REENO Aviation Flying Club

It is almost spring! The sun will blast through the clouds, and will heat up the air. The winter fog will be lifting, and we will have the joys of lifting air and cumulonimbus reemerge in our airspace. Can’t wait for warmer weather!

With that prospect, our flying season will commence also. The winter saw some activity, but most aviators were hibernating like a bunch of black bears. This is a good time to discuss currency and proficiency.

I probably don’t have to help with the definitions of the words currency and proficiency to your pilot lot. People do mistake one for the other though on a profound level. Let me give you a personal example: I fly quite a bit, and feel that I stay reasonably proficient in several aircraft. I aim to fly about 10-15 hrs a month at least. I keep an eye on my IFR currency, and do plenty of approaches and holds. Yet, I realized that I was due for my Flight Review. Never had one done, as I was always working on some kind of rating or check ride. Those count as reviews. I simply did not have that on my radar screen. So even while I am fairly proficient, I was at risk of not being current. The difference is that one is skill based, the other is regulatory. I went up with an instructor, flew a bunch of hours in an airplane, did some ground school and completed a flight review. I didn’t aim for the minimums of 1 hr ground and 1 hr flight. In fact, i tried to get as much out of it as possible, and added the Cirrus as a plane that I am now (currently) proficient to fly as well.

Obviously, the regulatory currency rules are set to provide an absolute minimum proficiency check. So if you don’t fly as much, the FAA still requires you to check these regulatory boxes so they can at least wash their hands of your lack of proficiency, and for you to keep your certification. You could legally fly one time every two years, do a flight review, and get signed off. You would be compliant with FAR 61.56 and could take an airplane to the skies at any point during these two years. The “law of recency” is not a real regulatory law of course, but it is the law that dictates that this is a fool’s errand.

Some really interesting and important data exists related to the retention of newly acquired flying skills. I am regurgitating information from AOPA, not making this up. In the early 1980’s Embry-Riddle aeronautical university measured skill retention levels of their newly certificated pilots and paired that with their own assessment of their level of proficiency. A significant loss of skill in judgement and decision making ability, and decay of flying skills within a short period of time was noted. This was particularly measurable in critical flight phases such as take off / landing operations, stall recognition and recovery, and emergency procedures. These areas coincide with our GA accident record, where 70% of accidents occur during take off and landing, often including stalls and spins, loss of control, and take off emergencies. What is most interesting about this data, is that the pilot’s ability to predict and evaluate skill retention is negligible. In other words, pilots are completely inaccurate in predicting their own proficiency, particularly for infrequently performed maneuvers and procedures. This is the perfect cocktail for disaster: you think you can do it, but you can’t.

Let’s add to this mix that the regulations stipulate that you have to have 3 take offs and landings in an airplane of the same category as the sole manipulator of the flight controls in the last 90 days to meet the FAR 61.57 requirement to carry passengers. So you can legally take up your family by doing a flight review, wait 23 months, go up with the plane before blasting to the beach, take off and land three times, then load up the fam and fly to the beach. That is, of course, if the tires are still on the plane after those three landings. Legally nothing anyone can do about that. I will still curse you for eternity if you kill your family this way.

For this reason the flying club has SOP’s that I would like to emphasize, and a paying structure that is intended to support currency, recency and proficiency as well. We stipulate that based on the SOPs you are not supposed to take the plane and fly it as PIC, if you are not 90 day current in type. This is not regulatory, so the Po-Po won’t arrest you, but the SOPs are filed with the insurance company. If you bend metal, they may point out that you were breaking the agreed upon rules, and not pay out your liability portion. You may get an awfully large bill from the insurance company. Outside of 90 days, you are to have a proficiency check with a club designated flight instructor. We have two such individuals, Mike and me. The SOPs are thus tighter than the regulatory currency minimums, and aid in your keeping up proficiency. Including an hour of flight with the monthly dues is designed for this reason as well. You are ‘forced’ to pay a non-refundable hour of flight to provide a financial encouragement to fly off those hours and get in the air.

So how many hours do pilots fly? How do you measure proficiency? Do hours flown match proficiency? These are solid questions to try and dissect and answer. There is not a perfectly reliable statistic to know how many hours pilots fly. Hours flown is not reported into a national database. Insurance companies may track your flight hours, but that data is not widely available. If we try to parse out recreational flying from the General Aviation pool, it becomes even more complex. The average number of hours I could find from various internet accessible sources lies between 35 and 55 hrs / year for general aviation. This includes all part 91 flying, so also corporate jets etc. Flight duties are regulated by the FAA, so we can also safely state that nobody flies more than 1000 hrs / year. That is the statutory maximum. I have some insight into several years of pilot experience forms and reporting to insurance, and the average may be even lower than the average 35 hrs / year for our type of General Aviation flying. With that kind of average, there are people that fly more, and people that fly less. This is ok. Just recognize that the number of hours most people fly is way lower than they wish they would fly.

Is the number of hours flown reflective of proficiency? Several airliners do not think so. They don’t measure hours, but rather cycles or landings. That makes sense. Hanging 8 hrs over the ocean, and landing 3 times in a month is not the same as flying a busy schedule with 5 landings per day during a 5 day tour flying short 45 minute hops. Similarly, I think that a GA pilot who flies once a month for 4 hrs and lands straight in a destination, then returns the next day and lands once is as proficient as a pilot who takes out the plane 8 hours a month and flies procedures, does maneuvers, practices pattern work and reviews emergency procedures. There are nuances here, as the proficiency of flying in the NAS and traversing weather systems on long cross country flights is surely missing in the latter case. There are many flight instructors who literally would be lost in the NAS, and have no clue about weather and associated risks. Hours don’t exactly measure proficiency, but it is the one measure everyone can relate to as they log flights in their log book. Think of proficiency as something a bit broader than just measuring hours.

So how do we measure proficiency? I stated above that it has been studies and demonstrated that pilots themselves are the worst at estimating proficiency. Nobody is immune to those fallacies. I state often in my other line of work that there is no arguing with statistics, but that statistics are not predictions of outcome for the individual. That means that there will be variation in proficiency, and some may retain things better than others. We just can’t rely on our own judgement to make those distinctions. We will need to fly with another person to know, and that person needs to be honest about it. As a pilot, you need to be open to this review of ones skill also. People will come up to me, and request a flight review. They start the stopwatch, measure an hour of ground, then go up in the air and aim for exactly another hour. They feel that they get ‘duped’ if it takes longer. I read online this entire debate on the Beechtalk forum where people were encouraging each other not to be ‘taken advantage of’ by ‘money hungry’ instructors. No wonder people fall out of the sky. This rage against the regulation attitude is not helpful. Airline pilots don’t complain if they have to be reviewed every 6-9 months, do they? It is all part of their professional attitude towards safety and proficiency. Part of their review is the mechanic of going through various procedures they normally will never encounter. Engine out, swan in right engine, fires, overflowing potties, doors falling out of the side of planes, weather issues, plane on the runway when breaking out at 200 ft in the snow, stuff like that. The training helps tremendously. There is also the review part to the training, a checker pilot that will measure their performance and gives feedback. It is the latter as well as the former that creates the professional feedback loop to understand and maintain proficiency.

Where does that leave you? I think flying can be safe and fun. I think everyone should have a training and proficiency plan. I am happy to set things up with you. It should be something just like your personal weather minimums for taking flight. I have shared in the past with several of you that my personal minimum is 8 hrs per month. I feel I need to fly at least 8 hrs / month, and if I don’t have 8 hrs in a month, I seek out a flight with an instructor. Is that necessarily an instruction flight? No. I just want someone else to see my flying, and have an opportunity to comment on my proficiency. Little comments like ‘a little more rudder to stay on the centerline’, or ‘pull back the power to 780’ are reminders and support my proficiency even without formal training. I also seek out formal training, IPCs and currency flights. The combination has served me well, but I am by far not as good a pilot as I want to be.

There is more to this, I think. I believe that it is important to stay embedded in aviation not just with flying skills. I listen to various sources while driving my car. Two excellent podcasts that I recommend are Opposing Bases and Aviation News talk. Those guys don’t just focus on accidents, but rather approach aviation broadly and deeply. By listening to their weekly pod casts you get a constant ground school refresher, and hear other people’s perspective on aviation. Recall that the Embry Riddle data also pertained to aeronautical decision making! These podcasts will make you think longer, harder and deeper about your decisions. It is impressive to hear a “flight instructor of the year” state that he never flies after 11 pm, for instance. He is a lot more proficient than I am… As a bonus, the OB podcasts is recorded in Greensboro NC by two guys that you probably have talked to on the radio when talking to GSO ATC! Super relevant!

Lastly, I am putting in a plug for the FAAST Wings program. There are amazing lectures, slide shows, meetings, videos and training programs embedded in this FAA program. I don’t get many requests for Wings sign offs, so that must mean that you are not using this program. You should! Go on the website, create a login if you don’t have one already, and work your way through the somewhat cumbersome interface. Work towards mastery skills. See it as a way to fly or stay involved with flying when the weather sucks, or the plane is down.

Last parting words, as this is getting very long: Remember or read up on the night flying currency rules, the IFR currency rules. Stay current and proficient, two separate but intertwined goals. Fly more, and fly more intentionally. You are by far not as good as you think you are, and you are by far not as proficient as you think you are. A great pilot is not a great pilot because of his or her skills, but is a pilot who realizes they can always be better and continually searches for improvement. Listen to your peers. Make very conservative decisions, and don’t over estimate your abilities. Train, and train often. And lastly, set a personal minimum and stick to it. Skills decay fast. Keep flying safe and fun by staying very proficient.

Cheers,

David