AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2023 - 24

FLYING LIFE
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Stress can be your flying friend
BY NATALIE BINGHAM HOOVER
HOW MANY OF YOU have experienced moderate amounts of stress
over the past year? That's the question asked by psychologist Kelly
McGonigal to a packed auditorium in a wildly popular TED talk.
More than half the audience raised their hands. But, I think if
she had been speaking to a room full of pilots, every hand would
have gone up. Oh, we've all had those beautiful, smooth-air flights
when the airplane behaves perfectly; it just doesn't happen very
often. Usually, some stressor is present, whether it's turbulence, an
erratic engine gauge, or the person sitting in the cockpit with you.
In her 2013 presentation, McGonigal describes a study
performed on 30,000 adults over eight years. The adults were
asked two questions: How much stress have you experienced in
the past year? Do you believe stress is bad for your health? The
study later took a look at public death records of the participants
and found that people who experienced a moderate amount
of stress had a 43 percent increased risk of premature death.
However, that statistic was completely mitigated in the group of
people who believed stress was good for them. They actually had
the same death rates as the ones who reported experiencing little
stress in their lives. Therefore, McGonigal says, the cause of death
of the 43 percent was actually the belief that stress is bad for them.
When we are stressed, our body has a physiological response
that includes an increased breathing rate and pounding heart. And,
McGonigal reports, those who believe stress is bad for them also
experience a constriction of their arteries, which is not a routinely
healthy state. However, those who enjoy a good stressful challenge
have arteries that stay wide open during the event, similar to the
way our arteries behave when we experience joy. People with
a healthy stress response think: My heart is pounding because
my body is rising to the occasion of this high workload. My heavy
breathing is providing the extra oxygen I need to perform well here.
McGonigal says that during stressful events, our bodies also do
something else interesting. They release oxytocin, a hormone that
drives us to seek contact from others. In other words, our body is
saying, " Don't go this alone. Get help. "
When we think of overly stressful flying environments, we have
to discuss N4252G, a Cirrus SR20 that crashed during a go-around
at Houston's Hobby airport (HOU) in June 2016. The 332-hour
private pilot was travelling with her husband and brother-in-law
to visit a family member undergoing cancer treatment. Hobby is a
busy, Class Bravo airport with multiple intersecting runways and
24
AOPA PILOT / April 2023
heavy airline traffic. There was a 16-knot gusty crosswind that day.
Talk about stress. But you haven't even heard about the flight yet.
When the pilot first contacted Houston tower, she was cleared
to land on Runway 4 and told to follow a Boeing 737, caution, wake
turbulence. She was also given maximum forward airspeed for
another airliner behind her. Shortly thereafter, she was told to
execute a go-around and enter a right base for Runway 35 and
warned of another 737 on final for Runway 4 that she would need
to land before. She was then given a traffic advisory for a different
inbound 737 to pass behind before turning to land on Runway
35. When she announced traffic in sight, the controller gave her
the option to follow that traffic and land on Runway 4, which she
accepted. (Are you getting confused yet? It's a lot to keep up with,
and I'm sitting on my living room couch, not trying to navigate an
SR20 around multiple 737s). The story continues with another
runway swap, more traffic advisories, and another go-around
when the pilot came in too high to make a safe landing. The next
time she was sequenced around, she came in too high again for
Runway 35 and executed a third go-around, during which she
was told to swap to a low tight pattern for Runway 4 and given
some more traffic to find. In the middle of this sequence, the pilot
retracted the flaps at too slow of an airspeed and stall/spun into
the parking lot of an adjacent hardware store. The AOPA Air Safety
Institute describes the accident in Accident Case Study: Traffic
Pattern Tragedy (airsafetyinstitute.org/ACS/patterntragedy).
There are so many problems with this scenario, but I do
wonder, did the pilot think of her pounding heart and increased
breathing rate as her body rising to help her out of a tight spot,
or was she feeling her chest constrict and starting to doubt her
abilities? What if she had listened to that rise in oxytocin-which
tells us to ask for help, McGonigal says-and told ATC she needed
some assistance and priority landing? Would things have ended
differently for the three people who died that day?
In our routinely stressful aviation environment, be
certain in the belief that a challenge is good for you. Your body
is perfectly designed
to rise to the occasion.
So, be calm, and fly the
airplane. You were made
for this.
myaviation101.com
NATALIE BINGHAM HOOVER
began flying in 2004. After
corporate and airline work, she
now serves as an FAA designated
examiner and chief instructor of a
flight school in Mississippi.
http://www.airsafetyinstitute.org/ACS/patterntragedy http://www.myaviation101.com
AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2023

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