Page 18 - Mar17ABS

When the unexpected happens at the most inconvenient phase of your flight, will you be ready?
Before contemplating your next flight, honestly assess your fitness to act as PIC.
tired or sick, checklist items, system limitations and instrument procedures can seem as difficult to perform as the seven steps in factoring a quadratic polynomial. If we are not fit to fly, could the unfitness itself cause us to misjudge the fuzzy edges of our fit-to-fly decision? Probably, yes. So here is a good old- fashioned memory mnemonic to help us methodically measure our fitness to act as PIC:
IMSAFE I = Illness
The FAA regulates this topic by stating that if a pilot has or develops a known medical condition that would prevent him from obtaining a medical certificate, he is prohibited from flying as a required crewmember. The pilot alone is responsible for ensuring that his own health is up to par before taking the controls. From sinus pressure to a fever, a cold or flu, a persistent cough to general malaise, pilots can become more of a risk to the flight than an asset.
M = Medication
Many prescription and over-the- counter medications can be dangerous for a pilot to take before flying. We need to be aware of residual effects of both short- term and long-term use of medications. Even after the medication has been stopped, the effects may remain in the body for some time. You can Google the half-life for medications to give yourself a clue, but not an excuse.
S = Stress
A small level of stress can be good; it keeps us sharp. But stress can accumulate and affect performance. There are at least three kinds of stress that pilots should be aware of: physiological, environmental and psychological. Physiological stress is stress in the physical sense. It comes from fatigue, strenuous exercise, being out of shape or changing time zones, to name a few. Unhealthy eating habits, illness, and other physical ailments are also included in this category. Environmental stress comes from our immediate surroundings and includes things such as being too hot or too cold, inadequate oxygen levels or loud
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