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Most likely just luck. These days US pilots can’t keep their planes separate from their helicopters so we're not exactly sending our best up there.




Mmmm…. Not saying us pilots are universally great, but I have definitely seen a significant regression from the mean in many foreign cohorts. I imagine it’s due to fundamental differences in the concept of training. It’s one of the things besides war that fear based societies seem to do better than shame based societies.

There exists a concept called "regression to the mean". I don't think "regression from the mean" means anything.

There is no way pilots form all over the world could "regress to the mean". They could not have been all, or most, "above the mean". The mean would be higher then.


Well, it may not be a term of art, but regression from the mean is reasonable to imagine as a failure to rise to the mean level.

Civilian pilots have to consider that they are flying in heavily congested airspace with 200 passengers in the back. They are not LARPING Chuck Yaeger in the right stuff.

It’s true that they don’t send their best

Between US pilots having to lie about their mental health and then having average pay far lower than people who use Claude code daily, they really aren’t sending their best.

Unironically whatever you think pilot training involves, we should probably double it. This would be extra good as raising the prices of flights will make fewer people fly. Far too many people right at this moment who shouldn’t be flying are flying.

If we could finish by forcing all airline seats to be at business class quality (thus average flight ticket costs are about 2X now as economics of scale kick in), than flying would become a humane practice rather than war crimes in the sky.




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