Saying YES is easy, saying NO is hard. Outstanding article by James Albright in Business & Commercial Aviation on not pleasing the boss. There is an old saying among business aviation pilots: “You don’t pay me to say ‘Yes,’ you pay me to say ‘No.’” Saying “Yes” is easy; it is what the passengers want to hear. It takes real courage to look …
Tag: go/no-go
Airmanship in Action
Your first choice isn’t always right. So keep turning! Plot from AA flight ORD to DCA. Looks like they ended up on the upwind side of the storm, almost always a better place to be, even if it is a longer track.
Flight Controls Free and Correct?
You have a religion that says if I want to live, I’m going to run the checklist. Robert Hulse Last week the NTSB released lots of details on a fatal accident that will keep lawyers and human factors academics busy for years. It involves rich high-profile (newspaper publisher) passengers, an iconic Gulfstream IV jet, the failure of a basic airplane …
I Know My Personal Limits
“I knew my personal limits. It was my pride to know my abilities and those of the airplanes I flew. Still, there was always a part of me that knew I could dart outside the limits for a bit and sneak back in quickly.” ~ Ryan Lunde This quote is from an excellent personal article well worth reading: Impact, online …
Andy Warhol on Weird Situations
“When a situation develops gradually, no matter how weird that situation is, you get used to it.” ~ Andy Warhol, in his book POPism. The big question is: What bad situations or habits are you used to? Can we step back and get un-used to them before an ‘accident’ happens?
Sometimes Airmanship is Not Flying
The US Department of Labor recently released an order with a rare win for an individual pilot against a large corporation. They are requiring that Air Methods (who operate over 400 helicopters) pay the pilot employee about $160,000 in lost pay and damages after he refused to fly a mission because of an airworthiness issue (the emergency locator transmitter that was …