Aviation safety ills go beyond United
A plane turned back shortly after takeoff. Another was missing an external panel upon landing. Yet another lost a wheel during takeoff.
In recent weeks, there have been 10 safety incidents on United flights in and out of San Francisco International Airport. This may sound like a one airport, one airline problem. It’s not. Although the correlation is a statistical anomaly, these events highlight a larger challenge facing the Federal Aviation Administration and Congress.
One of us is a pilot and aviation safety expert and the other is a journalist who has long covered the industry. We believe the aviation world has been lucky to have avoided more serious incidents in recent years. In numerous close-call events, planes have been saved thanks to the experience and technical skills of great pilots. Today, however, the industry could lose public trust as many largely unnoticed changes subtly increase the risk.
The heart of the problem is the aviation industry’s naive attempt to get rid of experienced pilots, the last line of defense against the unthinkable.
A key factor was the U.S. airline industry’s decision to use some of its more than $50 billion in COVID bailout money to finance the early retirement of thousands of pilots.
Meanwhile, thousands of new pilots have poured into the industry with little time to gain the vital experience to manage complex failures. Although a similar scenario played out in the 1960s, it is fundamentally different today because of advanced automation and, counterintuitively, increased reliability of new aircraft.
Ironically, the success of flight automation and improved hardware reliability means many younger pilots never encounter the challenges that are leading your news feed. Everything is typically so reliable that newer pilots cannot gain the critical flying experience essential for handling the kinds of emergencies seen recently on the news. Some pilots flying the largest planes in the sky, such as the Airbus 380, have not encountered so much as a burnedout light bulb.
As flight systems are modified and upgraded, training continues to fall behind. The industry has fallen prey to the false narrative that most accidents are caused by human error — that belief comes from using overly simplified models of causality.
In many of its most serious recent incidents, like the recent Alaska Airlines door plug blowout, the U.S. airline industry has been fortunate to have had highly trained and experienced pilots at the controls. In 2019, brilliant Capt. Tammi Shults expertly commanded a Southwest Boeing 737 to a safe landing after an engine explosion created myriad failures. Similarly, a FedEx crew on a cleared-to-land flight narrowly averted catastrophe after recognizing an airliner on its runway in heavy fog.
Current pilot training methods cannot replace the mentorship offered by being paired with distinguished pilots like Chesley Sullenberger and his copilot Jeffery Skiles, who had the experience, insights and skills that allowed them to execute a successful Airbus emergency landing on the Hudson River in 2009.
Without experienced pilots, it’s more difficult to provide the comprehensive mentoring and additional training that traditionally supplemented sometimes obsolete curriculum.
One solution would be to extend the mandatory pilot retirement age to 67 from its current 65. But while a lack of experienced pilots may be the gravest problem facing the airline industry, it’s far from the only issue.
Allowing aircraft manufacturers to self-regulate new technologies, as demonstrated by the failures of the controversial Boeing Max program, is another key factor.
Absent much greater funding to the FAA for stricter oversight, another tragedy like the Boeing and Airbus crashes we’ve investigated over the years will be difficult to avoid.
A key roadblock is the senseless partisan fights in a gridlocked Congress influenced by lobbyists who received $17.4 million from the airline industry during the first half of 2023. Budget constraints limit FAA aviation industry oversight. Legislative loopholes have reduced, and in some cases eliminated, essential training as airlines push for efficiencies.
There is a disconnect between the assumptions of pilot skills made by manufacturers and what airlines and the FAA are training and evaluating. This results in inexperienced pilots being hard-pressed to address unexpected automation and mechanical anomalies.
This is not to say that the loss of experienced pilots can’t be somewhat mitigated. Researchers, such as Robert Hoffman, have developed promising methods to enhance training to mitigate the loss of expertise. Airlines can begin implementing these creative ideas now. These methods can also be used to train engineers, maintenance teams and cabin crew.
There is no such thing as a perfect aircraft, but the problems we’re seeing in the industry can be fixed. Despite the hype, more automation and computer power will not enable every pilot to be capable of handling the kind of unexpected challenges we’ve recently seen. The best safety system on an aircraft will always be a well-trained pilot.
Shem Malmquist is an international Boeing 777 captain, a visiting professor at the Florida Institute of Technology and a veteran aviation accident investigator. He and Roger Rapoport co-authored the aviation safety books “Grounded” and “Angle of Attack” (lexographicpress.com).