Expert? Or experienced? Or is it just the Dunning-Kruger effect?

This past week has been a very difficult one for aviation in the US. From the midair collision at DCA to the Lear 55 crash on departure from Philadelphia, it has been a deadly week.

It (sort of) hit close to home as I have a close friend who is a PSA Captain and is based in DC. When I heard of the accident I immediately thought of him. At 4 AM after sleeping fitfully, I sent him the following text - “I saw the news about the PSA/helo collision at DCA last night.Text me and let me know that you are okay, please”. Four hours later I heard from him, and he let me know he was on a layover elsewhere but had left DCA about 3 hours before the incident. It made me happy to know my friend was okay, but it still made me sad for those not so fortunate as me.

As the week has progressed, from network television news (which I watch almost none of for personal reasons) to Facebook to LinkedIn to podcasts of all flavors, people of all ages, backgrounds, genders, professions and more have pontificated on the subjects of both aircraft incidents. So many of these people who have done the analysis (and pontificating) have been either described as experts, or have self-described themselves as such. I have seen so much of it this week that has been spoken and written by such “experts”, that I thought about that term - “expert”.

I looked it up on the Internet (so it must be true) and I saw that the New Oxford American Dictionary describes an expert as “a person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area." So to me, an expert can’t be someone who has an exorbitant number of flight hours and has flown the visual and instrument approaches into DCA hundreds of times and thus is an expert on traffic patterns in the Washington, D.C. airspace. That would be a person with a great deal of experience and not an expert. More on that later.

I would consider an expert in this scenario to be someone who has studied aviation safety and accident analysis in a professional setting for an extended period of time. It probably would help if they also have advanced training in TERPS criteria. For those of you who may not be familiar with the term, TERPS is aviation speak for Terminal EnRoute Procedures Standardization - the system by which aviation procedures are created at airports in America with the goal of standardized separation from obstacles and other aircraft. An analysis of the TERPS procedures for that airport between incoming fixed wing traffic and the helicopter routes would be extremely helpful. If such a described expert doesn’t have the academic background combined with years of activity in the commercial aviation world, I would submit to you that he or she is not an expert. They are simply experienced. It’s not the same. Its much like the picture at the top of this article - you have a doctor who has years of medical training and a successful practice in his/her chosen specialty, and you have a Boy Scout who has taken every First Aid class possible, and maybe even has volunteered for years at a local medical clinic. Who is the expert and who is experienced? Who do you want to get your medical advice from?

Let me use myself as an example. I started flying in Naval Flight School in 1981, and received my wings as an unrestricted Naval Aviator in 1982. I flew helicopters initially with two deployments flying off Navy Ships in the Western Pacific. In 1988 I was hired by a large FAR 121 air line (back then “we loved to fly and it showed”, if that helps you to identify my de-identified former employer - hint 1). I spent almost 34 years there and had a very blessed career with lots of narrow body domestic flying coupled with over two decades of wide body international flying. I jokingly say that I have flown to every continent except one, and only that one because my former employer did not have a route from Atlanta to Antarctica (hint 2). If they had, I am sure that I would have flown it. Since then I have worked as a Gulfstream G550 Simulator instructor for a well known and well regarded FAR 142 flight training company. I have flown and continue to fly for a organ transplant company under FAR 135 rules. I am closing in on 20,000 flight hours over that 44 year period.

So does all of that make me an expert in anything? Absolutely not. It does make me experienced, but that is not the same. I have flown the VFR helo route up the Potomac one time, but only as a passenger in the back of a CH-46 Sea Knight being flown by a neighbor. I have flown into DCA under both IFR and VFR conditions scores of times. I think my most memorable flight into DCA was when I flew Richard Anderson, the then-CEO of my air line (hint 3) on the Mt. Vernon Visual Approach. He was allowed to fly on the jump seat, and I was able to point out to him a superb view of Washington’s home, Mt. Vernon, as we headed north up the river to land on runway 1. Does that make me an expert on the airspace systems and the separation criteria required between helos and commercial jets in the Washington, D.C. airspace. I think that you know the answer - absolutely not.

I read one “expert” who posted, exclaiming online on how they don’t see the need for helo traffic routes in such close proximity to the DCA Airport. Here is my question to that “expert” - how much do you know of the logistical and transportation requirements of the U.S. military for transporting people and equipment in an out of Washington, D.C.? I am guessing by the phrasing of your statement that you nothing of such requirements. Therefore, you are not an expert in such requirements and such statements have little to no value to add to the discussion. Your statement is merely an informed opinion and should be taken as such.

I read another “expert” who was concerned that military pilots were allowed to fly such routes with “only 500 hours and 1000 hours of flight time”. Does that “expert” have a keen knowledge of the training provided in the U.S. military flight school programs of today? Does that “expert” know of what “course rules” training was spelled out by the parent command of these pilots before they were allowed to fly those routes? Both you and I know the answer to my question - the “expert” has little to no knowledge of such training, so their concerns are simply opinions with little practical, actual knowledge to back them up.

So we have trained experts who are trained academically and professionally. Those are the people who can provide accurate analysis of situations when they occur - whether it be aviation accidents, political activities, or just business practices. Then you have people with a great deal of experience in a certain area that may have a valid opinion about a given subject, but that is all that it is. An opinion. And we all know that opinions are like anatomical orifices in the nether regions of the human body - everybody has one.

The last category of character in this discussion is without a doubt the most dangerous. He or she is the person who suffers from the Dunning-Kruger effect. For those of you who may have heard the term but don’t know exactly what it really means, Wikipedia defines the Dunning-Kruger effect as “the tendency of people with low ability in a specific area to give overly positive assessments of this ability. This is often seen as a cognitive bias, i.e. as a systematic tendency to engage in erroneous forms of thinking and judging.” We’ve all met these people - it is the football fan who last put on cleats 30 years before on Friday nights in high school who is yelling from the stands at a college or NFL football game as to which quarterback should be put in and what play should be called on the 3rd and long situation. I always think when I hear these people yelling like an insane person, that it is a true shame. They are losing millions of dollars by being in the stands when they should be down on the sidelines coaching the team. Yes, that is sarcasm that you just read. That is the Dunning-Kruger effect, and I think that we are seeing the effect in full display in this current discussion of Aviation in America. And it is not helping.

In Shakespeare’s Play “Hamlet”, Polonius warned Ophelia against words shedding more light than heat. I think in our current time, the opposite is taking place. We are having the heat of heated opinions and discussions which provide little increased understanding (and thus, light) on the subject. Let me simply summarize all of the above into a question that you should ask yourself when reading or hearing people talking about the events of this past week. Are these people actual experts on the topic at hand? Are these people experienced? Or are they just prime examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect?

You will know that they are experts when they can point to their record of the requisite academic training combined with real world practice that allows them to speak with authority on whatever the specific subject or incident may be. By all means listen to them. They may be able to help us to see what happened, and to correct any mistakes so it is less likely to happen again.

If they are simply experienced, then certainly respect their opinion, but also understand that it is just that - opinion. It is no better than mine or yours, and their experience in a certain area does not transfer their words from the category of opinion over to that of fact. Listen, but don’t do so blindly.

And what of the Dunning-Kruger example? Evaluate their words, and if they fall into this category - run like the wind. If they have neither the training and practical application of such, nor even the real world experience in the area in question, then you know what category they fall into. Run away from this “fan in the stands” who speaks with neither knowledge or experience. You’ll know them when you see them, by simply asking yourself a few questions about the person making the statements.