Mike is an American aerobatic national champion, Red Bull air racer, and author of aerobatic flight training manuals. This quote was in the November 2014 iPad edition of the aviation magazine LOOP:
The next hour
Mac has been flying for 40 years, and writing/editing aviation magazines as long as I can remember. His words here are from the September 2015 edition of EAA’s Sport Aviation magazine:
Flying both the Boeing 747 & Edge 540
The essence of Inner Art of Airmanship is finding the core principles that makes good pilots great. Learning the techniques that are universal when flying a Piper Cub, an Airbus, or a helicopter.
Paul Bonhomme is uniquely qualified to understand these issues, as he flies an Edge 540 in the Red Bull Air Races and a ‘day job’ at British Airways as a Boeing 747-400 captain. And it just so happens that they let him film three minutes of really cool video talking about their similarities:
“There are lots of skills of flying both that are transferable. Mainly the managing of the safety. That doesn’t happen by accident. If you have the same mindset for a safe flight, whether it’s in a 747 carrying passengers or racing, that planning ahead, the managing the tasks, making sure you spot any issues well before you get there. That bodes well for flying safely in both.”
Paul Bonhomme
Paperless cockpit?
“Our two greatest problems are gravity and paperwork. We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.”
Werner von Braun
Are you a paperless cockpit? Is that even a thing?
Chuck Cook, fleet technology manager at JetBlue Airways, told the press this week Jepp has “allowed us to … achieve fully paperless operations.”
But hold on a minute. Here’s some pictures from the real world. Apparently fully paperless does not include the checklists, the non-normal checklists, the maintenance logbook, the flight plan, the release, the weather, the ATIS, the fit-to-fly forms, or several hundred other pages. Every time I takeoff, a tree dies! Are you going paperless?
Aaron Rodgers mindset
“It’s all about the challenge. Innovate and evolve and stay on top for a while. It can’t be Groundhog Day. I can’t be Bill Murray. I’d go as crazy as he did in that movie.”
Aaron Rodgers, NFL Green Bay Packers quarterback.
The Packers are 4-0 this season. He is the best quarterback in the NFL right now. And with this mindset, he could continue to be one of the best quarterbacks ever. But this thinking man at the top of his game feels the constant need to “innovate and evolve”.
So what are you doing to “innovate and evolve” your flying?
(Interview in Sports Illustrated magazine, 27 September 2015.)