av8rdude

Well, it's finally out. No big surprises but there are still lessons to be learned. There but for the grace of God...

http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2009/f-cp...p090601.en.pdf

Knots2you

Interesting, (and somewhat scary) read. On a similar note:
A340 zoom-climb inquiry backs shock tactics

afterburn81

There really seems to be a certain correlation between many of these recent incidents/accidents. Each pilot reacted to FEAR and not the reality of the situation. This was seen in the Colgan crash, the AF crash and this incident as well as others such as American 587 in JFK.

People love to point out how these pilots all had several thousand hours when they screwed up arguing the importance of the new regulation here in the U.S. mandating that airline pilots have a certain amount of experience before they get hired as an airline pilot. It's not a matter of how many hours you had before you incurred a fatal error. Rather it is important to see how many hours you had before you held the responsibility of your error affecting hundreds of paying passengers. My point is, pilots are getting less and less of a chance to go out and test themselves in their developmental stages of their career. It's not about how well you can land the aircraft or fly an instrument approach or understand the regs. It's about how well you can recognize a situation where you have to react and respond clearly to the situation blocking out fear of the consequences of failure.

In Europe they have a different style with the whole ab-initio program. Which in a sense never really allows the pilot to gain experiential learning to get to know ones limits. I believe we are starting to see the by-products of that.

Fear is a definite distraction in the line of flying. It's no doubt that a desirable trait in a pilot is one where he is able to balance his fear of what is going on around him. Some are too passive, some are too jittery and respond in ways that crash airplanes. The ones that understand, evaluate and manage threats with minimal fear induced distractions fare the best.

People need to go out and scare the crap out of themselves as much as they can before they start flying passengers or boxes for hire. If you have never really scared yourself or recognized the danger of your situation, you shouldn't be a professional pilot. Just as simple as that.

tripleplay

+1

Some guys don't like to hear it but you were spot on!

AKASHA

So simple. Go scare the crap out of yourself with boxes, then fly for hire. And why should a pilot be allowed to scare himself while flying boxes?

Ohh.. but you have to scare yourself to be a professional pilot,,, duh.. the air france plane is not going to crash if you just scare yourself first!!!

such garbage.

afterburn81

Umm, think you missed the point. But ok........

rocketman3746

What a foolish response. Panic played a huge part in this crash, don't you agree? I know that for myself, my first real emergency as PIC didn't go as well I would have liked it. But I got through it, and when I had my second emergency, I was much better equipped to deal with it.

ZDub

Quite possibly, yes. You missed the point by a mile.

rickair7777

Garbage?

I think having the opportunity to learn to AVOID scaring yourself (without a babysitter in the other seat) is priceless foundational experience.

Or failing that, actually scaring the crap out of yourself once (or twice for the hard cases) will usually do the trick too.

Hawker Driver

This is the problem that has come back to bite us in the arse now because recurrent training regimens had made the training itself mundane.

Decades ago, I wanted to know first hand how my own primary students would react to situations they had never experienced. It might be nothing more than shoving my door open right after takeoff. Needless to say, not all of the reactions were appropriate then either.

What should have been in training regimens world wide had gone by the wayside for too long with tragic consequences!