 Welcome to the FAA Production Studios and the FAA Safety Program's National Resource Center right here in the Sun and Fun Complex in Lakeland, Florida. Our next presenters decided in the 70s to take their love of flying and help others enjoy the passion that they have for our sport. Over the past 34 years, they've developed an 18,000 square foot facility based in San Diego, California, creating computer based and online training programs to help other pilots achieve the certificates and ratings they want. They are the first couple to hold every category and class pilot and flight instructor certificate that the FAA can issue. And they share PIC duties on each flight. Both are on the Charles and Ann Lindbergh Foundation Board of Directors and John is the chairman of the board. Professional pilot magazine named them the Aviation Educators of the Year, the National Air Transportation Association awarded John their excellence in pilot training. And Martha is one of the top 100 distinguished aviation heroes honored in the first flight Centennial Commission at Kitty Hawk. In 2005, Martha was awarded the Cliff Henderson Award for Achievement from the National Aeronautics Association and stands with other renowned recipients such as Jimmy Doolittle, Roscoe Turner, General LeMay, Frank Borman, Scott Crossfield, Ann Lindbergh and Ernest Gann. In 2008, they were inducted as a couple into the International Aerospace Hall of Fame and they've joined famous aviation pioneers such as Charles Lindbergh, Chuck Yeager, Jack Northrop, William Boeing, Glenn Curtis, Claude Ryan and Wally Chirac. Just recently, they returned from Kenya where they were working with game wardens. There's, I understand, 12 game wardens there that fly supercubs looking for poachers. And they went over there with another pilot, Patty Wagstaff, thank you very much. I'm suffering from senior problems. Went over there with Patty Wagstaff and they did a in-depth training program for those park wardens. Every pilot is familiar with their training courses to prepare them for the knowledge and practical tests and that's what they did over there. They also have a very common sense approach to flight safety and our everyday operation of our airplanes. Their topic today is practical risk management. Let's welcome the most enthusiastic flying couple I know, John and Martha King. Man, that was good. Let's see you do that again. I like that. Hello, fellow pilots. I'm John King. And I'm Martha King. And we are standing up. Yeah, we are standing up. Sorry. That's why we don't stand behind a podium. No one would ever see us. Just out of curiosity, how many people in here are pilots? Well, holy mackerel, I thought so. You know, one of the highest compliments I can pay to someone is to observe that they're not normal. And folks, you ain't even close. They know that. Yeah, they already do that. The reason I say that is that normal people don't do extraordinary things. And when you learn to fly, you persist through a course of instruction that is very difficult. In fact, anyone who learns to fly at some point in there will say to themselves, you know, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do this. And yet you persist. You handle stress. You handle difficulty. You sweat right down to your belt and beyond. You're right. Leg shakes on a rudder pedal and you persist and become a pilot. And so when you have a room full of pilots, you have a room full of people that you know have those characteristics that happen to be correlated with achievement. In fact, you get the movers and shakers of the local community in this room. And that's because pilots are those kinds of people who make things happen in their local communities in the world that they're in. So I can tell you right now it is a great honor and pleasure for Martha and I to be talking with you folks here today. You know, John and I have spent a lifetime in aviation. And we've got a real passion, not only about flying, but about the people who fly. We have met just enormously interesting and wonderful people all through the years. And it's been a great pleasure to be involved in your lives and the other people who we know their lives when they're learning to fly. Because when you're learning to fly, it's just about the most important thing going on in your life at that point. And it's a real privilege to be involved in that and to be able to be some small component of achieving that success and that accomplishment. You know, when Martha was chosen as one of the hundred heroes at Kitty Hawk, I was not chosen. She left me completely in the dust. And people would come to me and say, John, what about you? Aren't you an aviation hero? And I would say to them, no, I want to make it absolutely clear. I'm not an aviation hero, but I do sleep with one. And that's good enough for me. People say to me, John, you're lucky. Martha will fly with you. And I say, lucky, what are you talking about? Lucky. She wants to fly half the time. It costs twice as much. And she's got an opinion about everything. You know, John likes to think that our relationship kind of exemplifies that old story that behind every successful man stands a great woman. She's got it. That's exactly how I feel about it. What he doesn't realize is the truth is that in front of every great woman stands some guy without a clue who's blocking her view. It's been that way for 44 years now. It's just amazing. We have just absolutely been hooked on flying. We started flying together in 1969. We've always had a little bit more aircraft than we could afford. For many years, we've always just bought airplanes that we just couldn't quite afford. We had a session of 340 for 10 years when we traveled around the country teaching two-day ground schools. And then we lost our heads and we traded up to a citation 500. People often ask us, well, what number citation was it? And we say, well, it was a citation zero because it was before they had the one and the two and the three and so on. And we really love that airplane, but it was just about the slowest business jet ever built. And it had all kinds of terrible nicknames. I mean, the air traffic controllers would call it a slotation, a mutation, a crustation, a frustration. And you know, the citation had a real unusual bird strike problem. You know what that was? It gets run down from the rear. So after enduring, we actually had that airplane for 14 years. And after enduring these slotation jokes for 14 years, we finally decided we wanted to get some little faster this time. So we went out and bought an old Falcon 10. And that airplane is 150 knots faster than that citation was. And so this obviously caused our insurance company grave misgivings about this mom and pop operation flying that hot jet. So they said to us, look, John and Martha, we want to make sure that in addition to getting your type rating, you take the full simulator program. So we went through two weeks of simulator training, just about the hardest thing we ever did in our adult lives. But when we got done, we figured we must have done pretty well because the instructor got us aside. And he says, John, Martha, I've got wonderful news for you. And I said, oh, that's fantastic. What's that? He says, well, you'll never have to worry about a mid-air collision in this airplane. I said, oh, that's terrific. Why not? He says, you are so far behind this airplane, you won't even be involved. He says, you're going to come walking up to the crash site some 15 minutes later. Hey, what happened here? Well, as you can see, we've been involved in a lot of different airplanes and aviation activities. And as a result of all of that, we've developed some risk management tools that we use that we'd like to share with you that hopefully will help you have fun, stress-free trips and make sure that your passengers will fly with you again. So right here in this room, this very morning, we're going to reveal, first of all, the most important consideration in flying and secondly, the most feared emergency in all of aviation. Now, one of the things that we have in aviation, and we talked about this in an article one time in Flying Magazine, is we think we've been telling the big lie in general aviation for a long, long time. And a big lie is a lie that is so big and you've told it for so long and you've told it so frequently that you actually begin to believe it yourself. And the big lie in general aviation as far as we're concerned is the most dangerous part of the trip was the drive to the airport. And I wish that were true. We've been saying it for years, but it's flat out not true. And the reason we say that is that if you talk about fatalities per mile in general aviation, you're seven times more likely to be involved in a fatality per mile than you are in an automobile. You're 49 times more likely to be involved in a fatality for each mile than you are in an airliner. In fact, our accident rate in general aviation on a fatalities per mile basis is on a par with motorcycles. The fact is we're probably not going to be able to get away with this in the future. It used to be acceptable in the past, but society is now more risk averse than it used to be. Cars didn't have seatbelts in them when we all started driving. Now you would be criminal if you didn't have people belted into the car, particularly a little child has to be in the right kind of seat and so on. So we're not going to be able to get away with this. We're not going to be able to do it politically. We're not going to be able to get good insurance. We need to change it. So why do we do so lousy in general aviation airplanes? Well, the problem is the risks in flying are sneaky. They're insidious. They often catch pilots by surprise. When someone gets hurt in a general aviation accident, many times they didn't see it coming. It sneaks up on them. And the problem is our risks are hard to manage because it's hard to judge the probability and consequences of the risks in general aviation. If you wanted to play Russian roulette, you took a six-shooter and you put one shell in it. You spun the chamber and held it to your head. You'd know your odds. Your odds are one out of six. Most of us would say, no, I don't think I'll take those odds. But if you do a scud running, VFR on a lousy day, you don't know your odds. So you assume that you're going to make it. You assume that it's no problem. But if you look at the statistics on people who go scud running, and VFR on lousy days, they're not that good. They're not too far away from that Russian roulette odds, except you don't know the odds. And so we don't know the odds. We don't know the consequences of taking risks. And people tell us who manage risk professionally. They say when you don't know the probability and you don't know the consequences, you overestimate your chances of getting away with it. We just don't do a good job of managing risk in that situation. But I can tell you this. If the risks in flying are left unmanaged, they are unacceptable. Now I'm going to ask you a question. And if this question is yes for you, I would like you to put your hand up, leave it up, and look around the room if you would. How many people in here know someone personally who's been killed in a general aviation airplane? If that's true for you, put your hand up and hold it up. And it's always more than half the people in the room, and it is here today. Folks, this is unacceptable. We have got to change this, because we don't fly near as much as we drive, yet more than half the people in this room know someone who's gotten killed in a general aviation airplane. So we need to do a better job. The problem is, in part, that the way risk management has been taught and practiced in our training is flawed. And the reason I say that is, if you look at the general aviation accident statistics, 85% of the accidents are caused by a failure in risk management. So, of course, what does our training, as we go through flight training, focus on? If focus is on physical skill with the aircraft. Now, given, you have to have a certain level of physical skill, but we're not spending the time on proactive risk management that we need to. We're spending a lot of time pre-flighting aileron hinges and rudder bolts and looking at things like that, which need to be looked at, but we're not spending an equivalent pre-flight time thinking about risk management and how to manage the risks of our flight. If you look at the accident statistics, when a student leaves training, their accident rate jumps by almost 50%. The accident rate per 100,000 flight hours in student training is about 5.8%, and for new private pilots, it jumps up to about 8.55%. That's counterintuitive, because you would think that during student flight training, when the student doesn't know anything, doesn't know how to maneuver the aircraft, that you'd have a lot more accidents. Well, they're under the supervision of a flight instructor, and apparently, flight instructors are doing a pretty good job of exercising good risk management skills during the training process. But what the industry is not doing well enough, what we flight instructors are not doing well enough is transferring that ability to manage risks to our students so that after they leave the flight instructor's supervision and go out on their own as new private pilots, they will be able to exercise those same risk management skills. The way risk management is pretty much universally taught is telling stories, passing along rules, making up sayings. Making up sayings like, the only time you can have too much fuel is when you're what? On fire. When you're on fire. The two most useless things in aviation are the what behind you. One way behind you and the what above you. The altitude above you. It's a lot better to be down on the ground wishing you were up in the air than where? Up in the air. Up in the air wishing you were down on the ground. And they're good sayings. And they do have useful insights, but they're not enough because sayings do not constitute a system. You know, the reason we don't do a good job of risk management in part, reason we do a reasonably good job of preflighting airplanes, because our instructor taught us to preflight airplanes. They taught us to walk around the airplane, what to look for, their instructor before them, their instructor before them. But we do not have equivalent training in risk management. So we don't have generation after generation of identifying the risks of flight and managing those things. Be very simple to do and we're going to talk about how to do that. In fact, the way most pilots become experienced is they go out and do something, try something and see how it worked out. And if they don't scare themselves, they place it in the acceptable category and say, well, I must have been okay, but they may have just been lucky. And the more times you get away with it, the more acceptable that becomes. If on the other hand you scare yourself, you say, oh man, that was scary, I'm not going to do that anymore. And as you become an experienced pilot, you just add that to the long list of things you've tried and it didn't work out real well and you've said I'm not going to do that anymore. So an experienced pilot gets a real long list of things that they're not going to do anymore. Now the problem with that is experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first and the lesson comes afterwards. And many pilots and their passengers never survive the test to get the lesson. This is a lousy way, folks, to practice risk management. We need to do it differently. So even a pilot who has a long list of unacceptable risks that you would then call an experienced pilot, it doesn't help you to prepare for things you haven't tried yet or haven't thought about yet. So this doesn't work real well and we think the different way to do it is to get a procedure of systematic risk management that is proactive, that anticipates the problem rather than just reacting to the problem. Now, have we always felt this way about risk management? No, we're just like everyone else and we've gone out for years and tried stuff and scared the daylights out of ourselves. But there was one event that changed how we feel about flying because we had an aircraft accident and we very, very well could have been killed in that accident. In fact, I think it was just a matter of luck that we weren't. And we're here today to talk about now how we became experienced. And so I would like to tell you that story and that story made us become what you might call born-again pilots because from that moment on we changed everything about our risk management and airplane. Now, this happened in the days when Martha and I were traveling around the country teaching two-day ground schools for pilots and we would go from mostly through the Midwest. We live in San Diego and we'd fly, we had a Cessna 210 that had an aftermarket Ray J turbocharger on it so we had this turbocharged 210 and we'd fly out to the cities. And the cities were like Fargo, North Dakota and then we'd go out to Fargo and back to San Diego, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, out from San Diego to Sioux Falls and back. And then Billings, Montana, Spokane, Washington, we were flying that equivalent trip every single Friday. What we would do is on Friday we'd fly out to the class, set up the classroom and so on, Saturday and Sunday we'd teach our class on Monday. We'd help the FAA get the test going. Monday afternoon we'd fly back to San Diego. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday you do all the things you do when you run a small business. You'd set up the other classes, answer the phone, do correspondence and all of those things. Friday we would go back out again. We were doing this 50 times a year. And so we were doing a lot of flying. We were doing a lot of, we were very current and yet we had this accident. This particular accident happened when we were trying to fly out to the class in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. And we took off from San Diego in a little bit late one morning, on a Friday morning, flew to La Janta, Colorado to get fuel and to take a little break. And to our credit when we're in La Janta, Colorado we got a very, very thorough weather briefing. And what the weather briefing said is that when we got to Sioux Falls right around dusk we should expect about a three miles visibility in a thousand foot ceiling. What kind of marginal VFR was marginal VFR, certainly. But we were instrument rated. We were very current. That really didn't worry us a whole lot. So we took off and climbed up to about 11,500 feet, headed off towards Sioux Falls. And in order to reduce the workload, just enjoy it. We're on top of an overcast. We're 11,500 feet. We canceled IFR. So we're flying VFR on top towards Sioux Falls. And after about 30 minutes in the air we look over there and son of a gun, look at that, the generator quit working. Oh man, we're going to be late. We're going to get in there right at dusk as it is. We've got to set up the classroom. We're tired. We've got to teach two 12-hour days the next day. Here's what let's do. You know, we knew. We really ought to land to get this generator fixed. But let's do this. Let's turn off everything electrical. And we're pretty good at dead reckoning. Let's just hold ahead and keep track of our time until we think we're in a vicinity of Sioux Falls. And then we'll turn on the electrical system, call up approach control, get a vector underneath the overcast, and go land at Sioux Falls Airport and get the generator fixed while we're teaching our class. So we do this. We turn off everything electrical. We fly about three and a half hours until we think we're in a vicinity of Sioux Falls. Turn on the electrical system. And what did we get? Absolutely nothing. The battery had gone completely stone cold dead. Holy mackerel. Let's do plan B. Okay, we're obviously, we are not going to be able to call up approach control, but let's use our emergency authority to let ourselves down through that overcast because we do really have a pilot-induced emergency. So what we'll do is we'll get ourselves down through the overcast and find that, it's about a thousand and three is what it was forecast to be, find an uncontrolled airport on the outskirts of Sioux Falls, land there and just get our generator fixed at that airport while we're teaching our class. But there is a little bit of a problem with that because if you study the sectional chart around Sioux Falls, you'll notice there's lots of vantennas that go up a thousand feet more around the Sioux Falls area. So we said let's do this. Let's turn north and we'll deadwreck until we think we're about 40 miles north of Sioux Falls and let ourselves down through the overcast. So we were 11,500. We let ourselves down in the overcast. The top's over around 10,000 feet and as soon as we get into the clouds, wap ice all over the airplane. Now, if you're in an icing situation and you do not have an electrical system, what else do you not have? Petal heat. So as we're going down, the airspeed indicator goes 90, 80, 70, 60, 50 and pretty soon it's showing us going backwards. You know this sucker's not backing up on you. So now you figure okay, the airspeed indicator isn't working. We continued our descent. Now I can tell you this, we had been deadwrecking for about four hours now so we didn't know exactly where we were and we didn't know exactly how high the terrain was. Plus we didn't have a current altimeter setting. But I can say this, we continued to let ourselves down until we thought we were 100 feet above the ground and never saw the ground. Oh, holy mackerel. We put the power in, put the nose up and start climbing through this overcast and pick up our second load of ice. Now we are on top of the clouds and the airplane is a flying chunk of ice and I am scared to death. I am just absolutely terrified. You know, Martha and I have a funny deal and our deal is I fly one leg, she flies the next leg. If I try and touch the controls when it's her turn to fly, she breaks my arm. I would have given anything for it to have been her turn to fly. I am shaking, I am terrified. I tell her, look, I know what we should do. Let's find another airplane and follow it to an airport. She says, John, that's not going to work. We're not going to find another airplane and follow it that far. She says, we have to go back down. And I said, Martha, I don't want to go back down. If we go back down there, we're going to hit something, a TV antenna, a silo, a tree, a barn. Who knows what we're going to hit? But this is going to end with our hitting something. And a couple of times I actually kept forgetting that the radios wouldn't work. I'd reach for the microphone to find out what the weather was somewhere else. And in fact, when we got our weather briefing, we had remembered that there was some place that was about a 5,000 foot ceiling, five miles visibility, that we could get to pretty quickly, but we couldn't remember where it was. When you think you're going to die, your IQ goes to zero numbers, negative numbers. So we couldn't remember where that was. And I'm trying to figure something out and Martha says, John, we have to go back down. And I'm going, Martha, I don't want to go back down. We're going to hit something. And as we're having this conversation, the sun, as it does every evening, slowly slid below the horizon. And she says to me, John, would you rather do it now or in the dark? I hate it when she thinks that way. So we pulled the power back, put the nose down, and went back down into that overcast to pick up our third low device. And once again, we got to the point where we thought we were 100 feet above the ground and never saw the ground. And I said, Martha, that's it. I'm going to go back up. She says, no, John, there's nowhere to go. We have to keep on going down. So we kept on going down. And at one point where we broke out and trees are going by, things are just flashing by us, and we saw cars on a road with their lights on. And I said, that's it. I'm going to land on that road. And she says, no, John, you can't land on that road. There's power lines right there. Now at this point, I have to tell you, Martha's really getting on my nerves. Hey, that's it. We're just going to land right here. And I just reached over and pulled the throttle back. And I didn't care where we were. We just lose time to get this airplane on the ground because the longer we prolonged that, the more likely we were going to hit something. Happened to me, we were over a corn field. And we had had the landing gear down because we didn't know we didn't have an airspeed indicator. We didn't know how fast we were going. I just wanted to keep the airplane under control. So as I pulled the power off, just instantly we flared. The airplane, it was in a corn field and the main wheels touched on that corn field. And what had been going on there, by the way, that they had a freezing rain ice storm. And they had about 18 inches of snow on the ground and about an inch and a half crust of ice on top of it. So when we touched on the ground, the main wheels roll on that crust of ice and for about 75 feet, then after about 75 feet, it fell through the ice. And at that moment, I began my all-time record short-field landing because that airplane just stopped instantly and 18 inches of snow. And it just went up on its nose and it could have gone either way. It just came back on its wheels again. Now, if you're familiar with the Cessna 210, the baggage compartment is kind of elevated behind the cockpit of the aircraft because the landing gear retracts and goes right behind the passenger seats. So the baggage compartment is above that area, kind of elevated. And we had all of our luggage that we do for the classes, books, plotters, computers, our personal suitcase, a toolkit, and so on. And of course, we weren't bright enough to have any kind of way to secure that from going forward. We didn't have a net or anything like that. So this next conversation takes place with our faces pressed against the cockpit of the panel of the aircraft just with suitcases jamming us against the panel of the aircraft. And Martha says to me, John, I'm okay. I'm okay. She says, I hit my nose on the panel of the aircraft. I have a bloody nose, but I'm okay. And I looked up and I saw blood in a hole in the windshield of the aircraft. And I said to her, to hell you hit your nose on the panel of the aircraft. Your head went through the aircraft, through the windshield. And she says, no, no, no. I just hit my nose in the panel of the aircraft. All I've got is a bloody nose. And I reached back and I felt down her back and there was blood all the way down her back. And I said to her, look, you've got something a lot more serious than a bloody nose. Now at this point, you could hear things sizzling on the engine and fuel trickling. So I said to her, but why don't we carry on the rest of this conversation outside the aircraft? And she said to her, you know, I'm jammed up against the panel of the aircraft and I got all this luggage pressing me against the panel of the aircraft. I can't reach my door handle. Could you reach your door handle and we'll go out your side? She says, look, I've got all this luggage pressing me up against the panel of the aircraft too. I can't reach the door handle either. So it took me about 15 minutes to rearrange all this luggage to the point where I could reach the door handle. And I opened the door handle in front of the aircraft and in front of the aircraft was this long string of trash, wrenches, oil can openers, tools, rags all for about 75 feet in front of the aircraft. And I looked at that and I thought, I'll be darned. Somebody crashed here before we did. You're beginning to wonder about my intelligence, aren't you? So I got around to the right side of the aircraft and opened the cockpit door. And at that moment, I realized profoundly for the first time in my life how incredibly dumb allegedly bright people can be. Because what had happened is when we crashed, we had a tool kit in the back of that aircraft and that tool kit had come forward like a shot, beat Martha about the head and shoulders and gone right out in front of the aircraft. And when it hit Martha on the head it just sprayed blood all over the inside of that aircraft. There was blood on the headliner, blood on the side panels, blood on the instrument panel of the aircraft. The entire aircraft interior was sprayed with Martha's blood. And I thought to myself, you idiot, you absolute idiot, how dare you take such a risk with the most precious thing in the world all over the issue that you didn't want to stop and get that generator repaired. Then of course, when we called the insurance company the very first thing they did is get a flatbed truck and they lift this airplane up on a flatbed truck and take it to a hangar. And when they got to the hangar the very first thing they checked is what was wrong with the generator. And what they found is that a single wire had become detached from the generator. Had we simply landed and reattached that single wire we would have gone on safely with no problem at all. Because we didn't want to take the time to reattach that single wire. We put everything in the world that was precious to us at risk very nearly lost our lives but we did become born again pilots. So we want to tell you some of the things that we're doing differently now because of that experience. As John said the 210 was our own aircraft and we were very familiar with it we were flying it a lot. Physical skill with the aircraft had absolutely nothing to do with that accident. What caused it was a total lack of risk management on our part. Because of that accident and some other incidents some of which we're going to talk about here this morning some of which were not because this is the FAA building John and I as he said have developed some risk management tools that we use that we'd like to share with you. And the biggest thing is we feel that pilots need to conduct risk surveillance to actively look for risk. Just the same way a mechanic looks for defects in an aircraft in an annual. You're going to take an aircraft in for an aircraft annual. A lot of times you may even fly it to a different airport to the shop that's going to do the annual. As far as your concern works perfectly fine. But as soon as that maintenance technician gets a hold of it they're going to pull out a checklist and start going down that checklist and surveilling the aircraft for things that may be a problem now that they need to fix things that aren't yet a problem but will be fairly soon if they're not taken care of and also need to be fixed and just surveilling that aircraft to manage its maintenance properly. Likewise we as pilots can use a checklist what we call the PAVE checklist before take off when you're planning your flight in order to be able to pave your way to a safe flight. The PAVE checklist stands for pilot, aircraft, the environment and external pressures and the whole purpose is to look at the potential risks on a flight that you're planning put them into these four different categories and then evaluate them how do I minimize this risk how do I mitigate this risk how do I avoid it how do I handle it. So the PAVE stands for pilot and what we're talking about is the risk factors associated with the pilot and the FAA course uses what they call the I am safe checklist illness, medication stress the alcohol whether or not you've had it alcohol, fatigue, food and emotion but you also want to think about those factors regarding the pilot but you also want to think about am I current in this aircraft am I current on instruments and I up to what I'm asking myself to do if I'm asking myself to fly IFR at night time in lousy weather am I really sharp enough on instruments to do that so you want to go through a mental checklist regarding yourself and your capability of performing what you're asking yourself to do and it's just to stop for just a few seconds to do next. The next thing we want to talk about is the aircraft and again is the aircraft capable of what you're asking it to do can it carry the load you're asking it does it have the range you're asking it to do does it have the equipment for the IFR flight you're asking to do and one of the things you always want to think about when you're thinking about the capability of the aircraft is density altitude you know I think all of us if we fly long enough eventually there will become a day, a time and a place in which you for the first time in your life fully understand density altitude for me it was in 1974 on July 26 about 3 in the afternoon in Lone Pine, California at that time Martha and I had a little Cherokee 140 they used to call it a 2 plus 2 and the reason they called it a 2 plus 2 is they didn't want you to think of it as a four place airplane so in the back of the aircraft you could either have luggage or if you didn't have any luggage you could snap in some seats and put a couple of other people in the aircraft but they wanted to make sure that you didn't think of it as a true four place airplane so they called it a 2 plus 2 well Martha and I of course thought of it as a four place airplane and we're on our way today for the first time in our lives to go to Death Valley, California so we're leaving San Diego heading towards Death Valley, California with this other couple with us and as we're heading across the desert there on our way to Death Valley all of a sudden it occurs to me hey wait a minute Death Valley is famous for being a remote place and we wouldn't be able to go anywhere else afterwards what if they don't have fuel at Death Valley and so all of a sudden it occurs to me maybe we better get some fuel before we get ourselves in this remote area because if they don't have fuel we couldn't go anywhere else so on an impromptu basis I look down on the map and I pick a place called Lone Pine, California Lone Pine is east of the Sierra Nevada it's on the downwind side where it's really hot and dry at about a 4,000 feet altitude and we landed there and taxied up to the fuel pump opened the door and only then do we realize it's about 110 degrees in Lone Pine, California at a 4,000 feet elevation well this old codger walks out to us very slowly in the heat and as he got close to the airplane I said to him fill it up and he stopped and gave me a long look and he says you mean just fill it up to those tabs there don't you sir and I said to him did I stutter I said fill it up and he goes okay so he proceeds to fill up the airplane we go in and we go to the bathroom and get something cool to drink and we come out and pay him his money and get ready for the takeoff now you should know you're doing something wrong if when you get ready for a takeoff it draws a crowd I mean people lined up in front of that building because they knew there was going to be one heck of a show and we didn't have a clue we put all four of us in the airplane and I don't know for some reason it happened but he made my turn amazing these things happen to me I don't know and we taxi to the end of the runway we line up and we put the throttle forward and the wheels of that airplane just very slowly started rolling we went the whole length of the runway and when we got to the opposite end I rotated because it seemed to be the thing to do that airplane staggered off the runway and the red light for the stall warning was on so help me for five miles while we flew around trees after we finally got that airplane to climb I look back to see how our passengers were doing all I could see was four silver dollars staring up to the front of the aircraft that couple never did fly with us again but on that afternoon on July 26th in Lone Pine California in 1976 about three in the afternoon I understood the concept of density altitude for the first time in my life the V in Pave stands for environment for the environment and the environment covers a lot of things it covers the airspace that you're flying in if it's class bravo are you up to it are you knowledgeable about it it covers the terrain you're flying over and of course it covers the weather you know the interesting thing is on this 210 flight in La Janta we had gotten a good weather briefing including a bolt hole if you will that we could get to a place with reasonable weather in case it wasn't good at Sioux Falls what we did wrong we had not written it down so when we were in the air and we had problems as John says our IQs went negative and we just flat out could not remember where that area of decent weather was so now we take our weather out in the aircraft with us in printed form even though like I'm sure many of you have we have XM weather in the cockpit well that wouldn't have helped us much back then we had an electrical problem dead batteries and you're not going to get any weather that way so we print out the weather off duet we take it with us in the aircraft and that way if we have a problem we've got resources with us and we know where to go part of the environment is daytime versus nighttime the aerodynamics are exactly the same maybe even a little improved in nighttime because it's cooler but only about 50% of our VFR cross country flying takes place at night but 50% of our accident so it really does make a difference when you can't see well at night the key to that is pre-flight the airplane for a nighttime trip make sure that the lights inside the aircraft work make sure the exterior lights work and particularly make sure you can see the panel well at nighttime it's a matter of life and death and it's really important also another rule about nighttime flying I don't know whether you've ever flown out over the desert at nighttime but our feeling is if you're going to really head out on a cross country at nighttime consider it an IFR trip fly at IFR altitudes, on airways that you know are safe and that way you don't have to worry about running into terrain accidentally we just consider all nighttime flying IFR flying the E in PAVE stands for external pressures now external pressures are something that's not really part of the flight itself but there's something that you're thinking about or that is pressing on you all the time when you're planning the flight and when you're in the flight itself and the big key here is don't let those external pressures make you ignore risks external pressures are things like why are you making the trip are you going to a family wedding are you going to a high school reunion are you going to a ski trip and you've already paid for the condo or the lift tickets why are you doing this and the critical thing is figure out alternative ways before you start that flight to handle these external pressures do you have somebody who wants to be waiting at the airport for you try not to let them do that try instead to say well I'll call you when I get in or I'll rent a car and I'll meet you try and get rid of the pressures and that will make you ignore the other risks in the other categories now we talked earlier that we have a room full of abnormal people by that I mean they're extraordinary goal oriented people you are hardwired to be goal oriented that's how you became a pilot you're hardwired to finish what you start you're hardwired to complete things and that is a wonderful thing in life that's how we became a pilot but it can be being hardwired to complete what you start is a risk factor in airplanes because it tends to make you continue flying because you're a goal oriented person people often talk about these external pressures and they talk about it as get home items and I don't think that adequately explains it I think these external pressures are all about you're wanting to complete what you start whether you're going home going somewhere else it's just you are used to completing what you start doing it's goal oriented behavior generally a good thing you need to manage your own goal oriented behavior and you need to make strategies that take the pressure off of yourself so you do manage it if Marth and I are going out for as little as a fifty dollar hamburger or a hundred excuse me it's a hundred dollar hamburger now it's a two hundred dollar hamburger but if we're going to go out and buy a two hundred dollar hamburger we take an overnight kit with us so that if we have the slightest mechanical problem if we are fatigued if the weather changes on us we just say hey we got our suitcase let's just stay overnight here have a nice dinner and we'll worry about this problem tomorrow morning so we're trying to set ourselves up so that we don't feel pressured if we do have someone who wants to meet us at the other end we lie to them we tell them we're going to get there about an hour after we're really going to get there and if we do get there early we get the airplane refueled clean the windshield have a drink relax a little bit and by the time they show up we're all calm down and ready to go the reason we do that is that gives us time to land and call them and put them off a little bit say we're not going to make it today or we're going to make it later today it gives us an opportunity to land and refuel the aircraft so we're big believers in manage these external pressures they're the one set of risk factors that make you ignore all the other risk factors so manage those figure out what might pressure you to work up a strategy for it in advance so the PAVE checklist is something to use while you're planning the flight what about once you're airborne well once you're airborne you can use what we call the care attention scan to manage the risks care stands for consequences alternatives, reality and again external pressures we're all used to the idea of aircraft control where the attitude indicator is pretty much the focus of it you spoke out to the airspeed indicator and back to the attitude indicator out to the altimeter and back to the attitude indicator and what you spoke out to and how frequently depends on what phase of flight you're in well the care attention scan is very similar to that aircraft control is always the center focus but from that you spoke out to think about the consequences of what's happening what alternatives you have at the moment and how they've changed if they have what the reality of the environment and your situation is and to consider and manage the external pressures that are acting on you now when you started this trip presumably using our system you used the PAVE checklist to manage all the risk factors associated with the flight but as soon as you get airborne all of these start changing because flying is a dynamic thing you're flying an airplane you're lower in fuel and the pilot's getting more fatigued over terrain that's changing everything starts changing so what you need to do is think about what's changing when you're flying the airplane and think about the consequences of those changes and one of the things we always say is always think through the consequences because everything is changing also don't think through just the first level but think through additional levels for instance let's assume you planned a trip and you were going to arrive at a certain time you get airborne and you look at your GPS and now you find out you're going to be late at your destination let's say your ground speed is 20 knots lower than you thought it was going to be well let's think through the consequences of that you're going to arrive more fatigued with an airplane that's lower on fuel later in the day possibly closer to dark or even after dark and you're going to feel a little stress because you had a schedule to begin with or your goal oriented you want to do things as you planned them to be so as a result you have a tendency to have more pressure as a result of this sometimes you've got people on the ground that are going to meet you and you're going to be late to meet them so all of this changes now when you took off you had a huge circle of alternatives when you took off you could fly in any direction the length of your fuel length of the fuel for your destination plus your reserve and you could do that in any direction so as you took off you have a big circle of consequences or a circle of alternatives well it becomes a no-brainer to land and re-expand that circle of alternatives particularly if you think through the second thing about the consequences because we talked about all the consequences of the fact that your ground speed is slower and you're going to be late but if you're in an airplane and your ground speed is slower than you thought it was going to be why is it slower than you thought it was going to be for any reason because the wind is different than you thought it was going to be well the wind drives the weather so if the wind is different the locations of pressure patterns in front are going to be different than you thought they were going to be and your weather will be different than it was forecast as luck would have it probably worse so the point is when you think through the consequences to the first level that we talked about down to the second level then you think it becomes no-brainer to land and re-extend and make bigger your circle of alternatives so you think through the consequences several levels and think about now do you want to land and re-expand your circle of alternatives the most important consideration in flying is to always have alternatives no matter what you have to do in order to maintain them whether it's landing to get fuel whatever it may be you always want to have alternatives and part of your alternatives is making sure that you've got a good way to track your fuel which really is just flying time how long are you going to be able to stay in the air let me ask you a question a bit of a sucker question two are false general aviation fuel gauges are absolutely reliable and accurate I told you it was a sucker question okay let me ask it this way how many people in here remember the one and only time that your fuel gauges are required by FAA regulation to be accurate when the tanks are empty isn't that handy so make sure as part of making sure you have alternatives that you have a way to know how much fuel and therefore flying time you really have and alternatives you need them not just for fuel but for weather you could be going into an airport without anything, any other airport close if it has a single runway what if they have a disabled aircraft on the runway somebody's blown a tire somebody landed gear up make sure you have alternatives not just for fuel and weather the most common cause of fatalities in VFR cross country flying is continued VFR flying in what listening weather conditions now do people take off and deliberately fly in weather that they know will kill them no, what happens is they take off and the weather changes but who are we we're pilots, we're goal oriented people so what do we do keep on flying as if nothing had changed we are in denial we are in denial of anything that tends to prevent us from having a goal whether it be a mechanical problem broken wire in a generator whether it be worsening weather we have a tendency to keep on going so what we're saying is pilots don't be in denial deal with reality when things change, change your plan deal with things as they really are not as you plan them to be so that is one of our key problems remember your goal oriented behavior your goal oriented orientation is one of the risk factors and the E in CARE stands again for external pressures and one of the ways when you're in flight that you'll know that you are under the effect of external pressures and that it may be affecting your assessment of other risks is you start feeling in a hurry when you start feeling like you're in a hurry you need to step back take a breath and think about what's going on what is the reality here and am I about to do something that's going to fly me out of alternatives you don't want to do that you don't want to let those external pressures make you ignore the other risk factors in the flight now if you're about to do something in your airplane and you want to ask yourself is what am I about to do wise let me give you a standard that you can apply what am I about to do and you'll know immediately whether it is a wise thing to do and the standard is ask yourself this question would I do what am I about to do if I had a hundred paying people on board behind me in the aircraft and the answer is no I'd never do this with a hundred people on board well why in the world would you do it with yourself or the people you care most about your friends and your family one of the things when I was solo that I would never have done is if I had one person with me well what am I chopped liver is my life worth less than anybody else's so it don't take risks with just yourself or your family and friends and people you care most about that you wouldn't do with a huge plane mode full of passengers now we made some promises at the beginning first of all to share the most important consideration in flying and the most important consideration is to always have what available alternatives available make sure you have alternatives available when you're planning the flight think about the PAVE checklist and that stands for pilot aircraft environment and external pressures and once you're in the air to manage the risk use the care attention scan which stands for consequences alternatives, reality deal with reality and again external pressures Martha I just guess that about wraps up what we're going to cover well no John not at all we haven't talked about the most feared emergency in all of aviation we said we were going to cover that Martha you're getting on my nerves again she's right I hate it when she's right anybody in here know what the most feared emergency is a lot of people say an aircraft fire other people say a ramp check but if you're a pilot the most feared emergency runner pilot thank you very much if you're a runner pilot the most feared emergency is a runaway Hobbs meter folks keep the pointy and forward the dirty side down and by all means please stay out of the trees thanks very much everybody thank you for being here did you talk about the person with the two buckets no tell us about the person you tell them about those two buckets I don't know about those two buckets I don't even know about one bucket like an experience go ahead you tell it because I don't have that in my repertoire you don't have that in your repertoire but as soon as you tell it we're going to steal it now I remember a few years ago these two were talking about the person comes in to learn to fly has two buckets one is luck and the other is experience now the luck bucket is full and the experience bucket is empty and as they go through flight training the object here is to fill the experience bucket before the luck runs out there is there is a lot of truth to that you know on that day when we had that accident our number just never came up we just we could have gone we could have hit one of those silos or trees or barns or something our luck just never ran out and I think we want to get ourselves don't put ourselves in a situation where luck is what makes the difference have you got any questions if you have come up here and ask a few you