Redefining Your Personal Minimums June 14th, 2015
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I\'m not sure why, but this weekend made me take pause from a General Aviation perspective.\\xa0 There were two fatal accidents in SW Missouri that caught my eye.\\xa0 The first, was a tragic story of a father, mother, and two children that were killed when the A36 took off from a friend\'s grass field, only to stall at about 100 feet over the tree tops.\\xa0 Their 5 year old is in critical condition.\\xa0 The second was a business owner that entered into a thunderstorm which ripped his Saratoga into pieces.\\xa0 As a pilot, I immediately jumped to the conclusion in the first accident\\xa0that the field may have been short, soft, and probably at a high density altitude.\\xa0 With 5 people, even though three were children,\\xa0luggage, and who knows how much fuel, I can imagine the pilot saw the trees coming at him, pulled back and took aim for the tree tops.\\xa0 My theory could be way off base, but if it is, then this type of accident probably happened somewhere else recently.\\xa0 Since no thunderstorm has ever outpaced an airplane, the pilot flew into the storm, expecting to get through it.
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\\nMy experience is that when there is an accident, pilots that read about it, generally figure out what went wrong in less than 30 minutes, which is\\xa0proved right a year later, when the NTSB releases its findings that the pilot was unable to maintain control of the airplane when it (fill in the blank).\\xa0 The reason why\\xa0our community is able to pinpoint the issue, is because the list of alternatives is finite, and we\'ve been through this before.\\xa0 So the question is, if the list is so small and its the same mistakes over and over, then why aren\'t pilots (especially the good ones), staying out of those situations?
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\\nThe answer\\xa0is discussed and discovered in tonight\'s show.\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0As pilot\'s we are taught about proper flight planning to limit risks associated with making a flight.\\xa0 We are given cool mnemonics, like, IMSAFE (Illness, Medications, Stress, Alcohol, Fatigue, Emotion/Eating) and PAVE (Pilot, Aircraft, environmental, External pressures).\\xa0 We\'re also taught about dangerous attitudes:
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\\n* Anti-Authority
\\n* Impulsive
\\n* Invulnerability
\\n* Macho
\\n* Resignation
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\\nAnd to top it off, all pilots are taught to make and respect personal minimums.\\xa0 Seems like we have plenty of education on how to make intelligent decisions regarding a flight.
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\\nThe problem is that pilots are also taught to be procedural and to stick to a process, whether its GUMPS (Gas, Undercarriage, Mixture, Prop, Safety/Switches\\xa0or the 5 (or 7)\\xa0T\'s (Turn, Time, Twist, Throttle, Talk, Tires, Track).\\xa0 It doesn\'t matter if your plane doesn\'t have retractable gear, just skip that step.\\xa0 We can apply our acronyms to a diverse set of circumstances.\\xa0 The same is said for personal minimums.\\xa0 We\'re taught to determine our minimum ceilings, visibility, and cross wind component and commit that to memory.\\xa0 There are two problems with this.\\xa0 One, the list is incomplete.\\xa0 Doesn\'t it also make sense to add items like how much fuel should you have when you land at your destination, how much sleep you should have the night before a flight, and various other factors.\\xa0 Second, the personal minimum equation assumes it only changes when your confidence supports making the change.\\xa0 In reality, your personal minimums should change with each flight, based on what aircraft you\'ll be flying, the weather, the passengers, the destination airport, and so on.\\xa0 And why don\'t we do live by this concept?\\xa0 COMPLACENCY and MISPLACED CONFIDENCE.\\xa0 We fly between these two airports all the time, I can go.\\xa0 Never mind that you\'re flying in a different aircraft\\xa0that doesn\'t have the horsepower and avionics that you\'re so used to flying.\\xa0 Never mind that you didn\'t sleep so well and that you skipped breakfast.\\xa0\\xa0It\'s decent weather, so I am good to go!\\xa0\\xa0
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\\nTrue confidence comes from practicing with a purpose, proper planning, and understanding the factors and alternatives in play for each flying event.\\xa0 That confidence will drive a proper set of considerations in building your custom personal minimums for that flight.\\xa0 As pilots, we have the power to make a significant contribution to making our passion a safer and more rewarding experience.\\xa0 I have a saying that everyone is either committed or complacent, there is no in-between.\\xa0\\xa0Right now, which one is you?\\xa0 More important, starting\\xa0from this point forward, which one will be you?
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\\nBLUE SKIES and TAILWINDS!
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