The standard advice to avoid a wake turbulence encounter is to wait a bit, to give some room when taking off or landing right behind a large aircraft. And that is good, practical, physics-based advice. But what about when you hit wake turbulence and have to recover? What’s being rediscovered is when actually encountering serious wake turbulence, the best thing …
Aircraft Do Not Crash of Themselves.
“Aircraft do not crash of themselves.” Tough love? Too harsh? Nevil Shute did include designers and managers in his paradigm of human error. Quote from Slide Rule: The Autobiography of an Engineer, 1954.
Richard Bach on Spirit of Flight
In the book Gift of Wings, Richard Bach writes about the people who look up to the sky to watch airplanes, people who slow down when driving past airports. He says, “If you act this way, it’s possible that in flight you’ll find much to learn of yourself and of the path of your life on this planet.” Of course, …
Drink the Wild Air
“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, Drink the wild air‘s salubrity.” Ralph Waldo Emerson preface of ‘Considerations by the Way’ published in ‘The Conduct of Life’,(1860, revised 1876).
Zero/Zero, Charles D. Svovoda
“At last I understood what true professionalism is. Being a pilot isn’t all seat-of-the-pants flying and glory. It’s self-discipline, practice, study, analysis and preparation. It’s precision. If you can’t keep the gauges where you want them with everything free and easy, how can you keep them there when everything goes wrong?” Charles D. Svoboda Flying magazine, November 1976. Old editions …
Jimmy Chin on Managing Fear
Jimmy Chin is one of the best mountain climbers alive. He knows fear. And how to manage it: The full quote, from Outside magazine 19 October 2015: Fear is always there, it’s a survival instinct. You just need to know how to manage it. It’s about sorting out perceived risk from real risk, and then being as rational as possible with …
TWA Flight Safety
“The most important wings on a plane are on the pilot.” TWA Flight Safety publication.
Safe. Legal. Standard.
A major US airline is tweaking its SOPs. I like the way they now express their philosophy, and priority, of standard operating procedures. In six words:
Surgical Checklists
Checklists save lives! A major new study in the journal Annals of Surgery shows a 22% reduction in post-surgical deaths when a simple WHO 19-item checklist was used. It wasn’t a true random experiment, but the clear results are still impressive. “Safety checklists are not a piece of paper that somehow magically protect patients, but rather they are a tool to help change …
You Must Set Yourself on Fire
“You must set yourself on fire.” It’s not easy, it’s not fun, and it will hurt at times. But fuel the fire. It’s worth it.