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Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

Wow. Considering most airlines are operating at >20% of normal volume it’s amazing we’d see a crash right now.

I know two pilots in their 50s (husband and wife, who met through their work). Because of covid, they're back in flight simulators. For them, it's very very weird to be in a simulator unless it's for extreme scenarios like zero visibility, treacherous wind, engine failure etc. He's had a handful of flights in the last few months so his licence is ok, but she's got to fly as co-pilot for a while because she hasn't flown for 3 months. There's a critical mass issue though... If an airline doesn't have enough pilots who can fly, it takes a while for the rest to get the co-pilot fly time. So now she's in the simulator, and the instruction is simply "Take off from London, touch down in Dublin".

I thought it was like riding a bicycle - you don't forget. While that's true to an extent, I was told that you do "lose your edge" without constant practice. (I'm sure every developer knows what is like to go back to a language after a year of not using it).

I'm not suggesting that it's a factor here, just wanted to give a different angle to the low flight volume.

It is not like riding a bike at all. A few weeks of not flying, and I notice my landings getting sloppier and less smooth.

Particularly IFR.

Indeed, a leading cause of fatalities in general aviation is CFIT (controlled flight into terrain) often induced by a on-again-off-again pilot with very distanced hours. They fool themselves into thinking they are just as good as the pilot they used to be months ago, and as a result miss obvious warning signs and fail to adhere to procedure causing a disaster.

I don't feel like I'm as good of a driver after only driving a few miles per week. I can do it, but I definitely feel a little out of practice.

This reminds me of Blancolirio speaking of “perishable skills” in a recent video: https://youtu.be/u19R0zfusiQ&t=14m30s

That was in regard to mid-air refueling but I’m sure it extends to other skills as well.

Operating at such a low volume introduces other problems similiar like surgeons doing too few procedures and therefore not gaining enough routine

A reason why I have been avoiding restaurant foods here in India due to covid - it's not because of covid per se, but due to possible other cuts being done due to lower volumes and I just can't rely on quality of food.

Yeah. I am a SAR medic and due to rolling lockdowns, was only able to get to sea for training about 10% of the norm last year (4 times vs ~40 in 2019). The same is true for clinical placements (0 vs 4), classroom training (2 vs ~50), etc.

They're all perishable skills and it's left me rusty on everything from boat handling to nav to CPR (BLS is an extremely perishable skill - used to do BLS refreshers every two weeks). On call outs, I can the difference in all the crew - even those on the job for decades. Things just aren't as smooth.

I can't wait to get vaccinated and back into training. Otherwise, I worry we're going to start making mistakes.

What is BLS?

BLS = Basic Life Support

https://cpr.heart.org/en/cpr-courses-and-kits/healthcare-pro...

From the linked page:

What does this course teach?

High-quality CPR for adults, children, and infants

The AHA Chain of Survival, specifically the BLS components

Important early use of an AED [Automated External Defibrillator]

Effective ventilations using a barrier device

Importance of teams in multirescuer resuscitation and performance as an effective team member during multirescuer CPR

Relief of foreign-body airway obstruction (choking) for adults and infants

Sorry - Basic Life Support. It's the certification all medical practitioners must keep as a prerequisite for working with patients, and covers CPR, advanced airway management, defibrillation, and the chain of survival. Most countries issue two-year certifications, but every frontline service I ever worked with have monthly or fortnightly refresher training.

Agreed. This is an under-appreciated impact of widespread, long-term lockdowns. It disrupts basically everything in both obvious and non-obvious ways ranging from subtle to severe.

I've been reading some concerning analyses by supply chain experts documenting the increasing stresses and failures in supply chains throughout the economy. Basically, you can't change this much, this fast, across so many interlinked systems and not cause significant unexpected failures.

Is this just an assumption? It's an interesting thought, I'm curious if there's some sort of data to back it up.

There is a variety of anticipated risks linked to the reduced activity during the pandemic and its effects on air travel as a whole. However, this kind of oversight might not be equally managed everywhere in the world

https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/review_of...

I personally don't know about the not enough routine/repetition step, but the FAA did have a recommendation for pilots to reduce the use of autopilots due to similar reasoning.

https://nbaa.org/aircraft-operations/safety/faa-recommends-p...

That is from 2013 (not saying it’s invalid advice, just that it’s not related to current flying schedules).

Children of the Magenta Line is a great presentation on automation dependence and quite funny at moments. https://youtu.be/5ESJH1NLMLs

(The GPS flight plan track is standardized to be drawn in magenta.)

+1 for Children of the Magenta Line. Seminal work.

Also their equipment sitting idle

Interestingly even though there have been a significant decrease in the number of flights and passengers flying, the number of absolute fatalities was higher in 2020 than 2019: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-55515525

As the article says, 176 out of the 299 fatalities in 2020 were due to the "shooting down of a Ukraine International Airlines flight by Iranian armed forces last January". So that's the only reason

2020 did have fewer accidents than 2019 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...), with a major accident early January. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_International_Airlines...

And most accidents happened before June, which was still relatively early on in the pandemic.

2020 was so wild I forgot Iran shot down a Ukrainian airliner.

Wouldn't surprise me if to save some money airlines become more lenient in maintenance. Especially in less regulated airspaces.

Not saying this is the reason of the crash, but just it wouldn't surprise me if that was the case.

Beancounters have always been complaining about beans, but for the first time in aviation history (well, maybe a couple weeks around 9/11) operations is not driving maintenance insane with demands to keep em in the air.

There is a valid counter argument that planes are built to fly and nothing seems to attract problems like hanger queens that just sit there. Seals dry out, birds nest, corrosion is arguably worse on the ground that on flying planes...

Its interesting that the linked airline has no documented google-able history of maintenance related problems, but their pilots have repeatedly historically done some real cowboy stuff like land at the wrong airport and several episodes of "the weather isn't really that bad" turning out to be vastly optimistic. I would guess past performance predicting future performance would indicate it is much more likely to be an operations failure rather than maint...

Do you mean '<'?

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