On Friday I went up to Concord, New Hampshire for my Helicopter ATP and CFII checkrides with the FAA’s designated examiner, Joe Brigham. The Airline Transport Pilot certificate, which I already have for airplanes, is required for the captain of a huge helicopter used in scheduled air carrier service, and tests one’s ability to fly precisely solely by reference to instruments. The CFII enables one to teach helicopter instrument students, a much calmer environment than teaching primary helicopter students.
I had prepared for the checkride by practicing instrument flying while wearing a hood, to simulated cloudy weather, and doing some moderately crazy maneuvers such as autorotations under the hood (simulating an engine failure in the clouds).
After 3.7 hours of flying, mostly under the hood, I was feeling moderately heroic. Joe had chosen the New England airport with the bumpiest weather that day, winds gusting to 26 knots over the nearby hills and mountains. There were 1000 foot-per-minute updrafts and downdrafts at times. Somehow I didn’t manage to scare Joe too badly, exceed any aircraft limitations, or wander outside of the ATP standards (+/- 50′ of altitude), so I came back with two temporary certificates in my wallet.
Once back at Hanscom Field, I decided to linger and prepare the helicopter for a friend who would be doing a night flight. I had removed the left seat controls for the solo flight back from New Hampshire and was reinstalling them when a retaining pin for the cyclic handle slipped out of my hand, fell on the floor, and rolled into a hole behind the left seat’s right antitorque pedal (something that had never happened to me in five years of flying helicopters). Now the dual cyclic could not be installed and who knew whether the loose pin in the belly would interfere with anything critical. I grounded the helicopter, reflecting on Dirk Laukien’s observation that “pilots are notoriously stupid.” Then I noticed that the Gulfstream G-IV with which we share a hangar had its door open. I found Duane, the mechanic who lives with the Gulfstream, and asked him if he could think of any clever way to get the pin out. Duane brought out a magnet on a stalk and tested it with the pin from our other R44 to confirm that the pin would stick to the magnet. Then he slid the stalk into the hole behind the rudder pedal and came back up with the pin seconds later.
I’ve added myself to our helicopter instrument rating page. I probably should ground myself from monkeying with the removable controls, though…
philg… Amazing parallels between your checkride(s) and the medical-coverage topic where you said… “Unless we can somehow revoke the laws of supply and demand, we’ll probably have to spend a dramatically higher percentage of GDP if we want the currently uninsured to enjoy comprehensive medical care.”
A reply to that was a discussion of the role of the AMA (pro/con). My view of the AMA is that they do-indeed control supply, via limiting the number of med-schools that can be created, and then by “tightening the standards” to absurd levels.
Ha! But when it came to your checkride(s) the same factors evolved, with no “negative comments” from you.
3.7 hours of (exam) flight time? Get real! Altitude limits on a bumpy/gusty day of +/- 50-feet? Get real! I shudder to think how long the oral was.
Now, the correlation…
If you thought your check-ride(s) “OK” then you have no beef over the shortage of doctors. Endless medical “tightening of standards” until a shortage occurs.
Helo-ATP/CFII endless “tightening of standards” until a shortage occurs.
So, IMO the real question is “in training, how much of the schooling is directly-applicable to the real world”. If we want more ATP’s/MD’s we’ll have to solve that question first. Then, for anyone who wants to open a school, “meet real-world standards, open the school”.
For the question of med-schools, as long as the AMA controls the number of med-schools (they effectively do) then the MD shortage is self-induced.
For fliers, FAA standards (not only of “performance” but of “pass rates” etc) limits their numbers.
I understand my above dialog “not perfect”. I’m supposing there’s a PhD thesis in there somewhere…
Paul P.
Paul: Each checkride was 1.4 hours, which does not strike me as excessively long. Remember that the standards require a minimum of three instrument approaches. You also need to start up and shut down the helicopter. The rest of the 3.7 hours was spent getting from Bedford, MA to Concord, NH and back.
The FAA’s standards do not account for gusts and bumps, but they allow the examiner some flexibility and the examiner need not fail an applicant unless he or she is “consistently” outside the standards and/or does not notice or try to correct deviations caused by the bumps.
A 1.4-hour checkride does not strike me as excessive for an ATP. You’re talking about someone who is going to be pilot-in-command of a $20 million Sikorsky S-92 with 19 passengers on board. (And there is in fact no shortage of helicopter ATPs; there about 3000 in the U.S. and we probably don’t need that many.) It is not difficult to take the knowledge test for the ATP. You can get the study guide from Amazon.com and schedule a test at your convenience in almost any flight school with a Windows PC. You can call up the local FAA office and ride with them for free or get the name of a designated examiner who will charge you a few hundred dollars. They have to give you someone within a couple of weeks of your request.
As for the AMA, they are not limiting the number of doctors by imposing difficult testing requirements. Quite the contrary, the best and most knowledgeable doctor in the world could not come over to the U.S. from England or France, pass a test, and be able to practice. He or she would have to surmount quite a few immigration hurdles and repeat a multi-year residency (if one were available).
OK, points well taken (I mis-read the flight-time/checks), but just 2 rebuts:
Regarding the Sikorsky S-92, your ATP does not “allow you to fly it”. Your Type Rating (or proficiency-check) allows you to fly it. Your ATP allows (with a Type/Proficiency) to work for an air-carrier.
Regarding the AMA, I did not mean tests for *doctors* but the standards for opening a new Med School. Nearly impossible. One would think more med-schools would be beneficial to the US (unless I am missing something, which is certainly possible).
At the risk of crucifying myself on Easter Sunday, here’s a point of research: My MD buddy (in a focus group of like-minded MD-buddies) tracks “med school reality”.
One of their (to them “horrifying”) data points is the relationship of hot-looking female MD’s to “time actually spend practicing medicine”. Now, let me preface this: These guys are smart, have done their homework. Credible. Here’s the number:
SIX MONTHS. Then they become arm-candy to the worlds elite, “raising the perfect family”. This sub-group is statistically significant. A med-school slot for 6 months of practice, applied to a statistically-significant (sized) group? Uh-oh.
Please: I don’t mean to start a firestorm here. But I’ve known these MD’s for (literally) 20+ years (we met when they were the flight surgeons in my Reserve fighter squadron). I’m just “passing info”.
P.
The idea that making it easier to become a doctor will improve healthcare access or lower prices is hard for me to understand. First, it’s not hard to get into medical school if one is willing to do it, there are any number of options including offshore schools, even a for-profit US medical school (google Rocky Mountain Vista medical school). If you have a B average or so, you’re in. Second, docs don’t set prices, the government does. I could charge $5000 for a chest x-ray, but when I send a bill to the insurance company, they’ll look up what medicare pays (maybe $20) and send me that amount. Third, there’s lots and lots of lawyers but it’s still not cheap for me to hire one.
32 Papa: Since you can’t understand how increasing the supply of doctors would lower price or improve access, let’s look at a couple of extreme cases. Suppose that the U.S. had only one medical doctor for 300 million people. Access would be quite limited, perhaps to 20 people per day or 7,000 per year. Our one doctor would be able to charge quite a bit as there would be quite a few Americans wanting to be in this lucky group of 7,000. Our single doctor could refuse to accept Medicare’s reimbursement and instead establish a price of, say, $1 million per visit (we’re assuming now that people don’t have the option of going to a foreign country to get treatment at a lower cost).
Consider on the other hand the case where 100 percent of Americans have an MD and medical training. There would be no waiting time to see a doctor, since a patient could look at himself in the mirror, holler downstairs to his wife, or ask his children or parents to assist him. Given the medical resources available in the average household, it is unlikely that our patient would be willing to pay $1 million to see a doctor outside of the household.
Going from 1 doctor to 300 million doctors will increase supply and reduce prices. The same reasoning can be applied when going from, say, 1 million doctors, to 1 million and 1 doctor (though the effect on prices will not be as large).
Now to the point of what you accomplished. Congratulations! Well done!
I have been flying since 1959 and worked for an airline for 25 years. All those check rides were great (after they were done). Getting ready for them was always a bit scary. I am pleased to see expose yourself to greater and greater challenges. Keep up the good work!