Pilot screening - Aptitude and psychology gone with the wind?

How are pilots psychologically screened?

By Tom de Castella BBC News Magazine

• 1 hour ago
• From the section Magazine

Crash investigators say that the Germanwings Airbus was probably crashed deliberately by co-pilot Andreas Lubitz. The way pilots are screened is now under intense scrutiny.

Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings, has said that there had previously been nothing to suggest that Lubitz was mentally unstable.
The pilot's training in 2009 had been briefly interrupted, but was resumed after "his suitability as a candidate was re-established". Carsten Spohr, the chief executive, said he was not allowed to reveal the reason for the interruption. When Lubitz returned, "his performance was without criticism" and "nothing was striking" about his behaviour.
The inexplicable nature of the pilot's actions has put the focus on to how pilots are psychologically assessed. Most passengers probably assume that the person flying their plane has gone through rigorous mental assessments to check they have the right character and temperament to be responsible for hundreds of lives. But is that true?
Spohr seemed to admit that no special psychological test was mandatory across Europe.

A view of the cockpit of the Germanwings aircraft, photographed a few days before the crash

Most pilots in the UK start at a flight training school, says a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority, the UK regulator. But these schools do not screen out candidates for psychological reasons. They are purely looking at someone's ability to fly.
Once the pilot gets a job with an airline they will have a medical before they can fly passengers. Captain Mike Vivian, a former head of Flight Operations at the UK Civil Aviation Authority, said this is "very intensive".
This process does involve an element of psychological screening. Candidates are asked about their background, including their interests and family relationships, as well as whether they had suffered depression or had suicidal feelings, Vivian suggests.
But the screening processes appears to rely on the candidate's answers and the examiner's judgement of their answers. "There is an element of trust in it. We have to trust," says Vivian.
This medical is carried out by a specially trained aviation medical examiner. It is repeated every year or six months depending on age.
But the CAA has said that all screening procedures should be reviewed. "Following the details that have emerged regarding the tragic Germanwings incident, we are co-ordinating closely with colleagues at the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and have contacted all UK operators to require them to review all relevant procedures."

Andreas Lubitz, 28, seen here on his Facebook profile, is said to have been happy with his job

Most of the medical relates to the pilot's physiology - height, weight, blood and urine. The mental health aspect is small and general in tone. Just six lines out of a three and a half page guidance document set out what the "psychiatric" aspect should cover:
"During assessment of the applicant's history, the doctor should make a general enquiry about mental health which may include mood, sleep and alcohol use. The doctor should observe the applicant during the process of the examination and assess the mental state of the applicant under the broad headings of appearance/ speech/ mood/ thinking/ perception/ cognition/ insight. The doctor should also be looking out for any signs of alcohol or drug misuse."
Tristan Loraine, a former BA captain who retired in 2006 after 20 years flying airliners says he had no psychological profiling during his career. "The medical was having an ECG, peeing in a bottle, having a blood test and all that." It did not touch on mental health, he says.
Most of the testing related to technical ability. He had to do a simulator test twice a year and a Route Check in which he flew passengers as normal but was observed by a captain. At BA, unlike his previous airlines, he had to sit down with two human resources staff. But again it was hardly rigorous. "The HR people said tell us about your life. They were not giving you a proper neuropsychological test telling you if there were any [psychological] trends in there."
The British Airline Pilots Association rejects this. Dr Rob Hunter, head of flight safety at Balpa, said in a statement: "The annual medical certificate application includes a legal requirement for a pilot to declare if they have had any psychological problems and the examiner is expected to pursue any signs of mental health issues apparent during the examination. Pilots operate a strict open culture of reporting any concerns whether related to technical matters, safety issues or any possible medical or mental issues with colleagues."
Vivian said a major check on possible psychological vulnerability was "peer pressure". Colleagues look out for signs that a fellow pilot is troubled over a bereavement or a relationship breakdown, Vivian said. "If I was really concerned I would either replace them or mention it to the management later on."

Loraine, who campaigns on the issue of pilot welfare, says that while pilots and cabin staff are expected to report personal problems, often that didn't happen. "I've flown with people who were in no state to be flying. They had domestic problems or financial problems and would put more pressure on me. You land and say 'maybe you should take a few days off'. You remember those people."
Jim McAuslan, Balpa general secretary, said that there should be no kneejerk reaction on more rigorous screening. But he added that while planes and air traffic control had been made safer "the point of weakness" might now be the pilots themselves.
Pilots deliberately crashing a plane can be hard to prove. Among the cases that are strongly believed to have been deliberate are the EgyptAir crash in October 1999 and a flight between Mozambique and Angola in November 2013.

A JetBlue flight bound for Las Vegas had to make an emergency landing in Texas in March 2012. The co-pilot locked the captain out of the cockpit as the latter was behaving erratically. The captain then had to be wrestled to the ground by passengers.
Clinical psychologist Prof Robert Bor, author of Aviation Mental Health, says incidents like that can never be prevented entirely. He reviewed the regulations on behalf of the Federal Aviation Authority after that incident. "We concluded nothing could have been done that would have prevented that incident from happening."

Incidents of pilots trying to crash the plane are "utterly rare" happening every five to 10 years. Pilots are being observed all the time especially by their colleagues. "Every time they enter the flight deck they are being scrutinised because someone is sitting next to them."
Prof Bor says that even psychometric testing will not tell you about the person who wakes up different one day. And it's impossible to prevent 100% of cases where someone wants to abuse their position of authority. He points to the case of Harold Shipman, an apparently "avuncular" local GP who killed many of his patients.

Since then the medical profession has brought in more screening of doctors. But it's hard to say whether these would have picked up Shipman's evil intentions, he says.
Psychological screening might help, Loraine says. But it won't solve everything - people's mental health can change over their life. In the case of Lubitz there were no warning signs, according to Lufthansa.

Ultimately, Vivian said, it isn't obvious how airlines would achieve perfect screening. "I don't know about any tests whereby you can investigate a person's state of mind comprehensively and objectively."

The answer is to prevent a pilot ever being alone in the cockpit, Loraine says. "The most sensible solution is to put a cabin crew member in the cockpit." This is the approach that the US Federal Aviation Authority has taken. Europe will now consider whether it needs to do the same.

Pilot Screening Process Comes Under Scrutiny After Germanwings Plane Crash

By ANDY PASZTOR and SUSAN CAREY

When it comes to screening pilots, wide disparities exist among countries and carriers, and the crash this week of Germanwings Flight 9525 is already prompting regulators and industry leaders to reassess the effectiveness of existing protocols.

The crash is likely to fuel calls for more-robust background checks and mental health screenings of both new and experienced aviators, even if that means "more intrusive checks of psychological history" than labor groups have historically accepted, said Ken Quinn, a former senior U.S. regulator.

Deutsche Lufthansa AG, the parent company of Germanwings, has been widely viewed by safety experts as one of the industry's leaders in vetting prospective cockpit hires. Still, authorities said the co-pilot of Flight 9525 likely deliberately flew himself and 149 others to their deaths in the French Alps this week.

Lufthansa has said it relies on in-depth interviews and extensive aptitude and psychological testing to clear candidates before they can even begin the carrier's two-year training program. Multiple screening steps, company officials have said, were a major reason for low attrition rates during training and relatively few resignations.

Less than 7% of applicants make it through the initial screening, according to Lufthansa, which uses identical procedures to pick and train Germanwings pilots. EasyJet PLC, another big European carrier, also has been in the forefront of psychological screening, according to industry officials and international safety experts.

The co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 appears to have deliberately crashed the plane, leaving 150 people dead. What happened in the flight's last ten minutes? WSJ's Jason Bellini has #TheShortAnswer.
In the U.S., management and union leaders continue to cooperate on long-standing confidential counseling programs aimed at helping licensed pilots who may be battling problems with alcohol, prescription drugs, depression and other mental health issues, as well as financial and family stresses. Typically run by pilot volunteers or pilot-union officials, such efforts aim to help pilots with informal counseling and, if necessary, professional help, without jeopardizing their jobs.

For nearly all commercial pilots world-wide, periodic mental health checks typically are rolled into mandatory recurrent medical exams. Such screenings, however, vary greatly depending where and for whom they fly, according to safety experts. In addition, many pilots tend to be reluctant to discuss psychological issues.

In the U.S., unless a pilot previously was diagnosed with a serious physical or psychological ailment, medical examiners are often unwilling to delve into mental health matters because of limited time or expertise.

The International Civil Aviation Organization, the air-safety arm of the United Nation, has issued scant guidance in this area, compared with reams of standards regarding the substance of pilot training curricula. None of the standards, though, are binding on national regulatory authorities.

ICAO's "Manual of Civil Aviation Medicine," published in 2012, indicates that medical reviews routinely should include questions pertaining to "psychiatric disorders or inappropriate use of psychoactive substances." Noting the lack of detailed guidance to assess psychological matters, the document says that "experienced medical examiners have often informally and spontaneously included them in their evaluation."

The manual lays out questions for medical examiners to ask on subjects including depression, anxiety and use of alcohol and drugs.

In some cases, according to one veteran safety expert, psychological screening tends to be more "about identifying a good employee rather than a potentially unsafe pilot; this discussion will get really touchy."

On Thursday, Lufthansa Chief Executive Carsten Spohr said he would discuss upgrades to the airline's pilot training programs with regulators and labor groups, even as he expressed "full confidence" in selection and training practices dating back six decades.

The airline said it has a three-step screening process for would-be pilots, including a two-day aptitude and psychological assessment that examines motivation and reaction to stress. A final medical and psychological evaluation also must be approved by government authorities, before the start of a two-year training course.

Despite Lufthansa's "stellar world record" over the years for extensive screening of prospective hires, Flight 9525's tragic end will prompt "a close re-examination" of the entire topic, according to Mr. Quinn, who now helps run the aviation practice of the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP.

Regardless of regulatory requirements, other airlines around the globe also have internal safeguards intended to identify problematic pilots. Those can include random drug tests; confidential reporting systems for all types of safety violations; and in-flight assessments of flying and decision-making skills by specially trained observers.

The German pilot union said "airlines and regulators should work together to develop procedures to prevent a repeat of such an event." The largest pilot union in North America said its members undergo "rigorous screening and evaluation before being hired, including an assessment of the pilot's mental and emotional state."

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration requires all airline pilots to have a detailed medical checkup at least once a year, and twice annually for those over 40.

The last high-profile U.S. incident stemming from a pilot's troubled mental state occurred in March 2012, when a JetBlue Airways Corp. flight was diverted after the captain was locked out of the cockpit due to his erratic behavior. An off-duty JetBlue pilot who was on the flight teamed up with the co-pilot to land the jet in Amarillo, Texas, where the captain was taken to a medical facility.

The Germanwings crash also is likely to put the spotlight on the specific type of training long relied on by Lufthansa and authorized in at least 35 other countries. Approved by ICAO in 2006, so-called multicrew pilot licenses are seen as alternatives to traditional training and are tailored for students without any prior flight experience. Such training regimes rely on enhanced pilot aptitude testing, greater use of high-fidelity flight simulators, targeted practice countering in-flight upsets and stepped-up instruction about communicating with air-traffic controllers.

Other carriers that use the training system include Qatar Airways, Tiger Air, Ethiopian Airlines, several Chinese airlines and Japan's All Nippon Airways.

Graduates of these courses typically end up flying passengers with a fraction of the actual flight hours required under traditional licensing standards. Investigators said the Germanwings co-pilot had logged 630 flight hours during his two-year stint with the carrier, compared with a minimum of 1,500 hours U.S. aviators must have before they can sit behind the controls of a scheduled airliner.