I'm afraid the case for GIA being the source of the poor airmanship which caused these accidents fails to take the chain of causation to it's ultimate genesis. The fact that GIA grads have been involved in so many high profile incidents as of late is a compelling coincidence but it ignores the true problems to be found in training throughout aviation today.
I recieved my training through ERAU in the early '90s. At that point in time my instructors had literally thousands of hours of dual given. Basic airmanship (flying the airplane) was the overarching focus of all of the training I recieved. By basic airmanship I mean I was expected to intimately understand how to "fly the wing." The aviate, navigate, communicate rule was strictly applied, discipline was constantly reinforced and we all enjoyed the benefit of having instuctors who were truly teachers and skilled in their art. By the time I finished my CFII (a real bastard of a course then) I thought they would hire me as an instructor. Their answer? Go get some more time... You aren't experienced enough. None of this was unique to Riddle at this point in history. There were many part 141 schools as equally proud of their product and jealous of maintaining their quality edge.
So, it was off to Joe Shmoe's FBO I went. Eventually I returned to Riddle as a CFI. By now, the mid 90's hiring boom began and for a while things remained ok. But as a few years went by things began to change. Good people were leaving at an ever accelerating rate for the airlines, many of them to PFT "training bond" schemes (Comair and ACA at the time). Average instuctor experience began to plummet. Pressure began to build on the CFI's from both the flight department and the students to do it faster and cheaper. The Training Course Outline was rewritten again and again to accomodate lower completion times and costs to remain competitive with other 141 flight schools. Entrance requirements also suffered, and it became the instructors duty to not only teach but to "push through" less motivated and talented students. There was talk of replacing actual aircraft time with simulator time even at the primary level in order to control rising costs. Good instructors fought these changes tooth and nail, but to no avail. Less and less time was being devoted to the basics of truly flying an airplane. By the time I left in the late '90s (never did have the money to pay for a job or endure a training bond) I was frustrated and concerned about what had happened to the quality of flight instruction at the school.
Again, this was not unique to ERAU. My feelings were echoed by friends and collegues across the training spectrum.
Flash forward about 6 years. I had finally made my way to the left seat of a regional turboprop after two airlines and flying thousands of hours as an FO, a CFI and a student. It was still a big step... Anyone who has upgraded knows what I mean. Now I had the unfortunate opportunity to bear witness to the result of the changes I had witnessed while still a CFI. While many of my FO's were talented, motivated and dedicated to learning their craft, there were also many who lacked a true understanding about how an airplane really flies. I found myself not only learning how to be a captain, but also teaching what I considered to be fundimental aircraft handling and knowledge with a load of paying passengers in the back. Over time the average experience of the FO's I worked with decreased and this "teaching" environment became more of the rule rather than the exception.
Again, this wasn't a unique situation. My frustrations were again echoed by many others in the same boat.
Do I fault the FO's I have flown with for this situation? Absolutely not. Had I been able to enjoy the fast track to the airlines they benefited from I would have taken advantage of it. It would be the apex of hyprocracy to say that I wouldn't have. Besides, being a good pilot is not a function of the number of hours in the logbook... It is the quality of the experience along the way which matters most. Look at the military and European airlines. They have low time pilots and yet those pilot have superior knowledge which compensates somewhat for what they lack in actual experience.
The problem is not GIA. It isn't ERAU. It isn't any one institution. The problem is that somewhere along the line we stopped training PILOTS. We instead move people through abbreviated pipelines, checking boxes and hoping against all hope that technology and luck will save them when the proverbial feces hits the rotating air movement device. Safety won't improve until we get back to basics and adhere to the time honored and blood proven building blocks of creating airmen and airwomen, not systems managers engaging in OJT.
The captain of 3407 is undeniably at fault for the death of his passengers. It was his sacred duty to care for and protect them and on that night his skills were found wanting. But... He was the product of a system. In my mind, the system that created him is equally culpable in the deaths of those people. If it hadn't had been this crew it would have been another. In every sense of the term, this was an
"accident waiting to happen" because of the training philosophy we have collectively embraced.
