About Good Pilots and Bad Pilots

Very good post. I'm one of those GA guys that's had my "bad pilot"
moments - a Tri-Pacer on its back twice and out of fuel once. I have
done my best of learn from my mistakes and avoid them in the future. As
I get older that has become both easier and harder. Sometimes I can
recognize a chain of bad events beginning to form and put a stop to it.
Other times something will pop up suddenly and I'll kick myself for
days about how I reacted. I've survived 29 years and 2700 hours, but
it'll take just as much work and attention to survive my next flight as
it did the first one.
--
Gene Seibel
Tales of Flight - http://pad39a.com/gene/tales.html
Because I fly, I envy no one.

Hi Gene;
I've discovered through my career that I do most of my flight safety
"thinking" in between flights where I have a tendency toward self evaluation
on what I did and what I could have done to make the flight better. Doing
this sort of put me in a constant state of "awareness" about my flying in
general and resulted in my making those small adjustmants and improvements
that are necessary to longivity in the business.
I've always been convinced that it's the pilots who "think" about what
they're doing all the time, whether in flight or on the ground between
flights who have the best chance at a higher level of flight safety. Pilots
who put their mind away with the airplane in the hangar don't fare as well
in the long run.
I've had some of those "bad pilot moments" myself. :-)
Dudley

"Gene Seibel" wrote in message
oups.com...
Very good post. I'm one of those GA guys that's had my "bad pilot"
moments - a Tri-Pacer on its back twice and out of fuel once. I have
done my best of learn from my mistakes and avoid them in the future. As
I get older that has become both easier and harder. Sometimes I can
recognize a chain of bad events beginning to form and put a stop to it.
Other times something will pop up suddenly and I'll kick myself for
days about how I reacted. I've survived 29 years and 2700 hours, but
it'll take just as much work and attention to survive my next flight as
it did the first one.
--
Gene Seibel
Tales of Flight - http://pad39a.com/gene/tales.html
Because I fly, I envy no one.

"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
link.net...
Hi Gene;
I've discovered through my career that I do most of my flight safety
"thinking" in between flights where I have a tendency toward self
evaluation on what I did and what I could have done to make the flight
better.


Sports psychologists will tell you that 80 percent of most activity is
mental and 20 percent physical. So practicing mentally is suggested, indeed
demanded, for high-performance athletes. There is every reason that it
should be practiced by pilots.

Your potential for superior performance is not just based on your skill at
the activity, but your mental attitude... in many very different categories.
So when I see this thread on "good pilots", what does that really mean? He
may be very skilful at extricating an aircraft from an unusual attitude at
400 AGL, but he doesn't keep a very good visual lookout. He may be able to
flight-plan accurately to the second, but he skips through the pre-flight.
He is real skilful at finding a runway in 200-1/2, so he takes chances and
flies VFR into IMC.

Or alternately, he knows every reg in the book, every word of the safety
seminar, but he still skids his turn-to-final, always lands in a crosswind
with side-force on the gear, and becomes a panicked passenger when the
engine fails.

I believe that very few of us are "good pilots". If the required *mental*
and physical skills of piloting were classified and scored honestly, most of
us would score well is some categories and poorly in others; some
*exceedingly* well in some and *very* poorly in others.

Some of us would be mediocre in all.

Only a very few would score highly in all categories, all of the time. The
NTSB is full of multi-thousand commercial "good pilots" who did a stupid
thing, such as this example of empty-tank selection for takeoff:
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...09X01183&key=1

As a pilot, I can only pledge to try to improve those categories at which I
score poorly. Will I reach a "good-pilot" level of proficiency in them all?
I doubt it. It won't stop me from trying. Will I become a statistic before
reaching proficiency in every physical and mental category? Maybe. Maybe I
know enough about my shortcomings so that I avoid the situations which I am
apt to handle poorly. And maybe I pay special attention to those mental
skills which I know to be weak.

And maybe that is enough to cheat the statistician just a little bit, and
that is all that I can ask of myself.

"Icebound" wrote in message
...

"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
link.net...
Hi Gene;
I've discovered through my career that I do most of my flight safety
"thinking" in between flights where I have a tendency toward self
evaluation on what I did and what I could have done to make the flight
better.


Sports psychologists will tell you that 80 percent of most activity is
mental and 20 percent physical. So practicing mentally is suggested,
indeed demanded, for high-performance athletes. There is every reason
that it should be practiced by pilots.

Your potential for superior performance is not just based on your skill at
the activity, but your mental attitude... in many very different
categories. So when I see this thread on "good pilots", what does that
really mean? He may be very skilful at extricating an aircraft from an
unusual attitude at 400 AGL, but he doesn't keep a very good visual
lookout. He may be able to flight-plan accurately to the second, but he
skips through the pre-flight. He is real skilful at finding a runway in
200-1/2, so he takes chances and flies VFR into IMC.

Or alternately, he knows every reg in the book, every word of the safety
seminar, but he still skids his turn-to-final, always lands in a crosswind
with side-force on the gear, and becomes a panicked passenger when the
engine fails.

I believe that very few of us are "good pilots". If the required
*mental* and physical skills of piloting were classified and scored
honestly, most of us would score well is some categories and poorly in
others; some *exceedingly* well in some and *very* poorly in others.

Some of us would be mediocre in all.

Only a very few would score highly in all categories, all of the time.
The NTSB is full of multi-thousand commercial "good pilots" who did a
stupid thing, such as this example of empty-tank selection for takeoff:
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...09X01183&key=1

As a pilot, I can only pledge to try to improve those categories at which
I score poorly. Will I reach a "good-pilot" level of proficiency in them
all? I doubt it. It won't stop me from trying. Will I become a statistic
before reaching proficiency in every physical and mental category? Maybe.
Maybe I know enough about my shortcomings so that I avoid the situations
which I am apt to handle poorly. And maybe I pay special attention to
those mental skills which I know to be weak.

And maybe that is enough to cheat the statistician just a little bit, and
that is all that I can ask of myself.

From my first post;

"The truth is that at any given moment in time, a pilot can be either a good
pilot or a bad one. The trick is to constantly be leaning heavily on the
good" side. "

......and that, as you have so correctly stated, is all we can do, and it's
in doing this to the best of our ability that keeps us in the game :-)

Dudley Henriques

"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

"John Gaquin" wrote in message
...

"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

I think those of us who had a George Day somewhere in our past are
fortunate.
My George Day was named Jim Shotwell. :-)
Dudley Henriques

On Sat, 18 Feb 2006 19:37:32 -0500, John Gaquin wrote:

I have subsequently flown 22 years professionally without a catastrophic
failure of anything, without ever having to declare an emergency.

Next time you are at your airport, be sure to thank your A&P.

All the good piloting is only as good as the reliability of the equipment
you fly.....

Allen

"A Lieberman" wrote in message
news:l3utdxp6k9u6.8nu4f8z2h9p3

Next time you are at your airport, be sure to thank your A&P.

All the good piloting is only as good as the reliability of the equipment
you fly.....

You'll recall my post referred to "...a very healthy allotment of good
luck...". That good luck was, in great part, in the form of professional
airline maintenance staff and required routine maintenance.

Remember, when the aircraft operator or owner takes his
aircraft in for an inspection or to troubleshoot a squawk,
unless you fix what they find, it isn't corrected and the
plane may not be safe. Ask a few mechanics at the airport,
how many times they have not been allowed to fix a problem
because of cost or the need to fly a scheduled trip and
they'll do it later?


--
James H. Macklin
ATP,CFI,A&P

--
The people think the Constitution protects their rights;
But government sees it as an obstacle to be overcome.
some support
http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/secondamendment2.htm
See http://www.fija.org/ more about your rights and duties.


"John Gaquin" wrote in message
...
|
| "A Lieberman" wrote in message
| news:l3utdxp6k9u6.8nu4f8z2h9p3
|
| Next time you are at your airport, be sure to thank your
A&P.
|
| All the good piloting is only as good as the reliability
of the equipment
| you fly.....
|
| You'll recall my post referred to "...a very healthy
allotment of good
| luck...". That good luck was, in great part, in the form
of professional
| airline maintenance staff and required routine
maintenance.
|
|

"Jim Macklin" wrote in message
news:tITJf.98200

Remember, when the aircraft operator or owner takes his
aircraft in for an inspection or to troubleshoot a squawk,
unless you fix what they find, it isn't corrected and the
plane may not be safe. Ask a few mechanics at the airport,
how many times they have not been allowed to fix a problem
because of cost or the need to fly a scheduled trip and
they'll do it later?

My conclusions are based upon many years of Part 121 airline experience.
What are your opinions based upon?