Letters: Stick-and-rudder gap
Re “Crash puts spotlight on foreign pilots,” July 28
The problem of pilots lacking stick-and-rudder skills isn’t just a foreign one. Examples of pilot error abound: the crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 in Buffalo, N.Y., in 2009, Air France Flight 447’s crash into the Atlantic in 2010 and Asiana Airline’s crash in San Francisco.
In those cases, the evidence suggested that the aircrews lacked the ability to feel how the airplane was flying. In contrast, pilot Chesley Sullenberger’s dead-stick ditching of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River is an example of competence produced by high-quality training.
Autopilot and warning systems have their place, but aircraft still need skilled hands at the controls. Early training should include stalls, spins, acrobatics, unusual positions and other essentials that military pilot training does right.
Dundas I. Flaherty
Malibu
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