"Jose" wrote in message news60Jf.15117over.

But since nothing is guaranteed, a single unfortunate outcome of bad
piloting is not sufficient to identify a bad pilot. It is rather the
=pattern= of bad piloting, irrespective of outcome, that identifies one.



But Jose, a single failure in a flight rarely leads to a catastrophic event.
Let say Mr. Good missed that final tightening of the fuel cap. That's one
mistake that could lead to disaster. But since he is Mr. Good and does an
excellent scan of his panel he notices that the right tank is loosing fuel
faster than the engine could possible be burning it. So he makes the right
decision and lands the nearest airport, finds the problem and lives to fly
another day.

No let's look at Mr. Bad as he takes the same flight with the same single
mistake before take off. He doesn't notice the fuel burn rate is higher or
if he does he blames the gauge or makes the determination that it isn't a
problem and continues his flight. At some point he exhausts his fuel and
since he has spent most of the flight playing with his new Garmin 396 he
doesn't have a clue that there is a wide open field 1/4 mile behind him and
instead he tries to land on the highway in front of him where he catches a
powerline and plunges into a family of 5 on their vacation in a rented
convertable.

Two different types of pilots, one original mistake, two very different
outcomes.