On 14 Feb 2017, at 5:44 PM, Derek <[email protected]> wrote: > > It's easy to blame the instructor in this, but where is the personal > responsibility demonstrated? > The pilot had already made a fist of the conditions, so why on earth get into > a single seater? > > "The instructor MADE me do it yer honour”
The GFA system infantalizes pilots. The law of primacy: if something is important, teach it first, correctly. If quality of operational decision making is important, the GFA syllabus should be teaching it from lesson 1: What are your personal minimums? What are your go/no-go criteria? How do you manage authority gradients? How do you “step back” and create a bit of space for independent judgement when you’re confronted with an uncomfortable situation? The GFA syllabus doesn’t teach that. Instead, right from lesson 1 it stresses that the instructor is the superior, and that the duty instructor will be running the day, and that everyone else on the field marches to that person’s tune. So much so that if the duty instructor doesn’t show up, everyone goes home. Military-style chain of command. In the PW5 accident, the pilot CLEARLY didn’t feel comfortable with the flight: He’d had previous experience from earlier in the day that the new instructor wasn’t familiar with; he knew there was a skill he needed to polish before he was safe for solo flight; And, being 69 years old, one can assume that he’d been around the traps enough to pick up enough life experience to know when he’s being sold a pup. By any reasonable outside examination, those factors should have been a psychological defence against him accepting a launch. “Nope, I’m out.” And yet: A level-2 instructor completely disarmed him, and was able to talk him into a serious injury via precisely the failure-mode that he already knew he was vulnerable to. From day one exposure to the GFA system, he should have been taught to politely tell instructors to go and get fornicated if they behave like that. He wasn’t, and he suffered serious spinal injuries. How has the syllabus been changed to prevent a recurrence of that accident? Ha-ha, oh look, it hasn’t changed at all: This is what we’re supposed to expect when it’s working correctly. Despite that: The system wasn’t applied correctly anyway. The MOSP says the duty instructor is operationally responsible for all aspects of the day. Was the duty instructor sanctioned for this accident? Was there a disciplinary inquiry for letting the pilot launch? Or for letting the other instructor clear him to launch without observing his flying aptitude? What exactly does “responsibility” mean in the GFA system anyway? We accommodate these issues in other aviation disciplines by making a very clear rule: The pilot is operationally responsible for all aspects of his/her flight. That’s what the law says. That’s what the GFA system subverts. - mark
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