Starve the Ego Feed the Soul
Starve the Ego Feed the Soul
Preparation Calms Fear: How Great Pilots Prepare for Life with Randall "Random" Brooks
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Randall "Random" Brooks shares his expertise on upset prevention and recovery training, revealing how proper pilot preparation for emergencies translates to valuable life skills and better decision-making under pressure.
• Loss of control in flight is aviation's #1 killer, with aerodynamic stalls causing about 50% of these incidents
• Pilots typically have only 6-10 seconds to respond correctly in an upset situation before it becomes unrecoverable
• Traditional simulator training has critical gaps because it can't replicate the true physics or psychological stress of real emergencies
• Building muscle memory and neural pathways through actual aircraft training helps pilots access their skills even under extreme stress
• Aviation teaches valuable life skills including responsibility, judgment, teamwork, and emotional regulation
• The most important factor in pilot performance is attitude – how badly you want it and what you're willing to put into it
• APS training creates associations between verbal trigger words and physical actions to ensure pilots can respond correctly when startled
Visit APStraining.com to learn more about aviation performance solutions and improving flight safety.
More on Random here https://www.apstraining.com/team/brooks
Warmly,
Nico Barraza
@FeedTheSoulNB
www.nicobarraza.com
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Speaker 1:You enjoyed last week's episode with charlie mccally. Um, I had the pleasure of actually going to one of their services just like an hour ago here in Flagstaff, and he's actually out of town. So a woman I think I believe her name was Holland gave a little bit of a sermon in Charlie's absence and one of the things really like stuck out to me and I hadn't been to a service, I feel like I think my last one was like 2019. So it's been a bit, but the the sermon she gave was really heartfelt and one of the things that really stuck out to me was she was talking about. Her and her husband's mothers really encouraged them when they were younger to find the kids that were sitting alone at lunch or sitting alone and lonely and sit with them. And this is a great lesson for all of us, even adults, because I think it can be really daunting and nerve wracking to see people sitting alone or to go up to a stranger and share some time with them, but it really can go a huge, hugely long way in society. So if you see someone sitting alone, if you see someone that's lonely, maybe go sit with them, maybe go try to start a conversation and ask how they're doing and show that you care Just a great way to connect with people. So thank you to her for that lovely sermon and it was a nice service. Excuse me, you know, when you eat something and just like, you have to keep clearing your throat. That's where I am right now.
Speaker 1:So probably wasn't the best timing to record the intro for this show, but I have a pilot that is an incredible, incredibly accomplished pilot Randall Random Brooks out of Mesa, arizona. I listened to a podcast I think it was through, like EAA or some sort of aircraft organization pilot org where I heard a random talk on it and he really spoke really eloquently about not only like relating flying airplanes to you know, just being a better, more aware person, but really like how the idea of preemptively preparing yourself for things that can go wrong can go a long way in a lot of different aspects of our lives. So I wanted to have him on the show to have a conversation, not only as a fan of aviation and a pilot myself, but also just to have a heartfelt conversation about how his life's work has kind of can relate to, you know, interpersonal lessons for all of us, and so, whether you know things about flying planes or you're just interested, this is an episode that can apply to everyone. Again, I want to thank Random for coming on the show and sharing some time with me, and I hope I get to fly with him soon. Yeah, and don't forget if you see someone lonely out there, sit with them, say hi, look them in the eyes and acknowledge them and uh, you know, I think that that's a beautiful lesson that I took away from that, from that service today. So I'm glad you're here and I'll see you next week without any further ado, mr Randall Random Brooks.
Speaker 1:So so the reason I really was inspired is obviously I started to listen to all these aviation podcasts. I'm like it's just a student of aviation, so absorbing all this, you know, and yours came up one morning I was like 5am, I was walking my dogs and your like awareness of you know. First of all, what people don't know is like you teach upset, prevention, recovery training which is really, if you're flying a plane or an aircraft and it spins out of control, you put people in the situations preemptively to train them for what could go wrong, right. And then, as someone who works in counseling and mental health, I like sort of put all these dots together. I'm like that's exactly what we're trying to, like work with people on before they experience a trauma or a divorce or something that comes up where it's like you know you need to work on things in yourself before you experience this, hopefully, because you'll handle it in a much better way.
Speaker 1:You know, and you you were putting it in such an eloquent way, which is like you know, you were saying like these airlines pilots go to all these training. They fly these little planes and then they fly these huge aircraft with autopilot and TCAS systems and all these things and then they sort of become a little complacent because everything's comfortable and that's really what our brain is designed to do. It's like just seek out the easiest path forward and just sit in it right. But, as you know, things can go very wrong very fast and in areas of high consequence like life and death, such as air travel, because we don't have wings, we're not really meant to be up there, but the beauty is that we can do it, which is incredible right which is why you and I are attracted to stuff like that is preemptively thinking what could go wrong and understanding what you would do in a situation where you're in that actual situation. It's not something that's you know, you're sitting in a simulator, because that's not real life.
Speaker 2:You know you're sitting in a simulator, because that's not real life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think one of the phrases you might've heard me use I'm a bit of a slow learner, nika, so you know I think I was here for you know, several years before I, and I thought you know I'm going to come here and teach people flying skills that they don't have, because there are some different set of flying skills that are needed in an upset don't have, because there are some different set of flying skills that are needed in an upset.
Speaker 2:And what I began to learn as I saw the human factors impact on people in upsets is oh, actually what I'm teaching them is how to have access to those skills in an upset. Because if I teach them in a way or a manner that they can use on a nice sunny day in Arizona with a parachute on their back, that doesn't mean that they're necessarily going to be able to use it on a dark and stormy night in their airplane, which might be very different than the airplane that we're training in, but there are ways to do that to ensure that they are going to have access and be able to respond with the appropriate proficiency when necessary.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so let's let's sort of work our way back, cause I want you to be able to introduce yourself first and talk about how you got into the work you do, because it's a very niche part of pilot and aviation right, and you work with a broad depth of of aviators as well, too, from military personnel to students to people that are just starting to fly right, and you know, the company that you work with and are part of does a lot of different things. So how did you get to this point in your life and explain to me and feel free to share, you know, whatever you know personal anecdotes you want.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that one thing that's a little bit different about being a advanced UPRT instructor at Aviation Performance Solutions than a lot of flight instructor situations that people are familiar with is that we need two things. We need somebody that is comfortable in a turbine aircraft that's flown turboprops or jets at high altitude, because that's where the majority of our customers are coming from, and so we need to understand their operating environment and what it's taken them to get to that level. But we also need pilots that are comfortable in the all-attitude environment, and so where do you find people that have both of those things? Typically fighter pilots. That's where the majority of our instructors have come from in the past.
Speaker 2:I'm an exception to that rule. I'm the lone civilian trained instructor at APS right now, and that's because I flew air shows professionally for 10 years and on two different civilian formation aerobatic teams actually three civilian formation aerobatic teams if you include a two-ship glider act. That I did for a couple of years, but in any case, I had been teaching aerobatics for a long time before that, and then, you know, I had kids and needed to get off of the life of the air show circuit and was a corporate pilot for 10 years and so had four type ratings as part of that. But that helps me to relate to folks, and so I was able to put both of those skill sets my right side, operational flying together with my all attitude aerobatic and air show flying and find use those in a way to provide skills that I had seen in my flying that I knew would be useful and transferable which is an important word we'll probably talk about again to corporate pilots, and so that's that's what we need.
Speaker 2:You know, we can't have pilots that they might be great aerobatic pilots but they don't have a multi-engine rating, or airline pilots that have never been upside down before, and so it really, to me, is one of the most demanding roles in aviation because literally yesterday I was doing a high altitude profile, going out in formation in a couple of jets up to 30,000 feet or better, and today I had four flights in a tail dragger aircraft the extra 300L that we use. So it covers a broad swath of aviation knowledge and skills, and it's taken me an entire lifetime to get here, and now I have the ability to give back by providing that information to others in a way that's going to be beneficial and and fulfill. The purpose that we have at APS is we help pilots bring everyone home safely, and what's a cooler purpose than that?
Speaker 1:Sounds like a dream job, honestly. How cool is that? So one of the like, the connection you know when you were speaking on the interview and what you just alluded to right now is really like the preparation aspect of stuff that goes wrong, catastrophically wrong, right. And I remember in the interview you were particularly talking about sim time and sim training. And for those non-pilots out there, I just relate this to anything in life that you could, you know, go watch tape all day long, but until you get up and throw the football or you swing the bat, you don't know what it's like to be in that situation. Right Now you can conceptually understand, like, the mechanics of being an athlete or doing these things, but until you go actually build those skills in real time, you know it doesn't really get better.
Speaker 1:And even take it a step further, like for pilots, the simulator serves a great purpose, but you brought up it removes the human component of stress and of fear, right, which is very much for many of us changes the way we react.
Speaker 1:It changes the way our eyes are reacting, changes our ability to absorb information. It changes like we talk about spatial disorientation with actual pilots too, right, that's really hard to emulate in a simulator, but when you actually hear about how it goes on, it happens like that and the plane's upside down right and you're not aware of that. And so one of the things I thought was really incredibly powerful that you shared is that you, as safely and as controlled as possible, try to put someone in a very uncomfortable situation that they might not find themselves in so that way, if they do ever find themselves in, they have built enough muscle memory or, you know, ability to withstand that stressful environment to bring everyone safely home. Can you expand on that and what that takes, you know, from a like cerebral, emotional level to get to that level of processing to where you feel comfortable saying like this person is going to be able to handle this sort of situation?
Speaker 2:There's been no greater contribution to aviation safety than full flight simulators that can replicate a whole host of abnormal events that we can practice. But unfortunately, they were designed to stay within the normal envelope and so their programming which, let's remember, they're just computers they're only as good as their programming. Their programming has limits. Obviously, there are physiological limits in terms of Gs and things like that, but because they are so good, so realistic in the normal envelope where they are typically used, people don't realize, when they get outside of that normal envelope, that they may not only not react correctly, they might be totally different than the real airplane. And so, because what they saw in the normal envelope was so accurate and like what they experience in flight, they just assume that it covers everything and it doesn't. So, in fact, the simulators, as they are certified by the FAA, only have to go up to the first indication of stall, and the airplane behaves differently at the stall warning than it does when it actually gets past critical angle of attack. Now, there are some exceptions to that the 121, the airline world, their simulators, since March of 2020, have had to be modified to go to 10 degrees of angle of attack beyond the first indication of stall, which means that they will actually replicate somewhat some of the behavior beyond that critical angle of attack. And that comes from a couple of famous accidents the last one in the USS March 2009 or early 2009, and then Air France 447. And they said, hey, we need to modify sims to cover this, but it's still. Your brain knows that you are bolted to the ground, and so there is a difference there. So when we take people in the airplane, what we are trying to do is not replace the training that they do in the simulator. The simulator training has a group of requirements. Those are part 142 requirements from the FAA or other regulators, and we tend to not have that many accidents in these areas that we train at in the simulator on a regular basis, like engine failures, like emergency descents, like a whole host of other things that we can do that are within the envelope of the simulator. Where we have problems are in those gaps or holes in the simulator's capability. Either from an aerodynamic perspective, they can't emulate the behavior that the aircraft is going to have past the critical angle of attack, as an example, or the physiological or psychological things, and so that's where our training comes in together, and so if you have a company, an airline, that's doing both of those things, then you have the most robust system possible to try and prevent things and to provide a little bit of perspective for your audience that's not aware.
Speaker 2:When we categorize the things that kill people in airplanes, loss of control in flight by far is the number one cause of fatalities, and it doesn't matter whether you're talking about airlines, private aviation, instructional aviation or business, corporate, charter aviation they all. Loss of control in flight beats all of the others by the next closest factor, by two to one in most cases, because these gaps in the simulator are invisible. When all you do is train in the simulator, the majority of people in the aviation system assume that our present way of training is good enough. It's the best we can do. Now what happens when people come to us and they fly on the aircraft? They go oh my gosh, I've been flying for 5,000 hours, 10,000 hours. I've never. Not only have I never seen that, nobody ever told me about that. And the people that are blind to those things that we see doing? Transferable upset, prevention and recovery training include the regulators, and that's why we don't have requirements to do this.
Speaker 2:But, the people that fly with us see this, and I forget the exact quote, but it's from somebody that's teaching UPRT. They said trying to teach UPRT without an airplane is like trying to teach somebody to swim without water. You know, you can have a read about it and everything, but it's just not the same until you do it in the domain in which the upset is going to occur, which is going to be in the air.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I mean it's, it's sort of. It's exactly why I immediately was like I want to do this training when I heard about it, because, you know, I want to be the best pilot, safest pilot I can, just for my own accomplishment. Right, I want to own my own planes. I want to fly, you know, professionally too, and I'm doing this career change right now.
Speaker 1:But even as a kid I always wanted to be a fighter pilot. I didn't know I was able to at that age and then when I found out about the Air Guard, I was like I'm going to start applying, you know. But then, as I got older, I realized that it was really like it's my way of thinking and my way of like problem solving. That's very attracted to that mindset. And so when I heard you speak, I was like immediately, like I need to do this. I want to put myself in this position so that way, if I'm transporting my family or my kids or anyone's family that they care about and love about, I'm the best possible person to get out of a situation right that's that's deadly or that's, you know, could turn out into catastrophe, and I think a lot of people tend to maybe not aviators, because I think a lot of people. They understand that it's risky on a base level, but I think a lot of people, in general way of living, tend to avoid putting themselves in uncomfortable situations because our brains are designed to again take the easiest route right Comfort, like let's just do this. It's easy, you know, and I don't think.
Speaker 1:I think the difference with pilots is we don't. We don't get that leisure right Like you. You, you have to prepare for something that might go cat. You could have an engine failure, something could go wrong. You know what I mean. All these things with weather. Something could just do. You know completely. It's not like a car. It will just stop rolling, the plane just comes down.
Speaker 2:It must come down. We need to come down under control. But, yeah, you don't get a pass, you don't get to take the day off, you're up there, you got to get down regardless of what happens. And so, yeah, that's where we come in, providing some of those missing elements of training.
Speaker 1:Right. So for a lot of people listening to the show, they're not aviators, not pilots. Maybe they'll be inspired to go get their PPL because they listen to this. But what can you share to them that, like, pilots, have to train and prepare for that's part of aviation that has to do with your training. That is applicable to just like being a normal, everyday adult that's just trying to improve or, you know, be better.
Speaker 2:Well, for one thing, there's discipline, and because the majority of the pilots that I've worked with here are former military, they had discipline as part of their training, but we see it in the pilots that come through a more structured and disciplined program. That's very helpful. And it's helpful because, procedurally, we do things the same way time and time again and we follow procedures, and so there's a component of safety right there in that. But really, when we look at aviation, there's three components there's skills, there's knowledge and there's attitude. And what we like to say is you know what? I can teach skills and knowledge all day long, but you got to bring the attitude. And if you don't bring the attitude, you're not going to be successful. No matter how good a natural pilot you know, stick and rudder wise you might be, or how smart you are, if you aren't approaching it that way, approaching it in a professional way. And on the other hand, you can take somebody that has the right attitude and darn it. They're going to succeed, they're going to find a way to to succeed.
Speaker 2:And one of the things that has happened, um, in the aviation industry since COVID and then at the time of the pandemic, the airlines released 10 to 15% of, in many cases, their most senior pilots, and so the floodgates were open there, more so a year or two in the past than it is now. And an unfortunate problem of that is that you had people that flowed in that didn't have obstacles. If they had a rating and they had a heartbeat, they might get hired and progress. And you know that is a point in aviation that we haven't really had. You know, back to you know, world War I or whenever we really started needing pilots, there was always a hill to climb, there was always a bit of a struggle, and I'm not saying this just because I had to struggle, but I think that those challenges make you really want it and pursue it and try and be good at it. And if, frankly, it's a little bit too easy, is that really who you want flying your airplane? I don't think so too easy. Is that really who you want, you know, fly on your airplane? I don't think so. I think you want the man or woman that had to work a little bit harder, to be better than the other person, to get to that seat, and we are getting back to that now. And so you know that's a big part of is those three things.
Speaker 2:Now, I know you've been an athlete in the past and that's another way that I look at this is I've always tried to keep myself in shape. Certainly, being an airline pilot you don't need to be an athlete, but being an air show pilot you did, and one of the reasons that I appreciate the type of flying that I get to do now is that it is both mental and it is physical. I mean I did four flights today, did aerobatics on all of them, didn't do a lot of Gs. I mean, you know, most days I don't pull more than three or four Gs, but some days I pull up to six and do inverted spins and things like that.
Speaker 2:And so you know that has always been a part of it and I think we know now that good physical conditioning goes along well with, you know, blood flow to the brain and our disposition. You know emotionally, emotional regulation as well, and we're starting, you know, I think, in the pilot community, to put together a lot of these things that, frankly, we didn't dare talk about in the past because it was the John Wayne days. And you know there's a lot more crew resource management and we're starting to, you know, also see the problems with pilots that have depression, and where do you go with that? Because if you talk to somebody about it, you can lose your medical, and so we've had to really change the way we are looking at pilots into a much more holistic sense, and so I think we're getting better in a lot of those regards.
Speaker 1:That's a really awesome thing to bring up. Like I think there's been a lot of. You know, when you look at aviation, like even in the military, like pilots that have ever taken antidepressant or Adderall or stimulant, they're immediately almost written off Maybe not so much for antidepressants recently, but over the course of the past decade it was like almost a no-go, it was like worse than having bad eyes, you know, and I think, to an unfortunate extent, where there are many, probably incredible pilots that were passed up because of that, because they, you know, maybe sought help or actually saw resources versus hit it and repressed it. Right Now you brought up the industry sort of changing. Is that coming from like the, like pilots, ambassadors or, like you know, some of the, some of the not not the word a lot, but the unions, or is it coming from the industry itself, like who is actually bringing on this change to incorporate more, like paying attention to someone's mental health, emotional health, their wellbeing, outside of just their ability to like be a pilot?
Speaker 2:So a couple of different things. First of all, let's go with the standpoint that the reason that aviation is as safe as it is and despite recent events it is extremely safe and part of that is it's a very conservative industry.
Speaker 2:We don't change things fast, and that's why, if I don't like that, upset, prevention and recovery training has not been incorporated full scale as fast as I like. That's part of the reason. In terms of recent benefits, I think it's both the regulators the FAA, the NTSB and the unions who are representing pilots, that have some of these problems. So I think you know there have been a number of recent incidences that involve depression or involve mental health of pilots that have forced us to, you know, open up to that. But I'll say that you know, in the larger sense, one thing that aviation does respond to is evidence. We're pretty much an evidence-based industry, and so, with regards to loss of control in flight, it's sort of this elephant in the room that we can't ignore anymore, and so I will say, almost begrudgingly, people have started to take a look at it. And it's the same way with mental health issues. We go, we've ignored this as long as we can, but the only way that we're going to get better is to do something about it, and that is one thing that you can say about aviation from the 1920s on. Is that the reason that it has gotten safer is the fact that we have continuously been asking how can we do this better, how can we do this safer? And it's a little bit hard at this point because the incremental gains are pretty small.
Speaker 2:I will say that from the time that I started working in upset recovery training 2005-2006 time frame, we were losing like 1,500 pilots every 10 years in the commercial airline accidents, in the commercial airline accidents, and now we're down to about half of that. Now the problem is that we still have the same contribution of loss control in flight. In fact, it's gotten worse because we have solved a lot of other problems that we've been able to fix through technological means. One of them controlled flight into terrain. There was a wonderful gentleman with Honeywell that created enhanced ground proximity warning systems, saved hundreds of lives, and because of that that is now not the second leading cause of fat. What that tells us is that, despite the introduction of fly-by-wire and other automation devices, that loss control in flight is largely a pilot-centric problem and therefore it's pilot training that has to be the full-scale solution for the problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was just going to ask you out of loss control, what's the percentage? If you can generalize how much of that is pilot air versus, you know, mechanical?
Speaker 2:We, uh I I don't know the specifics. I know that, within the loss of control in flight category uh, that over 50% or right around 50%, depending on the sector of aviation that we're looking at is a result of aerodynamic stalls, which is pretty surprising to most pilots because they go hey, I figured out how to. I had to figure out how to recover from a stall before I got my private license. What they?
Speaker 2:don't understand is that the stalls that are encountered in the real world may be very, very different, so different than the ones that were encountered in their training that they don't even recognize it as a stall. They don't know what the airplane is doing or why, and that's where we come in to show them what to do about it. I do know that loss control in flight can be categorized into three large categories, the first being environmental, and that's from things that are easy to understand, like thunderstorms, like mountain wave rotor or actually the largest contributor in that category, which is wake turbulence encounters coming in behind another aircraft that can flip you upside down a heavier aircraft. Then there are systems failures, and those are things that can cause control jams, control failures and might require alternate control strategies. But unfortunately, I do know that the largest category overall is human pilot cause problems, and those problems come in large part because, in an upset, pilots are going to do what is the most familiar to them. Pilots are going to do what is the most familiar to them and so, since they fly in the normal envelope, most of the time they do what they would do in the normal envelope. The problem is that if the aircraft gets beyond 90 degrees of bank, for instance, their lift vector is headed towards the ground, not headed towards the sky, so where they normally would pull back on the sticker yoke and gain altitude, slow down and climb, now they're headed down and in the millisecond or one or two seconds that they have to respond, they're not going to be smart enough to go. Well, normally I would pull back in this situation, but now I can see that my lift vector is below the horizon, so I will have to roll and reorient that before I lift the nose. It doesn't, you know, unless you've had the type of training that will help teach you how to prioritize.
Speaker 2:Because and this is an interesting statistic, nico there was a really good study that was done jointly by both Boeing and NASA and they looked at six loss control and flight accidents where they had very good flight data, recorder data, where they could measure a series of five or six parameters, and they said okay, we're going to assume that the upset has begun when two or three of these parameters are exceeded and then we'll measure the amount of time from that exceedance to when one of the limitations either G or airspeed or bank attitude for the aircraft, has exceeded and it was. Generally it was between two and 15 seconds, but I like to say six to 10 seconds because that's where the tightest grouping was, and there are a lot of things as aviators that we learn to take care of within six to 10 seconds. An engine failure on takeoff is a pretty six to 10 seconds. An engine failure on takeoff is a pretty familiar common example of that, but that's because we do it on a regular basis. If we're talking about something that is so non-standard that we may have never seen it before and the solution is something different, that we might need to do with the controls than we would do in the normal envelope, that we might need to do with the controls than we would do in the normal envelope. We're not going to figure that out in six to ten seconds when our amygdala, the part of the brain, the threat-sensing part of the brain, is yelling and kind of taking over and screaming at us and obliterating whatever might come out of the frontal lobe. That would be helpful in trying to find a solution. And so that is the purpose of our training is it's not just about physical control inputs but literally building new pathways to in the brain.
Speaker 2:And an example, one of the examples of the way that we do this is we have an association between trigger words, if you will, that prioritize certain things that we as pilots need to manage, the first being angle of attack, the second being the lift vector orientation, the third being our energy state and the last being stabilize the flight path.
Speaker 2:And if we practice in the training environment saying the word doing the thing, saying the word doing the thing, we build this up so that in an emergency, we yell out those words and we will sort of automatically do the thing. I had the experience today of a student that did two recoveries the first where she didn't repeat the words, it was an okay, it was a safe and effective recovery. But I said, yeah, but we're missing that thing, so let's go back and do that again and let's say those words. And I said, say them loud and proud. She shouted them out there like she would be talking to another crew member and I could physically see the improvement in her recovery and debrief that with her afterwards and she's like, yeah, it's like you've got a plan and you're executing the plan and when your brain is terrified, it's going to be a little less terrified when it's got a plan to execute.
Speaker 1:Yeah, speaking it out loud almost helps you just prioritize what your focus is on versus fear. You're focusing on action and I think, as you know, as I've learned to land, you know, through my progressing and through the PPL, it's like even the configuration thing I'll say it out loud as I'm doing stuff, cause I'm very much like methodical, that's how my brain works and it helps me just like configure. You know, like, like, like. First thing I'm doing is like carb heat on, like down the 1500 RPMs. You know like hold the airspeed so you bleed off some airspeed, then flaps one, and then you know you're pitching for. You know 500 feet descent and then you trim. You know two things to trim. It's like those processes where you need to do that in an upset position too.
Speaker 1:But the issue with like PPL and again we train as best we can in those scenarios is like when you have a power on, power off stall, which for people aren't aviators, it's basically just the, the. You know you, you exceed the critical angle of attack which is where your uh, you know cord line of your blade, of your um, of your wing, is meeting the actual like air moving towards it. So, essentially, like you stop producing lift. So you fall right. Um, you just push your nose forward and catch up or push the throttle in, and it's in this very sort of easy thing. You could just barely stall and then you're over.
Speaker 1:That's probably not going to be what happens in real time, right? What happens in real time is maybe you're turning on left base or downwind or something, and you exceed your pitch angle, maybe you're at over 45 or something. You don't have enough power, and then you start to fall out of the sky and you're 1,000 feet AGL. That's a different feeling than if I'm at 8,000 feet AGL and I just have to do this little stall and then, okay, instructor, we're all good, you got it.
Speaker 2:So let me point out two things about that. First I'll talk about the talking, which is where we started, and then I'm going to talk about the aerodynamic stall just a little bit. One of the things that's interesting that I have to point out to people is most of their training has been involved in what we do in the normal envelope, like landings, like you were just talking about, and when we're doing those things we can be conversational. And when I'm flying with a pilot that might have been an instructor, they're used to flying and talking at the same time. So they're kind of critiquing themselves and I have to say look, what we're doing here at APS is a little bit different. We're teaching you to respond correctly in an emergency. The emergency it's not going to be quite as easy as today. So I'm actually going to restrict you and you're only going to get to say four words, those trigger words for the things that we're managing, because you're going to be lucky if you're smart enough to remember those four words. So that's one thing that sets our training apart just a little bit. But the other thing that I want to go to is the aerodynamic stall, where we exceed the critical angle of attack, and that's where the airflow can't flow smoothly over the wing anymore because of the angle between the wing and the relative wind. And for decades, when we were doing stalls, there was an objective stall testing criteria of minimizing the altitude loss. Now I'll just show you the control inputs. If I'm minimizing altitude loss, I have to do this. If I want to reduce the angle of attack, to reattach the airflow to the wing, I have to do this. You know, even the non-aviators can see I can't do both of those at the same time.
Speaker 2:And so, after you know a series of accidents in 2009, we said you know what, maybe we need to reevaluate how we're training stall training. And so I had the good fortune it was before I had come to APS to be invited onto the FAA industry stall stick pusher working group. It was after a major accident where they wanted to evaluate this. There were 40 of us in this group. It was a great group. We had an ALPA, person from United Airlines was a co-chair, somebody from Express Jet Airlines was a co-chair, but all of these different people, nasa and FAA were involved, and 39 out of the 40 of us, after hearing a lot of the evidence, says well, that minimum loss, altitude thing's got to go. We've got to prioritize and tell people which of those two inputs is most important. And the important one is reducing angle of attack, because until you do that, you have not regained the stability and the controllability of the aircraft not regained the stability and the controllability of the aircraft.
Speaker 2:Now, unfortunately, the only dissenter was the head of air transport training for the FAA at the time Very nice gentleman, but he just couldn't think of doing it a different way and he wanted to give his inspectors an objective criteria. He just couldn't imagine that. But we have changed that. It took two years that revised documentation, revised guidance, advisory, circular 12109 on stall training came out in 2012. A couple of years in industry before people started getting rid of that minimum loss of altitude and in fact it still lingers in some places. But, um, you know we're. We're teaching people here a methodology for recover that is transferable from light airplanes to any fixed wing aircraft.
Speaker 1:That, yeah, it's. It just brought up this, this quote in my mind. I've always told myself where you know, people talk about confidence and how a pro athlete or a pilot that's very good at something is confident, and how to tell that from cockiness. And for me, my entire life, cockiness is impersonation. Confidence is preparation, because if you're truly confident, you have prepared.
Speaker 2:If you're truly confident you have prepared and one of the ways that we know that Nico is demonstrated competence. Right, you have proven that you can do a thing. So one of the things that we do at the end of our training is before we get done, but after we've done enough training that we can be assured of the student's response, because we want it to be a confidence builder and not erode it is, I'll have a little conversation and I'll say look, you know, we've been practicing for a couple of days now, three flights. Do you think you know? Not in this training environment, but do you think flying in the dark or in the weather, which is when upsets tend to occur in your multi-engine jet or turboprop aircraft, do you think you would be able to execute this if you needed to in an emergency?
Speaker 2:Now, sometimes they'll answer, respond positively. Sometimes they'll say I don't know, but usually I don't let the words finish getting out of their mouth. Before whammo, I give them a simulated white turbulence and say recover, at which point they have to go through the strategy that they have been taught to respond to. And when they get done, invariably even the worst kids in class are going to be good enough that they kept their wings on, whereas what they would have done prior to training would probably have been catastrophic. And then we'll talk about it and we'll go look, that might not have been your best recovery of the day, but was it good enough? And the answer is yes, it was Now that so I go.
Speaker 2:Well, then I guess what I was asking you about whether or not you would be able to do this if you needed to in an emergency, because they never. If I do my job right, they don't expect it to come. Yeah, they go, wow, I can. And studies have shown that. Just that concept it's called locus of control, that feeling of I got this. If you have that, you are more likely to be successful, whatever the task is, because you think you're going to be, and so you know. That's again just another contribution that we have through our training.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. And I laugh because in my mind I'm like you have to be surprising people in some way to really test their ability to, because that that like literally, like not expecting, it is really when you're, when your amygdala kicks on, it's like all right, fight or flight, how do you respond. And that's built through muscle memory, like you said, like competence.
Speaker 2:So there's. There's two things that occur in a situation like that. They're called surprise and startle. Now, surprise could be subtle. That can be huh, why is? Why is the airspeed slower than it could be? And maybe you left the landing gear out, or something like that. Or it can be something greater. There's certainly surprise involved in what I just described, but the bigger is startle. Startle is a physiological response.
Speaker 2:That's cortisol and adrenaline being injected in and your heartbeat is actually jumping, and the phrase that we use around here is that when your heart rate goes up, your IQ goes down, and so we started off early on this. We were talking about putting people into this training, and the term that we use is training intensity, and that means that the level of training difficulty, if you will intensity I think most people can understand what we mean by that has to be equivalent to what they would experience in an actual emergency, and we cannot ratchet up that training intensity in the simulator environment because we know that they're not in any threat and I cannot generate startle in the simulator environment the way I can in the actual aircraft. Do you do this stuff at night too? And so what we do here at APS is called integrated training, and there's three major components that we use Academics to provide a foundational understanding of how the aerodynamics in an upset can be different and therefore what we need to do may be different.
Speaker 2:The aircraft, which provides the human factors component, the surprise and startle that we just talked about, as well as the actual aerodynamics.
Speaker 2:And then the third is the simulator, because the simulator, even though it doesn't have the full range of aerodynamics or human factors, it can allow us to do recoveries at night in the weather or at low altitude.
Speaker 2:So we have a scenario set up which involves a wake turbulence encounter on final at O'Hare Airport at night at 1884 feet above the ground, which, if you do not do that correctly, you know we've done enough training in advance of that that people, if they're they're doing what we have taught them correctly, uh are able to to recover uh successfully, uh, one of the things that came up, as uh we and others were, were beginning to integrate aircraft and simulator training back. This started in about 2006,. Was the question of which goes first, the simulator or the on-aircraft training? And the answer is you do the on-aircraft training first because then when you get in the simulator, even though you're not going to feel the Gs that you would feel in the real airplane, you're bringing that experience along with you. You can't unimagine it, and that makes the training in the simulated environment more productive and realistic.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. That makes total sense to me when we talk about general aviation and flying like your own personal aircraft. I'm guessing anytime people are training with you, they're using aircraft that APS is providing right. They're not flying their own.
Speaker 2:That's correct. My work involves that I do a little bit of flying for a museum that has some aerobatic biplanes Pitt Specials, the Pitt Flying Museum and then I fly my own aircraft. My wife and I own a Cessna 175 that's been converted to a tail dragger. It's more like a Bush airplane, resembles a Cessna 180, and we use that for airplane camping, but I don't construct in that, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the reason I ask is because you know, as someone that's in general aviation, and let's say they're flying their Mooney or their Cirrus or their Cessna or their Piper or something. Yeah, obviously every aircraft is different. Right, slightly different Is the training that they're going through with you. Is that going to be directly applicable to the aircraft that they're flying? No matter, you know, because obviously controls are different, how aircraft responds a little different, but would you predict that they're still going to be able to respond to that situation even in a different aircraft?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and the reason is that what we're teaching is based on aerodynamics and physics, and those rules don't change.
Speaker 2:We are going to teach the same thing to a Cessna 172 pilot that we're going to teach to a Boeing 737 pilot or an Airbus pilot, and that's the beauty of it.
Speaker 2:It's one of the reasons that Delta Airlines and United Airlines like working with us, because they will have pilots that are going from a legacy controlled airplane like a 737 to a fly-by-wire aircraft like an Airbus or a 787 or a 777, which are fly-by-wire aircraft. They might need to have degraded flight systems before the flight envelope protections don't help to protect them, but when we are teaching, for instance, students from United Aviate Academy who are on the other side of Phoenix from us, and we train 250 to 300 of them a year the beauty is that what we are teaching them they are going to apply, be able to apply in any fixed wing aircraft that they fly for the rest of their careers, and I tell them when they fly with us that 20 years from now they might need what they are learning here and unfortunately, what they're learning from us is not required by the FAA, but at least they'll have that. You know and have had it not just in a simulator but on aircraft and, and we'll hopefully be be able to recreate what they've learned.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, I mean that's you know someone that's attracted and absolutely will do your guys' training, uh, after my PPL is you know again, I think when, when we talk about like there's a financial part of it, but when you, when you talk about safety, you know if you really value. You know not only like the, the ability to keep yourself safe, but like the art of flying and the science behind flying. I don't think you can avoid training like this. You know truly because you're you're preparing for things that you know could happen, and so if we talk actually about like what it is to be an aviator, it's really like the study of all of that, right, the preparation for all of that, not only just flight planning and useful load and aerodynamics and the POH of your actual aircraft. You're flying all these different things, but it's actually like what could go wrong. You're thinking you're.
Speaker 1:We have this term innovation that I love and I've been using in counseling now is being ahead of the plane, right, when the plane is too much for you and you're overwhelmed, all of a sudden, like you're in that space in your head where you're forgetting or you're losing track and your focus is maybe on things that don't need to be prioritized at the moment off things that do and I think part of being ahead of the plane is really when you feel comfortable enough to where you can respond to highly stressful environments, like you said, when you're in like that fight or flight or that startled aspect, with as calm of a response as possible to give yourself the best chance of actually surviving or making out of it.
Speaker 2:There are different types of challenges that are time constrained or more time favorable. One of the sort of airline sayings is with any emergency, the first thing you should do is wind your watch. That was when we had watches that we needed to wind, but the point being just slow down for just a second and make sure that your next move is appropriate. Now, unfortunately, in loss of control in flight. As I said, six to 10 seconds doesn't give you a lot of time, so we better have practiced those things in advance, and that's one of the differences.
Speaker 1:For people that you know don't want to be corporate flyers or fly in the military or fly for an airlines. What do you think just working on your PPL or understanding just the base level on how to fly a plane? What do you think that teaches you in terms of life skills?
Speaker 2:Responsibility for one. There's no shirking responsibility in in an airplane, um judgment, um, you know, there, there pilots are, there's not. As you know, there's a lot of times, like dealing with weather, for instance, where there's, it's easy if, if it, you know it's thundering and lightning, uh. But what if there's a 5,000-foot ceiling? Well, if you're over the plains of Kansas, the 5,000-foot ceiling is no problem. But if I'm flying around Colorado and the ceilings are 5,000 feet but the mountains go up to 10,000 feet, now I have a whole different calculus. And so that process of problem solving and owning the full weight of your actions is one of the things that I think is attractive to me about flying. It makes it very real. It's something that is intimidating, which is why the majority of the population doesn't necessarily want the weight of learning to fly. But I think you know, in a broader sense, aviation teaches you a lot about teamwork, because whether it's as a crew, whether it's as part of an organization or a flight school, those human interactions are important, and we now know that on the flight deck, how we communicate with others, whether we're just with one other pilot or if we have a flight crew, cabin crew, in back, you know there are leadership skills that are required. I mean, I have a friend who just retired as an Airbus A350 captain for Delta and his challenges were in corralling all of the resources that might be necessary to get his airplane ready to fly from Atlanta to Milan or to someplace in Asia and making sure that it was fueled correctly and that everything else was done, not just his piloting stuff. He was in charge, he was a big program manager and that's a pretty big thing. Lofting several hundred people across an ocean. It's really kind of a gargantuan task when you think about it, which is why we compensate people that do that and for the expertise that they have acquired to be able to do that well. So there's a lot of life skills that come out of it and I think it's one of the reasons that for any pilot, whether they make it to a private license or not, when they've soloed an airplane they're part of the club. You know. We know that they have done something that separates them from all of those other people that look up. There's a funny saying that says pilots looking down on others since 1903, which is the year that the Wright brothers learned to fly. But you know, pilots are proud of their skills for a reason it's because they're hard fought and I know, like you and I, they are very much enjoyed.
Speaker 2:I had three years of my life, my adult life, where I wasn't flying. I was working for a simulator engineering and manufacturing company and I suppose I could have rented a 172 or something like that, but I had kids at home and you know it's cost a lot of money. When I got back into flying for APS at the end of those those three years, I thought to myself. You know each and every one of those flights is special. You know how much I much I missed that over those three years that I was gone and that has helped me not to take every flight that I have for granted and to appreciate how fortunate I am to be in the position that I've helped to put myself in.
Speaker 1:That is a beautiful thing to say and I feel very much, even though I'm not the aviator you are. I feel very much aligned with that way of thinking on. Aviator you are, I feel, very much aligned with that way of thinking on. I feel so blessed to be able to pursue this and I'm working as hard as possible to see everything through.
Speaker 1:One of the things I talk about a lot is how I want to get my CFI and CFII so that way, when I have kids, I want to be able to teach them how to fly, and I've had friends ask me weren't you scared that something could go wrong when they're flying? And I'm like, yes, but the whole reason I want to teach them to fly is because I'm not going to be here forever and passing on that discipline and that level of self-belief you get when you land an aircraft by yourself, whether you're 17 or 48, those things are intangible empowerments to a human being, right? You can never take those away from someone. So I'd want my daughter and my son to know that they don't have to be career pilots If they want to be great. They don't have to be, but they at least have those skills that are applicable in so many aspects of life that you're going to experience on a day-to-day basis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to expand on that. Nico, I didn't think of that when you were asking me about the attributes of flying that help us in our general life, but that is one know. You mentioned the fight or flight reflex. Well, we can't do that in a cockpit. I can neither run away and I can't fight my copilot. It's just not appropriate. So what we have to do is learn how to to deal with those emotions, because they are real. And they are real because of chemicals that are dumping in our brain, and they're real because of chemicals that are dumping in our brain, and so, with practice, we learn to do that. Now, unfortunately, that means that some pilots get really, really good at compartmentalizing and they can compartmentalize their family lives, their personal lives, to their detriment. So we have to learn that what's appropriate in the cockpit might not be always appropriate on the ground and dealing with others.
Speaker 1:I appreciate you saying that because I think also is like men, there's a certain level of, like emotional awareness we can just put. You know it's the very sort of soldier, warrior, you know archetype, where, and by an aviator too, it's like well, and that, that doesn't. That doesn't apply in a lot of relationships and a marriage and being a father, you know those things that are very quintessential for being in touch with that softer, you know more empathetic side, and I think it's it's important to recognize that, as it is pilots you know, no matter who you are, because it it really says that like, okay, I can learn a lot, I can be a great pilot, but there's still other things outside of that that I can work on that make me a human being in totality.
Speaker 2:And I want to touch you just kind of touched on the masculine side of things. When I was growing up, there were no female commercial airline pilots. That's been within my lifetime. And now a large number of the students that we fly with at United Aviate look different than the pilots that I saw walking down the aisle when I was growing up. And, interestingly, the rules don't discriminate. It doesn't matter who you are. You still need to be able to handle that emergency. Everything that we have just talked about about being prepared and responsibility and preparation applies, and those are the discriminators of who's going to be good or bad, and it's interesting. The biggest difference is what we sort of began talking about is the attitude and how bad you want it and what you're willing to put into it. That's what you'll get back.
Speaker 1:Randy, thank you so much for such a good conversation. I mean, first of all, I can't wait to get upside down in a plane with you and just become a better pilot. When that does happen and I definitely am going to, you know, take your guys' courses and be out there at some point. But really, you know, it was inspiring to listen to you on that podcast interview and I would immediately I have to get this gentleman on my show and I just want to say thank you so much for for coming on and sharing, you know, bits of yourself, not only as an aviator but as a as a person. Yeah, you know, just truly awesome to be able to speak to you and, you know, again, congrats on all your accomplishments and all the people that you've kept safe out there through your work.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, nico. It's been a great talking to you and I appreciate, you know, having an opportunity to to share the work that we're doing and what people can do to be safer aviators, cause, like I said, we help pilots bring everyone home safely.
Speaker 1:And if people are listening to their pilots, where can they go to find out more about what you do and the organization you're with?
Speaker 2:APS training, which stands for aviation performance solutions, but APSiningcom is our website and I think people would really enjoy looking at the aircraft that we fly. There's a wealth of information that we certainly didn't have time to talk about here, but a lot of it is really helpful free information for pilots.
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