Note from My Dad - About Critical Incident Planning : What he would tell us about pilot training requirements

Today while working my way through my parent's correspondence and journals, recovered after their deaths in 2003 and 2006, I came across a single sheet, with an additional note attached. Both in my Dad's handwriting, but showing the difference between 1991 and the tiny note dated 9/1999.  I am working on "their book" elsewhere (The Long Goodbye - A WWII Love Story ).  My Dad, John W. Atkinson,  was in the Army Air Corp during WWII. He was a pilot. He was an instructor of other pilots.

It has not been a month since the first anniversary of the crash of flight 3407, when I lost my dear friend Susan Wehle. My Dad's voice was in my ear from the moment I learned of the crash of flight 3407. I want to share here what I just found, in his own words:

9/99 These notes added on the side contain insights and conclusions written as addenda to the dated notes. Very important.

1991 I don't remember ever having been frightened or anxious while or about flying. (Maybe once - when two of us were checked out for our first team ride (without instructor) to shoot landings in between a couple of mountains in Tennessee. It turned out to be 'a piece of cake'. ) Felt it was under my control. In retrospect - it was a well-controlled, containment of emotional reaction. Kept me from getting angry at cadets making stupid mistakes. Now I realize that this always happens to me when there is a critical incident - one that could cause strong emotion (fear or rage). I get very quiet, soft-spoken as if ticking off an emergency procedure. (Bill got that treatment from me when he cut himself badly at Santa Barbara in 1977 on drive to hospital.)

My family got on me a lot about my always thinking of the negative possibilities and urging rehearsal of what to do - such as, always have in mind where you would put the car if you got a flat tire 'right now'. This game from the pilot days where we would spend 58% of the time practicing emergency procedures such as single-engine landings, suddenly sprung on the students.

I wonder, is it possible that the requirements for commercial pilots training are less than that which was required of pilots trained by the Army Air Corp during World War II? That was a period of desperate need for rapidly training pilots to win the war. Has anyone looked to see what training requirements were at that time, and compared the type of training required of commercial pilots now, who have the lives of not just their crews and an expensive airplane... but also large numbers of passengers in their hands?  My father would always say that flying straight and level was easy. What was needed was rehearsal of the situations that one hoped never would happen... so if it ever did one would not have to think about what to do. There wouldn't be TIME to think. To survive one would only be able to do what had been practiced.