The Dynamic Air Sector

Matt Vance, PhD, a professional pilot faculty member at Oklahoma State University, had delegates thinking out of the box when he offered some forward-leaning perspectives during his Undeniable Emerging Trends in Commercial Aviation presentation.

Backing up his assertion that the presentation title is “bold”, he first pointed out three macro-level trends in commercial aviation: automation maturation; basic airmanship erosion in three underpinning competencies – aviate, navigate and communicate; and the imperative of developing soft skills.

In a theme that is resonating well across WATS 2021 presentations, the engineer by training, and former naval flight officer then asked the question: Does airmanship matter? He provided a resounding “Yes!” by pointing to the role of adroit, competent pilots to mitigate and minimize disaster in a number of aviation incidents through the recent decades, including the 1988 Aloha Flight 243 explosion and decompression and the 2009 US Air Flight 1543 landing on the Hudson River, among others.

Vance also noted the merging importance of soft skills, crew resource management and decision making, and others, in the aviation enterprise. “These are the harder skills” he offered and noted the community needs to concurrently do a better job at recognizing and eliminating or reducing telltale signs of “hazardous skills” (macho image, resignation, anti-authority, invulnerability and impulsivity) among flight crews. On this theme, he further told the session’s delegates, “soft skills continue to rise in value.”

In what should be an attention-getter for collegiate training enterprises, the academic leader offered some very challenging questions/issues for institutions’ internal reflection. These included: it does not need to take four years to graduate from a university flight program; there is a potential imbalance between “steam” vs. “glass”; are we truly teaching prospective pilots a respect for maintenance and there is a disproportionate cost/benefit outcome in aviation academic programs.

During the Q&A session, a delegate who noted Vance’s earlier statement that UASs are not going away and, are, in fact, proliferating through the lower tiers of the airspace, asked how civil pilot training will evolve. Vance responded that the community should not “devalue getting into the atmosphere. This is an investment in building motor skills. This is the ultimate experience. Simulators can’t replace this experience.”