Car insurance has nothing to do with mental illness. But everything to do with age versus risk.

 

This is not just about mental illness. As said before, time weeds out the weak pilots, the reckless pilots, and the disturbed pilots. My position is that time had been a means to weed out the unfit. Mentally ill pilots are but just one of the risks that time can weed out. If you are going to create a system to fill airliner cockpits that no longer uses time as a gatekeeper, then you need to have another means to keep out the unfit, be they weak, reckless or disturbed. Lufthansa's 4 days of tests, and 250 hours of flight training apparently is not adequate for that.

 

In the US, any medical or psychiatric issue needs to be reported at the medical. There are specific yes/no questions on the form. Mental disorders of any sort, depression, anxiety, suicide attempt, etc. are asked about on the form. I believe that depression medications are allowed by the FAA here. So it is not career ending to have an issue as long as one is being treated and it is reported.

 

I would argue that continuous screening and training is what weeds out the weak pilots, the reckless pilots, and the disturbed pilots.

More like "corrects deficiencies" rather than "weeds out" actually. 

 

Also, I would say this is totally about mental illness, since this particular accident apparently was all about that, and had nothing to do with Lubitz flying skills and / or experience

 

Again, that's not to say a certain level of experience is not advisable

I would argue that continuous screening and training is what weeds out the weak pilots, the reckless pilots, and the disturbed pilots.

More like "corrects deficiencies" rather than "weeds out" actually.

 

Also, I would say this is totally about mental illness, since this particular accident apparently was all about that, and had nothing to do with Lubitz flying skills and / or experience

 

Again, that's not to say a certain level of experience is not advisable

In an ideal world, your solution is ideal. But it won't in this real world and is holds some rather naive assumptions. I will leave it at that.

 

If you want to believe that the issue with this ab initio pilot is only and only about mental illness, then I believe you are just putting blinders around your eyes to keep yourself from seeing a bigger picture.

In an ideal world, your solution is ideal. But it won't in this real world and is holds some rather naive assumptions. I will leave it at that.

 

If you want to believe that the issue with this ab initio pilot is only and only about mental illness, then I believe you are just putting blinders around your eyes to keep yourself from seeing a bigger picture.

 

What is it then? Why do you keep ignoring the fact that 40 plus people are more likely to suffer from depression? And the fact that rogue pilots in the past were all experienced and relatively old, mental or not?

What is it then? Why do you keep ignoring the fact that 40 plus people are more likely to suffer from depression? And the fact that rogue pilots in the past were all experienced and relatively old, mental or not?

 

I did a bit of 'Tweaking' with my AVSIM settings and now I find my AVSIM experience much more enjoyable 

 

 

Best tweak ever 

Well, to say that all the rogue pilots in the past have been experienced is a like saying men are more likely to crash a plane than women are. If you look at the history of aviation, probably 99.9% of all crashes were at the hands of male pilots. Of course, that statement doesn't consider the fact that almost all planes are flown by males. Just as almost all airline pilots in the past were experienced pilots. Of course if a suicide occurs, it would have to be a middle aged experienced pilot. That is all that existed.

 

Take the relatively short and recent existence of ab initio airline programs and we already have seen two major crashes at the hands of ab initios, and I think that it just might mean something.

 

What he had was more than just the depression that the 40+ mid-life crisis people get. To do what he did requires you to have other, less common afflictions such as a bipolar disorder. This guy had much more going on than just your average depression. And if he had to wait a few more years before bring responsible for 150 people, then probably something would have happened that would have kept him from ever touching an airliner cockpit.

Best tweak ever 

Your loss. Kevin is one of few ATPs on this forum, his contribution actually carries certain weight, technical competence, can't say too much about multitude of various 'wannabees'.

I completely agree, Michal. I have never been interested in using the "Ignore" option on forums.

Well, to say that all the rogue pilots in the past have been experienced is a like saying men are more likely to crash a plane than women are. If you look at the history of aviation, probably 99.9% of all crashes were at the hands of male pilots. Of course, that statement doesn't consider the fact that almost all planes are flown by males. Just as almost all airline pilots in the past were experienced pilots. Of course if a suicide occurs, it would have to be a middle aged experienced pilot. That is all that existed.

 

Take the relatively short and recent existence of ab initio airline programs and we already have seen two major crashes at the hands of ab initios, and I think that it just might mean something.

 

What he had was more than just the depression that the 40+ mid-life crisis people get. To do what he did requires you to have other, less common afflictions such as a bipolar disorder. This guy had much more going on than just your average depression. And if he had to wait a few more years before bring responsible for 150 people, then probably something would have happened that would have kept him from ever touching an airliner cockpit.

 

Agree with what you're saying in the final para.

 

Apologies if this has already been covered but it seems that mental health for a pilot presents a unique (perhaps?) set of problems. Are there any other careers (well paid ones at that) where putting your hand up to admit that you're struggling puts your whole career and livelihood at risk? This must weigh down pretty hard on the shoulders of the newly qualified if they feel they're not coping well. What happens to the £80k+ they still owe for their training and ratings etc? Is there any insurance to cover that? If not then that kind of thing could be a contributing factor. Who knows though, as I said, it's a unique set of problems, and I have no idea what the answer is.

They will be  a few careers  that would  put your career at risk one would  be  being  a police officer

Would it really, though? The Police (in the UK at least) I think have a pretty good record of dealing with stress/depression and I guess unless you're something like a firearms officer you don't have that much risk of losing your career from it. I would think that in pretty much all cases you'd just be moved to a desk job. I don't think a pilot has that option open to them. Also (again, in the UK), pilots get paid a lot more than police officers so it is more likely that they will have a higher standard of living to service; by that I mean a larger mortgage, children possibly at private school etc.

I believe that a purported shortage of qualified pilots in Europe as well as in many other nations around the world has led to the relaxation of both training disciplines (flying & sim hours) and medical guidelines.

 

This is due, in large part, to the low starting salaries, and, of course, the high cost of obtaining a pilots license.  I think airlines may have to seriously address these two issues very soon... 

Agree with what you're saying in the final para.

 

Apologies if this has already been covered but it seems that mental health for a pilot presents a unique (perhaps?) set of problems. Are there any other careers (well paid ones at that) where putting your hand up to admit that you're struggling puts your whole career and livelihood at risk? This must weigh down pretty hard on the shoulders of the newly qualified if they feel they're not coping well. What happens to the £80k+ they still owe for their training and ratings etc? Is there any insurance to cover that? If not then that kind of thing could be a contributing factor. Who knows though, as I said, it's a unique set of problems, and I have no idea what the answer is.

At least in the US, putting your hands up as a pilot and saying that you are struggling is not something that puts your entire livelihood at risk. We have loss of license insurance and long term disability. Anything that happens to cause you to lose your medical is covered by insurance. My former airline, Expressjet, has one of the best insurance coverages. If you medical out, you are paid 60% of your pay, tax free, until retirement age. Essentially, that would be the same as your regular take home after tax withholdings. Instead of saying 'I'm sorry' to colleagues who lose their mefical, we say 'congratulations'. Legitimately losing your medical was your ticket to early retirement. Not even the major I'm at has as good a plan. But there are plans, company sponsored, standard with employment, and optional plus ups available, so it is not so grave that suicide is your only option.

 

Obviously, this costs the industry money. And it is also very hard to fire people after they are hired. Especially if they haven't actually done anything too crazy or reckless. We have unions that protect jobs and fight against any increase in scrutiny against us. So assuming that once an unfit person gets through the door, it is a simple matter to remove them from the cockpit once it is suspected that they might do something crazy is very naive. The only sensible way to keep costs down and the public safe is to keep the weak, reckless, and disturbed out of the cockpit to begin with. The financial costs wasted to train up a new hire and then fire him is argument enough to be very careful in who you hire.

The financial costs wasted to train up a new hire and then fire him is argument enough to be very careful in who you hire.

 

Is the pay-for-your-own-training/rating culture as prevalent over in the US? I understand that you have professional cover, which presumably we have in Europe as well but I'm wondering how much of your training debt that would cover if you were declared medically unfit in those first years of flying when you still had the debt to pay back?

I don't know what you would do with the debt. I imagine one would deal with it as you would any debt. Use the cash money from the disability to pay it, get a job bartending, maybe even a strategic bankruptcy? Either way, I don't think the Luftansa Academy kids have any training debt since their training is paid for by Lufthansa.

Well yes, perhaps you or I would, but we're looking at it from an unclouded perspective. For someone at the end of their tether it might be a contributing factor.

 

You'd be surprised, I think there are very few (perhaps even none) of the European carriers that will fully fund (and I mean fully) a training programme these days. BA? Think again - I looked into their Future Pilot Programme a few years back and though it wasn't as blatant as other low cost carrier training self funding, it was still a case of you either needing to fund the training yourself (the £80k+) or take a loan with a guarantor and an agreement to pay it back via salary over the first X number of years of employment. That said, Lufthansa is the more likely of the airlines to be funding their trainees.