses in tune, and could prevent alot of stall/spin accidents. Some of the xxx thousand hour pilots who have crashed in simple stall spin accdients probably just got a bit distracted, and were rusty from lots of point A to B flying.
 
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