Increasing Standards

bbchien

bbchien

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Bruce C
Okay, for all of you who keep saying that FAA will do nothing n response to the persistently HIGH rate of PVT ASEL accidents, here it comes.....

and we only have three days left....

Comment Period Open for New Airman Certification Standards
 An FAA/industry working group has recently drafted new Airman Certification Standards (ACS) documents that aim to provide a more integrated and systematic approach to airman certification testing and training. These documents specifically address knowledge and flight proficiency requirements for the private pilot certificate and instrument rating. They also support the FAA’s goal of reducing fatal general aviation accidents by incorporating task-specific risk management considerations with the flying skills outlined in existing practical test standards. Given the importance of this effort, the working group asked the FAA to establish a public docket (Docket Number FAA-2013-0316) for review and comment. In addition to the previous link, you can also access the documents by entering the docket number in the search menu when you go to http://www.regulations.gov/. There is a link on the right menu bar for submission of comments. As comments post, they will be available for review in the same docket. The deadline for comments is May 24, 2013.

Produced by the FAA Safety Briefing editors, http://www.faa.gov/news/safety_briefing
Address questions or comments to: SafetyBriefing@faa.gov.

 
I think we should lower standards to allow for more people to want to become pilots. I have personally talked to hundreds of people who would try and become pilots if the rules and regulations were less strict.
 
I already got mine, screw the new guys. This kindler gentler world is unaccepting of any carnage, expect all gov meddling to get worse.
 
I reviewed the change matrix and there really don't seem to be many substantial changes...? Am I missing something?
 
bbchien said:
Okay, for all of you who keep saying that FAA will do nothing n response to the persistently HIGH rate of PVT ASEL accidents, here it comes.....

and we only have three days left....

Comment Period Open for New Airman Certification Standards
 An FAA/industry working group has recently drafted new Airman Certification Standards (ACS) documents that aim to provide a more integrated and systematic approach to airman certification testing and training. These documents specifically address knowledge and flight proficiency requirements for the private pilot certificate and instrument rating. They also support the FAA’s goal of reducing fatal general aviation accidents by incorporating task-specific risk management considerations with the flying skills outlined in existing practical test standards. Given the importance of this effort, the working group asked the FAA to establish a public docket (Docket Number FAA-2013-0316) for review and comment. In addition to the previous link, you can also access the documents by entering the docket number in the search menu when you go to http://www.regulations.gov/. There is a link on the right menu bar for submission of comments. As comments post, they will be available for review in the same docket. The deadline for comments is May 24, 2013.

Produced by the FAA Safety Briefing editors, http://www.faa.gov/news/safety_briefing
Address questions or comments to: SafetyBriefing@faa.gov.
Click to expand...

Have not read it yet (doing so as I type). Is this, by chance, partly due to attempting to align to a more global JAA standard? Are we to think that medical requirements may be changing as well? What do you think Doc?:dunno:
 
I am sure that changing the name from "Practical Test Standards" to "Airmen Certification Standards" will yield an exponential increase in safety! Why didn't they think of this before!
 
Wasn't it R&W who, while he was still with the FAA, said "We're raising our standards, so up yours, too"?
 
Best thing they could do is go back in time, way back you needed to be able to navigate with a compass and chart, demonstrate a spin and recover on heading, etc. More emphasis was on airmanship, common sense and thinking for yourself (and no that's not a "app"), learn to fly the plane all the way to the tiedowns and not stop flying it. Ban the use of ipads, glass panels and moving map GPS until they have their license, maybe weed out some pansies and people with lacking common sense.
 
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They don't want my comments - since I think the Commercial standards need to be PP-ASEL and the ATP competency rules need to apply to all of us after we log 1500 hours and we should be held to that standard during the BFR at that point.
 
Right now they are steeped in management tools. I think we need to teach pilots and quiz them on the accident database. If we don't teach the 10 common accidents, nothing can change.

Management tools without a database is simply make-work, in a vacuum.
Only 3 days of comment left.
 
Me too. Why can't we just pick up a license at the post office?
MultiMediaWill said:
I think we should lower standards to allow for more people to want to become pilots. I have personally talked to hundreds of people who would try and become pilots if the rules and regulations were less strict.
Click to expand...
 
These changes are fine but I struggle how to see they matter at all. They are mostly wordsmithing the documents.

That said, over the last couple decades standards have been "raised' several times and have had no effect. Since adding a Flight review requirement, requirements for tail wheel, high performance, and complex endorsements there has been no reduction in accidents. None at all.

Lots of ways to reduce accidents but more regulation isn't one of them.

If it did, we could publish a regulation requiring pilots to keep 30 minutes of fuel in reserve and we'd eliminate fuel exhaustion accident. Errrrr......maybe not...
 
Let everyone try to fly................... And then let Gravity weed out the idiots..:yes:;)
 
Just a thought, but unless attitudes change, no amount of government red tape will change a thing. At the risk of starting thread creep I will call this the "Cirrus mentality", by which I mean among a large portion of the younger pilots I run across there seems to be an almost mystical trust in technology to bail them out of something they had no business getting into. As 93 Kilo mentioned above concentrating on basic airmanship is essential to creating safe pilots. We need instructors that will teach their students to fly, not just pass the PTS and move along the puppy mill belt.

The need for basic skills was driven home to me once when after suffering a lightning strike I was left without an electrical system, and consequently no nav. As we were 900 miles from land and all the waves seemed to look alike, we were left with a clock, a compass, and a starting position which was recorded on our PAPER chart. Basic skills among the crew made the difference between finding Hawaii and swimming.
 
jbarrass said:
That said, over the last couple decades standards have been "raised' several times and have had no effect. Since adding a Flight review requirement, requirements for tail wheel, high performance, and complex endorsements there has been no reduction in accidents. None at all.
Click to expand...
The FAA, NTSB and AOPA ASF have a large stack of statistics which completely disagree with your statement. For example, over the last 20 years, the total GA accident rate per 100,000 flight hours has dropped from 8.5 to 6.5, and the fatal GA accident rate has dropped from 1.8 to 1.2. If you have statistics to support your statement, I'd love to see them.
 
Return the xc to the pre gps 300 miles and bring spins back...
 
Do you think well-trained pilots run out of gas more often than those who are poorly-trained? About the same? Slightly less? A lot less?

jbarrass said:
These changes are fine but I struggle how to see they matter at all. They are mostly wordsmithing the documents.

That said, over the last couple decades standards have been "raised' several times and have had no effect. Since adding a Flight review requirement, requirements for tail wheel, high performance, and complex endorsements there has been no reduction in accidents. None at all.

Lots of ways to reduce accidents but more regulation isn't one of them.

If it did, we could publish a regulation requiring pilots to keep 30 minutes of fuel in reserve and we'd eliminate fuel exhaustion accident. Errrrr......maybe not...
Click to expand...
 
bbchien said:
Right now they are steeped in management tools. I think we need to teach pilots and quiz them on the accident database. If we don't teach the 10 common accidents, nothing can change.
Click to expand...

I'd agree with this. Not enough time is spent on teaching students what kills pilots just like them. Of course, many folks will rationalize themselves out of it, but I think that this is a part of the syllbus that's missing and should be there.

The other part being a flight review system that works a bit more effectively.
 
Threefingeredjack said:
Just a thought, but unless attitudes change, no amount of government red tape will change a thing. At the risk of starting thread creep I will call this the "Cirrus mentality", by which I mean among a large portion of the younger pilots I run across there seems to be an almost mystical trust in technology to bail them out of something they had no business getting into. As 93 Kilo mentioned above concentrating on basic airmanship is essential to creating safe pilots. We need instructors that will teach their students to fly, not just pass the PTS and move along the puppy mill belt.
Click to expand...

I agree. As the technology increases the newer generation (as well as some in the previous generation) are becoming very automation dependent. Basic airmanship and ADM is being thrown out the window.

Another lacking area is standardization among CFI's.
 
jbarrass said:
These changes are fine but I struggle how to see they matter at all. They are mostly wordsmithing the documents.

That said, over the last couple decades standards have been "raised' several times and have had no effect. Since adding a Flight review requirement, requirements for tail wheel, high performance, and complex endorsements there has been no reduction in accidents. None at all.
Click to expand...
RBL beat me to it. Well informed, aren't we?
 
RotorAndWing said:
Another lacking area is standardization among CFI's.
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I think this is huge and hopefully in decline as the instructor ranks are thinned by attrition. If you follow any aviation forum for more than 24 hours you'll see numerous examples of "I was taught" that make absolutely no sense and were obviously made up by some guy based on who-the-hell-knows-what premise.

Whether an effective and consistent recurrent training program will ever be implemented is another puzzle. It's obvious to anybody who flies with many of these clowns that they shouldn't be trusted to operate a bike without training wheels, let alone an airplane, but that knowledge doesn't change anything.
 
I submitted my comments.

While most of us are not the sort who favor increasing regulations (including me), we should be in favor of restructuring the syllabi as appropriate to make them more relevant to the challenges that pilots face, and also attempt to better help new pilots understand what has killed others like them. The flight reviews I also see as needing extra emphasis.

Either we can be part of this, or the general public will decide for us that they're too afraid of a small plane crashing into their homes. We really don't want the latter.
 
wabower said:
Do you think well-trained pilots run out of gas more often than those who are poorly-trained? About the same? Slightly less? A lot less?
Click to expand...

Is that a training or judgement issue?

I assume all instructors teach fuel management. The question is whether pilots use decent judgement or not afterwards. Anyone can say the right thing on a test (because we teach the test), but whether they make good choices a year or ten later is the issue.

I'm not sure how you teach or test for judgement.
 
bem411s said:
Have not read it yet (doing so as I type). Is this, by chance, partly due to attempting to align to a more global JAA standard? Are we to think that medical requirements may be changing as well? What do you think Doc?:dunno:
Click to expand...
What I think is that we need to mandate teaching of the accident database. All mgmt. tools and ADM done in an informational vacuum are exercises in futility.

PTS Standard: Knowledge of the ten most common root causes of accidents.

DPE guide:
Applicant can adequately cite examples of root pilot failures in six of the ten types.
 
kyleb said:
Is that a training or judgement issue?

I assume all instructors teach fuel management. The question is whether pilots use decent judgement or not afterwards. Anyone can say the right thing on a test (because we teach the test), but whether they make good choices a year or ten later is the issue.

I'm not sure how you teach or test for judgement.
Click to expand...

We know that simply telling the public that smoking is bad for them doesn't get people to quit or not start in the first place by itself. However, sufficient badgering regarding the health consequences has caused a number of people to quit. I'm one of the earlier generations that got bombarded with anti-smoking campaigns in school, to the point of bringing in a man who lost his voice box and had to talk with one of those boxes he held up to his throat. That was 20 years ago, still remember it. Don't smoke.

"That kills people" and some of the gory details probably does more for convincing people to think twice about it. It won't work on everyone, but the ones who it will work on we save.
 
kyleb said:
Is that a training or judgement issue?

I assume all instructors teach fuel management. The question is whether pilots use decent judgement or not afterwards. Anyone can say the right thing on a test (because we teach the test), but whether they make good choices a year or ten later is the issue.

I'm not sure how you teach or test for judgement.
Click to expand...
Judgment requires database knowledge first. So if you don't teach the accident database, judgment is in a vacuum.
 
I didn't read the proposed changes. Honestly, I don't really need to. Here's a summary from the govt:

'We will use the power we have stripped from the populace, and increase regulation and oversight to the point where the pilot population will be distilled down to the hard-core, followers of our rigid method. There will be an increase in regulation until GA flying is 100% safe, and we have zero accidents. If that requires the operation of one and only one GA plane per year, flown on a perfect VFR day, with two engines, and a CFI on board, for one circuit of the pattern, that is acceptable to us.'

Nice people call it nanny state policy. Mean people like me know it as another step in the road of fascism. No risk allowed, no independent thought will be tolerated, no decision-making can be used. All must be pre-defined, pre-evaluated, pre-approved, and pre-tested before actual flight.
 
docmirror said:
I didn't read the proposed changes. Honestly, I don't really need to. Here's a summary from the govt:

'We will use the power we have stripped from the populace, and increase regulation and oversight to the point where the pilot population will be distilled down to the hard-core, followers of our rigid method. There will be an increase in regulation until GA flying is 100% safe, and we have zero accidents. If that requires the operation of one and only one GA plane per year, flown on a perfect VFR day, with two engines, and a CFI on board, for one circuit of the pattern, that is acceptable to us.'

Nice people call it nanny state policy. Mean people like me know it as another step in the road of fascism. No risk allowed, no independent thought will be tolerated, no decision-making can be used. All must be pre-defined, pre-evaluated, pre-approved, and pre-tested before actual flight.
Click to expand...

I was just hoping they got rid of the ADF and RMI questions.
 
bbchien said:
What I think is that we need to mandate teaching of the accident database. All mgmt. tools and ADM done in an informational vacuum are exercises in futility.

PTS Standard: Knowledge of the ten most common root causes of accidents.

DPE guide:
Applicant can adequately cite examples of root pilot failures in six of the ten types.
Click to expand...

Agreed 100%.....

Do it like they taught Drivers Ed when us old guys/gals were growing up.. Harp on the consequences of poor piloting and show grizzly pics of humans reduced to a pile of bones, guts and body bags... Just like they showed us Mechanized Death, Signal 7 and all the other road kill films.. To this day I ALWAYS think twice before doing something stupid in a car/ truck..:yikes:..... YMMV.
 
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The FAA, as usual, utterly disregards its own data. Hardly a surprise.

If ad initio training were insufficient newly minted pilots would by falling out of the skies. The fact that they aren't would suggest that the training within the PTS standards is sufficient to produce safe pilots, and it is recurrent training that needs the boost. Given that the requirement is a mere hour every two years, clearly there is room for improvement.

But apparently the FAA isn't happy with the rate of pilot attrition, and seeks to make even more obstacles between a trainee and their certificate. I would imagine that the only comments to which they will listen are those specifying which new rules and curricula should be put in place, I suspect the FAA has made up its collective mind on the requirement of such. And as usual the FAA's collective mind is up its collective ass--teroid.
 
Do you think training has any influence on the exercise of judgement?

Do we need the finger in the light socket lesson again?

kyleb said:
Is that a training or judgement issue?

I assume all instructors teach fuel management. The question is whether pilots use decent judgement or not afterwards. Anyone can say the right thing on a test (because we teach the test), but whether they make good choices a year or ten later is the issue.

I'm not sure how you teach or test for judgement.
Click to expand...
 
docmirror said:
I didn't read the proposed changes. Honestly, I don't really need to. Here's a summary from the govt:

'We will use the power we have stripped from the populace, and increase regulation and oversight to the point where the pilot population will be distilled down to the hard-core, followers of our rigid method. There will be an increase in regulation until GA flying is 100% safe, and we have zero accidents. If that requires the operation of one and only one GA plane per year, flown on a perfect VFR day, with two engines, and a CFI on board, for one circuit of the pattern, that is acceptable to us.'

Nice people call it nanny state policy. Mean people like me know it as another step in the road of fascism. No risk allowed, no independent thought will be tolerated, no decision-making can be used. All must be pre-defined, pre-evaluated, pre-approved, and pre-tested before actual flight.
Click to expand...
Yup. That is it right there. There is no acceptable ga accident rate, therefore there is no acceptable ga flying. Go on and play with their words while they slip shackles round your ankles. Suckers. When flying is outlawed, only outlaws will fly.
 
correlation is not causation. Accidents went down, fatalities went down. Therefore, we need to increase the PTS standards, or increase the requirements for the certificate.

The last engineer/scientist left the feds with the Manhattan project.
 
bbchien said:
Right now they are steeped in management tools. I think we need to teach pilots and quiz them on the accident database. If we don't teach the 10 common accidents, nothing can change.

Management tools without a database is simply make-work, in a vacuum.
Only 3 days of comment left.
Click to expand...

So without doing a ton of research, what should we tell them in 20 words or less?

(And will they really listen?)
 
RotorAndWing said:
I agree. As the technology increases the newer generation (as well as some in the previous generation) are becoming very automation dependent. Basic airmanship and ADM is being thrown out the window.

Another lacking area is standardization among CFI's.
Click to expand...

I know of some CFI's right now who dont know Mag compass errors :mad2:
 
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