Richard Collins gone west

Yesterday, aviation writing legend Richard Collins passed away at the age of 84. In his over five decades as the timekeeper of aviation history, he influenced an almost uncountable number of pilots, myself included. He'll pull into the hangar alongside such other writers as Bob Buck and Wolfgang Langewiesche as someone who had a deep understanding of not just aviation but how to write about aviation.

Early on in my aviation journey, I read his books Flying the Weather Map and The Next Hour: The Most Important Hour in Your Logbook. The Sporty's private pilot course had special vignettes by him on certain topics scattered throughout the pile of CDs (yes, we still used CDs way back then!) it came on. I still use some of his videos on weather theory when teaching my college aviation courses, as he was able to take weather knowledge and synthesize it into useful technique.

What makes me saddest about his passing is that because he had been flying since 1952, he was one of the last bridges between "classic" and modern aviation in the GA world. He saw everything from Cubs to Concorde, and was able to use his old experience to inform the new world aviation has been moving into in the 21st century.

In a world that prizes technological solutions to human problems, his voice was one that reminded us that skill is more important than glass cockpits and magenta lines. His voice was a thread that sewed together timeless aviation common sense in a tapestry that ranged all the way to Wilbur Wright himself, as many of his columns are elaborations on Wright's famous quote, "What is chiefly needed is skill rather than machinery."

In an age of highly-sophisticated airplanes and a world of "Direct to - Enter - Enter", we still need voices to remind us that the most important piece of technology in any airplane is installed between the left and right earpieces, with analog outputs of hands and feet at the stick and rudder. The aviation community's greatest loss is that his experience will no longer be there to remind us of the essence of aviation.

Farewell, Mr. Collins. It is a large void you leave.



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The Impostor Syndrome

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This month, Southwest's application window was open for new pilots. I'm over half way to my 1000 hours of jet PIC, so I'm getting close enough to their requirements that I wouldn't be totally wasting their time. So, for the first time, I applied.

I remember feeling a mixture of nervousness and excitement when I applied at my current airline. It was mixed with a "What am I doing applying at an airline? Can I really do this?"

When I got hired and went through training, I was sure I shouldn't be there. I was positive I wasn't doing it right and any day they were going to send me home. If you read my series "Becoming an Airline Pilot" back in 2014, you might remember that it wasn't until over halfway through I dared open my training folder and look at the grades in it.

I was sure I was one step from failing, and yet when I finally did get the courage to peek, I was doing just fine!

I have over twice as many hours in the logbook as I did then. I've added an EMB-145 type rating on top of the Dash-8. I passed upgrade with flying colors and I've spent a year in the Captain's seat now. After four years on the job, I'm reaching the point in my career where people start to move on to major carriers. It should be a piece of cake to apply by this point, right?

Nope. Despite having spent the last several years zooming around the sky at hundreds of MPH in 50,000-pound airplanes and having carried 59,897 passengers 522,369 miles, I felt the same thing this time around as I did when the largest thing I'd ever flown was a 6-seat Beech Baron: "What am I doing applying at a place like Southwest? Who do I think I am?"

This must mean I'm insecure and lack confidence, right? Well, actually, that rhetorical question was thrown in there to make my wife roll on the floor with laughter. That's probably the absolute last way she'd describe me.

It's actually a very common phenomenon called the "Impostor Syndrome". It's rarely talked about in aviation because pilots would never admit to something like that. Nonetheless, Wikipedia's article includes a small example of some people who actually have admitted to having felt like an impostor, and it includes a Supreme Court justice, several super-successful actors (like Tom Hanks, for instance), multiple best-selling authors, and some billionaires.

It's also addressed in Barbara Oakley's book A Mind for Numbers, which I raved about two years ago and highly recommend. Although its subtitle is "How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra)", I wrote about it several times because it's really a book that is more about learning how to learn than it is learning math and science, which makes it extremely valuable to people who are learning how to fly. The material applies to all subjects and tasks you'll need to learn throughout your lifetime, and is really a book for everyone in that respect.

In my case, I certainly don't suffer from a lack of confidence. I simply have extremely high standards; sometimes to the point of them being unrealistically high standards. I tend to expect more out of myself than is humanly possible, and despite asking for more from myself than what is reasonable, I still am unhappy when I fail to jump over the bar I've set too high. If that's a real flaw, it's one I'm happy to live with, and my next post will go into why that is.

I don't expect to get a call from Southwest this time around. Not because I don't think I don't deserve one, but simply because I haven't yet checked off all the boxes they like to see. Their total time requirement is only 2500 hours, and I'm almost twice that now, but they do prefer 1000 hours of jet PIC time and I'm not quite 2/3rds of the way there at the moment.

So even though I don't expect a call, it's not because of the impostor syndrome per se, but because there are still a lot of people out there that have checked all the boxes. Nonetheless, I will still keep applying, because they like to see you applying over and over. To them, it means you have the persistence and real desire to work for them.

I will keep applying until one day you get to read a series on becoming a 737 pilot! See you next Wednesday!


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The circle of training

Last week, the FAA issued a Safety Enhancement Topic on emergency management handling (PDF file) after engine failure, especially in twins. Here's an excerpt:

Every pilot needs to prepare for the unexpected. Engine failures and inflight emergencies have a nasty habit of cropping up at the most inopportune times. However, with the right training and preparation, you can be ready for any hazardous situation that comes your way.

During your initial pilot training, you may recall the layers of learning involved with acquiring and mastering aeronautical skills. You might begin your learning path by memorizing certain facts or details like airspeeds for best rate (V_y) or angle of climb (V_x). You would then need to understand the relationship between these speeds in order to best choose which speed might be applicable for your environment. You would then apply that knowledge by actually choosing to fly at V_x to clear an obstacle on takeoff.

Finally, through correlation of V_x/V_y knowledge with climb performance at high density altitudes, engine cooling, and traffic spotting requirements, a pilot may opt to begin a departure climb at V_x, transition to V_y after obstacles are cleared, maintain V_y until a safe maneuvering altitude is reached, and then transition to cruise climb to improve traffic spotting.

Correlative learning takes place when students are able to apply previously acquired knowledge to solve new problems.

It praises Scenario-Based Training, which in and of itself is not a bad thing. I'm a big fan of SBT. In fact, my Flying the Mississippi book is designed to be one big scenario in which to learn and/or practice.

Nonetheless, as much as I like SBT, it is not a one-size-fits-all magic cloak. It is extremely powerful if used when appropriate, and horribly inefficient when jammed into places it doesn't fit. This is a place where it probably doesn't fit.

While the excerpt above sounds pretty and contains 100% of your recommended daily allowance of FAA-approved educational jargon, it doesn't actually address the cause of loss of control accidents in twins. Basically zero accidents are caused by pilots reaching the "correlative" level and not being able to decide whether they should choose Vx or Vy. Those pilots are smoking holes in the ground long before that stage.

In other words, the last thoughts of a pilot about to die from an engine failure on takeoff aren't

Hmm, I think I should choose V_x here due to obstacle clearance requirements. Or was it V_y? I can't really remember exactly the difference between the two. Perhaps I should split the difference and choose a target airspeed between the two. In any case, it is warmer than standard today, but I'm 800 pounds below max gross weight. That means my V_x will be lower than normal. Or higher? That's quite the interesting mathematical challenge here. Let me think about it...

Nope. The last thoughts are going to be a LOT more like

I'm rolling! Why am I rolling!? That roll is making us sink. Why aren't the ailerons leveling us the way they usually do?!? Pull back on the yoke to keep us from sinking so fast!!! Got to pull--[SPLAT]

No scenario-based training is going to help here. What is necessary is a return to memorization. But not the "entry-level" memorization that is the only type the FAA mentions above. This memorization is "mastery-level" memorization, which is a term you won't find in any FAA textbook.

This level of memorization is also different in that it takes place less on a cognitive plane than a physical one. While ELM (Entry-Level Memorization) is concerned with storing and regurgitating facts and figures, MLM (Mastery-Level Memorization) concerns itself with physical responses.

This is by no means a new concept. What I'm calling MLM here has been known for decades as "automaticity". In fact, it's not even new to this blog: I referred to automaticity last year in "Smart people do stupid things in emergencies".

This MLM or automaticity is what it will take to reduce the number of accidents caused by loss of control. Pilots aren't dying because they didn't grok a scenario; they are dying because they didn't have the response to an engine failure so ingrained, so physically memorized, that it was automatic.

So we go full circle, from one form of memorization to another. We go from a mere fact stored in our head to an entire memorized response stored deep in our mental being. One stored so deep it no longer even looks memorized; it simply looks natural. The circle of training goes from the beginner's memorization to understanding to application to correlation... and finally to the master's memorization.

The master's memorization is a way of understanding without having to understand. It has passed through understanding and become being.

That sounds very Zen-like, and it is. It is at that point of mastery that it paradoxically becomes difficult to explain to someone else what you are doing because the skill is no longer a set of discrete steps. It has become one single chunk.

As an example, go and land a plane and think of each step as you're doing it. You'll probably find it extremely awkward and won't make the best landing. It is something you've internalized so much that landing is something you "just do" now. (Or if you're not a pilot yet, try to explain to someone everything you're doing as you drive down the highway.)

That's why SBT won't fix this issue. Pilots of twins have to go beyond the conscious, awkward response into the unconscious memorized response. In other words, not to practice until they get it right, but to practice until they can't get it wrong.

The next post will go into what SBT is really good for. See you next Wednesday!


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The author is an airline pilot, flight instructor, and adjunct college professor teaching aviation ground schools. He holds an ATP certificate with ERJ-145 and DHC-8 type ratings, as well as CFI, CFII, MEI, AGI, and IGI certificates, and is a Master-level participant in the FAA's WINGS program and a former FAASafety Team representative. He is on Facebook as Larry the Flying Guy, has a Larry the Flying Guy YouTube channel, and is on Twitter as @Lairspeed.

It takes hours of work to bring each Keyboard & Rudder post to you. If you've found it useful, please consider making an easy one-time or recurring donation via PayPal in any amount you choose.