Flight Training - July 2021 - 38

Ten thousand safe landings don't guarantee the
next one will be a success. Airplanes care nothing
about pilot history or qualifications. Pilots must
perform on every flight.
Pilots leave themselves an out.
If headwinds aloft are stronger than
anticipated, if the visibility as the destination
drops, if electrical systems fail,
or an engine loses power in flight, pilots
have got to have contingency plans. And
when backup plans go awry, they must
have the ability to develop new ones
quickly and under pressure. It's a tough
discipline to master-but leaving yourself
an out can be both habit-forming and
helpful in many nonflying activities, too.
Business owners who fly tend to look at
strategy and risk in the much the same
way they do as pilots.
Pilots commit themselves.
Spend as much time as you like preparing,
evaluating, and double checking. But
eventually there's a point when pilots
must commit to a takeoff or abort; continue
to a destination or divert; land or
go around. Those moments demand that
pilots decide and then perform. These are
binary choices-not shades of gray.
Pilots trust, and are trustworthy.
Pilots have a great deal of independence,
but they must also trust. They trust their
instruments to keep them oriented in the
clouds and navigating to their destinations.
They trust air traffic controllers
for headings, altitudes, clearances, and to
keep them clear of traffic and obstacles.
They trust mechanics to be skilled, thorough,
and diligent. And they trust each
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FLIGHT TRAINING JULY 2021
other to follow aviation regulations and
communicate clearly. In short, they must
trust the entire aviation system-and the
entire aviation system depends on them.
It's a package deal, and one can't work
without the other.
Flying is a meritocracy.
Becoming a pilot is a big step, but it only
puts you at the bottom of an elaborate
pyramid. Flying is a meritocracy
that rewards continued education and
achievement. More experience and
advanced ratings are, for some, milestones
in a lifelong aviation practice. But
no matter how many certificates a pilot
gets, no one ever completely masters the
art and science of flying, and all pilots are
fallible and prone to mistakes and oversights.
Ten thousand safe landings don't
guarantee the next one will be a success.
Airplanes care nothing about pilot history
or qualifications. Pilots must perform on
every flight.
Pilots have a unique culture.
And part of that culture involves gallows
humor.
" Never fly the A model of anything. "
" If your engine fails at night, turn your
landing light on. If you don't like what
you see when you get near the ground,
turn the light off. "
" Any landing you walk away from
is a good one. Any landing in which the
airplane is reusable is very good. "
These fatalistic laugh lines hint at
aviation's dark side. Its history is full of
accidents, mishaps, and misadventures.
But pilot humor is largely self-effacing,
and if you look closely, there's an inherent
self-confidence and optimism in it. The
jokes imply that, whatever difficulties
pilots face in the air, we'll deal with them
on our own terms. And then, eventually,
we'll laugh about them. What could be
more hopeful than that?
A pilot's perspective changes.
Flying is made up of hundreds of small
skills. Many of them, like chandelles or
lazy 8s, can seem maddeningly difficult
(or pointless) to learn. But once mastered,
those skills become second nature, and
you wonder why you ever struggled with
them in the first place. Get used to that
feeling because it repeats itself over and
over throughout your aviation education.
The goalposts move.
Pilots become masters at self-motivation.
We know the kinds of incentives that
matter to us, and we use them to accomplish
distant goals.
One of my fellow flight students
wanted a leather flight jacket but
promised himself he wouldn't buy one
until he earned an airline transport pilot
certificate. That turned out to be a multiyear
effort, and when he completed it,
strangely, he didn't rush right out and get
the jacket.
Flight Training - July 2021

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