AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2015 - 14

LETTERS
"Mr. Haines is probably one of the
guys who advocated removing the
spin demonstration requirement
from the private pilot test. He
probably flies with his feet on the
floor and avoids ADF approaches.
Aviation needs aviators, not
passengers."
Jake Johnson
AOPA 2893575
Houston, Texas

P&E

DOGFIGHT: MAKING TRAINING RELEVANT

Editor in Chief Thomas B. Haines and Editor at Large Dave Hirschman debate the merits of pilot education-
old-school rules or new-school style?

Silly exercises

No shortcuts

Put a bullet in dead reckoning

Master the art of ﬂying

BY THOMAS B. HAINES

B Y DAV E H I R S C H M A N

WITH THE AVERAGE PERSON taking well more than 60 hours
to earn a private pilot certificate-in what is meant to be a
40-hour-or-less curricula-perhaps it's time we stop focusing on
nineteenth-century navigation skills and allow students to focus
time, effort, and energy on subjects that will make general aviation safer, more affordable, and more useful. When's the last time
you needed in ﬂight to calculate the distance to a VOR by measuring the time it takes to move from one radial to another and then,
using a formula that involves multiplication and division, calculate the time to the station?
Nearly 40 years after earning my private pilot certiﬁcate I'm
delving back into such nuances while studying for a commercial certiﬁcate. If it seems ridiculous that we would put a private
pilot candidate through such silly
exercises, how about a commercial
candidate? I've never seen a for-hire
pilot using a plotter and a chart, or
use a multi-step process to arrive at
the compass heading for the ﬂight.
Can we acknowledge that when
it comes to actual navigation, every
pilot immediately after the checkride switches to a more practical
TOM HAINES
form of navigation planning and execution-one that probably involves a GPS?
There is a certain nostalgic charm for me in overlaying a sectional with pencil and plotter in hand on my dining room table.
Last time I did this I lived with my parents.
If you want to learn the skill of dead reckoning-plotting on
a chart, measuring time, distance, and fuel burn at check points
every 15 miles-have at it. Next up is celestial navigation and dropping knotted ropes off the back of a ship. To require today's pilots
to wade through such esoteric nonsense is, well, nonsense.
This is where the purists begin writing letters about the importance of knowing such skills for when one suffers a complete
electrical failure in ﬂight. A competent pilot should be keeping
track of his position as he ﬂies-regardless of the electronic gear
on his lap or in the panel-and should be able to navigate visually
to a nearby landing, because after all, we are imposing these navigation methods on VFR students. IFR navigation is another matter.
The FAA and others in the industry have heard pilots' gripes.
AOPA chairs an FAA/industry committee that has developed new
airman certiﬁcation standards and deletes some no-longer relevant knowledge questions. For more information, visit the website
(www.aopa.org/airman-testing-changes).
AOPA

FLYING IS AN ART. And like any art form, doing it well requires study,
dedication, and lots and lots practice.
There are no shortcuts.
The lapses in pilot skill and judgment that cause so much grief
and consternation today can often be traced to our industry's reﬂexive attempts to substitute new technology for pilot knowledge. So
when experts say we should make ﬂight training more "relevant,"
look out. That's code for dumbing down the foundational knowledge of what it takes to become a pilot. Going down that rabbit hole
will only accelerate the erosion of the essential skills pilots must rely
on when technology fails. And it does fail.
Roy Redman-a retired Boeing 747 captain and founder of
Rare Aircraft, a Minnesota restoration
ﬁrm-is no Luddite. Yet in a recent correspondence, he lamented that pilot
skills "aren't just dying, they are dead
and buried. They have been slaughtered at the hands of electronics and
digitization."
The color screens that so seductively draw our eyes inside the cockpit
and keep them there prevent us from
DAVE HIRSCHMAN
focusing on the outside world. Over
time, staring at screens degrades
hand-eye coordination, stick-and-rudder ﬂying skills, and even the
wondrous sensations and natural beauty that attracted so many of
us to aviation in the ﬁrst place.
Redman fondly recounts transcontinental trips in vintage airplanes in which navigation consisted of comparing features on the
"big map passing beneath you" with the "small map on your lap."
A salutary side effect of this antiquated form of ﬂying is a vigilant
traffic scan.
Rod Machado, whose insightful columns are an AOPA Pilot staple, tells the lamentable tale of an instructor who actually counsels
his students to keep their feet off the rudder pedals in ﬂight so that
they can't inadvertently cause the airplane to spin and crash.
"It would be funny," humorist Machado said, "if it wasn't so sad
and pathetic."
Focusing on ﬂight fundamentals doesn't mean doing without the
superpowers of GPS navigation, in-cockpit weather, or terrain and
traffic avoidance systems. Those are terriﬁc, safety-enhancing tools,
and learning their intricacies can be fun and rewarding.
But no amount of button-pushing prowess can substitute for
actual airmanship. Pilot education should build on hard-won knowledge and ﬂying skills, not water them down.
AOPA

EMAIL thomas.haines@aopa.org

EMAIL dave.hirschman@aopa.org

www.aopa.org/pilot AOPA PILOT | 91

"Mr. Haines hit the mark. Almost
nothing is the same as it was 40
years ago. It would be interesting
to survey commercial pilots and
ask how many of them do not use a
computer to do all the calculations.
Or, for that matter, how many of
them can do it the good old way
without having to refer to anything and get it precisely correct."
Robert W. Freese
AOPA 961468
Grand Rapids, Michigan

HANGAR TALK

Thanks for the "Dogfight"
on abandoning ancient navigation skills for real-world
navigating-I totally agree. I
just don't see how teaching
mental gymnastics and paper
map manipulations-which
are far more distracting in
the cockpit-instead of a simple glance at a GPS to quickly
ascertain that one is where he
or she should be, isn't better.
The FAA needs to stop testing 1930s navigation techniques
when virtually no pilots use
them anymore. There are simply
too many distractions for pilots

14 | AOPA PILOT May 2015

as it is-and we don't make for
very good flight computers or
multitasking machines.
Stick and rudder skills-and
good visual flight rules-are not
in the least reduced by relying on the glowing screen for
navigation. Most pilots know
better than to keep their eyes
locked on a moving map. We
are smart enough to know that
the moving map doesn't tell us
all we need to know to fly the
airplane.
Duane J. Truitt
AOPA 5584729
Naples, Florida

Are you, as a pilot, interested
in being OK, or are you interested in being the best you can
be? If you don't care too much
about how good you are, you
can certainly navigate by pressing Direct and adding an airport
identifier. And then, just look at
the line. And arrive when you
arrive. Or you can be the best
navigator possible, and identify your points on the ground
by reference to a map, reference to a clock, and reference
by passing radials. If you want
to go to the next step, you will

adjust your airspeed to make
all of your checkpoints as you
planned. Both of the attitudes
posed will get the job done. The
question each pilot needs to ask
is, "How good is good enough?"
Chris Hope
AOPA 771336
Kansas City, Missouri

We welcome your comments.
Editor, AOPA Pilot, 421 Aviation
Way, Frederick, Maryland 21701
or email (pilot@aopa.org). Letters may be edited for length
and style before publication.

On January 18, 1957, and with the help of midair refueling, three Boeing B-52s were about
to become the first jet airplanes to fly nonstop
around the world. At 18 years of age, contributor BARRY SCHIFF wound up being the charter
pilot assigned to fly two Life magazine photographers in a Beech Bonanza to March Air
Force Base in California, where the bombers
would be landing. "I was allowed to hang with
the photographers at the runway's edge," says
Schiff. "As the first of the B-52s approached
the threshold, one of the photographers
lobbed a camera at me and said to just point
and shoot, hoping, I suppose, that I would luck
out and get a decent shot." As Schiff tracked
the arriving bomber through the viewfinder, he
recalls wondering what it would be like to fly
such an awesome machine. He found out 57
years later and describes his incredible experience in "BROAD SHOULDERS," page 76.

http://www.aopa.org/airman-testing-changes http://www.aopa.org/pilot

AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2015

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