Q19 - How do the airlines expect

[b91302310]

The correct answer is (D). However, for answer (C), is it incorrect because the argument does not mention "increasing actual flying time?"

Could anyone explain this?
Thanks!

[aileenann]

So this question is asking for a *necessary* assumption, meaning something that absolutely has to be true. If you think about (C), this would definitely help or even close the gap of the argument, but it's not something we need to be true. (C) is quite strong - it essentially offers a guarantee that increasing flight time training will decrease crashes. But we don't need this to be true - really all we need for the author to be correct is for flight time to be important (not the be all, end all, just sufficiently important) in preventing crashes.

(D) really pares down what we need to the absolute minimum - the essential bit that flight time has to be important but does not have to be a guarantee of no more accidents.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have follow up questions

[daniel]

Would I be correct in stating that another reason to eliminate C is that there is a mismatch in terms between the argument and the answer choice.

The argument focuses on reducing the proportion of commercial plane crashes due to pilot error.

Answer Choice C is about reducing the number of airline crashes (irrespective of cause). If the total number of crashes is reduced, it would still be possible that 2/3 of the crashes were due to pilot error. Additionally, I don't think "airline crashes" and "commercial plane crashes" are equivalent terms. They seem to be a little different in their scope: commercial airlines versus private airlines, for example.

[WaltGrace1983]

Here are my thoughts on this. Maybe it will help someone out down the line!

Pilot error accounts for 2/3 of all crashes
+
Airlines upgraded training programs but these cannot compensate for lack of actual flying time
-->
airlines should rethink their training approach to reducing commercial crashes

When reading this, I am thinking about the gap between actual flying time, pilot error, and the training approaches. What I mean by that is the argument is assuming that more flying time --> less pilot error --> less crashes. How do we know this? Because the argument says tat "pilot error contributes to 2/3 of all such crashes." Therefore, what is the best way to reduce the commercial crashes? The best way is to attack the pilot error by presumably (here is where the gap is) increasing flying time!

(A) We don't need to ELIMINATE pilot errors per se. It would be great but we are only focused on "reducing" the number of crashes and who's to say that all pilot errors lead to crashes anyway?
(B) Out of scope. We don't care about the other training they go through. We are concerned about the flying time that these pilots receive and this answer choice does not give us nearly enough information for us to say that this is close to a good answer.
(E) Not necessary. The author is not assuming that communication skills are NOT necessary. The author is just rather saying that flying time is important.

Now for the tough ones:

(C) Not necessary. There are two gaps here that are so SMALL but significant. This is the type of stuff I would expect to see on a #19 question like this one. The two things are the words "focus" and "airline." The argument is talking about "commercial plane crashes" and then equates this to "airline crashes" in this answer choice. This seems okay but it actaully is not. An airline lets say has two different types of planes: 1) commercial plans and 2) other planes. The argument here says the following: "How do airlines expect to prevent COMMERCIAL plane crashes? Studies have shown that pilot error contributes to two-thirds of all SUCH crashes (aka, commercial plane crashes)." Therefore, we can only talk about one type of plane, the COMMERCIAL plane. Let's say the airline has 50 commercial planes and 50 non-commercial plane. The training program is improved and instead of 3 crashes a year there are only 1 crashes a year. However, this doesn't mean that the overall airline crashes would decrease in this case. Maybe even the number of airline crashes went up! Either way, the shift here is from what we know about "commercial plane crashes" to "airline crashes." Also, albeit this is a much smaller point, if one was still stuck then I would appeal to the "focus" word there. Focus is a vague term but it seems to imply that the training program should be the main priority. The new training program does not have to be the main priority, we just have to increase flying time.
(D) Correct. A tough correct answer but it does address the gap mentioned above. If lack of actual flying time is NOT important contributor to pilot error, then it looks like the whole point of the flying time is unfounded. Plus, in this answer, there is no scope shift between "airline" and "commercial plane". Bingo.

[WaltGrace1983]

The argument focuses on reducing the proportion of commercial plane crashes due to pilot error.

Also, I don't think it does. The argument says that pilot error contributes to "2/3" of all commercial plane crashes. However, the actual argument is about "reducing commercial crashes"

[Mab6q]

I see a much easier way to go about this question.

Whatever they are doing is not going to compensate for pilot's actual flying time

Conclusion: the airlines should rethink their training approach to reducing commercial crashes.

What do we know about pilot's actual time? Nothing! The author is assuming that it is important but this assumption is unwarranted.

Assumption: training approach reduces commercial crashes --> compensates or pilot's actual lying time.

The contenders here are C and D because they have the terminology we need.

C: focus on increasing actual flying time --> airline crashes will decrease.

But wait, this is the exact opposite of what we want.

Our assumption was that: X --> Y

This is saying Y -->X.

That is why C is not necessary.

D, on the other hand, is absolutely necessary because if we know that lack of actual flying time is not important, than that destroys the relationship between the premise and the conclusion.

[civnetn]

I know this thread is like 3 years old but I'm drilling Necessary Assumption questions because they give me such a hard time.

I don't think I agree with all this discussion on variations in wording. In my humble opinion, it completely misses the mark.

It's interesting to me, because this is one instance where the negation technique doesn't work perfectly. Upon first inspection C) and D) are both correct. But when you delve further into the logical structure of the answer choices, this just isn't the case.

In order for the conclusion to be valid, it must be assumed that C) the number of airline crashes will decrease if pilot training programs focus on increasing actual flying time. Because if we negate this statement, the argument falls apart.

And here's where the negation test can fail you. Because, while C) is true, and in fact must be true for the argument to be valid, the only way for C) to be true is if increasing actual flying time will decrease pilot error (which contributes to 2/3rd's of commercial crashes). If increasing actually flying time doesn't decrease pilot error, than it can't possible stop planes from falling out of the sky. In other words, C) is ASSUMING D).

And that's when it dawned on me. I'm looking for a conditional. To be specific, a necessary condition. Conditions don't have assumptions. What does? Well, arguments have assumptions! BINGO.

Let's take a look at the logical structure of C) "the number of airline crashes will decrease IF pilot training programs focus on increasing actual flying time."

So you see our deceptive answer choice C) is actually a simple conditional chain. Not a mere condition. And conditional chains make assumptions all the time. Just like this one did. A correct assumption, but an assumption none-the-less.

Hence, D) "Lack of actual flying time is an important contributor to pilot error in commercial plane crashes," is correct.

While I HATE questions like these, because this took me much longer than I want to admit to figure out, I also LOVE them, because they teach you so much!

Look at what we can learn from this one question:

1.) Conditions can't have assumptions in them. Conditional chains, of course, can.
2.) The Negation Test can be misleading sometimes. In order to correct apply the technique, you MUST be certain of the logical structure you are applying the technique to. You can produce a false positive by negating a conditional chain!
3.) Pay close attention to sufficient indicators like IF. There's a tendency to read the question stem, realize you're dealing with a necessary assumption question and then pay no attention to sufficient modifiers. This is what the test makers were counting on!

[hanhansummer]

Here is my understanding of this question.

P: training programs lack of actual flying time ---> unrealistic to compensate, which equally means that the commercial crashes won't decrease.
( -A --> -B)

C: airline should rethink their training approach.

C is wrong because it takes a necessary condition as a sufficient one. It says if increase the a.f.t., the commercial crashes will decrease, and the logic is A --> B, which is wrong.

D addresses this relationship correctly, that is, lack of a.f.t is a cause of crashes.

Hope it helps.

[jeanne'sjean]

Hi hanhansummer,

So impressive! Actually get a lot of valuable thoughts!

However, I think for your first part of reasoning on the relationship between C and D, namely C is assuming D, the shortcut can be that the author is concerning the direct relationship between "actual flying time" and "pilot error", not "pilot error" and "commercial flight crashes" although the crashes matter has been listed at first. Bearing that on mind, maybe we can have a clear-cut logic.

Anyway, your thoughts enlighten me a lot! Thanks!


Jenny

[WalterH807]

I'll try and add my understanding to the question. What I saw as wrong with "C" is that it's assuming that increasing actual flying time is sufficient for reducing airline crashes overall. The first piece is that we don't know if merely increasing actual flying time is sufficient for airline crashes to decrease since all that the stimulus is saying is that more classroom time isn't enough and that because of this the training program should be rethought. Perhaps increasing actual flying time requires more classroom time as well for the necessary condition to be satisfied.
Another point made by another user is really good too that answer "C" is saying airline crashes and not commercial airline crashes which is the overall category while commercial categories is a subset. Therefore this answer has a division fallacy assuming that overall airline crashes going down also means commercial crashes will decrease. Once looking closer at "C", it becomes quite the mess.
If I missed anything or my reasoning was faulty be sure to let me know so I can correct my mistakes!

[MayaK38]

I agree with what has been said. For me it was helpful to look at the word compensate. The argument says that it is unrealistic for these measures to compensate for pilots' lack of actual flying time.

This isn't suggesting that actual flying time is absolutely necessary. It could be that the new training approach just adequately compensates for the lack of flying time.

Then it became easier to distinguish between C and D. If you negate D then it doesn't matter that this program doesn't compensate for lack of flying time, bc it's not an important factor in commercial crashes.

[JeremyK460]

answer C is interested in 'decreasing the amount of crashes' while the argument is interested in 'preventing crashes from happening'

these aren't necessarily the same thing

total crashes: 10
total flights: 20
increase actual flight experience added to the training program
total crashes: 9
total flights: 15

the flights decreased, but i'm not sure if accidents have actually been prevented.

what if the next five flights all result in crashes?

there has to be some sort of relevance (synonymous with 'importance') between flying time and pilot error for the argument to be at least logically correct