safety

Not up on a shelf

By Dave English

“I want to live everyday all days as hard as I can. We party hard, we love hard, we jump hard because we’re reminded way too often that it can end like that. We’re very aware of how precious life is. What a gift it is. So we use it. It’s not up on a shelf still in its bubble wrap. Ours is all beat up and thrown in the corner. It’s good. You should use something that you cherish.” Jimmy Pouchert, interview at the very end of the 2024 move Fly. He died BASE jumping in 2021. The whole … Continue reading Not up on a shelf

Control of fear

By Dave English

“The control of fear is a necessary part of the inner work of flight.” William Langewiesche Breathe. Relax. Do the ‘what-if’ work ahead of time. All these are part of the Inner Work of Flight. Quote is from Langewiesche’s 2010 book Aloft: Thoughts on the Experience of Flight. And yes, his Dad wrote Stick and Rudder.

Mountains are

By Dave English

“Mountains are not fair or unfair, they are just dangerous.” Reinhold Messner, All Fourteen 8,000ers, 1999. Wikipedia says this about Messner: He made the first solo ascent of Mount Everest and, along with Peter Habeler, the first ascent of Everest without supplemental oxygen. He was the first person to climb all 14 eight-thousanders, doing so without supplementary oxygen. Messner was the first to cross Antarctica and Greenland with neither snowmobiles nor dog sleds and also crossed the Gobi Desert alone. He is widely considered as the greatest mountaineer of all time.

Your new job is to say

By Dave English

“Your new job is to say ‘no,’ when everyone else says ‘go’.” Happy New Year! Here’s to resolutions of flying more, flying better. This is from new Delta captain Jeremy King, his first trip as pilot-in-command of an airliner: https://wordsaloft.substack.com/p/managing-delays-gaining-time-without

81% of ERAU pilots bust IFR minimums

By Dave English

OK, this might be a bit of a ‘one weird trick nobody knows’ clickbait avgeek troll headline — but this is a real paper on real research in a real journal. It’s in Safety Science, titled ‘An analysis of a pilot’s adherence to their personal weather minimums’, written by Professor Scott Winter et al.. Full citation at the end of the post. They studied certificated instrument pilots (who were also ERAU students) and how they adhered to both personal and FAA minimums while flying an ILS approach. The results were quite astonishing: “The findings demonstrated 96.4% of participants descended below their … Continue reading 81% of ERAU pilots bust IFR minimums