Toronto - Delta Airlines CRJ-900 upside down, Flight 4819 from Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport (MSP) to Toronto

[flyingcheesehead]

This guy was a seniority list instructor. He could bid for whatever he could hold during a fly month.

A fly month???

Do they alternate months, or is it 2 months of sim instruction and a month of flying?

Crew scheduling can’t just arbitrarily say, “well this guy is current but hasn’t flown the line in a couple of months so we’re going to pull him off the trip.”

I'm sure the crew scheduling computer is programmed with currency limits that don't allow them to bust FARs at the minimum. I'm not suggesting they'd pull him off an already-scheduled trip, just that they wouldn't schedule trips without reasonably proficient crew* in the first place.

* Reasonably proficient at the minimum means legally current, but may well be redefined by the SMS process after something like this.

Maybe this accident will lead to instructors flying the line more

Quite possibly.

 

[Rene]

And as I discovered recently, the actuaries. I am 79, very healthy, more than 7,800 hours with no incidents, accidents or violations, yet forced to leave my CFI job at the local flight school because the insurance company will chose to no longer cover someone my age.

FTFY.

My great-granddad is 10 years older than you are and still going strong.

 

[Gilbert Buettner]

FTFY.

My great-granddad is 10 years older than you are and still going strong.

Well, Rene, I am not planning to quit flying anytime soon. I just renewed my CFI and my flight review, and I have a few things lined up as an independent instructor. As long as I can get a medical, I plan to keep flying.

Now, on the subject of risk assessment, I no longer fly IFR or night time.

 

[wanttaja]

Hate to sound like a looping MP3, but pilots' age is ALSO something I looked at, accident wise.

This takes ~25 years of homebuilt accidents and breaks down the percentage of total accident in that age group that were pilot error. I divide pilot error into two groups....Pilot Miscontrol (stick and rudder mistakes) in the blue bars, and Pilot Judgment in the orange ones. The short red horizontal bars indicate the total of the two types, the percentage of accidents due to pilot error.

You'll notice that Judgment Errors peak in the ~35-39 hour range, and tend to decrease over time...right up to 90 years old.

The Pilot Miscontrol rises a bit over time, but does tend to jump at age 80 and older.

As ever, these are *statistics*, not individual predictions. Certainly there are pilot in the 90+ age range perfectly able to fly; on the other hand, there are some that deteriorate early. And, of course, the insurance companies bet on the statistics.....

Ron Wanttaja

 

[Gilbert Buettner]

Good stuff, Ron. But it is limited to homebuilts and does not include the last two years. My experience in homebuilts is very limited, but the ones I know of here and at my previous airports were built by a lot of older guys who spent a lot of time building and not a lot of time flying. Yeah, generalizations are not very useful, but I would love to see a comparison with factory-built aircraft.

 

[pfarber]

SkyWest and Air Wisconsin still operate the 200s.

I feel sorry for the MX at SkyWest and Air Wisconsin.

I know quite a few of Endeavor's CRJs were ex-SkyWest planes. SkyWest also flys under the 'Delta Connection' name, as does Endeavor. But Endeavor is 100% owned by Delta, SkyWest is not.

I have not seen a 200 at ATL in at least a year.

 

[unsafervguy]

Delta's liability will be determined by the facts, not a press release.

and you know as well as i do that ANY piece of paper from delta that even hints at the fact that they MIGHT have know there was an issue will be used by the plaintiffs lawyers to increase the size of the settlement.

 

[Rene]

Good stuff, Ron. But it is limited to homebuilts and does not include the last two years. My experience in homebuilts is very limited, but the ones I know of here and at my previous airports were built by a lot of older guys who spent a lot of time building and not a lot of time flying. Yeah, generalizations are not very useful, but I would love to see a comparison with factory-built aircraft.

I know that I'm a noob. But to me CURRENCY is it. I haven't done the research. I don't have the data. But as someone in another thread said (and I'm paraphrasing) pilots who fly one hour a month are dangerous.

 

[Bob Noel]

the superior pilot uses his superior knowledge and decision making to avoid needing to use his superior skills.

I'll extend that to say as we get physically older and older and older, eventually our flying capabilities degrade. As long as us senior citizens fly within our capabilities, I think we are ok. Kind of like driving a car. Eventually old folks avoid driving at night or in rush hour (actual heavy rush hour, not the busy times some rural communities think is rush hour).

 

[Warlock]

I guess I have missed something…can someone explained the crew mix?

 

[hindsight2020]

I think "castoring" is the term you're looking for. Don't believe the 747 in the Kai Tak video has it, either. The B-52 is the only major plane I know of that has it. And it's not automatic, the crew has to dial in the amount.

Ron Wanttaja

The tech order term is "crosswind crab system". Airplane wingspsan is larger than fuse length, plus outrigger gear (the only gears that are true "free castering" in the airplane). All combined means it can't reliably do wing low method, hence the gear crab system.

The C-5 also has the system btw.

 

[Tarheelpilot]

A fly month???

Do they alternate months, or is it 2 months of sim instruction and a month of flying?

I'm sure the crew scheduling computer is programmed with currency limits that don't allow them to bust FARs at the minimum. I'm not suggesting they'd pull him off an already-scheduled trip, just that they wouldn't schedule trips without reasonably proficient crew* in the first place.

* Reasonably proficient at the minimum means legally current, but may well be redefined by the SMS process after something like this.

Quite possibly.

There will be a cost benefit analysis. More flying means less time in the sim. That means more instructors. That’s expensive. The crash was also expensive.

The cheaper option will win.

 

[Larry in TN]

Do they alternate months, or is it 2 months of sim instruction and a month of flying?

It varies by airline. A full-time sim instructor might flight every month, or every-other month. He might be built a schedule, or he might pick up trips for either from open trips or by displacing a line pilot from his trip. Each airline contract has some system for this for all flight-qualified employees who have non-flight duties.

they wouldn't schedule trips without reasonably proficient crew* in the first place.

It's binary. Each pilot is either qualified or not qualified. There is no "reasonably".

We are required to have three takeoffs and landings within the last 90 days. We are required to be current on our sim check rides. The timing of which will vary based on the approved training program. The CQ program used by most airlines of any size will typically have sim training every nine months. The non-CQ legacy programs were a check ride every six months for Captains and every twelve months for First Officers.

Recurrent sim checks can be one month early, in your base month, or one month late (grace month) and will still count has having occurred in the base month. If you go past your grace month then there will be requalification training, the length and content of which will depend on how long you've been non-qualled.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

It varies by airline. A full-time sim instructor might flight every month, or every-other month. He might be built a schedule, or he might pick up trips for either from open trips or by displacing a line pilot from his trip. Each airline contract has some system for this for all flight-qualified employees who have non-flight duties.

I'm most curious about Delta/Endeavor, given that's who was left hanging from the seat belts here...

It's binary. Each pilot is either qualified or not qualified. There is no "reasonably".

The crew has to be qualified too though for the software to put them together on the schedule, right? No green-on-green for example. And IOE/OE can't just be scheduled with some random pilot. Or are the systems in place so primitive that these issues have to be manually dealt with?

The non-CQ legacy programs were a check ride every six months for Captains and every twelve months for First Officers. Recurrent sim checks can be one month early, in your base month, or one month late (grace month) and will still count has having occurred in the base month. If you go past your grace month then there will be requalification training, the length and content of which will depend on how long you've been non-qualled.

This is how my 135 was. Unfortunately, the desk job took priority enough times that I had to requal twice (both 2 months after my base month IIRC, so it wasn't the long-term requal). Still, yuck.