Rest Rules Could Create Pilot Shortage?

(From a recent AVweb news article)

American Airlines says proposed rules intended to reduce pilot fatigue would require it to hire an additional 2,325 pilots at a cost of $514 million annually, and seemed to suggest the industry-wide effect could be crippling. The rules would effectively decrease maximum time on duty for pilots. In November, American offered public comments on the rules, saying "if AA needs 2,300 more pilots to meet the proposed rules, other certificate holders will need many additional pilots, too." Stakeholders also claim that the regulation's cost will be substantially higher than the FAA's estimate of $1.25 billion over 10 years. 

The Air Transport Association says the rule would cost more than 15 times that figure. As for the total number of pilots needed to meet the requirements of the bill, American said, "The industry figure will be so large as to raise the question of from where they all will come." American wasn't the only carrier to express concern.

Southwest commented on the proposal, saying "we feel than many of the rule changes will impact our operation as dramatically, if not more so, than the impact on any other carrier." The proposed rules call for nine hours rest between shifts and 30 consecutive hours away from work, each week. The proposal arose with support of people who lost family members in the crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407. There were no survivors of that flight, so the exact role of fatigue is unknown. However, the investigation found that neither member of the cockpit crew had slept in a bed the night before the crash, both had long commutes, and fatigue may have affected crew performance. In February 2010, NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman called the crash "an opportunity to reexamine fatigue in aviation."

Fatigue in aviation has been on the NTSB's Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements since 1990. The FAA accepted comments on the proposed rules (PDF) through Nov. 15, 2010.

My comments:

Reduced safety due to short crew rest periods and long duty hours has been a major concern especially after the crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 that killed all on board.  Crew rest was cited as a possible contributing factor as neither flight crew member had what many would consider to be adequate sleep prior to the flight.  

What I hear in this news story is an airline industry unwilling to make small changes to ensure the public receive safe air transportation.  I understand that decreasing the length of time a pilot is allowed to remain on duty, while also increasing crew sleep periods will require an added expense to the airlines, but no airline is being singled out to carry this burden. Rather, the ruling would affect the entire airline industry and the cost would  be passed down to the consumer.

While the airline industry at first, and later consumer advocacy groups may balk at an increase in cost, the public outrage that was voiced immediately after the Colgan crash over the extreme personal loss following a zero survival crash, should be enough to remind us that the consequences of industrywide pilot fatigue are far to great to warrant complaints over a small increases in ticket prices.  

Finally, the airline industry is expressing concern over an inadequate supply of pilots to support a change like this.  In fact, there is likely to be a significant pilot supply issue over the next 10 years.  Here are the numbers, airline industry experts expect airline passenger traffic to double by 2020, mainline carriers are expected to need to train 17,000 pilots a year between now and 2020 - roughly 3500 more per year than we are currently training to fill seats vacated by retiring boomers, as well as the pilot seats of roughly 16,000 aircraft on order through 2020. 

The problem is, it's hard to attract smart college graduates to the airline industry when entry level pay into a regional airline remains somewhere between $20,000 and $25,000 per year, especially when most airlines are willing to publicly balk at the idea of increasing pilot quality of life by increasing rest periods and reducing duty duration to a level that doesn't cause regular and often life threatening pilot fatigue.  

Decreasing Pilot Population - Why?

Many recent pilot news stories have focused on the issue of a dwindling pilot population as many WWII era pilots pass on with few young people filling their spots; many are struggling to figure out how to enable more to join the ranks while also keeping current pilots active.  The FAA estimates the total number of active airmen in 1999 at 635,472 compared to only 590,349 in 2008, a decline of 45,123 pilots in only 9 years.  Those numbers are especially staggering when you realize that decline is occurring as population overall is continuing to grow. What is especially dissapointing is that there seems to be a large audience of people who would love to become a pilot but remain unable to pursue the dream.  If you attend just about any air show or Red Bull air race, you will see thousands of people in wide eyed wonder at the airplanes and the pilots who fly them, and no doubt almost every person in attendance is at that moment wishing they could themselves fly an airplane.  But the numbers are dismal.  Even if they do start training, many will never complete the flight training program.  Of all the people who start a flight training program, based on AOPA statistics, only 20% of them will end up completing the program.  In fact, I almost became one of the 80% that didn’t make it.  Let me back up a bit. . .

I can’t figure out exactly when I first caught the flying bug.  I remember going to the Castle Air Museum with my Dad as a kid, and I also remember going to the Seattle Air and Space Museum at some point, but I didn’t right away say “I’m going to become a pilot one day.” Not to say I wasn’t fascinated by airplanes – I still vividly remember sitting out in our backyard watching formations of jets that would fly low over our house during training flights out of the old Mather Air force Base. But becoming a pilot myself had hardly crossed my mind as it seemed like a thing you were only able to do in the military or as the hobby of wealthy old doctors. The first time I really thought about pursuing flight training is when I happened on a website with what seemed like a very reasonable estimate of training expenses.  The amount I saw was $4,985 making me think, well maybe flying isn’t just for “rich people.”  The cost seemed reasonable to me.

Fairly soon after seeing that number, all those memories of airplane museums, and jets flying low overhead suddenly came back to me but in every airplane I saw myself at the controls!! OK, maybe not exactly but the point is that a switch had been turned and I had to go for it!  I took out a loan for almost $8,000 wanting to be sure I wouldn’t run out of funds before completing the program and I also wanted to cover some of the other training expenses including charts, books, and a nice aviation headset.  So I started training at the beginning of August 2006 at a rate of two flights per week and was almost finished in December with only 2 – 3 weeks until my check ride when I ran out of funds.  That’s right, more than $3,000 over the advertised price and I wasn’t even done yet.  It took me until September the next year to pick up where I’d left off and after a couple months spent relearning material, I finally took my check ride on the 28^th of December 2007.  I earned my Private Pilots license with 65.1 hours and total training related expenses (including a $400 headset) of $10,465.97. 

Now, getting back to the point is that I was nearly a part of the 80% of people who never complete flight training. I was only able to finish the program because I put college student loan funds towards the training and was able to remain focused and determined to finish the program no matter what.  Now the cost of training on its own may not always be a major issue, as some have pointed out, many motorcycles cost that much and there are a lot of young people buying motorcycles.   The significant difference I see is that after you get a pilots license you don’t own an airplane, you don’t have 10k worth of flight credits available to go out and enjoy your new adventure toy, and in fact the average 4 seat airplane costs in the range of $95 – 115 per hour to rent making it a challenge to mindlessly enjoy on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.  For more than two years after I earned my license I was paying $214 per month on my flight training loan meaning if I ever wanted to fly, I had to first factor in the flight loan, then add on the individual flight expense. For example, one of the shorter yet still meaningful flights I’ve taken from my home base airport in Davis, CA is the 2.1 hour roundtrip flight to the Half Moon Bay airport.  The Average Cessna 172 would cost around $220 to rent for that trip meaning a pilot in my situation would need to budget $435 that month for flying.  That may not be completely out of the question but Half Moon Bay is still one of the shortest destination flights one could possibly fly – making most destinations out of the average young persons budget until the flight training loan is taken out of the picture.

Let me generally recap the problem here: the pilot population is dwindling as WWII and even boomer pilots retire from the cockpit, even as wide eyed youth try to become pilots, only 20% of those who try will succeed, and of those who do become pilots, many will not remain current as airplane rental rates can be prohibitively expensive for anything more than quick local flights.  So maybe my youthful perception that flying is a hobby generally restricted to wealthy old doctors was more accurate than I would like to believe.  But I don’t think it needs to be so out of reach.

I’ve been thinking about this issue a lot lately and believe there are some reasonable solutions that will help to keep the spirit of adventure alive and within reach for a larger group of people. So decreasing pilot population is the issue, but what’s the solution?  On my next few posts I will try and actually address some of the problems with possible solutions.

 Talking points for the next post:

• How to create a flight training environment that encourages quality flight instruction that succeeds in graduating more than 20% of students.
• How to build a stronger support network for pilots who have recently obtained their license.
• Use modern business techniques of marketing to bring more pilots into the flight club while offering proper customer service to keep them coming back.
• Working with banks to offer more funding options for flight training.
• And the list goes on . . . for next time

Night Flying

N711PG    Cessna 172 CalAggie CAFF Cal Aggie Flying Farmers

Night flight holds a certain magic for me and is one of the most peaceful times to fly with typically calm air, less air traffic, and a quiet radio, each contributing to an especially pleasant flight environment. As you lift off the ground and slowly climb above it all, the lights of the city begin to lie out in front and all around you, slightly twinkling as you fly along. There is nothing actually magical about city lights at night, but the sight of a city from the air still manages to make me feel something, maybe even a little starry eyed.

Flying at night is so pleasant it can have the negative effect of lulling one into a false sense of security. The added dangers of night flying can really add up to make it a whole different animal from day flight, to the point that I’m surprised the FAA hasn’t required a unique rating specifically for night flight. Here are some of the more challenging aspects of flying at night: at altitude, it can be almost impossible to distinguish if the horizon you think you see, is the bottom of a cloud or the top of the earth, a lack of depth perception on especially dark nights requires a pilot pay special attention to altitude when near mountains, when close to the ground it is hard to distinguish the lights of a moving airplane from ground lights – which reminds me of a flight last summer.

I was on a night flight with a buddy of mine and had just done a landing at the Woodland airport which is just around the airplane corner from my little Davis airport, on the way back we decided to take a couple of turns over Dixon, not that there’s much to see, it’s just more interesting that doing turns over the pitch black earth. After we impressed each other with our turns around a point, we headed back over to the Davis (KEDU) airport. To properly set up for the approach to KEDU, you fly east from Dixon until 45 degrees east of the runway, then you turn in to enter the traffic pattern. While heading east from Dixon, I caught a flash of light just off my right wing that was barely discernable from a light on the ground when a never seen before instinct took over and I quickly banked hard left. Afterword my buddy confirmed that that flash of light that I’d seen was a helicopter that had apparently seen the flash of my airplane lights and quickly banked away as well. Never before and certainly not since have I ever come so close to another aircraft, though I still never saw the helicopter, something just told me that the light I saw wasn’t on the ground and was in fact closer than it should be, so I reacted.

What I really took away from that moment was to never become lulled into a false sense calm and comfort when flying, especially at night. I remember back when I was in flight training when my instructors would repeatedly tell me to keep up my “scan” which is pilot talk for continuing to look out all the windows for oncoming traffic. What I never understood until that night flight, is how little time it takes for two approaching airplanes to close in on each other. I’m still not sure how close I was to the Helicopter that day, but certainly close enough to make me appreciate having had the correct gut reaction to bank hard when I did.

Flying at night, low over a city of lights is a really special experience that allows me to really appreciate the joy and freedom of flight while also keeping my flying skills and pilot instinct alive and kicking - and I guess that’s part of the reason I keep coming back for more!

Lake Almanore Trip - Santa Rosa by Air

My buddy DJ worked with me back when I was a valet for the Delta King Hotel. It was during my hours of free time sitting in the valet booth that I first started seriously talking about flying. I had always been the kid who would look up as a plane flew by, imagining it was me up there flying the friendly skies. I never thought though that it would be possible that I’d become a pilot myself as that was something for rich people. But as I sat there in the valley booth on my laptop, bumming of some unlocked wireless internet connection, I started seeing prices for pilot’s license training that I thought I could afford. Just an FYI: If someone ever gives you a rough estimate about how much it costs to become a pilot, double it and you might be there – just a side note.

At this point in time, DJ was also talking about taking flight lessons as he apparently was also the kid that always thought it’d be cool to be a pilot (someone recently told me that is actually a common affliction among young kids, and that some just don’t ever quite grow up). Apparently I didn’t grow up as fast as DJ as I jumped the gun and started training on an expensive loan, while he has patently waited as a logical person should wait, until they actually had the money.

DJ’s grandpa has a cabin up on the shore of Lake Almanor just east of Chester CA. His house is nestled in a little semi private cove with a tired but functional boat dock sitting just off shore. It’s an idyllic mountain house that allows one to slip away from reality, the perfect retirement home really. The drive from Sacramento takes you up the California valley for a few hours through the slow highway 70, likely stuck behind a big rig, then through windy mountain roads for another hour to hour and a half depending on how aggressively you drive. It just so happens that there’s an airport in Chester that only takes an hour to get to by plane. One hour! It’s for this reason that DJ and I had often talked about flying up there for weekend with our girlfriends.

It’s an idea that stuck, but seems like it took forever to make happen. After almost four years as a pilot, it finally seemed like the trip was going to happen. DJ Chanel and I were going to fly up where we would meet some friends and DJ’s wife up at the cabin. Since we were planning this trip in what is normally mild California May weather, I wasn’t too concerned about rain or IFR cloudy conditions. The morning of the trip, we wake up to clear skies but with wind in the 20’s gusting 30 – 40, dramatic for sure! If the wind were blowing across the runway that would have been an easy deal breaker, but the wind was literally blowing directly down the runway making it much less dangerous. Additionally, the weather at the destination was supposed to be significantly milder than in Sacramento. The thing with wind is that once in the air, the only real concern is ensuring that you have plenty of fuel if you are heading into the wind, not a factor on this flight seeing as it would normally take only one hour. I may have chosen to go as I felt like the take-off wouldn’t really be that dramatic, but my passengers seemed fairly concerned about the wind, so I called it off.

The weather predictions that day said the wind was supposed to die down somewhat by evening, enough so that I knew I’d flow in similar conditions and could offer a little more confidence to my passengers. As friends were meeting at the cabin, DJ ended up leaving that morning by car with his wife while Chanel and I would try to make it up when we could by airplane. We ended up leaving around 7:00pm and arrived in Chester around 8:20, still a much quicker flight time than drive time, but since DJ left in the morning and got to the cabin around 2:00, we were effectively 6 hours slower by air than by car. And that’s the thing with flying a small airplane. Yes the trip time was less, but we still arrived much later than if we’d have driven. So why would anybody really want to fly a small plane if it’s unpredictable due to weather and sometimes barely faster once you factor in setting up the plane before flight, and setting up ground transportation on the other side. It really doesn’t make sense right? And, it will likely cost 5 times as much as the same trip in a car!

Taking all that into consideration, I would probably still take the plane if it were an option, let me try and convince you. The easy reason is that it’s beautiful. It’s different than flying in an airliner. You are lower to the earth, much more connected to the scenery, looking across the horizon at amazing mountain ranges in one direction, the patchwork quilt of farm country below you and the destination somewhere in front, just waiting to emerge in sight. On a more practical note, there’s no traffic, no brake lights, no cop cars looming around a freeway overpass, no people, just you. That makes it so peaceful. One of the best reasons though, is that it’s novel. You drive around all day every day making it one of the most normal things you can do. Getting on a plane to go somewhere instantly makes the trip more of an adventure, when you arrive, you really feel like you are on a special trip. But that’s not what really makes flying by small airplane special.

After spending two days at DJ’s cabin, Chanel and I hopped in the airplane again and flew to Santa Rosa, it took us an hour to get there. This is a drive that would normally; (according to Google maps) take 4.5 hours to drive. This is what’s so cool about a small airplane. You won’t find an airline flight from Chester to Santa Rosa. There’s no direct way to drive from Chester to Santa Rosa making the small personal airplane an amazing tool for making a crazy illogical trip like this work out.

See, what happened is that after we had already told DJ that we could spend a weekend at Lake Almanor, another good friend of ours invited us to their wedding all the way across the California Valley in Santa Rosa. While we could have done the trip in a car, it would have taken us so long that by the time we got to the wedding we would have been tired from the trip and not able to really enjoy the event. With the airplane, we were able to sleep in and get out of Almanor by mid day and still have plenty of time to check into a hotel, relax a little, and get dressed for the wedding with plenty of energy to contribute to the fun of the event.

And that’s the beauty of a small airplane. Making crazy illogical trips possible while also making the whole thing feel like an adventure, that’s aviation!

Just a side note, the trip cost from Sac to Chester, Chester to Santa Rosa, and back to Sac cost us just shy of $500 – in case any future pilots are trying to guess costs.

I set up this blog after taking a really exciting multi day, multi destination flight with my wife Chanel, thinking that the experience was such an enjoyable and exciting trip that if the story were written properly it could actually be an interesting read, and an interesting experiment in me trying to write something. The problem is that I don't easily write in public forums. I am almost incapable of leaving comments on social media sites such as Facebook. I start writing something but invariably before I hit the send button I will have decided that my comment isn't really very interesting and so I delete it and move on. So in a way, this blog is an exercise in my own ability to write and a personal challenge to express my thoughts and opinions in a public forum.  I guess we'll see if I can overcome my bad writers block.