I wrote this yesterday in another forum, as more rumours came forward and I had more discussions, I can't help but feel that we need to look at this MUCH more holistically and challenge our assumptions and attitudes.
"After WW2 a bunch of pilots with good training, time and so forth from the war started flying around in private planes. It was a serious boom time in single engine aircraft like cessna, piper etc. Anyhow, controlled flight into terrain was always an issue (and still is) but after the war during this boom, it became massive. What perplexed the forerunner to the FAA and the flying industry is that the folks doing it really, absolutely knew better, had proven skills in bad situations and yet were doing it. So, some folks started to really study it, including asking around of the same types of private pilots if they had had close calls with CFIT and why. Most started with "I knew better but was in a rush to get there (aka get there itis), but then they started to pick up on pilots making comments like "so, I was in the clouds and lost track of altitude, speed or something. Anyhow, there I was trying to figure out what way was up etc and I kept on looking at the wrong dang instrument! It wasn't where I was used to from my xxx (x) hours during the war in my XX aircraft". So, they then started to experiment on the "standard T" where the instruments were placed in the same spot. Shortly after all the aircraft manufs. came onboard with doing the same on their panels and the CFIT safety record greatly improved within the decade.
I promise you however, that there was not "nothing to learn" but everything to learn from the bad outcome of pilots flying their aircraft into the ground, mountain, trees etc. People knew that broke the safety rules. In fact, early 2000's there was a spate of issues when general aviation got glass panels in some aircraft like the Cirrus, where people just did seemingly stupid things. Then better glass panel transition training and what has become fairly standardized."
