MAURICE CLOUTIER

Issue Area - Pension

Comments - Several years ago when there was all the controversy about how pilots were hurt by the pension cuts and the pilot communication net requested input---I submitted the fact that a dear friend of mine and 76 captain xxx xxxx committed suicide due to the reduction in pension---he flew co-pilot for Sky West for a time, but finally lost it and shot himself. I can't find any reference to that report anywhere.

Editor: Maurice, thanks for the note. We are all aware of the devastating effects on some fellow pilot’s and their families of the lost pension benefits. There is a privacy issue for each family who has suffered the terrible tragedy of a suicide. For that reason the PCN will not make public a very private matter. Suffice it to say we all recognize that corporate broken promises can play out in very tragic ways and many of us have seen that first hand.

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God love Rob Moser. I don't feel that telling the group that there are some "hopes" for reclaiming our lost pensions is the right thing to do. Take the gloves off and go public.

Pat McGirl

PATSQD@aol.com

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From: Michael Magon <mickiemagon@yahoo.com>
Date: July 20, 2013, 11:50:37 AM EDT
To: "mickiemagon@yahoo.com"
Subject: Fw: Airlines turning pilots into 'computer geeks who can't fly'

Don't know where this shortage is in these times. the only place you can get a job are with sleaze carriers........

From a retired TWA pilot friend.

This is why I was happy to be a ‘round dial’ pilot until retirement. I don’t totally agree with this because the captain is, & should be, the final authority on how he flies his airplane safely.

Exclusive: San Francisco jetliner crash caused by airlines turning pilots into 'computer geeks who can't fly' says commercial pilot

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) When flight 214 crashed last week at the San Francisco airport, killing two people and injuring dozens, many people were in a state of disbelief. How could a Boeing 777 -- the "Titanic" of commercial airliners -- be piloted so carelessly that the pilot seemingly flew it into the seawall and caused the accident?

But that's the problem, you see: There are no more pilots flying these planes. The real pilots have nearly all retired, leaving a bunch of "computer geeks" who have almost no flying skills and only know how to operate the computerized, automated flight equipment which is subject to catastrophic failure.

That's what "Pilot X" told me in a phone interview. His identity is being secret for his own protection, but he recently retired from over two decades of flying Boeing's largest aircraft for major U.S. airlines. He has received more actual flight time than 99% of today's active commercial pilots, and he's an expert in Boeing flight automation equipment. His testimony, below, reveals insider details that only a real commercial pilot would know.

Airlines are trying to dumb down the pilots

"The bigger the plane, the worse the pilot," he told me. "The airlines are trying to dumb down most of the entire fleet, and the pilots are losing all their flying skills. They don't want pilots; they want computer geeks instead of someone who can actually fly. The stick-and-rudder skills go to hell in a hand basket when you don't actually fly the plane."

The SFO flight 214 accident was likely caused by the pilot relying on the auto-throttle, Pilot X explained to me. "There's too much reliance on the auto-throttle. If you're a real pilot, you can do much better than the auto-throttle by running the power yourself to stay in line with whatever approach you're making."

The other pilot on the flight deck was also partially responsible for failing to do his job, I was told:

"The non-flying pilot was not using CRM (crew resources management) where you call out the controls and altitude all the way down. They also had the glide slope switched off, and those two runways are too close together to be doing real close approaches."

"The pilot was probably being trained to use the auto pilot and auto throttle instead of developing his pilot skills. Probably within 5 or 10 hours [with the plane] he should have been able to hand fly the airplane, but they don't teach that anymore; they teach people to be button pushers instead of pilots."

Accident was made worse by an air traffic control scheme called a "slam dunk"

"The air traffic controllers do what they call a slam dunk," Pilot X continued. "They make you go fast [during the approach], they are trying to move numbers instead of safety. They are trying to slam dunk everybody and push airplanes through as quickly as they can to get the next one on the ground instead of worrying about spacing, which should be increased. Sometimes it causes you to exceed your flap speed and limitations on the airplane for their convenience instead of what you should be doing as a pilot."

Expect to see huge increases in the number of air travel accidents

"I see a big increase in the number of aviation accidents in the future," Pilot X told me. "The FAA is just as corrupt as airline management. They're all pushing numbers instead of developing pilot skills."

"As far as air traffic control goes, they're one of the biggest threats to aviation right now. Most of the senior controllers have retired. These guys are pushing numbers, so coming into different airports, sometimes you'll have 3 different STAR approaches (standard terminal arrival routes) switched around for their convenience, and they switch runways when you're close in. And you're busy running the checklist, and then you suddenly have to switch everything in the FMC (flight management computer), so it's all heads down trying to change everything for their convenience, and it results in all kinds of safety parameters being violated, especially looking out for other planes."

Air traffic control treats pilots like they were a "yo yo," he explained. "I view air traffic control and the FAA as a big threat to aviation... giving up safety for convenience and statistics, and moving numbers. The speeds are too high, they make you fly high speed, 180 knots to the marker. That's too fast, no matter what kind of airplane you're in, you don't have time to slow it down, you're trying to get the gear out and everything else, so instead of worrying about landing the plane in front of you, you have to worry about the guy behind you, they're trying to rush you to move numbers."

Experienced pilots being forced out of the industry

All the really good pilots are retiring, quitting or being forced out of the industry, Pilot X explained to me. "Most of the best guys have quit, and some of these airlines are expected to file bankruptcy next year and steal their retirement funds."

A pilot shortage is on the horizon, causing even more inexperienced pilots to be put in charge of airliners carrying hundreds of passengers. "There's gonna be a massive pilot shortage over the next 2-3 years. They need 60,000 pilots and there are only 10,000 qualified to draw from. Everybody is pissed off and stressed out."

Airlines also have a reputation for stealing the pensions of pilots. "Most of the pilots want to get out; they know [management] is going to steal the pension money to give themselves bonuses."

Conclusion: Air travel is going to become increasingly dangerous

Here are the key trends happening in the air travel industry right now according to Pilot X:

• Real piloting skills are being abandoned by airlines.

• Pilots are being trained to be button pushers instead of real pilots.

• Air traffic control is "slam dunking" airplanes into runways at dangerous speeds in order to increase traffic throughput at the cost of sacrificing safety.

• Airplane automation is actually becoming a danger to the safety of airline passengers because pilots rely on it too much and lose piloting skills.

• The most experienced pilots are rapidly leaving the industry and taking decades of experience with them. There are not enough younger pilots to replace them, so airline companies will increasingly have to hire inexperienced pilots to fly the largest planes.

But who cares about safety when you can get extra miles by shopping with your "rewards" credit card!

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More posts concerning TWA 800 and Asiana 214

From: Barry Boustead <barry_boustead@hotmail.com>
Date: July 17, 2013, 9:28:45 AM EDT
Subject: Fwd: Asiana Crash Site SFO photos...

These are pretty sobering

Asiana Crash Site SFO

see attached link: http://leehamnews.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/asiana.pdf

These are pretty graphic photos of the significant aircraft damage of

Asiana Flight 214.

It is a miracle that there were not more deaths.

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From: THFoster6@aol.com
Date: July 18, 2013, 10:19:27 PM EDT
To: misc@pilotcommunication.net
Subject: Re: This is absolutely incredible.

I received this from Kirby Klein. The comments printed in red are made by Kirby. Travis

Korean Pilots Avoided Manual Flying, Former Trainers Say

This is absolutely incredible and to think we allow these airlines to fly into the United States. What happens when the automation doesn't work?

Asiana Pilot Skills Affected by Cultural Barriers, Trainers Say

Haruyoshi Yamaguchi/Bloomberg

U.S. crash investigators are examining the manual flying skills and cockpit teamwork among the pilots of Asiana Airlines Inc. Flight 214 as they determine why their Boeing Co. 777 crashed July 6 in San Francisco while making a visual approach.

MOLIT Aviation Safety Policy Director General Kwon Yong Bok

“As planes become more sophisticated, the government has told airlines that they need to narrow the gap between digital and analogue systems,” Kwon Yong Bok, director general of aviation safety policy at the South Korean transport ministry, said in an interview today when asked about pilots’ dependence on automation. Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg

As the Asiana Airlines Inc. jet neared Los Angeles International Airport, Captain Vic Hooper told his Korean co-pilot to make a visual approach, meaning he'd manually fly instead of letting automation do the work.

The co-pilot froze, leaving them too high and off course, Hooper said about the incident, which occurred several years ago. Hooper said he had to take over the controls to get the Boeing Co. (BA) 777 back on track.

“I don’t need to know this,” Hooper said the co-pilot told him later, explaining why a maneuver that’s second nature to most U.S. airline pilots rattled him. “We just don’t do this.”

U.S. crash investigators are examining the manual flying skills and cockpit teamwork among the pilots of Asiana Flight 214 as they determine why the 777 crashed in San Francisco on July 6, killing three teenaged girls from China. Two passengers remain in critical condition at San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, according to a statement yesterday.

Pilots were being told by air-traffic controllers to use visual approaches the day of the accident because the airport’s glide slope, which helps line up the correct path to the runway, was closed for construction, U.S. National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah Hersman said last week.

Too Low

The plane was coming in too low and had gotten almost 40 miles an hour slower than the target approach speed when its landing gear and tail struck a seawall short of the runway, Hersman said.

Lee Hyo Min, a spokeswoman at Asiana, declined to discuss the manual flying skills of its pilots, citing the NTSB investigation.

Asiana (020560) shares fell 0.6 percent to 4,810 won, the lowest since April 2010, at the close of Seoul trading. The stock has slumped 22 percent this year, compared with a 6.5 percent decline in South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index. Korean Air Lines Co. (003490) rose 0.2 percent today.

“As planes become more sophisticated, the government has told airlines that they need to narrow the gap between digital and analogue systems,” Kwon Yong Bok, director general of aviation safety policy at the South Korean transport ministry, said in an interview today when asked about pilots’ dependence on automation. He didn’t elaborate.

Asiana Pilots

Three aviators who flew for Asiana or who helped train crews in Korea said in interviews that the Asiana pilots they flew with, while intelligent and well trained on automated systems, rarely flew manually.

Hooper is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and a former Delta Air Lines Inc. (DAL) captain with more than 25,000 hours in the cockpit. Flew with this guy out of New Orleans.

Ross Aimer, a retired United Airlines captain who trained crews at Korean Air Lines (003490)for Boeing subsidiary Alteon Training in 2008 and 2009, and Kenneth Musser, of Roswell, Georgia, said they also noticed that many Korean pilots struggled with visual approaches. Musser, a former Delta pilot, flew 777s for Asiana for almost four years until 2009.

“You will never hear an Asiana pilot request a visual approach,” said Hooper, who flew for the Korean carrier from 2006 to 2011 after ending his U.S. airline career. “That happens all the time here” in the U.S.

Touch, Gos

Visual landing is one of the first skills an aviator in the U.S. learns, as a civilian practicing on single-engine planes with an instructor at a small airport or as a military student pilot.

In both cases, pilots make dozens or hundreds of unassisted landings before graduating to more sophisticated aircraft, Aimer said.

Civilians in Korea rarely learn to become pilots because the country doesn’t have the same network of public airports, Aimer said. Most non-military pilots hired by Asiana are sent to flight school by the carrier, he said.

Among Korean pilots, even those who flew in the military, comfort with manual flying was unusual, he said.

“They know their procedures almost better than we did as instructors,” said Aimer, who now works at Los Angeles-based Aero Consulting Experts. “But we all noticed they all had more trouble with a simple visual approach than with a very sophisticated approach.”

Improving Record

David Greenberg, a retired Delta executive, was hired by Korean Air in 2000 to bolster its safety and pilot training following three fatal crashes from 1997 through 1999.

“I observed it,” Greenberg, speaking in an interview, said of Korean pilots’ deficiencies in hand-flying planes, while adding it wasn’t worse than with pilots elsewhere in the world.

A Korean Air Boeing 747 struck a hilltop in Guam on Aug. 6, 1997, killing 228 of the 254 people aboard. The NTSB said the co-pilot and flight engineer failed to monitor the captain, who had gotten too low, and found Korean Air’s training “inadequate.”

Korean Air has had a “stellar” safety record since its last fatal accident in 1999, Penny Pfaelzer, the company’s Phoenix-based spokeswoman, said in an interview. The company brought in outside pilots and managers and revamped its safety and training, Pfaelzer said.

“They’ve established training that is the gold standard in Asia,” she said.

Eroding Skills

There were no fatal accidents involving Korea’s two main carriers after 1999 until a 2011 Asiana cargo plane caught fire while in flight and crashed, according to AviationSafetyNetwork, a Web-based database of crashes.

Delta experienced a similar shortfall in pilot skills in the 1980s after introducing more automated Boeing 757s and 767s to its fleet, Greenberg said.

Flying skills have eroded globally in an era of heavily automated jets, said Robert Mann, a former airline executive who runs consultant R.W. Mann & Co. in Port Washington, New York.

International flight crews, who may make only four trips a month and spend most of that time on autopilot, “probably don’t get enough hand-flying,” Mann said.

While the accident involved different circumstances, the Air France (AF) pilots who crashed in the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, 2009, killing 228 people, had difficulty flying the plane by hand after a malfunction switched off the Airbus SAS A330’s automation, according to France’s Bureau of Investigations and Analysis.

Three Seconds

After noticing their plane had slowed to well below the target landing speed, the Asiana Flight 214 pilots didn’t attempt to abort their landing in San Francisco until less than 3 seconds before it struck the seawall, Hersman said.

While the pilot at the controls had almost 10,000 hours of flight experience, he had flown only 10 legs and 35 hours in the wide-body 777. A management captain making his first flight as an instructor was supervising from the co-pilot’s seat. Another pilot aboard to give the primary pilots a rest break was seated in the rear of the cockpit.

From the time that the plane descended through 500 feet, the point at which Boeing advises pilots to abort if they aren’t sure the landing is set up properly, none of the crew voiced concerns until the final seconds before the crash, according to Hersman.

The Korean government has announced it will investigate whether the crew followed procedures and how they were trained, according to a Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport statement.

(For a map layout of the SFO airport that will display runways and taxiways, click on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SFO_map.png)

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TWA 800 Documentary – Epix video airing July 17^th. ]

Point counter point:

Why the 'TWA Flight 800' Documentary Is Wrong

After seeing the film "TWA Flight 800" — set to air this month on the Epix cable channel — we debunk the conspiracies.

By Stephen Pope / Published: Jul 03, 2013

Screenshot from the documentary "TWA Flight 800"

Enlarge Photo

I've watched “TWA Flight 800” — the much-hyped Epix original documentary that purports to present “new” evidence proving that a missile attack brought down the Paris-bound Boeing 747 over the Atlantic 17 years ago this month. Yesterday I interviewed Hank Hughes, the former NTSB investigator who, the filmmakers say, is “breaking his silence” to blow the whistle on a vast government cover up. Here is why the film and Hughes are wrong.

I'll try to keep the spoilers to a minimum, but suffice it to say there’s really nothing new in the film — although the filmmakers go to great lengths to make it seem that way. The biggest surprise in the documentary is the claim that not one but three missiles downed TWA Flight 800. According to the theory, two missiles rose from the ocean while a third was fired from Long Island’s Patchogue Bay.

The supposed “smoking gun” that proves the missile theory is a tiny blip of primary radar data that the filmmakers say shows debris blasting from the 747 at a speed in excess of Mach 4 — far faster than would be possible if an explosion of the center fuel tank alone caused the airplane to break apart. What’s strange about this blockbuster claim is that the filmmakers spend just three and a half minutes of the hour and a half film discussing the suspicious radar signature. If this truly was the hard evidence that proved the theory that a missile (or three missiles, as they say) downed TWA Flight 800, shouldn’t this facet of the story have been featured more prominently?

Instead, much of the film focuses on the stories of eyewitnesses, who recall seeing something that looked like a flare or "cheap fireworks" streaking through the sky toward TWA Flight 800 just before it exploded. This is apparently how the filmmakers arrive at the conclusion that three missiles brought down the 747. There were so many different versions of what people saw, from so many vantage points, that a lone-missile theory couldn’t possibly explain the inconsistencies. So there must have been multiple missiles.

Another central claim in the film is a suspicious “splatter pattern” on top of the center fuel tank that tested positive for nitrates. This material was never tested again after originally being discovered by someone at NASA. The sinister suggestion is that shadowy government agents coated the center fuel tank in high explosives before the flight departed to ensure it would blow apart when the missiles reached their target.

For the record, I don't think the people who made this documentary are seeking to make a quick dollar or created it just for the publicity. Tom Stalcup, a physicist who has become obsessed with proving the TWA Flight 800 missile theory, is the film’s primary narrator and one of the producers. His motives seem noble; he believes the conspiracy theory. But there are so many holes in the documentary that it’s just too easy to dismiss. After it airs on July 17, people who watch it at home will be left with more questions than answers.

I know I was. So I called Hank Hughes yesterday afternoon to ask him about the film’s inconsistencies. The first question I asked him was how it's possible that three missiles took down TWA Flight 800 and yet not a single fragment of missile was ever recovered. He answered that the FBI was in charge of the recovery of the wreckage and must have removed the missile fragments if any were found. I find this explanation extremely hard to swallow. An FBI agent isn’t going to know whether he’s looking at mangled missile parts or Boeing 747 parts with enough certainty to gather and remove every last piece. There was also no direct damage to the 747 that would indicate multiple missile hits. For this Hughes had an answer at the ready: They were "proximity fuse missiles," designed to explode near the airplane, not shoot through it.

Next I asked him about the radar data and why it was glossed over in the documentary. He didn’t have a good answer for that one either, although he reiterated that the real smoking gun is the "totality" of the evidence: the eyewitness accounts, the “splatter pattern,” the radar data, the fact that the FBI agents who were involved in the parallel criminal investigation didn’t seem like nice guys, and on and on.

That’s what always bothers me about conspiracy theories like this one. The people behind them present so much “evidence” that at the end of the day they can throw up their hands and say it just has to be true. But to believe everything the TWA Flight 800 documentary claims, you would have to believe every statement from every Long Island housewife who thought she saw something streaking through the sky; you’d have to believe that multiple missiles were fired from separate locations and then all of the evidence was successfully suppressed; you’d have to believe that government agents placed explosives on the top of the center fuel tank at some point before the airplane took off; and you’d have to believe that dozens of NTSB investigators, FBI agents, the CIA and others were involved in covering it up.

Or you could pick up the NTSB’s 400-page final accident report and read it. Then you’d know what really happened to TWA Flight 800.

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