Dear Rod:

I imagine that in the course of your time as a pilot, you’ve flown long enough to personally know someone who has died in a plane crash?

Several years back, a fellow CFI died in an airplane crash along with his student. The part that is most vivid in my mind is that my instructor desk (at the former school I used to teach) was at the front of the CFI office area, right near the door; I remember this instructor’s smiling face (he was always happy) saying that he’d see me later, and I told him to have fun. Just a couple of hours later that smiling face was a cadaver at a crash scene. It was all very sudden and totally unexpected—the contrast, for me, was between the moment I told him to have fun and the moment he was dead.

First of all I still continue to love instructing and flying and am a very big proponent of teaching my students safety by my own example—enough said. I guess what I wanted to ask you is this normal? Not ALL the time, but sometimes I catch myself wondering while I am bidding my dog and cat goodbye (for my trip down to the airport) if this is the last time I will see them? Now I want to stress that it isn’t a fearful thought, just sort of like a passing thought, a brief ponderance on the notion, so-to-speak.

Do other pilots/instructors have thoughts like this? The part I find silly about the whole thought is that one’s life could just as easily end by doing just about anything (driving to the corner market, or going to the ATM). So, why should going off to fly cause the thought to pass through my mind…?

Thank you,

No Name Please

Greetings Member of Witness Protection Plan:

You ask a question that happens to be on the mind of more than a few pilots. Yes, you’d be surprised to know how many pilots actually wonder whether or not the last time they left home to go flying will actually be the last time they leave home. There are several significant reasons why some pilots think this way and they’re worth a little exploration.

Most of us who’ve flown for a while know of someone (either directly or indirectly) lost in an airplane accident. And if we don’t actually know someone who vaporized themselves this way, then we willingly go in search of someone like this by subscribing to magazines and periodicals that describe aviation accident scenarios in great detail. It doesn’t take long before the accumulation of these stories tip the balance of our aviation risk-reward scale and start us thinking about our chances of lifting off and returning to earth in one piece.

What makes matters worse is that all pilots carry genetic coding in the form of an instinctual fear of falling. Eons ago, we lost those big grasping hands and feet, the tail we use for balance and those powerful muscles we used for jumping which made high treetops and bananas look less inviting, and the ground, more appealing. It’s not much of a stretch to see that flying might arouse our instinctual fear of falling by reminding us that we can fall if we fly wrong.

So it’s pretty hard to deny, much less ignore the ever increasing collection of reasons we accumulate supporting the idea that it’s possible for us to actually get hurt in an airplane (which, of course, doesn’t mean that we will). As a result, we often respond psychologically to protect ourselves from this perceived danger. It appears that our response typically evolves through four distinct stages.

Most of the time, we dedicate very little conscious energy to thinking about the bad things that can happen to us in an airplane. We go about our flying business until a significant enough event (be it an aviation accident, an accident report or simply a discussion of accidents) causes us to question our ability to actually fly an airplane safely. Never mind that we might have flown without an incident for decades or that we might be considered the safest of pilots by our peers. When doubt takes root, the mental stew that brews in our noggins is often disturbing enough to cause us to personalize these aviation accidents. It’s as if we emotionally and somatically (physically) project ourselves into each airplane accident, wondering what would happen if we had been the person doing the flying. This is the first stage in which we typically experience our nascent anxiety about flying.

Next we posit what it would be like if our presence were suddenly removed from the planet. We begin to think about what our homes would feel like if we never returned because we managed to demolecularized ourselves in an airplane accident. We run these mental scenarios as we leave home, not because they’re therapeutic, but because they’re symptomatic of an ever increasing—but not yet debilitating—fear about our future (or whether or not we’ll have one).

The stage that follows next is where be begin making excuses not to fly. We actively look for reasons not to go to the airport and get in an airplane. In a sense, on some conscious level, we act to sabotage the thing that once gave us great pleasure. And here’s the great irony. Once we actually get in the airplane and fly, we feel just fine. When airborne, we wonder what all the fuss was about in the first place.

The fourth and final stage is where the risk-reward scale tips one way or another. If the scale tips toward the side of perceived risk and excessive anxiety, then the pilot doesn’t receive as much pleasure from flying as he or she used to. The discomfort associated with flying wins the day and the pilot often hangs up his or her headset and seldom returns to the airport. On the other hand, some pilots manage to sustain a sufficient balance of risk to reward or pleasure to discomfort and continue to fly, despite the ubiquitous anxiety they have about flying. Yes, they still occasionally wonder if they’ll ever see their family, their home or their dog again when leaving for the airport. They aren’t, however immobilized by these thoughts, despite the fact that, in some small way, flying is less enjoyable to them than it once was. On the other hand, there’s another group of pilots that have found a way of controlling and even diminishing their anxiety while simultaneously increasing the pleasure they receive from flying. These are the folks that have something valuable to teach pilots who’ve been or are being immobilized by their fears.

The pilots who are able to sustain their aviation pleasure and keep their anxieties at bay know one very important thing. They know the antidote to apply to counteract the debilitating thought patterns that diminish the pleasure they receive from flying. What’s the antidote? Well, brace yourself for impact. Here it comes, and it’s framed in the form of a self-referential statement: I know I can choose to fly as safe as I want to fly. This is the antidote that gives pilots great comfort and helps them derive great pleasure from flying airplanes. Furthermore, they actually believe the statement because it’s absolutely true.

We can indeed choose to choose to fly as safe as we want to fly. Period! You can’t, however, say the same for driving a car, can you? No, you can’t. That’s because you don’t have control over what other drivers do on the road, but you do have almost complete control over what you do and what happens to you in an airplane. In other words, you have nearly complete control over the safety statistic outside an act of God. That’s right. If you are clobbered by a meteorite on the downwind leg, well, that will teach you to hold a heading, right? Acts of God are things for which no one can prepare. They are, after all, acts of God, and are so rare that we shouldn’t even think about them. Then again, we can control nearly everything else that affects us in an airplane.

Years ago, the head of NASA Dryden once told me that their pilots are safer flying one of their experimental jet airplanes than they are when walking on the ground at Edwards Air Force Base. That’s because NASA’s flight operations are conducted within the scope of a pilot’s ability to actually influence and control the safety statistic. And this is precisely the way general aviation pilots can fly their airplanes, but only if they choose to do so.

In fact, if you want to reduce your chances of getting hurt in an airplane to nearly zero (no, not zero, but close to it), then do the following things.

• Never allow yourself to be airborne with less than 1/4 fuel in your tanks (you can “choose” to do this).
• Never fly in weather that’s beyond your capability to handle (you can “choose” to do this).
• Learn good stick and rudder skills sufficient to fly by the seat of your pants, and keep proficient at these skills (you can “choose” to do this).
• And finally, prioritize everything you do in the following way: Aviate, Navigate and Communicate, in that order (you can also “choose” to do this).

Most pilots bend their airplanes and a few bones by neglecting one or more of these four items.

It’s important to understand that fate isn’t the hunter here. But if fate were the hunter, it would certainly be so when driving a car rather than flying an airplane. So if you want to be scared, please be scared in your car. In an airplane, there’s no need to be scared. There’s only a need to be cautious and to choose to fly as safe as you desire to fly. The odds are really on the side of the cautious pilot here. Sure, there will always be someone who crashes an airplane, but in almost all of these instances, it’s because he or she didn’t choose properly. Even the NTSB says that 75% of accidents are primarily a result of pilot error. That means the pilot had a choice in three out of four instances but didn’t choose properly. If we had a little more courage as a society, we’d probably up the NTSB’s number to 95%.

So the next time you (or anyone else) begins to wonder if this is the last time you’ll ever return home, make a simple choice for yourself. Choose to fly safely. It’s within your ability to do so. Even in those small and rare instances where you may not actually have control (think catastrophic engine failure here), you can still regain control if you’ve practiced your emergency skills (think emergency landing skills here) before hand.

As a final note, I have several articles on this subject in my Rod Machado’s Plane Talk book as well as on my web site at: (http://www.rodmachado.com/_available_products/plane_talk_book.php).