Brehm: Cessna-to-CRJ pilot pipeline creates dangerous aviation safety risks
David Brehm · Venture Investing in Mobility + Tech with University of Michigan’s Early-Stage Zell Lurie Commercialization Fund · Jun 23, 2025 · at 15:29
David Brehm, venture investor at the Zell Lurie Commercialization Fund, discusses recent aviation near-miss incidents and systemic failure points in commercial pilot readiness.
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“And I think an area that people aren't quite talking about this just yet, when you look at pilot training right now what are they training in? They're training in these Cessna one 72 at these local airports, right? Like our aviation club likes to use to for events. Great. But you're not dealing with this high traffic, high velocity areas. And I think that creates an issue because when you have these young pilots that are training on these small aircraft, right? Sure. Everything's fine. But now their next step is a pretty big one. You're going from there To being a first officer of a CRJ, you're going into a high traffic airport where if you're familiar with the Swiss cheese effect, right, it's basically saying if you go through all these holes, you will hit a point of failure, but if you hit through one hole, You can still recover, right? It's not going to result in anything. But if you put effectively a metal rod through all these layers, there will be a failure point. That's what happened in this case. And so looking at training, I think is definitely an area of focus.”
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