Leaderboard

Look, I've spent a long career (that will end at O-5) instructing, mentoring and sometimes defending my "guys". Lord knows I've made a ton of mistakes and bad decisions and luckily I've never hurt myself or anyone else, in part because someone took the time to instruct, mentor and sometimes defend me. You can blame this incident on whatever or whomever you feel you need to blame it on, but at the end of the day, it was caused by complacency and buffonery. Nothing more, nothing less. Hopefully, we will ALL learn from it and this particular crew will survive and live to fly another day. SC

I used out/back to MOA as an example, but grabbing the map out and doing some LATN, or even better a tactical sortie planned low, is far more than that. I remember 3-4 months ago when I came back low VFR from the MOA because I had the gas and why not? I was asked by the WG, "how'd you find that lake without a steerpoint?" Uhhh, I looked at the map and out the window. Bottom line: there is a lot of VFR flying to be had that is far more than just flying VFR on the stereo back home. Dudes need to stop being so afraid of VFR flying and man up. Be a pilot...if you start sweating at the thought of having to fly/navigate without ATC holding your hand, get a new job.

What is with people being so attached to "max extent possible" means you must fly IFR 99% of the time? It also mentions unless required for the mission. My mission requires I get VFR flight training to maintain competency in a required skill. If I can fly VFR on the way back, out to the MOA, knock out some LATN, why would I not? Just don't understand a lot of people's aversion to VFR flying.

While I agree with all of the "airmanship falling to the wayside" comments, I seriously doubt working on a Master's degree or performing additional duties contributed to this particular incident. Landing at the right airport falls into the putting the gear down or making sure the wings are attached before you take off category - either you do it or you don't. No training required, really. The SIB will probably be a human factors bonanza, but I'd be surprised if a lack of training/proficiency was causal here.

Could not agree more BitteEinBit. What we have going on here is a very slow decrease in airmanship and it is going to continue. I feel sorry for the FAIPS at my base because as soon as they finish PIT, they are thrown into the queep grindstone immediately and do not have an opportunity to become proficient as instructors. Their next assignment does not hinge on their flying ability. Rather, it hinges on the sheer amount of worthless queep they volunteer for. I seriously do not know how they do it---fly the line, do the queep, their desk job, "professional" Air Force organizations, masters, PME, etc. , etc. etc. While us MWS guys have a little bit less, there is still a LOT of crap we have to put up with. For this guy, at least, it is enough that I want to get out of this misguided mess at the first opportunity. The issue of "careerism" is going to unfortunately bend metal someday. At my previous base, one of my "additional duties" was that of pilot scheduler. In that job I knew everything about everyone for the most part. I knew the Q3s, the bad pilots, the good pilots, the pilots no one wanted to fly with, etc. One issue that I saw, though, was that many of our Q3s and less-than-stellar aviators were the folks who put more emphasis on their desk jobs and career progression than being proficient in their airframe. This was not constant across the board, but most times, this was the case. I am not knocking guys who want to fight to stay in--but for the love of God, if you are going to be a pilot, KNOW your airframe and be as proficient in it as you can possibly be, because your crew's life is depending on your skill and experience. I joined the service to "SERVE" my nation as a pilot. I uphold that and I put my flying job first. I care about my student's learning and want to ensure that they are passed along the knowledge that they need to be safe and proficient pilots. But, I am told that I need "mentoring" because I put being a pilot as my priority and not PME, Masters, etc. Many say that the only way to stop this is for the ones of us that complain about this to get into leadership positions and change it. I don't agree, it will take a huge servicewide culture shift to change this and I sure as hell don't want to waste more years of my life dealing with it. Another issue I see is a severe lack of VFR flying skills. A lot of new pilots anymore (especially IFS graduates with no prior flying experience) do not know how to navigate an aircraft by looking out the window. I am not saying that a lack of VFR skills is what caused this near miss in Florida, but it would not surprise me either. Yes, we are required to fly IFR to the "max extent possible"--I get that and that should continue. Our new UPT students, though, should be getting a much better foundation for VFR and navigating by looking out the window and a sectional more (we only give them 2 sorties to navigate VFR). In my previous airframe we were descending into our overnight location in Europe and I told my copilot to just fly the visual approach because it was a clear and a million day in Germany. Wow, you would have thought I was about to beat him over the face with a golf shoe--suddenly he did not know what to do to fly a visual approach. I had to basically coach him through it until he picked up the VASI's on final. For all the airline guys out there, I hope this made you laugh. I just hope this pilot shortage we all keep hearing about is actually going to happen. The Air Force has a great way of making awesome dream jobs suck...

This is making the rounds today...

Quote of the week nomination

As a side note... Gen Johns was the brilliant C-5 pilot who deployed the GROUND spoilers in flight (while in the traffic pattern). These effectively dump all the lift from the wings.

Hmm...with or without TiB in the back to weigh you down?