JFK Jr.'s mean ol wife

In rec.aviation.misc Snowbird wrote:
: wrote in message ...

: Most of the deadly accidents can be attributed to some form of
: poor pilot decision, judgement, competence. It's pretty rare that a wing
: falls off, or even that an engine quits outright. Much more often it's
: VFR in IMC, fuel starvation, or overloading that gets people killed. It's
: unfortunate that arrogance and hubris are typical pilot personality
: traits, as these really have no business in aviation.

: I guess I'm a little unclear on your meaning, here, Cory.

: Are you saying that arrogance and hubris lead pilots into poor
: decisions such as VFR into IMC, fuel starvation, overloading,
: or misestimating the performance of the aircraft?

: It happens. There are certainly plenty of accidents which seem
: to fall into the "what was he THINKING?" category.

: On the other hand, I see another kind of arrogance, which is
: the sort which says "VFR into IMC, fuel starvation, etc etc
: are mistakes which stupid, arrogant pilots make. I'm not a
: stupid, arrogant pilot so I'll never make such a mistake."

: Having watched an accident chain unfolding next to me, and
: having had a few flights where we landed and looked at
: each other and knew that if a few things fell out differently,
: we would have been in trouble -- I try now to ask "what was
: he thinking?" in a different tone of voice. One of enquiry
: not condemnation.

I'm pretty much saying the former. Once one thinks the latter,
they've already become "arrogant and/or stupid." While certainly all
pilots are not made equal, the temptation to think of oneself as "better
than that," is the fundamental issue. Of course, there is the slippery
slope of errors that usually leads to an incident, but pilots with hubris
are more susceptible to that chain.

I'm probably unclear again, but the bottom line is that it's not
good to be overconfident.

-Cory


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