Repeat Performances

A plane pilot who has had a crackup needs a cooling-off period; if he takes off promptly on another flight, he is very likely to crack up again. That unnerving news was reported in the Journal of Aviation Medicine by an A.A.F. medical safety officer, Dr. Daniel Horn, who has been looking at the statistics on Army pilots.

From the records of 9,348 pilots who had had two or more flying accidents, Dr. Horn found that 15% (five times the normal expectancy) had a second accident within 30 days after their first. It seemed to make no difference whether the pilot himself was at fault in his first crash; the experience was so disturbing to his self-confidence that it generally took him months to recover his normal flying skill.

Dr. Horn's finding pointed an obvious moral for air travelers: don't fly with a pilot who has just had a crash. For airlines and pilots, that conclusion poses a dilemma. How can the pilot get back his confidence unless he flies? Horn suggests that a crashed pilot should go through a comeback course of supervised flying with a copilot. If his jitters are severe, it may help to talk out his trouble under a "hypnotic" drug.

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