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officer, I’m expected to be a mission accomplisher. Officers that cannot accomplish their assigned missions are not respected. I learned quickly being a mission accomplisher in the Army is important.
But at what risk should missions be accomplished? I mean, we were in a foreign country earning “hazardous
Tuzla, Bosnia
duty pay.” We were expected to “push the limits,” right? Or were we?
My commander used me as an ob- ject lesson to teach every pilot in that meeting that I accepted too much risk for the benefit gained. I could have easily landed, refueled and then f lown that last batch of grunts. He used my decision to highlight to everyone that
the mission is important but not at the risk of loss of life. We were on a peace- keeping mission, not a mission where actual bullets were flying. Loss of life on the deployment was unacceptable.
Personally, the rest of the deploy- ment was a real downer. Many pilots in the unit lost respect for me. It was a really tough deployment for many, myself included. To make it worse, my decision to depart with the blink- ing lights was at the very beginning of the deployment. It was going to be one long deployment.
How does this relate to you as a civilian pilot? Well, I think two les- sons are germane: fuel exhaustion and mission accomplishment.
Simply put, there is no excuse for fuel exhaustion in any properly func- tioning aircraft today. If you have a fuel exhaustion episode in a prop- erly operating aircraft, it is your fault. Either your planning failed or your decision-making failed. Every pilot should know the level of fuel in their tanks and, if you don’t, it is your fault.
6 • TWIN & TURBINE / December 2022
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