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“Minutes of sheer terror, followed by hours of sheer boredom, followed by minutes of sheer terror.”
React: Pilot Reflexes
From the Flight Deck
by Kevin R. Dingman
PHOTOS BY AUTHOR
Months of boredom followed by minutes of sheer terror was reportedly first used in The Great War (WWI) to describe the waiting and then terror
of trench warfare. The adage has since been modified and adapted to activities like aviation, racing, baseball and space flight. The above version was used to describe flying an early model and sometimes cantankerous busi- ness jet. It’s now used to illustrate the extreme mental or physical contrasts of an activity. Such can be the contrast
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between a routine cruise, followed by a frenzied descent and a demanding approach.
The last thing most pilots want is to feel rushed. While flying a high-performance aircraft on a short, slippery runway or landing with an aircraft system failure, or fly- ing at night, in icing, in low visibility (the list could go on and on), feeling hurried can be a recipe for disaster – or at least a recipe for mistakes. There’s a handful of reasons ATC may give us a slam-dunk descent. Most commonly,