The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Are Laid Off Pilots Getting "rusty"?

Episode Date: February 4, 2021

A recent LA Times report investigates a number of "incidents" that have aviation experts concerned about how pilots who've been laid off because of Covid are getting "rusty" and suggest this is a safety issue.  Just one of the items on this week's potpourri episode ... including a pandemic boom in snowmobile use!

Hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, and you are just moments away from today's episode of The Bridge, where we're going to ask this question today. Do pilots get rusty waiting months to fly? And hello again, Peter Mansbridge here, and this is a different kind of day. Thursdays, they've always been different when we've been doing this podcast for more than a year or so now. And one of the reasons it's different is we call it the potpourri day, where I kind of catch up on a lot of things I've been seeing over the last days, sometimes the last weeks. Now, those of you who have been listening to The Bridge on the podcast, you know that.

And I've found over time that a lot of you are fascinated by these days because there's all kinds of stuff. It's not trivia. It's kind of a step above trivia, but it's all interesting. So those of you who are just joining this week through the magic of Sirius XM

channel 167 Canada Talks and we love being with Sirius now it's been a great opportunity for us this will be new to you so um so listen in because I think you'll what we try to do is touch on any number of things that are a COVID related but also also just different stories. So let me start off with this one. And to do this one, I get the opportunity of telling an anecdote from my career. And I've also found over time that some of you enjoy that. So this goes back a ways. This goes back to the fall of 1968. It was a time when I was working for Transair, an airline in northern Manitoba. And we were a very busy airline. We did a lot of smaller flights, you know, DC-3s, DC-4s. and mainly when we weren't moving passengers on domestic routes in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Northwestern Ontario, we were moving freight and a lot of it, especially

into the Arctic and the High Arctic. So here's my story about this time in the fall of 1968. When you look at the big picture, what was happening in the world at that time, well, that was the height for the United States of the Vietnam War and the protests against the Vietnam War. There were hundreds of thousands of young American kids fighting in Vietnam. Now, what's this got to do with Churchill? Well, here's what's this got to do with Churchill? Well, here's what it's got to do with Churchill.

They had to supply armaments to the forces that were fighting in Vietnam. They also had to move young recruits to the front. And often when the movements were from the U.S. East Coast to Vietnam, the flights they took, believe it or not, were through Canada. They'd fly from the East Coast of the U.S., you know, Dover, Delaware, a few other places, to Churchill, then to Alaska, then to Vietnam. It was a long route. And the plane of choice in the fall of 1968

was one of the biggest aircraft in the world at that time, the C-141 Starlifter. So it started coming into Churchill in the fall of 68. And it was usually, you know, once a week we'd see a C-141 starlifter, sometimes more frequently than that. And what was the load? Sometimes it was personnel, young Army recruits, U.S. Army. Sometimes it was people. But more often than not, U.S. Army.

Sometimes it was people. But more often than not, it was freight. And that freight was everything from, you know, armaments for various types of aircraft that were flying sorties in Vietnam. You know, bullets, armaments, you name it. And those planes would come in, land in Churchill, basically to refuel. So they weren't there long, you know, an hour, two hours, that was about it. And it was a big deal to see this plane come in.

I mean, Churchill was a busy airport, built primarily by the U.S. Air Force in the 50s and early 60s. It had one of the longest runways in Canada. It could handle anything. I think it was even eventually was one of the landing spots for the shuttle, if it had been an emergency situation. Anyway, at that time, the C-141 could land in Churchill, and it was a special day whenever that would happen because all of us kind of airplane nuts would come out to watch it.

And because I worked at the airport, I had a front row seat. Because the plane would taxi up right in front of our building where we would gas it up. We had the contract for refueling it, so that was worth a few bucks to Transair. So this story I'm going to tell you happened in the week before Christmas of 1968. We got word a C-141 was coming in. Sure enough, there it was in the sky, landed, taxied towards our hangar. And when it got off the taxiway and into kind of the apron in front of our hangar, it paused while it let out a couple of the crew members who were going to marshal in the plane.

You know, those guys who kind of stand there with flashlights and things. Pointing for those in the cockpit, the direction they should be going. To park in front of the hangar to eventually gas up. So huge plane, right? Dicey situation. It was December, so it was not just icy, it was a little bit icy. It was cold. It's Churchill, after all, on Hudson Bay.

So I'm standing there watching all this. I'm standing at the steps of our hangar where people are coming in and out, and I'm watching all this, and it's, you know, it's quite something. So the plane starts to maneuver around to park itself in the appropriate position, and that basically meant it had to swing around. So it's got a huge wingspan, right? I think it was 50 meters, 49, 50 meters. So what's that? Well, you know, kind of roughly half the length of a football field. That's a big plane. So it's maneuvering itself around. The guys on the ground are, you know, waving their flashlights or markers. And those in the cockpit, the pilots,

are doing what they do to maneuver the plane into the right position. Well, I'm watching this, and the guy beside me is watching this, and we notice, yikes, that's going to be really close to the hangar. And we figure, well, yeah, but they must know what they're doing. And then suddenly the marshals,

the guys with the sticks, seem to be waving a little more frantically than they had been in the past. And then, boom. The wingtip hits the hangar.

This is not a good moment. Now, first of all, it's a dangerous moment. Anything could have happened as a result of that. But it didn't other than damage to the wingtip. So everything comes to a standstill. The plane stops, the engines are shut down, the cockpit crew, the captain and the other pilots who are on board, because that plane carries, you know, like three or five pilots at a time because they're long trips and,

you know, some of them sleep at certain points. Anyway, they all come out to survey the damage. And the person who had been in control, the captain, looked devastated at what had happened. Here you've got this, you know, multi-million dollar aircraft filled with, in this case, armaments to head to Vietnam. And it's been crippled. Now, when you look at it from standing there, you go, well, it's not a big deal. It's a big deal because the airframe is now being changed as a result of the damage to the wingtip.

So eventually he comes in to our hangar and he asks if he can use the phone. And sure enough, we set him up. I think I set him up with the phone in the office at the back of our kind of counter space. And he phones his headquarters to explain what happened. And as I said, he looked shell-shocked. He was kind of white in the face explaining this. Anyway, short story, they had to send another plane up with mechanics who could fix the situation enough that they could find it to be airworthy. But that second plane also then, they moved the load over to the second plane, and it went off to Vietnam. This plane came back. The pilot was grounded, and they went into an investigation.

Now, what was the conclusion? The conclusion was that this pilot, the captain, had been off for a couple of months beforehand. I can't remember what the details were. He'd been hurt or he was sick or something. But anyway, he'd been off for a bit. And part of the conclusion on this was that he was a bit rusty. Should have known the sequencing better. Should have understood the situation better. Didn't because he was rusty. He'd been off work for a bit. And I think his,

I'm not sure what happened to him. I tried to keep up a writing relationship with him. I got all the pictures, everything that had been taken by people who were surrounding that area and sent them down to him so he'd have something to argue his case. But we kind of lost track of each other over the years. Anyway, why am I telling you this story? This is why I'm telling you this story.

Because there was a piece in the Los Angeles Times the last week or so that's got a few people in the airline business talking. The headline is, airline pilots making in-flight errors say they're rusty because of the pandemic. And this is how the story starts. Hugo Martin writes it for the LA Times. A pilot preparing to pull a passenger jet away from an airport gate forgot to disengage the parking brake, damaging a part of a towing vehicle that was trying to pull the plane to the runway.

Another pilot had so much trouble landing a passenger jet on a windy day that it took three tries before the plane touched down successfully. In another incident, the first officer forgot to turn on the anti-icing mechanism that ensures the altitude and airspeed sensors on the outside of the plane are not blocked by ice. Luckily for the passengers, the plane completed its flight without problems. Now, one of the officers talked to for this article said, listen, you know, I hadn't flown in a few months. I was rusty.

I felt that my recollection was strong enough, but in reality, I should have taken some time to review things, like the standard operating procedures. Now, listen, I, you know, I love the airline business, and I think any of you who've listened to me over the years know that, but let me just say a couple of things about that, and I, you know, I've managed to connect with, well, a couple of pilots who I know, and I've you know I've I've managed to connect with uh well a couple of pilots who I know and who connected with me over time and they think this story is a on the one hand it's fair in the sense that listen lots of pilots hundreds of them have been laid off or being furloughed and are waiting to go back to work and as a result, you know, they're not flying every day.

But the arguments they also make are, listen, it's not like you take six months off and check in, pick up the keys to your Boeing or Airbus and then, you know, fill it up with passengers and take off without having done anything. You get up to speed. And many of them are trying to do that all the time anyway through simulators, either private simulators or with their company. And the simulators are a big part of being prepared all the time for flying and going through testing and check pilots, overseeing what you're doing. And when you actually look at some of these things, you know, okay, the guy forgot to disengage the parking brake. Bad. Okay, you don't want to do that. But it happens, right? Unfortunately,

it happens. And that Unfortunately, it happens, and that's when you're not on top of your game. The pilot who had trouble landing the plane three times in windy conditions, that happens. And, hey, I would much prefer the pilot did a go-around, which is what happened here. In other words, you know, they're trying to come in to land and it's too windy and they're getting buffeted around, so they slam on full power, lift the nose, they retract the gear, they go up and they do another circuit of the airport and get back into a landing position or guided down by air traffic control. I don't know whether that's – I've flown a lot over my time, many, many dozens, hundreds of flights,

and I've been in situations where that's happened more than a few times. It happens. And thank God the pilots know what to do when it is like that. The anti-icing one, that's bad. You know, we all know too many stories, too much history in the airline business about accidents that have happened as a result of planes not being properly de-iced

for going through conditions that build up ice on the wings. And, you know, we talked about this little, you know, damage to a wing tip, you know, we talked about this little, you know, damage to a wing tip, you know, changing the nature of the airframe on an aircraft. Icing really changes things. And suddenly you're not flying what you thought you were flying because everything's changed in the dynamics of the plane.

Anyway, there are, this article goes on, you can find it in the LA Times library, but all I would say is, A, it's important, obviously, that the airlines ensure their crews, when they do get back to work, and that's not necessarily anytime soon yet, that they're trained and retrained and tested and retested. And as far as I can see, certainly in the airlines,

the majority of us as Canadians fly, they do. They do exactly that. They could use a little help, and I think they got a little bit last week in terms of their negotiations with government to try and help the airlines, which have been just absolutely hammered by the pandemic, with, as I said, hundreds, thousands of people out of work. Here's a couple of other airline-related stories that I'll quickly go through. CNBC is reporting that low-cost airlines may be better positioned for the challenges of recovery, of coming back in.

Analysts say more carriers will likely go bust this year, and pre-pandemic demand won't be returning anytime soon, but there could be one bright spot. Low-cost airlines that mostly fly domestic routes could recover more quickly than their full-service counterparts, that is, if they haven't gone out of business yet. 48 airlines failed in 2020. 48 airlines. That's a lot of planes stacked up in the desert airfields in Arizona and New Mexico and elsewhere, including some Air Canada planes that are stored down there

because it's better to store them in that kind of weather than anywhere we can put up with. That's interesting to know. Low-cost airlines may be the ones that somehow get out of this mess. And here's the last one. This was in Forbes magazine magazine and i like this story because it also affects my business the business of journalism the headline on the story in forbes is is there a future for in-flight magazines and you're going okay peter really how far are you

going to stretch this story out listen in-flight magazines provide a lot of work for freelance journalists. And you know what? Air travelers like those magazines. The surveys that are done show that they really do like them. People get on an airplane, you know, they're either going on holiday or they're going to work. In both cases, they're looking for something to kind of drift away to. And often those in-flight magazines, it could be a travel story,

it could be something about some, you know, great location resort somewhere, or it could be something on deals in terms of merchandise. They kind of touch all the bases. And as I said, they provide an outlet for work for a lot of journalists. And believe me, in today's world, journalists need those opportunities too. Did you see the bloodbath at Bell Media this week? Hundreds of young journalists getting laid off. You know, they've got families and they've got obligations.

And so they're all going to be looking for work. Now, as the in-flight magazine business, you know, what's happened in the last year? Well, a lot of them have gone under, or at least the airlines have said, you know what, pause happened in the last year? Well, a lot of them have gone under, or at least the airlines have said, you know what, pause, we're not going to do this because nobody's on the planes. Plus there's the issue of magazines in those, you know, pockets behind the seats that have been touched and handled by different people. And do they present a problem in terms of the transmission of the virus. So that was one of the first things they pulled

when the airlines slowed down. They pulled all the magazines out. But they're coming back, and in some cases, they never went away. Air Canada's a good one. En Route magazine is very popular, and it's still being circulated, not just on airplanes, but they're sending it to some of their customers as a result of the airplane program

because they've got access to your addresses and everything. And so they send the En Route magazine to many people in that platform. But so are some other airlines because they see this as an opportunity, stay in touch, give you something to read, and perhaps dream about going to some places, whether they're in Europe or the Caribbean or wherever it may be, if and when all this gets back to some sense of normalcy. So, yes, there is a future for in-flight magazines.

And you would have thought, ask that question, well, that's going to be one of the first things to go. Bang. Well, apparently it's not because they are very popular. All right, more to come on the bridge, including how effective is holding your breath when you pass someone? You know, the other day we were talking about the big ice melt,

the great ice melt, the Arctic and Antarctic, and I thank you for your letters and comments on that story, and many of you did write in. And it's a good reminder that if you have anything to say about anything, don't be shy. Send us an email. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com.

As a result of that story, there's always the discussion about where are we in this whole fight on climate change? Where are we positioned as a country? And an interesting study came out. I'm not going to go through all the details with you, but it was a look at the G20 economies, the G20 countries, right? And who's doing best in trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And so of those 20 countries, of course, Canada is one of them. And what they've done is they've divided up the 20 countries into four sections of five, and they're ranking them from number one to number 20.

And they've come up with a kind of a scoreboard. I won't bore you with the details of how they do that, but it comes up with a number in terms of how effective, a percentage number of how effective each of these countries is doing. And this is worth noting because of where Canada is positioned on this list. At the top, the very top, at 73%, is Germany. Germany leads the top 20, or the overall 20, but it also leads that first segment, the first quarter, if you will.

And it goes Germany, France, South Korea, the UK, and Japan. This is coming out of Bloomberg News, okay? And that's your top five. Then you go into the second segment. Number six is Italy at 59%. Remember, Germany was 73%. Canada is ranked number seven in this at 52%, one point ahead of China. And eight points ahead of the United States.

Now, I'm not going to list all 20 countries here, but I'll drop down to the final, the bottom segment. Guess who's at the very bottom? 22%. Russia. The other day I was out for a walk. I try to do a bit of a walk. I double mask these days. And the weather has been spectacular here in Stratford all this week.

It's cold, but it's blue sky, and it is again today. Gorgeous day. So it's a gorgeous day for a walk. So I'm out walking, double masked, which I've found, you know, it does kind of hinder your breathing pattern I found myself kind of I don't know gasping for air at times um which is unusual for me anyway the um I was walking along and you know what happens happens? I'm sure all of you have been in this situation when you're out for a walk, and it's obvious to you if there are other people around,

and you take all the proper precautions. But suddenly you see somebody coming on the sidewalk in the opposite direction directly towards you. Now, most of the year that's not a problem. One of of you moves aside or you both move aside, give some distance. But at this time of year, especially here in Stratford, where we're right in the middle of the kind of snow zone, the sidewalks are pretty narrow. And if you're going to step away from the sidewalk, you're going to be in like three or four feet of snow. So you have to maneuver yourself properly to try and pick off one of the driveways that you can walk up. But sometimes if there's a long stretch between driveways, you can get caught.

So caught in the sense that you're not going to be able to move quite far enough away. Either you run back and find the driveway or you do something else. And this thing that is done more often than not, I'm sure you've done it because I know I've done it, is you hold your breath when you pass others. Now, does that work? Does it actually help protect you so the Huffington Post in the UK the United Kingdom

they did a piece last week on this question and they talked to Professor Jose Luis Jimenez who's an aerosol expert from the University of Colorado in Boulder. He says the risk of transmission when you just cross someone in the street is very low, especially if you're wearing a good mask. They also talked to Dr. Julian Tang. I used to do this. Hold the breath.

Dr. Tang is at the University of Leicester in England. I used to do this in the early pandemic, and other people have done the same thing. He recommends that if you see someone walking towards you, it's best to take a quick breath in, and then you exhale out after you've walked past them. Holding your breath is good, but if you breathe out, it's even better because you then blow any virus away. Now, some of this is kind of obvious, but they turned this into a whole column, right? Dr. Tang likens it to swimming. You take a big breath, hold, and swim underwater.

Then when you come up for air you breathe out. It's a physically robust way of avoiding inhaling any aerosols. If you consider the other modes of transmission, you don't touch people as you walk past them and large droplets will fall to the ground anyway. You won't even inhale them because they're so big. So the aerosol transmission is how we think this virus really spreads. And if you want to control that inhalation risk, either holding your breath or even breathing out, if you can time it right as you walk past them,

it will add to that protection of being outdoors. Bottom line, you don't have to feel embarrassed anymore when you're holding your breath when you're walking past somebody and just hope they don't say something to you. Hey, Peter, how's it going, buddy? Okay. Did you see this this week? Australia. Perth.

Perth's Australia's fourth largest city. A couple of days ago, they had reported one case of COVID-19. A young security guard at a quarantine hotel who tested positive for the coronavirus and was experiencing minor symptoms. One case. That was it on that day.

So what'd they do? New York Times reports that was all it took for Perth to snap into a complete lockdown. One case and now two million people are staying home for at least the next five days.

One case and now the top state leader who's facing an election next month is calling on his constituents to sacrifice for each other and for the nation. This is a very serious situation, he said. One case. Now, listen, they've got a pretty good track record. Australia and New Zealand and Thailand and, you know, a number of other countries in that part of the world.

Vietnam. And they move very quickly. Australia's fight against the coronavirus hasn't been flawless. The case in Perth illustrates a persistent soft spot. A number of outbreaks have been linked to hotel quarantine, including one in Melbourne, Australia, last year. I think that was more than 100 days of lockdown. But right now, they're looking at a five-day,

they're in the midst of a five-day lockdown as a result of one case. Now, think about that in terms of us, right? How quickly do we move when numbers start to rise? Well, we sure didn't move very quickly in most parts of the country when numbers started to go up late summer 2020 and early fall. And now we're in the same thing, right? We're starting to pull back on some restrictions. In Ontario here, kids are going back to school

in different parts of the province. In some parts of the country, school hasn't stopped. And they point to numbers that suggest that's okay. But I also notice in Ontario they're going to start to open up gyms a bit for a couple of weeks. I don't know about that one. Okay, here's the last story for today's potpourri. Right, I told you, there's a little something for everybody in here.

This is a new trend. Well, it's not a new trend. It's an expanding trend in the United States. Associated Press reporting that snowmobiles are enjoying a boom. From Maine to Montana, it's becoming difficult to find a new snowmobile for sale. And the rental fleets are booked up. We've had some good years and some bad years,

but we've never had anything quite like this one. Dave Jones at Jackman Power Ports told the Associated Press. He expects to sell about 450 snowmobiles this year. Nearly a third of sales were to new riders, Jones said, and he would sell more snowmobiles if he could get more from manufacturers. I haven't been on a snowmobile in years. He loved it. He used to have a lot of fun a snowmobile in years. He loved it.

Used to have a lot of fun on snowmobiles. He got a little old for that now. But that tells you something too, right? This drive to get outdoors. People want to get outdoors. Get some fresh air. And at the same time, be safe. Well, be safe on a snowmobile.

That can be a dangerous thing if you don't know what you're doing. You know, don't be rusty on a snowmobile. Okay, folks. Remember, if you've got letters, if you've got things you want to talk about, you want to ask about, you want to comment on, the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. This is the day to send them in.

Love to hear from more of you who are tuning in this week for the first time on SiriusXM, Channel 167 Canada Talks. Heard from quite a few of you already. But if you have questions or comments, send them in because Fridays is a day where I pick some of the best ones out and read them. It's kind of your day on the bridge,

and it's always great fun. You can be funny, you can be serious, you can be whatever you want. Look forward to hearing from you. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours. Thank you.