About Good Pilots and Bad Pilots

"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message

I've always been convinced that it's the pilots who "think" about what
they're doing.... who have the best chance at a higher level of flight
safety.

I agree. Almost 40 years ago now, a long passed fellow named George Day
started my commercial certificate training with a very short flight wherein
he asked me to demonstrate a left bank.....right bank....pitch up......
pitch down........ok, let's go back and land.

That's good, he said after we shut down. Now, everything else you need to
know and do to fly professionally is mental. Thinking is what seperates the
professionals from the amateurs. Get the right attitude to start, and keep
it right, and you'll be fine. He then handed me a book called "Song of the
Sky", by Guy Murchie, and told me to come back next week. [the book dates
from the early fifties, and may be overly sentimentalized for today's
tastes, but is still worth the read, in my view, if you can find it.]

I have subsequently flown 22 years professionally without a catastrophic
failure of anything, without ever having to declare an emergency. I am
convinced that George, although a world-class curmudgeon, had it right about
thinking and professionalism. His advice, along with a very healthy
allotment of good luck, got me through.

John Gaquin