Views on Airline Training Are Hit

Congratulations on the piece in your March 31 section about tougher standards for pilots. I agree with LeVier 100%. Some of the new pilots don’t have emergency flight training and could use some of this kind of training.

I was a Navy flight instructor during World War II. The Navy has the toughest primary training course of all. The course has to be tough because every student is a potential carrier pilot who must be able to land a fighter plane on the pitching, yawing, rolling deck of an aircraft carrier. Every student had to master emergency landings, spins, stalls and aerobatics. We always called a carrier landing a “controlled crash.” They still do. Fortunately, I retired from the Navy as a commander without an accident of any kind. I have noticed since the end of World War II that kids I ride with have had none of the kind of training I received in the Navy. They can fly straight and level, turn with accuracy and land the same. But the second they encounter an emergency, their life is at stake. And I wonder, as LeVier does, how many of these young pilots have filtered into the commercial airline jobs as captains or co-pilots?

LES SHOLTY

Los Angeles