Recovering people-pleaser

Although many of those professions have largely been replaced by machines, pilots still learn by supervised experience, flight instructor to student, captain to first officer. Oh sure, we have our books and training courses, but the real business of flying, the day-to-day decision making, you learn that in the air from the person sitting next to you. So, what happens when that person isn’t an expert, or they’re a less conservative decision-maker than you? How is an inexperienced pilot supposed to know the safest way to operate?

Several years ago, two young men were renting a Cessna 152 from our flight school for time-building. One of the pilots had his instrument rating, the other was a VFR private pilot. I was in my office when a line of storms showed up on the radar moving faster than expected. Sure enough, flight instructors started to trickle back in, saying they had cut their lessons short. One of our airplanes, however, didn’t come back. Apparently our two time builders had decided to take off in the face of the approaching line and were going to skirt the edge of it before turning out toward their planned destination. I’ll spare you the suspense. They made an uneventful (if bumpy) flight and landed safely back at Olive Branch (OLV) later that day. Now, as a rule, I try to avoid sticking my nose in other pilots’ weather decisions. Everyone has different personal minimums and comfort levels. But that day, considering the relative youth and inexperience of those two pilots, I felt like I had to say something. So, I intercepted them the following day when they were heading out for their next time-building adventure.

“Hey guys, heard you took off near some pretty ugly weather yesterday,” I said. The instrument-rated pilot blew me off with an explanation that they had stayed VFR and broken no rules, landing safely without incident. (The old “it ended well, so it was a good decision” rationalization.) The other pilot, however, remained quiet, barely making eye contact. I reminded them both about the risks of flying too close to convective weather and suggested more conservative decisions in the future if they wanted to continue to rent our airplanes (and stay alive). While the instrument pilot was obviously a defiant risk-taker, I recognized another dangerous tendency in the quiet pilot, a reluctance to speak up for himself. Once I got him alone, he explained that even though he wasn’t quite comfortable with their decision, his friend had more experience, and so he just went along with the plan, unsure of whether he was being too cautious and not knowing what to say to get himself out of the situation anyway. As a recovering people-pleaser myself, I was happy to give him the words that have been keeping me out of stressful flying situations for years.

Taking off in wind over 20 knots? “That’s outside of my personal minimums.”

Scud-running on a cross-country? “I’m not comfortable with that.” You don’t have to argue or make excuses. You simply refuse to do things in an airplane that make you feel nervous. But it’s not just about weather decisions. There are lots of little choices during a flight for which there is no black and white checklist guidance. One rainy day, I asked a group of my bored flight instructors a question. What are the ways you create an extra margin of safety beyond what the books advise? Here’s what they said:

I always take off with full fuel if we can, and land with more than an hour of fuel reserve. Thirty minutes is scary.

I don’t let anyone switch the fuel tanks or turn off the fuel pump in the traffic pattern. We are too low if something goes wrong.

I don’t fly with more than two pieces of inop equipment. Managing all that just makes the workload too high.

I square off every turn in the traffic pattern. If you round your downwind to base to final turn, you never get a chance to look for traffic.

I don’t fly lower than 1,000 feet agl unless I’m over a runway.

I don’t let my students get outside of the white flap arc in the traffic pattern. That gives us time to run checklists and to see and avoid traffic.

These are great ideas from a group of safety-minded folks. But just because it’s a flight instructor or an experienced pilot with thousands of hours doesn’t necessarily mean he or she will make decisions you are comfortable with. As the years go by, you’re going to see lots of different ways of operating an airplane. In this aviation apprenticeship, make sure you’re learning from a master craftsman you can trust. And if you realize you’re not, speak up sooner rather than later.

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