Your question was, who should be screened out? That requires an objective evaluation not born of pure philosophy, pure politics or pure ideology.

I cannot speak as a pilot, but I can speak as a part 121 passenger and I can speak about the objective qualities I'd like to see in my Captain.

As a passenger, I want my Captain to be [above all] fully competent and demonstrably capable of performing correct tasks under the pressure of life and death - bottom line. As a passenger, this is what I want to know are firmly in place.

There are lots of people in the world who can knock the ball out of the park, when there is no pressure involved. Place them under just a small amount of heat and their cognitive ability suffers significantly and thus their physical ability is hindered as well. As long as the waters are calm and smooth, as long as things are predictable and expected, some people can climb mountains and perform at high levels. Introduce real pressure into the equation and not everyone of those calm, fair weather performers can maintain the same tempo of performance. We see this demonstrated in all walks of life, not just flying airplanes.

This is of course, Human Factors related. So, how do you simulate life and death scenarios and make it real? Good question - and I don't have a rock solid answer excepting those military pilots with actual combat experience where they actually dealt with life and death decisions.

The second attribute that I'd like to see in my Captain, is the ability to be a cross functional thinker. That is, one who can think globally and act locally. One who is both a Strategic Thinker and a Tactical Implementer. Often times, in high pressure corporate environments, I witnessed people who where PhD educated and awesome strategic thinkers. However, place that same person into a mission critical business situation and their real-time cognitive functioning seems to drop to that of a very advanced high school graduate.

They can't make solid decisions, they are constantly second guessing themselves, they are often times indecisive and bottom line insecure in their own ability to do the right thing involving leading people in a time of crisis and/or high pressure. Place them back into the lab, or get them back into their office where no mission critical decisions have to be made, and they are once again a world class, highly educated, highly capable and very productive PhD performer.

I think this speaks to the ability of a Captain to be able to properly prioritize, analyze, categorize and compartmentalize incoming data and then mentally firewall all cognitive functions that hinder mission critical physical performance. Now, unlike the life or death scenarios, this is something you can test, measure and evaluate objectively without political, historical, personal and/or philosophical bias.

Either the candidate has this capacity, or they don't.

When Tiger Woods loses, he does not make any excuses - ever. He wins not because he's the most physically gifted person on the PGA Tour, but because he's the most mentally prepared person on the PGA Tour. This is what separates Tiger, from the rest of the tour, on most Sunday afternoons. No matter what happens to Tiger on the golf course, his brain, like a heat seeking missile, finds a way to focus on those things that must get done [mission critical to him] to bring home another victory and collect another check - big checks.

Anyone knowing anything about how hard golf is physically to play well day in and day out, understands fully what it would mean to play with a busted ACL. Virtually, impossible - most golfers would say. Yet, this is exactly what Tiger did and he did it during a Major Tournament and won - ACL knee and all.

Nothing but the ruthless ability to mentally firewall the pain and everything else inside of you telling you to quit, give up and go home could possibly account for even being able to finishing the tournament, let alone actuallying win it.

So, mental strength and mental agility, are very important things that I'd like to know were in my Captain. Because if something goes wrong at FL380 @ .80 mach and it is within the Captain's ability to get us on the ground safely even if we need to make a crash landing, then I want to know that he/she has the kind of mind that won't break down under mission critical pressure.

There are a lot of people who simply cannot do that and you have to wonder, when the chips are down and mental toughness is required to save human life through a mission critical event mid-air, is everbody currently in the left seat of a 121 operator capable of making it happen. [assuming pilot input can solve the problem, of course]