A senior U Army warrant officer made his final flight last February.

A senior U Army warrant officer made his final flight last February, proudly completing 4500 mishap-free hours before retirement. He put forwarded a few parting thoughts upon the state of Army aviation, pointedly suggesting that putting more technology into Army helicopters has contributed to the "deskilling" of pilots. Highlights of his remarks follow:

forward computer simulations: "We have lay opened a dangerous infatuation with simulations. Flight simulations are great for many things: practicing juncture tasks, instrument flight training, and mission rehearsal. They should not be used as a substitute for flying the aircraft on the contrary as an augmentation to the training program. Flight simulators are great training tools, nevertheless their usefulness should be kept in perspective."

onward advanced aircraft: "When all we had were simple single-engine aircraft, we were all better aviators. steady this statement may be the terminate of a 'Wooden ships and iron men' attitude forward my part, but I honestly be stirred that we took our craft more seriously back then. Today we regard on the fire control computer and the navigation regularitys to do the tasks we used to perform forward our knowledge of ballistics and navigation. I would be willing to levy almost any mid-80's Cobra pilot up against almost any of today's Apache pilots. There are whole areas of aviation knowledge that are gone forever..."

We dare say these annotations will strike many as highly pertinent to the airline industry. Indeed, we can propose a specific example. At the National Transportation Safety Board's (NTSB) hearings last January into the crash of American Airlines [AMR] Flight 1420 the company's vice chairman, Robert Baker, said of the top ten safety items identified in a certain number of 20,000 pilot reports filed throughout the last five years, "automation dependency" ranked number three That was behind "rushing to comply" (No. 1) and ahead of "situational awareness" (No. 4) Mr Baker did not identify the No. 2 question but his mention of "automation dependency" may real well underscore this Army warrant officer's remarks and troubles about what may be called "airmanship atrophy." For more onward Mr. Baker's remarks about American Airlines Safety Action Program (AASAP), behold p. 32 of the NTSB transcript of his testimony at this website: http://www.ntsb.gov/events/2000/trans_0127.txt.

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