Aviators Need More Flight Time

Mandates from the Secretaries of Defense and the Navy to cut pilot mishaps are achievable only if training actually involves flying.

Naval aviators on active duty will instantly recognize a graph of historic aviation mishap rates often publicized by the Naval Safety Center. From a high of 55 Class A mishaps per 100,000 flight hours in 1953, the rate has steadily declined to 2.14 in 2004.1 Even so, 28 naval aircraft were destroyed in fiscal year 2004 at a cost of $1.25 billion and a loss of 19 lives (see Figure I).2

That may sound like an exorbitant price to pay. Certainly if it were possible to crash less and kill fewer aviators without affecting readiness, a lower mishap rate would be desirable. Several recent safety initiatives hope to lower that rate. But they seem unlikely to have the intended effect.

Aviation safety is not a product unto itself. Accident rates are byproducts of other factors within naval aviation. Any attempt to create safety for its own sake necessarily has an impact on flight operations, either by increasing costs or depleting readiness. Naval aviation's leaders should not be so enthusiastic about "better" accident rates and discard capabilities made possible by rates that are "good enough." One cannot, for instance, expect a pilot to strafe accurately in combat if he or she has never practiced the art (with attendant risks) in peacetime. Recent proposals disregard that truth and threaten to bankrupt naval aviation in pursuit of an unrealistic goal.

Orders from the Top

In 2003, then-secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared that "[w]orld-class organizations do not tolerate preventable accidents" and challenged the services to reduce mishaps by "at least 50 percent" in two years.3 secretary of the Navy Donald C. Winter recently renewed that objective by calling for a 75 percent cut in naval mishaps.4 Unfortunately, the problem cannot be solved by simply issuing an AINav message. The closer to zero one wishes to force the mishap rate, the more expensive the undertaking becomes. Figure 2 shows the data from Figure 1 with a trend line added. The equation that defines the trend line is asymptotic; it approaches, but never reaches, zero as it is extrapolated to infinity.5 Although this does not mean it is mathematically impossible to meet the goals set by the Navy and Defense secretaries, it does suggest that attaining them will be extravagantly expensive.

By using past successes to predict future performance, those mandating lower mishap rates essentially said, "We cut the mishap rate by 50 percent once; we can do it again!" But perpetually cutting anything in half rapidly becomes impractical. Mishap numbers are no exception.

The problem with Figure 1 lies in the way its X axis is labeled. Because the Safety Center plots mishap rates against the years in which they were recorded, it is not wrong to show time as the abscissa, but it is misleading. Mishap rates did not decline because of the mere passage of time; they fell because the Navy invested money in systems or practices that enhanced safety. It cost money to outfit straight-deck carriers with angle decks. But in the 1950s, shipyard modifications were comparatively cheap and easy, and the additional cost of building new ships with angle (instead of straight) decks was negligible. The reason for the improvement would be obvious to anyone watching straight-deck flight operations: a landing aircraft must either catch an arresting wire or crash into a barrier rigged to protect planes already on deck. Angle decks allow a plane that has missed the wires to go safely around for another try.

In the 1960s replacement air groups (RAGs) were established to train newly winged aviators in their aircraft prior to Fleet service. Previously, neophytes reported directly to their Fleet squadrons to fly new planes without any formal training. RAGs introduced standardized syllabi to familiarize novices with the handling foibles peculiar to a given aircraft and devoted much academic attention to increasingly complex aircraft and weapon systems. RAGs, too, cost money-more than shipyard modifications-with costs that continue to the present day. They also contributed to a lower accident rate, though not as much as the angle deck.

Figures 1 and 2 would be more useful as guides to policy if their X axes were labeled in terms of dollars spent. The precipitous early decline in accident rates, made possible by eliminating cheaply and easily avoidable mishaps in the 1950s and 1960s, practically bottomed out in later years. While it is still possible to lower the rate, an influx of constantvalue dollars will have exponentially less effect, to the point that the cost of implementing the most recent mishap-reduction goals could easily prove prohibitively expensive. Before spending that money, it may be helpful to compare the Navy's mishap rate against another yardstick.

Civil vs. Naval

Like Navy pilots, civil pilots show a long, slightly declining trend, with a fatal accident rate in 2001 of 1.27 per 100,000 flight hours.6 But the flying that produces these two similar statistics is not at all equivalent. Civil pilots fly from point A to point B at low speeds and crash roughly once every 76,000 flight hours. Naval aviators fly from point A to point B at 200 feet and 500 knots. They load high explosives onto their jets several tons at a time, and destroy ground targets with them. They deliberately connect their airplanes to others, in flight. They test aerial missiles. Exercises might find four jet fighters violently maneuvering at 300 knots. And Navy flyers land on the pitching decks of aircraft carriers, in darkness and poor weather. Yet they crash only once every 47,000 hours, half again as often as civilians. However deplorable the loss of 28 aircraft per year might be, under the circumstances it is hardly an unreasonably high loss rate.

In the civilian fleet, 87 percent of fatal accidents occur as the result of some human error, with 95 percent of those because of pilot error.7 The pilots who make fatal errors are usually the inexperienced ones: those with low total flight time and those who (regardless of total time) have logged little time in the type of aircraft flown in the mishap.8 (See Figures 3 and 4 on page 57.)

Granted, it takes a long time for a private pilot to amass, at his own expense, 1,000 hours of flight experience. Many never do, and it should come as no surprise that, with 51 percent of all pilots with accidents holding a private certificate (or less), many of them have low flight time." But that is just the point. More accidents happen to inexperienced pilots. The more one flies, the less likely one is to crash. To prevent accidents, pilots should fly often.

The statistics for more experienced civilian aviators provide further insight.10 Private pilots flying personal flights have the highest fatal accident rate. Beginners, however, are not involved in corporate flights or aerial application; such businesses hire only experienced pilots and consequently post much lower accident rates.

Executive-jet accident rates are almost negligible. Expensive, state-of-the-art business jets are flown by two experienced pilots on low-risk missions to transport passengers to a destination as efficiently as possible. The nearest naval equivalents are logistics support squadrons flying aircraft such as the C-9, C-20, or C-40, for which the mishap rate is also virtually nil.11

Crop-dusters, on the other hand, do their business ten feet above the ground, close to trees and power lines. They carry large payloads of noxious chemicals, and some spray at night. There is no lavish corporate maintenance for sprayers, whose aircraft typically receive only the minimum maintenance and equipment required to sustain airworthiness. A crop-duster is the closest civilian approximation to single-seat jets or helicopters, which have the highest accident rates in naval service.12

So why do crop-dusters crash less often than naval aircraft? Is it because agricultural pilots typically have thousands of hours of flight experience, much of it in the make and model of aircraft flown? Is it because they continue to accrue experience, regularly flying several hundred hours a season, year after year? Is it because they do not change jobs every 30 months and abandon their flight duties for years at a time?

Faddish or Admistrivial Duties

The same cannot be said of naval aviators. They have numerous non-flying duties-many important, some faddish or administrivial. They leave the cockpit for tours on joint or flag staffs, only to be thrust back into important flight-leadership billets with minimal refresher training. Perhaps worst of all, naval aviators' training is rigidly micromanaged by a system that increasingly views actual flight as an unacceptably hazardous activity that must be minimized to any extent practicable.

The Navy recently bought a new suite of F/A-18 flight simulators for the express purpose of flying the actual airplanes less.13 The Fleet Response Plan, a readiness panacea, lowered yearly flight-time allocations by 13 percent shortly after Operation Enduring Freedom began.14 Is it any wonder accident rates should remain stagnant when rusty aviators struggle to maintain basic proficiency? If there is anything surprising about today's mishap numbers, it is that they are no higher than they are.

Although the Secretary of the Navy did not (at least publicly) explain how his call for safety should rank against other important Navy priorities, he did set a zero-mishap goal.15 This is easily achieved, by decommissioning all naval aircraft! Billions of dollars of penny-wise, pound-foolish savings could be realized by not fueling, arming, and maintaining aircraft, by not paying the personnel who service them, and so forth. With more money perceived to be on the way, perhaps accident reduction need not be achieved at the expense of combat capability. Non-pitching aircraft carrier decks and uncrashable aircraft might be developed were the Navy to invest, in constant dollars, an amount equivalent to everything spent on safety since 1973.

The Holy Safety Grail

The answer certainly lies somewhere between these two ludicrous extremes. Assuming that the Sea Services are not to abandon their duties in search of the holy safety grail, a more balanced approach is in order. The Navy should invest in improving the skills of those humans whose errors have been a factor in 80 percent of all mishaps over the last 50 years.16

In theory at least that is how the Navy plans to attack the problem. But according to the Safety Center's Web site, the Secretary's directive will be met with a full slate of "culture workshops," "intrusive leadership," and the like.17 The result will be more administrivia that must be crammed into already busy schedules. Safety stand-downs were once ordered as complete stops to non-essential flying following unusual spikes in accident rates. Now they have degenerated into three-hour circuses scheduled, with monotonous regularity, intra-fly-day. When not actually mandated, they are de rigueur: after Christmas leave, before workups, before cruise, after cruise. They are cheap; they are easy tor squadrons to schedule; they are wholly ineffective.

Instead, the Navy ought to consider a course that has thus far been anathema: increasing flight-hour allocations to allow air crews-particularly junior air crews-to fly more often. Although such a simple expedient will not eliminate 75 percent of all mishaps in the next year or two, Figure 1 demonstrates that nothing but extreme measures will. In the absence of dedicated funding, this approach has the added advantage of being capable of incorporation in any quantity as money becomes available. Any small efficiency-an administrative budget cut a percent or two here, an aide cut from a flag staff there-can be redirected to jet-fuel budgets at any time.

Critics will argue that the Navy cannot afford any more flight time. Flights cost money; though an exact cost is highly subjective, a rough cost of $8.000 per flight hour seems generally accepted tor the F/A-18.18 To fly aircraft more sends them to the bone-yard sooner, as their lives are limited by how much metal fatigue they can absorb; Hornets and Super Hornets must be struck after 6,000 flight hours.

This narrow view is engendered by the Navy's "pots of money" budgeting. Those in charge of the flight hour "pot" see any reduction in hours flown as a cost savings, even if the savings contribute to accidents costing far more. Viewed in that light, it quickly becomes apparent that the Navy cannot afford not to fly more. At eight grand an hour, the Navy can more easily afford to fly a Super Hornet 9,000 flight hours (half again its lifetime) than crash it once.19

More Flying Needed

In addition to flying more in the Fleet, junior aviators should fly more when they fly cheaper aircraft. The elimination of the T-2C and the intermediate phase of jet pilot training cut some 50 flight hours from the flight school syllabus. Replacement pilots now are asked to fly more complex aircraft with less training than ever. To recoup the lost flight experience, T-45 jet students should fly more before reporting to the RAG. The cost of a single Super Hornet crash averted would allow the Navy to fuel a T-45 for 62,500 flight hours, enough to train 400 jet pilots-two years' output for Training Wing Two.20 Does naval leadership worry that so much extra flight training might cause students to crash more $32 million T-45s? No problem; let them fly more in primary, where the fuel burned by 240,000 hours in the T-34 would not equal the price of one T-45.21

Those who argue for less flight time claim it is profligately spent in the pursuit of personal goals. While such waste was once perhaps widespread, it is now the exception, not the rule. Squadron skippers must be given the responsibility and flexibility to spend additional money wisely. This is an easy task in a Navy where no one gets enough experience to be proficient at the myriad missions assigned to multi-role air crews. Three recent midair collisions underscore this fact. The accidents, which cost the Navy six F/A-18s and six air crew members, would have easily been avoided by pilots experienced in dogfighting, a skill once practiced daily. In today's Navy, however, a young pilot will likely see only ten practice dogfight missions in three years in the Fleet.

The exceptions to the smart spending rule are easily spotted; a captain trying to rack up his 1,000th trap is not the same as a novice getting a couple of extra practice landings. With more time to fly, squadrons can teach important lessons that would otherwise go unlearned. It would be better, for instance, to learn short-field landing techniques on a well-planned flight to a civilian airport than on an unplanned bad-weather divert to an unfamiliar field.

What's Acceptable?

It is possible that naval leadership is reluctant to declare current mishap rates acceptable because a certain number of mishaps must therefore be acceptable, while other mishaps (in excess of the acceptable rate) must therefore be unacceptable. How is one to know the difference? This is a hollow argument. As any midshipman knows, an officer of the Navy "should be quick and unfailing to distinguish error from malice, thoughtlessness from incompetence, and well-meant shortcomings from heedless or stupid blunder," which is exactly the role of the Field Naval Aviator Evaluation Board convened after every mishap.

As a RAG flight instructor, I saw roughly 100 students move on to the Fleet. Three were subsequently involved in Class A mishaps. All three were found to have made errors that contributed to the mishaps. But that is not to say they made "heedless or stupid blunders;" all three crashed when outside circumstances such as poor weather or malfunctions left less margin for error than normal. All three were subsequently returned to flight status by senior naval aviators who consciously decided that their mishaps were acceptable.

Most Hornet pilots would look at the circumstances and say to themselves, "I would never have done that." A little hubris aside, those pilots are probably right. They would not have erred because they (unlike the pilots who actually did crash) knew better, having flown thousands of hours in the F/A-18. The Navy ought to try investing in its junior pilots the way it invested in its more senior ones; with such a program readiness can only improve, and the safe bet is that accident rates will continue to decline.

Safety costs money. This is another lesson taught by the civilian community. Experimental aircraft owners accept the risks of flying with new technology and unproved equipment in exchange for increased performance and lower cost. They also crash four times as often as those flying expensive FAA-certified aircraft, whose designers accept mediocre performance in exchange for inherent safety.22

Naval leadership is understandably concerned with the number of aircraft lost in avoidable mishaps. But those who lament the fact that accident attrition greatly outpaces combat attrition lack historical perspective. Such has been the case since at least the Korean War. Mishaps that destroyed 776 naval aircraft in 1954 now destroy 28. In contrast, combat attrition accounted for only 541 aircraft in three years in Korea and has fallen to virtually nil today.23 The Navy should be so lucky in every conflict.

Secretary Winter's challenge is an unfunded mandate. The Navy needs to find a way to work toward his goal without compromising readiness. More flight time constitutes a logical first step, all the more so because the benefits extend to every pay grade within a squadron. Plane captains, mechanics, airframers, and ordnancemen all have more work to do so junior Sailors can earn their qualifications faster while petty officers maintain their skills.

Inexperienced and rusty pilots are prone to mistakes. The Navy that wishes to avoid mistakes would be well-advised to ensure that its aviators remain in practice.