The Hidden Science Behind Aviation Accidents | Human Factors Engineering

Aviation has never been more advanced than it is right now. More automation, smarter systems, safer airplanes, but at the center of it all is one critical failure point, and there's a science dedicated to fixing it.

Humans have limitations. So that's where human factors really comes in, is to make sure that it's not a confusing system.

So, how do you actually design a system that works with the human?

It takes a lot of human factors research, a lot of testing to get to that point. We have to do this testing called human in the loop. How is everything gonna flow?

But here's the problem the technology is moving faster than the rules that govern it.

Even DFA can't keep up. Changing a regulation is so, so hard.

Do you think that limits innovation in some way?

Yeah, I mean it definitely does.

And we're still using aging systems that are getting harder to manage.

It's a little bit scary. Yeah, ATC are so good at what they do, they usually don't make mistakes. All these things really just increase the workload for the pilots, for ATC, for everybody.

Today we're talking with Vanessa, a human factors engineer at Boeing. She helps design systems that improve safety by removing the X factor out of human fallibility. Some people are asking if this new technology is an aid or a crutch.

Being able to put the autopilot on and being able to visually look outside for everything else, right? It's taking away a task that I have to do. And that doesn't mean that I don't know how to fly the airplane.

And I'm looking for an answer to a question that I think might be inevitable. Is there a world where going from a two-pilot cockpit to a one-pilot cockpit can be safer? This is the AirPod. My name is Mitchell. Now let's hear a little more about Vanessa.

I always love to travel a lot and really go everywhere, meet new people, new cultures, right? And I just always love going to the airplane. Going to the airport, uh, that takeoff feeling, right? For me, that was just just the best feeling. And uh we're what better place to be than in the front of that airplane. Yeah, that's really what I loved about aviation, is the whole life, the whole lifestyle about it. It wasn't just like, okay, go fly the airplane, because you can love to fly the airplane, but if you don't love going to the airport and sitting there, which we probably will be doing a lot, right? Airline pods, they do that a lot. Um, it's gonna be really hard for you to love to get in that flight deck and just fly it, right? Just at that power, go and talk with ATC. It's just so much more than that. So for me, you know, all of that really opened the doors for me to be like, okay, yeah, I do want to be a pilot. I do like that life lifestyle. I like, and I like what you do, right? You're sitting in the front, you're flying. There's so many things that you have to take care of, right? There's so many ATC talking, you're flying, somebody next to you also talking, probably. And it's just like so many tasks that I just loved kind of doing them.

Yeah. Do you have any family that were pilots or into aviation at all?

Not at all. Not at all. Yeah. My family immigrated from Serbia to the US. My grand great-grandparents came around in the 70s, and my grandparents came, and my mom and dad came in the 90s. So we all immigrated here. But uh my family just always loved airplanes because that's something that took us from Serbia to New York, where we uh even now live, essentially. So it was just something they loved. Like I didn't even know, but I saw photos from like the 80s, and they were taking a photo next to TV, and next to it, they had a Boeing airplane, like a model. I was like, oh my God, I can't believe they had that.

That's cool. And then maybe a little background on what you do now. So you work as a human factors engineer. Uh, can you just describe what that is?

Yeah, so what is human factors, right? If you're a pilot, probably one of the chapters that you first read in these books and pilot books, right, is all human factors, right? So essentially what it is is how the human interacts with a system, either cognitively or even physically. Uh, that's kind of what human factors is in a ballpark.

Sure. And then the the engineering piece of it, I think you we talked earlier and you said that you work with like the design team on the actual aircraft design. So can you talk about that process a little?

Yeah, so I'm more in the developing the system, uh, and that way, maybe essentially, uh uh designing it, but a little bit less about designing it, more about building the system, right? Design that system for the pilot. So, in that essence, yeah. So everything from, you know, chair, which more ergonomics part of human factors, to, you know, building a system that is cognitively right for the human, right? All the all of us have like limitations, humans have limitations. So we want to make sure that we don't build a system that is too much for that pilot to take or it's confusing or something like that. So um, that's where human factors really comes in, is to make sure that as much as we can, right? It's not a confusing system. It's not a hard seat to sit in, right? This button is not that hard to press. Right. So those are the things that, you know, the human factors person will make sure.

Yeah. And I I think that's some something that people don't really consider when they think about airplane design. You know, it's like, okay, wings and engine, and does it fly well? But like you said, the pilot's got to sit in the front. And if they're in an uncomfortable seat, they're gonna make, you know, if you're just bothered by it the whole time, you're gonna make worse decisions at the end of the day.

Yeah, yeah, and exactly. And then there's different parts of that too. Some people might not be able to reach the pedals, right? Like a lot of women now flying, they're a little bit on the shorter end that the airplanes were not exactly built for shorter people, right? They're built for the average person and you can reach. But if you're a little bit shorter, it's difficult. Like I also I'm a CFI say the biomEI, and some of the students that come in that maybe are younger, they might not be able to reach the pedals, right? So they have to bring more stuff in this little Cessna, put on the back, put at the bottom of their seat, and and make sure they reach. But, you know, and that's a human factors, maybe that, you know, part that some manufacturers maybe didn't consider, right? This Cessna 172, it's never changed, right? It's almost always the same, but the people flying it change a little bit.

Yeah.

Sometimes, you know, they're not they're not at the same rate, right? The human factors part or the ergonomics part in that case might not be at the same rate, right? The this those seats still don't move enough for a younger pilot, for example.

So yeah. Yeah, it's funny that you mentioned that because one of my best friends since childhood, she just started her flight training and she's like 5'2, 5'3. And she was asking me before, like, should I get this cushion to sit in the seat? I'm like, Yes, you will need the cushion. And then on my end, you know, I'm six foot four, so when I get into 172, I crank the seat all the way to the bottom, and it almost doesn't even go low enough.

Exactly. Yeah, and again, like if you're too tall, you don't fit in the fly deck. Your legs are gonna be right in between the yoke or whatever you had there, right? So you have to think about those extremes, but again, like when you're doing that human factors research, sometimes it's hard to accommodate every single person, right? Some reason if you're left out, unfortunately. So yeah.

Yeah. What was it about human factors that uh got you interested? Because I uh I guess for background, you went to Embry Riddle, right?

Yeah, so I did my master's in uh human factors at Embry Riddle. And uh what really got me into is before I changed careers and became a pilot, I was actually medical school. And I had so much knowledge, and I I have a bachelor's psychology as well. So I was like, well, what am I gonna do with all the psychology, psychiatry, the biology, you know, background, all this background that I have. I didn't want it to go to waste because I left in the middle of medical school essentially. So um, yeah, one day I didn't even know about Riddle when I moved here, when I moved to Daytona Beach for training. Never heard of that. I just said I'm gonna be a pilot, and then I picked for me the best flight school I could ever pick up, which was Phoenix Use Aviation. So I packed my bags from New York, put all myself in the car, and just came here. But when I saw Riddle, I was like, what is this school here? I just passed by it because I live nearby. So that's how I knew about riddle. Then when I looked up the degrees, I was like, well, what am I gonna do? I really want to do a master's, not just stay with a bachelor's. And I saw human factors, and it was like the basic, the best combination between biology, psychology, human behavior, and aviation. And to me, I was like, I already, I love everything. I loved every class I saw there. I was like, this is gonna be easy. I already know all this. And it for me it really was because I already had that background and I loved aviation. I loved how when I was training, I was thinking, oh my God, how do I make this decision? Right? I can't believe that we have ways to make a decision, right? Three Ps, the five Ps, the I'm Save checklist, the decide checklist. To me, that was just fascinating in that human factors chapter of all these books I was reading. So that's kind of how I decided I'm definitely doing this.

Yeah, cool. Well, that's quite the leap to just pack up and move from New York and just go for flight school.

I've never even been in a small airplane before. I was like, well, you know, and I wanted to go to Reno, but I already had my bachelor, I had double major, I had a post back, and I was like, I'm not gonna go do another bachelor. So the best thing to do is do a part 141 that didn't have a bachelor attached to it. So that's kind of the reason why I went to that school, but I had no idea Ember Riddle was there. I didn't even know about Ember Riddle. I know about medical schools, which are the best, but not about flight schools. Yeah, it was really. I don't even know if it was fate that I came to this school. I could have gone to Epic, I could have gone to California, which I would never see Riddle, right?

Yeah.

So it was really for me just like a blessing to be here, honestly.

Yeah, it's funny how you just kind of stumble upon stuff like that.

And look at Riddle bringing us together. We they don't need Riddle doesn't even know how we're attracted to it, that we don't even know we're going there.

Yeah. Um getting more into the human factor side. So, like I mentioned, and you talked about it too, most pilots have heard human factors before. They understand, you know, the hazardous attitudes and the I'm safe and all that stuff. But maybe talk a little about how it influences aircraft design because it it goes further ahead. Like the human factors process starts with aircraft design, like you were talking about. I mean, it's it's very early on in the process. So can you just talk about what is involved when you're making those decisions?

Yeah, uh essentially is really putting that human in the spotlight, right? A lot of times, you know, even in the past, engineers were sitting down and they build this system and they understand it gr like greatly, right? They're software engineers, they're mechanical engineers, everything, right? But then they never thought and they think a little bit about it, but they never thought, like, how is the pilot from the other side of this display or whatever going to understand what you put there? Because yeah, the software engineers knows exactly, you know, what they're putting there and they understand, and they're like, yeah, you know, there's a logic behind this. But does the pilot understand your logic? And that's where, you know, we really want to bring bring more human factors people at the beginning of a design, even before you have a design, really, just have a concept. You know, let's let's bring bring the human factors people, let's make sure that you know we understand that if this pops up on the screen, is the pilot really going to understand what it is? Are they gonna make the right decision? Or is this something that's actually gonna hinder their decision, right? It's gonna make it worse. So we want to make sure that you know we really bring the human factors people at the beginning of the design. Because otherwise you're gonna build this whole design and it's almost done, the system is done, and then you at the end put the pilot in and start testing it, and then it's like, oh well, something's wrong. But then you spend years and a lot of money as as probably as a company sometimes, right? Even if you're a startup, right? The same thing building all that, now you have to go change it because you realize, like, well, we put 10 pilots in this flight deck and they all did the same mistake. And at this point, it's not just the pilot, right? It's not their personality, it's a systematic mistake, it's the system making them make that mistake, right?

There's kind of the almost an old joke about engineers or you know, they've never sat in the cockpit, they're not the pilots. And it's in the any industry, right, where like um auto mechanics are like the engineers who've never worked on a car. Like, why would they put this bolt here when you can't even get to it? Where you have to like disassemble the whole car to get to the oil drain plug kind of thing. So what what kind of precipitated, at least on the aviation side, this human factor study where people realize there's a gap between the engineer's understanding and the pilot's understanding of the system?

Yeah. I mean, honestly, when mistakes are made, when it's too late, that's where they're like, oh, let's bring the human factors in, you know? And that's where really most of the time, probably until recently, that's how they figured out, like, okay, there's like a human problem. And they always blame the human, right? Not just the engineers of the companies, it's just almost our nature as humans to be like, okay, there's no way the airplane did this, right? There's no way the F-22 did this and made the guy go into a spin that he couldn't get out of, right? There's no way this happened, you know, it must have been the airplane because you know these airplanes fight so much, and then there's one mistake, has to be the pilot. But it's really it is, you know, I'm not saying it's not always, but a lot of the time it is the system in it. A lot of the times what the system gave to the pilot, the pilot wasn't able to make the right decision, right? It's always that domino effect that we think about. So yeah, yeah, it's kind of like where it really is.

I think people can see it a lot with older aircraft too, especially if you've flown small single-engine aircraft at schools that have older fleets, especially. Um, but even like you said, the 172 design hasn't changed in 60 years. Like it's still basically the same aircraft, and it cracks me up seeing some aircraft like the 172. I appreciate that I can just put the fuel selector on both and not have to worry about it. But that there's still aircraft being designed and sold that you have to cognitively think like I have to switch the fuel tank, and now I have to switch it back. And just the back and forth of that is it's such a simple thing that you wouldn't think anybody would even consider.

And that could kill you, really. If you don't switch those tanks, it can definitely be catastrophic, right?

Yeah, there's tons of GA accidents where the airplane went the engine quick because of fuel exhaustion when there's still fuel in the wings.

Exactly. I mean, I just heard one recently where if the person just switched the fuel tank, then they would have restarted the engine and not basically kill kill the other person. So those are things, right, that back in the day, human factors was not that popular, right? We didn't think of it. We thought, like, okay, let's just put right and left fuel tanks and that'll be that'll be fine. But not only that, like they built that, but they didn't build anything in the airplane to help the pilot remember to switch the fuel tank, right? Now we have stuff I can put my phone for every 10 minutes, right? But these are the things that that can easily be a pretty big human error, right? That would be like, yep, the pilot didn't do it, but then you don't think that they built a system where the pilot was able to make that mistake, unfortunately, because you become busy and everything, right? So yeah.

Yeah. You talked about how systems are a part of this too, and anyone in aviation knows that the systems go beyond the aircraft itself. So, how does human factors apply in uh airspace management? And the reason I thought of this question is, you know, the recent news of the DCA accident, final report just came out, and the NTSB was pretty harsh on EFAA for systematic failures. And to me, a lot of that comes down to the human factor of you know, you're overloading the controllers, you're shoving more aircraft into this airspace than they can handle. You have routes that uh the de-confliction just wasn't there, and you're putting pilots in a position that they just couldn't win in. So can you talk about human factors when it applies to airspace and that that sort of thing? Hey, real quick, I'm on a journey to a thousand subscribers. So if this is your first time listening, please consider hitting that subscribe button. Now back to the episode.

I mean, that's that's a complicated thing, Brian. I I didn't see the report exactly. I just I know about it, but yeah, I mean, I I wouldn't say exactly the airspace. It's been like that for a while, right? Like that, that airspace. I'm sure it hasn't changed much. But yeah, overloading ATC, not having enough people to do these tasks in an airspace that's so busy, it's almost like you're asking for it, right? It's a little bit scary. Yeah, ATC can handle, they're so good at what they do. I mean, we we hear them, they're so fast, they make decisions fast, and they usually don't make mistakes. Like almost ever. Like I'm from Daytona B, so we work in this airspace. Um, and I hear them, right? I hear them all the time. They're so busy, they can manage all of us, all of us not even you know, brand new students who are hard to manage when the new student doesn't even understand that they need to go taxi this other way, right? So imagine like how complicated it really gets for ATC, right? You can have even a language barrier with ATC. But regardless, like yeah, overloading ATC, overloading the people, not communicating properly, right? Like that that's another thing. Like, I I think they did have some kind of communication blockage at some point, not hearing it. Again, if imagine, I don't know, maybe like in hundreds of years, there's something in the fight that said your your radio was blocked, right? Maybe at that point they would have known, like, did I miss something? But again, it happened so fast, there were so many things going on. Uh you know, obviously the airplanes were not necessarily the issue, right? Unless you know somebody has something turned off, which I think they did have their DSB turned off or something, but still nothing mechanically went wrong, right? And that's that's another thing. Everything can go right. Mechanically went right, everybody kind of did what they're supposed to do. Like, you know, the airliner he just did what he was doing. He didn't do anything, he didn't change path, route, you're just coming down, right? This helicopter did that how many times? The same route. Everybody do what they're supposed to do, but something goes wrong, right? And this is where we need better ways to mitigate that. When everything goes right and there's a catastrophic, you know, event going on, where did it go right? Where did it go wrong? You know, like obviously there's a lot of things we figured out that yeah, you know, this happened and that happened, and ATC didn't hear and they didn't communicate properly, but could have been preventable. It sounds like it.

Yeah. Yeah, and it's just stacking the odds against the the pilots too. It's the Swiss cheese model that we all hear about, or you know, the weak leak in the chain, and you know, you have uh a helicopter route that arguably shouldn't have existed, and you have now we know it shouldn't, but it's been there for a while. Yeah. And then you have an aircraft that has to change their approach and they're doing a circle to land at night in busy airspace. You have a controller that's overloaded, you have the helicopter crew on night vision goggles, so their you know, peripheral vision isn't as good, and it's just so many factors that stack up.

Um Yeah, I mean, it's just so many. It's not even like one big one, it's all these little ones come together, and then like that whole massive disaster happens, right? It's bad.

How how do we handle the increasing volume of air traffic from the human factor standpoint? Because you know, the we talked about the controllers getting overloaded, and uh there's a reason for that, right? Like they're shoving more aircraft into an airspace than they may be able to handle, and air travel being more popular than it's ever been, you know, the post-COVID boom, it's uh back up above pre-COVID levels by a significant margin at this point. And some of these airports that are just trying to stack more and more airplanes on top of each other into the airspace, eventually there's a limit, right? Like we can't just do that indefinitely. So how do we set that limit and how do we handle that going forward?

Yeah, again, like humans, you know, we have a limitation. We can only handle so many things going on, um, probably most likely putting pre-existing routes where everybody comes. Because that way, you know, ATC is not overloaded by everybody coming from a different place. That's probably one of the better ways. Again, that's that's such a complicated question. Like, I I don't really work with that kind of problem, so I don't really know, but really getting it simplified, right? Like, okay, if you're coming from the east, which we do kind of have now, right? You're joining this approach, right? And that probably most likely reduces the workload on ATC so much, reduces the pilot's workload too, because they know exactly I'm going to this waypoint, I'm gonna be at this altitude, at this airspeed, I have my restrictions. Instead of not going through these like predetermined routes, right? The approaches and all that, and then coming in and ATC has to tell you turn left 20 degrees, traffic here, traffic there, and traffic is here because they're not on the route, right? So I have to watch for traffic. They're overload telling me, they have to tell the other guy. God forbid there's an unrest, like I don't know, other air spaces below you. There's like a Bravo and a Charlie or an uncontrolled airspace below Charlie where somebody's just flying around at right the right out altitude where your TCAS is going off, you know, or something. All these things really just increase the workflow for the pilots, for it to see for everybody. So especially in DC, more like planned routes, which I apparently they do have, but maybe a better design. Maybe it's time to look at them again because, like you said, now we have so many more airplanes, right?

Yeah.

So maybe things have to be looked at again.

And building in the Safety margins, too. It's like we were accepting smaller and smaller margins to increase the volume. Um, yeah, just a quick story that I can remember off the top of my head. So I was flying uh in a 182 from Phoenix to uh Camarillo, which is north of Los Angeles, and coming through the banning area um over Palm Springs. And so, you know, we're flying through this pass, we we're on our set altitude, and then there's a uh PC-12 that took off out of Palm Springs, and they're climbing out below us, and we can hear you know ATC talking to them saying, you know, climb to this altitude, and I'm watching them because they're coming up underneath us, and obviously faster than we are. So I'm kind of looking out the side and watching them come up. And sure enough, like I'm talking with the guy that's in the cockpit with me. Like, I I don't think I think they're gonna overshoot their altitude. And so we pull the power back a little bit, and sure enough, they come right up through our altitude, across in front of our nose, and then they kind of hit the burble and come back down and get back down to their altitude, but that kind of thing where you're just eliminating those margins because people make mistakes. I mean, it's just you have to accept that that's gonna happen. Um, so the more safety buffer you can have, the better off everybody's gonna be.

Yeah, yeah. And and not only that, but having automation sometimes on the flight deck, it helps because you can actually look outside for everybody else instead of like having to fly this airplane, you know, all that thing. So so to me, it maybe I mean we have right now I think we have enough automation, more than we probably want or need for a lot of people, right?

Yeah.

But I do feel in essence, like it does help. Like when I fly VFR, I just love having the autopilot on so I could actually look outside. Because I fly in really busy air spaces around the riddle and Phoenix and all these airplanes that are doing all kind of maneuvers below 4,000 feet, right? And I have to be below 4,000 feet because I'm climbing, right? Um, but it's it's a lot harder when you have to fly the airplane, you have to look left and right, and you're like, oh, maybe now I need to turn and still look outside the other way. I think sometimes, you know, having a little bit of automation that airplane helps. And not only that, but you can see like having a garment in your in your in your airplane or having your iPad, you can see the traffic that maybe your eye, if you were just looking without any of those cool stuff you have on the flight thing, you might not be able to s to spot it. Right? You might not know somebody's flying right above you because you were too busy maybe flying the airplane or looking somewhere else, you know, checking something. So having a little bit of help, I I think really, at least for me, really helps. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, how many accidents have we seen historically where one plane descends on top of another or climbs up underneath one? It it's, you know, not frequent, but it's happened several times.

Yeah.

Um, the high the whole high wing, low wing kind of coming together thing. You know, like that's a a a real issue.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I do love having like everything telling me where the traffic is. That's just to me is like one of the better designs or better systems that probably was put in for situational awareness of the pilot, right?

Sure. Like that. Yeah, and and just lowering the task level, the task saturation for the pilots, too. You talked about loving to have the autopilot on. It's like, you know, I don't fly anymore, but um, just even in my car, like setting cruise control on the highway. My girlfriend always laughs at me because she's like, I'd never use cruise control. I'm like, it's just one less thing I have to think about. I don't have to.

Oh, I love using one less thing out to do. Yeah. Even one less thing I have to do, like actually hold, you know, pressure on the gas pedal. Like if you're really driving for, you know, hours, then it's kind of getting tiring, right? So to me, you know, that's so that's also an ergonomic part, right? Somebody designed that thing to you don't have to press the pedal anymore. It will sit at that airspeed that you wind, which is just amazing.

Going back into uh pilots in the cockpit, what are some of the most common like cognitive errors that you see on the human factor side? What what's a mistake that pilots are making over and over again?

Oh, there's so many. Um probably the one that I feel like we do a lot, but don't really think about it. It's like confirmation bias when we're like, oh, you know, I'm going to fly today, right? And like it's a good day, right? It's gonna be a good day. Maybe in the back of your head, you're like, oh, I know there's a cloud, there are clouds and thunderstorms and all that, but the weather's fine. And then you look for things on Far Flight and on your whatever other stuff you have, you're like, oh yeah, well, there's just a little cloud, but this is fine. And then next thing you know, there's a huge thunderstorm coming your way, but the confirmation bias that you're convincing yourself and only looking for stuff that is confirming what you want it to be, right? You want it to be a good day, or like, I want to go flying, right? I am going flying. So to me, sometimes those things, especially in general aviation flying, sometimes can be really bad. I mean, so many people go into bad weather, right? Like, why are we still going into bad weather when we have so many, most of us have so many things on our airplanes that tell us there's a thunderstorm, right? And most of us know by this point from other accidents that okay, it's about five minutes late on my iPad. The storm might have moved more towards me, right? All these things I feel like just easy errors. Um, maybe not doing those ADM steps that we usually learn, like you know, checking yourself, right? I'm safe, am I safe to go fly today? You know, am I sick? Am I anything? Because really some people have really serious sinus issue issues, right? It's really not a good day to go do approaches all day from 2,000, 3,000 descending all the time, right? It's just not. So yeah.

How do pilots overcome that, especially the confirmation bias side? What's a a tool that pilots can use to overcome that?

Yeah, just do all the checklists that you have to do, right? Check all the one that checked. Don't ignore parts that you just don't like, right? And also don't ignore parts that you might not be able to read this weather product, for example, right? Like a lot of times we kind of skip these weather products that you don't really know how to read them, or you have to look at the bottom to see what does this exactly mean? Is it a thunderstorm? Whatever, that whole thing. So just really be honest with yourself. Can I really go fly? Should I really go fly today? Is my airplane really safe? I know a lot of people who probably take off and the fuel gauge is not exactly telling them where the fuel is, right? Can you go? Are you gonna die? A lot of old airplanes have that issue, right? They just can't even fix it. But people go do it and now they're like trusting their instincts or hopefully trusting their timer on their phone that in 30 minutes, especially if you fly like a 150, 152, it might not be, I need to start searching tanks, I need to start thinking like where am I gonna go land? Because you don't know how much fuel you really have in the fuel tanks, right? So a lot, even though you're not supposed to really take off with that, right? But here you go, people are still doing it, they're still surviving. That's another thing. You do things that you know might not be the best, but you still continue doing them because nothing happened, right? That's another human error that we have. So it's really about doing the checklist, go back, you know, go back to the basics, right? Do the airplane checklist, do yourself, you know, all these things I are in these chapters for human factors, really.

Yeah, it's like the normalization of deviance, what you just talked about, where pretty much I'm just gonna slip, you know, it's my wind limits or whatever. I'm gonna just go, you know, it's two knots over. I can do two knots over. Then you do two knots over and you're like, oh, that worked out. Like next time I can go four knots over or whatever.

Yeah.

People just go down that slippery slope until it's beyond what you can handle.

Yeah, limits. Yeah, it's beyond, yeah, exactly. Really beyond beyond your limits. And sometimes, you know, you get to the ground when that was the worst landing and approach you're ever done with gusting winds of whatever, and this says I can't really handle it. And then you're like, oh, okay, I can do it, right? And even that, right? That that idea, you know, again, you're having all these like human personalities, like, I can do it again, right? I can do it. But really, like, no, that's stupid. Basically, that's what the FAA says don't be like that. Think about it first before you go again, right? You just got lucky, maybe one time.

I've I've had to have that conversation with myself a couple times where you know I'm watching a thunderstorm build up or I'm watching you know the winds pick up and I'm like, well, maybe. And every time that I'm sitting there and I'm going, eh, maybe I can, I just have to stop and be like, no, it's not.

Yeah, I mean, there's so many things also behind us pressuring us to do something to go. Like if you're in flight training around, you're the instructor and your student drove like two hours, and now there's this little thunderstorm around, which you know it could go really bad, and you really don't want to send him back home, or this person doesn't really want to do an oral right now, they want to go fly. It's so many things that, you know, pressure you. But I think explaining everything nicely to somebody and maybe even telling them what you're thinking, right? Really like communicating that with them. And most of the time, I think people understand. Not only that, but you know, for example, as an instructor, you know, I want to tell, I want to show my students that, yeah, I know you've done all this hair. I know you drove here, I know you want to go, and I know this looks like there's only one thunderstorm, but hey, let's go back to Fort Fly and see all these, you know, better products. Like, let's look at a TAF again, let's do all that. And then together kind of get to that conclusion, like, yeah, maybe it's not the best day to go, right? And like if the winds are increasing and this person's a little bit new, right? I wanted to see, like, can you go? Obviously, I'm on board, but would that be beneficial for your flight? Are you gonna really get the, you know, worth your money that you're spending that day?

Yeah, when I was flying at Riddle, I had a summer flight block one time at 4 p.m. And if anybody's lived in Florida, 4 p.m. in the summer is not a time to go fly. It's like every day thunderstorm. So it was my last, uh, I think it was my last long cross country before I could go do my check ride. And I'm just like, I gotta get this done. And every day I'd show up in thunderstorm and show up in thunderstorm. And after like three or four weeks of it, eventually there was a day that was like borderline, and I went for it. And then coming back into Daytona, it was like threading the needle between clouds on the way back. Oh my gosh, yeah, I should not have done this. You just like it. Fortunately, it worked out and everything was fine. But yeah, those situations where you get into it and you're like, why did I do this? Why am I up here?

Yeah, yeah. And sometimes, you know, there's things that we don't think about how quickly, for example, just that weather can change. Sometimes the meeting on top are saying one thing that doesn't look that bad, but then suddenly the moment comes in and you're like, oh, well, this is way worse than it reported. Right. And even having that in the back of your mind will really help that stuff can can get worse, right?

Yeah. We were doing touch and goes one time, and uh, you know, we're we're probably on our third or fourth one coming around to um to land. We're on final, and we're like, okay, this is gonna be a touch and go. And then all of a sudden, like this rain and clouds come in and the end of the runway just disappears, the far end. We're like, yeah, this is gonna be a full stop. We're not we're not doing touch and go on this one.

Yeah, something and it's so hard because you really have to put all the information you have, for example, about that weather moment, together to realize that, well, the winds are blowing a little bit harder. That means that this storm is gonna get here a lot faster than if the winds are just blowing like two, three knots, right? But you know, do we really have time sometimes to think about that whole thing? Because even for us instructors, we go from flight to flight to flight to flight. And unlike the student who might have a lot more time than us to go check all of these weather reports, like sometimes you're you're just not making the best decision. But again, you have to try to mitigate as much as you can. And even mitigate errors, right? Okay, I made an error, how do I fix this now? Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You you talked about this earlier, but uh when you talk about pilot error in incidents specifically, you know, the reports come out and they say, you know, root cause pilot error, but there's a lot more to it than that. Can you talk about some examples where maybe a design issue caused pilot error or just things along those lines where it's like, yeah, pilot error, but that can be an umbrella term that covers so many different things, like the weather reporting was bad or there's something wrong with the design of the airplane, even though the airplane functions as it was designed to, it just wasn't designed well.

Yeah, exactly. Or even if functions how it's designed, but the pilot still made the error. Like what part of that was was wrong, right? I mean, to me, the classic human factors one is basically um I forgot what bombers they were back in the like seven sixties, seventies, something like that, where basically they had to put the yeah, obviously put the gear down, but at the time, and those I think they were Boeing bombers, but anyway, when you put the landing gear down, this that switch for the landing gear was the same as the flaps one. It was the same as a lot more, it was just literally like a normal switch. So at night, when the pilots were really tired, um coming from a whole day of fighting, right, and all that. Well, guess what? They wanted to put the landing gear down, but they put the flaps down. So that's kind of one of the first human factors problems that they had. And they didn't know like why are all these pilots, even when they're not super tired, still putting the flaps down instead of the gear down. Well, then they realized, like, well, because it's really hard to tell which one it is, even though it says, but think about it, when we're pilots, we're trying to land, like, I'm not looking to read which one is which exactly, because that takes so much time away from me actually landing. But that's one of the human factors, like uh like events that really make human factors popular. Where the what they did is they changed the the landing uh lever, right? So they made it round, like a wheel. So now you don't really have to look down because you can even touch it and feel it and know that that's the landing ear one. The same thing with the flaps, right? Our flaps one is flat, looks like a flap, essentially. Yeah, somebody has to think about that.

Yeah, it's funny when you think about it like that because it seems so simplistic, like almost, you know, like a toddler could do it. But that's when you get cognitively overloaded, it's like you want it to be as simple as possible.

Yeah, you're gonna so easily make mistakes. Like easily make those mistakes, even though everybody else at the time had the same uh landing gear switch, right? The same one. Nobody had anything different. It was like a metal one that just like you put it down. But essentially they figured out, like, wow, a lot of people are making this error, especially when they're busy, they're tired, there's stuff going around, they have to land, you know, that whole thing. So yeah.

It's funny too, when you see really good design, it it seems so simple looking back on it. But like we talked about, there's airplanes that you can still get in that you have to switch the fuel tanks every 10 minutes. Or you know, it's just like why does this still exist? And an example that I'm thinking of right now, I don't know if you've been in the Epic E1000, the single engine turboprop.

No.

Um, but they're they just got certified. They've been around as experimental for a while, but they've recently got certified. But I've been in the cockpit of a couple of them, and their startup sequence is literally buttons on the upper left side of the dash, and you start on the upper left, and it's just in order. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. It's like, why why are you the first ones to do this? Like, I have to go over here and flip this switch, and then my fuel's over here, and then my starter's over here. It's like I'm going to six different places in the cockpit, and they're the first ones to be like, why can't they all just be right here in order the way you press them?

Exactly. And it takes a lot of human factors research, a lot of testing to get to that point, right? So we have to do this testing called human in the loop, which is bringing the human and with them in that loop, how is everything gonna flow, right? And there's a different way of doing that, for example, like a lot of the you know, Airbus and Boeing, they kind of group all the all the buttons in one thing, right? It's like, okay, everything for the left engine is here, everything for the right, or whatever it is, everything for the fuel system is here, right? They try to group it that way. So it really depends what kind of system you're building, but at least try to make it, like you said, a little bit better for the pilot, right? And to me, like one example, one of the first human factors, things I kind of had an issue with in the Cessna was starting the engine. I don't know if you remember, but if you're the instructor trying to start that engine, you actually have to go over the student and this the keys on the other side, and now you have to move your hand with two different things you're trying to turn it on. So I was like, but they know this is a training aircraft. At this point, they know it's a training aircraft, right? Why not put that starter a little bit closer to the middle so nobody will be uncomfortable, right? Especially if it's a male, female. Either one of them can be uncomfortable, right? So these are some of the actually the first human factors thing that I did research on. I'm like, uh, a little bit better could be the design assessment. But either way, right? It's to me it is perfect. I love that airplane. So yeah. But still, if I had to improve, I wouldn't be like something like that.

My very first flight lesson in a 172, this is before I even went to Riddle, but I we walked through everything. He's like, okay, go ahead and start it. So I'm like cranking, cranking, cranking. It's not starting. Take the key back, and before the prop is like completely stopped, I go to crank it again, like you would a car, right? Yeah. Not thinking, right? Like it's the starter, there's a a gear attached to the motor, and then there's a gear on the starter that comes out and engages with the teeth on that other gear. And so this one's still spinning, and then the starter comes back out and just shears the teeth off the the crankshaft uh gear. And so he's like, Well, I guess we're not flying today. I'm like, He's like, No, I should have told you, but it's you know, I'm just like cranking it like a car. Okay, it didn't start a crank again, and then yep, sure enough.

Yeah, but then look at the new airplanes, like the diamond aircraft right now, it's just like the easiest turn-on key, right? There's a lot of the even then, I think a D50 or somebody has a push to start button. Right? Like they're so they're improving so much, and this is automation coming into place, right? Like you used to have to do, use both hands, like hear the engine, hold it, not do more than you know, 10 seconds on that starter and all that. But now the newer airplanes, right? The diamonds are sling or something like that. You just like turn the key or push the button, ride the sears, probably two, and you just turned on without you needing to do that many things.

And it's interesting that aviation seems to lag behind the auto industry so much in terms of that kind of stuff. It's like, you know, how long were we flying carbureted planes when fuel-injected cars were out there? And um, like you said, the essentially push to start now. It's like push to start's been in cars since at least the early 2000s, if not earlier. And we're finally getting to a point where there's you know, piston aircraft that you can push to start and you don't have to manage the fuel and all this other stuff.

Exactly. Yeah, and even like in the diamond aircraft compared to like the Cessna, I don't know about the series, but in the diamonds to do a whole test to test the engine, you just like literally hold the button. And it does the whole testing. I don't have to touch anything, I don't have to reduce the power, I don't have to add it back, I don't have to change the magnetos, none of that. It just literally does the test itself. And and another way where automation is really good. Because now you're removing the pilot that could potentially make an error. Right? It might not not reduce the power the whole way. Maybe they understand the magnetos that well, but in a diamond, you know, something goes wrong, and it will tell you, you know, you see a fader, you you can't take off, basically.

So I want to get into more of the automation side because I think there's some interesting developments. Like we talked about, there's, you know, you have some of the Fadek engines now, you have just the more automated piston engines. How has automation improved flight safety from a human factor standpoint?

Yeah, and one example, like I said, is being able to put the autopilot on and being able to visually look outside for everything else, right? It's taking away a task that I have to do. And that doesn't mean that I don't know how to fly the airplane. And I feel like we always go back and everybody kind of fights back, and like, well, you know, you put in so much automation on this airplane and now people don't know how to fly the airplane. But I'm sitting there thinking, well, if somebody tells me that the FAA private pilot standards have changed because of automation, I really want to know. Yeah, they're telling me that because you have more automation on this airplane, you don't have to do this kind of landing and you don't have to meet these minimums and maximums on the landing, then really automation changed the pilot, right? You really, you know, you don't have to do a landing within 100 feet, right, of your target or something like that. But it didn't change anything, right? Like it just made you better. Um maybe it took us away from really flying the airplane in some instances, where now I'm really managing some systems, but I didn't take it away. I still have to do the same exact private pilot truck ride, the same exact instrument, the same exact commercial. Except now, not only do I have to do everything that's on there that never that hasn't been changing for a long time, I have to also know the Garmin system. If I fly the Cessna with the Garmin or the Diamond, right? Which adds more stuff that I need to know. If I fly a six-pack, I don't need to worry about the Garmin shooting some information at me that's like, well, what is this yellow thing it's saying, you know, or well, what does this mean? You know, because you have more chance it's probably even worse that you have more animation because now the DP can ask you so many more questions. They can tell you, oh, I actually just want to hold in five minutes wherever I am in five minutes. They're like, Well, in the garment, you can do that, you can take your little Mouse, click on that, and you can just ask the P well, what do you want the likes to be? Right? That's not something you can do in a six-pack. So you have to learn more stuff, understand the system even more to do something like that. Right. So I feel like it makes you maybe essentially a little bit smarter because, okay, now I know the system. Now not only do I need to know what's in front of me in the flight deck, in this, in this G1000 or whatever you have, but now I have to understand how is it linked, right? How are the two PFD, MFD linked? What's linked to the PFD? Is it a transponder? My transponder doesn't work. What's going to show up on the screen? So I have another like at least two weeks to study before I go on the checkboard compared to somebody who's just maybe flying the six pack, which is probably much better. But here I am trying to be advanced, trying to have autopilot in my flight day, trying to have TCAS and auto landing and I don't know, whatever the whole thing. But now I need to know the system. What does it mean, right? What does it mean that's gonna go auto land? Is it really landing or is it just bringing me to the best airport? You know, what's the logic behind what the system is doing? So I feel like it's really probably better for situational awareness. But yeah, there's so many opinions on that, you know.

It's funny to me that people kind of poo-poo on the automation stuff, and you know, you're a systems manager now. It's like, well, that's how the airlines have been doing it for 40, 50 years, and it's the safest form of transportation to ever exist. It's like, so do we want to have safer air travel or do we want to be, you know, cowboy hotshot pilots? Like if you want to go buy a J3 cub that you have to hand prop to fly, you can still do that, I guess. But if you're gonna fly day in, day out, you have a family that relies on you, like wouldn't you want the best chance possible to make it home safely?

Yeah, exactly. And and and it that's a good point. Like back in the day, having those airplanes, great. And like you mentioned, there were now there's like hundreds of airplanes in the air that you really need something to tell you what the traffic is. Because there's so many. It's not like, you know, 50 years ago when they built these airplanes that there were not, you can easily fly a six-pack and really not hit anybody, probably. But now you can't really do that. Not only are there Cessnas and jets, private jets and all that, but now is the military flying around too, right? Super fast. The last thing I really want is to not have some awareness that there's something going on, right? Oh, not be aware of the airspace, right? Like it's gonna be really fun having the paper chart and forget out where you are.

Yeah.

It's gonna be really fun.

Well, it's like the accident that founded essentially led to the founding of the FAA was a mid-air collision. And, you know, people talk about you don't need all this technology, but it's like that stuff was happening frequently in you know the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, that planes were just running into each other. And like you talked about, if you're just flying around with a six-pack now with the number of aircraft that are in the air, you don't stand a chance. I mean, we just we just had one with all the systems that are in place. We had one a year ago that killed, you know, 70 people.

Yep. Yeah, it's it and it's scary, right? We can be stuck back in the day, right? We have to understand that technology is evolving even more than our airplane is evolving. And maybe, you know, and even DFA can't keep up, right? Like changing a regulation is so, so hard, right? Doesn't matter how advanced our airplane is, I didn't see any regulation being changed for the private pilot trek ride. Like it hasn't changed, nothing's changed, even though this airplane is like super high-tech, right? Um, yeah.

When it comes to the human factor standpoint, how does automation affect the human factor? You talked about having to learn more systems. Is there a world where it's making it almost too complicated for the human to understand? Or do you think that it's being designed now in a way that's really benefiting and being like a companion to the human pilot?

Well, the goal is to design it to the humans, to the limitation of the humans, right? Like we we can be super task saturated. You put too much automation, or the automation is not good at explaining what it's doing, it's just gonna be complicated. Like, I don't know, recently we've seen the uh what was it? The King Air that had a that the pilots were incapacitated and an auto landed. How amazing that is. Like in any other case, like 10 years ago, they would have all died. They would just all died. But right now, pilots incapacitated, the airplane sensed, was like telling ATC, hey, I'm coming in to land and essentially land in the airplane. But look how automation helped. It really helped save lives. Can it kill you? Of course it can also kill you. It can overload you. And even worse, if you're a pilot that doesn't understand the system, you don't know what mode you're in, you don't know how to change it, you don't know how to stop it, that can be very dangerous, right? That's when I think automation becomes really dangerous. Uh, when you don't really know how to use it. Yeah, that that that definitely is a little bit of a negative part about it. But good thing that we have pretty good training. I mean, not a lot of people have too big of a gap in training, right? Even the people who are flying six pack and going into a 737 that might be a little bit more high-tech, they there's enough training to get them to that point, at least.

Yeah. Yeah, the automation being dangerous part, you know, I don't want to cause any conflict considering your role and position, but uh the MCAS stuff, you know, we saw that with the accidents that came from the pilots just not understanding what the aircraft was trying to do.

Exactly. And the FA always says, well, if you don't understand what they're doing, you know, turn it off. But sometimes where do I turn this off, you know? Right? Like sometimes you don't know. And I mean, even that's one of the biggest, actually, that's probably one of the biggest um accidents where they realize like they need more human factors. They didn't train it, they didn't do it right, whatever it was, you know, whatever the law ruled it to be. But essentially they were saying, like, hey, you know, in all of your new design, you have to incorporate the human factors earlier. And I think that's where human factors really became even more popular, right? They wanted even more. Now they're like, I have a degree in human factors, but a lot of people, you know, they just do a course in human factors, and they're like, okay, I'm human factors too. Which, you know, any everything helps. At least have an idea of like how things can go wrong when it comes to the human. Even though you you think you build the best system, the best aircraft, and that one time one person is gonna make a drastic mistake. It may not even be one time, comes again and again, right?

So Yeah. And and it's one of those things where you just never know how somebody's gonna use something until you put it out in the world and let people do it. Um I'm working on an app right now, and we were supposed to release a couple weeks ago, and we just keep going back and being like, well, we should fix this and change that. But at the end of the day, we have the conversation of like, we don't know what people are gonna do on it until we let people get on it and do stuff.

Yeah, usability, right? The user UX research, that whole thing. You really have to let because us from the building side, we're so much into it that we're we think this is like everybody's gonna understand that. But then you put somebody who's not in this world of developing something. Take it from the outside, put them in, and you're like, it would be it'll be something you're like, oh my god, it'd be so obvious that how did you not see that this is gonna be a problem, right? But that's how you build the best product. That's why you know Apple is so good, right? Tesla is so good, because they really value the user, right? They bring the user and and they're not afraid to say, hey, no, this is not good. And a lot of times, even us inhuman factors, sometimes we really have to fight with everybody to tell them this is really not gonna go well. You know, because at the end of the day, in the ladder of engineering, the engineers in general, like we might not be at the top. So sometimes, you know, to get your voice heard, you really have to stand up and really fire for it and keep going back. Like, no, no, they're not gonna understand this. They're not the pilot, you know. And it's hard. So sometimes as a human factor, you really want to make sure you stand up because otherwise you don't want another big accident, right? That where you're gonna say, Well, I I I said it, but I wasn't that hard on what I said, you know. I didn't scream it out. So that's one thing about human factors. We really have to watch out. If you do go into human factors, don't think you're this, you know, it sounds crazy to say something because they didn't go through the training you did. They don't understand that this person won't realize to click that that button, you know, or hit that button, something like that. So yeah.

Going back to automated cockpits, um, an interesting, I guess, thought experiment that I've been having for a while is there's a lot of talk about going to single pilot cockpits on transport category aircraft. You know, I I think there's several companies that want to go that route. A lot of people say, you know, the airlines are as soon as they can do it, they will do it because they're saving one pilot's worth of salary on every flight they do on the cargo side as well. I think there's a big push for it there.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of pushback on it. And I understand it, and I, in a lot of ways, agree with it. But the the thought process I've been going through on that is we used to have three-person cockpits across the board. And ever since we went from a three-person cockpit to a two-person cockpit, augmented by automation and technology, aviation safety has gotten safer by orders of magnitude. Is there a world where going from a two-pilot cockpit to a one-pilot cockpit can be safer? Or do you think we're still just far enough removed from that the human factor element? Like maybe that single pilot that's the systems monitor has a heart attack or has an illness or is incapacitated in some way?

Yeah, I mean, that's that's really hard to say right now, especially for myself as a pilot. You know, do I really want the second pilot to be out of the fight? Like, no, as a pilot, I don't. Because that means like I'm gonna lose my job, you know, in the future. A lot of people won't be able to be pilots because instead of needing two, now you only need 50% of that. Which would be even worse for the pilot industry, right? Um, but it's complicated because, yeah, like you said, they can if there is one pilot and they do have a heart attack, who's flying that airplane? Right? So essentially you might have to build an airplane that it's really a drone or a no-pilot airplane, right? Or whatever it is, right? But it's hard. But going, I think going from three to two, it was fine because all you did is redistribute all the tasks, and you obviously we increased the automation so much that we really didn't need the third person.

Right?

So, again, another example where automation really is helping us. You don't need that third person, the third engineer in the back telling you what's going on because you have it all in front of you. Are we gonna have like single pilot airplanes? I don't know. But if we really think about it, when you start training, are you a dual pilot flight deck or a single pilot flight deck?

Yeah, I mean early training, I guess you're dual because you have the instructor, but once you're doing it's called a solo for a reason. You're up there by yourself.

If you can do a solo flight when you don't even you barely know how to fly, can you really go fly the airplane by yourself on big, you know, whatever Airbus Bonjour that might have, you know, all this automation that can help you? And who knows what it will have in the future? Who's gonna have like, you know, like I don't know, maybe like a Star Wars or something? They have like a human that is there that looks like an electric human or something. I don't know. Something crazy in the flight deck. But it's it will be a pretty big issue, especially when the pilot will be incapacitated. Like who's not only that, but is the is the is the world gonna trust with one pilot? You know, some is who's gonna get on the airplane thinking like I only got one pilot? What if that pilot is feeling sick? You know, how and how do we stop that? You know? And that's a pretty big human factor's question. Like, well, if there is one pilot and they're getting sick mid-flight, what are you gonna do then? You can't just call somebody from the back and be like, okay, come on, second pilot, you're sitting there hanging out, you know?

Yeah, like the joker, uh the private pilot. It's like, I'll be in 12B if you need me.

There's gonna be a lot of chances for that then. I'll take note.

And the chance for malicious action. It's you know, after the German wings thing, uh every every airline mandates that there's two people in the cockpit at all times. Like pilot has to go to the bathroom, flight attendant goes in the cockpit.

And you know, how do we go from that mindset to one? I don't know. It's it's gonna take a long time. It's not just building the aircraft, but also the world to stand behind you, right? Because you can build the aircraft, but if nobody wants to sit in that in that airplane, it's gonna be really hard. Who are you gonna sell it to, right?

Yeah. And that's why I think uh cargo is the first one that's gonna implement it. If it does I mean, maybe the pilot unions just never let it happen. Um, but it seems like an inevitability at some point, maybe it's you know, 30 years, maybe it's 50, maybe it's a hundred. But with the pace of technology, I can't imagine that it will just never happen.

Yeah, no, I mean it definitely will happen for sure. Like, I mean, we we s we have the flying taxis, right? There won't be anybody in them. Somebody's controlling them maybe from the ground or so, or they're completely autonomous, but it's it's getting there, right? Like we have WISC, we have you know so many other companies that are making these flying taxis. So there you go. If you're willing to sit in that one with no pilot, then I don't know that I am just yet.

Yeah. We'll know about those.

There's even this self-driving car. What's it? I forgot what's it called. Jack. There's a white Jaguar that like it's having a lot of.

Yeah, the white most?

Yeah. Oh my god. I mean, I I drove into it, it was the craziest thing. We actually went to human factors conference in Phoenix, Arizona, I think it was. And we we called that whatever that app is, and yeah, the car came and picked three of us up. There was no driver and dropped us up at the airport and they knew where to go. To me, driving is a little bit more dangerous, and a lot more people, right? The drivers are not, they don't have to go through a massive and massive amount of training to be a driver. So now people are walking around, which is if they figured it out in this setting, the transportation setting on the ground, I'm sure they can figure it out in the air where, you know, there isn't a random person that's walking on the street, everybody's pretty well trained.

Yeah.

So yeah.

You can only de-conflict so much on the ground. It's like you have two dimensions and you have to be on a set roadway somewhere. Everybody's gonna use the same road.

Yeah. I mean, I feel like it's it was even more complicated for them to develop a self-driving car. Almost way more complicated.

What are some examples, if you can think of any, of how a cockpit layout design is made around the human factor? Can can you think I mean we talked about the landing gear and flaps. Are there other ones that maybe more modern examples of things that have changed to improve how humans make decisions in the cockpit?

I mean, it's really overall everything, right? It's not just for, but yeah, I mean, putting the displays in the right position, right? Our PFD is always in one place, our MFD is in another place, while the systems are usually in the middle. There there are regulations that says, you know, kind of the flight deck needs to essentially look more or less like that. Or for example, even deeper than that, on the displays, right? There are certain colors that we can only use. And that's dictated by the regulation, right? I can't just put whatever colors, right? Something is a red, obviously is dangerous. Something's a yellow, it's caution, right? If it's green, it's it's good, essentially. Or it's working, something like that. So it's really when it comes to finding, you don't have that much leverage to move around, right? GA is something different. That's a different regulation. But I think more of the bigger airliners, the commercial ones, they kind of have to stick to to whatever DFA or whatever their regulation says it is. Like you can't just throw stuff in, right?

Do you think uh obviously it's there for safety, but do you think that limits innovation in some way?

Yeah, I mean it definitely does. Definitely does. There is so much innovation going on in aviation, but they can't put it there because the FA doesn't have the tools or even the appropriate regulation to approve it. You know, if it's something's brand new that it's new in this world, we just invented this, the FA really has to work hard to approve it, right? Like even that auto landing with the with the King Gear, right? I'm sure I'm sure that that's that's not new. That's been going on for probably 10 years they've been testing this. But it took 10 years maybe to to get to the point where it's approved for the flight deck. It took a lot of testing, a lot of probably FA people, a lot of different pilots sitting in death light and thinking, like, okay, this all makes sense, right? It makes sense that I need it on the screen to tell any living passenger that we're gonna go land here, that the airplane took over now. Right. So all these things, it's just very complicated, to be honest.

I w I listened to uh not really so much a speech, but kind of a seminar. I went to an AOPA show last year, and um, it was a safety seminar, and a quote that stuck with me from that was we're not finding new ways to crash. And it was, you know, they were talking about the accident rate in GA has been going down, great thing, but the types of accidents, the causes of the accidents remain largely the same. From a human factor standpoint, what do you think of that statement? And and how do we uh not find new ways to crash, but stop crashing in the old ways?

Yeah, I mean, a lot of complacency going on. I see that in everybody. I even see it as early as, you know, students. You know, they go from private pilots to instrument, they're already complacent on some stuff, right? They they take stuff for granted, they they don't do the proper checklist, they think they know it. They fight the same airplane, they think they know exactly what's wrong with it and how to mitigate it in flight. Those things can so easily be kind of shopping.

Right.

So for me, it's really going back to the again, going back to those basics, you know, pre-flight checklist, right? I see a lot of people people, students that I fly with are not necessarily my students, or they don't come from maybe a 141 or something like that. They I'm like, okay, let's do the pre-flight, pre-takeoff checklist, and they they pull out the checklist of the airplane to pre-take off. That's great. But then sometimes I feel like they forget that, or they've learned it at some point and then they got complacent. They don't do it anymore. They don't do the other part of the pre-takeoff checklist, which is like something that you have to have, you know, separately that's not on the airplane, which is like a how long is the runway? Do all the emergencies, you know, go through the emergencies before you take off, right? Uh engine failure on takeoff before, you know, you you roll or 500 feet. When are you gonna turn? Have that plan ready, right? I feel like a lot of people just get so complacent. They're like, I'm at this airport every day. I know exactly this runway is 4,955, right? By 150. But sometimes they don't say it. And if you don't fight with somebody else and you don't really say it out loud, right, that crew resource management might might come out to not a good thing, right? Like maybe they they might think that's 3,000. They think like, oh, if I have an engine fit, I'm not gonna make it, I'm gonna add full power when it's like, okay, I have an engine fit on the roll, I can definitely pull the power back and stop this airplane. And even more critical than a multi-engine that you don't understand that you can do that at this runway. But just simple stuff like that, right? Fuel management, how these are so common even now, right? Somebody not moving that switch or not even properly determining how much fuel they need, or they're like, oh, I have enough fuel. You know, I'm just like, yeah, you have enough fuel to exactly make it to that point, but then they're like, don't think that they need a little bit more fuel in case something happens, right? Basically don't be complacent, right? I feel like that's for GA sometimes really a killer.

Do you think the complacency is I guess the question I had was experienced pilots making seemingly basic mistakes, and do you boil that down to just the complacency as well?

I mean, yeah. I mean, like I fly at the same airplane, and I I get complacent. I have to stop myself, even though I know the checklist probably by heart. I still have to go and like instead of doing it by heart, like go back and and reference it, even though I saw it like a thousand times, like I know exactly, you know, what to do, when to do it, you know. But still, like it'll be that one time that you think you did everything right and then you didn't check it with a checklist, which is why it's there, right? It's really about do it and then look at it, right? Did I do the right thing? Like in in GA, we don't have that much um that privilege to have another pilot there checking for us. We have to do it ourselves. When we get lazy, sometimes we don't do it, or you're in a rush and don't know how to say, hey, you know, I'm gonna need a minute before I take off. I'm not ready to take off. A lot of those things also come from from training, right? Having good training, having good background, taking your time and training. I see a lot of people who do take their time and training that they're much better pilots than people who are like, I'm doing this in eight weeks. I'm doing this in six weeks. You know, I'm gonna become a pilot in six weeks. I'm like, oh my god, I in six weeks I bet it did my solo. Right? I don't think people in six weeks at middle are too far in. You know, and there's people in Parsi Monday that really are like, I'm doing this this week.

Yeah.

You can, but you're gonna be rushed. And as you know, being rushed in aviation is never a good thing.

Yeah.

There is a big I guess growth of those accelerator programs around COVID. Uh they've always been around, but COVID, especially uh 20, well, not actually the year of COVID, but you know, 21, 22 when the hiring started back. People were just trying to rush to fill positions, and so many of these schools were advertising, you know, zero to airlines in 12 months, 14 months, whatever the case might be.

Yeah.

Do you think that's just a huge d detriment to pilots in general in the in the industry? Do you think there's a place for those kind of programs?

Yeah, I mean, I I don't know. Are they really at the airline in 12 months or they're just got That's what they tell you. They can say that, right? Like they can even say that because somebody who's new, they're not gonna realize that I'm just gonna have the ratings, but not the hours for the airline.

Yeah.

Like maybe Cape Air in 14 months or you know, Key Lime or something, but not going to Delta in 14 months.

Yeah, but that's what they think airline. They didn't realize that it's cargo airlines in Alaska.

Yeah. Yeah.

Or something where, you know, if you don't have good training, like you go become a cargo airline in Alaska, you really need good training because you need to know all of the icing, what to do, uh, it should be really good at instrument, be really good at flying six-pack instrument, probably. And now you're there, like thrown into like really interesting weather and and positions and airplanes. Yeah. Can you do it in 12 months? I yes, of course. You can probably get all your ratings in 12 months. I don't know how, but you probably can. I have an experience that somebody who's never from medical school, and I can definitely learn stuff like way faster, probably than than than normally. Even I thought like I don't I don't know if I would ever do that.

Yeah. That's uh for me, it's the regulation side. Like I can learn the the physical, like what I have to physically do with the airplane and even a lot of the system stuff. But you I mean the far the far aim back here. Look how thick that thing is. Like, I can't even read that in 12 months, much less learn it all.

Yeah, and not only that, but does it get guarantee you you're gonna pass every chart ride in 12 months? Like, yeah, I don't I don't know about that. Because it's an oral and a flight. I don't know. I'm sure there's other stuff going on behind it where they're telling them, hey, take all the exams before you get there, which it might be a different thing, right? But to really go from zero, I never send the airplane, I never opened a book, to really think you're gonna be at the airlines in 12 months. I never heard of that. But I would really love to see an example, though. That would be really cool.

And I think the detriment to the students is you know, they don't tell you, like, yeah, we'll get you the ratings you need to get there, but you still gotta get to 1500 hours. Yeah, I mean, which like these days, you know, back in 2021, 2022, 1,500 hours of instruction was enough with almost no multi-time, you know, 20 hours or whatever the minimum is for multi-time. But now it's uh I just talked to a lady that does pilot resumes for a living, she's a recruiter, and she's saying, you know, a hundred hours of multi might get you an interview now. It's not 25 hours anymore. And exactly you've got to go find the experience somewhere. I mean, you're not getting in at 1,525. You're like 3,000 total, 4,000 total, and 100 or 200 hours of multi.

Yeah, exactly. Like it's definitely more than than just 1,500 hours. And yeah, again, I don't know how they see people who are instructing versus people who are time building. You know, it's really, I mean, everybody's flying, right? I I don't know how they see it, but it's it's definitely more rigorous now. It's definitely they want more. They I think they want even like life experience, not just like having one job in aviation, but having maybe different jobs in management and leading roles. I mean, it's it's it's really difficult. I go to all these conferences and I I hear them want more than 25 hours. But I also had the flight school that I'm that I worked at, like I've had people with from riddle with the restricted ATP who already had uh in an airline job job lined up and they didn't even have the 25 hours. They had to come to my school, build the extra seven hours with me, just fly around in the diamond and get to the 25 and they're running the airline the next month or two.

That's crazy.

So it's you know, it can go either way. It really probably depends on you know what school you go to, maybe even what airplanes you fly, who knows? You know, it really goes all the way.

Yeah, and it I had a lot of pushback in the comments from when that lady was on talking about what the airlines are looking for. And I think people's misinterpretation is like, you know, their expectations are too high. And maybe, but the reality of the fact is all these pilot mills push through tens of thousands of pilots in a short period of time that are all looking for jobs. So it's not like they're saying, you know, we're only gonna take these people, but they're saying this is what's competitive now. Like there's uh an ample supply of pilots that have this many hours that we're gonna hire. So if you want to be competitive, you gotta be at least equal to them.

Yeah, I mean it's it's uh I'm sure it's so hard for any pilot trying to get hired right now. Like, I don't know, even wanting a bachelor, you know, obviously you don't need a bachelor, but I think like now they I seen a question on one of the airline apps that said, like, do you have a bachelor? And it's like, well, if it's asking me this question, then it probably, you know, like putting me on the side if I do or if I don't, right? Yeah. So yeah, and you don't need a bachelor, right? You don't need to to have really anything more than a high school diploma to be a pilot. But again, like the times are changed from 2020 when everybody was getting hired, when they actually removed the need for a bachelor. Where now it's like they might not be saying it exactly, but now they want the person that has this and that and this experience, a chief pilot, an assistant chief pilot, and I don't know, an FA examiner or whatever that whole thing is out of 141 schools. It's so hard to tell.

Like, and the airlines are a business. There's only so many open positions. So once they're full, they're full.

Yeah, yeah. And and so many people, I know some people who are time building. Like I was time building and flying 150s and 152s, and I don't know, all kinds of different even a tomaha, I feel even a tomahawk at some point. But then I sometimes I wonder, like, oh, if I apply to the airline, they're gonna look at me weird if I am flying a tomahawk, you know, for like 20 hours.

Yeah.

Right? Like, I I don't I don't know what they want. Like I honestly couldn't even tell what they want. They want me to fly the nice diamond all day or the nice Cesta for Riddle that has all the cool systems, or are they okay with me also flying this not so sophisticated airplane? Right.

So who knows?

Going back to pilot errors, there's the book I I don't know if you've read called The Killing Zone, and it talks about kind of that period of time between I forget the exact hours, but you know, 300 to 800 hours or whatever pilots are are more likely to kill themselves in the airplane. I think there people had some issues with the research from that one, but uh, I think the broad strokes are still there of like you kind of have that Dunning Kruger effect of you know enough to be dangerous. What is it about that time period that's so dangerous for private pilots, especially?

Yeah, I mean I haven't really read that book. I just I know about it. I yeah, I think the hours were pretty, pretty low on it, like what below 800 or something like that. I mean, that's right at 200 hours, 250, that's the time that you have usually your ratings, right? You have your commercial pilot rating. Um, and if you're out of these 141 schools, you probably have all of them because you don't have the limit of the 250 hour. So, yeah, I mean, if you already have your CFI standard by at 250, then you kind of think, well, I'm an instructor. Look at it from that point of view, those kind of people, right? Well, I'm an instructor, I'm teaching somebody else, I must know a lot more. And you're dangerous. You've only been in the air for 20, 50 hours, you probably never experienced uh uh some failure, something like that. So now they're giving you all this command, authority in an aircraft. And you have to teach somebody else to do what you've done, but you just got your rating, right? To me, to me, that sounds dangerous. I think if you tell the normal customer in an airline, hey, you know, my instructor, he just got his instructor license yesterday, and he's like 23 and he's teaching me, but I'm like 40. Yeah, they're gonna be like, wait, you're telling me your instructor's like 23? They're already an instructor? They're teaching you? You know, things can go wrong, right? Like, and I don't know, and maybe it gives you all the confidence. If you're an instructor, it gives you all the confidence. But even if you're not, even if you're just a normal pilot, even a private pilot with all those, it could be even worse if you're a private pilot and you've flown so much beyond your 50 hours that you got your license. Again, you're building complacency, right? You're comfortable with things that might not be normal, and that becomes dangerous. All those things together become dangerous. You're like, I can do it, I fly all the time. We see so many of these pilots, like in I the school that I worked at, um, we were a flight club as well. So a lot of the people there, they got the license, but they were not going to the airlines. So now they're flying these routes, either instrument or VFR, but they don't have the level training like somebody who is going to the airline, right? Um, and I feel like I had to knowing that, I felt like I almost had to teach them even more, to be even more careful that when they go on this cross country, make sure you know what airport you're going to, what runway you're landing, where are the winds, how it can possibly change. First of all, and other things like maybe that I don't have to teach your uh airline pilot that much, which is like this FBO, is it open? Does it have the fuel you want? Right? Like, how are you gonna get out? How are you gonna get in the FBO? How are you gonna refuel? A lot of times, our rural students, they don't know how to refuel the airplane. But I I do have to go with somebody like that, a private pilot, to go teach them how to fuel at least one time, or even how to find the fuel tank, right? Something's not like obvious. So these things are extra things you have to teach. If you don't teach somebody well, they might end up at an airport and it might not be extremely dangerous where they're not able to refuel, especially if they're flying a diamond and not every everywhere that they have Jedi fuel. Right. So I had to like go back and really a complete different mindset as an instructor. Not only that, but they're bringing their family. They're bringing their family as a private pilot, and now they're at 200, 300, 400, 500 hours to find these maybe a lot of them find really nice airplanes, like the Cirruses, right? The nice diamonds. I need to make sure they understand the system. I need to make sure, like, hey, if you see the CCU going up, like really don't take off. Don't think that you reset it and now it's gone and now you're gonna take off and it's fine. Like maybe just don't go with your family, right? Like, and I feel like that's when danger comes in, right? And they get they get really good at you know, flying in bad we in bad weather. Because they're used to it. They're visiting their family in, I don't know, Tennessee and it was snowing. They they do a lot more stuff where a private pilot, right, just just goes, does it, or somebody private pilot should have been rated, right? Like those are even more dangerous people.

Yeah, that I I think another component of that too is like the ones that are pushing for the airlines. You're getting checked as you go. But if you're just going for your private or your instrument and you never do it beyond that, and you're at 500 hours, like first of all, it probably took you a long time to get there because you're not trying to time build. So maybe it took you, I don't know, five, six, seven, eight years to get to five hundred hours. So the last time you learned something was six years ago. And yeah, you're doing your BFR, but realistically, BFRs are kind of a joke. Uh every every flight review I've done is like go up, do like three maneuvers and come back and they sign you off.

Yeah, exactly.

So are you really learning anything extra or even remembering what you learned six years ago? Probably not.

No, and again, like you have to go back like when when I do those BFRs, like I really try to go back and just go back to basics. I'm like, okay, show me a pre-flight. What do you do? Like, not just like the physical aspect of doing that pre-flight of up the airplane, but like more so even before that. Like, how did you decide? And really, I really drilled that ADM. So I'm like, I really want to know how how did you decide that we're gonna go flying today, especially if the weather is is not that good. It's Florida, right? It's always thunderstorms, like you really have to make a decision, am I gonna go or not go? And you can easily be stuck somewhere, right? I always tell them, okay, be ready to be stuck and just tell your family or whatever it is that we're gonna stay here an extra day.

Yeah.

I've done that. I've slept in a pilot lounge before.

Yeah, I mean, and but there's people that don't do that, right? They're have to get their itis, especially these private pilots who or whatever they are, you know, who are at the low hours that are just flying for fun, not going to the airlines. I feel like a lot of them like make that mistake, but they're just like, you'll be fine, right?

When it comes to accidents, what do you think is kind of the split between there being a skill gap with the pilot, there being a knowledge gap with the pilot, or it just coming down to poor decision making? If you had to give it a percentage, what do you think is probably the most common?

I would say probably just poor decision making. Because, you know, everybody takes again the same track right. The skills are there. You might not use your skill, but you know what a slow fight is. You know what a stall is. I feel like some sometimes it's just like those decisions aren't just not there, or or yeah, to me that's what it is, really.

Yeah. Do you think there's something lacking in training on the decision-making aspect? I know you know you and I have gone to schools that offer the ADM as like that's a core piece of of the knowledge base, but maybe some 61 schools don't touch on that and they're just teaching you hard skills.

Yeah, it it could be, right? It it could be. Like, yeah, of course, like Riddle, Phoenix, and Epic and ATP, you know, obviously they drill that in us like every single stage. Like you have to talk about ADM. So obviously I have a lot more practice with it. And it's really about the practice, right? That's why maybe you really want to get, especially if you're gonna be like a you're gonna buy your own little airplane and fly around, you really want to just go to 141. Just get that experience, go do it, don't be cheap and go to 61. You can go. Again, I was at a 141 school and I teach at a 61. But when I'm teaching, I'm teaching them from a from a 141 standpoint, right? I have my syllabus, I'm teaching them exactly how I was taught at that school. So essentially they're getting a 141 experience. Uh and I do my own stage checks. I'm like, okay, I taught him up to this point. This is when I have my stage check at Phoenix. I'm gonna do just a little, they won't even maybe the student won't even know it's really a stage check. I'm just gonna come in and start asking questions, right? But that's how you really see, do I really know this? Do I not know this? But a stage check and not knowing something, it's a hard pill to swallow for a lot of pilots. Like you don't like not knowing, you know, you don't like to be asked a complicated question where now I really have, or scenario questions, right? Now I really have to think, am I really gonna go this weather? Can I go to my alternate airport? Can I do this? My family's pressuring me, you know. And these are all basic FAA scenarios, too. I don't know how many times I got the same scenario at these 141 schools, stay check after stay check after license after license, that I know there's no way I'm gonna let somebody pressure me. But if somebody at 61 feeling that way too, maybe, maybe not, depending on their structure, right? They're not gonna be like, oh no, there's no way I'm going just because my mom and dad really need to go on this flight today. I'm gonna have to go back and tell them we're not going today.

Yeah. And not every 61's built the same either. It's uh like you said, some have the 141 standards and they come from that background. They're just not a 141. And some are just the mom and pops, and maybe they have one aircraft, maybe they have two, and that's it, and they're just getting by.

Yeah. I mean, again, like I train out of 61, and I mean, I I love it. And for some students, that's the best thing that can happen to them. That they're it's just 141's so much more rigorous than any 61, and you can do all that in a 61 too. It just might maybe take you some more time because it's not that like structured. But at the same time, we all go to the same trek ride. No matter where you go from. Almost the same DPEs for everybody. So you're still getting the same knowledge, either what whatever way you're taking, which is the best part about aviation, that you don't have to go to a nice Ember Riddle school. You can go to mom and pop's and still be the pilot, which is to me like the best thing.

Do you think human factors is gonna be more or less relevant in 20 years?

Yeah, probably just more relevant. The more systems, the more automation you bring in, the more is that human going to have to probably manage it. Uh, think about it, know the systems, learn more. Again, you have to learn more, you have to think about the training materials too. Right? And a lot of human factors in the training materials as well. So you have to build a good training material that based on what this pilot is doing and learning, it can meet the objective of the lecture or whatever it is. So yeah, I really think it'll be more important as we go on. Especially if you want to remove a pilot. You remove the human, now this other human needs to have more tasks, or you have to introduce something that's gonna take over the tasks.

What's the biggest lesson you've learned in aviation?

For me, probably take your time. And I don't mean like take forever to do your private license, but give yourself time to study something to look at because your life really depends on it. Really, if you make that mistake, it's you who made that mistake. Like you and that maybe you didn't look at the regulations enough or you were not told to really be strict on that regulation, right? If it says like, okay, you can't land if it's you have a decision altitude of like 300 feet and it's like more than that or less than that, and you're trying to land, and it's against a regulation, know that you can't do it. Always have an alternate, right? But yeah, for me, it's just really kind of taking my time, learning what I have to learn, be a good pilot, be a confident pilot, a lot of practice. Also I realized one thing I learned aviation that your skills, if you don't use it, they might be gone. By your commercial pilot, you just got a license, you're so good at landings. And then two weeks later you come back and it's like, oh my god, do I not know how to flare today? Do I have I heard about flare? Did I not just pass this check, right? So it's just keeping up. That's one thing I learned that you really have to keep up with aviation, with being a pilot, with landing, you have to go fly, right? It's so easy. Even ATC skills. Like I know I used to be so good at ATC, and now because I'm instructed, I don't talk too much. Even I'm mumbling sometimes. I'm like, oh my god, why am I mumbling, you know?

I remember I was telling my friend she was as she's learning, she's calling me every day with like all the frustration she has. And she's like, I messed up this ATC call. I'm like, it's okay. One time I was flying and I was telling the airport their position relative to me instead of my position relative to them. Like, yeah, 10 miles to the southeast. And they're like, wait, you're where are you? And I'm like, no, I'm like 10 miles to the southeast. And then I'm like, oh no, wait, you're 10 miles to the southeast of me. Whoops.

Exactly, yeah.

Uh what opportunities are there for human factors as a career? And then what advice would you give to somebody that wants to go down that pathway?

Yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunities. Again, like it's it's pretty new, pretty new in the job setting, in the sense that like now they're making more jobs because of a lot of these accidents. It was popular before. So if you watch like YouTube and these accidents, investigations, you'll see us say human factors from NTSV or FAA or whatever. But it wasn't as popular as it is now. I think like it's not as accessible of a degree as it is now. I feel like now you can definitely do it. And you know, if you like psychology and you like human behavior and how the pilot thinks and how we build things that are are good for the pilot within the limitations of that pilot, of that human, then that's definitely something that that that that's for you.

Hey, thanks for listening. If you want to hear more from aviation professionals just like Vanessa, you can subscribe to the AirPod on YouTube, Apple, or Spotify. I will see you right back here on the AirPod.