How COVID-19 Changed Things For Pilots

In March of 2020 my family and I took a vacation to Mexico. Upon arriving at the airport, I wondered if I was making a big mistake. At the time I wasn’t worried about shortages of meat or paper products. What was troubling me was how this mystery virus might impact our return flight.

It turns out that we arrived back in the United States about a week before the airline ceased operations to our destination.

The definition of the word “trips” was about to change. As we entered the pandemic, the definition of trips had become more about climbing a flight of stairs from the home office, rather than climbing into the flight levels. Teleworking is not a strange concept for a pilot; we work via computer all the time while on trips. The difference now was that the teleworking would take place from home.

Flight activities within our organization and many others either stopped or were greatly reduced. This presented a fair number of challenges and problems to the entire industry. Machines like to be exercised. If you leave a car in your garage long enough, you will eventually find leaks under it. The same is true for aircraft.

What to do? In our case, at MnDOT, we consulted the aircraft manufacturer’s guidance. Turbine engines proved to be easier to maintain, reciprocating engines were more challenging. The reason is because a turbine engine can achieve normal operating temperature on the ground. A reciprocating engine typically needs to be flown to get up to operating temperature.

Getting an engine up to operating temperature is crucial to evaporate the moisture that naturally accumulates in the engine case. Too little temperature simply adds to the moisture problem, which can lead to corrosion. In some instances, you can observe this during the prefight inspection when you see rusty water droplets on the dipstick cap while checking the oil.

Pilots require proper care and attention, too. Exercising a pilot, from a repetition perspective, is just as important as exercising the aircraft systems.

The FAA tells us that we need to have completed three takeoffs and landings in airplanes every 90 days if we want to be legally current to carry passengers (same category and class, day/night).

When the pandemic began, we sat down as a pilot group to discuss what standard we wanted to impose on ourselves regarding keeping current.

The conversation naturally flowed into the nuances between currency and proficiency. We reminded ourselves that currency is a federal requirement, while proficiency is how comfortable we feel in the aircraft.

All pilots want to feel like they are way ahead of the airplane. Meaning, we are ready and waiting for the next task to present itself long before the aircraft catches up with our mind. This is a good place to be.

A less OK place to be is where we are just keeping up with the aircraft - when things are happening, we are dealing with them, but we likely could not handle much more.

A bad place to be is when we are behind the airplane. At this point the plane is flying us and the outcome is often newsworthy.

So, what is the appropriate level of proficiency? How long is too long to be away from the controls? That depends on a great number of factors including the pilots’ overall experience, near-term experience, time in type, qualifications, or experience in IFR, VFR, night, icing, thunderstorms, wind, and other operations.

There is no one answer. However, the number we came up with was three weeks.

Many other considerations were born from the COVID-19 situation. Cleaning protocols had to change. Training regimes needed adjustment. We all now know more about PPE than we ever wanted to.

What I find interesting about this situation is that something that was so devastating globally, and to our industry specifically, could ultimately make us stronger.

We had an opportunity to shine a light on many of our policies and procedures and reflect on how and why we have them. In the end, if there is a silver lining to the COVID situation, I would say that it was the pause that we so often don’t get when we are surrounded by the whirlwind of everyday life.

After seeing the damage done by COVID-19, I’m sure that we would all trade the opportunity to have been introspective for the ability to have so many of our fellow citizens of the world either back with us, or not suffering the long-term effects of this dreaded disease. Let’s keep looking to the sky and hope for a better year ahead.