Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

They didn't have the guts to attach their name to this statement, but some minister in May's government has some choice words for the Brexit Hardliners. These guys remind me more and more of the Freedom Caucus in the Boehner/Ryan days

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[Kapture1]

how fucking dumb does your kid have to be to need a bribe to get in at USC?

[Dr. Strangelove]

One of the people indicted is USC's 'legendary' (stretching use of the word a bit) water polo coach Jovan Vavic. He had won about a dozen national titles.

https://www.tmz.com/2019/03/12/usc-ucla-coaches-named-in-college-admissions-scandal/

[WingsFan]

Finally a scandal that will never have anything to do with MSU.

[hack]

LOL. Or our other rival.

[Ghengis Jon]

Harsh but accurate.

[Jeff Buchanan]

DSL ...... the issue of flying by process versus flying by the seat of your pants so to speak is a real one. I was involved in panels of USMC and USN Aviators that discussed this sort of thing. At the time of my involvement the "glass cockpit" stuff and it's impact on flying skills - we call them stick and throttle skills - was a hot topic. The question was, how can pilots maintain hands on stick and throttle skills in aircraft that were becoming increasingly automated. The answer was to design and appropriately integrate two separate types of training. One was CRM or Cockpit Resource Management - a process that was being widely integrated into commercial pilot training. The other involved maintaining basic flying skills and teaching advanced skills that went beyond what a pilot learned in his initial flight training.

Commercial flying is a bit different than what military pilots do but not that much - the biggest difference is few pilots who are trained commercially have ever flown upside down. It's all straight and level stuff, maybe a bit of single engine power off approach to stalls which would involve nose up attitudes around 30 degrees before recovery is practiced or a steep turn at 45 degrees angle of bank maintaining a constant altitude. That's about as hairy as it gets. After they are hired by a commercial airline, there is more emphasis on learning the aircraft systems and CRM. Military pilots on the other hand learn the aircraft systems AND regularly practice Air Combat Maneuvering and Low Altitude Tactics that are 100% stick and throttle skills. In my community, we did actual spin recovery training where you intentionally put an aircraft in a spin and learned how to recover from one. You get good at recognizing unusual attitudes and without thinking about it, put in the the necessary controls to recover.

IMO, you cannot afford to let this sort of skill training lapse or let pilots get stale at it. This kind of flying has to remain in pilot training syllabi and NOT be replaced totally by CRM. The reason for this is that you become much better at instinctively reacting correctly to unusual attitudes/situations that might be encountered when flying. You get to know the aircraft like it is part of your body. I know most commercial pilots never develop that kind of feel for the aircraft they are flying. They don't do it. There are exceptions but they are just that.... exceptional and those types have usually flown aircraft that are certified to do acrobatics and have done them (loops, spins, barrel rolls, etc.). Your basic guy flying you around in a bus with wings and jet engines doesn't develop those skills. Instead commercial pilots get good at managing the information available to them in the cockpit, at altitude and comfortably on auto-pilot. Between actually flying the aircraft on takeoff and landing (and sometimes both are totally automated) the pilot in command (First Officer in the left seat) sits in the cockpit, monitors glass screens and if something is amiss, pulls out a manual and goes through a process to address it with their Second Officer - the guy in the right seat..

So, let's assume the Ethiopian Airlines pilot in command was flying the aircraft on takeoff/departure. Everything is normal until, after climbing through 1200 feet, he has to cope with an unexpected 40 degree nose down attitude. He knows about the potential problem with the auto-system that is in his 737 Max 8 and probably knows before he does anything he needs to disengage it by switching the system off. But he's never seen the picture he's seeing out the window - it's all dirt and no blue sky - and has never had to recover from this extreme circumstance. He's a process guy and he starts thinking about the process and asks the second officer in the right seat about it because ..... CRM. The instinctive guys recognizes the critical flight circumstance, realizes that he has about 5 seconds to recover from the nose down attitude and correct the all dirt view to a blue sky view. He has seen it before and instinctively pulls back on the control stick, disengages the auto mode and recovers..... bang, bang, bang. The process guy and his first officer both quickly overwhelmed hit the ground thinking about the steps they have been trained to go through in their CRM training.

[hack]

Do you have a sense of commercial-pilot salaries? I remember sharing an airport shuttle a few years back with a Delta pilot whose basic point was that we just don't pay enough anymore.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Jeff- I'm sure there's plenty right with what you're saying. I'd only say what froot or someone else pointed out yesterday, that as aviation has gotten more 'process' oriented, American crashes (and globally too) have gone down. I'm willing to bet the military has lost more planes over the past decade than commercial aviation has. It's possible this particular software glitch does however directly exploit what you're talking about.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Do you have a sense of commercial-pilot salaries? I remember sharing an airport shuttle a few years back with a Delta pilot whose basic point was that we just don't pay enough anymore.

When an engine blew up on a Southwest flight last year, the shrapnel killed one passenger. That was the first passenger lost on a US commercial flight since 2009. That one happened to be a Continental shuttle trying to land in Buffalo in the middle of winter, killing all 50 people on board. In the wake of that accident I seem to recall that the pilot made a ridiculously low salary -- $30,000/yr is probably about right. It's probably improved since then because the general public was probably unaware of just how bad the working conditions were for crew on those short distance shuttle flights were but I'm sure it's still unpleasant.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Famed attorney Alan Dershowitz is a frequent Fox News guest, but for some reason the network never seems to ask him about his involvement in a high-profile case that continues to make news.

On Nov. 28, 2018, when the Miami Herald revealed

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And then on Feb. 21, a federal judge ruledJussie Smollett being charged with filing a false police report.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-news-hasnt-asked-dershowitz-about-his-pedophile-client-jeffrey-epstein

[AlabamAlum]

I am sure that Dershowitz told them in advance he was there to only give legal advice on other matters not to discuss his own cases.

With the Epstein case, Dershowitz isn't accused of doing anything wrong, just the prosecutors, correct?

[Dr. Strangelove]

I am sure that Dershowitz told them in advance he was there to only give legal advice on other matters not to discuss his own cases.

With the Epstein case, Dershowitz isn't accused of doing anything wrong, just the prosecutors, correct?

He does go on other networks so I'd be interested if it's been brought up on MSNBC.

And he did help craft a plea deal that has been ruled illegal by a judge, though I don't know if that really implicates the defense team at all. Possibly just the prosecutors.

[Dr. Strangelove]

New book shows focuses on the poisonous influence Javanka have in the WH. Trump's former legal spokesman says they would simply walk in on meetings all the time, including ones Trump was having with his personal lawyers.

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https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/java...ry?id=61639588

[Jeff Buchanan]

Do you have a sense of commercial-pilot salaries? I remember sharing an airport shuttle a few years back with a Delta pilot whose basic point was that we just don't pay enough anymore.

Good question because it probably pertains. Before airline deregulation in the late 70s and the bankruptcy of Continental Airlines in the 80s - precipitated purposely by it's then CEO, Frank Lorenzo, to bust the APA (Airline Pilot's Association) and dismantle the union based pilot pay-scale - the starting salary in for new hires was around $30K (about $90K in 2018 dollars). After 6 months of probation you went to the union pay-scale as a second or third officer (727s had 3 officers in the cockpit, 747s, 4) at about $55K ($160K in 2018 $).

From there you worked your way up to Captain (first officer) and this usually took about 5-7y depending on how willing you were to put up with a lot of changes in the equipment you flew and where you were based. At that point, a first year Captain made around $90K ($275K in 2018$). By the time you would reach full retirement age (62, now it's 64), you'd top out at $130K ($360K). Lorenzo busted the APA union pay-scale and salaries tumbled, the rest of the majors followed suit.

Today, a new hire on probation with the majors earns about $30K, bumps up to $45K as a second officer (there are only 2 pilots in the cockpits now - 3 on long haul flights over 9h) and if you move on to Captain, its around $85K topping out at just over $100K. In the pre-union busting days, pilots retired at 75% of their pay. That is entirely gone now. The majors, like most businesses, offer 401Ks. Pay scales for the smaller regional airlines (e.g., American Eagle, now ENVOY Air) pay half that of the majors and most pilots working for the majors worked their way through the regionals to build the necessary flight hours to get hired by the majors.

Industry demand for new pilots is huge and increasing. There is a pilot shortage. There is no shortage of applicants even though the pay sucks and so do working conditions. Hard to explain but there is still some sort of mystique about being a commercial airline pilot. I can tell you that mystique is way over-blown. I thought about it in 1990, was offered by Continental (Now United) and Southwest, probably could have closed with Fedex but decided no and went to medical school instead. I'm very happy with the decision to have become a PA and not an airline pilot.