Clicking around research rabbit holes, reading papers cited by other papers, looking for something else entirely, I came across something in one of the world’s premier medical journals, The Lancet: Preventive Medicine In Its Relation To Aviation, by E. Goodwin Rawlinson (full PDF). From nineteen thirty-two. Yes, 1932. Lots of great quotes: “It must always be an axiom that the …
Regretful People
Woulda coulda shoulda. Go soar.
Training Isn’t . . .
From this month’s edition of the Commemorative Air Force’s magazine, a really interesting thought in what is normally the last place to look, a safety article. Under the section about ways to improve safety, it says: “Training isn’t just to fulfil a requirement; it is to make sure each person is comfortable and confident in the task.” Not ±100 feet, or …
Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown Talks Flying
Legendary Captain Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown was a British Royal Navy test pilot who flew 487 types of aircraft, more than anyone else in history. He was the most-decorated pilot in the history of the Royal Navy. Some of his ‘firsts’ include first to land a jet on an aircraft carrier and first to land a twin-engine aircraft on an aircraft …
Awake
The squeak of tires on landing, the view over a ridgeline, the red warning light. When I’m fully awake, I’m flying my best. Quote by Thich Nhat Hanh, online article The Three Gems in Tricycle magazine. Original photo of single-seat sailplane CC0 Public Domain from pxhere.
Hint and Hope
From a major US airline flight crew operating manual: Do not HINT & HOPE. Works well for crew communications in the cockpit, as well as for ATC, mechanics — and maybe marriages?
A Superior Pilot Uses . . .
A superior pilot uses superior SOP to avoid situations which require the use of superior CRM. I think this is true. If I’m disciplined, if I follow standard procedures, it certainly doesn’t solve everything — but it means I have less need to involve the whole team and get creative. Saves that for the really hard stuff, the really …
In the News Today, Living and Dying
Two big news stories today. One sad one happy. Both involve unique planes and expert pilots that I’ve flown with a few times. The sad one first: Man Killed in Plane Crash at Covington Airport was Avid Pilot I flew with Lance Hooley several times in the A320, about 14 years ago, when I was a first officer at the airline …
Woulda Coulda Shoulda
Getting out of the comfort zone is not, well, comfortable. But the views are awesome. George Mallory fought in the Somme, lectured at Cambridge, and may, or may not, have been the first to summit Everest.
Isn’t It Ironic, Don’t You Think
Thirty-five years ago a paper was presented at a conference, titled Ironies of Automation, by Lisanne Bainbridge. It included many insightful ideas: The designer’s view of the human operator may be that the operator is unreliable and inefficient… so should be eliminated from the system. There are two ironies of this attitude. One is that designer errors can be a …