How do you fix the mental health issue with pilots? My understanding is that as soon as you self report you’ve basically jeopardised your career and you’re grounded for a minimum of 6 months while you wait for FAA physicians.
Fine, step one, work on why you'd resent that.
Because it feels like being punished for the actions of other people to have my finite time in this universe forced into therapy if I'm a pilot who doesn't need it. Three incidents in the past four decades against 110,000 pilots working daily and not crashing planes because they've had a mental breakdown should not justify the pilot having to give up a whole day a year to talk about their feelings.
This is a real challenge for the FAA; they do not like having a variable they can't control, but they also know they don't have a good enough model of mental health to control it yet. I don't envy them the challenge, or they pushback they'll get trying to use their traditional intervention strategies to fix the issue.
The only thing where I could see a remote landing system make sense is during the (very few) cases of crew incapacitation (e.g. Helios 522), but it would almost certainly be done in a way that makes it very apparent and easy to override for the crew actually on board, just like the cockpit door lock operates currently: Require authentication (a PIN code) for unlocking from the cabin-side; give the cockpit crew complete authority to override even that.
That very system has unfortunately contributed to at least one tragedy (Germanwings 9525), but I think the general risk assessment of "bad guy in the cockpit" being significantly less likely than "bad guy trying to compromise the good guys in the cockpit" still makes sense.
I feel like there's at least scope for an interesting discussion on what a takeover could look like and how the process could be abused and/or protected from abuse.
For example, what if it was something that could be requested using a "call for help" mechanism available elsewhere on the craft? Perhaps there could be buttons on opposite sides of the galley that would activate the distress call, so two flight attendants would have to collude for it— that would call the attention of the ground station to a pilot-incident-in-progress who could then receive telemetry and begin to investigate what was going on and go through some kind of clearance process to unlock the final takeover key that would let them disable the cockpit if deemed necessary.
The trick would be to position it as being about broader spectrum welfare than just a binary determination of whether you're crazy enough to try to kill a plane full of innocent passengers.
There have been a few other incidents that essentially boil down to CRM (crew resource management) issues regarding pilots with clear and obvious personality issues that when combined with the wrong crew members has resulted in loss of life.
Basically, combine someone on the flight deck with seniority who’s an asshole with a junior and impressionable crew member and it can be a problem:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlink_Flight_571...
Either way aviation is remarkably safe generally speaking and I’m not sure I’d put mandatory therapy, etc towards the top of the list in terms of approaches to make flying even safer.
Of course pilots have a tough job and are responsible for hundreds of lives at a time and their needs should be looked after. But the incident rate just isn’t there.
“Aviation regulations are written in blood”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990?wprov=sfla...
There just aren't enough people involved in general aviation at the start of the funnel to feed the demand for commercial and airline pilots later. Changing some HR policies won't move the needle on that.
[1] https://www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation_data_statistics/c...
Pilots seem to very underpaid and overworked.
I'd think twice about flying on any airline if I thought or new they were anything less than pampered.
Seems to be a trend these days. The more safety critical the job, the worse conditions and pay are.
(I'm no political or labor expert, but to me this feels like a case of the air crews being in need of an union.)
There's a public safety interest in fixing that, but like with other safety-critical jobs, there seems to be no way for that interest to become a force acting on the market. Yes, it would mean slightly more expensive flights, but as it is, the price floor on air travel is too low. Sure, current prices mean flights are available to more people, but that's just subsidizing the poor via having everyone accept a small but growing risk of death.
So, with pilots in short supply generally, and if they had a strong union you'd think that they'd be in a position to command good compensation.
Strange, the compensation in the executive class is never that heavily squeezed
What would help more in the long run is for airlines to hire untrained candidates and then pay them to go through training. Lots of people would like to become pilots but can't afford to pay for their own training. Some foreign carriers already do this.
The only way to get the lesser benefit of therapy is to precommit to not report suicidal thoughts.
The greater benefit of "pilots honestly report their suicidal thoughts and then they are stopped from flying" is simply impossible to achieve, and if you foolishly try to get it anyway then you won't even get the lesser benefit.
you didn’t think that strong silent man stereotype came from nowhere, did you?
It's similar to telling your doctor about illicit drug use. Don't do it unless you really trust your doctor to (a) not take adverse implications from the disclosure and (b) not write it down anywhere. Chances of both (a) and (b) are tiny. So, just lie about illegal drugs when asked. Do your own work on making sure to avoid interactions between prescribed drugs and recreational ones.
Why do you think anonymous therapy isn't a thing? There has to be a reason, I wonder what it is...
This was (and still) a major issue flagged after the Germanwings suicide/crash.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-crash-germany-conf...
That's obviously significant, especially in terms of the cost of a down airliner, but I'm also a bit dubious that it's the most effective here. It seems like screening could be more effective in preventing needless death, even if there are some controversial false positives.
> eight-session DBT skills-training intervention (‘WISE Teens) (n = 563) or class-as-per-usual (n = 508). On average, the ‘WISE Teens’ intervention did not improve outcomes with significant deteriorations or null effects observed across outcomes relative to class-as-per-usual immediately post-intervention. The largest deteriorations were observed for depressive (d = −0.22; 95% CI = −0.35, −0.08) and anxiety symptoms (d = −0.28; 95%CI - = −0.41, −0.14
‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ vs a world with a large segment of mental disorders basically resulting from someone having an existential need for something to not be broken (and no tools or time/resources to fix it).
The commonly accepted rate of iatrogenic harm from therapy is 5%[1]. The six listed mechanisms don't involve diagnosis.
1. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-...
Therapy can very helpful to many people. I also think therapy can be equally detrimental, (or more-so) to many people. Therapists are people doing a job. Some people are bad at their jobs. A patient implicitly trusting a therapist giving harmful advice can have far reaching, long lasting consequences.
Edit: then again, don’t out the therapist. I don’t want anyone getting sued for libel. The world has enough problems.
I'd go a step farther, make it anonymous by design so that real name and identity are never disclosed. That way it builds the confidentiality into the system instead of just giving the illusion of it
but... this is probably never going to happen (at least at scale), it isn't profitable enough
but a good historical analogy would be those confession booths in churches. except, instead of going to the local one the confessor goes to one that's far away enough
That's best case scenario.
For mild depression, you will probably only be out of a job for only several months.
For ADHD, you will be out of a job forever. (Commercial airlines, banner towing, freight on Alaskan puddle jumpers...anything)
- Yours truly, the Good Guys at the FAA
Not if you're familiar with the FAA.
> Is that due to
It's due to a condition called CYA.
That may sound glib, but I don't mean it to be. If there's a pilot that is hiding their mental health issues because they'll otherwise risk destitution, that's a problem that's solved by a social safety net. Such a safety net would also solve many other social ills, like people stuck with abusive employers, and so on.
I imagine it's similar with some pilots.
I can't tell whether that is a stereotype or not.
I believe an experienced commercial pilot makes around 200K? If I’m 50 have no professional skills except being a commercial airline pilot, what kind of work do I qualify for that has comparable pay?
> The issue is losing the level of income they make (more than any safety net could pay)
Why can’t this be solved by a tool like insurance? It only needs to cover something like like 80% of the career earnings of people who would be removed for mental health reasons up to the mandatory retirement age of 67, minus early retirement benefits if any.
Unless they are a huge number of pilots that would be removed for mental reasons, it seems affordable to me.
I agree insurance is probably the best way, but even that doesn't help with the purpose and social status part, which I think are the largest factors. Plus if the insurance covers career advancement losses the incentives become really adverse, if it doesn't there's still massive economic losses.
I think any solution would also need a way to get back in. No need to lose everything because you had a bad time once.
Fair concern, I think we can screen for people faking it for money. Also, in these situations the payout is usually somewhat less than you would earn working.
I get that the end of a career you worked your life for is really hard, but unfortunately it's not an uncommon experience and being a pilot is not a right. A payout for a significant portion of your future earnings is far more than most get in that situation.
If a pilot fantasizes about crashing planes and killing people, and tells someone about this, I'm not sure I want there to be a way for them to keep their career. Sure lets treat them, get them better, but putting them back in a plane? Is it worth the risk?
You put people like that back in planes, and well, eventually one got the keys that shouldn't have. I can imagine TV reporting after a suicide crash "well... we knew they used to fantasize about crashing planes full of people, but they said they were better now and we didn't want to damage their career so we put them back in the captains seat". Help them, retrain them for another job, but don't give them the keys to the plane.
In real life I keep reading about an increase in "near collisions" on runways caused by low performing air traffic controllers that keep getting shuffled around instead of being fired (having their career harmed).
If people with known mental issues can't get guns, why would we give them the keys to a large airplane full of people?
Secondly, issues like this aren't a 0 or 1, they are on a scale. Someone can be depressed without being suicidal and someone can be suicidal without being homicidal. Someone can have ADHD without being a danger to passengers.
The FAA treats all mental issues effectively as the same thing, which results in pilots being barred from flying. Someone feeling down for a month or two after their wife dying after 30 years of marriage gets the same treatment as someone who ideates killing a plane full of passengers.
Here's what I would accept: a stipulation/restriction on my medical regarding how often I go to therapy, when, and maybe even giving the therapist power to ground me temporarily.
But it would have to apply to only people like me with that restriction.
And that's for a history of depression. I don't really deal with clinical depression now.
Instead, the FAA wanted me on antidepressants, with all of their side effects, and I could not justify that. My wife has never known me on antidepressants (we met over a year after I got off), and I don't know how it would affect my marriage.
But constant therapy and checks? Yeah, I would take that in a heartbeat. I even grounded myself one day after a night where I had to deal with external problems; I wanted to be safe.
IOW, the FAA treats me like a problem; I would love if they treated me as a professional, and I would respond in kind, by being the kind of professional they want.
There have been some small changes here and there. One example is the fast-track change to ADHD history. From first glances you can skip the CogscreenAE if you've been off the meds for 4 years and pass some other criteria.
https://www.faa.gov/ame_guide/media/ADHD_fast_track_eval_gen...
This is not a recipe for a mentally healthy subpopulation.
Could be worse, like waiting on the FWS.
> need to be in hospital
It clearly is a mental health issue.
Whether it's a disqualifying, treatable, etc is a valid argument but it is certainly a mental health issue.
But in this scenario and many others there are strong distinctions between people who commit suicide, people who commit murder-suicide and people who commit mass murder-suicide. Understanding that distinction is important because one is a risk to themselves only and another is a risk to others around them.
The flaw is of course we bucket all of them the same way for pilots, which leads to the last two stewing and hiding.
> there are strong distinctions between people who commit suicide, people who commit murder-suicide and people who commit mass murder-suicide
Sure.
The degrees of accepted violence is cultural. Plenty of people kill out of anger but anger does not make one insane. Unless you defined criminal behavior as mental illness.
Also I believe you're misunderstanding what was said, people as a whole, as in humanity, commit all kinds of atrocities. Mental illness is not required to be cruel or callous.
Is every soldier mentally ill simply because they are capable of killing on command?
I.e. she shot and killed her attempted rapist.
You've given me a shitty idea that might work some of the time: We give every airline pilot a pistol. This way if they ever feel the urge to kill themselves they can do it in a hotel room instead of with the airplane. It ensures that the most convenient way for a pilot to die isn't crashing their plane. It will probably slightly increase the number of pilots who kill themselves, but decrease the number who do it by crashing their plane.
...hey, I did say it was a shitty idea.
https://www.faa.gov/pilot-mental-fitness
The FAA’s regulations require airline pilots to undergo a medical exam with an Aviation Medical Examiner (AME) every six months to five years, depending on the type of flying they do and their age.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-D...
Mental standards for a first-class airman medical certificate are:
It's a real hard corner they're painted into on this because they ultimately don't know what makes a pilot snap and decide to kill a planeload of trusting passengers.
These appear to be what they're looking for https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-D...
If you're getting your Adderall not from prescription, they're not going to know till you tell them, but I wonder if they try anything interesting to find you out. I know at least one person who flew but used Adderall daily for work which means that this sort of thing isn't super rigorous.
Even easier. Just answer ever question with what's "normal". If you're shooting for a particular diagnosis, or even a diagnosis in general, you have to actually know what the symptoms are, or else the doctor will notice something odd. If you want no diagnosis, you just have to have a general idea of what most people are like.
Airline pilots are subjected to a lot of drug tests. The upshot is that person won’t be taking the Adderall. Even if they need it.
> The off-duty pilot who attempted to cut off a plane’s engines mid-flight told an officer it was his first time using psychedelic mushrooms, per the federal complaint
The following was written in the context of mass shootings, but I believe it applies to this incident and other "trying to kill everyone" incidents.
"Four assumptions frequently arise in the aftermath of mass shootings in the United States: (1) that mental illness causes gun violence, (2) that psychiatric diagnosis can predict gun crime, (3) that shootings represent the deranged acts of mentally ill loners, and (4) that gun control "won't prevent" another Newtown (Connecticut school mass shooting). Each of these statements is certainly true in particular instances. Yet, as we show, notions of mental illness that emerge in relation to mass shootings frequently reflect larger cultural stereotypes and anxieties about matters such as race/ethnicity, social class, and politics. These issues become obscured when mass shootings come to stand in for all gun crime, and when "mentally ill" ceases to be a medical designation and becomes a sign of violent threat." <https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25496006/>
Have the ability for someone on the ground to take over if there is a suspicion of this. Remove the pilot’s ability to disable key systems like in the past examples.