It is hard to do the math on this question with NTSB and FAA findings of probable cause. While Dan Gryder's Probable Cause videos are less sanctioned, they are timely and logical. From my experience as an instructor since 1974 and from his and my observations, I find that pilots with confidence have more incidents and accidents while pilots with extensive personal limitations have more fatalities. To be fair we have to examine the reasons for personal limitations. Are they actually personal or are they rather institutional? We are told that the ACS mandated competency of a PPL is just a licence to learn. Sort of like sign a non-disclosure document with the FAA and sort it out. The Flight Review looks like concurrent training but actually is meant to be just repetition of admitted (licence to learn) incompetent training. Nor is a couple extra maneuvers and less +or- envelope on airspeed, altitude, and heading in the CPL a paradigm change. Those are just about validating existing techniques. No new techniques nor even improvement on existing technique are often sanctioned. There was slight improvement from PTS to ACS concerning acceleration in ground effect. But only acceleration to Vx or Vy as appropriate. Neither is normally appropriate as far as energy management and safety goes. No paradigm change. So we can't fault the PPL or even CPL with the insufficient training. They have good reason for institutional limitations leading to lack of confidence. They are saddled with limitations. What is your experience with this repetitive loop?

Is change or progress or fewer fatalities possible with the current paradigm? If it is time for a paradigm change, who can make that happen? If David Soucie is correct that the NTSB and FAA are primarily interested in making those agencies look good and if Dan is correct in his evaluation of those agencies as incompetent, instructors are in a moral dilemma about how to best serve the customers interest. Do we teach the art of flying so a to help them become confident pilots or do we teach V-speeds necessary to pass the flight test or both? Can instructors make a paradigm change? For all pilots is AOPA the solution? We are a democracy and therefore should support the government. But can we expect more attention to safety at our low level rather than just posturing? Video is helping us see ourselves both currently and historically more accurately. Can it help with this safety problem, fatalities that is? Can we expect an agency paradigm change from fault finding to actually self evaluation in safety?

Mastery education has as much to do with art as with science. What V-speed is mastery. Vx or Vy as appropriate are just numbers. They express laboratory physics, not the natural world where things change and humans delay. Are they the appropriate numbers for pitch attitude with a three second delay after engine failure? More artistic numbers like DMMS take human error into consideration. Design safety features like dynamic neutral stability take human error into consideration. And we old guys have to admit that computers take human error into consideration, except for the programmer. The only thing in ACS that is artistic, and not digital, is the DPE's evaluation that, "the outcome of the maneuver was never in doubt." Butt covering idiots, the maneuver is unsafe. It is unfair to make the DPE judge an applicant on how he performs an unsafe maneuver based on assigned numbers with the outcome never in doubt. How, honestly how can we not have pilots with low confidence, even neurotic? Personal limitations is a cheap institutional ass cover job.

Given the distance between and speed of vehicles on the freeway, mastery of the art of vehicle control is expected. And a tremendous majority of us show tremendous confidence. Expectations have a lot to do with that. Is general aviation's better safety record the result of better training or less exposure? Would personal limitations improve automobile safety?

Is limiting ourselves to long runways safer than mastering ground effect, terrain management, wind management? Is limiting bank safer than allowing the nose to go down naturally in all turns and safe maneuvering flight. Is limiting energy management to engine thrust safer than mastering the law of the roller coaster and natural energy. Is 1.3 Vso all the way down to round out and hold off and uncontrolled float safer than mastering power/pitch deceleration on short final to touchdown on the numbers slowly and softly with variable power to control glide angle and rate of descent to touchdown?

Mastery of all these techniques is easier than backing a short trailer. Mastery of V speeds does not instill confidence. Flying artfully so that the outcome of the maneuver is never in doubt instills confidence.

I think the recent stance of the FAA outlawing training in experimentals has shown the FAAs hand when it comes to training and “safety”

I hadn't heard that. Yes, there will be even more first flight fatalities in experimentals. I have given lots of training in experimentals. Experimental was my least favorite type of airplane to train in. So many scary things out there like shoe string throttle cables that worked against a spring at the throttle, rudder pedals that applied brakes at a point before full rudder, overweight for horsepower, tiny control surfaces, and limited space for Army boots in cut outs in bulkheads to allow feet to engage rudders. I can tell many scary stories, including my only major injury crash. My problem as an instructor was I didn't listen to Nancy Reagan's, "Just say no!" I was the go to guy, in my area, for experimentals.

contactflying wrote:I hadn't heard that. Yes, there will be even more first flight fatalities in experimentals. I have given lots of training in experimentals. Experimental was my least favorite type of airplane to train in. So many scary things out there like shoe string throttle cables that worked against a spring at the throttle, rudder pedals that applied brakes at a point before full rudder, overweight for horsepower, tiny control surfaces, and limited space for Army boots in cut outs in bulkheads to allow feet to engage rudders. I can tell many scary stories, including my only major injury crash. My problem as an instructor was I didn't listen to Nancy Reagan's, "Just say no!" I was the go to guy, in my area, for experimentals.

FAA
Kiss the ring > Safety


True, but there are also some experimental way above and beyond most of the certified fleet, to me it’s all the same, I go off of the specimen at hand, last experimental I flew was owned by a guy with a very long career in aviation, thing had torque stripes on every nut! Everything was ship shape and bristol fashion on that plane. I had much more confidence in that plane than the average flight school offering.

I think the FAAs hate for experimentals is because they show how bloated and useless much of the FAA is, it ain’t raining experimentals, and you don’t see crashes due to the much more advanced avionics you’ll find in many exp planes. Kinda goes to show the draconian BS of the FAA isn’t really providing that safety they keep bloviating about.

Also

That is a good point. In my real job, as dangerous as a crab boat, I had the advantage that there was a high probability that the engine would quit. Nobody had yet figured out about the three second delay in acceptance, but that didn't apply to some of the Ag and pipeline patrol jobs I was in. I never had that delay, except the time I was high on Parathion and happy with myself very much behind the airplane.

I guess we should categorize acceptance as well as confidence. Acceptance is not safety first or third, but without confidence that attitude falls apart quickly. Some soldiers accept the dangerous situation. It is true, while rare, that some are not afraid. They simply do their job and don't dwell on the negative. The one year tour thing in Vietnam, 13 months for Marines who had to have it tougher, made pilots a bit buggy when few numbers remained on their "short sheet." Some became dangerous and some just very careful. Bloody Bart, who was full of bravado and got us shot down on my area checkout, didn't fly at all the seventeen days he had left. I was long, 353 days, and he was short. It affected him a lot more than it affected me. The Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was worse in these smaller wars with multiple deployments even though casualties were much lower. That is because it is never over, no DEROS, date of estimated return from overseas service. Actually multiple DEROS which was like no DEROS. It is understandable that one might begin to dwell on the bullet with ones name on it.

Anyway, if we push personal minimums as a solution to the stuff out there, the one with my name on it comes into play. If we don't confront bad stuff daily and get through it and do our however many hours, iterations, and confidently go about our business with safety third, it can work. Heads up and do your job. I have found all manner of student so amazed at what they can do, however, like put it down slowly and softly on the numbers every time, that dwelling on bad things and avoiding them (we all try to avoid bad things) with personal limitations becomes less of an issue. They see through the game. That bullet is out there, if they continue to fly. Sometimes it is not nearly as bad as they thought, or were lead to believe, it was.

When flying for a pipeline patrol company, we had a safety meeting of all pilots. As we fly all day long in the sun, severe crosswind at single runway airports with limited fuel came up. I mentioned drinking coffee or tea all day and stopping often for relief and fuel. We also discussed power/pitch deceleration on short final to the downwind corner so as to have plenty of room (1,000' to the upwind white big airplane touchdown zone marking) to angle across taking out a lot of the crosswind component. A retired airline pilot who had recently joined the company said he absolutely could not do that. He stalled and killed himself and an oil company man on a front range airport after the third go around because he absolutely had insufficient rudder to land straight down the centerline of the single runway. He had a lack of confidence and was unwilling to suffer the criticism of other pilots and the FAA should he just land into the wind and bang up the airplane. Or learn to angle across.

In preparing my fortnight original post, I came across the realization that I do have a personal minimum. I will not pitch up any nearer to Vso, when out of ground effect, than absolutely necessary. Deceleration on short final coming into ground effect is entirely a different scenario. I will wack the tops of trees, coming out of the first spray run max gross, before I will pitch up a little bit more. OK, I didn't hit the top of the trees. That was my downwash. But the farmer says I hit the top of the trees. We can look like a dangerous cowboy when we are actually safely practicing energy management.

Or we can cowboy an aircraft for the same reason as Russian roulette, that being life or death. Don't do that. Neither your family nor I want you to die.

I'll get to that OP in a bit.

From what I heard about the FAA Administrator's discussion at AirVenture, the FAA got caught in a bureaucratic spider web on this "LODA required for Experimentals" thing... They were going after one solitary operator who was abusing the rules pretty badly – basically selling warbird rides under the guise of "offering flight training" in a Limited class aircraft. That operator refused (multiple times) to comply with the FAA's request to establish a program like what is done by EAA, CAF, and other warbird "ride" operations. Eventually, the FAA took that operator to court, and a federal judge on the case looked at the FARs, and as part of his "guilty" verdict on the operator, issued a ruling that "instructing" was "for compensation"... That tied the FAA's hands - their previous administrative rulings and legal opinions were instantly invalidated by that judge's ruling, which takes precedence over the other findings. And that "new law" made by the judge is what forced them to revoke all their previous policy letters, etc., meaning that LODAs are now required for Experimentals and pretty much any other aircraft where commercial operations are disallowed. If I understand it correctly, any airplane certified as other than Standard, Primary, and Special Light Sport aircraft would require a LODA.

Yeah, I'm just as pissed off about it as everyone else, and I agree with EAA, AOPA, and all the other alphabet groups that we need a congressional mandate to change the FARs to make instructing explicitly exempt from the "for compensation" rules, once and for all. But given what transpired, I think the FAA has done a reasonable (if extremely inconvenient) work-around by allowing all of us Experimental owners to request a LODA to be able to receive training in our aircraft, and by turning around those requests in about a week. (I sent mine in on a Friday late in the afternoon, and got my LODA on the 2nd Monday after my request. It was basically a 6 working day turn-around. The LODAs being issued are valid for four years (as long as the ownership doesn't change), and hopefully by the time they expire, Congress will have mandated a change to the FARs. Several congressmen and senators have already joined Senator Inhoffe in co-sponsoring the bill to do exactly that. Write your representatives!

I agree with common sense folks at the FAA, or any agency, finding workaround amongst the awkward and lengthy regulations. FARs were pretty simple, but advisories and such can get complicated. Deviations are above my pay grade, but if they help you and others train in Light Sport that is good. Your airplane, Jim, looks pretty much like the simple older manufactured airplanes I flew. I have probably flown yours with someone, but didn't realize it. I have flown with BCP guys and gals in several of the Cub clones that fly like Cubs. More flap and slat is fine so long as the basic flight controls work the same. What do you fly NineThreeKilo?

All that older trainer sized stuff flew/flies basically the same. Reversed controls or something as serious would have to be fixed to get certification. My accident and area where personal limitation would have helped was with the pusher types that did not have dynamic neutral stability and small control surfaces that don't allow safe maneuvering flight. I flew an Ultralight Challenger II into the ground because I turned to steeply at low altitude and the rudder was not at all effective, I find out later, with the doors on at reduced power. The itty bitty ailerons were not effective, but I consider them secondary in any airplane. Power was one of those on or off deals, so I needed some deviation training on that. Having flown almost all the older trainer airplanes, I stupidly assumed I could do fine with anything that looked pretty much like an airplane. That was not the case. Energy management turn was fine until it wouldn't come out, without full power I later found out, and I was pointed at the ground.

As far as war birds and passengers go, I agree with Dan Gryder that there needs to be more oversight. I can't imagine low time four engine pilots flying passengers in B-17s. The golf architect my dad was with and I started flying with so young flew B-24s out of N Africa and Italy during WWII. He had some stories about the seriousness and CRM (Crew resource not cockpit.)

I had a Ford rear end gear reduction on a Subaru engine lock up in a Stearman looking, but much smaller biplane I checked out for the builder. That would be a deviation on the building side. An engine builder for light sport airplanes in California just kept sending my cousin different props and then had him cut down the length of the props to get the rpm up. Finally they sent a reduction that worked. I was a design test pilot and didn't know it. The more an experimental can fly pretty much like an old manufactured airplane the safer in my opinion, but I know that is not what young builders and pilots are after. FAA oversight of all this stuff was better when the General Aviation District Office guy got in and flew with you for airplane or pilot certification. Ag was an area they didn't understand and just didn't go there other than insisting that the training syllabus be identical to a Part 141 syllabus for a people airplane. When things get more complicated than what they know, they just farm it out. That works so long as long as the farmers are ethical. Experimental and light sport can lean toward design features the builder wants without full safety control, I think.

Double post

JP256 wrote:From what I heard about the FAA Administrator's discussion at AirVenture, the FAA got caught in a bureaucratic spider web on this "LODA required for Experimentals" thing... They were going after one solitary operator who was abusing the rules pretty badly – basically selling warbird rides under the guise of "offering flight training" in a Limited class aircraft. That operator refused (multiple times) to comply with the FAA's request to establish a program like what is done by EAA, CAF, and other warbird "ride" operations. Eventually, the FAA took that operator to court, and a federal judge on the case looked at the FARs, and as part of his "guilty" verdict on the operator, issued a ruling that "instructing" was "for compensation"... That tied the FAA's hands - their previous administrative rulings and legal opinions were instantly invalidated by that judge's ruling, which takes precedence over the other findings. And that "new law" made by the judge is what forced them to revoke all their previous policy letters, etc., meaning that LODAs are now required for Experimentals and pretty much any other aircraft where commercial operations are disallowed. If I understand it correctly, any airplane certified as other than Standard, Primary, and Special Light Sport aircraft would require a LODA.

Yeah, I'm just as pissed off about it as everyone else, and I agree with EAA, AOPA, and all the other alphabet groups that we need a congressional mandate to change the FARs to make instructing explicitly exempt from the "for compensation" rules, once and for all. But given what transpired, I think the FAA has done a reasonable (if extremely inconvenient) work-around by allowing all of us Experimental owners to request a LODA to be able to receive training in our aircraft, and by turning around those requests in about a week. (I sent mine in on a Friday late in the afternoon, and got my LODA on the 2nd Monday after my request. It was basically a 6 working day turn-around. The LODAs being issued are valid for four years (as long as the ownership doesn't change), and hopefully by the time they expire, Congress will have mandated a change to the FARs. Several congressmen and senators have already joined Senator Inhoffe in co-sponsoring the bill to do exactly that. Write your representatives!

So what was warbirds doing that was “dangerous” or wrong? They had instructors giving discovery flights in sexy warbirds, guess it was the fun and money factor was too high for the FAA?

What was the accident rate and instructor experience rate between warbirds discovery flights and your local clapped out 172 with 400hr CFI?

Warbirds rightfully told the faa to kick rocks as they weren’t doing anything wrong per the FAR, or logic, or safety, that put the faa into some frothing authoritarian frenzy, they take their “case” to a federal judge who probably doesn’t know the first thing about aviation, and surprise the federal judge rules in favor of the federal government, logic and safety be damned

Just goes to show the license to learn and safety first comes in at a distant third from

100% of my warbird experience was in Hueys and Hughes turbine helicopters. We were young and boisterous. Without oversight, management, training, and leadership we would have hurt ourselves and the equipment more. Personal freedom prevents as tight civilian control. But without some oversight, management, training, and leadership innocent passengers get hurt or dead. A beginning warrior has 200 hours and lots of iterations of aircrew training manuel techniques. Wealth is not a safe qualification criteria.

We budget FAA and NTSB fairly well. We should, through our political representatives, expect oversight, management, training, and leadership sufficient to prevent fewer general aviation fatalities. Recently, old warbirds flown by civilians and very non-current old warriors are producing unacceptable loss.

contactflying wrote:100% of my warbird experience was in Hueys and Hughes turbine helicopters. We were young and boisterous. Without oversight, management, training, and leadership we would have hurt ourselves and the equipment more. Personal freedom prevents as tight civilian control. But without some oversight, management, training, and leadership innocent passengers get hurt or dead. A beginning warrior has 200 hours and lots of iterations of aircrew training manuel techniques. Wealth is not a safe qualification criteria.

We budget FAA and NTSB fairly well. We should, through our political representatives, expect oversight, management, training, and leadership sufficient to prevent fewer general aviation fatalities. Recently, old warbirds flown by civilians and very non-current old warriors are producing unacceptable loss.

So warbirds was shut down because of lots of crashes?
Or because FAA got into a pissing match and just had to win?

How does outlawing getting instruction to be safer in these “dangerous” planes produce fewer accidents in said planes?


Personally I’d feel more comfy with a loved one going on a discovery flight in loved P40, with a high time instructor, than a discovery flight with a zit ridden 300hr wonder in a clapped out DILLIGAF mx 172.

Fatalities per number of hours flown are much higher in all general aviation than in military or airline aviation. Both need more training directed at the area of greatest fatality, that being around the airport. The airline advantage is total IFR, total ATC, legally prescribed airspeed, altitude, and procedural track. The military advantage is both IFR and low altitude training. We can learn from them. Since we operate mostly VFR, low altitude training would be very helpful. A warbird disadvantage is the lack of round engine mechanics these days to service very high time engine components. The Ag mechanics went out to their piles to pick out used radial parts mid last century. CE, Chief Engineer, or Crew Chief is part of the crew of every crewed military aircraft. Nothing wrong with the warbird concept, just lots of expensive problems. Beaucoup C-172 parts available. I agree that 172 training needs improvement, especially around the airport where stall is often fatal.

So faa’s issue was the mx in the P40s or the lack of experience of the CFIs at low level flying? I think most of the CFIs at warbirds had flown at Reno, and the planes looked pretty well cared for

121 flying and mil isn’t the top of the food chain, it’s a tool that in some cases makes sense, and in other cases doesn’t.

"Carelessness and overconfidence are usually more dangerous than deliberately accepted risks."
-Wilbur Wright


“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”
-Helen Keller

But again, it wasn't crashes or safety issues that got the FAA all hot and bothered about warbirds was it?

I wager flight schools with more crashes, worse mx and lower time CFIs haven’t incurred 1/10 the wrath that warbirds did, for simply holding the FAA to their own rules. And the FAA grossly made GA less safe just to stick it to warbirds for not bowing down to them.

I’m all for safety, I have posted on here more than a few times saying people should get more training, sport pilots should get some basic instrument and night training, even though the FAA doesn’t require it, for pre solo falling leaf stalls, spin training, and even small things like showing them what it’s like to land with tailwind, but that’s as a instructor and pilot who’s active in aviation, who honestly and without reservation wants real safety for his peers, his friends, the longer I’m in aviation and the more I see that;
there are two groups,

group 1 who wants folks to be safe and works in actually training people and making a good culture

and group 2 this is the group who screams from the rooftops about safety and makes mottos and logos on their webpages about it, but when the rubber meets the road don’t care half as much, or do half as much compared to group 1.

Some folks are about talking about safety, often disingenuously, and some folks are about being about safety.

This ruling resulting in the loda, that had nothing to do with making the sky’s safe

John Boyd, "Do you want to be (group 2) or do (group 1)?" NineThreeKilo or JP256, you need to start a thread on LODA. I am not that familiar with that, mx, and the P40 instruction "letter" I guess. I have been talking generalities and you guys are talking about a specific incident, I think.

Actually, we can all take a deep breath and maybe write about one tenth of what you folks have written here.

The FAA Legal Division screwed this deal up. The warbird outfit in Florida was indeed in violation of the regulations regarding operating with passengers in Limited category airplanes. The problem, however, was that the Court (ie: Judge) who heard the case was totally ignorant of aviation regulations and policy. And, the FAA didn't educate the Judge.

So, now we have to have a "LODA" to instruct in, or receive instruction in, Limited, Primary and Experimental category aircraft. Which in fact does nothing to improve aviation safety. But, the worst part of this may in fact be that the court determined that a flight instructor giving flight instruction is, in fact "operating an aircraft for compensation or hire", which is absolutely contrary to long time FAA policy. And, the FAA legal folks have determined that if a CFI provides flight instruction for free, he or she is still being "Compensated".

We all need to contact our Congressional reps, and ask them to strongly support S. 2458 and H.R. 4645: the "Certainty for General Aviation Pilots Act of 2021".

MTV

Thanks MTV. Being legally a passenger is like a warm blanket. A passenger can talk for free without talk being ruled "for compensation"...so far.

contactflying wrote:Thanks MTV. Being legally a passenger is like a warm blanket. A passenger can talk for free without talk being ruled "for compensation"...so far.

Jim,

Sorry, but if you hold a CFI certificate, and you are IN an airplane, the FAA will most likely determine that you were in fact, PIC and "operating an aircraft for compensation or hire", even if you never touched the controls.

So, if you prefer NOT to be a CFI, yet still offer "advice" on flying, let your CFI expire. But, frankly, as screwy as FAA Legal has gotten these days, they'd likely STILL claim you're a CFI just trying to get around the rule.

Seriously, the FAA Legal Division determined recently that if a CFI was giving flight instruction, and NOT charging ANYthing, AND, not logging the flight time (because building time could be considered "compensation") he or she would STILL be operating for compensation or hire.

Seriously. It's going to take an act of Congress (God help us) to fix this. But, the Administrator needs to grow a set of cohones and do some "personnel adjustments". Like the Legal guys to start dumping the trash, working night shift, and cleaning toilets.

Course, he'd get sued then.....

MTV

contactflying wrote:John Boyd, "Do you want to be (group 2) or do (group 1)?" NineThreeKilo or JP256, you need to start a thread on LODA. I am not that familiar with that, mx, and the P40 instruction "letter" I guess. I have been talking generalities and you guys are talking about a specific incident, I think.

This may be thread drift but since it is being brought up: The LODA (Letter of deviation authority) was created as a short term workaround after the court made the ruling for limited, experimental, and primary aircraft. The LODA only applies to experimental aircraft. It has been in effect since July 12, 2021. It is a short term workaround to the mess created by this judge and ruling. I have heard the FAA needing 1-2 days to approve them and at this point is just a formality. You can either have the airplane or CFI obtain the LODA. I am going to need the LODA because I plan on flying a Glastar Sportsman with my friend who is new to tailwheels. I have zero time in the Glastar Sportsman and my friend is an airline pilot who just wants some help learning how to wheel land. There apparently is no specific prior training needed for the LODA - just the form and application.

https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificat ... mplate.pdf.

This particular court also brought up the idea that flight instruction may require a class II medical because the instructor would be receiving compensation for flying. The court deemed "flight time" as a form of compensation for those instructors not charging for their time. Hopefully the FAA will make a separate ruling on this issue with new specific language regarding this court ruling. Older retired pilots make great instructors and many can only qualify under basic medical. So the court ruling could have an impact on future training. AOPA and EAA have both gotten involved. For now you can still teach with Basic Medical and charge for instruction. Lastly, I have always assumed that the highest timed and most experienced pilot in the airplane is ultimately responsible for the safety of the flight and will be deemed PIC if there is an incident/accident.



Josh