Ira Heilveil

I recently read an accident report in which a pilot lost power on the rollout, and then when he heard the engine surge back to life, resumed his takeoff. Just after leaving the ground, the pilot retracted the landing gear, the engine quit again and the pilot died attempting to make the 180-degree turn back to the airport. In a matter of a very few seconds, the pilot had some important decisions to make. If he had made the decision to abort the takeoff the first time his engine lost power, he would likely be alive enough today to have learned that his fuel was contaminated with water. But perhaps buoyed by the engines roaring back to life, he decided instead to climb out. That was his first bad decision. The second bad decision was to retract his landing gear before reaching the end of the runway. The third was his attempt to turn around rather than find a place to land in front of him. That was the one that sealed his fate. http://cftblog.com/the-raven-over-our-shoulders/

Owners of airplanes typically have mixed feelings over Big Brother’s requirement that we subject our airplanes to annual inspections. The negative side of the equation is obvious: inspections cost a lot of “aviation units,” a term invented by pilots who prefer not to disclose exact dollar amounts to their spouses. On the other hand, the benefits are equally as obvious. The fact that the airplanes flying above us are thoroughly inspected by licensed mechanics at least once a year undoubtedly makes those flying inside them and those on the ground below them a lot safer..... http://cftblog.com/the-annual/

One of the reasons I love to fly is because I feel a deep sense of freedom when I do it. I don’t know how to explain that phenomenon. It just is. And, perhaps coincidentally, flying one’s own airplane is also a symbol of freedom. As Vietnam continues its gradual path toward openness, I suspect that general aviation will emerge. Laos, closely aligned with Vietnam, has its very first flying club, and perhaps that will serve as a model for Vietnam. http://cftblog.com/a-note-from-saigon/

Most pilots hate diversions. Diversions make those aboard late, and usually create additional expense in fuel, time and lodging. But diversions are a necessary part of getting there safely. I would like to believe that having to divert is one of the more wonderful things about flying. It forces us down a road that, if not less traveled, is certainly less anticipated. And it forces us to live in the moment, a skill I have never been very good at, managing to immerse myself in the nostalgia of yesteryears, or the expectations and fantasies of life downstream.... http://cftblog.com/?p=1024

One of the oldest clichés is that a pilot’s license is a “license to learn.” I deeply appreciate the ongoing training I avail myself of, as well as the early training I received in which certain fundamentals were drilled into my head. One of those was the mantra that, above all else, one must “fly the airplane.” That mantra is there because, when the fit hits the shan, pilots and humans in general forget the basics. Whether panic takes over completely, or one concerns oneself so much with problem-solving that one fails to focus on the simple basics of flying, the failure to self-regulate can have devastating consequences. http://cftblog.com/?p=1017

The term “situational awareness” originally referred to knowing where one was in space at any particular moment and remaining vigilant when it comes to bumping into things such as other airplanes and mountains. As have so many things in flying and life, it has come to mean much more. http://cftblog.com/?p=1001

We humans, through the ingenuity provided by our cerebral cortexes, create and build machines that allow us to use nature in order to defy it. We build machines that move us from one place to another for many reasons, but ultimately we build machines that move us physically in order to move us emotionally. http://cftblog.com

Ask Americans who was the first to take flight, and they will almost certainly say it was one of the Wright Brothers. Ask that question in France, and they will tell you not only that the French invented aviation altogether, but they will reel off the names of Charles Renard, Henri Giffard and Arthur Krebs—all French of course. In Italy, they will mention DaVinci, although there is no record of Leo ever actually lifting off. They will, however, mention Tito Burattini, who successfully lifted a cat into flight in 1648 (but not himself)....http://cftblog.com

Recently, on a particularly windy day, I told my instrument instructor that I always wanted to fly backwards, and as is typical of him he said, “let’s do it.” We had other plans for that day, and I wasn’t in the mood to change them, so I opted for another time. Apparently, it’s an easy thing to do, especially in a small, low-powered airplane such as a Piper Cub or a Cessna 150. The wings of a J3 Cub stall at about 33 knots, or about 38 miles an hour, so all you need to do to fly backwards is to point your nose into a 45 mile an hour wind, fly just over stall speed, and you can find yourself flying backwards over the ground. Find a stiff 60 mile an hour wind or more and you can fly backwards at 20 miles an hour. http://cftblog.com/?p=968

I’m sure every profession has its way of distinguishing the amateurs from the professionals. In aviation, the lowest rung of the ladder is “airplane driver.” I heard it more than once in my training, typically when I did something wrong: “You don’t want to be a driver, do you?” The next higher level is the pilot, the one who has mastered the technical aspect of flying, the one who finally makes the shift from the two dimensional steering of the driver to the three dimensional flying of the pilot. But there is yet another level, one reserved for the masters of flight. These are the aviators. They are, of course, somewhat artificial and arbitrary distinctions. Yet, just as Justice Potter said about the difference between pornography and art, “I know it when I see it.” The aviation writer Budd Davisson describes the difference between a mere pilot and an aviator this way: “The difference is that an aviator is the airplane, and they move as one, while the pilot is simply manipulating the proper controls at the appropriate time and sees the airplane as a machine that he forces to do his bidding.” I have flown with a lot of pilots, and the best pilot with whom I have ever flown was my first instructor, Floyd Jennings. I witnessed Floyd’s flying on several occasions, but the most memorable was on my second flight as a student. The first and only time I had ever felt nauseous in a small airplane was on that flight. The nausea, which seemed to come from out of nowhere, was so bad that I knew I wouldn’t make it down to the ground without creating an embarrassing mess in the cockpit. I was sweating profusely and my face was pale as I was trying to hold back. I finally told Floyd that I couldn’t hold back any longer. He glanced over and saw the sweat on my face and my normally pink Polish skin shift to a whiter shale of pale. We were about halfway through the downwind leg of the pattern in Santa Paula, which means we were flying parallel to the runway, but pointed opposite to the direction needed to land. Floyd took control of the airplane. In what appeared to be a single movement, he looked from side to side, cut the power to idle, pointed the nose down, swooped down and around, and in a matter of mere seconds, the airplane kissed the ground sweetly and almost imperceptibly. Whenever Floyd took control of the airplane, I had the distinct feeling that he and the metal bird were one. Though he was a grizzled, curmudgeonly character, his flying was seamless, effortless, like wearing a comfortable shirt. When he moved the airplane moved, when he blinked the airplane blinked. He met Budd Davisson’s definition of aviator to a tee. This was sadly in contrast to my flying, in which I often felt that I was wrestling with a metal beast. I am currently working on a collection of poems I am calling “One With the Miso.” It’s just a whimsical, silly title, but I like it because on the one hand, it sounds meaningless, but on the other hand, it expresses something bigger. We can eat or drink the miso (that is, be a pilot), or we can become one with it. Whatever our behavior, be it simply brushing our teeth, drinking soup or flying an airplane, we can get to the point where our sense of self as separate from the universe disappears, and the thing that we do and thing that we are becomes one. http://cftblog.com

These days, if you use the initials “CRM” most folks in the business world will immediately think you are referring to “customer relationship management,” but in the world of aviation it initially stood for “crew resource management” and now “cockpit resource management.” It has been said that the difference between the “Indians” (the pilots flying single-engine airplanes down low, nick-named such because they often flew Apaches, Seminoles and Tomahawks) and the “chiefs” (commercial pilots flying big jets up high) is that the “chiefs” had more resources at their disposal to manage....http://cftblog.com/?p=935

More than a few years back, I called my cousin on the phone to ask him some real estate advice. He advised me against the deal I was pursuing, and added this bit of wisdom: “It’s the deals you don’t make that make you rich, not the deals you make.” That was difficult advice for me. Ever since my early twenties, when I decided that I was done hiding from life, being alive meant engaging, taking risks and making deals. Saying no to something that looks like it might be a good deal feels like a retreat from life; there is no way to win if you keep folding your cards. But then, knowing when to hold and when to fold is what makes a good poker player, and that is really what my cousin was saying. The poker expert Mike Skelza once said something very similar to my cousin: “It’s not how many hands you win, it’s how many hands you don’t lose.” Of course, if you don’t ever make any deals, or take any risks, there can never be any gain. And every gain seems to require the pain of mistakes made along the way. Each of us has had it drilled into our psyches that we learn by making mistakes– so why do we fear them so much? Sometimes it has to do with shame, and sometimes with perfectionism—an overly critical internalized voice that accepts nothing but the best from ourselves and others. Doing something wrong confirms an underlying self-hatred, a feeling of never being quite good enough. That is why many therapists have their clients practice making mistakes. The iconic psychologist Albert Ellis developed a series of “shame-disputing” tactics that included walking a banana tied to the end of a leash as if it were a dog. Those clients whose fears of mistake-making were based more on perfectionism than shame would be encouraged to make mistakes intentionally and often, in order to ultimately get comfortable with the fact that few mistakes have disastrous effects. But in aviation, small mistakes can have disastrous effects. Fortunately, it is rarely the single mistake that causes the mishap, but rather a series of bad decisions. That is why good aviation instruction includes intentionally making mistakes in order to learn how to recognize and recover from them. Or, as happened to me a couple of months ago, allowing students to discover their own mistakes before correcting them. After a complex instrument approach, I was told to do a “touch and go” in which I immediately took off after landing. I forgot to raise my flaps, which I didn’t notice until long after I should have. My instrument instructor, Michael Phillips, waited for me to figure out why the airplane was flying with its nose down and tail in the air like a downward dog in order to maintain the airspeed I was trying to get it to. I have done perhaps a thousand touch and goes, and never before forgot to raise my flaps, but now I know what happens when I do. Focusing on not making bad deals, as my cousin suggested, is ultimately a way of not focusing too narrowly on winning. If we focus too narrowly on winning, we are less apt to notice our mistakes, and correct for them. I was so relieved that I successfully accomplished my instrument approach that I forgot the simple necessity of raising my flaps on my way out of the airport. You can drive full steam ahead toward your goal, but if you hit a deep pothole your axle will break and you’ll never get there. If, instead, you drive determinedly toward your goal but keep your eyes peeled on avoiding the potholes along the way, you may eventually get there. Whether the arena is investing in real estate, making a business decision, flying an airplane, or teaching a child with autism, mistakes are going to happen. Given their inevitably, it is always a good idea to get a certain comfort level with making them, without letting our fixation on the goal get in the way. If you can’t, there’s always the leash and the banana. By Ira Heilveil, Psychologist/Aviator Clear For Takeoff, Psychology of Flying visit: http://www.cftblog.com