Thermal right, land left

In article ,
ADP wrote:
Well Mark,

After defending the honor of Airline Pilots,
I suppose that I could be forgiven the fact that
I agree with your last two paragraphs, to wit:

What does this have to do with RAS? Plenty. I suggest
pilots who are very experienced can benefit from practicing
things that are VERY "rare." As you get more experienced, these
things become even rarer (because skill and judgement make them so.)
Slack rope, the need for takeoff abort, unexpected need for
release, full stalls, failed instruments, etc. are rare because
super experienced pilot skills are so good one avoids these
things well.

I suggest that if one spends enough time in the safe regime, the
rare events happen extremely rarely, but when they do, they
are more unexpected, more mentally jarring, and more potentially
devastating. The mental disbelief of an experienced pilot can be
more profound and more crippling than for a novice. I myself
have had a delayed reaction to a recovery because of disbelief
and had to go back to training from many years past to recover.
And I've seen this while flying with other experienced pilots...

It's like saying puppy dogs are cute. Of course you are mostly right
but it does not entirely explain why experienced pilots do dumb things.

I can not, for the life of me, understand how a pilot gets into
an inadvertant spin close to the ground. I have seen it and read
about it, but I don't understand it.

The accident reports from the last ten years for gliders indicate
two ridge soaring stall/spins, two airframe failures during stall/spin
or recovery, and 1 C.G. stall spin for commercial pilots.

Out of 24 fatal accidents.

This seems quite different from the accidents of low time pilots
(which include some classic base to final accidents).


To take your thesis to its logical extent, I suppose I am an accident just
waiting to happen, as are we all. With over 15,000 hours of accident
free flying, I guess it's time to hang it up. (He says, modestly.)

If you've been accident free for a long time, you may have developed
self-discipline which results in self-training which helps you to
continuously be "recent" in your experiences. Maybe you
fly a variety of aircraft which helps you to avoid repetitive
complacency. Maybe you occasionally stop your prop for an air
restart in a new aircraft. Maybe you spin a new glider
once in a while to keep yourself sharp.

If you do, this may be what is keeping you from having
an accident. Hours are not the only metric. "Just because
a man eats every day doesn't make him a gourmet." I liked that quote
Hours just show that the overall attitude of the pilot
hasn't killed him yet...


sO WHAT'S THE POINT? hOW CAN WE ALL BENEFIT FROM THESE OBSERVATIONS?

Practice those rare occurances, and try to avoid the arrogant
assumptions that "it can't happen to me." Self-discipline and
the awareness of the little mistakes is really valuable in
avoiding the big mistakes. Finally, study the accident reports
and practice things that will ensure you don't repeat the
mistakes of OTHERS either. I've had a heart-wrenching
session where I said "that failed spin recovery with the
excess speed and outboard wing sections failing could have happened because
of a wind-up ASI. Maybe they didn't know their airspeed." Then
whenever I see that kind of ASI, I mentally note this is a
potential problem.

Most of us are probably engineers, so we have critical,
analytical minds anyway. Make the "what if's" FUN.

Above all, for even the little mistakes, don't be
"that guy" who always blames it on somebody/something else...
fess' up and make it a learning experience for everyone...

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Mark Boyd
Avenal, California, USA