In March, a Boeing 737-800 cruising straight and level on a routine domestic flight suddenly nosedived into a hillside, killing all 132 aboard.
A full report on the cause of that China Eastern Airlines crash is probably months away, but with no other explanations, suspicion has landed on the pilots. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that flight data indicate someone in the cockpit put the plane into an intentional dive, as occurred in a Germanwings airline crash in 2015, and at least two other foreign carrier crashes in the late 1990s.
Nothing puts aviation safety on the front burner like a mysterious and chilling plane crash, and the issue of safety is especially relevant as the U.S. grapples with its worst pilot shortage in recent memory.
Congress, the Federal Aviation Administration, and major carriers are mulling revised pilot qualifications to make more pilots available, while pilot unions are pushing back against measures that would weaken bargaining positions made stronger by the shortage.
The ideas include some reasonable steps, such as raising the mandatory retirement age for commercial pilots from 65 to 67 or older, and some potentially alarming ones, such as reducing training hours, and allowing a single pilot instead of the current minimum two-person crew for certain commercial flights.
Some rules under review were approved just a decade ago after pilot error caused the deadly crash of a regional carrier's flight in Buffalo, N.Y.
The approach we recommend, then and now, is putting safety first.
The pilot retirement age, raised from 60 to 65 in 2007, could be safely increased again, if that step is accompanied by sophisticated programs to ensure fitness. The U.S. should take a page from European regulators and modernize current physical assessments to more thoroughly account for mental health as well.
Another change that could have a bigger effect on the shortage might be alarming on the surface: Require fewer flying hours for incoming pilots. Under current U.S. law, pilots of commercial passenger planes must log at least 1,500 hours of flight time before they're good to go. The problem is that not all flying hours are created equal, and the 1,500-hour law already has a well-founded exception for those with high- quality military training.
The per-hour experience is much more valuable if gained as a pilot of an Air Force cargo jet, for instance, than as a pilot of a single-engine plane towing a banner around a beachfront.
As for one-pilot cockpits, that's a big N-O. For now, anyway.
Modern aircraft can indeed "fly themselves." Between automation and the presence of pilots on the ground who can help manage a flight remotely, it is theoretically possible to eliminate pilots in the air. But who would want to take that flight?
Commercial aviation is not perfect. But it is the safest mode of transportation and getting safer decade by decade. Let's keep that record going.