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Don’t Push Your Luck
When at home or on the road in a hotel room, I often recall that last proverb while watching the light show and listening to pounding thunderclaps from an overhead cat- egory five thunderstorm, particularly as I watch the sky turn greenish yellow. Aggressiveness and risk-taking are sometimes an integral and necessary part of managing a business, but in aviation, there is this truism: Don’t push your luck (see the above proverb about “those that will”). Having just experienced my fifth engine failure this past June (three in jets, two in pistons. This one due to the left engine number 5 cylinder swallowing an intake valve), from the perspective of this old, but not too often bold, pilot, things can and will conspire against us aviators. And pushing your luck will eventually bite you in the rear end. Folks generally try to do their best, but most would agree that pilots do their best more often than most by necessity, having been conditioned by life, our career and flying air- planes to do it right the first time...or else.
Our assessment of risk becomes just as important as weight and balance or our fuel reserve. Danger, peril, threat, hazard, jeopardy and menace – all synonyms of the word “risk.” Even though we subconsciously realize these words apply to human flight, they seem a bit extreme. After all, they could apply to other things we do that are more peril- ous. Besides, flying is fun. And didn’t someone say it was safer than driving? It’s only when we are unlucky or slip up that those malicious words apply, right?
Margin Call
There are typically safety margins added to the safety margins. First, the designer adds a safety margin, engineers add a margin; the manufacturer adds a margin; and then the attorneys add a factor. After that, the FAA and NTSB add their safety margins until finally, we add our own margin – frequently called “one for the wife and kids.” Before you know it, we’re wearing life jackets and carrying a full load of fuel just to taxi to the wash rack. An exaggeration, but our experience and that of others show us that sometimes even these additions prove to be too little.
Knowing there are margins (built upon margins) can also work to our disadvantage. Just because you got away with it last time or the last couple of times doesn’t mean the margins will protect you the next time. Chuck Yeager said, “Never believe anything anyone tells you about an airplane.” His point was that you, the pilot, will be the first one to the scene of the accident every single time. Learn the truth about your machine and why it does what it does. Verify everything there is about your airplane and about flying your airplane. Don’t rely on the word of anyone re- garding its ability to be flown a certain way or in a certain environmental condition.
Jiminy Cricket
There can be precursors to an impending “risky” event. One is the hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck sensa- tion. This is the awareness you get when you think: “I knew something was wrong. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.”
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August 2022 / TWIN & TURBINE • 23