As a pilot with over 45 years experience in aviation, nearly 37 of them as a pilot for a major international airline, I believe I have ample credibility for what I’m going to say in this post. The management of all the airlines currently operating in this country would disagree, but the facts bear me out.

As I have stated before on this site, flying, whether it be in a J-3 Piper Cub or the largest, most sophisticated airliner, is inherently dangerous. What keeps it safe, in the final analysis, is the skill of the pilots manipulating the controls in the cockpit. However, that is about to be called into question by events beyond our control.

As I told you, at the top of the list of those events, is a large number of age related mandatory retirements in the airline industry. Unlike in the past, there aren’t a lot of former military pilots in the hiring pool. There was a time, basically until the mid 1960s, when military trained pilots were the backbone of the new hire pilot group in the airline industry, with over 90% of that group being ex-military, and only 10% coming from a civil aviation background. That time is long past, and the percentages today are essentially reversed.

With the cost of civilian pilot training constantly on the rise, due to the cost of suitable training aircraft, and skyrocketing fuel costs etc, even the civilian trained pilot pool is shrinking. As such, virtually all the airlines have had to lower their standards, accepting pilot applicants with much fewer flight hours logged. This hasn’t happened since the late 1960s and early 70s, when the Viet Nam War was at its height, and military pilots were having their tours of duty involuntarily extended.

To deal with this problem, the airlines are beginning to establish their own flight schools, to train their future pilots basically from the ground up, a practice foreign airlines have used for many years, with varying degrees of success. However, as I stated in a previous post, there is another very dangerous factor which has entered the mix. Certain “woke” airline CEOs are directing their HR departments to develop a quota system to insure that there is “equity” in the pilot hiring process. In other words, it is more important that the makeup of the cockpit, is politically correct than competent. 

For instance, take United Airlines. Scott Kirby, the United CEO, has stated that of the projected 5000 pilots United expects to hire by 2030, a minimum of 50% of them must be women or people of color. Unfortunately, other airlines might go down this path as they attempt to curry favor with the Biden Administration. This brings up another factor. If the available applicants don’t meet United’s current minimum standards? No problem. Just lower the standards to achieve the desired equity goal. 

Pete Buttigieg, the admittedly woke head of the Department of Transportation, heartily supports Phil Washington, the Biden nominee for the new FAA Administrator. Not surprising, since Buttigieg had no experience which would qualify him to be the head of the Department of Transportation. Why would he be skeptical of Washington, who knows nothing about airplanes or aviation? Washington is an African-American, which checks a very important box in a woke administrations goal of “equity”. Competence be damned.

Beyond the question of future pilot competence, the recent rash of near-miss incidents at our nations airports brings into question the standards employed in air traffic controller hiring and training. Add this to sub-standard infrastructure at many of our largest airports, and you have a serious potential air safety problem bubbling just below the surface. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that all of this will blow up in our face if not addressed, and soon. People will die. That is almost inevitable. This is a serious business.

On March 27, 1977, the worst accident in aviation history occurred when a KLM 747 on takeoff ran into a Pan American 747 which was back taxiing on the runway in Tenerife, Canary Islands after landing. 583 people lost their lives in the crash. The horrific crash was caused by what is referred to as a “runway incursion”. Simply defined, this is an aircraft operating on an active runway without clearance from the tower or ground control.

On Friday, January 13th, there was a very serious runway incursion at JFK International Airport in New York, which might easily taken the lives of the hundreds of passengers and crew on board the aircraft involved.

Having flown numerous models of airliners out of JFK from 1964 through 1999 I am very familiar with that airport, its assets and its limitations. There are many of both.

On the positive side, it was the first major airport in this country to have separate terminals for the various major airlines. American, Eastern, Pan American, TWA and United all had their own facilities. Others, such as Delta, Northwest, Northeast and others, shared terminals.  So did all the foreign carriers, in the International Arrivals building. 

In addition, the “Big Five” (American, Eastern, Pan Am, TWA and United) all had large hangars and catering facilities where their aircraft were maintained and thousands of inflight meals were prepared daily.

As the airline industry expanded, airports world wide increased their capacity to handle the additional traffic with more ramp space, taxiways and of course runways. Airplanes, from the time of the Wright Flyer, takeoff and land into the wind, so runway construction is dictated by the prevailing winds of the location. Since those frequently change seasonally, having a large footprint to build on is vital.

The runways at JFK have been constructed to maximize departures and arrivals regardless of the wind direction and velocity on a given day. As can be imagined, the taxiway patterns constructed to access these runways are VERY complex.

Aircraft of various sizes and weights require runways of different length to operate, depending on the wind speed and direction. on a given day. Therefore it, might be necessary to utilize multiple runways, taking off and landing in different directions, to efficiently utilize the capacity of the airport at any given time. That means that it might be necessary for aircraft to taxi across a runway which is currently being used for landings and takeoffs, ie: an “active runway”. The possible safety implications are obvious, and they are compounded by the time of day and weather conditions. Continue reading Tombstone Legislation →

There are two dates burned laser like into my memory bank, one at the end of the last century and the other at the beginning of this one.  They are July 17, 1996 and September 11, 2001.   I believe they are connected by an evil thread which still exists. 

My greatest fear is that recent events will bring another series of dates to be added to the list.  As in the case of the first two, they will occur because of the stupidity of American politicians, and if we allow it to be so, like their predecessors, they won’t be held accountable for the people who died.

Bill Clinton in many ways was responsible for for the shoot down of TWA 800 in July of 1996.  Why, you ask?  Simply because he failed to act decisively after the failed attempt to capture Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid in the “Black Hawk Down” raid in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1993.  There, a ragtag group of Somali militiamen loyal to Aidid killed American servicemen, and shot down an Army Blackhawk helicopter.  Instead of a swift and thorough retaliation, Clinton ordered an ignominious retreat.

This caused Osama bin Laden to conclude that America was a “Paper Tiger” militarily. Because of that belief, he formed “al Qaeda” and began plotting the attacks against American interests at home and abroad.   These culminated in the events of 9-11.  There is a great deal of evidence that the downing of TWA 800 was one of those attacks, intended to frighten the American public and embarrass the Clinton Administration. 

The coverup of the true cause of the crash was a factor which allowed al Qaeda to successfully plan and execute the 9-11 attacks, using airline aircraft, previously not thought threatened domestically.  The attacks were planned at bin Laden’s base in Afghanistan and executed by al Qaeda members, initially based in Frankfurt, Germany.  It must be noted that when he had an opportunity to kill bin Laden after his involvement with al Qaeda attacks on the USS Cole and our embassies in Africa, Clinton refused to do so.

Bad decisions continued after 9-11. President Bush, using American Special Forces, successfully attacked and destroyed the al Qaeda training base in Afghanistan and drove the Taliban from power.  Instead of sealing off bin Laden’s escape route from the mountains of Tora Bora, he pulled back, fearing to cause an incident with Pakistan, and thus allowed him to escape. 

Then, inexplicably, Bush entered into a conflict with Iraq, thereby strengthening our real enemy in the region, Iran.  Meanwhile he continued what became the twenty year war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, attempting to “Nation Build” a western style democracy in a region where the majority of the population didn’t want one. Continue reading Two Dates…. →

As I have watched the debacle which is the Biden-Harris regime unfold since he was sworn in on January 20th, I knew, by his campaign promises, what was coming.  Cancelling the construction of the southern border wall, allowing hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens to enter our country during the current pandemic, and an assault on our voting system and the Second Amendment were all expected.  I have opinions about all these issues, but no actual hands on experience in dealing  with them.

However, now an issue has arisen in which I do have decades of experience.  That issue is the hiring and training of pilots for the nations airlines.  For the average individual reading this piece, it might seem reasonable to lump the field of aviation in with all the other occupations and job specialities that make up our countries work force.  In some aspects, that is reasonable.  Mechanics, clerical workers, or various service personnel who occupy the ticket counters, clean or fuel the aircraft, or load and handle baggage or cargo can be compared to similar positions in various other corporations.  But for the pilots, who occupy the cockpits, it is a completely different situation.

In many, if not most corporations in this country, the job of hiring, and even promoting employees  has been delegated by managements to the corporate “HR” personnel.  These “Human Resources” departments have morphed from being tools for corporate management to help them select appropriate job applicants, into the final arbiters as to whom is hired and later promoted.  Frankly, I think this is a bad idea on it’s face, but is particularly inadvisable where technical positions are concerned.  The people who have the expertise to do those jobs are the ones who should select new employees, and promote them, based not on artificial criteria developed within the HR Department, but rather on the skill level and performance of the individual involved.  Simply said, it should be based on merit alone.

Now, based on amorphous principles of “Equity”, some airline CEOs are making decisions which will determine who will occupy the cockpits of our airliners for years to come, and potentially place crews and passengers in great danger.  If there is one single place where all hiring and promotion should be determined by demonstrated merit and competence it is in the hiring and training of airline pilots.  That “merit firewall” may be coming to an end.  A classic example of that situation involves Scott Kirby, the new CEO of United Airlines.

Perhaps bowing to pressure from the current administration, Kirby recently announced a hiring program which will provide more “diversity” in the cockpits of United’s aircraft.  He recently stated that:

“Our flight deck should reflect the diverse group of people on board our planes every day. That’s why we plan for 50% of the pilots we train in the next decade to be women or people of color”.

It may well be that the other major airlines in this country will follow suit in an effort to placate the current government and so receive federal grants and other financial aid.

That is a very bad idea! Continue reading A Very Bad Idea! →