Last week, we published an open-ended query to readers asking about flight activity and instruction as the COVID-19 pandemic burns through the U.S. at an accelerating pace. All the major schools have stood down and are temporarily closing or reverting to online instruction. I never thought I would say this, but it’s now time for the rest of the training industry to do the same.
A short story maybe of interest here. First week of January, despite our October flu shots, my son, wife and me came down with the flu. A few days into it I couldn’t break my fever nor catch my breath, so a trip to urgent care was needed. Shortly after a blood draw and nasal swab, I was startled by the not uncommon door burst from the Doc who told me I had Type I influenza. Excuse me? Yes, I was sent home with Type I-nconclusive - neither A or B could be identified.
So for two solid weeks I was sicker than I can ever recall, no sense of smell or taste, bad cough, fever coming and going, nausea, etc. I still haven’t recovered my 6 second inhale/exhale breath back, 3 seconds is about the best for now.
But just the other day I was researching and came across an article that had several hundred people commenting that they had this exact type of experience, some as far back as Thanksgiving.
I can’t prove it, but I just might have had Covid-19 before it was recognized. Please heed the experts directives and be heroic as Paul suggests by not becoming a patient or spreader - like maybe I was. Despite being 70 and having allergies, I made it through Type I influenza. Be well all.
Thank you. There are many times more people walking around, transmitting this virus, than the numbers show, and one of the might be your flight instructor, or it might be YOU. Twelve inches away in a cockpit is exactly the sort of environment where this virus can be easily transmitted.
There is almost nobody in America who will not be negatively impacted by Covid-19; most of us will be lucky if that impact is merely financial. Social distancing is no joke, and I appreciate you saying so to a community which may not fully realize it yet.
Will the FAA extend the date of BFR deadlines ? This is important. I own a Vans RV-9A. As long as my last BFR has not lapsed, I can be PIC during my BFR. And any CFI can then conduct the BFR. However, if my BFR has lapsed, then the CFI must be PIC. That creates a huge problem. The insurance companies have become more and more stringent on “named pilots“, requiring time in make and model as well as current in said model. The Vans RV-9A is an experimental aircraft for which it is very difficult to find CFIs with this qualification. I wasted months a few years ago with this problem with an RV-6, trying to find an instructor to get checked out. I hope the FAA will provide relief from this situation.
Paul…
Well said. This is a pandemic in every sense. Time for the naysayers and worse to do their part to support the public effort to reduce infections and thereby help save lives.
To your main point…Want to continue your pilot training??? Try home simulation. “Shelter in Place” is all the more a good reason for student and seasoned aviators alike to explore the current world of home simulation.
For those on a budget the new Honeycomb yoke is a game changer. I have more expensive gear with a 65" LED TV, a Yoko yoke, MFG Rudder Pedals, a Saitek throttle quadrant and a realistic flap switch from Desktop Aviator.
I recently switched from P3d (Lockheed Martin’s 64bit upgrade of Microsoft’s FSX) solely to be able to use a neat software package called Air Manager which combined with a gadget called “Knobster” and a 23" touch screen allows me to operate a whole host of instruments. As an example, I have Nav 1 and Nav 2 and simply touch and dial in radials. You can practice all manner of cool navigation exercises known so well by all you IFR magicians, but equally important for those seeking their PPL.
Training?? I have an excellent CFII who screen shares on Skype as we continue training weekly. After I type this I will be taking another practice flight to be ready for tomorrow’s lesson.
Finally, if anyone wants to know where home flight simulation is going in a few months, check out all the buzz around Flight Simulator 2020 (Microsoft and a genius French video lab called Asobo). Want to fly over your own house? FS2020 is based on Bing’s satellite imaging with 3cm resolution and an AI engine to make for ultra realistic scenery for just about everywhere. Brand new physics for aircraft and weather that finally matches real world flight.
Home simulation offers more than most would imagine and is an excellent way to keep fresh on pilot skills while we await a turning of the tide later this year.
I’m a student pilot. 64 years old. I bought a plane, just had the 1st annual done on it, and we’re coming into flying season. I’m guessing another 5-10 hours and I’ll be ready for my 1st solo and another 10 and I’ll have my sport licence and I’ll be free to roam the countryside in my life long dream. My instructor informed me that the schooling was going to end until this crisis clears up. I was devastated and thought, “we are only two people in my plane and if we were careful, what chance could there be that we’d get infected”? But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that at my age, and with a respiratory issue, there might be a chance I’d never get to fly again if I actually contracted COVID 19. I fully believe this will be conquered and life will return to normal. I have been cracking the books and keeping knowledgeable with my ground work and my plane is spotless now that I have time to do nothing but clean it… I hear the occasional plane flying over my house and wish it were me but, I know that waiting is the right thing to do. I’ve become friends with my instructor and would feel awful if he or anyone in his family got sick for me.
So in the meantime, I will wait. As long as it takes.
Again, the risk from GA (especially the training segment) is INSIGNIFICANT when it comes to global warming, epidemics, or any other of the latest disasters du jour. The right thing to do is to be sane; the wrong thing to do is to take things out-of-context and react insane to current situations and pressures. People who say to shut things down “as long as it takes” have not read the latest news of riots in Italy. Again, the pilot population will not be in the sci-economic riots that will result from shutting down the economy since we ARE NOT a problem. Stay safe.
But, after the economy has finished cratering, airlines limp back into some form of normalcy, the pilot shortage we thought would be on the horizon will have evaporated with the contraction of the number of seats in the air at any one time, and we have to take the next few years to beat down the unemployment stats…does anyone really think that there will be extra funds at hand in most people’s checking accounts for something as secondary to maintaining real life as flight instruction?
9/11 (I was instructing part time back then…) had a close to a year effect on the numbers of hours I flew and stranded a whole bunch of youngling captain wannabes in the CFI time building (or scraping) conundrum. I’m pretty sure, while 2001 was only 4 or 5 days until there was (limited) resumption of activity, keeping everyone and most businesses locked up for 6-8 weeks will have a more dramatic effect. Not trying to sow fear and angst…just trying to take a clear view of reality.
Stay home, certainly. Stay healthy, certainly. Don’t be stupid and lick subway grab handles and cough on veggies at the supermarket. We are all in this together, but the other side is going to be a lot different than it was on January 1 of this year.
I have to differ from this. First of all, flight instruction is an infinitesimal part of the population and economy. It’s one person meets one person, not a crowd. Certainly safeguards can be made before meeting in the cockpit. Wash hands and face throughly, wear freshly laundered clothes. Of course have no symptoms beforehand. Also, this needs to be put into context. Everyday you go to groceries, drugstores, pump gas, open delivered packages, pass currency, pay at touch screens, and much else, that either directly or indirectly involves touching where others have touched. So, why such an emphasis on the meeting of 2 individuals who, after all, can take reasonable precautions? Must every facet of the economy be destroyed ? It should be pointed out GA hangs by a thread. The declining pilot population and financially fragile aviation infrastructure make this a real threat to its continuation. We shouldn’t be overzealous in shutting everything down.
“by the time you read this Monday morning, that will likely be 150,000, both as a consequence of ramped up testing and exponential spread.”
Paul:
I do not think you can say “exponential spread” without ubiquitous testing during social distancing. That is conjecture at best. Distancing may or may not be working. We do not know at this point due to the lack of testing minimally or non sick people.
Brent
Flight instruction involves more than 2 people sitting close together in an airplane. Fueling, dispatch, maintenance and others will be directly exposed in the process. I don’t think it is unreasonable to hit the pause button for the next 2 months.
My personal airplane was filled to full tanks several weeks ago. When I finish my 14 days self isolation due to international travel, I will pull it out of my private hangar and go flying alone for some short local trips, but when the tanks get low it is going back in the hangar and staying there.
Fair enough. I tried to qualify that with the ramped up testing comment. However, unless death causes are being widely misreported, Covid-19 total deaths appear to be on an exponential curve, doubling every three to four days. These are a reasonable surrogate for total cases, given our lousy testing matrix.
Another interesting thing is that these numbers are being driven by a handful of hotspots, including New York, Washington state and Louisiana with Florida and New Jersey following. But not Utah nor Arkansas. So the deadly question is: if distancing is not working, should we abandon it?
I have no answer to that, but it doesn’t make sense to even suggest it.
Paul, I have read your articles for years. I have come to appreciate your ability to cut through the BS and call things for what they are by careful research and common sense. You are missing the mark here. As a current physician and former Air Force flight doc I look at the facts. There are areas of this country that are virtually untouched by the virus. If you are healthy with no risk factors (travel, age, co-morbidity) then go! Keep the economy going where its safe to do so. Aviation is a risk unto itself that we all willingly accept. Our population is more likely to be killed somewhere between pulling out of the driveway in our cars on the way to the airport and taxing back to the ramp for shut down than contracting and dying from COVID-19.
I beg everyone to please not fall for the hype in the media. This is bad but nothing like it is being made out to be. We have had over 100 child deaths this flu season in the US and world wide the flu will still kill more people (as it does every year) than COVID-19. Where is the annual outrage? Keep your perspective! Get a flu shot! If you are sick, then stay home. If you are an at risk individual then stay home and stay away from others. Use your common sense!
Say what you will about our president, but he is right on when he says he doesn’t want the cure to be worse than the problem.
Some elements of our economy demand shutdown. But flight training? No. It is a small part of the population. It is a population of relatively healthy individuals. Remember, the majority of Corona deaths are premised on previous health conditions for which, I’d imagine, would preclude issuance or sustainance of an FAA medical.
Remember, also, that a lot of flight schools are Part 61 operations for which protracted shutdown would be the kiss if death.
Our flight school takes serious precautions before dispatching an instructor and student: Six feet of separation before temperature taking and signing an afadavit assuring no health-risk endeavors were partaken within the previous 14-days.
@Mark F apparently there are not riots in Italy, at least not yet. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-30/italy-risks-losing-grip-in-south-with-fears-of-looting-and-riots
If you understand the math of exponential growth on the “logistic curve” (see Paul’s post on that) and we don’t try to contain things, it will be much worse. Not a little worse. So far our efforts are not working in part because too many people don’t take it seriously, and we started two months late. What this could look like is https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/podcasts/the-daily/coronavirus.html
The most recent 10X increase in the US took 10 days (Mar 18-28) per the John Hopkins site. We are still testing-limited so we have no idea how many walking Petri dishes we have. If we see 10X in another 10-14 days that would be 1.5 million cases and 25,000 dead. When will it stop? We have over 350 million people in the US so this could get really serious.
My wife is an MD in a local network of community health centers, the largest in our state. She’s at work today and was on call over the weekend. They do not have enough PPE so a group of us here are making face shields for them. That’s where my money and time are going instead of into my BFR (which I need).
Thanks Paul. Physical distancing and full cleaning between flights are not an option in GA. The risk should never exceed the value of the mission. Safe pilots know that. The safety mantra also applies to pilots who are “helping” by flying sick people to appointments during the pandemic. Pilots who want to help should carry needed supplies, not people.