Because it feels like being punished for the actions of other people to have my finite time in this universe forced into therapy if I'm a pilot who doesn't need it. Three incidents in the past four decades against 110,000 pilots working daily and not crashing planes because they've had a mental breakdown should not justify the pilot having to give up a whole day a year to talk about their feelings.
This is a real challenge for the FAA; they do not like having a variable they can't control, but they also know they don't have a good enough model of mental health to control it yet. I don't envy them the challenge, or they pushback they'll get trying to use their traditional intervention strategies to fix the issue.
A perhaps less conventional intervention could be using starlink or similar to permit remote takeover of flights that appear to be going rogue. Potentially also addresses some hijacking scenarios (though maybe introduces others).
Fair, but these pilot mental health incidents are not that common. We all rightly resented two decades of taking off our shoes in security because of that one shoe bombing attempt.
The trick would be to position it as being about broader spectrum welfare than just a binary determination of whether you're crazy enough to try to kill a plane full of innocent passengers.
Correct. I’m an aviation geek/disaster post mortem junkie and the only incident I’m aware of is Germanwings (obviously) and potentially MH370 depending on which scenario/theory you subscribe to.
There have been a few other incidents that essentially boil down to CRM (crew resource management) issues regarding pilots with clear and obvious personality issues that when combined with the wrong crew members has resulted in loss of life.
Basically, combine someone on the flight deck with seniority who’s an asshole with a junior and impressionable crew member and it can be a problem:
Either way aviation is remarkably safe generally speaking and I’m not sure I’d put mandatory therapy, etc towards the top of the list in terms of approaches to make flying even safer.
Of course pilots have a tough job and are responsible for hundreds of lives at a time and their needs should be looked after. But the incident rate just isn’t there.
shadowgovt|2 years ago
Because it feels like being punished for the actions of other people to have my finite time in this universe forced into therapy if I'm a pilot who doesn't need it. Three incidents in the past four decades against 110,000 pilots working daily and not crashing planes because they've had a mental breakdown should not justify the pilot having to give up a whole day a year to talk about their feelings.
This is a real challenge for the FAA; they do not like having a variable they can't control, but they also know they don't have a good enough model of mental health to control it yet. I don't envy them the challenge, or they pushback they'll get trying to use their traditional intervention strategies to fix the issue.
mikepurvis|2 years ago
mikepurvis|2 years ago
The trick would be to position it as being about broader spectrum welfare than just a binary determination of whether you're crazy enough to try to kill a plane full of innocent passengers.
kkielhofner|2 years ago
There have been a few other incidents that essentially boil down to CRM (crew resource management) issues regarding pilots with clear and obvious personality issues that when combined with the wrong crew members has resulted in loss of life.
Basically, combine someone on the flight deck with seniority who’s an asshole with a junior and impressionable crew member and it can be a problem:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlink_Flight_571...
Either way aviation is remarkably safe generally speaking and I’m not sure I’d put mandatory therapy, etc towards the top of the list in terms of approaches to make flying even safer.
Of course pilots have a tough job and are responsible for hundreds of lives at a time and their needs should be looked after. But the incident rate just isn’t there.
“Aviation regulations are written in blood”.