Student Drop-Out Rates...why?

Which raises an interesting question about focusing more effort on
making an airplane that is simpler to fly.

Which is very doable - it merely requires that we give up some of our
cherished concepts about what the right way is.

Some thoughts:

Forget rudder pedals. Forget slips. Crosswind landings are made by
crabbing all the way down, then plopping the plane on the runway by
chopping the throttle. The gear will take it. It worked fine on the
Ercoupe, and it would work fine on a Cherokee. I've seen the way
students land those things in a crosswind - if they can take that, they
can take anything.

We can make it more effective by adding spoilers on the wings. They
activate when the throttle is pulled all the way out. They also
simplify glideslope control.

Navigation? What a waste of time. Every plane would have the
equivalent of a Garmin 396 (its failure would be considered an
emergency condition warranting a call to ATC for emergency handling)
and everyone would just follow the purple lines. VOR? NDB? DME?
Dead reckoning? Pilotage??? You gotta be kidding.

Weather? Why? That 396 has a satellite downlink. A little
reprogramming, and it will simply shade areas of the screed green (for
safe), yellow (for caution), or red (for hazardous) and you reroute
yourself. METAR? TAF? You gotta be kidding.

Engine failure? How often does that happen anyway? And if it does -
hey, let's just equip the planes with parachutes. If you can't get it
restarted by 2000 ft, pull the handle.

Ground reference maneuvers? Patterns? WHY? That 396 will zoom in on
the airport and guide you into a pattern entry. After all, it already
knows the winds and the traffic pattern direction. We can add
skywatch, and then it will even sequence you in with the traffic. No
transponder in the aircraft? Those guys are a hazard, shouldn't be
allowed.

With modern technology, it would be no problem to design and build
airplanes that any idiot could learn to fly in a weekend, never mind a
week. We wouldn't get the Harley crowd that way, but we might well get
the Mercedes crowd.

Michael

With modern technology, it would be no problem to design and build
airplanes that any idiot could learn to fly in a weekend

What you just described is being a passenger. People can already do
that, and don't need training.

Hmmph.

Jose
--
Quantum Mechanics is like this: God =does= play dice with the universe,
except there's no God, and there's no dice. And maybe there's no universe.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

What you just described is being a passenger. People can already do
that, and don't need training.

See, I wondered who would come out of the woodwork to say something
like that.

What I described is most emphatically NOT being a passenger. It's
being a driver. With modern technology, flying an airplane really can
be as simple as driving a car. Why shouldn't we make it that simple?
It would give us the advantage of numbers, and that of course would
reduce costs, regulation, etc.

Of course this would significantly devalue the skills of the existing
lightplane pilot, but so what? Do you really believe the skills
required to drive cross country in a 2005 Ford Focus with power
steering, antilock brakes, automatic transmission, the Neverlost
package, and OnStar on modern roads is even vaguely comparable to
making the same trip in a Model T in its heyday?

Flying can be expensive, or it can be difficult and inconvenient - but
if it's going to survive, it can't be both.

Michael

What I described is most emphatically NOT being a passenger. It's
being a driver.

Fair enough - you didn't mention an autopilot. But I can't concieve of
one of these being marketed without one. Lots of present day pilots
swear by George already.

Why shouldn't we make it that simple?
It would give us the advantage of numbers, and that of course would
reduce costs, regulation, etc.

Don't confuse "simple" with "simplistic". It would most certainly NOT
reduce regulation; if anything with all the influx of barely trained
drivers climbing to ten thousand in some light midwinter rain, I
anticipate lots of new regulations, bringing flying down to the least
common denomenator. No, it's not anywhere near there now.

I most emphatically disagree that weather will not be a problem. No
matter what you do, you are still being held aloft on a blast of air by
a piece of something whose shape matters a lot.

Every plane would have the
equivalent of a Garmin 396 (its failure would be considered an
emergency condition warranting a call to ATC for emergency handling)

1: Even if they don't fail much, with lots of them out there, they will
fail often enough to make ATC into AAA.

2: Even if they never fail, I don't see the average joe who can't
program their VCR making head or tail out of what it does when it dishes
out an "interface surprise", especially as it gets a tad bumpy up there
and they are threading their way through the frowny faces on the moving map.

Jose
--
Quantum Mechanics is like this: God =does= play dice with the universe,
except there's no God, and there's no dice. And maybe there's no universe.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Fair enough - you didn't mention an autopilot. But I can't concieve of
one of these being marketed without one.

I'm thinking full time wing leveler. Mooney used to do that. You had
to press a button to turn. I would add GPSS to it, and there you are.

Lots of present day pilots swear by George already.

Yup. Some of them are airline pilots. The Airbus is a tribute to this
sort of thinking. At 400 ft the autopilot goes on, and MAYBE it gets
disconnected on short final.

Don't confuse "simple" with "simplistic". It would most certainly NOT
reduce regulation

Yes it would. Once people with money started flying in quantity, they
simply would not tolerate the heavy-handedness of the FAA and all its
rules. Too many of them would have the money to hire lawyers, the
connections to have the DOT inspector general investigate the FAA (and
we know that historically the FAA can't stand that sort of scrutiny -
too many skeletons in those closets), and pretty soon the FAA would
have to back off. Way off. Not because flying would get safer
(although with some serious technology it might - cars have) but
because numbers mean political clout.

Motorcycles are just as dangerous as GA, and how much regulation is
there on them?

Even if they don't fail much, with lots of them out there, they will
fail often enough to make ATC into AAA.

No doubt. They will deal. Or they will get outsourced to LockMar and
their replacements will deal. And pilots will pay $100/year for AAA (I
mean ATC) services.

Even if they never fail, I don't see the average joe who can't
program their VCR making head or tail out of what it does when it dishes
out an "interface surprise"

The VCR was a perfect example of a lousy UI. That's why people STILL
can't program them. No need, though. We now have TiVo, and everyone
can use it.

Michael

Once people with money started flying in quantity, they
simply would not tolerate the heavy-handedness of the
FAA and all its rules.

I don't see that happening to the conclusion you draw. People with
money are =already= flying in quantity, just not as pilots. Air taxi
rules don't seem to have been affected.

Motorcycles are just as dangerous as GA, and how much regulation is
there on them?

Motorcycles are not as dangerous to other people as GA.

The VCR was a perfect example of a lousy UI.

It has been superseded by the GPS.

Jose
--
Quantum Mechanics is like this: God =does= play dice with the universe,
except there's no God, and there's no dice. And maybe there's no universe.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

I don't see that happening to the conclusion you draw. People with
money are =already= flying in quantity, just not as pilots.

Which means they aren't concerned about what the pilot has to deal
with. If this one loses his ticket, plenty more where he came from.

Air taxi rules don't seem to have been affected.

Actually, they have been. The fractionals are for all intents and
purposes air taxi, but operate under Part 91.

In any case, they are really only used by corporate execs who are not
spending their own money, thus don't really care what it costs.

Michael

Hit post too early...

Motorcycles are not as dangerous to other people as GA.

Nuts. Motorcycle passengers are at just as much risk as GA passengers.
Innocent bystanders (primarily pedestrians) are way more at risk from
motorcycles than from planes falling out of the sky.

Michael

Michael wrote:
Which raises an interesting question about focusing more effort on
making an airplane that is simpler to fly.

Which is very doable - it merely requires that we give up some of our
cherished concepts about what the right way is.

Some thoughts:


Some time back Raytheon hacked up a Bonanza with all kinds of
electronic goodies including a fly-by-wire control system and synthetic
vision (highway in the sky) PFD. Reportedly they tested it by grabbing
the receptionist, sticking her in the cockpit, and in an hour she was
able to shoot an ILS to minimums within checkride standards.

Best piece I could find on it online:
http://www.designnews.com/article/CA86994.html

I think the biggest challenge for this is integration into the NAS. You
really need two-way datalink with ATC and then you can have a
controller transmit a routing directly to the FMS. Well, we could
certainly get Boeing/Lockmar on board for this, especially if they get
to collect a "toll" for every flight. They'll have more of an incentive
to expand the market than the FAA I think...

With modern technology, it would be no problem to design and build
airplanes that any idiot could learn to fly in a weekend, never mind a
week. We wouldn't get the Harley crowd that way, but we might well get
the Mercedes crowd.

I come from a boating family and it's enlightening to compare the two.
Boating is unregulated and almost solely recreational. Flying is
heavily regulated and has utility as a means of transportation.

In the boating world you have a choice of a million different vessels
offering every combination of cost and performance and mission. There
are boats designed for and primarily used by people who shouldn't be
allowed to drive a wheelbarrow, and "little ships" which are the equal
of any commercial vessel and whose owners adhere to the finest
standards of seamanship.

The big difference between flying, boating, and driving in my view is
what I call the "pull-over factor." A car can experience severe
mechanical problems and still easily limp to the side of the road if
not a service station at very low risk to occupants. You can drive
safely in nearly any weather in nearly any car, and if it gets really
bad, you can still pull over and just stop.

A boat raises the stakes in that some mechanical failures can cause
serious problems and there is no pulling over in bad weather. But, even
in sticky situations, you still often have time- minutes, if not an
hour or more to figure out what to do, and you can often call for help
when the bleep hits the fan.

Flying however offers no such outs. Once the wheels are off the ground,
all anyone can do is wish you good luck; if a problem develops, it is
up to the pilot to solve it. This is what scares most people away, and
while you an build many safety systems in to add options, there's still
no way to pull over.

-cwk.

wrote in message
oups.com...

...snip

I come from a boating family and it's enlightening to compare the two.
Boating is unregulated and almost solely recreational. Flying is
heavily regulated and has utility as a means of transportation.

Boats might be a source of fun, but they can be, and are, used for
transportation. Come visit the Chesapeake Bay area and you will see plenty
of boats out for fun, while also being used to go somewhere.