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The Evolution of Training by Stan Dunn
The first time I ever touched the controls of an aircraft was in a glider over Durango, Colorado, when I was 16. The next time was in a DC-10 when I was 19 (I had won a free hour in a United Airlines simulator). I was bit by the flying bug, but it would take several years for it to develop into a passion that would lead to a career. The first powered aircraft I flew was a vintage Cessna 172 with a six-pack, a DG that required regular adjustment due to mechanical precession, and a whisky compass that could get you reliably within 20 degrees of your intended course.
Training was a different animal then too. The most difficult thing on an instrument rating was figuring out an NDB hold on a fixed card ADF. That NDB stuff actually came in handy when I found myself flying Beech 1900s around Montana in 2010. Navigation in the trusty BE-1900 was purely a ground-based affair, utilizing VOR/DME, cross-radials and bearing pointers. RNAV overlays were gradually picking off the worst of the non-precision offend- ers, but our 1900s weren’t equipped for them. The year that I spent in Montana produced 80 percent of the missed approaches I’ve had to do “in the heat-of-the-moment.” You almost never go missed from an ILS.
Prior to my time in Montana, I found myself flying around the West Coast after the Colgan crash in Febru- ary of 2009. Initially, all we knew was that the tragedy had occurred in icing conditions while on approach to
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Buffalo Niagara Airport in New York. I remember watch- ing the coverage of it before catching the hotel shuttle to the airport. On my third leg of the day, we were bumping around in the clouds at 20,000 feet when I selected prop heat on. I soon noticed the prop amps cycling between the normal range and zero. On the multi-engine Beech 1900, this meant that one set of propellers was not deic- ing. I requested a climb to FL250 (the max altitude for the 1900) in the hopes of getting on top. I briefly considered a diversion to San Diego where clear skies prevailed but managed to get a pilot report below that indicated that lower altitudes were clear of icing. I ultimately decided to continue to our destination.
That Colgan crash (stretching across better than a decade) would result in Congressional hearings, hand wringing, finger-pointing, and a deeply expansive set of new rules that governed everything from duty time to extended envelope training (EET). At the same time as this was happening, Part 121 training was in the midst of a dramatic shift in theory. The airlines were gradually rotating away from the 121 training rules towards advanced qualification programs (AQP). In the old 121 world, the pilot monitoring was not so gently instructed to keep their mouth shut while the pilot flying completed their check-ride sans any assistance. Crew resource manage- ment (CRM) was inexplicitly frowned upon in the train- ing environment. Orals were hours long and could cover