Fighting complacency is not as exciting as fighting fires, but it’s a battle we will join many more times. We train for engine failures, electrical loss, and lots more. And we should practice multiple worst case failures. But we must also learn to handle ourselves on all those flights when nothing is going on. (Quote is from Coelho’s 2008 novel The Winner Stands Alone.)
Being a “good stick” is not enough. Good pilots are thinking their way through the air as well as simply moving controls. What comes next in flight is absolutely as important as what is happening right now. Jack J. Pelton EAA CEO, Sport Aviation magazine, Nov 2016 “Being ahead of the plane” they call it. And if you can always answer the question, “what are the next two things,” then you are really mentally ahead—pilot not passenger.
Great advice on doing the right thing. From one of the best basketball players of all time Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, also known as Airplane! co-pilot Roger Murdock:
Total power loss at 300 ft. Eighteen year-old solo pilot glides back safely by flying the plan he’d verbally self-briefed. Very short, very cool video: Plan your flight. Fly your plan. Control your airspeed.
The No-Drama Airline Cockpit, a great piece by Chris Manno on his JetHead blog. It’s high praise of low stress: That’s the way I like it in flight: quiet, disciplined, low bullshit and high performance. Leave the drama to others outside the cockpit, on the ground, in Hollywood or romance novels. The way Sam put it to me years ago, “best relax in the cockpit, or you’ll die all tense.”
